Europe looks so ugly from the air! And boring too, it`s all the same from Moscow to Berlin. But once I was on terra firma again, I was amazed at how clean and bright everything looked, and how orderly the traffic was. On the bus from the airport to Alexanderplatz I couldn`t help staring out of the window in absolute astonishment, as if I had never been to Berlin before, or in fact had seen anything like it. I felt disoriented, a feeling that would take quite a while to wear off.

I fell in love with Berlin all over again though, and made quite a lot of new discoveries.

The most important one of those is Erholungspark Marzahn. Marzahn is one of those eastern suburbs tourists don`t usually venture into, but this is well-worth the trip. There`s a large Chinese garden, and smaller Japanese and Balinese ones (and an Arab garden in the making), as well as a herb garden, a rose garden etc., and a miniature Berlin and Brandenburg.

In west Berlin, the Story of Berlin is quite expensive, but also well wort it. As the name suggests, this museum has multi-media displays on all periods of Berlin`s history, and the entrance ticket also includes a guided visit to a cold war nuclear bomb shelter.

Even further west is Pfaueninsel (peackock island), a tiny island in the Wannsee, littered with curious buildings, and of course peackocks.

On wednesday, I finally bought a bus ticket back to Antwerp (which people I met along the way have been constantly telling me is a wonderful city), and a train ticket to Warsaw for the next morning. I almost didn`t make my train. My alarm didn`t go off, so I woke up only 25 minutes before it left! I had to wake up May-Lee (I`m sorry about that!) and ask if she knew a number to call a taxi, which luckily she did, and then I made it to the train station just in time. Phew!