I arrived in Charles de Gaulle airport at about 3:30 pm melbourne time (which was something like 6am paris time. There was nobody there in the airport... I sleep about 6 hours on the plane and got a good seat next to the door. The guy sitting next to me was a trauma expert from coffs harbour (actually, he was born in essex). I got a few nice pictures going from melbourne to singapore. Singapore airport was 27 Celcius and 100% humid! The atmosphere was relaxed and helpful (alhough not many people spoke english). On the way I sat next to (I think) Narelle Paterson. She has represented Australia in bike riding (not sure which sort). Lots of orchids in singapore, but I didn't have time to look at them. I changed money at Charles de Gaulle airport, I think I converted $160 into 2 euros or somethings :) I managed the whole transaction in French, the guy behind me asked if she spoke english, and she spoke perfectly good english (doh!)
Charles de Gaulle airport was quite cold when I got off the aeroplane and I needed my coat. (I think it was abou 9C). I only took 2 pictures from Singapore to paris as it was night. Every now and then I would look out the window and by chance would see a populated bit - I saw the north west coast of india, which has a sort of fractal structure to the lights. Dubai had complex light patterns from the roads. Serbia had blobs of light separated by I think mountains covered in snow.
Dubai is about halfway between singapore and paris - and as we pulled into Paris he captain informed us that the connecting flight to Dubai would be leavin in about 1 hours... Food was okay: coq au vin on qantas (boeff pasta on airfrance.) Arrived in Tegel/Berlin, which is pretty dumpty(reminds me of a musty canberra or launceston). Customs was pathetics (oh, btw, have you got any nastying things? don't worry.) Armin met me at the airport and we chatted a bit before getting in his brand new car. We pulled out into the traffic and I realised that melbourne drivers aren't that bad :)
Armin didn't have time to take me to his house, as he lives in Ostberlin, and we were in Westberlin where Armin was to give a lecture at 14:15(my plane landed at 12:00). After that Armin gave me a bit of paper with some instructions on it (like: catch a train...). I walked to the trainstation and hopped on a train (actually, I spent 5 minutes trying to work out how the ticket machine worked (verked?). I feel somewhat mollified to see another person couldn't get it right either, and they spoke German). Eventually I worked it out and got a ticket. A train pulled in and I worked out it was the one I wanted. I had 4 goes at getting the ticket validated and as I did the train closed its doors. If I had known I could have pushed the button on the door and opened it and hopped on... but I didn't. I had to wait 15 minutes for the next Erkner (S3) train. A trains comes every minutes or two, but there are a lot of destinations. I sat on the train watching the platforms go past until I got to my destination 'köpenick'. Armins instructions were all written from the point of view of getting from his house to the city, so I had to reverse them. He didn't quite give me enough info directly to get to his house, but I managed to infer enough to catch the right bus and find his house, the long way...
I got to Armins house gate and was greeted by a disembodied german voice. I said Armin Wolf in a hopeful voice and she said "Ja, blzggttgz". The gate opened by itself and I walked down the path to the door. A short Frau appeared and said "gbtlzgg" and took me upstairs. I went into Armins flat and flopped on my bed at about 4pm. Armin woke me up a 7pm by clunking around in the kitchen.
Thursday I caught the train into Alexanderplatz (a notorious den of thieves, prostitutes and cabaret, at least in the 1920s) and walked down to the museum island. On the way a guy with a newspaper offered me something. I said nein lots and kept walking. (Armin says they give the first newspaper free and then hardsell the subscription). I first went into Dom zu Berlin and looked around that. It was very impressive, although later I found out it was a reconstruction. The original burnt down just after the war or something. Lots of gold leaf and a huge pipe organ (I missed them playing it at 3pm - doh!).
After Dom zu Berlin I wandered round in the park and went into an impresive building which said something in latin around the top like "From Frederick the great we get these great works or something". I went into the first room which was full of pictures and statues in a huge dome room. As I walked into the next room a lady stopped me and told me that I needed a ticket to go any further. I asked where do I get a ticket and I didn't understand a word she said. I wandered out and found the main entrance and saw that tickets cost 7e, which is about $14. I'm not that interested in greek sculpture so I wandered elsewhere. I found an outdor cafe and used my impressive German skills to woo the natives. I pointed at something shortbready and asked what it was. she answered something, but I decided it didn't sound yummy, so I pointed o something else and she said it was choclate cheesecake. I also asked for juice, and orange in partiular (gosh, one day of learning german and I was already fooling them!) She said the price and I fumbled some coins then handed her a 20e note. That tricked her too I bet.
I then went into the Alte nationalgallerie, which was fantastic - they give you something like a discman with digits on top and lots of the pictures have a number under them. You type in the number and you get a commentary, story behind the picture, musical background etc. I'm pretty sure they are mp3 or the like compressed because I was in there for 4 hours and hadn't seen everything. I finally went home and got some stuff for dinner from the supermarket.
The supermarket was a challenge - I had planned to make pizza as Armin said he had mozartella and tomatoes. I intended to get a pizza base and toppings. The toppings were easy - you can put almost anything on a pizza, but I needed the base. I wandered up and down all the isles and couldn't find anything. You must remember that at this point my total German was about 10 words. luckily, one of those 10 words was the word for bread. I asked a helpful looking person if she had any pizza bread. she said 'yeah, of course' and raced off to show me. I followed behind. She got to where she knew the stuff was and said, hmm, there isn't any. She then asked the manager, who asked the person who stacked the shelves, and they realised that they don't atually stock pizza bread. So I got this strange tube stuff which you put on a tray and attempt to roll flat and use that as a base.
Armin took over making the pizza, as he could read the instructions on the side of the tin. After much beating and cursing Armin managed to flatten the pizza base flubber. We had nice pizza for dinner.
Friday I decided to go to the Kulturthingy and look at the musical instrument museum. To get there I could have caught the underground, but I didn't realise it existed, so I walked from one station I knew through the Berlin equivalent of Hyde park, taking lots of pictures of things, including a bolete (I tried to explain it to Armin, but he couldn't picture what I was taking about. When I showed him a picture he said, oh yeah, bovite.).
I found the museum of musical instruments and went in. It was great - there was a guy who explained everything(in German) and played the instruments. There were lots of interesting instruments, although my pictures are a little crappy because it was dark and I couldn't use the flash. I even got to play some of the instruments in a sound proof room, and there is a nifty wacom tablet driven system which controls lots of speakerdrivers connected to strange things like car windscreen washer bottles which make funny sounds as you move the pen around the tablet and push harder or softer.
Then I went to the new national gallery. It was crap. Lots of blue rectangles, bloby things and movies about glass pipes sitting in the waves on a beach. Darn waste of a euro.
Next I went to the dutch gallery, which had thousands of great art works, including people like rembrant, and that other guy. I spent a few hours in there before heading home through the park again. Once home I got ready to go out for a night on the town with Armin and Silke. We met up in Potsdamer place, which is the current center of berlin(only 10 years old). There I was wowwed by the huge sony center, which is like daimaru, only there's a pretty fountain in the middle, rather than a shot tower. Armin was wowwed by Silke and I twiddled my fingers for a bit while they became 'reaquainted'.
We then went up panorama point tower and looked at the wonderful fog of berlin. Then we went for a guided tour in silke's car. She knows all the stories about the buildings that you don't read in lonely planet guides, like the building which they discovered was missing several floors, after they had opened it; the scandinavian embassy, which only required 360 exemptions from the local building regulations; the greek embasy, which looks like it only just survived WWII; the indian embasy, which was made from 1000s of unique stones cut in india, and shipped to berlin with numbers for each stone, only to find that the numbers had come off in transit (the building was missing stones when the place was first opened) and the Mexican embasy, which was intended to be made out of mexican stone and carved with the special patterns of mexicans, but ended up being carved in Poland cos it was cheaper that way.
Finally we went to the jewish quarter, which had policemen stationed everywhere, and those people bulldozers for riot control parked around. We ate in a very nice resturant which included a 4e applestrudel which would have been enough for 3 people, if anyone bar me could eat it...
Saturday Armin took me to see the shiplifter in Niederfinow. Very cool piece of hardware. It lifts 1000 tonne ships up 36 meters from the lower canal to the upper one. It does so using little more energy than a car driving up the same hill. We then went and looked at Chorin monastery. Finally we hopped out to look at the Muggle-sea, which is the lake where Berlin gets its water from, but we hopped back in the car very quickly as it was blowing a gale and raining.
Back home I ate some rolls then later we had some spaghetti bog. Armin showed me slides until late.
Sunday I was invited to Silke's house for breakfast. That meant we had to get up and go by about 8. Urg. Breakfast was yummy - eggs, german meat things, cheese, pate, jam, coffee, orange juice.
Then Armin and silke took me to the bot gardens, via the town center. The bot gardens were cool - it was the first time I really got to see what plants made up german forests. They had large, recreated sections of local forest with labels and stuff. Lots of bumblebees (although I didn't manage a single picture of one :-( ). I went in the huge glass house complex and saw lots of weird stuff from warmer climates. There was even a little 'australien' section, with a few scaby looking leptospermums, a sad kangaroo apple and lots of twigy albizia lophanta(tree in a hurry/cape leuwin wattle). Almost made me homesick. They had a cool carniverous house with drosera, nepethes and saracenias.
Outside I found that they also had north america, japan, china and siberia sections. The water plants section included a large sphagnum bog and lots of plants I've never seen before.
After all that I went home and collapsed into bed.
saw protest
went up into eifel
look at niederggen castle
look at hydro power
look at lake
look at Heinz's work
fuels cells, nuclear stuff
look around düren
paper museum
go to köln with beatrix
look in cathedral
look at lots of shops
meet Heinz under arch
I had planned to travel from düren to Lausanne on an overnight train, look around there for a day, then to travel up the brig->chur valley to salzburg.
After standing on the rainy platform waiting for the train to arrive for an hour with heinz (at least I had someone to talk to) we figured that even if the train were to arrive I would miss my connection and have to wait in cologne for ages anyway. At this point we gave up and went back to Heinz's house.
Catch train to Luzern
The next morning I decided to go to Luzern instead, which was significantly closer to salzburg
Luzern
Vienna Butterfly house
Augarden (flak tower)
haus der music
Breakfast at famous place
Meet up with Christian's girlfriend (forget name!)
Go on wheel
Go to swisshouse beergarden
walk along danube
Go to Jazz thing at night