Yes I am now definately coming to Berlin plane tickets booked and I arrive on the 27th which will give me acouple of days to do a bit of sightseeing.  Please could you tell me whereabouts HQ are so I can work out how to get there for the Friday evening. Also it would give me a bit of an idea where to look at staying. Any ideas would be appreciated

I've had a couple of PMs asking about hotels in Hull (see post below if you're confused as to why anyone would do that) so here are a few:

Holiday Inn Express (City Centre) is right next to the train station. Rooms around £62 - £69 depending on occupancy.

Quality Hotel is actually part of the train station - don't even have to go outside. It's Victorian and large and nice but rooms are still only £60.

There's an Ibis - good old Ibis - which is a few minutes from the station. It gives its rates in Euros for some reason, but I still think it's the cheapest: Between 34 and 48 Euros, again depending on room size.

Other than that, there's also the Owner Hotel, far plusher and around £85 - £95 a night (about 5 minutes walk from station), and various other little independent ones dotted in the city centre for about £50 a night.

Myself, xmillyxxx and brokendownangel decided we needed to have a ruddy good night out together. Now, along with idontknowwhy, and possibly GilraenH, it shall be so, and the (drunken and possibly messy) event shall take place on 15th August 2009.

As both myself and idontknowwhy live in Hull it was deemed 'sensible' for this event to take place here. I know, I can't quite believe it either, but there we go. Hull will host a mini-meet.

It's not the most vibrant or cultured of cities in England. I can't guarantee you will be dazzled by the glamour. But it is fairly small (i.e. you can't really get lost), the locals are friendly, it's safe, good for a laugh, and (most importantly) very cheap indeed!

It has a new Holiday Inn and various other affordable hotels/B&Bs in the city centre/nearby villages (ranging from about £30 - £80 at the very most for a double room), and it's only an hour or two away from train stations like Leeds and York.

So, if anyone else fancies it, the more the merrier

Much as I love to travel I really, really hate packing. I always take far too much stuff than I need "just in case"

I've already paid to put my luggage in the hold (I forgot it was only a weekend!). But I think I might try and manage with cabin luggage only so as not to slow everyone down when we arrive in Berlin.

So tell me girls what's everyone packing for the Berlin Blogmeet?

I am very pleased to announce that there are a large number of bloggers making the trek to Berlin for this year's blogmeet.

Signed up thus far are LandersUK, scoobydoofus, soyunperdedor, malakeas, sweetymon, antlady69, GilreanH, la_spice, isadora101, sula36, nittygritty and yours truly, of course.

There's still LOADS of time to decide to come along if you haven't booked anything yet.

People are naturally arriving at different times - I will do my best to meet to meet everyone at airports or wherever, but if I can't I will sort you out with directions, etc.

The plan, tentative at the moment, is this:

Friday May 29th, at 1700 we shall meet at blog HQ and meet some of the team. There will be drinks and general refreshementy-type things. For a recent blog.de blogmeet, we set up a webcam and had a live stream online - might sort this out for the BCUK meet too.

Then around 1900, we will go for dinner. And this is where I would like to hear your opinions, as there are a number of options.
Option 1: a really excellent pizza place about fifteen minute's walk from blog HQ - run by Italians and very atmospheric.
Option 2: Some good old-fashioned German food with outstanding home-brewed beer. This place is about twenty minutes away on the u-bahn.
Option 3: Ethiopian food. This is where we were for last year's blogmeet and it was glorious. It's two stops from blog HQ.
Option 4: Something else. I am open to suggestions!

The Karneval will be in full swing on Saturday and Sunday, but for those of you that want to do some sightseeing, I was thinking of asking a friend of mine (who is a tour guide) to bring you around the sights on a walking tour. Only if people are interested though, buggering off and exploring on your own is also a great way to see the city.

So let me know what y'all think.