I wish I had bothered to write a diary of some sorts, but here’s a little taster of what I did:

• walked lots and lots. So much to see in Berlin, and what better way to walk around the city getting a feeling not for the normal tourist haunts, but what the suburbs are like too.
• took lots of pictures of random things [1]
• visited the Jewish history museum (stunning architecture, as well as an incredible insight to the torments the followers of this faith have had in the past few thousand years in Europe)
• visited the communications museum
• visited the old point where checkpoint Charlie stood, and the museum that overlooks it
• visited countless other museums giving quite an extensive history into what Berlin and Germany as a whole has looked like in the past, the present and plans for the future.
• more walking
• Drank beer (Berlin wießbier is now my favourite beer, lets see what I think when I get round to visiting Bavaria

I didn’t really get chance to see everything I wanted to in one short week, so probably will want to go back some time in the future (probably a few times) and try and plan more constructive plans to actually do things. What will prove invaluable in this endeavour will definitely be my “rough guide to Berlin” which proved to be a brilliant source of information whilst I was out there, along with my handy map of Berlin, purchased from WH Smiths, and my BVG rail system map).

Not being a travel writer, or writer of any kind, it is difficult for me to attempt to put into words how good I thought Berlin was, the German people and just how polite and helpful they are (as long as you at least attempt to be polite yourself!) the excellent public transport in Berlin, basically the entire city is great!!

Anyway, expect more posts when I have time, going into specifics

[1] http://thefraggle.com/germany/

It’s a vosonic vp2160, and at £109 for a 60gb model I’m pretty happy. It happily reads my CF card fresh from the camera, and copies over all the images pretty speedily.

The interface is super simple and easy to use, it doesn’t play music or anything like that, but all I wanted it for was to store pictures on till I get home and can process the images.

The USB2.0 interface is speedy enough to copy over files i’ve copied to the disk, and also allows you to use the device as a CF/MMC/whatever reader for your PC, which is handy. It’s pretty handy too how you can charge the Li-ion battery via USB too (you have to plug two usb connectors into your pc, but that’s no biggie really)

What really impressed me the most, however, is how it actually seems to suggest you should be fine upgrading the hard disk at some point. They include (amongst the power adapter to charge it up and the install cd for win98 drivers etc) a mini screwdriver to uncouple the back off it, which reveals a bog standard fujitsu 2.5″ hard disk. So if I decide 60gb isn’t enough in this little device I will be able to have a good go at upgrading the hard disk!.

I also purchased a Creative Zen Vision:M 30gb today too today to tide me for my trip to germany, but will druel more at that when it arrives tomorrow

Today was a pretty nice day, so I decided to go to the Trough of Bowland, had a wander around and decided to head on and go for a bit of a drive. Not sure how good an idea this was, but I ended up in North Yorkshire, and having to follow signs to find Clithroe, to head back to Preston.

Well worth it though, was a beautiful day, and even though I diddn’t get any really good pics, It was nice to get out of the house on my own and have some quiet time thinking

See deviantart for any pics I put up .