Ich bin ein Berliner!!!

Hello. We are back from our trip to Berlin. It cost 3 NOK per person each way. With taxes, it in fact came up to 700+ NOK which is still very, very good for these parts.

"Ich bin ein Berliner!" is what JFK said in his speech to the Berliners. He was saying that every person living in a democratic and free society was a citizen of Berlin and that he too was a Berliner. The speech was really quite good and you can actually hear it on the internet. I think its on Wikipedia.

My European geography/history has improved tremendously since living in Oslo. For instance I didn't even know till the week before my trip to Berlin that West Berlin was in fact in East Germany. It was a little island of West Germany right in the middle of the Communist Germany also known as the German Democratic Republic.

Berlin is a big city. It's about 4 times the size of Paris. Having been split in two for many years, there really isn't a single city centre. We stayed in Mitte which means "middle". This was in former east Berlin but is now back to being in the middle of the city. There remains quite a difference between the east and the west. The buildings in the east look a lot more run-down and there are quite a few communist built pre-fab apartments. Everyone seemed to be making fun of the apartments but they actually look a lot like the flats back home. The west looks more "european".

The first thing we discovered the moment we got off the plane was that Germans are really very efficient. We were whisked away to our hostel on the shuttle bus and trains immediately after getting out of the airport. Berliners are efficient even when no one is looking. One night at about 11 p.m., we saw a guy briskly sweeping the floor in a desolate U-bahn station. he really looked quite intense.

The second thing we noticed was that there was food everywhere. Kebabs and currywurst were the most common and were readily available for 2 euros on practically every street corner. Unlike Oslo, Berlin has Kentucky Fried Chicken and of course we had our first meal in the city there. Interesting thing about KFC in Berlin is that it is guarded by a security guard who actively patrolled the restaurant every few minutes. We do not know why the Berlin KFC needs security.

The beer in Berlin is very cheap and good. It cost about 70 cents for 1/2 litre in a supermarket and never more than about 3 euros even in an expensive restaurant. We heard that even in the communist days, beer was always cheap and readily available.





The sights.

We took a walking tour with Brewer's Berlin Tours which lasted about 8 hours. Bjorg's feet and knees were "pain" after the tour. We saw so many things...the Reichstag, the Brandenburg Gate, the Berlin Dom, Checkpoint Charlie and the Berlin Wall, the site of Hitler's bunker, the SS Headquarters, the Berlin giant dish (made from a single slab of granite and declared by the Berliners to be the 8th Wonder of the World. The dish was subsequently accidently broken while being moved), Hotel Adlon where Michael Jackson hung "blanket" from the balcony and more. The most interesting things we learnt on the tour was that many Berliners are in fact of French descent, that Hitler liked chocolate cake and that his remains are in Russia.



The museums.

There were many, many excellent museums in Berlin. We visited a couple. We went to the Old Museum where we saw the bust of Nefertiti. There were also many other exhibits on display from Egypt. We now know all the positions in which Egyptians were depicted i.e. in the shape of a cube, sitting, standing with one foot in front and writing.

We also went to the Pergamon Museum which displayed the Pergamon Altar, the Babylonian Ishtar Gate (which was bright blue) and various Roman and Assyrian artefacts. The third museum we went to was the national gallery where we saw paintings by Renoir, Monet and henceforth my personal favourite, "Raoul Dufy". From now on if anyone asks who my favourite painter is, I can confidently answer "Raoul Dufy!" and hopefully there will be no more questions.


The buildings and the rest!

Berlin, in our opinion, has very interesting modern architecture. the Sony Centre in Potzdammer Platz had a giant propeller over it. Potzdammer Platz is also home to the funkiest Dunkin Donuts in all of Berlin, Stockholm, Budapest and Oslo (in our humble opinion).

Spandau, the western most burough of Berlin was a very interesting contrast to the rest of Berlin. We decided to go there although it wasn't a main tourist spot because, firstly, there's a place there known simply as "The Citadel" ("Zitadelle" in German) and because there's a british pop group from the 80s called "Spandau Ballet" named after it (We have the "best of" album).

It was very picturesque and had cobbled streets (unlike the rest of Berlin it was not bombed). The citadel, we discovered is the oldest structure in Berlin and dates back to the 12th Century. It's a tower with a moat that was built to protect the town of Spandau.

Berlin is supposed to be one of the clubbing capitals of Europe and the clubs stay open till 7 in the morning. We however did not go to any of the clubs because of Bjorg's knee and feet "pain" (see above). Well we'll leave that for another time.

In all, the trip was excellent. Berlin is cool.

We are still alive

No updates recently because
1. Jose K and myself were down with a bad case of the cold. (Very exotically known as the 'Shanghai cold')

2. Our Acer laptop which was our only source of multimedia went kaput and has been in the Acer repair shop. Our old faithful Toshiba Satellite is still chugging along steadily but very slowly.

3. Nothing has been happening since my last post. Yes there is more heavy snow but nothing earth shattering.

4. What little energy I had left was spent trying to sort out a huge parcel mess caused by the Singapore Post, Nordisk Express and poor Norway Post got dragged in halfway. The short story is that my mother sent us a parcel for Chinese New Year,paid SGD$60 in postage and now I am supposed to pay another SGD$50 for the handling charges in Norway because some fool in the supply system indicated a wrong code or something like that.

BAH! I say, I have refused to pay and have dug in my heels on this issue. No news yet so far from SingPost (HELLO- do you hear me? I am not going away until you fix this). Yes, the long winter has created a grumpy super-fiend of a Bjorg.

The good news is that we will be off to Berlin next Tuesday and returning on Friday. This should be fun and we will blog many much after that.

Till then, stay warm.

THE ICICLES OF DOOM

Last week, we had a break from winter. There was no snow and the pavements were frost free.

Unfortunately, this respite was cut short and it has been snowing non-stop since Sunday. According to Aftenposten ( a local Norwegian newsaper), around 25 centimeters of snow fell over Oslo between Sunday night and Monday morning alone. You can read more here.

I just peeked out of the window and yes indeed, it is still snowing.

One of the side effects of this recent bad spell of weather was pointed out to me by Jose K. We stay on the bottom floor of our student apartment (ergo, the blog title) of which there are 5 storeys. Check out what looms on top of our kitchen door.



And the floor above it

And the floor above that.

Jose K and I have decided to use the front entrance henceforth.

Postcard from Budapest

We came, we ate, we walked down Vaci utca.

Budapest was beautiful with lovely architecture on a large scale but what made it special for me was the discernable buzz of energy in the air.

We visited a HUGE mall almost as big as Ngee Ann City. The mall was full of local brands which looked good. People were out shopping on a weekday.

Food was plentiful and cheap in the supermarkets and in the restaurants. The people we met spoke really good English. Contrary to what some guidebooks/forums said, we hardly saw any beggars in the streets and the average person we saw looked well-dressed and comfortable.

It looked and felt like Budapest was wide awake and waiting eagerly to show the world what she is made of.

I haven't felt this kind of energy since we left Asia. It was great!