46 European Nights

i was brutally ROBBED! deep shit!

ok! am in Amsterdam! got here early this morning. 0445HRS and it was pouring man! got soooooooo wet and it was so darn cold! was freezing! hostels do not take check in till like 830 onwards. really sucked, as i roamed the cold wet streets alone scouring for a hostel. got me feeling so sad! never felt so bad since i left home. its like my last leg of my adventure and i forsee its gonna be the worse few days. aint gonna be as happening as the past one month. amsterdam! the city of sin and vices! walk around the streets like i did just now.. and u can smell weed in the air. they dont smoke no mormal ciggies.. they puff weed, hemp, grass and such. round everycorner they have their infamous coffee shops - legalised weed puffing shops. hahahha! got to my hostel and was at the reception. wierd reception. its in the cellar and all around fellow travellers who have poured in from all over the world, not to see amsterdam, but rather to get high on drugs and loose themselves puffing weed. remeber the song "i like to teach the world to sing"? try singing this to its tune "i like to teach the world to smoke, to smoke their lives away. smoke hemp and weed, and marlboro, and sometimes Salem too..." besides that alcohol is cheap. 1 euro for a mug of beer. good beer. Tiger cant even compare. and take awalk around another streets, strip bars, whore houses, porn peddlars. they,re everywhere! at least back home when it comes to prostition we have our more decent 'fishtanks' in Geylang, but here.. its like along the streets! its like window shopping! really quite a sight. tried to see the dykes today. if u didnt know amsterdam is in netherlands, and netherlands is built on land reclaimed in a special way. its not conventional. so they've got dykes errected all around the place to how out the see. Isjemmer.. thats their famous lake. tried cycling there. got lost. never got to see the dykes, but at least i got to cycle! in europe u.ve gotta cycle at least once, cos thats how most locals get from place to place. but its kinda confusing cos am used to keep left. its keep right for traffic here. ok... till my next blog

4 days till Paris. tonight i am gonna take a night bus to Amsterdam! yeah i would really love to stay in Berlin. its a really nice city. compared to Munich, Berlin is way better. its the culture, the peeps and everything. totally different from the south. the peeps areway easier. so nice that i got myself a berlin t-shirt! Berlins got lotsa gothic looking punks. wanted so much to talk to one of them. met one at a club 2 nights ago, he told me to visit the LAST CATHERAL cafe.. its a gothic styled bar. i went there. sheesh, u´ve gotta see my pics. skeletons and demmonic art everywhere. thot i would see lotsa punks. i wanna ask them if they dress like that, cos they´ve got a statement to make. but met none there. cos it was a raining cold wet evening. got back to the hostel after a drnink and yay! met another punk there. a mild one. but was happy enuff! took a picture with her. there were these 2 brit english gurls in my dorm. thot me to play silly card games and how to mimic an english brit slang. hillarious. anyway all for now!

ok yes... today is the 22nd. count down 6 days till Paris! 6 days till sharing a hotel room with mum and grandma.. or view it positively 6 days till a good warm hearty meal with family. its a trade off.. day 2 in Berlin. woke up around 1000. cos was really tired. had a long car ride to Berlin yesterday and the moment i checked in, put my bags down headed off to town, and did a big city walk. so was naturally kinda worn out today. lazily got out of bed and planned my itenary. was supposed to go see quite a few stuff plus a LITTLE shopping. ended up.. spent all my time SHOPPING! hahahha! John´s gone mad! for once i splurged sooooo much all at one time. spent like 40Euros on? H&M! thats europe´s giordano if u didnt know what H&M was. not that cheap, but its UK fashion, reasonable compared to the other brands! Big sis! if u´re reading this! now i know why u asked me to go shop at H&M! hahahhahha! bought 2 bottoms from there. then i got a T-shirt from somewhere else. i´m finally spending money. all the time i´ve spent buying things for other peeps. finally did some shopping for myself! went to the palace in Berlin in the evining. it was drizzling a little. had pasta for dinner and went back to the hostel. tried on all my new clothes. am very happy today. think i´´m gonna take a shower, then go chill at the hostel´s bar. see who´s going where tonight. have gotta party here. the clubbing scene´s really happening. been seeing all the adverts and stuff they´ve got on the metro and what not. flyers and pamphlets... ok all for now. Tschuss!

i didnt talk abt the Dachau concentration camp did i. anyway it was raining, blasted cold wet weather. i felt so depressed when i woke up that morning. set the moood just for the concentration camp. it was a totally depressing place i tell ya. reminds me a lil of pulau tekong when i first enlsited. spent the entire day there. saw how the inmates were tortured. took lotsa pictures. there were the gas chambers disguised as 'mass showers' so that the peeps will walk in willingly. then the death chambers and the living quaters. brrrr... anyway yeps.. all for munich. am in berlin now. something i´ve got on my mind bvut i havent told anybody abt it was how i was planning to get to Berlin! see now a train cost like 88Euro = 180SGD and takes like 6HRS. a slower train cost 30 Euros(60SGD) and will take 11 hours with multiple changes. means i´ve gotta get off and get on and different stops before i finally get to Berlin. that means leaving me no time to catch a snooze since i´ve gotta be always on the look out what stop is coming up. now howabt 32Euros, get a chance to speed down the German AutoBahn at a speed of 200KMPH in a alphaRomeo and get a experience of what hitching a ride is like? woah ho! of course i took the last choice! hhahha! its one of the popular forms of transport in germany, esp with students and its safer than hitch hiking becos someone knows where u are going. the company that is, who hooked me up with a driver who was going from munich to berlin. yeah... it was scary i tell ya initially. if u´re driver imagine driving at 5th gear and ur REV is like 5000+ imagine how fast is that. and thats just the crusing speed on the autobahn! yeps got to Berlin in slightly less then 6 hrs! got to my hostel. woah! another nice hostel. its awesome i tell u! wait till u see my pics! went on a walking tour. was pretty glad that weather cleared up in the late afternoon. there was sunshine finally. went to see checkpt charlie and the museum. and then walked around town. had traditonal berlin food for dinner. CurryWurst. curry hotdog. and boy i tell u the berliners can really take spicy food. finished that up with a big Fuji apple. so am very full now. got back to the hostel to the CHEERS of England´s win. ok all for now... till my next blog. Tschuss!

its supposed to be summer in Europe, but this yr, the locals in Germany didnt really consider it a summer. cos its been wet and chilly. the kinda bone chilling kinda cold. brrrr... went to the Neuschuwenstein castle yesterday. its awesome, just that the weather was a lil unmerciful. was pouring. the castles up on the hill, so gotta hike up. and then down again. got caught in the rain on the way down, so made a dash for it. ran from the castle all the way to the trainstation. dont know the distance, but its kinda like a 40min walk. so yeah. castle´s supposed to be build by king ludwig. llludwig was obessed with caasstles. embarked on major bulding plans that almost bankrupted the coutry, and in the end, a top secret government initiative, got the doctors to fake a med report that ludwig,s a lil cracknut, get him off the throne. after the castle, went to the BMW museum. was supposed to do a factory tour but it was booked out for the next few months. and then walked over to this arts and music festival thats supposed to be going on for the next 25 days. something like a large scale pasar malam back home, but this time with lotsa live band, loud music, lots and lots of BEER. went clubbing last night. it was friday night. what did u expect? stay in the hostel and sleep? narh, no time to sleep. too much to see and do. save the sleep for the train man! its awesome i tell you. they´ve got like a clubbing town! its a small lil town.. maybe if u draw a boundary, it´d be taka, wisma, tangs, luck plaza, paragon. yeah.. and in it... there are all kinds of pups. lots and lots of clubs and pups. they even have a map at the main entrance to the 'clubbbing city' say where is where and whats playing. awesome! hahahaha! but it was wet weather. otherwise i´m sure it´d really ROCK! today i went to the science museum. the Germans are really good at this kinda engineering and science stuff i must say. its one of the best museums i´ve ever seen. not that i´ve been to many, but its really impressive! if i visited that museum earlier. i´d defitnely have renewed interest in physics, enough to ace my Alevel paper. singapore´s science centre cant even be compared to it. spent half a day there playing with all their exhibits. talk a lil abt back home. i know... they cut NS by 6 months! what the heck man! talked abt this all the time while i was in NS. and when i ORD. finally ORD! they shorten the liability. but still... never mind lar. nothing beats this: ORD lo! hahahahha! 10 days till Paris. thats like 10 days till my adventure ends. sigh.. mix feelings. its like i so wanna meet my family. check into some nice HOTEL. note.. HOTEL no S between the O and the T! have a good meal. nice warm meal TOGETHER. something that i've not done in a while. but at the same time.. i wanna go to more places! there´s so much i have NOT seen! yeah... talking abt that. today i ate traditional bavarian food for dinner. bavaria is like a region or state that munich is in. bayern u can say. thats why the name bayern munich. its called. schweinhaxe! pronunce svine harkser. its pigs trotter, roasted, and then cooked in a stew. served with a sticky rice ball with salad as starters. mmmmm! completed with a beer of course. whats a bavarian meal without a beer? and i saw this sign today tha says 'save water.. drink beer!' that really speaks lots abt their beer dirnking culture! ok.. enuff said. going back to my hostel. wonder if there´s any party tonight. a lil reluctant to go, cos its really lousy weather. till my next blog!

am in munich! and ths internet cafe is like one of the cheapest. super hightech. there are like hundreds of computers for use here. and there´s no counter to register. u go to a machine, slot in a coin, then they print a receipt wth some numbers. somethng like an id. then u jsut sit at any free termnal. key in the id and u can surf for the amout u paid. cool! so how was salzburg? well its a pretty little town. LTTTLE town. really small. everything is like within walkable distance, with lotsa green hills, and baroque archictecture. pleasant, but boring. they´ve got nice beer tho. Steigl thats the name. u see that.. u can boast and tell peeps its not just austrian brew, its Salzburg brew! apparently monks in europe brew their own beer. thats like long time ago. so i guess thats why they have a happy church. i always thot like associating monks with beer is some kinda joke we crack but hey NO! cos certain tmes of the year they fast, so the beer they brew is suppose to give them the ample nourishment. i dont know how true that is. but oh well... food for the ears. so just listen. lets see today i walked around town, seen most of the main sights. dont talk to be abt museums cos i´ve given up on them. so just snooped around. tomrorow i´m going to the fairytale castle that inspired WaltDisney. the schueweinstein castle! its gonna be one full day spent there. so yeah that leaves me with one day more in munich. i´m trying to get a BMW factory tour. see how it goes. if not i´ll just visit the BMW museum. after that i´ll visit the Dachau concentration camp. yeps.. thats my up coming program. lets pray for fine weather. its been good so far. ok... all for now. countdown to Paris will begin soon. tommorrow will be 10 days to Paris! 10 days to a stay in a luxurious HOTEL. enuff of this shit hole hostels with queer peeps lurking around every corner. that night this brazillian suddenly spoke to me at the stairway "i cant speak good english, but if u cant get a girl tonght, we can play together. u know what i mean play together, i know very little english, but we can have fun together" i was freaked man! HAHAHA! never spoke to him again. avoided him everywhwere. sheesh!