Aug 2006

After another excellent brekkie of muesli and croisants I was about to head out to explore the museums of Berlin when I saw something that shocked and appalled me.

I have a mullet!!

Argh! After all this time bagging out this particularly nasty form of haircut, I have fallen victim to it myself! Usually it's hidden under a mass of curls and frizzy hair, but because I only just washed it and it was quite straight it was plain to see. This calls for drastic measures - a haircut!

But not just yet, it's too expensive in Berlin!

I will write about all the museums I visited today, but I will do that post later on, as I'm about to have dinner. For now, a list of the miscellaneous notes on the side of my diary shall suffice!

• Bonn was the capital of Germany from 1945-1991. Berlin only reclaimed the position on June 20, 1991, after a narrow victory in the Reichstag.

• I read a quote the other day that sums up (to me at least) why I visit museums, concentration camps and the like. "Each of us today is shaping the background history of tomorrow". To me this goes along with the idea that "He who does not history is doomed to repeat it".

• Loads more people smoke in Germany than any other European city. They also smoke everywhere - in the internet cafe as I speak actually, as well as in airports, train stations, restaurants - everywhere!

• Almost everyone who owns a dog takes it with them everywhere they go - including public transport, museums, and planes! And they all seem to be massive, great, hulking German Shephards!

• 'Multilingual' as a term is technically 'Multilanguageable'. Not that anyone would ever say it, but think about it, when do we say 'lingue' in any other form?

• Hot and cold have different starting letters in many European languages. Thus 'C' is hot (Chaud) and 'F' is cold (Froid) in French. IKEA and others have solved this problem by just painting little red and blue patches on taps. Not before I burnt myself in a shower though

• Ambulances DO shound different here - they have a more musical tone. Bill Bailey was right!

• I read this cool ad on a billboard in Singapore many moons ago. "Every little drop dreams of being German beer when it grows up".

• And finally, some thoughts on travel in general from me:

  Everyone travels with the next destination in mind - or at least on a long trip. Nowhere was this more evident then in Singapore where everyone focused on what to see outside the city then on what was within it. Some of us made the effort and were rewarded with a feeling that, at the end of our semester, we knew the place. We knew the short cuts, the best makan (food), the buses, the language, and most importantly, the people. Granted, Singapore is smaller geographically than most cities with 4 million people, but the effect is the same. So next time you're travelling, stop thinking about what's up next and take in what's around you. That's living for the moment
  

After an early flight from München, I arrived in at Schönefeld Airport at 9:40. From there I went straight to the brand-new Berlin Hauptbahnhof (Central Station) and checked my luggage into the left-luggage depot.

There I encountered my first problem. It's a brand new station (opened in late May this year), so all the entrances and exits aren't completely finished. Being the person that I am, I managed to find one of this unfinished exits and found myself on the street 10 seconds after getting off the train. This in the largest station in Europe!!

So I went back up the same escalators, walked across the platform and down another set. Aahh!!! This place is HUGE! Seriously massive. And it's all glass, so you can see all 3 levels of trains, with at least one train leaving every 90 seconds. Crazy stuff!

So after that little excursion I did a little self-guided walking tour of the area around Berlin Hbf, including the new Reichstag building (and later up it), the Brandenburg Gate, the Soviet memorial, and Unter den Linden. Berlin is under constant construction, especially from the East, and nowhere can you see this better than from the Reichstag, which sits very close to where the Berlin Wall ran. There are cranes everywhere!

The highlight of the day, however, was the tour I went on through two bunkers under the U-Bahn (subway). This was organised by Berlin Underworlds, and was FANTASTIC! It's so interesting - the bunkers themselves were rarely bomb-proof (it was too expensive) and many of the early ones weren't sealed, so were essentially useless in the event of a nuclear attack. The fundamental problem with them was that there was NEVER enough for more than 1.5% of the population, which meant essentially they served as a disperal mechanism.

Our guide described it succiently: In the case of Hurricane Katrina, everyone fled the city, leading to blocked roads in all directions, and thus no emergency supplies could enter the city. In Berlin, instead of everyone leaving, the idea was many would run to the shelter, and by the time they realised they weren't going to fit in any of them, the army etc. would have been able to enter the city. Clever but cynical.

For accomodation in Berlin, I am staying with a friend of a friend - specially Julia, who was in Singapore when I was there, but we only met briefly. She is originally from Bonn, but moved to Berlin last week, and has very kindly offered space on her floor for me! And so we decided to meet in Potsdamer Platz, but having never been there before, I got hopelessly lost (sensing a trend here?!), and failed to find the ALDI (our meeting point).

Eventually it all worked out, we met and had a great Green Curry for dinner. AND it turns out Julia works for the German equivalent of AusAid and is going to Ecuador soon for a development project! Small world!

And now I'm buggered, so I'm off to sleep!

Tchuss!

As I'm leaving München tomorrow, Bianca and I did a whistle-stop tour of all the remaning main sites today. This pretty much took us across the entire Aldstadt (old town) and through the Stadtsmuseum and Englischer Garden. The highlight was once again having traditional Bavarian food in a biergarden, and seeing the 'München wave'.

This thing is hilarious and has to be seen to be believed. Basically they put rocks in the fast-moving river that runs through the Englischer Garden to create a false wave. It's not at all like the ones in the fake 'beaches' in Las Vegas etc., this is purely a single, continuous wave. And so all these surfers come and queue for their 45 seconds on the 'wave'. Looks like loads of fun as they don't have to prepare for it or anything, just jump straight onto a neverending crest!

And I had the traditional Sunday breakfast of Weiß Bier and Weißwürst and Bretzl (Beer, Sausages and Pretzels) at the civilised time of 11am. Seriously, this is a tradition here. It even has a specific name, although what that is eludes me for the moment.

However, the most exciting part of the entire day had nothing really to do with München or Europe or travelling or anything! Today I became a true adult. I am no longer a child. In the words of my mother I have 'lost my innocence'!

I had my first cup of real coffee.

No, seriously, I did! After 21 years of bad-mouthing the drink as bitter, disgusting, etc. etc. I finally bit the bullet and had a 'latte machiatto'. Granted it's not an espresso, but it was surprisingly tasty! So I guess Europe has taught me something - an appreciation of fine food. First the salmon, then the muesli, then the cheese and ham, and now coffee. Mmmm...food!

Oh yeah, and the Stadtmuseum has this awesome exhibition on marianette puppets! Really cool - and super creepy as well! They had all these old amusement park rides from decades-old Oktoberfests etc. that still worked! Sooo cool - I even bought a poster of it.

AND I finally satisfied my craving for fries with mayonnaise. No more tomato sauce for me! It's a Dutch thing (I think I've blogged about it before) and it's super tasty.

The strangest thing also happened tonight. In Amsterdam, Nathalie and Soren are working their way through all the Friends' episodes. In München, Bianca and Flo are doing the same. Fair enough I guess. What I didn't expect is them to be at the SAME POINT! So the episodes that I watched in Amsterdam a few weeks ago, Bianca and Flo had just watched. So now I'm up to the wedding of Chandler and Monica in Series 7. I'm expecting the hostel in Prague to have those!

Bianca, you are an awesome friend, and have been a fantastic tourguide and host. Thanks SOOO Much! Thanks also to your Mum & Dad and of course to Flo! Please pass on my congratulations to your brother as well! (He's getting married in a few weeks in Bangkok!)

PS: For photos of Munchen, click here.

After the über-impressive Alps, today was totally different. Bianca and I visited the Dachau Concentration Camp memorial site. This was not a place that you rush through, and it made for an emotional and powerful visit. We stayed there for 3.5 hours, listening to the survivors' accounts and gaining a much better understanding of the structure behind the camps.

Flo asked me last night why I wanted to go to Dachau, and to a large extent I couldn't answer him. It was a mixture of reasons, but I think mainly because I'd learned so much about it in high school and Uni that I felt it was about time I actually saw it with my own eyes. I don't really know what I expected to see, and whether it would change my point of view, but I knew that I had to go there.

Nothing can prepare you for a visit to Dachau (or Auschwitz, or Bergen-Belsen or any of the other camps). It's just unimaginable that such a camp existed for so long. Dachau was in operation from 1933 to 1945 and in that time thousands of inmates were worked or starved to death. It was not a designated 'extermination camp' as Auschwitz was, namely because it was within Germany. All the extermination camps were in the East - even the Nazi party realised it would not be pleasant to live next to one.

Having said that however there are people today who live right next to Dachau CC. I mean RIGHT next to it, in 2-storey buildings overlooking the campsite. That's just disturbing.

But back to the camp. The most scary aspect of the entire visit was the Infirmary. Here they undertook 'experiments' on inmates. These ranged from tests to ascertain how long someone would survive if plunged into ice-cold water, to ones testing a German version of penicilian by injecting patients with various viruses and seeing if the drug had any effect. What scared me most about all of this was that the reasoning behind it was fairly sane, in that I could see the thought processes behind it. It wasn't straight-out sadism, it was planned and calculating. For example, the ice-cold water tests were undertaken to work out how long the air force should look for survivors from a plane crash.

BUT THESE WERE REAL, INNOCENT PEOPLE!

After Dachau we both felt a bit numb, and so drove back into München city centre and went shopping. As you do. Bought some awesome homemade chocolates though.

We had a fantastic Thai red curry, and I visited Bianca's University and the White Rose monument. The White Rose was a resistance movement that distributed anti-Nazi pamphlets within the University. They were captured almost immediately and executed by the SS.

Fell asleep during the film 'Ghost Dog' at 12:30am.

PS: This movie has to rate as one of the worst I've ever seen. It's supposedly about the samurai and the mafia in New York. Hah! It's like someone has sat down and gone, "Right I want to see the Mafia, something Japanese, an illicit love affair, and I know, PIGEONS (!)". Stupid stupid people. Z-Grade Nonsense!

PS: For photos of Dachau, click here.