Day 21 - Frankfurt Part 2

Posted by HELiX

So it came down to this very day, a rather sad one I must say. It’s our last day in Europe, and if history is of any indication, we won’t be coming back for another ten years of so. Perhaps I’ll get the opportunity to once I enter university, but it won’t be with my family.

Our last day to enjoy perfect weather and temperature - a breezy 15′C to 20′C. It’s the kind of environment which allows you to walk on and on for hours without sweating or turning numb.

Our last day to eat European food, which portions are as large as the price figure.

Our last day to enjoy over sixteen hours of daylight, which somehow allows more productive work to be done in a day.

And our last day to enjoy Euro football at perfect timings, since much of Western Europe is GMT+1 and the host countries are in Western Europe themselves.

It’s not just that. Euro, being Euro, is available on non-paying TV channels throughout Europe. It’s like all the matches are broadcasted live, for free, on their normal channels like what Channel 5 is to Singapore.

Of course the downside is that the commentary is in German/Czech/French/whatever the national language of the country you’re in. It’s still okay and fully watchable.

You haven’t experienced football until you go to Europe during one of the important matches, or during a tournament. And I’ve been able to draw out some links between the residents of European countries and which countries they support at Euro 2008. While it’s common sense to say that, for example, the Swiss supports Switzerland, that’s only the half truth.

I can tell you that the locals of Switzerland are rooting for both their country and and Portugal, generally. I have no idea why, but it’s just like that. Outside their apartments they’d hang both the Swiss and Portugese flags.

So at first I thought that maybe the Swiss didn’t have faith in their national team to make it very far in the tournament, so it’s better to pick up another team to root for. After all, Switzerland became the first country out of the tournament a few days ago after losing both of their first two matches.

But then for Germany, they’re up for their home country and Turkey. No idea why once again, but majority of the supporters are rooting for Turkey as well. Germany isn’t exactly going to be knocked out anytime soon, but the supporters here are multitasking both teams.

That may explain how Switzerland managed to beat world-class Portugal during their match just now. Perhaps the Swiss decided to take sides now that they’re forced to, and the number of Portugese supporters suddenly dropped.

I hope for a Germany vs Turkey.

Turkey just made an amazing comeback again Czech Republic, turning a 0-2 struggle into a 3-2 win. Granted, they were really lucky, but at least I know that my flight tomorrow would be safe from Turkish rioters and depression in the country.

And when you’re talking about supporting football in Europe, you’re talking about this:

Believe me, that’s the norm. The entire city was filled with cars driving around with supporters sticking themselves out, flying the Turkey flag and honking at anything and everything. The police are not doing anything to stop them; they’re fine with it as long as they’re no violence.

Right now, as I’m typing this, it’s more than 45 minutes since the match concluded and ever since the final whistle was blown, cars can be heard honking at the city centre two train stations away. It’s 11.40pm here and I don’t expect myself to be sleeping soon with the amount of noise. This city has gone crazy.

Of course it’d be ridiculous to simply talk about Euro 2008 without mentioning my final day experience in Europe.

Frankfurt am Main. It’s the financial capital of Germany, and just about the only city in Europe (that I’ve seen so far) that’s trying to build up and has a skyline of skyscrapers.

When reading up internet guides about Frankfurt, I had this creepy thought — Frankfurt is just like Singapore.

Much of Frankfurt, like Berlin and Munich and other German cities, was destroyed in World War II and what you seen today are recontructions and restorations. Hence, there are few historical buildings in Frankfurt — much like Singapore.

The tourist attractions are kinda lame, as their only historical buildings are cathedrals and churches. The skyscrapers are the next best landmarks. Sounds like Singapore, doesn’t it?

If you compare…

Skyline of Frankfurt I took just now:

Skyline of Singapore I took two years ago, dug up from my archives:

I made do with that fact that while Frankfurt has an uncomfortable resemblance to Singapore, I had to explore around and sightsee anyway. The temperature was perfect, so why not?

We first took the train to the city centre, and went to places like St Paul’s Church, Roemer and St Bartholomeus Cathedral which is quite possibly the most historical building in the whole of Frankfurt. The Cathedral was constructed sometime in the 14th and 15th centuries and since the 14th century, the kings of the Holy Roman Empire were elected and crowned here.

After that, we walked along the River Main for some panoramic scenery of the skyline.

And finally we went up to Maintower where there’s an observation platform 200m high at the top to view the entire city.

That’s pretty much all about Frankfurt, and Europe in fact. It’s been a wonderful three weeks 10,000 km from home but Shanghai beckons.

Shanghai. Not again.

Comments(0) 6:56 AM 6 June 2008

Day 20 - Frankfurt Part 1

Posted by HELiX

We drove to Frankfurt am Main today, where we’ll be taking a plane on Monday to Shanghai. It’s our final destination in Europe although we’ll still be spending another 3 nights in China.

We originally wanted to stop over at Munich again to see my brother for one last time (for the next two months), but he’s away in Rome and has been traveling to all over Europe during his weekends. Apparently, almost every weekend when there isn’t any class, he’d take the train to another part of Europe. He has already planned his next weekend to visit Vienna.

While we’ll only be exploring Frankfurt properly tomorrow, it’s looking quite good so far. Frankfurt, being located at the centre of Germany, is their transportation and financial hub like what New York is to the US. So the government tried to copy New York, even giving Frankfurt the nickname of Mainhattan (not a typo!).

Because of that, after seeing most of Western Europe, Frankfurt is just about the only place with a Singapore-like landscape with skyscrapers and tall buildings. For once, an European city isn’t limiting their buildings to 5 or 6 storeys like what the rest of the cities seem to be doing.

My Dad will be returning the rented car tomorrow, because there isn’t any use for it anymore.

The car has been with us since 31 May, and in exactly two weeks, has brought us to various locations from the mountainous Alps to the north where the Sun hardly sets.

We have drove through France, Germany, Switzerland, Netherlands, Belgium, and Czech Republic, not forgetting that we nearly knocked down a deer in Denmark.

Also, this is the first time in my life I saw my Dad hit another car (parked and unmanned, luckily), making side-to-side contact as we drove past it. We scratched the other car and quickly drove off. We blame it on the left-hand driving that so many countries adopted except Singapore. And also, we blame it on the Flying Spaghetti Monster like we always do.

Of course, it didn’t matter one bit to us because our scratched car will be covered by travel insurance.

If you were expecting me to write out some emotional paragraph about the car because I’ve been spending countless hours in it traveling all over Europe, WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU???

In total, in exactly 2 weeks, we have covered a total of 4971.4 km. That’s nearly half the distance from Europe to Singapore itself.

As much as I wanted to my Dad to break the 5000 km mark, petrol costs money.

This is dwarfed by the approx 6000 miles (9660 km) we covered in the US back in 2001, when we circled it entirely and even crossed into Canada. But we had 5 weeks with the car back then, and US is more car-friendly. Right here in Europe, it’s better to drive from city to city in a car, but take the public transport to view the city from there.

Comments(0) 6:06 AM 6 June 2008

Day 19 - Prague Part 2

Posted by HELiX

In contrary to popular belief, by which I mean my Dad’s, Czech Republic isn’t that poor and the standard of living isn’t so bad at all.

My Dad instilled this impression into me that the former and current communist countries are worth avoiding, so we won’t be going to Russia or the likes anytime soon. He thinks they’re polluted with corruption and crime. We’re here in Czech Republic because my brother recommended Prague.

But indeed, having visited China over a few times to Shanghai, Beijing, Guilin, Shenzhen, Zhuhai, Guangzhou, etc, it’s a really terrible place with the worst imaginable toilets. Poverty is everywhere, and somehow you feel like everyone around you is a snatch thief.

Prague is quite like the rest of Europe. The prices here are high, which tells me that they’re not one bit poor. Maybe it’s because Prague is the capital of the country and was also for the disbanded Czechoslovakia, allowing it to be more developed.

Prague is most famous for its medieval buildings and having a surviving Jewish residential area. A lot of buildings here are UNESCO protected and listed as World Heritage Sites. The Jewish quarter of the city is protected by the city, and they have guards and police officers patrolling the area.

As with Germany, Prague uses the honour system for their train service: after buying a ticket, it must then be validated (stamped) using the machines at the entrance to the station. If the ticket is not stamped, you will have to pay a fine if checked by ticket inspectors.

We visited the Old Town Square first, where there was the Astronomical Clock (Orloj) and an incredibly beautiful church, the Tyn Church. I didn’t really understand the Astronomical Clock as much as I loved to, because the whole thing was in Czech. The Tyn Church is this magnificent church that looks more like a castle.

We saw a few other stuffs like the Powder Tower (another medieval tower), Rudolfinum (I don’t know what, it just appears as an attraction on the Prague map), and finally the Charles Bridge, which we crossed. It’s this bridge built in the 14th century and as you can expect, is only meant for pedestrians. It looks somehow like the Tower Bridge in London with two towers at each end.

We also made our through the Jewish quarter of the city, which miraculously survived the holocaust. Not sure why, because we didn’t enter the Jewish Museum as they wanted us to pay. We even would have to pay if we wanted to enter the Jewish cementery!

Walked on, saw St Nicolaus Church before we climbed up a hill to the top, where the Prague Castle was at.

The Prague Castle is the biggest ancient castle in the world according to Guinness World Records, and it rises above the city on the hill to provide beautiful views of the areas below.

It’s kinda cheating actually, because everything within the boundaries of the ‘castle area’ is part of the castle and that includes many buildings unrelated to the castle. So as part of the castle, we have quite possibly the most prominent landmark in Prague, the St Vitus Cathedral.

Yet again, it’s another one of those medieval buildings, but it’s really huge and well-architectured. Probably on-par with St Paul’s Cathedral in London.

We pretty much covered everything in Prague already, so with that we made our way back.

Prague, or rather Czech Republic, is also famous for its bohemia crystals. It’s like a Swarovski paradise in the city, and there are countless of shops selling crystal designs and glasswares.

I expected to be impressed by Prague, but I guess it just qualifies as ‘not bad’. I’m not disappointed though. The medieval buildings are very well-preserved, just that the city lacks information of its history. Most of the medieval part of the city goes back to many hundreds of years ago, but when you see them, you’ll wonder about the historical significance of them. That bit they can improve.

Comments(0) 5:25 AM 6 June 2008

Day 18 - Prague Part 1

Posted by HELiX

Entered Czech Republic for the first time today, another country (besides Denmark) that we missed out during our ‘98 trip.

Their highways are quite terrible. At some parts, they merge into a single lane, which hardly looks like a highway. And as we made our made towards Prague, the highway brought us straight through towns and villages.

We just checked into a hotel, finally one that has internet connection. Going two-three days without internet is like Survivor, except that you don’t have some television crew invading your privacy.

Umm… that’s pretty much… everything for today? We’ll only be going around Prague tomorrow.

Distance update:

Comments(0) 5:58 AM 6 June 2008

Day 17 - Berlin Part 2

Posted by HELiX

Seems like not only Munich has a barrier-free train system. It’s probably the same for the rest of Germany as right here in Berlin, you can similar walk into the train without a ticket-

What luck. I swear, just as I was typing that, in came the inspector who checked our tickets.

(Uh yeah, I type my entries while traveling around because that saves time.)

So anyway, we made our way to Brandenburg Gate, one of the few well-known landmarks in Berlin.

Back in the bad, depressing and horrible days of Germany, when there was East and West Berlin, the Brandenburg Gate was one of the gates which allowed traffic between the two sides. I suppose only prominent people with a purpose got to go through the gate though.

It’s quite like Arc de Triomphe in Paris. Napolean marched through the gate as well, when he conquered Germany.

My history may be a little rusty, but the story of Berlin goes something like this:

East Berlin was under the Soviet’s control, while West Berlin was Allied territory. And you know how both sides have big problems with each other.

East Berliners, for years, kept running away to West Berlin and the Soviets decided that they had enough. So they embarked on this massive project, to build the first and only wall in the world ever to cut through a city, stretching from end-to-end. It was about 150km long in total.

After that was done, separating East and West Berlin was a solid wall that formed the historic Iron Curtain, with several gates and checkpoints to allow certain people to pass through if needed.

Life in East Berlin was tough, so it’s no wonder why they were losing people to the West. The prices of items in the East when one-tenth of that in the West, so people enjoyed going over to East Berlin for a visit.

For the years that the wall was standing, there were tensions building up in Berlin between the Soviets and the Allies. Over a few times, it was on the verge of spiralling into a nuclear war. The Russians had nukes. The US had nukes. It could have been World War III when someone did something stupid when crossing through the wall.

…So, um, yeah. The Brandenburg Gate. Yeah.

(What? Okay fine I couldn’t come up with a good transition.)

Nearby the Brandenburg Gate is the Reichstag. It’s basically the parliament building of Germany. Interestingly Hitler never set foot on it.

It’s the most visited parliamentary building in the world with three million visitors a year. How boring.

After that, we went to Checkpoint Charlie, another one of those renowned gates and checkpoints between East and West Germany. Nothing much of it is left as whatever that made up the checkpoint is now kept in the museum. What they have instead is a poor attempt at replicating the checkpoint.

They have some remains of the wall which the Germans didn’t tear down after the unification, so they preserved them and now you’ll have to pay to view them. We didn’t.

We went around to see other places like the Red Town Hall, the seat of the Governing Mayor of Berlin; Berlin Cathedral, another one of those historical cathedral found all over Europe; Soviet War Memorial, where 2000 fallen soliders of the Red Army is remembered; And the Television Tower, which is the tallest building in Berlin.

But I won’t bore you with stories about them.

Frankly speaking, while Berlin is the capital of Germany and supposed to be very rich in history, I found it quite boring.

Perhaps it’s that way because the history comes from Hitler and the Berlin Wall. Of which, the latter they tore down. And curiously enough, little of Hitler is mentioned (for a good reason I guess) and there isn’t any tourist attraction regarding the Nazis and him.

With 5 days left before we fly off to Shanghai, we only have enough time to visit an additional city on top of Frankfurt (where we’ll be flying off from). So my Dad chose Prague, which my brother claims is the most beautiful city in the whole of Europe.

Prague is in Central-Eastern Europe (Czech Republic), and this is probably the first time we’re crossing over to Eastern Europe side because my Dad prefers to avoid those countries. They’re basically the poorer side of Europe, with less developed countries like Poland and Croatia.

Comments(0) 5:53 AM 6 June 2008

Day 16 - Berlin Part 1

Posted by HELiX

I still find it quite ridiculous that we traveled for over 3 days just to reach Denmark, only to spend a night there. We left Denmark today and entered back into Germany, with a new destination — Berlin.

Unlike other travelers, we do not have everything planned out. We have totally no idea where are we heading next, and just choose our destinations as we move along.

It was about a 500+ km journey from Odense in Denmark, down south-east to Berlin. We left the hotel by noon and reached Berlin about 5-6 hours later. So far, this is the distance we have covered in Europe by car:

First impressions? It looks like this city with a mix of Munich and Paris. A capital city with a taste of German lifestyle. It has quite a lot of graffiti like Paris, but overall it’s neater.

We arrived and checked in to one of the cheap hotels on the outskirts of the city, because the prices skyrocket as you approach nearer to the city centre. Much like what we do for the other big cities, we just parked our car in the hotel and took the public transport to get around.

We’d be sightseeing only tomorrow, and to end the day we went around looking for dinner. The only restaurant we found open in the vicinity of the hotel was Burger King.

They had this promotion. Some ‘Six-Pack’ thing. The ads shows six burgers and more for a price of 9.99 Euro. Sweet.

So my parents got it and decided to share it among themselves. I mean, 3 burgers each, why not?

…what they got was this. One of their burgers measured up against my ordinary burger I got from a standard meal.

Comments(0) 5:47 AM 6 June 2008

Day 15 - Copenhagen

Posted by HELiX

After a three hour journey up Denmark, we arrived at Copenhagen. It’s at the northern end of Denmark, and a bridge across from the area of Copenhagen would be Sweden already. But we didn’t have any intention of crossing the border and move any further away from Frankfurt, where we would be taking a plane from on the 16th for Shanghai.

Denmark is one of the richest countries in the world, with a huge load of cash in the international reserves, much like Singapore. Like Switzerland, they didn’t adpot the Euro currency, so their own national currency is the Kroner. S$1 will give you about 3.36 Kroners.

It’s a really costly place, perhaps second to Switzerland. The cheapest hotels, with a shared toilet, costs about 100 Euro for a room for two. So my parents reasoned that it’s too expensive to spent a night here, especially when there isn’t much to see.

Because, really, there isn’t much to see.

Perhaps this is all people have seen and heard about Copenhagen.

No, not me. I mean her.

Famous she may be, but I don’t even know her name. I think she just appears as ‘Little Mermaid’ in the news and papers.

Also, I don’t know the story behind her.

But she’s famous for being… well, being vandalised. Countless of news reports are about her losing her arms and even her head, courtesy of some destructive people. Other times, she’s coloured with paint. And everytime, the authorities fix her back and leave her as she is, only to be vandalised later. She has become some kind of symbol against anti-social behaviour.

That much I know. After we saw the Little Mermaid, we didn’t know where else to go and sightsee.

We asked around a bit and were directed to the Queen’s palace.

It’s interesting because it’s not.

What was surprising the how un-grand the palace was. Unlike Buckingham Palace back in England, the security for the palace… doesn’t exist.

There are no walls, fences or any form of boundary around the palace, and anyone can just walk or drive to the front of the palace.

It’s quite small anyway. And when I mean small, I’m comparing it to other palaces, and not our houses.

There were the Queen’s guards, and they’re allowed to freely talk to people. And they’ll even tell you that the Queen isn’t home today. What kind of security is that?!

We moved on to the city centre of Copenhagen where the shopping is, and ate dinner there. Because we didn’t convert any money to Kroners, we only had Euro so we asked to pay in Euro. Much like in Switzerland, they accept.

But inconveniently, they returned the change in Kroners. So we had 14 Kroners, which converts to S$4.20, but nothing could be bought with it.

Soon we came across a 7-Eleven on the way back to the car, where I suggested that we could get rid of the Kroners by buying a can of Coke. The listed price was exactly 13.95 Kroners. Just nice.

Got the can and went up to the cashier to pay. Strangely, the price displayed was 15 Kroners upon scanning. Tax?!? I don’t know, but the guy wanted 1 more Kroner and I didn’t have any.

So I said nevermind, I’ll put back the Coke, but a lady queuing behind me offered to pay. And then the cashier said nevermind, he’ll just accept the 14 Kroners.

In the end, I got my can of Coke and an impression that the people here are really nice and helpful. Not bad at all.

We left Copenhagen by 10pm and tried to make it as far away from the city in hopes that the prices of the hotels would drop as we get further. After driving for an hour or two, we went into towns and checked for hotels, but most were either closed, full or too expensive.

So we continued on and on and after some painful searching, we found a suitable hotel in Odense at 1.30am.

This was when I realised that we are so far north that the sky here doesn’t ever turn completely dark. We don’t have the midnight Sun like in Norway, but the Sun just barely sets under the horizon, so the darkest the sky can get is like the twilight sky.

And after we checked in, settled down, bathed and everything, it was 4am. I looked out of the window. The Sun was rising, and their 4am looks like 7am in Singapore.

Comments(0) 5:10 AM 6 June 2008