Do you remember when I said there is a horror story behind my trip to Santorini? I’m not going to reveal it just yet. I have another story for this time I went to Malta when I was 16.

My parents sent me on holiday to Malta to learn English. What is the first destination that comes to your mind when you are thinking of learning English? Engh-Malta. However, it all worked out well judging by the fact I’ve been happily living in London for the last 5 years.

We had 2-3 hours of English classes a day which felt like a necessary obstacle we had to overcome before heading to the beach. To be honest, I don’t remember much of this trip because that’s when I got introduced to cheap wine. Do you remember your first sips and glasses of this delight? Exactly, you don’t. The highlight of the trip, I’m embarrassed to admit but it is a funny story, was the watermelon explosion.

Every day we ate a lot of watermelon since it was super-hot and watermelons were super-delicious. One evening we had a party with a special appearance of the infamous cheap wine. Long story short, I had to throw up. Smart kid that I was, I crawled on the balcony – not to mess up the room. Lucky kid that I was, I puked outside of the balcony. On to a car. (It gets better) On a sporty convertible. (Wait for it) That belonged to the hotel owner. (Imagine it covered with wine+watermelon mix) A quick note, I was 16. These days, I don’t practice throwing up from balconies or throwing up at all.

Perhaps, it doesn’t show Malta in the best light but believe me it is a beautiful place. If I could go on Malta holidays again, I would immediately pack my things and go. I’d get into a hot tub time machine and went to the 16^th century Malta to become a Knight and fight pirates and Ottomans!

I have a Greek trauma. Every time I land in a warm country, I think of Greece and every time I take a ferry to an island, I get a Santorini deja vu.

I came to Greece after the first year of uni without much thought or a plan. I hoped to find a job and spend summer there. I remember, it was a warm, sultry night when I arrived. No matter where and how many times I feel the muggy air in an airport shuttle bus, my stomach cramps a little bit as a reminder of how nervous I was that day. Back then, I got into central Athens after midnight and a random stranger gave me a Vespa ride to my CS host. Scary as hell, because I had to hold my suitcase on the side during the whole ride and after all, it was a stranger, God knew his intentions.

In a similar fashion, each time I step on an island, I think of Santorini. Two weeks after arriving in Athens, since there were no jobs for non-Greek speakers there, I picked an island from a postcard and took a ferry there. All islands have these curly roads, almost no public transport and little life in between villages. Even on Koh Phangan, I still had flashbacks from this horrible stay in Santorini.

By now I know that if I make my way to one of those beautiful islands again, I need a good company to forget about my Greek trauma. FTC is running a competition where one lucky blogger and their crush win a holiday on one of the Canary Islands. Hey, I’m in!

If I had to choose one blogger to fly to Gran Canaria together, it would be the one and only Paula from ThePHoDiaries.com #NoHomo

Probably because I miss her a lot since she is not my colleague anymore, we don’t take tea breaks with Tunnocks tea cakes or paint our nails in fancy arty ways. Long are gone the lunch breaks in Crabtree Fields when we gossip about our handsome colleagues or “the chair guys”.

Although, as you can see on her blog Paula is a luxury loving fashionista and I’m more of a tramp or a “pretty hobo” (quote by Jude Law, 6^th January 2013), I’m sure we could meet half way. (Especially, since the trip is sponsored by the lovely Fly Thomas Cook).

One thing sure, we would draw Justin Bieber’s face on the beach sand and dance the Harlem shake on the top of the volcano.

So please, FTC, send us on a supersonic electronic trip on Gran Canaria.

East Side Gallery is the graffiti on 1.3km of the Berlin Wall along Muhlenstrasse. It is a beautiful response from the artists, the wall instead of becoming a sad ruin is covered with paintings that symbolise hope, freedom and future, as well as the reminder of the past.

PS Photo credit to Aga and Iwona!

A month ago we went to Berlin. We planned this trip in July because Florence and The Machine announced they were playing there in winter. It seemed like a a great opportunity to visit Berlin and experience the famous German Christmas markets.

I’ve been to Berlin once before but it doesn’t count because I just danced day and night. I told my mother that I was going to a friend for the weekend to learn German, instead took a train to Berlin to join my salsa friends on the Berlin Salsa Congress. (Mum if you are reading this, you should know it was totally worth it!) Anyway back to December 2012.

We stayed in the Sunflower Hostel near Waschauer Strasse in East Berlin just a short walk from the wall. The area looked like Stratford before the Olympics. This side of the wall is known as East Side Gallery and it is covered with grafitti. Walking on the east side felt sort of at home because Poland was behind the Iron Curtain as well.

We went to the DDR Museum and this was a mild surprise. Almost everything felt very much like from the Polish history classes. I said almost because some rooms felt even more familiar. There is a space in the museum where they created a typical DDR flat: a living room and kitchen. Both me and my friend looked at each other and said: that’s how our parents’ flats used to look like when we were little. The same shelves, drawers and the rest of the furniture. How old are we, for God’s sake? (23, it’s not THAT old, right?)

Before moving away from the history, let me give you a tip. If you are curious about the culture and history, you should take one of Berlin free tours. We did it on the second day and it was as useful as interesting and enlightening. The first out of three places I remember the most is the place were Hitler’s bunker was and where his body was supposed to be burned. It’s in between council blocks, not signed in any way. You have to know where it is to find it.

The other interesting place was the Opernplatz where Nazis burned books in 1933. There is a plaque saying: “Das war ein Vorspiel: nur wo man Bücher verbrennt, verbrennt man am Ende auch Menschen.” (“Where they burn books, they will in the end also burn people”). It comes from Heinrich Heine, how sadly prophetical it was. Underneath there is a white basement with empty shelves, like a library for all these burned books.

Third place that made a big impression on me was the Holocaust memorial. It’s located very centrally, just south from the Brandenburg gate. At the first sight, it looked like a cemetery filled with with simple tombs. The mood changes when you come closer and start meandering between the blocks. The concrete blocks start at 1 metre height but the further down you go, the ground slopes down and some blocks grow to even 5 metres long. The taller they are, the quieter city noise, the less sun, the smaller you are. I felt lost between them. Our guide mentioned to us that murdered Jews weren’t buried separately, but in mass graves on top of each other. Now if you have a bit of imagination you can picture these blocks as different body piles. I’m not a fan of contemporary art but this got into me.

After all day long sight-seeing, Gluhwein and curry wurst from the markets gave us energy to party at night but this is another story…

This was part 1 of my Berlin impressions. I’m a history geek. Part 2 will be the Street art. Part 3 – surprise.

I often judge cities and countries by “would I like to live there?” criteria and No, I wouldn’t like to live in Berlin. It was too grey and too many Polish-looking council flats. However, it was December, in summer the world turns happy so it may be a different city if I come back there another time.

PS Photo credit goes to Iwona!