The day where nobody set an alarm, which was awkward when we all realised we had about ten minutes to get out. Thankfully we went into packing mode, making it out in a record 18 minutes. Walking to Lidl to stock up on food and drink we then hopped on the now open S-Bahn to the main station where we dumped our bags for the day before heading across to the Allianz Arena to appease Ed and Josh’s need for football activities.

When there, and it became clear that the tour cost €10 it dropped down to just myself and El Dorado. The other two left to explore less exciting parts of München as we were guided around by the lovely Max, who I swear is Murray Macleod’s German cousin. Alas we didn’t get to play on the pitch, but it was interesting to see everything, and learn that even the German National Team didn’t get to use Bayern’s dressing room.

 Meeting the other two back in the city centre we headed over to the English Gardens where we encountered musical bins, which must be up there for some sort of award. Taking some time out to relax after a stressful few days of Jonny attempting to lose everything we decided it was best to head back to our train. So we got up and watched a group of German kids run off with some boys clothing; dick move, kids. On the way we passed a dog, we’d decided to shout ‘DED’ at every dog to warn Ed there were dogs approaching. The owner of this dog was English, and when I said I’d push Ed in the river to save him from the dog she took offence, thinking I was going to push in the dog. After trying to explain this wasn’t the case we continued our quest to arrive back at the Hauptbanhof.

I’d promised to nut everyone on the train if it didn’t have wifi, turns out the train didn’t even have plugs except for one inconveniently placed in the corridor. Ed and myself trekked the length of the train looking for our seat reservations to find if they had electricity, but alas no. So after attempting a quick charge of the laptop we made it about 20 minutes through an episode of The Walking Dead before it gave way. In the seats this may have made it an incredibly long journey, and I think everyone silently thanked our decision to upgrade to beds. Trying to use the plug to charge my phone I gave home a call before going back to the compartment to find that the guys had already mostly given in on entertainment and were heading to bed. I did the same.

We arose remarkably early for our group as we were off to Ruhpolding, a place Jonny had stayed on holiday, he promised amazing things. After listening to an American explain history on a train for about an hour we switched onto the smaller line to Ruhpolding where they had to phone to make sure our Interrail passes were okay, evidently they don’t get many tourists down that way except for the ski season, being encompassed by mountainous terrain.

We quickly headed for food and found a little pizza-slices-to-go place which were delicious and virtually the only thing to actually eat due to it being Sunday AND out of tourist season. We headed down to an activities area where there were numerous games available - jet golf, miniature golf, table tennis. We opted for the first option which is basically hitting a golf ball encased in Velcro at a target made of carpet. Not fully understanding the rules we ploughed  ahead and agreed our own, which were then changed when the game took four times as long as it should. Pre-rule change winner, Ed, came unstuck after the new guidelines to let me in to win the second half.

To break up the golf we rented some table tennis bats and has a mini-tournament. Anyone who knows me may know my enthusiasm toward the half-sport and so I was determined to win. Round 1 saw Jonny lose to Ed and I beat Josh to set up a magnificent final, which I went on to win 21-18. Victory!

Due to the crowd of people gathered around the mini-golf we made the decision to go swimming where we were promised an impressive wave machine. To be fair when we got there the place was pretty amazing, especially with the landscape. Ed even attempted a flip off the top diving board which he almost completed well, he still made a bit of a splat though. The kids after him showed him how to do it, despite being significantly his junior. 

On the way back to the golf via Jonny’s accommodation it started to rain, and quite hard, so the golf was abandoned and we headed home via Traunstein, which we walked around to attempt to find food, although Jonny learnt that he’d somehow lost his Cash Card too.

Back at the hotel the Internet wasn’t at top speed, possibly due to the sheer amount of people in the lobby but slowly they cleared out, allowing us to get some downloading done, and giving the woman watching the Millennium Trilogy on her Mac peace. With this in mind we headed up to the room where I headed into the shower. Halfway through however Josh came into the room with his camera, after having unlocked the door from the outside. Fearing I had no dignity left to lose I then opened the door to Ed in my nude state, everything’s hilarious when you’re in the nude.

Luckily the Internet was now at full speed allowing me to find a stream for Money in the Bank, huzzah for WWE! Even Josh watched for the majority. Going up to bed at 5am was probably helpful given the probably uncomfortable nature of the beds on the Munich-Rome train the next evening.

Luckily nobody shouted at us to check out as we awoke before having to get the train over to München and we actually managed to get out fairly successfully, even Josh managing to be up and ready for our fairly early train. Considering our last train journey had taken almost thrice as long as it should’ve done we were hoping that Austria wouldn’t cause us the same problems.

As soon as we got on the train - after the daily chocolate pancake - we were all amazed by the quality of transport. There was a play area for small children alongside tremendous leg room and beautiful seats, which stopped your head rolling off the sides much to Jonny’s delight. The locals must have thought we were an odd bunch marvelling at their trains. We set up the laptop in order to finish Star Wars Episode I and start our run through of The Walking Dead now we could actually all hear it with our recently purchased five-way splitter.

Eventually arriving in Munich we learnt that the S-Bahns were all shut over the weekend, which was a tad annoying as we were in town Saturday to Monday. We headed over to the ticket office to try and buy Jonny a new Interrail ticket and to book onto the night train to Rome. After finding out it was €26 more for a bed we opted for seats whilst Jonny queued for his pass. Everything was bought - although he now came from Eire rather than his native UK. We decided to walk to our hotel after eventually deciding on our directs using a number of factors (which included the direction of the sun due to our incredible ingenuity). We arrived to a very smiley lady who directed us to our room, she even managed a sense of humour despite being German. 

After a nap from Ed and a journey to the lounge to attempt to download more video for us to watch alongside research on our overnight train which saw the group reverse the decision and opt for beds instead. So we travelled back into the city to buy new reservations to allow us to actually sleep and then we went in search of the Haufbrahaus (sp?) although it appeared that Munich was in the middle of Gay Pride, which made navigating the centre interesting to say the least.

Eventually we made it to what is essentially a massive pub with not enough seating but everyone had told us to go see it so we gave it a go anyway, and eventually found somewhere to seat. Not being a massive drinker myself I can’t comment on the litre of alcohol that arrived but the food was amazing and worth every penny. I had a beautiful pork steak that I would quite happily eat for the rest of my life. Jonny had some suckling pig and the other two opted for half a chicken apiece. Again, Jonny eats chocolate ice cream terribly.

On the way home we passed by a massive fountain that we’d dared Ed to go in earlier. “Carpe Diem” I thought and handed my stuff to Josh. This led to Edward and Jonathan both deciding to take the adventure into the middle with me as Josh was sensible and walked around the edge with all our stuff. Admittedly this led to a very cold, and a very wet journey home where stuff was hung from every conceivable peg in order to dry out as quickly as possible but it was fun and we vowed to find a fountain in every city in order to repeat our feat.

For some reason the evening was spent filling up plastic bags found in the bathroom with soap and water and throwing them into the shower to watch them burst. Seriously the coolest kids.

The time had come to leave mostly beautiful Berlin and Josh actually managed to be up almost in time for us to checkout, although that didn’t stop the cleaner trying to come in at 10:01. I felt almost bad, our room was still pretty messy and yet everyone there had been so nice! With heavy hearts we said goodbye to Singer 109 and realised that we probably wouldn’t be staying in a hostel as nice again. The idea that we’d chosen the wrong route, and should’ve finished in Stockholm/Berlin was growing but we put it to the back of our minds.

Ed needed to find a Deutsche Bank which should be fairly easy in Germany, or so one would think! In the end it took a fifteen minute trek down friedrichstraße whilst Jonny and Josh waited with all our bags. We still managed to get to the Hauptbanhof over an hour early, perhaps we should’ve saved the shopping for then. It’s surprisingly difficult to find a good sandwich in Berlin. You also tend to get odd looks when you start singing ‘Take On Me’ in the middle of a shop.

On the train we ran into two girls from Milton Keynes (or ‘MK’ as they like to say) Anna and Freya, who we ditched to go sit in our seats - remember kids to always reserve if you actually feel like sitting down. On the way past the penultimate compartment of our Harry Potter style train I caught the glimpse of a face I hadn’t seen in years - Nico Walters! Absolutely mental to think that we were on the exact same train a compartment apart. Anyway, we took our seats next to a man very reminiscent of Santa (although I expected Mrs Claus to look different) the MK girls were still looking for somewhere to rest at this point. On the Harry Potter train they have odd seats you can fold down in the corridor which were unused so I offered my own seat to one of them and sat in the corridor, because I’m such a gentleman! We got talking - Santa, MK and our own pack - and everybody awwed when Santa eventually fell asleep. We realised that Anna and Freya were mimicking our trip for the next couple of stops and decided to all get the train together over to sunny Austria in three days time. Santa woke up and proclaimed we were now in the Czech Republic, and close to where he was getting off (although he did keep saying it was the next station). Eventually Josh helped him with his luggage and we were left alone to rave it up with our Europe playlist with classic tune after classic tune.

At last we were in Prague and after waiting for what felt like an eternity for Josh to withdraw money - later we learnt there were unused machines just down the escalator - we headed our separate way to the MKs but with plans to meet up later in the evening. Upon arriving at our hostel and learning that it was 1150CKr per person, more than Josh had budgeted for the entire day, we dumped our bags band meet our roomies - it was an odd hostel because it was split into apartments, which were then subdivided into a couple of rooms with communal wash, kitchen and relaxation facilities.

We met up with team MK to try to find somewhere to eat and eventually settled on an Italian/Pirate restaurant - there were reasons for the theme, but srsly. It was then out to find a bar that we could all drink in, Ed still being 17, which isn’t hard in Prague as nobody IDs even when they’re unsure of your age. We ended up in a rock/comic club and just after we arrived the Official Prague Pub Crawl came in, which seemed to have been taken over by Australians. The organiser of their tour to Europe came over to talk to us, and despite her accent she was from London. We discussed Australians’ poor use of the English language before a real life Australian came over to start insulting England, us, and The Queen. She also decided to show us how tough she was by trying to tackle me ‘Aussie Rules style’, which I’m sure everyone has videos of. Eventually she left, but only after we shouted at some of the other pub crawlers to take her with them.

By the time we left, after Ed broke a glass, it was too late for Anna and Freya to get back over to their hostel, so we smuggled them into our apartment. On the way we passed Tesco, and a Costa Coffee - it’s almost like home. There’s also a Subway with normal advertised hours that NEVER CLOSES. It’s insane.

So after the entertainment that was my birthday we didn’t manage to get up until around 12 but was up relatively quickly. It was fairly evident that Josh wasn’t quite fully awake when, attempting a shortcut, Josh jumped at a tree before exclaiming ‘I thought it had a jaguar in it’.

Our plan of things to do wasn’t quite complete, so we headed over to the Berlin Wall using the underground - skipping fares on the underground seems incredibly easy due to the fact that they don’t seem to use barriers in Europe - but unfortunately went the wrong way out of the station. Although this meant that we stumbled across Checkpoint Charlie, a crossing point between ye old East and West Berlin.

When we managed to get to the Wall it was almost exactly as expected. A concrete wall with varying amounts of graffiti. What was perhaps more interesting was the Topographie des Terrors exhibit about World War Two. I got kinda mad that they killed a 6 year old girl due to the fact she had epilepsy, I still can’t understand how it’s possible to justify. It was just after we took cover under the exhibit that the heavens truly began to open, a huge thunderclap seemed to roll in and echo off the surrounding buildings whilst flashes of lightening illuminated the grey skies of Berlin.

We decided it was probably time to head over to the Olympiastadion before the world ended. €5 to walk around wasn’t too bad! It was strangely disappointing, maybe the history the place was steeped in gave unrealistic expectations, especially after its revamp. It was, however, interesting to know about figures like Carl Diem, who held his position in office from the Weimar Government right through the Third Reich. It was also amazing to see people swimming in the ex-Olympic pool. We were all slightly jealous as we hadn’t had a chance to use our trunks yet and we were pretty sure we wouldn’t really get another opportunity. On the train home I started singing ‘Do You Really Like It?’ and a five year old girl opposite copied. “I’m loving it, loving it, loving it!”

We stopped off at the Hauptbahnhof to book our tickets over to Prague as well as searching for a connection for Ed to download photos from his camera - he only brought a 128mb memory, idiot. We also managed to bag a five-way splitter, so we can watch The Walking Dead on the train! Stoked. Also bought a couple of Ampelmännchen souvenirs, because that dude’s awesome.

Josh caved in and bought a Burger King, our first fast food food of our trip. I was just surprised it took so long, really. We went back to the hostel and downloaded The Phantom Menace to, hypothetically, watch later. However we all went down to the bar and ate some food instead, before grabbing Ligretto which involved me teaching them how to play. Unsurprisingly I won. CHAMPION. Jonny/Josh managed to even up Pool but we managed to keep up our Table Football supremacy, so I suppose we won overall!

It was early to bed for our journey to Prague later in the day, but at least we didn’t see anyone bleeding out on the pavement.

So the most important bit about July 6 was the fact that it was the day that I finally became an adult. Brand New were finally relatable, I could use eBay, all the positives were there. The fact that I was in Germany, a country with a drinking age of 16 meant that the obvious were somewhat taken away, but that was completely fine with me!

We’d set our sights on slightly touristy things for the morning, and as I awoke Ed and Jonny were already planning our route for the day. We seem to have stopped the three meal-a-day routine of at home and tend to only eat properly around dinner, so breakfast was skipped as we made our way toward Alexanderplatz and the concrete Fernsehturm Berlin - which is basically a massive TV tower that was built on the communist side of the wall, according to Jonny to rub in that they managed to get TV first - this may be complete rubbish but he does seem to have a ridiculous knowledge of German history so I’m taking it as true.

Anyway, it’s the tallest structure in Germany, and the fourth tallest freestanding structure in Europe. In fact, the tower is taller than the Eiffel Tower - although the viewing platform is lower than you’re allowed in Paris. Due to this I decided that my feet would remain in the Starbucks at the bottom - because when in Berlin drink Starbucks’ English Breakfast Tea. The view is allegedly amazing, and I’m slightly gutted that I didn’t go up, I’ll work up the courage one day!

As we passed through the square just behind, complete with Poseidon fountain, we were told to steer clear from the people with clipboards and “stay away from the gypsy scum” by one of the city sightseeing saleswomen. Which Jonny had said in a slightly more PC way just before, which helped hammer home the point.

As we walked down Berlin’s only street (according to Josh) we came across Berlin Cathedral. At only €4 entry we decided to have a look - well Ed got in free after a lot of searching for a passport. We decided that Christianity was at least good for the structures it created if nothing else. Heights aren’t my thing, so when the dome walk was suggested I had second thoughts but made my way about half way up before grabbing hold of the hand rail, brow slightly sweaty and eyes petrified. Eventually I made it up to the top with the encouragement of my three colleagues and a random tourist to look over a slightly lower panorama of Berlin than the one Josh, Jonny and Ed had managed to get a few minutes earlier. From the dome it seems like half of Berlin is still being built!

Afterwards we went to have a look at an empty room just below street level outside the library which signified the amount of books the Nazis burnt. We spotted the Cathedral of St Hedwig - no joke, it’s an actual thing - which was almost completely empty. It contained the body of a holocaust hero too, for whom we lit a candle (although we didn’t have the money to pay - whoops)

Then it was onwards to the Brandenburg Gate via the Haagen-Daz cafe where Josh preceeded to spend all my money, complaining that he spent £130 in Copenhagen, so I gave him his €5,90 tropical twist ice cream smoothy (thing) and looked toward the end of the street for the almighty Gate, which was quite impressive. Again, history lessons from Jonny, and musings about why the French embassy has loopholes to shoot through. The square was complete with the hotel Michael Jackson dangled a child out of. Now that’s history if ever I saw it. There are quite a lot of posters advertising the Cirque De Soleil Michael Jackson Immortal tour, which is ironic as Josh pointed out as he’s almost the very definition of mortal nowadays.

From the Gate it was onto the Reichstag - the German House of Parliament - which is impressive from the oustide, being inside a royal 1894 building, although topped with glass dome, which we could’ve gone round if we were okay with waiting the half an hour queue - not something that we were up for doing. So we headed toward the Berlin Victory Column, built to commemorate the Prussian victory in the Danish-Prussian War. Berlin seems to attract war.

It was finally getting time for everyone to be hungry so we headed over to the Hard Rock Cafe to eat. Due to my birth date I was forced up on to a chair at the end of our meal and everyone sang happy birthday, at least it was a good ice breaker as Melanie and Jenny, in town for the fashion week, started talking to us and we all decided to go out later. This required us to all go back to the hostel to dump our bags and get ready whilst they went to see the Blue Man Group. As we left the hostel and walked down the street we were asked for a cigarette, and when our answer was negative profanities were yelled in our direction, which made us all speed up just a little bit.

On the train we started counting in binary which sort of become a thing now. Good ol’ binary. Meeting back in Hard Rock Cafe where there was a DJ before everybody started to leave and he just started choosing songs from iTunes. Seriously, mixing I’ve Got a Feeling with Du Hast was some sort of stroke of genius. Jonny’s hardcore Moshpit drink turned out to be quite a feminine strawberry cocktail, whilst Josh & I chose some sort of Baccardi Raspberry drink. MANLY. We were told about a rock club in a different part of town, so we got on their overground and got off to an interesting sight.

There were ladies of the night on the street corners, and we immediately bumped into a group of German guys that talked to our German counterparts whilst we looked on with absolutely no idea what was being decided. Eventually we started walking down the street in search of (what we were told was) a bar. After a few hundred metres it was quite obvious that nobody quite knew what they were doing, and the ladies of the night were endless. The final straw was when a guy right next to us got kicked in the head and was flat out on the pavement, blood spewing from his head. We decided to call it quits and head back to the hostel. We’ve decided that somebody dies every time someone shouts angrily in German. Every. Single. Time. Sort of like whenever somebody mentions that they don’t believe in fairies, although I doubt you can wish them back to life by speaking in a cute Parisian accent.

The fact all the underground is still running at 2am, alongside the pastry shops in the stations being open is a little trippy for an Englishman who’s used to everything shutting significantly earlier. On our way back a guy started talking to Josh about his Enter Shikari t-shirt, although he was promptly surrounded by Polizei, judging by how high he seemed it was of little surprise.

All in all it was a good day, but maybe could have ended a little better!

It wasn’t a good morning. Not in the slightest. Josh seemed fairly chirpy but the fact that food was off the menu meant that I was hungry, and the walk from the hostel to Copenhagen Central just killed me. After loading onto the train to discover that we were in the hottest coach on the damn thing without so much as a wifi. Most of the beginning journey was spent trying to sleep off the night prior, before eventually our train docked onto a boat. We were on a train on a ferry. It was absolutely mental, although probably not the best thing.

Is the whole sailor hat thing in Daneland to do with the Eurovision entry, or is that just a thing? Answers on a postcard please.

After we got back onto the train somewhere in Germany we opened the laptop to try to watch The Walking Dead, but when that proved to be too quiet we switched to Bruce Willis (who’s hencher than even Jonny) trying to save aeroplanes from another German villain. RAW was again rejected. Shockingly all the trains into our changeover at Hamburg were running late and so what we thought was a 15 minute changeover became one minute when we were told it was late, but ended up being more like 5, hurrah!

In the Harry Potter train compartment complete with what seemed like a fairly annoyed Granny and extra German to make up the numbers I bagged myself my first real food of the day, a single chocolate square. Good food. The two hours into Berlin passed pretty smoothly except for the fact the plugs died again meaning I failed to get all the way through RAW. At some point I’ll get there, trust me. Berlin welcomed us at about 6:30 but a further train awaited us to carry us out to our hostel.

Or hostel is SO NICE. From the outside it looks quite similar to Sleep In Heaven, almost looking like an old factory but inside it’s been done up really nicely, and reminds me more of a hotel than hostel. We showered in our clothes, which I’ve been reliable informed is covered under YOLO before we went down to the bar where we completely alcohol free where overly annoying German women didn’t understand why we were asking how many the nachos fed (they easily served all four of us rather than the one she’d said) and we got some proper food in us for the first time since Gamla Stan in Stockholm.

After a game of Pool (me and ed victorious) and table football (again, with the losers being Josh and Jonny) we headed up to our room to chillax and write our blogz. NOW IT’S MY BIRTHDAY, which we’ll be celebrating responsibly (and most probably sober). Off out into Berlin tomorrow to explore, it’s going to be an interesting day!

edit: I’ve been informed that the sailor hats are to do with graduation and not Eurovision :(