We are blogging to you live from the A&O Hostel in Berlin, Germany, where the Two Crabs are in the middle of their low-budget packpacking tour of northern Europe. So far we have hit Copenhagen, Denmark; Malmo, Sweden and now Berlin!  In Copenhagen we attended a REAL AMERICAN-STYLE HALLOWEEN FESTIVAL in Tivoli Gardens, a beautiful amusement park smack in the heart of the city. It was the first place in Europe where we have seen Halloween celebrated to the extent it is in the USA. The park had been transformed into an elaborate Halloween theme with thousands of pumpkin patches, staff dressed in witch costumes, and even a pumpkin-head live band! 

As for Copenhagen itself, apart from the main canal and Tivoli Gardens, we found the city overrated. A much nicer city turned out to be Malmo, a beautiful quain seaside town on the Baltic Sea, with cobblestone roads, a huge town square with old buildings and a park that ran alongside a sandy beach.  On Mondaz we made our way to Berlin via a train from Copenhagen to Hamburg (part of which was a ferry ride in which the train itself actually boarded the boat on a special track for the 45 minute journey across the Baltic Sea, and then returned to the rail when it reached Germany!) followed by a high speed 90 minute journey to Berlin via the German ICE train, the nicest train we have ever seen in Europe.

Other than our first night in Copenhagen, we have not made any reservations along the way, playing it all by ear. When we got to Berlin, we headed straight for the tourist office and we learned it was still high season. Luckily they found us a room at this hostel, that is actually as nice as a standard 3 star hotel. We have a private room with shower, toilet, sink and TV, breakfast included, all for 40 euros a night. Sweet!  For our first meal in Germany, we dined on beef goulash, potato dumplings, apple struddle with ice cream and two pitchers of dark beer at the Georg Braus Brauhaus, a traditional german beerhall on the banks of the river.  Hard to believe that just 16 years ago, our hotel and main sights in Berlin were once behind the iron curtain on the East side of the Berlin Wall.

Pictures and more reports TK.