While Wacken is off to the west of the country, near Hamburg, I’ve never been to Berlin despite hearing many great things about it. Time to fix that.

I’d checked flights, but worked out that train was about the same price, about the same time, far more comfortable and dropped me off 50m from a hostel. So after waving bye-bye to Joy, I headed to the international terminal at St Pancras and jumped on a Eurostar to Brussels. Then promptly fell asleep. I woke up briefly and the cars we were zooming past were on the wrong side so I assumed we were in France (or the police in Kent were in for a bad day). I nodded off again and my phone told me I was now in Belgium.

After a minor panic getting my 4G to work even though I thought I’d set it all up before leaving, we pulled into Brussels and I located the first of my German trains. A short while later I made a final change onto the one which would take me to Berlin.

I got talking to a nice German lady (who’s near-opening shot was “What on earth is that Boris Johnson doing?”) for most of the trip, and she helped me decipher the conductor’s instructions that we change carriage as, due to an electrical fault, the aircon was borked. Sadly this meant being moved to first class.

We pulled into Berlin Hauptbahnhopf a shade over 7 minutes late which isn’t bad for an interrupted journey (they had to make an unscheduled stop to get everyone to move carriage) and my hostel was ridiculously easy to find. I’m currently ensconced in the Meininger by the train station and it’s pretty much like a budget hotel only with two bunks in each dorm room.

Berlin is like the UK a while ago – it’s hit and miss if people will take card payments and everywhere closes around 9-10pm, but after some hiking I managed to find a place called Curry-One which sold me a “Berlin Menu”: currywurst, chips, mayo, ketchup and beer for €6.50. Very nice it was, too!

Job done, back to the hostel and asleep on top of the covers in the top bunk as it was so bloody warm!