Munich Dachau

hey everyone just a post about my time in munich so far

We arrived two days ago, and spent most of the afternoon sleeping which isn't a great idea considering how freaking cold it gets here! unbelieveably cold. but yes I guess constant travelling kind of got to us.

anyway we got to see some of the christmas markets at the Oktoberfest field sites, which was pretty fun. while most things were a bit expensive, they did have heaps of stuff ranging from raclette (traditional meal of grilled cheese, pickled onions and gherkins on potatoes.. seriously lack this back home) to extreme makeover hair dramatists (you could call them that..) dressed in alien lady-gaga-esque costumes and turning people's hair into cacti pretty much (lots of teasing of the hair and hair spray)

our room mates were pretty 'lekker'! they were 2 guys from from south africa and taught us some of their 'lingo'. lekker = awesome, china = dude (seriously haha), so you could say 'hey china, that's so lekker'. hilarious.

that night we finally met up with my sister and her group (of 3 other guys) (they've come to Europe from a hospital elective in Mumbai) and had dinner at a famous German beer house, 'Hofbräuhaus' . it's actually a 500 yr old restaurant that is known to be the 'birth place of the Nazi's', where Hitler and co shall we say would come and congregate and have beers in the early days. The ceiling of the bottom floor used to be adorned with Swastikas that have since been artfully painted over with Bavarian flags, though you can still see the quadrants that made up the Swastikas. pretty scary. On a funnier note, before women were allowed into the beer house, it used to have slanted tiled floors and strategicallz placed drains so that men would be able to pee on the floor and continue drinking without losing their seats. NASTY! apparently to prevent potential brawls over who-peed-on-who, each guy was given a spiral walking stick (screw like) and you would pee on those, so that your pee  didn touch anyone else, just the floor. NASTY! ERGH GROSS GROSS.

yesterday we all paid a visit to Dachau, the first concentration camp of WWII. It is actually beyond words - how does one describe the feeling of standing in what was previously a gas chamber? there were fake shower heads on the top of the ceilings (no piping underneath) so that the prisoners would believe that they were going to take a routine shower and would not resist walking in to meet their ends. They were even made to fold their clothes before they went it, to make them think that they were going to come back out and wear their clothes. Every detail/effort was preplanned. you could see the vents where the poisonodus gas was mixed with the hot air, the crematorium was there... it's nearly impossible to describe. I dont think I will try, though i will say that it was well conserved and factually/objectively presented.They've done a commendable job in respecting such an historic site.


Last night we ended up having dinner with 2 other aussies (we're everywhere!) One had spent 2.5 months walking through France and Spain with her dad (literally, no public transport). She ended up on the coast of Spain (the very edge of her journey) on her 28th birthday. The other girl was doing ajoint phd project in Spain on frogs' sperm. Being knowledgeable on animal reproduction, she told me that there is a particular type of rat whose males only live for one generation. In the one breeding season of the year, they mate until they die of starvation and exhaustion, leaving only the females to raise the babies and to start the next generation.What the...! The dessert at the restaurant was divine, I would thoroughly suggest anybody going to Munich to try the caramel crepes at Opatija's, a few blocks from the city station (Marienplatz) Hochbrückenstraße 3,  80331 München, http://www.opatija-restaurant.com/ So delicious! the perfect mixture of sweet crepes, the creaminess of the cheese curd, the sourness of the berries and the crunch of the toffeed caramel. won't get over that one for a while!

Today we visited the famous castle at Neuschwanstein, which is what the disney castle is based on. It's not very old, only was built at the end of the 19th century, though the interior decor (from furniture to tapestries to door hinges) where quite viking-inspired (what would you expect from a German-Bavarian castle..)   the picture here is just from google, although we saw it covered in snow so it wasn't surrounded by green trees either. I can't currently upload my photos bc the comp i'm using sucks a bit.

that's it for now!

Love
Caroline

first post

hey guys!

So I know I've been pretty bad with keeping you guys up to date and informed about what I've been up to, so here's my best attempt at 12.35am whilst in my hostel in Rome. 

Start:

leave sydney, plane to Darwin with some amazing views of clouds and some interesting stories from a Dutch 60+ widowed midwife who specialises in home deliveries. She could tell just by touching a mother's stomach/uterus area how old the baby was (until 20weeks or something, since all babies are the same size up to 20 weeks) and this was verified time and time again via ultrasound.

Darwin to Singapore trip - amazing views of the sunset - see some of my photos on my  web album (made so that my non-facebook mum could also view it)

Singapore for 3 days with Ben and his mum.
impressions: it's quite developed (most people live in 10+ level apartments, though there are houses) and the shopping centres and hotels can be unbelievably decadent. the marina bay sands hotel has a 150m pool that is 200m high in the sky (on the roof top, available only to guests unfortunately), and most of the surfaces within the 3 building/tower hotel complex are marble and shiny and stationed by perfect concierge staff. it's also super humid, but bearable. people stare at me because they know I'm a foreigner (though it is a bit of a change to visit a country where everyone is Asian-looking I must admit) because of my accent/the way I dress. Ben taught me that I (Australians) pronounce 'here' as 'hee-ah', which I never realised.

They also have a LOT of durian despite it not being the season. (Y)! you can just buy it and then sit on one of the plastic tables near the durian stall and eat it. The durian suburb area is called 'geylang', which is also the red light district of Singapore. We (Ben's family and I) therefore went scouting for prostitutes as I had never seen them before. Apparently they used to be a lot more common (according to Ben's dad, who used to be a civilian police officer) , and streets were divided by the race of the girls you'd find there. Since prostitution is effectively illegal (you can't even chew gum in Singapore..), the girls that are still on the streets have an inside in place to signal a warning bell whenever there are cops around so that they can scatter. This person was an innocent enough old-ish man on the corner of the road selling icecream to visitors/tourists/foreigners. Interesting system. the prostitutes pretty much looked like they could fit in any nightclub back at home (ie bum skimming skirt/dress and lots of cleavage). It was a pretty interesting night haha.

went to Kota Kinabalu with Fiona, another university friend. KK, as it is also called, is the tropical capital of the West Malaysian island of Sabah. She goes back every year for a month or so to visit her grandpa. He's pretty cool. Still a super active grandpa.

KK in some instances reminded me of Vietnam when I went as a child, where not every house has a flushing toilet and a lot of the city is still developing. However, i thoroughly enjoyed my time here - this was the first time I saw a sunset on water (since in Sydney we pretty much only see the sun rising from the water because we're facing the east) I went to see orang utans - we had to walk into this jungle sanctuary for 5min, and within that time we were swamped by mosquitoes (more than i had ever seen in one place, ever.) ended up with 15+ mosquito bites despite constantly spraying myself with insect repellent. seriously scary! however, we did get to see an orang utan about 1m away from us which was pretty unbelieveable (one of the tourists tried to bribe it with a bit of coconut despite being warned not to in an incredibly long introduction video that i mostly slept through). Also went parasailing, which was pretty cool.  I think the best thing about KK was seeing Fiona and her family, and how simple and pleasant life is there. No internet, just hanging on the porch and talking. pretty sweet.

despite the fact that I'm currently in Rome,  I"ll have to start my posts about Dubai and Rome another time. need to sleep!

Ciao!