Berlin (13/9 - 17/9)
13/9
We reached Berlin at 3.40 pm. the Berlin HBf looks like an airport, with so many levels of shops and the escalators, it looks super modern and it was undoubtedly the largest train station in Berlin (not sure is it largest in Germany?!). we din really have much problem finding the line to take, but we certainly had problem with the ticketing machine cuz we couldn't read German. out of all the cities we have been to on this trip, Germany's single journey tic is the most ex - 2.20 euros!!! although they have the flexibility of taking unlimited no. of trains within two hours in the same direction, but it's nowhere as economical as the hamburg card.
we din have much of a problem finding the hostel, cuz this time we ha
d detailed instructions printed from the internet. Citystay Mitte was not bad - the 6-bed dormhas its own shower in the room, WC was juz beside the dorm and there was plenty of space in the room. each bed had its own private bedside lamp so u can still continue reading or doing ur own stuff even after everyone has turned in. Shelter City din have that. after dumping our stuff, we made our way to Unter Der Linden where we could see the Reichstag, Brandenburg Tor
(Gate) and the Holocaust Memorial. me and YS couldn't really figure out why the supposed tombstones in the holocaust memorial were arranged in a sort of wave-like structure. is there any significance? i have yet to find out. weather in Berlin was pretty hot in the afternoon, but much better at night. but i was quite sad today. seems like my sling bag cannot hold much longer, I'll have to switch to my backpack for the last few days. besides the fact that i look nicer with sling bag in photos, it's also cuz i really like that bag and have been using it for years but now the strap is almost breaking. i must have overworked it all these years. so sad!!! anyway i am gg to sleep now... zzz.
14/9
today was our first full day in Berlin. I ate apple tart for breakfast, bought from a open air market near the Hackescher Market station. this is the 3rd apple dessert i'm eating since i came to Europe! no more apple related desserts for me for the rest of the trip. thought the tiramisu looked nice, it's shape was not so defined, so it looked authentic to me, but eating tiramisu in the morning sounded a bit weird.
there was a cheap supermarket nearby called activ markt (oh i realized that supermarkets all open from 8 am to 8 pm in Hamburg, Amsterdam and Berlin) whcih sells water and batteries really cheap! Why din we see this earlier? I could have saved a bomb on batteries at the very least. We went to Museumsinsel (Museum Island) after this, passing by the Berliner Dom on the way. I din expect it to be this magnificent! I mean, i was alreadt quite tired of churches, large monuments, but this was really big and impressive. in fact, my travel notes
say that it is the largest Protestant church in the 20th century in Germany. we went to Pergamon museum next. before that we had lunch at this cafe just outside the museum. i ate the vegetarian lagsana which is really nice! considering it's only 6.10 euros. of course to talk abt it in S$ terms it's $12 which is quite pricey. but considering it's in a restaurant setting and comparing it to some other meals we had (e.g. the 8.60 euros dinner at YH Bruegel), it's well worth the money and plus we had free water and no service charge. actually come to think of it, it was really very cheap.
in the end we ended up spending 7 h in the Pergamon Museum. I real
ized I can appreciate art
and paintings much much more than sculptures, friezes (till now, me and YS still dun quite understand this word). Although the audio guide was really informative, but there was really information overload esp after the initial element of novelty wears off. i enjoyed hearing all the stories from Greek mythology but i couldn't really absorb all the info on the different celiphate (?!) that emerged near Iran, Iraq, such as the Uruk and the Umayyads. I only remembered the part about the contributions by the Uruks, cuz they invented the Potter's wheel. and there was one whole section on the Babylons and Mesopotamia and Romans and Greeks. I was pretty confused by the connections between all these types of pple and places. so the Babylons are a type of pple or is this the name of a period? and they stay in Mesopotamia? and the Romans admired Greek art? I know i caught all this info somewhere sometime but i was really blur by the end of the day and esp when i was trying to rush thru towards the end. but i rem seeing a lot of sculptures that were headless. I can't rem if it was mentioned where the head was lost at, but anyway after a while i started skipping commentaries. I know YS enjoyed the Pergamon more than me, for sure. i guess sculptures and friezes are juz not my cup of tea. one thing good abt travelling is that u will also come to understand urself more, u know what ur interest are and what type of traveller u are. like are u the sort who goes for art? for history? or for photo taking?
for dinner we ate at the same cafe cuz we din noe where else to find food and we din want to end up eating pathetic stuff again. i ate baked potato with curd cheese and shrimps. i certainly hope curd cheese is not that fattening... sigh.
15/9
saw nice big eclair at the bakery we had breakfast this morning selling for 1.20 euros but thought it was not appropriate for breakfast. maybe should not think so much next time. in the end i decided to be good and to eat baguette with cheese and tomato. very boring but at least it's healthier that what i have been eating. made our way to Kulturforum after that. initially planned to visit Musikininstrumental museum whcih had instruments from many centuries back on display but decided not to when we saw that there was not much on display, so went to the Gemaldegalerie instead. YS says that her boss is crazy over the artist Rembrandt, so we decided to see the Rembrandt-only exhibition for 12 euro. seems that Rembrandt likes to paint portraits of pple with great detail. the hair, beard, fur on coat, folds on the robes, veins on the hand - all these minute details were characteristic of his works. although we din rent the audio guide, it already took us ~2h to see his paintings and ~1.5 h to see his drawings and sketches. if we had rented the audio guide, i think we would have been stuck in the museum the whole day again.
after Rembrandt we went to Topography of Terror. finally can see some history, which is a refreshing change from art. this is a free open air exhibition and even the audio guides were free. the Berlin Wall (whcih has been badly vandalized) can be seen thru a fence juz behind the exhibits. it was refreshing to hear abt the SS, SD, SA, Gestapo and Prinz Albrecht Terrain instead of brush-strokes etc... Hurried to checkpoint Charlie after that. had wanted to see the museum or at least view the open air exhibits but had no time. YS was not feeling well so better to go back earlier. maybe can go back to see it tmr or day after if time permits. ate subway bread for dinner. then after that bought this Mars bar with praline inside which i dun rem seeing in singapore. now i am begining to regret not buying more chocs at belgium. the box of 8 chocs is really pathetic, now that i look at it. i shld have bought the bigger box of 24!!! now i can't really find any special chocs in Germany contrary to what i have been expecting. anyway hope to find sth, or else may juz buy the Lindt collection.
in the end today we wasted the one-day pass (5.80 euros). we had planned to take the metro to explore Alexander Platz which had the tv tower, but in the end din get to go. but it's fine, travelling is like that, unforseen circumstances crop up all the time. hopefully tmr can go to more places, provided YS gets well.
16/9
YS is still not well, so we decided not to go for the walking tour to Schanzenstern (?!)concentration camp. instead we were trying to decide between Charlottenburg Palace and Potsdam. YS says that her colleagues strongly recommended Potsdam for its castle and i also rem JY saying that i should go down to Potsdam, but i can't rem the reason. so comparing the price for the all-day tic for zone A+B+C (6 euros) and tt for zone A+B only (5.80 euros), we figured we have nothing to lose if we buy the all day tic for zone A+B+C, so Potsdam was our choice.
getting there was a complete horror. contrary to what i thought, it was not that straightforward. had to get off and change trains and had to wait super long for each train when i had initially thought it was gg to be just simply one direct train. in the end we spent more than 1 h getting there. when we got there, we decided to join the city tour cuz we din want to waste any more time figuring out how to get around. both of us did not really do any research on this area and it seems it's not that easy to get to places, so we have to fork out the money for the 3h city tour. it's not that cheap - 18 euros. already i was starting to regret gg down Potsdam after all the hassle of getting there and now we have to pay 18 euros for the city tour - it had better be worth it. i naively thought it might be like Brugges where we managed to walk around ourselves, but
Potsdam wasn't that simple. ok, in the end the city tour was ok, not fantastic, but ok. at least the guide was tyring his best to speak in English though he kept getting his numbers wrong, e.g. he said 1962 instead of 1926. the english audio guide on the bus really helped. we visited the castle known as Cecilienhof castle. this is the plaace where the Potsdam Conference was held. the POtsdam conference was where the decision to divide up Germany into 4 parts after WWII was made by the US, GB, France and USSR. this is also the place where the decision to drop the A-bomb was made by Harry Truman. At that time, Truman was there for the Potsdam conference. I'm not even sure if it's Truman, the US president at that time. I really have forgotten my history le. but i was paiseh to ask my tour group members who had so nicely told us what we m
issed abt the A-bombs. (checked it out when i came back: it is indeed Harry Truman) again we were mistaken to be Japanese. the guy who sold us tea from the kebap store also asked if we were from Japan or Korea. I guess to all these Europeans when they see someone Asian, the first thought that comes to mind will be Japanese. now it seems Koreans are the next big thing. i dun think the word ' singaporeans' will ever come to their mind.
we visited some other castles too (Sans Soucci - without problems) and heard a lot of stories and heard a lot of stories about their King Wilhelm the first or 2nd and there's one about Frederick the sth, but still find the Potsdam Conference one most interesting.
Actually besides the conference, Potsdam was also significant as a garrison town during the years of the cold war. again my history knowledge on the cold war really sucks. I still dun really understand some facts. if the cold war was between Russia and the US, why was the boundary in Germany? so the Berlin wall is a result of the Cold War? I know there was this brick wall which was red in colour and at the point where it turned white, tt's the place where the 'electric fence' was. so there were a lot of Russian soldiers in Potsdam during the years right up to the 1980's. ok, when i go back i'll make sure that i do a bit of research on this. (Cold War represented a clash of ideologies between US and Russia - US: Capitalism, Russia: Communism East Germany is under Soviet control, hence communist, west Germany is capitalist, it developed to be more prosperous that east)
at night, we went to the famous 203 m tall TV tower at Alexander Platz. it cost 8 euros to go up. at first i did not want to but YS wanted to and i couldn't see anything else i could do if she went up and i din, so i went as well. anyway i may only be in Berlin once in my life, so may as well experience one more new thing. it would have been worth it if u went up in the day but in the dark u can barely spot anything other than those nearer landmarks. at best i could pick out the brandenburg gate, the berliner dom, museumsinsel, Berlin Congress Hall but nothing else significant. so i seriously think if u want to enjoy a magnificent view, go up during the day. spent so much money today, really need to scrimp and save when i go back.
ok, very soon, i can sleep in my own bed, eat rice, noodles. actually i kinda miss typical singapore fare. it has been fun in Europe and a really great experience although the last few days was less enjoyable cuz YS was sick but i still had a very enjoyable time overall!!! staying in hostels, common bathrooms, common WC, taking long train journeys, taking plane all by myself, finding our own way abt in a foreign country, struggling with backpacks, asking for directions, making wrong decisions, losing our way - everything was really an experience in itself. so i say goodbye to Europe and its pple and thank you for the pleasant memories.
