Meag: Last night, Matt gave us directions to go to Basteibrücke by train. We didn’t really know where we were going but we hopped on the train in the morning and rode through a little valley with picturesque colourful houses along the Elbe River. After about half an hour, we got off and walked down to the waterfront where a small ferry was tied down and to float back and forth across the river. I tried my hand at some more German to get tickets and the boat captain got what I meant after some hand gesturing. (S: and some unhelpful hand waving on my part.) We wound our way through the little streets to find the bottom of what was essentially a giant 60-minute staircase, which Savanna was thrilled about!

S: Right. Thrilled. Especially since we didn’t take the direct route, we explored every extra pathway which was a lot of work. It was completely worth it don’t get me wrong! Meaghan can even attest to the fact that the only complaining I did was mid-way where she looked back at me from 20 stairs away and I was just looking at her like ‘who the f* would want to live up here? How the f* did they get their stuff up here? WHY.’ But honestly it was wonderful and probably one of my favourite things I’ve seen so far. It turns out that on top of this very steep, very long hill is a broken down medieval castle, which we also thoroughly explored.

M: It was beautiful all the way along! We kept climbing to the next point and I thought, wow this is so high this must be it! The we turned a corner and there were more stairs, much to Savanna’s chagrin.

We then headed back to Dresden to explore the old city a little more. It was just as beautiful in the daylight, so we wandered around and ate some currywurst while watching people set up tents and flags for a holiday on Monday.

Matt met us at the train station to head to Berlin and we were off! Just before we got on the train I found some cat yogurt gummies that we have at work sometimes and I was very excited. Stopped-dead-in-my-tracks kind of excited and made Savanna turn around excited. Now I could have a whole bag to myself instead of having to share with the whole office!

S: She was almost more excited about the cat gummies than anything we’d seen today, which piqued my curiosity. Turns out the gummies are just gummies, friends. After our train trip to Berlin (and a lot of awkward unintentional eye contact with a Czech man who didn’t speak English) we checked into the hostel and promptly met up with Matt’s friends on the east side of Berlin. At least I think it was east… I have been the butt of ALL directional jokes based on my ‘locking myself but not actually locking myself in the bathroom’ escapades…

We all went to a wine bar and proceeded to talk A LOT about German politics for the next 3-4 hours. Which was actually really interesting. I had a harder time following along because by the time I processed a question Meaghan was onto the next one! Also two glasses of wine were not super helpful on this score.

M: I still have many questions. It was a lot of fun meeting Matt’s friends, we are looking forward to seeing them again tomorrow! On our way home we found a 24-hour pizza place with a very eccentric pizza maker who said “Opa!” and “Aiyayai” after every sentence. Turns out his hobby is knowing random facts about countries. He dazzled us with facts about Canada, and I in turn dazzled him with my one factoid I could think of about Turkey – the capital. He made a delicious hand-tossed pizza in 10 minutes flat and we ate the whole thing back at our hostel: Heart of Gold. (Which by the way is based on the Hitchikers Guide to the Galaxy).

S: seriously we ate the whole thing. I might also need to find new pants tomorrow. On that note….

S&M