European Escapade

Ahoy there my avid readers! I’ve managed to catch a few of you via instant messenger or SMS in the last few days and it’s been good to hear that lots of ppl are following along with my travels every now and then at least.

Despite having posted just yesterday, it’s been a few days since I actually said anything, as the last two posts have been mainly historical pictures, so here’s a bit of an update for you all. I somehow seem to resort to posting whenever I’m too tired to face the heat outside and do anything real, so please forgive my tired ramblings.

On Monday I caught my train to Berlin. The best part of that story is probably the train itself; it was one of those high-speed ICE trains. They are so high-tech, it’s worth talking about them a little for my nerd friends back home. Imagine a plane which runs on train-tracks and you’ll have a good idea. There’s a hostess who walks up and back serving food and the like. My seat had a fixed little wooden table in front of it, which I used for reading, etc. The doors between carriages are all automated infra-red sensor style and make a really great Star Trek kind of sound as they open and shut. The bathrooms are just like those on a big Boeing aircraft.

One of the most interesting parts of the train is that not all the passenger carriages connect directly to each-other. As a passenger, you can walk between certain parts of the train, but not to others. The reason for this is that, rather than being one engine unit, with a whole lot of little carriages, the train actually has an engine carriage, then a few passenger carriages, then another engine carriage, and so on. Why? Because the train splits into multiple different trains as the journey progresses. It’s really cool. Passengers bound for different destinations all get on their corresponding carriages and the train travels as one unit for a few hours to the first major hub at which time it stops and the middle section breaks off and heads off in another direction, leaving my section to continue on its merry way.

This happened a few times throughout the trip and I was thoroughly impressed with how efficient it makes the whole system. Think about it- everyone travels on the one train for as long as possible, then as our journey’s diverge, the train splits up. It’s brutally efficient and I was really impressed. Of course, the main downfall of it is that if you accidentally get one the wrong carriage, or mistakenly assume you can get on at one end, and walk to the other, you’re going to find yourself arriving in a different city or country to that which you may have expected. But that’s easily enough dealt with by the projection screens in each carriage which say where that carriage (as opposed to the whole train) is going. And each allocated seat has a little LCD which displays the seat’s occupant’s destination too The only other downfall is that you can’t pick a seat which faces “forwards” because for the first leg the train drives one way, then it switches, then it switches back.

I expected Monday to be a bit of a write-off in terms of sight-seeing, and it was. By the time I got into Berlin, and to the hostel at about 8pm, I was pretty tired and everything was shut. Everything except for the beer gardens that is, so off we went. There were two different groups of American guys staying here so we teamed up with them and headed down towards the nearest beer garden. Actually it wasn’t close at all, but it was a nice enough walk. So Monday night was spent drinking, talking about rappers, movies and US politics.

Tuesday some of the US guys left, and two others came with me and Caleb to a free walking tour conducted by Neue Berlin, the sister group to those who ran the free tour in Munich. This one went for about 4 hours and had, no exaggeration, about 150 people in it. They must be rolling in money from these tours because at the end, everyone gives a tip of 5 - 10 euro. They split the group in two and staggered our starts. It went for about 4 hours and comprised about 50% history lesson, and 50% seeing sights. The English guy, Nick, who ran it was an absolute bible in terms of German history and clearly loves Berlin more than anywhere else. His passion for the history and way of telling the story in terms of personal stories of impacted families, separate by the wall, etc. was contagious and by the end of the tour I was much more aware of the significance of Berlin than I had been from reading the same history in my little travel book on the way up in the train. This little city has played an amazing part in shaping what the world is like today, and is still very unsure of what it will itself become.

The size of the group made taking photos a little impossible, so I decided to go out again yesterday and follow pretty much the same path, alone, and take some happy snaps.

Tuesday afternoon the US boys had to move to another hostel, so we planned to meet up later in the evening at a park. The place we’re staying at is really quite small and homely, but awesome. I would think that in total it holds about 15 people. The bunks are custom-made, and I have a double med in a kind of mezzanine area in the main living quarters. Tis cool. Everyone gets a key, the staff are hear each morning and each evening for check-in only. The rest of the time we just pop in and out and sometimes stop to talk to the others who we bump into. It’s a really alternative kind of environment which matches Berlin to a tee.

That brings me to talking about Berlin, and boy, this place is bohemian beyond belief. Every single person you see walking down the street (who isn’t a tourist) has their own fashion going on. There are punks, and crazy looking or sounding, scary people everywhere, but at the same time it feels incredibly safe. It’s kind of in fashion for the kids to walk down the street with your MP3 playing mobile, and play the music they like so that everyone can hear it. Standing at a station is a funny experience sometimes. 10 different groups of young kids, each with a different swing on the style they are reppin’, each with music blaring from a tiny speaker in one of their mobiles.

Berlin was painted in our tour, as a melting pot of multi-culturalism, and individualism, and it really is that. But at the same time, the city has a really unified kind of feel to it. It’s also a very young city and absolutely bustling with tourists at this time of year. I’m liking it and beginning to see why some i know say it’s the best city in the world. You get the feeling you can really be what you want and people will judge you entirely on who you are, not what you look like, or what you do for a living. It’s very liberal and encouraging of free speech. Strangers will talk to you about politics from the word go, and aren’t scared to lay their opinion out on the line. I think that’s where people get the wrong impression- it could be quite confronting if you weren’t ready for it.

Tuesday night we went to this park as agreed, and couldn’t find the American guys, since we were pretty late. We had a nice walk around the park though. Lots of groups of people teaching themselves or others different musical instruments. Over there is a group of hippies playing drums. There’s a young mum with her two little kids paddling in the small flow of water which runs through the park… I know these are all the sorts of things which you might see in Melbourne, but there is really something very different about this place. At first I didn’t like it, but the trip to the park started me on a path toward appreciating it I think, and in the last 24 hours I’ve really come to like Berlin a lot.

Wednesday I got up late and spent some time on the computer. I then went out on my own and followed a tour from my Berlin book, which took me to the same destinations as the Neue Berlin tour from Tuesday, plus a few, in a different order. Got some good photos but really just enjoyed looking around at the city. The eclectic nature of the place is evident, if in nothing else, in the architecture. Half the city is old, half is new. Half was built under communist rule, half not. Half is poor, half is richer. Residents are young and old, from all over the world, speaking all different languages. And none of these halves are the same. They overlap each other so you end up with patches which are poor and old, or poor and new. Kel, if you’re reading this, you have to come here man. You will absolutely love it. Even I am being really taken in by the variance in the architecture. It’s a great city.

In the afternoon Caleb and I were dying to chill out, both mentally and physically. We decided the best way to do that would be to go to the Sony Centre here where they have an awesome cinema complex, and watch a mentally stimulating and deep movie. So we chose Fast and the Furious 3, Tokyo Drift. I’d give it 3.5 stars. If you take out the beautiful cars and women… Can a film get a negative ranking? Seriously though, it was nice to just chill out in a cinema and watch a total no-brainer film, while occasionally exclaiming about how awesome a car chase scene was.

Then Caleb decide to go home and I went to the beach to meet Friederike. Well, not exactly. Those who are up to date with their geography will know that Berlin is completely and utterly landlocked, so they have no real beaches. That hasn’t stopped the residents from having them though. I had heard about these beach parties before I came. Imagine taking a piece of real-estate - this was was near the river but I hear most are on the top of parking garages, or just in other open areas - and filling it with sand. Add a 5m diameter inflatable pool in one corner with a fountain-like hose spraying everywhere, heaps of beach chairs, some chilled music and a bar serving massive cocktails and you have yourself a great recipe for a good day or night out!

We sat around drinking - damn strong, but good - cocktails and chatting the night away. It was really nice to catch up with someone I knew already over here. I’m looking forward to doing the same in London even more now.

Today has been a complete bludge day. I slept right in and woke up without even a sign of a hang-over, which I was pretty impressed with since I ended up pretty drunk last night. Went out for a big brunch with Caleb and ate up big. Then came back here and just crashed on my bed, thinking and listening to music. Then Friederike called saying she has a spare ticket for Robbie Williams tonight… so guess where I’m, going.

*Clears throat*
“And through it all, she offers me protection, a lot of love and affection, whether I’, right or wrong.” - Angel

Man, I hope he sings that song a few times because I swear it’s the only one of “our Robbie’s” songs which I actually know. Nonetheless it should be heaps of fun. It’s also at this massive stadium which I was told can’t be missed, so I’m looking forward to seeing that.

Anyway, that’s my lazy catch up post people. I feel like it’s Christmas Sunday afternoon; really kinda sleepy but content. It’s a good way to be. I hope everyone back home is staying happy and healthy. Stay in touch and I’ll post again soon.

Love to all, j xoxo

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 27th, 2006 at 11:56 pm and is filed under Germany. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.