Disclaimer: Am typing this on a French keyboard and the alphabet positions are all different. Typing each word is a monumental struggle....hence will keep the email short (do I hear a collective 'Thank God')
Immigration officers are where I have my first memorable encounter in any country (remember my Pakistan story?)....In Berlin I was expecting a ClaudiaSchiffer-esque tall, blonde, blue-eyed beauty in short skirts but what I got was a...
Disclaimer: Am typing this on a French keyboard and the alphabet positions are all different. Typing each word is a monumental struggle....hence will keep the email short (do I hear a collective 'Thank God')
Immigration officers are where I have my first memorable encounter in any country (remember my Pakistan story?)....In Berlin I was expecting a ClaudiaSchiffer-esque tall, blonde, blue-eyed beauty in short skirts but what I got was a dour looking Boris Becker look alike behind the glass window. He asked me all sorts of questions (why are you coming to Germany?, Where are you going to stay? Do you have the money?). He made me feel quite unwelcome in his Fatherland and completely screwed my first impression...fortunately that opinion changed in a few days as i found the people to be very helpful....even the pretty fraulein with dimples smiled when they give me directions to places I already know about ;)
Berlin.....It is difficult not to be impressed by its grandeur, especially if one considers that most (80%) of the buildings were destroyed in WWII and then rebuilt after 1945...the portions which are original ALL have bullet marks.....a sad testimony to what one misguided person can cause........only a few of the Nazi-era buildings stand, one of them being the office of the Airforce (Luftwaffe) - probably the most sturdy looking building I have ever seen (photos will tell the story). It now serves as the finance ministry...The marble from Hitler's private office is being used at a subway station, Goebbel's ministery of propoganda no longer stands ('all lies I tell you, all lies'). Even the 'fuhrer-bunker' has been intentionally totally destroyed....so all in all there are very few reminders of 1933-45....the German's no longer feel guilty for causing 2 world wars and the holocaust but there is still a feeling of responsibility and regret....It is visible in the large number of memorials to the jews that dot the city...and the impact that the two WWs and the holocaust have caused on their psyche is also perceptible...
The Berliner public transport is pretty confusing (especially for someone who comes from an only-one-form-of-public-transportation city like Edinburgh). There is the tram and the S-Bahn and the U-Bahn....the latter two are both suburban metro lines but I still haven't been able to tell the difference between the two...maybe I needed to have more of that German beer....To cut a long story short...on my second day in Berlin, in the S-Bahn (or was it the U-Bahn?) I was accosted by a shabby looking guy who asked me a question in German...i thought he was a beggar so I imperiously shooed him away....then he took out an Id card and waved it in my face...I then realised that he was a ticket checker.....when i showed him my ticket....he said 'no good'....when i pointed out that it was, he tried to snatch away my ticket from me....i panicked and pulled it back (maybe not a very smart thing to do)......he called his colleague and I panicked and since the train was at a station (where I was supposed to get off anyways) I got off just when the door were about to shut (in true cold-war-spy-thriller movie style)..in retrospect not a very smart thing to do. But atleast I got away. For the record, my ticket was the right one!
What is there to see in Berlin? Lots of Museums, shopping (FriedrichStrasse, Unter Der Lintern and KaDeWe), art, music, outdoor cafes, bars and the bohemian life...one night I went to a nightclub with some German friends. I have no qualms in revealing that I was the shortest person there of either sex.....most men are over 2m and most women are over 1.8m (as you know I am....er....well....you know...). But normally people dress up as if they are about to go for a formal office presentation....the only people who stand out are the shabby Americans in their shorts and some youngsters who dress up in Eminem style :(
Only about 1.5 kilometres of THE wall remain (got myself duly photographed in front of it!). Checkpoint charlie is a real tourist trap and only a bricklined path marks where the wall used to stand...Closeby is the Brandenburg gate (totally rebuilt) in front of which is the most exclusive hotel of Berlin 'Hotel Adlon'....now it is more famous as 'the hotel from where Michael Jackson dangled his baby'. In front of Humboldt University (alumni includes Einstein, Marx and Engels) I saw a street philosopher who would put up chartpaper, write his theory on it, pull it down and then put up the next chartpaper. His long beard, flowing hair and scowl completed the mad professor calculus image!
From Berlin I visited Potsdam which is now more famous for THE treaty rather than the save-me-from-my-wife antics of the Prussian King Friedriech. The Cecielhoff palace, where the treaty was signed, is an extremely intimate and pretty palace right next to a beautiful lake.....THE table is well preserved and one can imagine Stalin, Truman and Churchill arguing each with each other on it. However, the crowning glory of Potsdam is the 'Sans Souci' palace and garden built by Friedrich. He is given the epithet of 'The Great'. Married men can easily understand why...he built this palace 'sans souci' (without worry) so that he could be away from his wife....he is buried in the gardens with his 11 dogs. The most interesting (and insolent) part is on the top of his palace where he had 'three ladies', almost-nude statutes of the queens of his three enemy countries (France, Austria and Russia). These three queens hold aloft a golden replica of Prussia's crown. To add to the indignity, their respective back-sides point towards their own countries. Freidrich was truly great!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Today I moved from Deutscheland to La France - took the train to Strasbourg. The train journey was, naturally, picturesque with dense green forests and meadows with well-manicured farms, rivers, and pretty houses. The only problem I faced during the journey was that a group of seven cute grannies were also travelling in the same bogie and I sneezed a few times. Every time I sneezed all of them would religously say 'Gesundheit' and the I would say 'Danke' and then I would sneeze again and the cycle was repeated a few embarassing times...............
Strasbourg seems to be a pretty city and the beauty of the French women, as always, doesn't disappoint.....more on that next time.
Well, I am going to stop............the keyboard has given me a headache.....excuse the bad english, the bad grammar and the typos!
