Berlin, part II - the Wall

I took so many pictures of the wall, and went from west side to east side, and on top of that it was boiling.

I think I might talk a bit about the people I met at the hostel. I rather liked them, and I'm sure I would have liked them a lot better if I wasn't so sick. There were a bunch of rather fit Egyptians and an incredibly good looking ginger from Italy called Pierre who kept walking around the room in his pants. The Egyptians were very friendly, but one of them insisted on making me repeat his name, through my nasal voice, till I could properly pronounce it. I immediately forgot it, of course. I was too tired to argue with him. When I told Will about this, he said that he would have trolled him and kept on saying it wrong.

Pierre rocked, though as usual he was younger than me, a very fresh faced 20. On the second day we hung out for a bit and ended up going to one of the supermarkets in Alexanderplatz and having lunch together in the Platz. I bought loads of hilariously overpriced fruit and a bee buzzed over to inspect my lunch. I do not like bees and freaked out quite a bit while Pierre sat there and roared with laughter. I felt rather silly about this but the bee was really quite furry and fuzzy and just the way I hate them. After I'd managed to get the bee off my case, Pierre told me that he'd enjoyed the whole scene a lot. I didn't know whether to be pleased or offended. Pierre's a medical student, and like Will and Vera in Wroclaw, was staying at the hostel till he found a place to stay. He told me about how difficult it was to find accommodation and how he kept getting rainchecked by potential landlords. He had to go to his school in the afternoon and asked me if I wanted to accompany him, but my cold felt so horrendous that I had to decline. We talked about rather average things; about how we both liked travelling and meeting people, seizing the moment, living la vida loca, and the usual stuff you talk about when you meet people that can think. The pretentiousness of facebooking people you meet while travelling. He told me how he'd spent a year (or was it half a year?) backpacking in Latin America, the hearts he'd broken, the girls he'd fallen in love with. Fell in love with and despaired over, as Jake would say. Though to be honest Pierre wasn't that despondent. He takes life very seriously, but he's still a player. He said that he was tired of saying goodbye and walking out of people's lives.

He also spent a good hour or so trolling the Egyptians and some of their beliefs, but I'm not going to write too much about that since it's a public domain after all and I don't want to get anyone into trouble.

Went over to the West side gallery located at Nordbahnhof (metro lines S1, S2, S25). This used to be a ghost station, and still retains a lot of its previous creepiness. Rather unsettling place for sure.

A...plaque, I'll call it.

Just to say that I've been here and did not notice its unfortunate name.

The West Side Gallery.

I then took a tram to the East Side Gallery. I couldn't find a gallery, but I did find the Wall.

A view from the tram. I think, but am not wholly sure, that the metal pipes denote where the Wall used to stand.

Found it.

And of course, the inevitable barrage of photos.

It was quite a walk from the tram stop though, although the Germans were very obliging when I asked for directions. When I asked a shopkeeper where "the wall" was, he pointed at one of the walls in his shop and said "Here it is!" Whilst I goggled at it, he gave a chuckle, told me he was just messing about and pointed me in the right direction.

Both sides of the wall.

The neighborhood.

Took the metro back to Alexanderplatz.

Frankfurt, be there soon.

And yes, my FOOD. Quite a hearty serving as they come at a Bavarian restaurant next to the hostel. The yellow balls tasted an awful lot like polenta, the vegetables had been pickled and tasted deliciously tangy, and the meat was stringy.

To be continued.

Romania, day 5 – Sibiu

Manhole covers in Sibiu.

One thing I noticed about the pigeons and sparrows here was that they’re all very thin. I’ve never seen such emaciated birds in my life. The ones in London and Taipei, and all the other cities I’ve been to, are so rotund they practically can’t get off the ground. The sparrows in Taipei positively look like Snitches or blowfish, they’re so fat. In the future, I will use this as a standard to determine whether a district is wealthy or not – the skinnier the pigeons/sparrows, the less well off it must be.

Witnessed England being crushed by Uruguay yesterday, which I watched with the girls in our kitchen last night. I don’t need to turn on the TV, or go on facebook, even, to tell when a goal has been scored. The noise last night was something dreadful. I didn’t realise that the World Cup would be played during my masters year in London, but it is a fortuitous twist of fate, and one I’m happy to have been privy to. Did I mention how interesting it was, being in Romania while the madness of FIFA began spreading itself like rabies? In our Brasov hostel, a bunch of guys would huddle over the television set every night. My first real shock came when the invincible armada of Spain turned out to be not so invincible, suffering a crushing defeat at the hands of the flying Dutchmen. And then there was Portugal against Deutschland on the 14th, which was…whew. And so begins the Decline of Iberia.

We spent the whole day walking around Sibiu. It’s a very picturesque little town, idyllic yet bustling with energy, which won the much-coveted title of Europe’s Capital of Culture in 2007. Our hostel (about 8 pounds a night) was located slap bang in the middle of the old city centre, the Piata Mare/Piata Mica (pronounced like “piazza,” with a wee sound of “t” right before the z). There’s always some sort of event going on there. When we first arrived, there was some sort of concert/festival/carnival, which went on and on for the duration of our stay. Joanne was very excited about this.

This reminds me of the Wizard of Oz

We rented bicycles at the Hotel Ibis, about ten minutes walk from our hostel, which cost 8 lei for two hours and is a LOT cheaper than renting it at the tourist office in the piata. We cycled for about forty minutes to a lake, which was beautiful, but a bit crowded.

Not the most beautiful lake I've seen, but it does have a certain je ne sais quoi

I don’t think I mentioned this before, but it’s also one of the major defining parameters of our Romania trip. The people here act like they’ve never seen East Asians before. Everywhere we walked, people would slow down and stare at us, and even point at us. Some of them would even take pictures. The teenagers would, in some instances (once in every town at the very least) jump in front of us and call us names. I felt like we were a walking zoo, or as if there were horns sprouting out of my forehead. Both of us found this VERY unamusing. It can really ruin things and your whole travel experience per se when all the people do is stare, stare stare. I do not think Romania is too high on the tourist friendly scale (again, thanks to the negativitybias effect of bus 780 – you’re going to haunt me till the end of my days) and the environment is especially hostile for people who look noticeably different azn. During the whole of our trip, we did not see one single black/Indian/Muslim/any other race/colour other than white. The teenagers are plain xenophobic. Then again, their adults are wonderful (except again for the ones on the bus). When I was in Rasnov, a man told me that I was the most beautiful person he’d ever seen in his life, and that he had lost his heart to me. I was flattered, although sceptical – I don’t think I looked my best after a whole day of climbing and sweating.

So, yeah. If you look Asian, or not white, you’re going to stick out like a sore thumb, and boy don’t they let you knowit. We’ve had people coming over to us at restaurants and approaching us on the street, asking where we’re from. (“China? Japan? The land of the chopsticks? Chopstickland?”) I personally would not recommend Romania to anyone Asian, unless you’re travelling with a group of at least 7 people or you have a burgeoning desire to challenge yourself and push your limits. It’s not a trip for the faint of heart. Even then, you will be gawked at, but at least when you’re in a large crowd, the teenagers probably won’t be so inclined to use google translate to call you a slant-eyed monster in Chinese and Japanese (apparently these are the only two countries in East Asia) while you’re on the bus, minding your own business. I’ve never had a problem with my race before. Hell, I LOVE being so ostentatiously Asian azn. But in Romania, when people consistently look at you like you’re some character from Hellboy, it’s really annoying. To be honest, me and Joanne were relieved to be going back to multicultural, melting-pot London after 8 days of being goggled at. I actually think I could write a whole blog post on the racism we encountered in Romania. Even the people who mean well can come across as very offensive. One of the people who came over to give us the Spanish Inquisition in a restaurant told us that he’d worked in the States for ten or more years, that three of his ex girlfriends were Asian sinophile and that he still couldn’t tell the difference between all of us. I had a cow or three when he guessed Vietnam and the Philippines after China and Korea fell short. The ball really dropped, though, when he excused his ignorance by saying, “Well, you all look the same, you know – the Chinese, the Filipinos, the Viets and the Koreans. Exactly the same.” I felt so insulted, even though I knew he didn’t mean any harm, and retorted rather stiffly, “Well, we can say the same about you people, you realize – you Romanians, Serbs, Slovaks and MAGYARS all look alike to us azns, too.”

Back to Sibiu. The old town was beautiful. This is their main church. Note the colourful tiles of the roof.

This is the old town – see the windows, which look like peeping eyes? It’s a very common feature of Sibiu’s houses.

The Piata Mica.

On our way back, we were fortunate enough to encounter their parade.

 

See the "Banca Transilvania" in the background? It's a blood bank

And we got a lovely view of the piata bathed in the light of the late afternoon sun.

Dinner in a bar off the Piata Mare. I had polenta, again, and Romanian meat rolls (sarmale) – the vampires continue to dazzle me with their culinary skills. sparkle sparkle, glitter glitter.

Again, I realise this picture is really bad, and again I excuse myself by the fact that I was starving at the time.