Journey to Berlin
Been out travelling for the past 3 weeks and didn't think of bringing my laptop along, haha. So much has happened... I'm not even sure where to begin! Better start typing somewhere before everything piles up...Jaryl and I left on the 16th of March for Berlin. We got some discount ticket from a new friend we made who came down from Frankfurt to visit Jahafar. Being completely clueless on the train timings and dates we just decided to head down to Munich's Hauptbahnhof (it means main or central station) and got on the next train outta here! The guy at the ticketing booth insisted that we had to pay some more to reserve our seats in the train because he said "If you don't reserve a seat, you will have to stand up if there's not enough space." Standing up for 6 hours was totally not an option for us so we forked out $4.50 euros each...
Golden hour at Munich's Hauptbahnhof Station
Instant soup vending machine?! Cooool
The sunset was just beautiful!
We were at the Hauptbahnhof since 4pm and the next train was at 7.14pm so we had a lot of time to kill. There was nothing much to do so Jaryl had Burger King (or something, don't really remember) while I tried to read a book. It wasn't easy because there were birds flying all over us and we didn't want to get shat on so our eyes were always kept peeled like this O_O
We had to transit at Leipzig for like... 5 hours? "Why didn't you guys just take a direct train?" Because we were foolish, that's why. We didn't want to reach Berlin at 1am and camp overnight there because our AirBnb check in was only at 2pm the next day. Turns out we still had to wait the same amount of hours at Leipzig anyway... somehow we thought the wait would be less bearable if we were at someplace else for a few hours before reaching Berlin at 7am.
Found a sandwich joint that was really cheap...
Never liked bread back in Singapore but over here there's not much of a choice! The breads are definitely tastier here though. Or maybe I've just gotten used to it hahaha cheers to all the other fellow broke exchange students out there who are also surviving on bread!!
Inside of the ICE train — aka the inter-city express train in Germany. High speed train that can reach up to 300km/h!
Remember what I mentioned earlier about having to pay to reserve our seats? When we boarded the train we realized that our seats were taken by someone else! We obviously looked confused and annoyed because a nice young man beside us looked over and told us that "It's like this at night on the trains, you can sit anywhere, it's very hard for someone to know whether a seat is reserved or not." So here's a tip, only reserve seats if you're on a MORNING train because it's usually really crowded. If you're travelling at night then forget about it, the train cabins were emptied out by the time we reached Leipzig.
Entire train cabin to ourselves
Here's another funny story that happened. The both of us sat down beside this sweet looking couple and right before the train was about to set off, the girlfriend jumped out of her seat and yelled "HONEY WE HAVE TO GO WE ARE ON THE WRONG TRAIN" "ARE YOU SURE BABY?" "YES SWEETHEART WE HAVE TO GO LETS GO WE MIGHT STILL BE ABLE TO MAKE IT" "ARE YOU VERY VERY SURE BABY? IM POSITIVE ITS THE RIGHT TRAIN" "WE DONT HAVE TIME!"
They grabbed their baggage and luckily, made it off the train in time. The nice guy beside us laughed and explained what just happened to us.
"Sometimes, the train splits into two halfway. One half goes somewhere and the other half goes somewhere else. I made that mistake once, I fell asleep and woke up in a different city!!!"
Never knew that happened! Really interesting stuff. So I guess make sure you're in the right half of the train whenever you get on one, haha.
Also don't bother trying to sneak on an inter city train to get a free ride, the conductors do their rounds at almost every stop, it's almost impossible to escape.
Leipzig Station
5 hours flew by quickly because the seats were really comfortable and there was lots of leg room. Found ourselves in Leipzig at 1am in the morning with absolutely nothing to do because EVERYTHING was dark.
It was a pretty scary experience because there were people lurking everywhere in the dark. Some were homeless, and the rest were mostly groups of youngsters having some sort of secret gathering. The only thing we found open was a McDonalds store in a corner of the station, which also meant that everyone else was there too haha.
Bought a 1 euro cheeseburger so we could sit inside
There were many homeless people inside, and by many I mean the police had to come in to help the McDonald's staff intervene because there was one guy causing a scene. We didn't really feel comfortable sitting there for 5 hours because of some incident we encountered there so we left and sat near the train platforms instead.
Just as Jaryl and I were talking about how at least this transit at Leipzig counts as a sort of "experience" for us because we now have another story to tell, we saw small sparks shoot out of a train that was about 2 platforms away from us. The small sparks got bigger and bigger and then suddenly there was one hell of an explosion right before our eyes. BAM! It was so loud and big that the both of us were jolted wide awake even though it was about 3am at this point. We decided we weren't ready to die at Leipzig just yet so we quickly took off. The police all came running out to find the source of the explosion, guess it was some kind of power surge but wooooo... if we on that platform who knows what might have happened...
We couldn't go out of the station because it was tooooooo cold and even scarier outside. Somehow 5am came around and we finally got on our (very pathetic 1 hour train ride lol) to Berlin. What a stupid decision, we should have just gone straight to Berlin hahahaha.
Arriving in Berlin
Berlin Hauptbahnhof at 7am. Really love this photo because of the sun rays
The train system is very similar to that of Munich's so we had no problem finding our way around. Our Airbnb was located at the station Hermannplatz, and from there we spent a good 20 minutes trying to locate our apartment!
7.30am: We found ourselves outside our apartment in the damn cold, couldn't stop shivering and check in was not until 7 hours later HAHA. As you probably can already tell, our trip was completely spontaneous and we didn't have the time to do any detailed planning.
We didn't want to wake our hosts of course, but we had nowhere else to go... ridden with guilt, we buzzed the doorbell a few times and called our host's cellphone. Eventually they did wake up and let us in early to dump our stuff though...
Rambo the cat. He lets us pet him and jumps on the bed to sleep beside us. This one is definitely not a cat.
Found breakfast at a nearby coffee joint. Sooo delicious and only 1EUR each
Smarties yogurt?!?!
We wandered into some peaceful cemetery (the name fails me right now) and wowww there were flowers popping up everywhere! There was an old German lady who walked past us and she smiled at us and then pointed at the flowers and said something in German. We didn't understand but she just made a sound like "POOOOFFFF!!!!" and signed that the flowers were blooming everywhere!! She stood there for quite awhile just observing them. : )
Our Day 1 was pretty boring because we were exhausted from all that travelling. We were about to head back to our apartment after checking out a lesser known part of the Berlin Wall when we were approached by a group of students. They were all holding clipboards and the slip of paper had a wheelchair logo printed on it. They kept pushing the pens towards us, telling us to sign it. As I was filling up the form with my fake name and fake country I glanced over and saw that the last box said "DONATION AMOUNT"... that was when I knew we had walked right (ok, technically they walked towards us) into one of those infamous European street scams. The first thing I did was check that all my money was intact and then told Jaryl we have to leave cause it was a stupid scam. He gave 2 euros to them to chase them off and they still told him "minimum 5 euros". Haha whaaat. When I refused to give them anything, more and more of their 'gang' started to close in on us, wayyyy too close for comfort that we barely had any space to turn around... but we managed to push our way through the human wall and find our way back home.
Another encounter I had was outside Alexanderplatz (some sort of happening train station mall) where a woman approached us and mumbled:
"CanIhave50centsforthehostel?"
"Sorry what?"
"CanIhave50centsforthehostel?"
"You want money?"
"Yes. 50 cents."
"50 cents?"
"50centsforthehostel"
We're not even sure if she said "for the hostel" but I gave her the 50 cents anyway... In retrospect I should have just said no. But it was just 50 cents to me in my head... I suppose that's exactly what she was going for... to everyone she asks, "its just 50 cents". Ask a hundred strangers for 50 cents and it becomes 50 dollars! Darn.
Day 2
We decided to head to the Salvador Dali museum! I was pretty excited for this because Dali is one of my favourite artists. There was a discount for students so we paid 9.50€ for the entrance fee.
Don't have many pictures at all because photography is not allowed inside! It was a very small place and to be honest, for the price we paid it was a pretty disappointing experience. There were no replications of his famous works at all... only some of his wacky sketches. We did spend quite awhile inside though... being kiasu and all we wanted to make our money's worth!
Pantagruel drollige traume
Memoires de casanova
Some of the more interesting pieces from the exhibition! Dali's works are always fascinating, but I think visiting the museum in Spain would have been heaps better. Besides, with 9.50€ you could visit SO MANY other museums in Berlin!!
Spy Museum
We got a little hungry and decided to explore the Potsdamer Platz area. Got lost while trying to locate a McDonald's so we settled for this thing called a 'pretzel dog' for 1.60€.
Meh....
Small part of the Berlin Wall in the middle of the city. Yes, that's gum! Everywhere! Some of them were still fresh. Gross.
Visited the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe aka the Holocaust Memorial.
The 2711 different stone slabs (each slab represents a certain amount of Jews that were killed) were all of uneven height and it felt like we were trapped in some sort of labyrinth while walking through it. I suppose that's the whole point of it though, to make you feel uncomfortable and uneasy. It's hard to describe the intensity of the Holocaust in words. Sadly, lots of people come here to take happy, smiling #OOTD Instagram pictures in their heels and shit because of the "nice grey backdrop", it just doesn't make sense at all.
"The duration of an individual's experience of [the monument] grants no further understanding, since understanding is impossible"
GERRRRRMANYYYYY!!!!
We walked to Brandenburg Tor after that.
A fun fact: The statue on the top of the gate was stolen by Napoleon in 1806 during his occupation in Berlin, haha. When it was returned to the Germans, they changed the statue to one of Victoria, the Goddess of Victory.
Brandenburg was filled with lots of tourists so we took a few pictures and left quickly...
Horses have little bags near their butts for them to shit into as they walk! Sweet!
Mr Pudding at the Brandenburg Tor
Saw one of these crazy bike things... everyone on it was drunk and there was a dude dancing around & pouring more drinks in the middle. This was taken at a red light, and when it turned green everyone shouted "GOGOGOGOGO!!!!" and started to pedal like their lives depended on it! Hahaha
The Berlin Cathedral. Absolutely magnificent!!!
Oh and before we went back to our AirBnb, we stopped by Primark because we saw lotssss of people carrying huuuge Primark bags!! It's located at Alexanderplatz and wwwwwooooo the both of us went nuts!!
Also the Berliners have shops around the city called 'AMPELMANN' = the little man shown on the pedestrian signs/crossings.
The unique looking ampelmann was first created in East Germany to attract the attention of little kids, and survived the German reunification. It's interesting because I first noticed the ampelmann at a traffic light solely because of the cute little hat he was wearing! People from both the East and West fought hard to keep this 'eastern' ampelmann alive because traffic signs were supposed to be replaced & redesigned after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Slowly throughout the years the ampelmann has become a significant and well-loved icon of Berlin. There's even a wall with a painting of these red/green men at my dorm in Munich!!
FOR ALL SIZES!!! XXS TO XXXXXXXXXL!!!!
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