Berlin Day 2 (12th Apr)

Sidetrack --- lyrics for the background song

Sora (Sky- Cielo)
Win dain a lotica
En val tu ri
Si lo taFin dein a loluca
En dragu a sei lain
Vi fa-ru les shutai am
En riga-lint

Win chent a lotica
En val turiSilota
Fin dein a loluca
Si katigura neuver
Floreria for chestiSi entina

Lalala…Fontina Blu Cent
De cravi esca letisimo
Lalala…De quantian
La finde revelalala...

Win dain a lotica
En vai tu ri
Si lo ta
Fin dein a loluca
En dragu a sei lain

Vi fa-ru les shutai am
En riga-lint
After lunch at Checkpoint Charlie where i had a Doner Kebab with cheese for 3 euros and a banana milkshake for 1.80 euros, we proceeded along Friedrichstraf to shop. We past by this massive shopping center called Quartier 2006 apparently selling alot of designer goods like Chanel n stuff.

Volkswagen people's car

海風牽帶著思念, 淚水咬著回憶不放...
當黑夜轉到地球的那一邊, 你有沒有夢見我的淚...

Win Win and Yew Keng wif Berlin Bear

Win Win posing with large Conetto XD

Berlin bear

Bradenburg Tor reminds me of Arc de Triumph in Paris

Twilight shot of Reichstag

Sideview of Bradenburg Tor (slow shutter speed)

Interior view of the Reichstag Dome. Have to wait damn long for the queue to get in man. Once inside still got to queue up for security check they really check u down to yr very sole ><

Nite shot of city landscape on top of the Reichstag Dome


Nite shot of Bradenburg Tor. Hahaha i would rate my photography skills 9.5/ 10 for this shot XD


===========================

12th Apr Day 2 in Berlin

We decided to go to Sachsenhausen Camp but its in like zone C so we need to get a grp S-bahn tix for to travel from zone A to zone C. Below is the picture of our tix. It writes please validate yr tix and we have to validate it at a red ticket machine thingy within 2 hours if not there will be penalty for commuters caught travelling with a unvalidated tix.
Kleingruppenkarte means little group card; gruppen means group lor karte means card lor see i neva learn german also know XDDD so its 15 euros for the 3 of us but it can be shared to a max of 5 people so the more people sharing the merrier lah but then onli got 3 of us travel mah

Hahaha a MTV style of a pretty lady on board our S-bahn train to Sachsenhausen Camp. The most feared camp during WWII...yes the concentration camp
Nazi's Uniform in Sachsenhausen Camp (think typical private uniform)

The monument erected in memory of those victims who fell into the cruel hands of the Nazi or the secret police during World War 2. There are 18 small traingles on the monument each wif a unique design on it to represent the 18 major nationilities of the captives.

This camp is super big lah luckily admission is free but we need to get the audio guide and a map for 3 euros if not confirm will get lost de. After spending like half a day in the camp somehow get kinda depressed lah its really not a nice place to spend too much time in kinda creepy to see the cells of the prisoners, drawn pictures of the atrocities (they wun show you the real photographs of course). So at about 2.30pm (think abt 3.5hrs spent in the camp), we decided to head back to Berlin city center to explore the west side since we have been walking around the eastern side for the past day.

Flowers flowers
There as u can see we are back in Western Berlin. Apparently we can see that there is some difference in the layout n building architecture in the west and in the east lah but now there is heavy reconstruction in the eastern side. Think its the govt development policies to create a new Berlin and to erase the past 'boundaries' that still exist bah.

As usual, we went to check out where is Hard Rock Cafe and we found out its actually very near the Berlin Zoological station the place where we alighted from our train travelling from Paris one. Hehehe Ah keng's fave since its his motivation to go to every city he visited and buy the Hard Rock Cafe t-shirt there as rememberance XD He says he's going to wear one per day in NUS during lecture. First day Paris lah second day Berlin, third day Rome, etc XDDD evil hor XD

Me posing wif a German police officer. Haha stopped him after he bot some cigarettes in a convenient store.

Mercedes again Ah Keng's fave too bad i no $$ to buy car think must save up for future!

My dinner German Currywurst (their kinda saussage with curry powder) this meals cost 4.69 euros

Berlin Zoological Station

This is the memorial church in Berlin. Look at how po4 lan4 its state is in. Its genna bombed during the WWII but now they still preserve it.

Victory Column


==============================

13th Apr Day 3 in Berlin

Dunkin Donuts hehehe vvv nice wor!! I got a Walnut choco one think we very heng leh coz got offer gua if u buy any donut they give free coffee and can refill one all for 1.10 euro not bad siah their coffee is really very nice they use their special grounded coffee beans even ah keng who drink coffee so much also say nice XDD hahah look really mouth-watering hor :P

Berlin typical CD store. Look at their spelling for culture spelt as kulture reminds me of.....malay leh @@~


Since its our last day left in Berlin, we decide to indulge abit lor. Ah keng was complaining since his exchange here he hasn't ate jap cruisine for 2+ months then he says is a new record for him lor. So we decided to go to this Korean restaurant which is very near to our hostel. This Korean restaurant got serve jap food too so its not too bad lah and got nice ambience.


This plate of salmon sashimi costs 15 euros!! Ah keng's fave hahah think ah keng really like berlin alot since got good food and relatively cheap as compared to singapore. He says in singapore good sashimi easily costs 30 - 40+ sing dollars.

Hehehe cutie teddy bear with a heart shape pinbadge, i got this bear for Win Win. It writes Weldstaldt mit herz which means metropolitian city with heart. LOL i found out by asking the waitress in the korean restaurant.

Haha after lunch we rushed to the airport lor almost have a fright coz we are like 5min before the gate closes phew....all because of waiting too long for our jap food in the restaurant lor coz apparently the lady boss and the male chef had an arguement think they run out of rice to make sushi then the lady boss dunno misunderstood wat thing lor then argue wah really first time experience in restaurant reminds me of the brawl up incident in St James Park between Kireon Dyer and Lee Bowyer internal conflict. Haizz becoz of this incident make us almost late for our flight luckily SAF trained us well man XDD hahaha can run wif bulky load ;)

Berlin Day 1 (11th Apr)

Berlin is located on the rivers Spree and Havel in the northeast of Germany. It is enclosed by the German state(Bundesland) of Brandenburg, and constitutes a state of its own.

Berlin Coat of Arms

The overall impression one gets when visiting Berlin today is one of great discontinuity, visibly reflecting the many ruptures of Germany's difficult history in the 20th century. Although it was the residence of the Prussian kings, Berlin's population did not greatly expand until the 19th century, mainly after becoming the capital of the German Empire in 1871. It remained Germany's capital during the Weimar Republic and under the Nazis' Third Reich. During this period, Adolf Hitler had great plans to transform Berlin, because he thought that Berlin was one of the ugliest cities in the world, and he hated it. (Berlin was and is a center of left-wing political activity in Germany, and its residents largely opposed the Nazis' rise to power.) Therefore he and his architect Albert Speer made enormous plans for the new Berlin.

Einstein Cafe XD

Russian Embassy

Mayor of Berlin quite charasmatic XD

What's that convoy??

wahhahaha??

President of South Korea and the first lady

Monument graves with new architectural design in memory of the Jews who were massacred in the holocaust.


Remains of the Berlin Wall which was fell in 1989.
Until 1961 East German citizen were allowed to travel to West Berlin. Travelling to West Germany became difficult after closing the border between East and West Germany in 1952. The Wall was erected in 1961 because more than 2.6 million East Germans escaped to West Berlin or West Germany from 1949 to 1961 (total population of East Germany was about 17 million!). The life in the West was much better than in the East after 1948. West Germany including West Berlin had got financial help through the Marshallplan from the USA. In East Germany a communist system was established and many people had to suffer under repressions of the Communist party. In May 1952 the open border (Zonengrenze) between East and West Germany was closed by the East German government. In the years after 1952 it became more difficult and dangerous to escape to the West over this border. However, the sectorial borders between East and West Berlin were not closed. Many East German citizen went to East Berlin and from there to West Berlin. East Germany lost too many skilled workers in these years. Another big problem were the two currencies in Germany and especially in Berlin. West German DM had been exchanged into East German DM at a rate of 1:4 (1 DM West = 4 DM Ost) in West Berlin. People with West German DM could get goods very cheaply in the Eastern part of Berlin. The East German government saw no other way to prevent from escaping to the West via Berlin than closing the border between East and West Berlin on August 13, 1961.




A 140 meter long section of the Berlin Wall was re-erected by the museum on October 31, 2004 and nearby, a field of 1,065 crosses represents all victims of the East German border system.

Checkpoint Charlie

Ten days after closing the border on August 13, 1961 tourists from abroad, diplomats and the military personnel of the Western Powers were only allowed to enter East Berlin via the crossing point at Berlin Friedrichstrasse.
Soon the US military police opened the third checkpoint at Friedrichstrasse. The other two checkpoints were Helmstedt at the West German-East German border and Dreilinden at the West Berlin and East Germany border. Based on the phonetic alphabet the Helmstedt checkpoint was called Alpha, Dreilinden Checkpoint Bravo and the checkpoint at Friedrichstrasse got the name Charlie.

nEw Berlin (modelled by Win Win) Why New Berlin? Well essentially Berlin is now in the phase of transition especially in the eastern part where new infrastructure and instituitions are created congruously incordance to the 5 year development plans laid by the government in creating a metropolitian city.

Our group photo at US Checkpoint Charlie over the other side of the road (facing us) is the former USSR boundaries.

Max Planck

Deutschland University

Historic Musuem

Berlin TV Tower Tallest buiding structure in Berlin.

Berlin TV Tower

Berliner Dome