The Route: London – Berlin – Gdansk – Warsaw – Krakow – Budapest – Prague – Amsterdam – London
Guidebook used: Lonely Planet Guide to Eastern Europe, 2nd edition, published 1991

Friday 29 July 1994
Having missed out on the whole Inter-Rail experience during our respective student days (too skint and too disorganised to get our 'shit' together!), Lorraine and I finally decided to take the plunge by planning a mad dash around Eastern Europe. Armed with two weeks leave from work and a cheapo tent which first saw action at Glastonbury earlier that summer, we arrived at London Liverpool Street Station one sunny morning wondering where our freshly acquired passes would take us. After buying some sandwiches and snacks in the vast station precinct, we boarded the boat train for Harwich and the Hook of Holland with a mixture of nervousness and excitement. With only a fairly limited experience of independent travel behind us we weren't quite sure what to expect but the first leg of our trip was straightforward enough. As our train pulled out of London for the far reaches of Essex, it felt great to be on the rails even if our view of the East End out of the window did seem drearily familiar. When we arrived at Harwich just over an hour later, we boarded a large Stena Lines ferry and then made our way up on deck so we could watch the coast of England fade into the distance.

After waving goodbye to our beloved homeland, we retired to the bar and enjoyed some musical entertainment courtesy of a semi-talented female vocalist, backed by a 'house band' whose spangly costumes couldn't quite rid me of the impression that they'd walked straight off a building site. Whilst we savoured this fine combo's readings of 'Lay Down Sally' and 'Karma Chameleon', a couple of Welsh blokes joined us for a few drinks. We didn't learn much about them apart from the fact that they'd been drinking all the way from Swansea and were planning to tour the brothels of Amsterdam that evening. Judging by the state of them though, the chances of either indulging in such exotic pleasures looked somewhat slim but we wished them well as we finally spilled out onto the European mainland some eight hours later. Having successfully negotiated customs, we made our way to the railway interchange but as we waited for our train, I dropped a plastic bag containing a large bottle of duty free red wine on to the platform. The bottle smashed inside the bag and wine gushed out all over the place leaving me with no option but to bin the remains and quickly walk away from the mess hoping that no-one would notice. Thankfully, a bright yellow Dutch Railways train soon arrived to save my blushes but once on board we were surprised to see it  heading in the direction of the sea. The train had actually shuttled to Hook of Holland Strand Station by the beach but I was worried because getting on the wrong train here would have meant missing our planned connections. We breathed a sigh of relief though when the train eventually reversed and went back past the port in the right direction.

As we headed away from the coast, our view of the flat industrial landscape was enlivened by a group of topless women waving at us as we passed a small lake by the side of the railway. 'Ah…those liberal, fun-loving Europeans,' I thought as I enthusiastically acknowledged their greetings by waving back at them like a madman. It felt great to have left England behind! After changing at Rotterdam, we eventually arrived at Amersfoort where we connected onto the overnight express to Berlin. We'd reserved a couple of seats for the journey in advance but it wasn't long before our compartment was full. It was really hot and even the open window didn't seem to offer much in the way of fresh air, a situation that was exacerbated by the female German student who joined our compartment and then proceeded to break wind at regular intervals throughout the night. I really wasn't too bothered about all that though. With two weeks ahead of us and a large slice of the European rail network at our disposal, I was just happy to be on the rails heading out into the 'great unknown'.

Saturday 30 July 1994
I somehow managed to grab a couple of hours sleep during the night and by the time I woke up, we were well inside the former German Democratic Republic. I'd never been so far east before so it felt strange travelling through a land which would have been out of bounds to us just five years earlier. As the rising sun illuminated the misty pine forests that lined the route, my sense of anticipation rose. Berlin was a city I'd always wanted to visit and my first view of the ancient S-Bahn trains ranged along sidings at the edge of the city only served to intensify my excitement. It wasn't long before we arrived at a bustling Zoo Station and feeling in need of some refreshment, we found a café nearby where we paid the equivalent of £4 for a single pot of tea. Even though it was only about eight o'clock in the morning, there were a few people drinking beer in the café which added a nice 'euro-bohemian' touch to the place, even if the prices were a bit steep. Skipping the opportunity to shell out any more cash for another tea, we instead located a supermarket nearby where we rustled up enough ingredients for a nice big breakfast picnic which we enjoyed outside the Zoo whilst an elephant peered at us through the iron railings. We then made our way back to the station where we caught the S-Bahn right to the end of the line at Potsdam where there was supposed to be a good campsite.

As the train trundled through the suburbs of West Berlin, some early morning revellers joined our carriage on their way to the beach at Lake Wansee. It was now beginning to warm up and one laid-back looking dude had obviously decided that we were in need of some fresh air so he pulled open the manually-operated sliding doors whilst the train was moving and then sat on the floor next to them to catch the breeze. I was slightly concerned that he might fall out of the train but at least he helped provide it with some much needed ventilation. Our arrival in Potsdam brought us back into the old East which was easy enough to spot due to the prevalence of concrete housing developments, although the imposing dome of St Nikolai's Church did provide an element of grandeur to the vista. It took us longer than expected to find the campsite as the name of the nearest station to it had changed from Potsdam Hauptbahnhof to Potsdam Pirschiede. This station was nowhere near the centre of Potsdam and off the main S-Bahn line so we had to catch two more trains to get there. One of the trains was a decrepit double-decker which still sported the logo of the 'Deutsche Reichsbahn', the railway network of the GDR. We were the only ones onboard which wasn't surprising seeing that the whole area appeared to have been long deserted. I wondered whether everyone had migrated to the West, or maybe they knew something about the Chernobyl look-a-like industrial unit situated next to Werder Havel Station that we didn't. Either way it didnt appear that this part of the old GDR had changed much since the fall of the Berlin Wall. The only difference now was that we could actually see what the place looked like for ourselves without attracting the attention of the Stasi.

We eventually reached Pirschiede Station where we walked out onto a long road that ran between Lake Templiner on one side and a shady pine forest on the other. The heat had intensified even further and the water in my bottle felt like it had been warmed up in a kettle. It was a twenty-five minute walk to the campsite but once there we knew we couldn't have asked for a better location to stop the night. We were allocated a pitch right by the lakeside and as soon as we put up our tent, I went straight into the water for a nice, relaxing swim. The lake was tranquil and as I cooled down in the water, it felt good to have finally come to a halt after so much continuous travelling. We then enjoyed a couple of cold Berliner beers outside the small campsite kiosk before heading back to the tent where we spent a pleasant evening watching steamers plough up and down the lake as the sun set slowly behind the trees.

Sunday 31 July 1994
We got up early and each enjoyed a long, hot shower before sitting down to a bread and cheese breakfast by the lakeside. As we were preparing to leave the site, a couple of friendly old men who'd been camping next to us asked me to take a photo of them. They told me that they were brothers just enjoying a little of the outdoor life together like they used to when they were younger. The Praktica camera they gave me to take the photo was a nicely crafted piece of equipment, one which relied on mechanical engineering rather than electronics to do its job. Although I had to manually focus the lens through the view-finder, the shutter gave a satisfying, positive click when I took the shot. The camera embodied all the traditional virtues of German engineering and even though more advanced Japanese models had since become available here, it was nice to see that some artefacts from the past were still worth hanging on to. The brothers enquired as to whether we were planning to visit Sanssouci Palace, the so-called 'Versailles of the East', seeing that we'd made the effort to come all the way to Potsdam. I said that given our tight schedule, looking around Berlin was our main priority but I was sure we would return to check it out some other time. 

After packing up our tent and the rest of our stuff, we hiked through the forest back to Pirschiede Station. Once again the station was deserted but we had some time to admire the sleek, modernist lines of the building. There didn't seem to be any direct routes back into Berlin and one of the maps on the station notice board had West Berlin blocked out completely, obviously another relic from the past. I wondered whether the old map had been left there deliberately as I'd read that some East Germans resented the fact that the history and identity of their former nation had been completely submerged during the reunification process. As our train options seemed limited, we instead boarded a tram which went past the entrance to Sanssouci before continuing through the centre of Potsdam and on to Babelsberg (the home of the German film industry during the pre-Hollywood heyday of Dietrich and Lang) where we were able to connect back onto the S-Bahn. Travelling towards Berlin, we enjoyed a great view of the city as our train snaked its way above street level through the plush suburbs of the West. We continued past the Kurfürstendamm and the Tiergarten, eventually crossing over the River Spree into the East. Berlin had a strange visual quality, almost as if I was viewing the city in black and white like in the film 'Wings of Desire'. The further east we travelled, the greyer the view seemed to get although some neighbourhoods were punctuated with attractive blocks of pre-war tenements which lent an air of understated cool to the scene.

We eventually arrived at Berlin Lichtenberg Station where we dropped off our backpacks in left luggage. We then made our way back towards Alexanderplatz where we ascended to the top of the TV Tower, Berlin's most visible monument to the might of Communism. The view from the top of the tower was stunning and the line between East and West was still quite visible even if the Wall had now gone. Industrial buildings and endless rows of 'social housing' dominated the East whilst the West at least benefited from having the green expanse of the Tiergarten to spruce up its view. After spending some time circling the viewing gallery and absorbing the panorama, we made our way back down to ground level. It was beginning to warm up again and some locals were even swimming in the fountains outside the City Hall. Declining the opportunity to take an impromptu dip, we instead carried on towards Marx Engels Platz where a statue of those heroes-turned-villains stood outside the Palace of the Republic. Built in the 1970's, the Palace lost its role as a chamber of government when the GDR collapsed. The building itself was rendered useless not only by the end of the regime but also by the copious amounts of asbestos used in its construction which suggested that the architects probably didn't think too much of the politicians they designed it for in the first place. I wondered whether the statue or the Palace would still be there if we ever returned to Berlin at some point in the future. I'd read that this area might be subject to a major transformation in the coming years so I was glad that we saw it then before it changed forever. 

We continued our walk over Museum Island, past the Cathedral and then along Unter den Linden which was lined with grand buildings and statues dating from the height of the Prussian era. Unter den Linden was surprisingly peaceful although I guessed that many tourists had disappeared from around here after the Wall came down. We eventually reached the Brandenburg Gate and it felt quite strange actually walking through it. I looked back through the Gate towards the East and tried to imagine how things used to be. Street vendors near the Gate were hawking a few souvenirs such as toy Trabants, Communist badges and chunks of concrete supposedly taken from the Wall but we weren't tempted to buy anything. Instead, we made our way to the nearby Reichstag where we found a small collection of crosses commemorating those who died trying to escape across the Wall. It was a simple memorial but it told us everything we needed to know. Having enjoyed our glimpse of East Berlin, we caught a U-Bahn back to Zoo Station where we sampled a few beers on the Kurfürstendamm next to the bombed out remains of Kaiser Wilhelm's church. Not surprisingly, there was more of a buzz in this part of town than in the East but we didn't have much time to soak up the ambience as we soon had to make our way back to Lichtenberg Station to catch our next train. However when we got there, we were ripped-off by a stone-faced left-luggage bloke who refused to believe that we'd already paid our fee that morning. Rather than argue about it, we reluctantly paid again and walked off in a huff but when we reached the platform I soon forgot about all that. I instead watched entranced as trains bound for places like Moscow, Minsk and Kiev passed through the station. 'Here we are standing at the gateway to the East', I thought to myself as we waited for our own train, an overnighter to Gdynia in Poland, to pull into the station.

When we finally boarded the train, we found ourselves sharing a compartment with four other Poles. They were all very sociable although they did seem slightly puzzled by our choice of destination. Two of our fellow passengers were lads in their early twenties who were returning home after having spent some time in Spain working as builders. Both were pretty serious Heavy Metal freaks and one of them sported a huge Metallica tattoo on his back. It seemed like they'd spent all their time away from home absorbing MTV culture and it only took a couple of Beavis and Butthead impersonations to have them rolling around in hysterics. The onboard fun was enhanced by the bottles of San Miguel they'd brought back from Spain and generously shared amongst everyone else in the compartment. At one point we even exchanged addresses with each other although I gave the lads a false one as I didn't fancy the idea of a couple of metal freaks dossing on our floor for weeks on end after turning up at our place unannounced. 

When we finally reached Poland, our companions got off just over the border at Szczecin which left us with the compartment to ourselves. The train stopped at the station for quite some time whilst heavily armed customs officials carefully scoured each carriage.

"Tickets! Passports!" one of them shouted as he suddenly burst in on us. We duly handed over our documents to him but when he asked us for our currency declaration forms, we didn't even know that we needed one. Luckily, the officer mumbled something along the lines that he'd let us off this time although I suspected that things might not have been so simple if he hadn't been feeling so generous. We weren't complaining though and as the slow, precise sound of his footsteps faded down the corridor, we relaxed once again. With the border successfully negotiated and with the compartment all to ourselves, we could spread out across the seats and look forward to grabbing a good nights sleep without any further interruptions.

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