chapter 5 : berlin.

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i know i am really fuckin bad at keeping promises. hence, this post is up somewhat 2 weeks after i promised that the next post would be up soon. i really wasn’t into writing these days, although i am actually on a localised holiday, which means i do not need to go to lessons but still am going to libraries and learning german for most of the days. it’s not that i forgot, cos my wordpress dashboard is automatically opened every time i start my browser, but on tiring days of reading german/playing basketball/being out and about, i was just never in the right state of mind to invest an hour of my time writing. i pity those who just bumped into this post trying to find out what i have to say about the great city of berlin, but instead need to read my rant at the beginning. it seems that it is how my posts always seem to begin.

talking about being global-minded and internationally aware, my sense of insecurity has never been so heightened. people just never seemed to know or be able to guess where i come from, or worse, they always think i come from the same place they are from. in the last few months, i have been mistaken for a ‘japanese’, ‘italian’ (mostly cos of my name), ‘spanish’, ‘eastern european’, ‘brazilian’, ‘chilean’, ‘ecuadorian’ (and pretty much every other country in south and central america), an ‘american’, and an ‘afghan’. it is one thing hearing from your friends that you look like a middle-eastern, and even a stereotypical terrorist just for fun, than hearing it yourself from a real afghan. geez, this turned out to be a sensitive issue, rest assure that i so not mean any disrespect. but i am still unsure whether i should feel complimented or offended by these things. kinda used to it though, i lived in singapore for four years, and my singaporean friends wouldn’t guess i am a foreigner if i do not tell them. sigh, i always just take them as a joke though. might be useful in the future, to get local tourist prices, just need to learn those languages.

so, dee and i continued the trip out of switzerland on an overnight train direction berlin. that’s a bloody long train ride, what was that, 10 – 12 hours? damn. we sat on those reclining seats cos dee felt like saving on cash, which was not a good idea at all according to her. i, surprisingly, did not have trouble sleeping, despite some stiff neck in the morning, but that wasn’t a biggie. once we arrived in the moring, we might still have not realised just how big berlin is, but we managed to get our tourist card in the main station and set off towards the hostel. 2 hours in berlin and dee was already so impressed by the friendliness of the germans. people were really so helpful. there was an old lady at the station that went on great lengths to find our bus stop, she kept looking for signs with the bus number and even asked one of the driver, that was like 1o minutes of her time. and also the lady who pointed us to the u-bahn station and told us the direction after she found out that we were a little lost after we realised that our bus was taking a detour due to construction. then the reception guy at the hostel who gave us everything to be ready to roam the whole city.

our first day was filled with going into a bloody huge flea market at ‘mauerpark’ which was at least the size of a football field, watching a street musician from which dee got a free mixtape cd, playing street basketball for me, some other cool street performances (damn the berliners are creative), walking through part of the wall that was painted (coolest wall painting that stretches for almost 2 km), and at night we went to an annual cultural festival (what a coincidence!) reggae concerts, street drum crew, eating african bbq and banana flavoured beer was just some of the highlights. there was also a stand that sells like 100 different types of beer, heaven to my collection, although i am not impressed by many of the choices or i have owned some of them. i still think that my selection is still classier than theirs. it was a fun day to start the trip for sure.

second and third day was full of historical sightseeing and walking around the big city. sorry, big is an insult to berlin’s size. seriously, their streets in the city itself is at least 3-4 lanes, for just one direction! the size of their squares and the spacing between buildings, and also their monuments. geez, even i feel small there. so it doesn’t come as a surprise when i say we walked for 11 hours to get really around the city. dee was not really happy with me forcing her to walk that much. not many do share my affection to walking, freely and without direction, trying to find out where your feet are bringing you.

oh yeah, the highlight of the berlin bit, we did the free walking tour by ‘new europe’ which meets in front of the starbucks at the ‘pariser platz’. it was fucking awesome. you know i mean it when i tell you that, even if you are not a nerd like me. i am putting this out there, berlin has seen the most history happening in the last 100-150 years without any doubt. and this tour really tells you about the significance of the history written on the walls of berlin’s numerous monuments. brandenburger tor, reichstag, holocaust memorial, hitler’s bunker, berlin wall, checkpoint charlie musuem island and  many others, if you do want to know the story of berlin, you have got to join this 4 hours walking tour. it is in principal free, but it was so good that i felt i must give the guide 10euros for the excellent job that he did. funny and informative, not something to be missed.

what else did we do there? hmm. oh ya, just walking along the famous shopping roads of ‘unter den linden’ and ‘kudamm’ was actually quite fun too. i went to the vw showroom to look at those bentleys and ended up trying all the vw cars if one day i would finally change my mind and drive a car. my choice would be vw scirocco at this point. there was also the mercedes show room, but i felt uncomfortable sitting on the cars looking at their price tag. dee bought her hard rock cafe t-shirt at kudamm, where the hard rock cafe building is, of course. we also went out to this place where there are lots of restaurants and bars somewhere in the eastern part of berlin.

damn, just put it this way, berlin is way cool. it is no.1 on my list of cool cities among which i visited in this trip. i have so much to tell about it that i couldn’t stop or even try to make it into a blog post length. for further info just ask me. but i really do recommend people to go there, especially those among you who are more artistic. for instance, you can’t even find a clean wall in berlin which has not been tampered with a spray paint and also the freedom enjoyed by the diverse street artist. crap, i am blabbering again. just go okay, go!

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