Berlin, Germany

I'm seriously disliking Blogger's photo-management system. Yet -another- batch of photos I picked that got randomly swallowed up by the service. T_T''

Numerous bad request headers. I'll share an album on Facebook and link it when it becomes available. I had some initial thoughts of Berlin typed up, so I'll just mirror them here. I don't think photo-taking was very necessary for Berlin though. The entire experience was very saddening.

1 - Berlin Wall. I watched many videos and listened to audio clips depicting the issue with this divide between East and West. Since the borders between East and West were put up in a matter of hours in 1959, tens of thousands of families were split down the middle. It didn't matter who they were. All of Germany was split. Half of it stayed within the Iron Curtain, half of it in the West. The families and friends would not be reunited until 1989 when the wall fell down.

2 - Jewish Memorial. What's there to say? This was a chilling experience. This was a very simple memorial dedicated to the six million Jews murdered and massacred in the genocide of the 2nd World War. There were no signs, no descriptions, not a single hint of what the memorial was about. Perhaps this is a better way to think about it. Rather than feed us information, it forces us to reflect and try to remember what actually happened. We ought to think about our human capability for destruction so we don't make the same kinds of mistakes again. The memorial itself consists of numerous concrete blocks which grow drastically taller as you walk towards the centre of the square. Since these blocks begin to get taller than you (1.7m) around 1/3 of the way in, it becomes increasingly windy because it all gets channeled at you. Being inside the memorial felt extremely uneasy. It was as if the blocks were closing in on me. Add to the fact that it was rainy, cold AND windy, I caught a minor glimpse of what the sentiments were for the Jews at the time.

3 - Soviet Memorial for the fallen soldiers in the Eastern Front.

This reminded me a lot of the movies we had to watch in Socials 10 and 11. Although I did not really feel too much for the Soviet Union by observing the memorial itself, there was certainly a good history lesson in the little museum which hid behind the memorial.

So you can see - my trip to Berlin was mostly about the war. There was some minor lapses and dips into sausages and alcohol, but that was about it. In particular, Berliner Weiße was absolutely delicious. Also had some liver sausages and blood sausages. Kind of icky to be honest, but I should have expected it since it -WAS- internals that I had.

Country count was upped by two since my stop took me to Riga. :D

Photos: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=560314&id=727335006&l=00c1a639c4

Country count: Iceland, Finland, Czech Republic, Germany, Austria, Estonia, Latvia, Russia(next up!!)

Tallinn (2)

So the following days in Tallinn, I really was quite bummed out because of the weather: Why

does it affect me so? :( In any case, I chilled out at the hostel (Monk's Bunk) a lot. The people were just too wonderful and everyone had so many stories of adventures to share!

There isn't much in photos and all the ones I just tried to upload, blogger(read: google) decided to not upload for me. In any case, my remaining days at Tallinn were surprisingly interesting although all the tours I wanted to go on got canned. More specifically, the gun shooting which I absolutely wanted to do was NA because the place was too far, and no one else was interested, and the transportation there costs about 40e. Then the trip to small town Paldiski where an old Soviet Union sub base existed also got canned because the tour's car broke down. All in all, quite depressing.

His presence is everywhere.

I decided to go out on walks the next day to the not so busy new town area -- it was quite bland since I was basically walking in a suburb. The church I discovered looked pretty cool from the outside, but alas I was not meant to be inside since it was closed. Circling back to old town around lunch time, I ran into a series of narrow back streets and I just had to take some photos. :D

Yes, it was raining hard.

At night, I went back out for more walking. This time, I went uphill and found the PM's home. It looks pretty impressive at night when its perched over the outside of the city. It looks toward the north and the Gulf of Finland, and it was surrounded by a faux moat about 50m below the foundations of the building. Walking up these stairs almost killed me.

White as marble.

Goodbye Tallinn!

I met a Canadian, a Lithuanian, and a German on my last day and we all had a hearty breakfast. Hostels - that's what its all about isn't it? Meeting new people, exchanging contacts, understanding different cultures. Since I was due to leave this day, I wasn't able to go on the other tours they had signed up for. The clouds opened up for a brief moment this day. Specifically, they opened up for the one hour that I would be out by myself, walking towards the ferry terminal. Some things are just magical aren't they?

Country Count: Iceland, Finland, Czech Republic, Germany, Austria, Estonia

Tallinn, Estonia

Interesting town, Tallinn is. Its old city centre (where I stayed) was not too large at all - you can make the rounds in about two hours if you walk briskly. Being a non party goer, I took the opportunity to sort my thoughts out in the mornings by going out for early walks.

Feeding frenzy thanks to a crazy old woman.

Tallinn is full of sculptures, old buildings, and (what has now become my enemy) cobblestone. Not many people know about this city just because its so small with a population of approximately 400k. Of course, these 400k people are squeezed into an extremely tight area thanks to the proximity of the buildings. What's interesting is that there's a law in the city that prohibits the building of structures which are taller than St. Olaf's church. Even if Tallinn is the up and coming high-tech city, there is a serious lack of skyscrapers which you'd expect of such cities. In total, there are six(!!!) skyscrapers in the city, none of which are allowed to be any taller than 130m.

The medieval structure of the old city has carried through to this day. Numerous courtyards like the one below can be spotted. They are literally everywhere in the old town. This particular

courtyard was interesting: I just felt it was the perfect blend of modern engineering blending right into traditional architecture.

I know I should blur out the license plate..

Should I mention the weather? The sun was out the entire time and the temperatures were so comf.... I can't lie. It was cloudy, raining, windy, and absolutely cold. It seems that my last two trips have been like this. Seeing as St. Petersburg is my next stop, I hope that if it does have to precipitate, that it comes down in the form of snow. At least this way, I can enjoy it! Despite being from such a rainy city myself, I find the rain hard to handle when combined with wind.

I returned to the hostel after an afternoon's worth of photo shooting. At the hostel, I met the most friendly people thus far on my trips in Europe. It literally felt like going to a friend's place to hang out and relax. Heck, we even had a communal dinner made by a young Swiss Farmer! Yes we had to pay, but it was interesting sampling a dish from other cultures. I was going to turn in for the night after such a hearty potato based meal, but I decided to venture out again to capture One Shot (:)) before calling it quits for the day.

The city hall with old town square in none of its usual glory.

Tallinn(2/3/4) should be arriving soon with absolutely no photos. Most of the charm Tallinn had was in the people I interacted with and all the various stories which I heard. :) Nevertheless, more updates to follow!

Not dead!

I'm still around unfortunately. :D

It will be a fun next six weeks! So many trips planned out. The first one will commence tomorrow for three days! My trip plan at the moment looks like this.

10/28 - 31, Tallinn Estonia

11/03 - 06, Berlin Germany

11/11 - 15, St. Petersburg Russia

11/17 - 21, Manchester(?), London(?) UK

11/25 - 28, Venice(?) Italy

12/01 - 6, Paris France

12/10 - 15, ?

12/17 - 20, Maastricht, Amsterdam(?), Brussels(?), Brugges(?), Belgium and Netherlands

12/22 - oo, Vancouver Canada

Yup... looks like a heavy set of trips for me. Wowee! So much fun to be had! The great thing is that I only have one more course remaining and if all my exams went well (and I have reason to believe they did) it means I only have one final in my second period. Isn't life wonderful?

Next update will be for Tallinn, Estonia featuring the feared AK47!

Germany, 3. Sidestep into Austria

Day 3 of our Germany trip.

We woke up at a much more reasonable 8AM instead of the 4AM we got the previous night. I still maintain it was worth it to get up early. In any case, while everyone else woke at 8AM to enjoy the free breakfast (and it was good too!) provided by the Hostel, I decided to wake right near sunrise time. I managed to catch these absolutely epic shots of the sunrise. Amazing skies atop the hostel we stayed at. I wish we could have stayed for another day to enjoy the beautiful sunrise. Something about orange / pink / red skies seems to attract me. Its really a shame I didn't grab camgirl's fancy camera to go out to take these shots.. otherwise we'd be able to share.

The mountains in the distance after we made the descent to the bottom of the mountain, where we visited Austria afterwards on our way to Schloss Neuschwanstein.

The sign was so unofficial: I guess Europe really is starting to become a land with no borders except for.. well, the countries that sit on the edge.

And here we are at the famous Schloss Neuschwanstein!

The place was quite breathtaking. I'm certain that many countries have these viewpoints, but I felt right back at home with this view here:

This concludes Germany. I won't be travelling much in the next month seeing as finals are looming just around the corner, but I should be hitting up Russia, UK, and Italy in November. Any further suggestions for me?

Country Count: Iceland (for a grand total of an hour... LOL), Finland, Czech Republic, Germany, Austria (for a grand total of less than an hour, more LOL)

Germany, 2

Oliver was a very good car! This is Oliver. He is a Black Opel Astra with leather seats inside. We took the liberty to rent a handheld GPS for the car because we (apparently) hate maps. So of course, in a foreign country where I hoped nothing would go wrong, the GPS decided to tell our driver to 'Make a U-turn, if possible" on one of Germany's unrestricted Autobahn sections. Umm....... no can't do that. As a result of this, I got to the airport roughly 40 minutes late, but still in time to catch the airport.You see, by the time Oliver returned to the rental place, he had apparently done over 1600km in three days.

About Oktoberfest.... It is a truly amazing sight to behold. The sheer number of people is absolutely overwhelming. The amount of beer was overwhelming, and the amount of sausages! So many good hotdogs! We waited in line for about two hours to try to get into a tent for Oktoberfest, but alas it was simply not our day.

We couldn't get in and there were just too many people... I'm pretty certain I had about two or three cigarettes worth of second hand smoke that day too. Instead of staying in Theresienwiese where Oktoberfest was held, we decided to go to downtown Munich.

Before we left, I managed to snag a shot with some German patrolmen at Oktoberfest. He initially said it was 50e to take photos with them and he had me duped for about 5 seconds. Germans have humour too!

We headed to downtown Munich for some city wandering. The centre of Munich is kind of interesting... It had a nice mix of old and new architecture. To be honest, it didn't have as much of a wow effect on me as Prague did. Nevertheless, some of the architecture there was still very beautiful. This is one of the scenes you see right away the moment you get to ground level from the underground subways. On a nice day like ours, the sight was quite breathtaking. We had lunch afterwards, and someone decided to try something that was labelled as "I'm going to splurge on lunch today".

It came out to be this dish (Apologies for the half eaten dish..)

That's right. Fresh Mozzarella cheese with a healthy portion of tomatoes. For 10e. Given that some people don't fancy cheese and certainly not tomatoes, I had to engage in a dish swap for my vegetarian pasta.

Regardless, this was basically day 2 of our trip in Germany. Photos to follow in the next few days for our very brief stint into Austria and our visit to Schloss Neuschwanstein, inspiration for Disney!

Germany

It started out with a briskly cold day (I swear it was colder than the forecasted 1c at 4 in the morning) in Helsinki, catching the 4AM bus to the airport. The bus took about half an hour to bumble toward the airport but I didn't manage to catch any sleep while on the bus. Being sick absolutely stinks when you're about to go on a trip. Ignore the man in the photo. I was too tired to take this shot with my hands or even find anything to plunk the camera onto, so pavement was fine for me. :D

Once I got to the airport, being kicked around for the check ins kind of sucked. When all was said and done, I was glad it took me a while, because this sight awaited me while I was chilling at departures.

Let's go to Germany! After a two hour flight, two sandwiches on the flight and a 15cl can of Sprite, I arrived in Stuttgart where I was to wait for a few hours for my ride toward Munich.... or so I thought. While in Stuttgart airport, there were many things for me to see! They had a flight history exhibit going on so I took a look. Wandering the airport was fun for about two hours, then I had to settle down and start working. Unfortunately, Stuttgart airport is cheap. No free wifi was available (boo!) Even at Stuttgart Airport, they care for the kids. Look!

Aside from kiddieland, there was really nothing worth looking at (lol) at Stuttgart Airport. I sat down and worked from 11AM in the morning until 6PM, when my travel buddy and her friends picked me up in a Black Opel Astra. I have nicknamed it Oliver. Oliver was a cool car! He took us to many places and we had many adventures in it. Oliver took us to our eventual hostel for the night which was another four hour drive away from Stuttgart. Oliver took us to Oktoberfest. Oliver took us to Neuschwanstein Castle too! I love Oliver. More updates to come re: Germany in the next few days! I leave you with a jaw-dropping photo of the sights we saw at 7AM in the morning at Oktoberfest.

Sunrise at Oktoberfest in Munich.

Prague and Karlovy Vary, Czech Republic

Returned from a four day long trip in Prague & a satellite town of Prague.

Prague in one word was “Golden”. The taglines that people use to describe Prague are very accurate! The city was absolutely full of spires everywhere. We stayed in the Old Town area where we saw many historical relics! Unfortunately, it was rainy for 60% of the time we were here so the photos were not very beautiful. I only caught a few with my EPL-1 but the proper DSLR didn’t arrive until it started raining.


Photo of the winding river that runs through the centre of Prague. This was from the airplane hence the blurriness.


Photo of the grand tower which the king of Prague used to cross under every time he returns to the city. It is now a huge tourist attraction with at least four spotlights illuminating it at night. The surrounding area glows like gold because of the incandescent lighting and golden reflections close to the building. Absolutely beautiful!


This sort of became my dinner for three different days. Bratwurst with Baguette style bun! They taste delicious and they’re around 50CZK ($2.50CAD). I realize these are just hot dogs, but for such a big hot dog they’re hard to resist!


The amazing hospitality at Old Prague Hostel. If you don’t mind people invading your privacy when you sleep a little bit, I highly recommend it! Cheap rooms, free breakfast, free wifi, free maps. How does a little hostel like this even survive? Sadly, I never got this guy’s name. He’s pretty cool though.


Seeing a bunch of tourists waiting in front of this building. Not too sure what kind of building it is, perhaps a hotel? This is at around 8 in the morning. Note the sun rising in the reflection and the blue skies – this was the one and only sunny morning we experienced.


Couldn’t capture much of the Prague skyline from here, but the sunrise is absolutely exquisite.


The small little creek that runs under Charles Bridge – its an offshoot of the main river. Does this look like Venice?


:O PAVOL DEMITRA! Oh wait, why’s he wearing a Canucks uniform?


The little street on the left sort of does represent Prague. The Old Town is littered with streets like that snaking all over the place. I got lost (on purpose) the morning I shot all these photos just to see if there were surprises – and there were! I went through so many narrow alleyways and walked on so many streets built from cobblestone!

People Break Things and Suomenlinna

So today was supposed to be the 'bed-bug spraying day'. Apparently people get bed bugs easily in Helsinki.

Long story short, when I came home, I found that the frame in my door had cracked wide open. They claimed they had the key.. but.. who the hell breaks a frame like this? How much force did you need to use bro?



I guess I've bee neglecting this blog lately. There's been too much work at school what with all the case studies and responses every two days. Regardless, we managed to hit Suomenlinna as a chinese tourist group on Sunday. Suomenlinna is a fortress island built in the 18th century by Sweden as an attempt to defend their waters. Read more about the Fortress here.



Oh look at that, its me on a honking huge cannon!



Isn't this beautiful? Mr. Sun decided to come out and play halfway through the day!
Tomorrow I head to Prague. I'll attempt to provide daily updates as I make my way through the historical city! There's much to be seen!

Temppeliaukio Kirkko - Rock Church

I went to a very special church today. It reminds me of a passage in the bible referring to build on a rock and not sand. This church literally shows this fact.

As you approach the church, the walk is quite steep uphill. It reminded me that being a Christian is not easy. There will be hurdles and challenges, and it will most definitely be an uphill battle. But when all is said and done, we get to revere in God's glory. Some photos to come with annotations.


The view that you get when you reach the top of the church (the church itself is underground) is basically all blue skies and nothing else. Despite the surrounding buildings being taller than the church itself, the church dominates the landscape.


A simple cross, reminding us to keep everything simple and to not be burdened with riches in this world.


This is a shot of inside the church around 11AM. The light within the building is all natural, and all the walls that we can touch and feel within the church are made of actual rock.

The overall experience at this church was downright amazing. What's great is taht I'm going to be going there every Sunday when I'm not out on a trip! How awesome is that?

First Day at School!

I really should have posted this yesterday, but I took the photos today because the weather's just much nicer!


This is a Finnish keyboard, apparently. It has very strange character sets that keep throwing me off when I try to type on it.


This is the top of one of the major shopping centres in Helsinki, Kamppi. If I paid 540e PER MONTH, I would be living here in the Studios. Uhh... no thanks.




This is a street sweeper waiting to pounce - they sweep sidewalks too! Water gets sprayed while its sweeping so the dust doesn't get kicked up all over the place, its kinda neat.




Another snippet of home - Metro!




In front Aalto University School of Economics (aka Helsinki School of Economics). The locals still call it HSE because of the branding. Apparently, HSE is a difficult school to get into. I guess either a) international students are exempt, or b) I'm awesome?


The Arkadia buildling. Another building that belongs to HSE.


Dr. Gregory House - yet another thing to remind me of home.

Finland is great so far. I'm meeting lots of international students, all with very interesting stories to tell about their own cultures and experience. I've also had the fortune to meet another student from SFU - very cool! We formed an all Canadian row in our Management of Technology class and for any group work, I think we'll be working together. It makes it a heck lot easier for us to accomplish the work.

So far my expenditures are not looking good - already spent upwards of 400e but I don't know where its gone! I must keep better track of my finances, otherwise I run the risk of being bankrupt and bankrupting my parents!

First Batch of Photos from Finland

I took my camera out today and went shuttercrazy .... .. a bit. Lets try to annotate these photos one by one, shall we? :)



This is the elevator in my apartment. Very old school! You have to pull on a door to get inside.



My apartment. I'm on the top left-most room.



Free furniture anyone? People leave furniture behind all the time and when we clean out our dorms, we're not allowed to leave things in the hallway for fire safety reasons. Everyone dumps stuff there!



Bike corral! Many of these exist throughout the streets within Helsinki and our apartments. Bikes are truly the quick way to travel on cheap. Plus, workout!



Clean my clothes here! The sauna is supposed to be here too, but I only see the one for females and not males.. Have to ask. Sauna is a highly traditional Finnish thing to do where they take their mind off everything and just relax.



Our trash facilities. I am SO not the one going to be dumping the trash in the winter. The trash facilities are only about 50m away from the exit of our apartment, but it'll be freezing cold. T_T



From left to right, Ida Aalbergintie 1C, 1B, 1A



The only Chinese restaurant I've found so far.. Its Shanghainese(??) cuisine, but I'm not sure if they can speak any Cantonese. If they can, that would be great!



Alepa, the mini supermarket which is 5 minutes away from our dorms. Has a bit of everything here, but for better shopping, go to Prisma instead.



Many Finnish roads are separated like this. The sidewalks are roughly 1.5 times the width of those we have in Canada.



Finnish highway system is very efficient. 4 lanes both ways!



Prisma - the huge supermarket where I'll be spending the majority of my daily expenses.



GUYS. ITS SCII!!!!



Hi Miche, look, its the moomins!