You can call this a kind of “next instalment” to my Getting out of Melaka rant last month, as it follows the same “helpful” lines. However, this one might be best titled, Now for something you might actually find useful.
Get ready for caps lock – it means excitement...
THERE’S A TRAIN FROM BANGKOK AIRPORT!
After years of fussing about over said mode of transportation out to Suvarnabhumi airport, they’ve finally got this thing up and running. Whilst I may be out of date in reporting this, it was news to us upon arrival, and it’s good for you, too.
Why is it good? It’s cheap and frequent, and you avoid the taxis! A taxi from BKK to Sukumvit (which is a u-turn off the highway) will cost about 500 baht, or close to. You’ve got the 50 baht charge of picking one up at the airport, about 350-80 charge of getting into town, plus about 70-100 in tolls.
But now, all you have to do is head to the bottom level of the airport, pay 45 baht and hop on the half hour train all the way to Phaya Thai, a skytrain station. Two stops on the skytrain (20 baht) and you’ll be on Sukumvit (Siam to be precise) in half the time and a fraction of the price of a taxi.
There’s also a non-stop express train straight from the airport to Makkasan for about 150 baht, but this station isn’t on the skytrain if that’s what you’re after, so it may not be as convenient as it sounds (It might be.. I never went on it, the cheapo that I am).
Thursday, March 3, 2011
30 Photos in 30 Days
Because words are boring when used too often, I present this: Malaysia and Thailand in 30 photos. Hopefully there's something you like amongst all this jazz:
Kualur Lumpur's Bazaar in Little India. My how I love the balloon sellers!
Batu Caves, outside Kuala Lumpur.
Chinese New Year celebrations in Kuala Lumpur.
Gardens of Melaka.
This loses value without sound. Melaka's Trishaws and their blaring tunes.
London 10632.
School Bus in Penang.
Christian cemetery, Penang.
Fort Cornwallis, Penang.
Penang National Park.
Valentine's Day, Bangkok.
A lot of these guys don't make it across the road in Koh Lanta.
Release of lantern in Lanta.
Wai.
Kualur Lumpur's Bazaar in Little India. My how I love the balloon sellers!
Batu Caves, outside Kuala Lumpur.
Chinese New Year celebrations in Kuala Lumpur.
Gardens of Melaka.
This loses value without sound. Melaka's Trishaws and their blaring tunes.
London 10632.
School Bus in Penang.
Christian cemetery, Penang.
Fort Cornwallis, Penang.
Penang National Park.
Valentine's Day, Bangkok.
A lot of these guys don't make it across the road in Koh Lanta.
Release of lantern in Lanta.
Wai.
Thursday, February 10, 2011
So mee is noodles and nasi is rice and that is all you need to know, right? The rest is just whatever comes on top. Actually, in Melaka, you don’t need to know that – just sit down, look at the wall, and pronounce as best you can whatever words look appealing. Something will show up.
Without someone who’ll simply walk up and ask the obvious, often ridiculous, questions about etiquette and translation (where is James Yeates when you need him?), the best way to figure out eating out is to just find a seat and wait to see what happens.
In Melaka, we stayed on Raya 3 (a street name that sparked my knowledge of 1 to 10 in Bahasa!), away from Chinatown (but not lacking in noise at 5 am – thanks Cafe 1). Our hotel room might have been full of cockroaches and other peoples’ hair clogging all the drains, but our street was pretty cool. It had a real ‘country town’ vibe going on; even though 15 minutes walk would bring you to the sardine madness of Chinatown.
Coincidence or not, it was funny that down one side of the street were all the ‘touristy’ restaurants, and on the other were all the ‘local’ eateries. The former included the blazing red, white and blue of Casual American Dining, the karaoke-starting Cafe 1, and the super-cosmopolitan Ant Bar, where the same five-girl-vocal-pop-sensation group performed nightly from 9.30 (from the street, it seemed the only musical performance was coming from some old dude and a Yahama). On the other side of the road were the places with names you wouldn’t as easily see. We named these places: “We know you’re mean but your roti is the greatest”, “You wait long time”, and “Does a hotplate really cost that much”. What we lacked in creativity, they made up for in yumminess.
The first of these – the one between the other two – was amazing for the roti – we had to come back multiple times for this – as will you if you ever head to Melaka. The second, despite waiting at for almost 2 hours for food, won us over with its cook: this old dude whose kitchen was surrounding him on the street, and heaven forbid that anyone else try and help cook! The third won us over because it introduced me to taro. What’s the deal with taro anyway? It looks like a potato and tastes like beans.. They’re mad for it here. All in all, three places within walking distance that crapped all over the clean side of the street (though, I will say that come Sunday, when they were all closed, the Indian place across from the roti joint served a wicked Chicken Tikka).
Taro taro taro - what's the dealio?
Now to Penang, where all you hear about is food. Apparently, people get frustrated at tourism agencies plugging this place as a beach town. Well, according to my mad Ctrl+F skills in the LP and Wikitravel, there’re no recommended places to swim here at all. It is indeed all about the food. What said travel advisories lack in all their tellings, however, is an idea as to what one should do to get such great food (yes, get it, I’m not saying “find it”).
My answer – look like a goose. Dressed as a big white bird (much better than Plucka’s costume, I assure you), I did initially run into some trouble when sitting at one street stall serving chicken rice. Explaining that I was, in fact, a goose and not a chicken, they quickly stopped looking.
Just walk in, sit down, and look at what other people are doing. Soon enough you’ll realise (unless you actually have read this far, in which case I’m ruining it for you) that in Penang, the good stalls only sell one thing (efficiency in effect). Go to the laksa stall (if you’re ready for fishy explosion), or the chicken rice one, or the satay one, or the koay teow one (my favourite) and raise a finger (that’s “one please”), say terima kasih, and sit down. Don’t pay at the stall, wait til the food hits the table. Then enjoy.
As for drinks, the sellers of these are keen AS. Order up on Ice Kopi, Lime Juice or 100 Plus (SO many tubby kids drink this stuff, then use the isotonic brilliance to run marathons).
I might say at this point, they don’t usually use a number system or even ask where you’re sitting. In some of the bigger food areas, test how mad their skills are and sit nowhere near the stall you order from. I guarantee they’ll find you.
Finally, my confusion. I’m confused about why Penang needs that dude and his programmed keyboard? The melody doesn’t actually change and yet he just starts singing new lyrics... I’m also confused by the love for chicken rice. Is there something I’m missing?
Get the crap out of Melaka!
No, that’s not telling you to do so, it’s telling you what I’m about to write – although, after visiting some of Melaka’s “museums” you might want out (Yes, best to stay on the food trail when in this here town).
Kuala Lumpur have bus services to Melaka running from Bukit Jalil. Note, Bukit Jalil, not Puduraya. Note the date this is being written – 11 February 2011. The bus station reno began in April last year and was scheduled for four months. Hmm, funny how these things always happen. Never fear, head to Puduraya anyway and smoosh yourself into a shuttle (RM2, of course... nothing’s free). A ticket to Melaka from there could cost you anything, depending on how the ticket girl feels at the time. Then once in Melaka (that’s provided you do get on the bus you’ve been allocated to), the cab fare to town is RM20 – the fair price nowadays (the rip off price being RM30).
BUT WAIT! There’s a bus straight in and outta there to/from KLIA and LCCT! This means you can avoid KL if you hate the city, or.. just need to get to the airport. For most people, this information is meaningless; but in case you ever actually want to do this, this info is actually hard to find via Google.
Trust this: Go to Mahkota Medical Centre, head to the back of the building and you can actually get the bus straight outta town at 5am, 8am, 12.30pm or 2.30pm. Booking ahead is not always necessary, but can be done for us nervous types. It will cost RM22 (better than the total RM45 to get to the airport the other way). It will take longer than 2 hours (as the dude will tell you), but not much longer – say, less than 3. Then once at LCCT, fly to Penang :)
Without someone who’ll simply walk up and ask the obvious, often ridiculous, questions about etiquette and translation (where is James Yeates when you need him?), the best way to figure out eating out is to just find a seat and wait to see what happens.
In Melaka, we stayed on Raya 3 (a street name that sparked my knowledge of 1 to 10 in Bahasa!), away from Chinatown (but not lacking in noise at 5 am – thanks Cafe 1). Our hotel room might have been full of cockroaches and other peoples’ hair clogging all the drains, but our street was pretty cool. It had a real ‘country town’ vibe going on; even though 15 minutes walk would bring you to the sardine madness of Chinatown.
Coincidence or not, it was funny that down one side of the street were all the ‘touristy’ restaurants, and on the other were all the ‘local’ eateries. The former included the blazing red, white and blue of Casual American Dining, the karaoke-starting Cafe 1, and the super-cosmopolitan Ant Bar, where the same five-girl-vocal-pop-sensation group performed nightly from 9.30 (from the street, it seemed the only musical performance was coming from some old dude and a Yahama). On the other side of the road were the places with names you wouldn’t as easily see. We named these places: “We know you’re mean but your roti is the greatest”, “You wait long time”, and “Does a hotplate really cost that much”. What we lacked in creativity, they made up for in yumminess.
The first of these – the one between the other two – was amazing for the roti – we had to come back multiple times for this – as will you if you ever head to Melaka. The second, despite waiting at for almost 2 hours for food, won us over with its cook: this old dude whose kitchen was surrounding him on the street, and heaven forbid that anyone else try and help cook! The third won us over because it introduced me to taro. What’s the deal with taro anyway? It looks like a potato and tastes like beans.. They’re mad for it here. All in all, three places within walking distance that crapped all over the clean side of the street (though, I will say that come Sunday, when they were all closed, the Indian place across from the roti joint served a wicked Chicken Tikka).
Taro taro taro - what's the dealio?
Now to Penang, where all you hear about is food. Apparently, people get frustrated at tourism agencies plugging this place as a beach town. Well, according to my mad Ctrl+F skills in the LP and Wikitravel, there’re no recommended places to swim here at all. It is indeed all about the food. What said travel advisories lack in all their tellings, however, is an idea as to what one should do to get such great food (yes, get it, I’m not saying “find it”).
My answer – look like a goose. Dressed as a big white bird (much better than Plucka’s costume, I assure you), I did initially run into some trouble when sitting at one street stall serving chicken rice. Explaining that I was, in fact, a goose and not a chicken, they quickly stopped looking.
Just walk in, sit down, and look at what other people are doing. Soon enough you’ll realise (unless you actually have read this far, in which case I’m ruining it for you) that in Penang, the good stalls only sell one thing (efficiency in effect). Go to the laksa stall (if you’re ready for fishy explosion), or the chicken rice one, or the satay one, or the koay teow one (my favourite) and raise a finger (that’s “one please”), say terima kasih, and sit down. Don’t pay at the stall, wait til the food hits the table. Then enjoy.
As for drinks, the sellers of these are keen AS. Order up on Ice Kopi, Lime Juice or 100 Plus (SO many tubby kids drink this stuff, then use the isotonic brilliance to run marathons).
I might say at this point, they don’t usually use a number system or even ask where you’re sitting. In some of the bigger food areas, test how mad their skills are and sit nowhere near the stall you order from. I guarantee they’ll find you.
Finally, my confusion. I’m confused about why Penang needs that dude and his programmed keyboard? The melody doesn’t actually change and yet he just starts singing new lyrics... I’m also confused by the love for chicken rice. Is there something I’m missing?
Get the crap out of Melaka!
No, that’s not telling you to do so, it’s telling you what I’m about to write – although, after visiting some of Melaka’s “museums” you might want out (Yes, best to stay on the food trail when in this here town).
Kuala Lumpur have bus services to Melaka running from Bukit Jalil. Note, Bukit Jalil, not Puduraya. Note the date this is being written – 11 February 2011. The bus station reno began in April last year and was scheduled for four months. Hmm, funny how these things always happen. Never fear, head to Puduraya anyway and smoosh yourself into a shuttle (RM2, of course... nothing’s free). A ticket to Melaka from there could cost you anything, depending on how the ticket girl feels at the time. Then once in Melaka (that’s provided you do get on the bus you’ve been allocated to), the cab fare to town is RM20 – the fair price nowadays (the rip off price being RM30).
BUT WAIT! There’s a bus straight in and outta there to/from KLIA and LCCT! This means you can avoid KL if you hate the city, or.. just need to get to the airport. For most people, this information is meaningless; but in case you ever actually want to do this, this info is actually hard to find via Google.
Trust this: Go to Mahkota Medical Centre, head to the back of the building and you can actually get the bus straight outta town at 5am, 8am, 12.30pm or 2.30pm. Booking ahead is not always necessary, but can be done for us nervous types. It will cost RM22 (better than the total RM45 to get to the airport the other way). It will take longer than 2 hours (as the dude will tell you), but not much longer – say, less than 3. Then once at LCCT, fly to Penang :)
Sunday, February 6, 2011
Paris (again)
The Gypsies of Paris are hilarious folk, though I’m sure they don’t try to be so intentionally. They’re annoying, we know that by reputation, but they’re also lazy and lacking in creativity. Given how many of these guys and girls there are around the place, you’d think they could muster up some half-decent ploys to trick tourists.
Come the beginning of 2011, Parisian Gypsies possess two stunts in their repertoire. To my knowledge, one of these is quite old; the other I’m not sure about.
# 1. The golden ring
This is the older one, I believe. You’ll be walking along and suddenly be approached by a Gypsy, who so happens to come across a gold ring on the ground. They’ll “pick it up” and look at it quizzically, then “spot” you and say something to the tune of, “here, you should have it.” The sucker who takes the ring will think they’ve scored as they walk away, until the Gypsy reappears to reap reward for finding the ring. This may only be a few euro, “for a coffee” or some such, but it’s money you certainly aint gonna keep unless you want to be accused of swindling on the street.
So what’s the problem? (“What’s the problem?” is become a classic phrase in some circles, you know) Well firstly, they don’t quite have the “discovery” down pat. They bend over, and flick the ring from out under their shoe, a bit like the coin from behind the ear trick. All well and good, except it is way too obvious. One Gypsy tried this on a patch of ground I was already staring at, then got confused when I laughed at her. Second, how many damn rings could there possible be on the streets of Paris? Break yourselves up a bit, Gypsies! Who are you kidding? A “spread out” group of the guys will have you witness the uncovering of treasure about 6 times in the space of 300 metres. When you laugh at this, they laugh; but they aint amused.
#2. The petition
You’ll see the Gypsies walking around with clip boards, and this means if you go anywhere near them, you’ll be asked to sign a petition for peace. We were told that, upon signing the petition, it is revealed to the signer that they have signed a contract to give money, and if they refuse then a group of their buddies are gonna approach you and give you a hard time. Do I believe this? No. For a start, the main place where this petition stuff happened was outside of Notre Dame, where military patrol with great big machine guns. There’d be no real confrontations as far as I believe.
They do request money after signing the thing, though. Perhaps it’s “a donation” for their cause. What is crap about the whole thing is that they get away with actually having “UNICEF” printed across the top of their page. Way to suck people in.
So sign it, don’t give any money, and throw a wave at one of your “military buddies”. See if they take you to court...
C’mon gypsies... you have two tricks! Can’t you have a staff meeting or something to come up with, say, a dozen ploys to have on rotation to actually make your trickery a bit more exciting for the rest of us? In the meantime, I wonder how much one of those “gold” rings will go for on ebay.
Come the beginning of 2011, Parisian Gypsies possess two stunts in their repertoire. To my knowledge, one of these is quite old; the other I’m not sure about.
This is the older one, I believe. You’ll be walking along and suddenly be approached by a Gypsy, who so happens to come across a gold ring on the ground. They’ll “pick it up” and look at it quizzically, then “spot” you and say something to the tune of, “here, you should have it.” The sucker who takes the ring will think they’ve scored as they walk away, until the Gypsy reappears to reap reward for finding the ring. This may only be a few euro, “for a coffee” or some such, but it’s money you certainly aint gonna keep unless you want to be accused of swindling on the street.
So what’s the problem? (“What’s the problem?” is become a classic phrase in some circles, you know) Well firstly, they don’t quite have the “discovery” down pat. They bend over, and flick the ring from out under their shoe, a bit like the coin from behind the ear trick. All well and good, except it is way too obvious. One Gypsy tried this on a patch of ground I was already staring at, then got confused when I laughed at her. Second, how many damn rings could there possible be on the streets of Paris? Break yourselves up a bit, Gypsies! Who are you kidding? A “spread out” group of the guys will have you witness the uncovering of treasure about 6 times in the space of 300 metres. When you laugh at this, they laugh; but they aint amused.
You’ll see the Gypsies walking around with clip boards, and this means if you go anywhere near them, you’ll be asked to sign a petition for peace. We were told that, upon signing the petition, it is revealed to the signer that they have signed a contract to give money, and if they refuse then a group of their buddies are gonna approach you and give you a hard time. Do I believe this? No. For a start, the main place where this petition stuff happened was outside of Notre Dame, where military patrol with great big machine guns. There’d be no real confrontations as far as I believe.
They do request money after signing the thing, though. Perhaps it’s “a donation” for their cause. What is crap about the whole thing is that they get away with actually having “UNICEF” printed across the top of their page. Way to suck people in.
So sign it, don’t give any money, and throw a wave at one of your “military buddies”. See if they take you to court...
C’mon gypsies... you have two tricks! Can’t you have a staff meeting or something to come up with, say, a dozen ploys to have on rotation to actually make your trickery a bit more exciting for the rest of us? In the meantime, I wonder how much one of those “gold” rings will go for on ebay.
Saturday, February 5, 2011
Paris
The City of Lights – named as such because some scribe was late to dinner one night. You see, Mr. Paris was standing by the River Seines, deciding what affectionate name he might give his fair ol’ town. His scribe was there fidgeting away, busting to leave because he had a hot date (it is Paris). “It will be known as...” (stupidly stereotypical French accent is appropriate here) “...The City, The City of–” All of a sudden he was cut off by the passing Seine River Boat Tour, completely decked out in flood lights, blinding the banks of Île de la Cité; causing Mr. P to exclaim: “ergh! Lights!”
In such the rush that he was in, Mr. P’s scribe wrote that down. Well, he couldn’t spell “ergh” so he left that word out at least. The rest is history.
What else have I learnt about the French then?
> You’re gonna get a ‘good morning’ out of them come breakfast. Now, I am a particularly grumpy bugger come the morning so there’s no surprises I find this odd; but, it’s gotta take some kind of sick French person to bother saying bonjour to every person in the room at breakfast time. No, I’m not talking about the staff, I’m talking about the patrons. They’re just so excited that it’s another day, another baguette.
> They’re obsessed with rollerblading. Clearly the French have never witnessed Ross Noble’s rants about rollerblading or perhaps they simply lack the skills of basic observation – but how ridiculous can they all look!?
> They’re craaazy about Police. I don’t think there is a more Police-flooded city in all of Europe. They’re literally everywhere. In cars, vans, BUSES, on foot, horseback and, you guessed it, on rollerblades. How can anyone take a police officer on roller blades seriously? They’d be chasing a crim, and all that Frenchie needs to do is run into the park. What’s Mr. Roller-speed gonna do then? There’s also the Parisian ritual of the 6 pm Police brigade. At roughly the same time every night, you’d be hard pressed to not see a great long brigade of vans and buses roaring through the city. Now either this is a drill, or Parisian crime is extremely predictable.
> The military guard all monuments, such as Notre Dame, with guns not much different in size to themselves. This is because the French are constantly fearful that Quasimodo might eat an American tourist and then Americans will be afraid to ever visit Paris again. Hmm.
> Academie de Francais is plain awesome. These dudes have such an amazing job deciding the French rules for language and the like. I’ll put in into perspective: when the ipod was released, the AF spent eight weeks deciding if ‘ipod’ was to be masculine or feminine. Eight weeks! Pretty sure it ends up being ‘l’ipod’ at either conclusion – can’t it just be cross gender? Still, brilliant work there and good use of French taxpayers money. Hey, it’d only otherwise be spent funding new rollerblading tracks.
> There is some contention over public urination. You don’t want to know about it? Sure, that’s why I left it til last. However, it seems surprising that in Bordeaux, public wees are all the rage (they love it!), yet in the capital it’s extremely frowned upon. Perspective? In Bordeaux, I saw a local man weeing very openly on the street (presumably he thought a van would hide him from the world... it didn’t), and a woman clambering into a bush in the middle of a roundabout to relieve herself. These are but a couple of the many people I saw each day using the streets as a toilet. Certainly not what you’d expect from the French. We read that in Paris, however, locals wouldn’t even pee in their friend’s bathroom when visiting for tea! I’m not entirely sure if I believe that, but there were certainly none of the Bordeaux shenanigans going on in the City of Light. As for free wees, never fear! Paris made all their public toilets free! (They’re the big spaceship looking things on the street that self clean and threaten to crush you if you don’t leave in time – inviting stuff!)
> French dog owners still need some lessons in common decency.
In such the rush that he was in, Mr. P’s scribe wrote that down. Well, he couldn’t spell “ergh” so he left that word out at least. The rest is history.
What else have I learnt about the French then?
> You’re gonna get a ‘good morning’ out of them come breakfast. Now, I am a particularly grumpy bugger come the morning so there’s no surprises I find this odd; but, it’s gotta take some kind of sick French person to bother saying bonjour to every person in the room at breakfast time. No, I’m not talking about the staff, I’m talking about the patrons. They’re just so excited that it’s another day, another baguette.
> They’re obsessed with rollerblading. Clearly the French have never witnessed Ross Noble’s rants about rollerblading or perhaps they simply lack the skills of basic observation – but how ridiculous can they all look!?
> They’re craaazy about Police. I don’t think there is a more Police-flooded city in all of Europe. They’re literally everywhere. In cars, vans, BUSES, on foot, horseback and, you guessed it, on rollerblades. How can anyone take a police officer on roller blades seriously? They’d be chasing a crim, and all that Frenchie needs to do is run into the park. What’s Mr. Roller-speed gonna do then? There’s also the Parisian ritual of the 6 pm Police brigade. At roughly the same time every night, you’d be hard pressed to not see a great long brigade of vans and buses roaring through the city. Now either this is a drill, or Parisian crime is extremely predictable.
> The military guard all monuments, such as Notre Dame, with guns not much different in size to themselves. This is because the French are constantly fearful that Quasimodo might eat an American tourist and then Americans will be afraid to ever visit Paris again. Hmm.
> Academie de Francais is plain awesome. These dudes have such an amazing job deciding the French rules for language and the like. I’ll put in into perspective: when the ipod was released, the AF spent eight weeks deciding if ‘ipod’ was to be masculine or feminine. Eight weeks! Pretty sure it ends up being ‘l’ipod’ at either conclusion – can’t it just be cross gender? Still, brilliant work there and good use of French taxpayers money. Hey, it’d only otherwise be spent funding new rollerblading tracks.
> There is some contention over public urination. You don’t want to know about it? Sure, that’s why I left it til last. However, it seems surprising that in Bordeaux, public wees are all the rage (they love it!), yet in the capital it’s extremely frowned upon. Perspective? In Bordeaux, I saw a local man weeing very openly on the street (presumably he thought a van would hide him from the world... it didn’t), and a woman clambering into a bush in the middle of a roundabout to relieve herself. These are but a couple of the many people I saw each day using the streets as a toilet. Certainly not what you’d expect from the French. We read that in Paris, however, locals wouldn’t even pee in their friend’s bathroom when visiting for tea! I’m not entirely sure if I believe that, but there were certainly none of the Bordeaux shenanigans going on in the City of Light. As for free wees, never fear! Paris made all their public toilets free! (They’re the big spaceship looking things on the street that self clean and threaten to crush you if you don’t leave in time – inviting stuff!)
> French dog owners still need some lessons in common decency.
Tuesday, January 4, 2011
Berlin
The Berliners do a pretty good New Years... Leaving the apartment, you get a hefty dose of passive smoking – not from any cigarettes, but from the gunpowder in fireworks and crackers. Something about the 31st of December, really; popping out of the metro along with about 10 other people that afternoon, gangsters in training were shooting capguns out of windows, blowing crackers in the open and shooting flares into bushes. Outside the Jewish Museum there was three cops with machine guns (yes, the German police have machine guns casually swung over the shoulders), completely ignoring the smoky traffic hazard being created by some punks about 40 metres down the road. New Year’s Eve is coming.
New Year’s Eve and a good 2 km stretch of road surrounded by forest (the biggest toilet ever) before the Brandenburg Gate. West Side, yo. Just hanging out with 999,999 of my closest friends – this is one big party and one that expectedly draws mixed opinions. On one hand it’s the biggest New Year celebration in the world (take that New York) so clearly it has popularity going for it. But on the other it’s hard to tell just how many locals make up the million. I suppose that’d be the case in any city, really, but the “cool” types weren’t going to be seen at the Gate, especially when the programme offered a bit of Bonnie Tyler come midnight. Who needs the yuppies anyway, all we needed was a hero (holding onto a hero). Fireworks, lasers, beer and half metre bratwursts are enough to please us at any rate.
Now, before getting to perhaps the greatest moment of 2011 (I say that in a premonition-like fashion, as nothing looks like it could top what happened in the first 5 minutes of the year), I’ll mention the amateur pyros again. Where else in the world will you find locals with backpacks full of fireworks, happily going about their explosions IN FRONT OF THE CAPITAL’S HOUSE OF PARLIAMENT. Imagine the White House for a moment, a few hundred people shooting miniature rockets skyward and sideward – that would never happen. The Reichstag is technically the comparable structure for Germany (heck, they close the viewing platform in holiday season for fear of terror amongst the high density tourism...) The cops aren’t phased, the people aren’t phased, and the sky is full of pretty sparks. What’s the problem? So, there was no waiting til midnight for a fireworks show – with the kids shooting em off all night.
The Reichstag
The moment then? So in the sky the “real” fireworks show is going off following a rather surprised countdown (“blah blah blah... [checks headpiece].. oh, uh, 4, 3, 2, 1...”), Paul Potts is singing his lungs out and everything’s feeling pretty nice. The moment he’s gone though, there’s a roar, but it wasn’t for Potts departure, it was for the fact THE HOFF had appeared on stage. 21 years on from when he first performed the song for the folks here in Berlin, out came Looking For Freedom. Super-thick makeup, hip thrusting that no old man should attempt, and loads of self-appreciation made this appearance as good as ever. Possibly the only day of the year the Hoff’s not drunk – this was a pretty special surprise; one that we just may have enjoyed a little more than everyone else.
Might I just add this little bit as well: it’s part of Miniland at Berlin’s Legoland, depicting the fall of the wall and the Hoff’s iconic (yes, iconic darn it) performance atop a cherry picker. Incredible.
This is Lucy – she’s awesome. Lucy’s from an oldschool Czech cartoon in which she went on all sorts of adventures with her cat. She now appears in some of Berlin’s more popularised street art. So why is she so awesome? Well if you love cats you might beg to differ, but there’s something pretty special about looking around Lucy to see her cat hanging from a noose, pressed into a microwave or being spun in a washing machine. All around Berlin you’ll find Lucy killing her cat in very innovative ways. What’s not to love about that?
A word about Berliner Kindl Weisse. This is the beer the French decided to mix up a bit when they joined Berlin back in the day. These should not be considered beers and should be consumed under the presumption that you will get any sort of beer experience. They’re alcopops basically; raspberry, grape and “the green one” #### (formally a hallucinogenic) – and they are sickly sweet (not “siiick” nor “sweeeet”). Other than these beers there’s very little the Germans do less than great. Oh wait, these are the Frenchie’s fault.
Now we’re saying goodbye to Deutschland, and I have to say that’s a pretty hard thing to do. The Christmas season has certainly been a brilliant time to be travelling around the joint – the Christmas markets haven’t let us down at all. History is everywhere and it seems impossible that you could venture around Germany and not gain a giant historical education (especially of the 20th century). Beer – can’t get enough – gluwein and, er, Korn; and food – I’m gonna miss schnitzel the size of my head, amazing strudel, pretzels, kraut, kebabs (high Turkish population in Berlin :D), and the snags: bratwurst, bockwurst, feuerwurst, currywurst, frankenfurter, nurnberger (mm, I ate a lot of food in Germany).
Gonna miss this...
Cologne
So you would like to try a Cologne speciality? How about Halver Hahn – no half chicken as the translation might suggest. This is a cheese sandwich. Yes, on a Cologne menu, under local dishes, you’ll find a cheese sandwich. I didn’t realise anyone was allowed to lay claim on that.
“You know what that is? No chicken.”
Christmas tree made of a beer glass, sock and lemon. Yes we can.
“You know what that is? No chicken.”
Christmas tree made of a beer glass, sock and lemon. Yes we can.
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