from Dublin to........Mirissa, Sri Lanka: The Stag's Night

My plans for dinner and a few drinks, home around midnight so I could do a free walking tour at 11am around Berlin went awfully awry.

Half a dozen of us left the hostel together to taste Berlin’s most famous doner kebab (Moustaffa’s on Mehringdam Str in Kruesburg area). So legendary is its reputation that it can often have a queue so long that you can wait over 2 hours for your kebab.

When we got there the line was 30+ people. At even 1 minute per customer (which is being very generous) that would take at least half an hour to get served. I aint that desperate for one of Moustaffa’s finest. No kebab is worth that wait. And besides, a souvlaki trumps a kebab any day of the week. After asking a local, we found an alternate kebab joint.

The story goes that the doner kebab was created here in Germany when the Turks emigrated decades ago. Back then the Germans weren’t interested in meat and salad on a plate so the Turks tricked them and stuffed it into a bread roll and the Germans haven’t looked back. Kebab = Meat (with salad, I think). Doner = Bread....according to the Germans. If you ask a Turk what those words mean you get a different answer. I don’t really believe the story but let the fussy Germans think they are special. And a kebab before going out – that was messing with my head.

(I think an old lady on a respirator behind me at the café just threw bread at the back of my head!! Wtf!!!)

Drinks were at the Bier Festival of course. What timing. A long boulevard lined with German and International beer stands. I have no idea quite how long it was as we only made it 50-80 metres down, distracted by the copious number of beers for sale. We got there around 10pm….it had kicked off at lunch so it was in full swing. We were greeted by German drinking songs being sung by the inebriated.

The deal was that you buy a beer and pay a deposit for the glass it is served in. You take your mug/challis back and get it 1) refilled, 2) return it to collect your deposit or 3) pocket it as a cheap souvenir. On average the beer was €2.50 per mug. The system didn’t really work if you wanted to drink your beer whilst walking to the next stand. A stand will not serve their beer a rouge glass – they are all labelled and some are actually fancy glasses. Bit precious really.

Shortly before midnight when the carnage was coming to an end, we got talking with a large group of guys trying to skull a yard glass – they were hopeless…and English. It was a stag’s night. Quite intoxicated by this stage and in a very friendly mood (this is the English lads), they invited us to kick on with them, which included one girl in our group!

To Alexanderplatz it was. The first club was horrible with revolting beer served and they denied entry to half the guys. Across the tram tracks was Bierlin Bar (clever) – nearly got collected by a tram travelling at walking pace getting there. This place served marginally better beer from a pop-up stand. Whilst drinking our first beer here, a young guy and his mate came up to us with an assortment of stuff laid out on an old fashioned wooden cigarette tray that you hang from your neck. He was selling stuff to fund HIS upcoming wedding! So Babe, Pig in the City was purchased for €2.00….in VHS no less. The groom was then forced to carry this souvenir around for the rest of the night.

A non-exclusive “exclusive” area was infiltrated behind the bar after I walked straight into it. The lads followed suit. A DJ playing rock music and MJ. More beer and carrying on. By this stage we had accosted another three girls from Australia. At 3am, the fun police (literally) arrived and shut the place down….although poorly. In order to get the patrons out of the area, the DJ started playing “leaving music” which everyone just ended up dancing to!

Given it was a stag’s party, the next venue of choice was fairly obvious. Not knowing where to go at 4am, the groom drunkenly asked a cabbie where to find “beer and boobs”. That cabbie wasn’t very helpful but a procession of cabs eventually arrived and we were off…..had no idea where to. Taxis pull up. It didn’t look like a strip club. An iron fence with a sandy path leading to some bright lights and plenty of drunk people. We head in, pass through another iron fence/gate and end up at an outdoor club on a river bank with a sandy beach section filled with deck chairs and a separate dance stage. The sun was now trying to peak its head through the horizon. Stayed till sunrise. Home at 6am. Two other dorm beds were still waiting for their occupants to arrive.

A few crap photos as I forgot my camera that night.