EuroX Trip: Day 15 and 16

Salve from Italy! I have arrived in the final country on our merry dance across Europe.

Yesterday, after a hearty breakfast and an amusing conversation with our German host (who seemed to speak more German in her English than English), Henry and I set off for a walking tour of Berlin, joining up with a tour group at Zoologischer Garten station. Our tour guide, surprisingly, was an Australian expat living in Germany, and the rather assuring accent reminded me of home. What also reminded me of home, and which I observed, was the rather large Vietnamese presence in Berlin.
It turns out that apparently a lot of North Vietnamese emigrated to East Berlin during the Cold war as labour, and to join their Communist brothers on the front line against the capitalist pigs. I was rather amused to see that my people had ranged even as far as Germany. Paris is kind of a given considering that Vietnam was a former French colony, but Berlin ... that was an interesting tidbit of knowledge.

That morning, I learned the very definition of cold weather. We spent the morning and most of the afternoon trudging about Berlin, learning about various sites, while freezing our collective arses off. The winds would not let up, and I ended up by the end having numb feet and hands, constantly moving my fingers in an effort to keep blood flowing. The generous fellow handing out free samplse of coffee outside a Starbucks was a real godsend.
Despite the cold, we learned a lot about the history of Berlin, including the looming presence of the Wall, which only fell about eighteen years ago. Berlin is very much a new city. We also visited the infamous Checkpoint Charlie, which was where many foreign diplomats and soldiers moved into and out of East and West Berlin.
After the tour, Henry and I bummed around the city, where I went shopping for a stein, and Henry for some posters or something. Dinner was a nice, traditional German dinner - sausages, steak and sauerkraut, followed up with some nicely brewed beer. After some Haagen-Dasz for desert, it was time for a night at the Philharmonie, listening to the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra playing a couple of Schumann's pieces.
I have to say, it was my first time at an orchestral concert, and I began to feel a bit like I was in Nodame Cantabile, mainly because that is the extent of my orchestral concert experience. The concertmaster was even a Japanese guy! Nevertheless, I found that Henry enjoyed it more than I did, probably due to his inclination to classical music, and me to music from a rather different source. It was an interesting experience.

The following day, we were up at 4am to get ready and fly to Milan from Tegel airport. The trip was filled with fun. Firstly, we both got up at 4am after going to sleep at midnight the previous night, so we were both functioning on about 4 hours of sleep. Once we got to Tegel, I panicked and thought that I'd lost my passport. If I had lost my passport, I was screwed. No, make that we were screwed. I couldn't check in, I'd miss my flight, and then I'd have to wait while the mess is cleared up with the Australian embassy and I get a new one or something. Luckily, it seemed that I had just misplaced it somewhere. While I went through the security area, I set off the metal detector too many times, and while the guard scanned me with his metal detector, I frantically wondered why I had set it off, even though I had removed everything that I had thought was metal.
It turns out, it was a 5 cent coin sitting in my pocket.
Always the lsat place you look.

When we arrived in Milan, securing transport was an interesting endeavour. We had to get the Malpensa Express shuttle bus to Central Station. After paying 7 euros and getting on, I slept most of the way there. Once there, we bought our tickets for transport in the rest of Italy via Trenitalia, and then tried to find a place to buy local passes. Unfortunately, there were none. We ended up getting on one of the trams to our hotel anyway, and it was lucky for us there was a friendly old Italian woman on the way to the same place as us. They are very lax about checking passes in Milan - you're just assumed to have one, and to flash it, in the rare event that a transport cop tries to bust you. We later found out you also need one to get on the Metro underground train system. Like in Berlin, each station had big TV screens to entertain commuters with ads, news, and other interesting tidbits. I found this to be quite an innovation, and wish that some of these ideas would find their way back to Adelaide.
After checking in, we visited the Duomo, where some overfriendly Nigerians gave me a friendshop bracelet in exchange for a 'donation' of 2 euros (he originally wanted 10, but I pretended that I only had spare change). We visited the Duomo cathedral, ate lunch at a nearby Mcdonald's (amusingly enough, Henry wasn't big on the idea of lunch when I brought it up, considering pizza too big for lunch. I asked him what would constitute a good size, so he said something like Mcdonald's. It just so happened ... we were standing outside one as he brought that up), and got to witness what appeared to be a Communist rally, supported by feminists and anarchists. I was rather amused, particularly at the idea that there was still Commuist rallies happening. They all had their big red flags with the hammer and the sickle, and were singing songs in Russian. They were also accompanied by heavily armed police wearing riot gear, which was a kick to watch.

Next: a visit to Lake Como!