I know I should kick start a post about where I've been and what I've been doing for a whole week (or 8 days to be exact) but I'm very reluctant for a few reasons. Firstly, the photos are split over a number of cameras and I've not gotten all the relevant photos. On this note, it means I have to get the dreaded facebook, something I have tried to procrastinate for as long as possible for no real reason. But thats just a minor thing. More importantly, I find it hard to reduce the great time I've had into words and photos. I'm not great at descriptive; I would suck as a novelist. But a friend kindly suggested that the photos would serve to remind me of the journey I have taken, the memories of which I hope would be etched in me for a long time to come, and which no camera lens can truly hope to capture in all its essence. So here goes...
Day 1 (Mon 1st Oct)
7.5 hour train journey to Berlin cooped in a small carriage with 5 others is no joke. I'm just glad I did not suffer any cramps, and I was sufficiently beat to sleep more than half of the time away.
First day was pretty much meeting up with Kyle and Khel, checking out our sweet accoms, and gushing at how the prices in Germany are so cheap compared to Scandinavia. I just remembered the day as eating all sorts of greasy food like Döner Kebab, Curry wurst, hot dogs, fries, hamburgers and thinking this was the life. Plus checking out a nice Mexican pub with a limited song list but good prices for beer and cocktails - three of us just spent some time catching up and doing some solid, intense discussion.
Day 2 (Tue 2nd Oct)
And we have a new member from Madrid! We all headed down to Potsdamer Platz intending to go on a City Tour but ended up going on the Third Reich tour, which was all about Mr Hitler and how well he made history. Our tour guide was really good - armed with interesting snippets and knowledge of things liks assassination attempts. It really made history come alive, unlike secondary school history lessons and textbook mugging.
Soviet War Memorial with a bronze Russian Soldier and his rifle hanging in the non-alert position. And the 2nd one is some grave which all I can recall is a memorial to victims, and it was felt that the size was too small in light of the sheer number of victims - 200 000 from 1939 to 1945. Disclaimer: Facts may not be accurate .. I really should have jotted down facts in a notebook.
This one goes out to all who like to make me 'lao nuah' over the food I cannot enjoy in Singapore. Muahaha. Towards the end of dinner it got a little uncomfortable because every other diner was in a formal attire.
Next we headed off to the super huge open-air concert set up specially for reunification day. My camera batteries conveniently died at the top of the ferris wheel we sat in, but here's a photo of the ferris wheel taken from on top the Reichstag:
There was a huge festive mood at the open-air concert. Young kids were dancing wildly, pushing into the people around them. The idea was that those people would join in and the wild dancing would grow contagious.
Afterwards we just bummed around because we were half expecting some form of countdown into the Reunification Day, but promptly at 12am, the crowd was gone and the stalls started closing. So much for a countdown.
Day 3 (Wed 3rd Oct)
City Tour Day!
Jewish Memorial: sides of the blocks have been coated with some substance that would allow easy removal of graffiti/dirt. Its rather tasteful compared to alternatives such as a giant vat of blood or giant ovens, which apparently had been suggested for the memorial. Various theories have been suggested what these blocks represent, one went along the lines of a bar chart representing the victims over the years.
Next photo is the Berlin Wall. Huge piping on top of the wall is to prevent people from getting a grip on the top. Apparently barbed wire was not enough to deter desperate people, and our tour guide gave us funny stories of how some made it across the wall - dressing up as a cow, using the ID of a west berliner who looks like the fella's gf in east berlin, sob story of having a dying grandmother and forgetting the proper papers etc.
Finally Checkpoint Charlie. Its so commercialised now, saw someone posing with the fake American guard there and paying him money afterwards.
After the tour we parted ways - me and kyle headed off to shop, liz and khel went to see some museum and have a romantic candlelight dinner together. Okay thats all the gossip I'm leaking.
However, shops were closed on this fateful Public Holiday, and we were so shacked out that we nearly went back to the hostel to nap for a bit. Rather glad we didn't. Spent some time at the Topography of Terror before heading to the Reichstag. Caught a beautiful sunset along the way.
This is Kyle resting up before the pub crawl at night!
No photos of the pub crawl simply because this is a family-oriented blog. Hahaha. Anyway this marks the end of my stamina and energy for this post. Of course I should have added Part 1 to the title, or deleted Munich from it, but then I would not be able to say SURPRISE!!! now, would I.
(Above): Papercuts, which he did as he was regaling children with his stories.
