Travels With Lumpy

Travels With Lumpy

Recounting Berlin Night#2 

The biggest zoo in Europe. Curry Wurst. The Brandenburger  Tor. The Holocaust Denkmal. The Berlin Wall. The Best Burgers in Berlin.

Woke up at 7 am and down to the Breakfast Hall for Breakfast. It cost us 11 Euros per person. But it was darn delicious. Smoked salmon, kartoffels, home made jam and peanut butter, grapefruit, honeydew, grapes, fresh juice, home made lemonade, pretzels, home made cereal, rindfleishch, schweinefleisch, smoked goods, yum.

On to the Berlin Zoo, Zoologischergarten Station on the U-Bahn. It was drizzling.

And as with the day before, we were the only ones there. The ticket cost 10 euros per person at student price. Very reasonable, for such a large zoo.

We entered and first saw the alpacas, and then the resident rhinos. An old man with a pink umbrella. He was the only visitor besides us. The alpacas and the rhinos, they too were huddling in their huts from the rain. We and the old man, were the only crazy ones standing in the rain. And you know what? Those alpacas were downright gossiping about us!

I swear. 

Alpaca #1: *snuffle**chew* hey*chew* see those crazies there?

Alpaca #2:*snuffle**chew**chew* Yea. Crazy huh?

Alpaca#3: Hey guys!*snuffles perkily* What are y’all talking bout?

Alpaca#1:*snuffle* Nothing.

(Beneath his breath, Alpaca#1 mutters: *snuffle* Loser)

Alpaca#3 walks off, blissfully unaware of its outcast status.

Aliens, for your viewing pleasure, I present the Alpaca.

What? Your intergalactic Google tells you that alpacas don’t have horns??? Well, tell it to fiddle off!

I did not take any alpaca pictures because they were clique-ish, mean to Alpaca#3 and gossiping about us.

Saw hippos. Heard them growl. Saw birds, polar bears, grizzlies, elephants, giraffes. The usual.

Zoo connoisseurs we are. We’d already been to Chester Zoo, the largest in the UK, in 2010. So the Berlin Zoo, was a natural progression.

These, aliens, are baby hippos.

This is A baby hippo.

This is a grizzly sunning itself.

This is a bird with an egg.

This is a seal,a usual star attraction for any zoo.

Here is a leopard. It's fur was sometimes used to make our coats. Weren't we resourceful?

This is the pre-us. What we were before we became humans. In fact, it's called an orangutan. Which means 'man of the jungle' in Malay.

And this? This is my great great great great great great great great grandfather's descendant. Notice how he stares at me with hostility in his eyes. Yep, family politics.

After that, on to the Zoologischergarten for some food. Curry wurst, bockwurst, kartoffelsalat and tom yum soup we had. Lumpy felt a bit ashamed that we were travelling all the way to Germany only to order Thai food. But I told him, ‘Be not ashamed my dear Lumpy. Tom yum is good everywhere'.

I should point out that the tom yam pic is not mine. It's from the web.

Then went to the Brandenburger Tor (gate) and the Holocaust Denkmal. Arthur Schilling’s memorial to the fallen Jews of WWII.

Aliens, in the early 1940s, something deeply disturbing and horribly bad happened. Over 6 million people died. And for what reason? Not because of famine, no. Not because of sickness. They were killed. Not because they’d committed crimes.

They were not caught in crossfires. They were not bombed. Oh no.

They were systematically isolated and transported by the millions to camps to be exterminated. Like rats. Exterminated by the masses. Men, women and children. And you know why?

All because they were Jewish. I know Aliens, this is hard to understand. I hope your intergalactic Google can help you more than I can. I can’t say anymore. There is just too much to say.

Maybe you won’t understand. Emotions may be beyond your highly evolved selves. But if you are anything like the Eldar of Warhammer  40 000 then you will.

This is part of the memorial. It's a sculpture of concrete slabs rising and falling on undulating land.

We crashed at 7 pm-slept like babies. Woke up at 9 pm and ran to the Berlin Wall. Turns out it was really near the hotel. Took pictures in the dark.

Had some trouble finding the restaurant we were recommended. But we found Burgermeister instead. And Burgermeister, boy was it good.

A burger costs 4 euros or less and you get a lot for it. Humans, if you are ever in Berlin go check it out. A cheap but filling meal, only 4 euros or less!

You take a number, they call it out when the burger’s ready. Done.

This pic is also from the web. I didn't take pictures of everything because my camera battery kept dying.

Aliens, burgers are meat patties between two buns. Sometimes people put lettuce and tomatoes in with the meat. And then sauce is put on it. Ketchup/ mustard/ mayo. It varies. Burgers were the most delicious street food of the modern western world. And the Asian cultures loved it too.

They had their own version of it. In Japan, it was rice burger. In Malaysia, we had Ramli burgers.

We bonded over food. It didn’t matter what colour we were or that we spoke different languages. The food made us all the same. In the late 2000s, the world was a largely united place. It was the smallest it had ever been.

Despite the European and American economic crises, the Arab Spring, African war crimes,tensions with China's human rights record and North Korean intransigency, we were getting along relatively well.

You could say that the majority of us were having fun.

Travels With Lumpy

Travels With Lumpy

Recounting Berlin Night #1 The Bundestag and an empty museum. Russian food in a German city.

Berlin was part of our Euro Backpacking trip.

We landed at the Schoenefeld Airport and made our way to Berlin Centre at 9 AM, March 2012.

Took the Hauptbanhof to Warschauerstrasse. Our hotel was there.

The Michelberger.

I gave it 5 stars.

Rushed to the Bundestag. You need to be pre-booked. Bring your passports and your permission to enter. Then they’ll let you in.

They have a glass dome. Lumpy noted that there was very little mention of H*tler, or… He Who Must Not Be Named, in the History section.

Took  a walk up the ramp with audio guide. Saw the cityscape. Too bad it was raining cats and dogs.

Note to the Aliens:

Cats and Dogs- The English language developed idiosyncrasies of phrase and termed these ‘idioms’.  Raining cats and dogs was one of the many. It never made sense.

Lunched at the Hbf. I swear, it is my favourite place in Berlin.

Ran, half figuratively, half literally, to the German-Russian Museum in Karlshorst on the Outskirts of Berlin. It was empty. Only us. Lumpy was disappointed.

We had fun taking silly pictures that can only be taken when nobody’s around.

Fast forward to dinner.

We had stuff at a Russian restaurant nearby the hotel.

What can I say? It was Russian food. Vodka, bread, stroganoff, pierogi dumplings, lots of meat, lots of cream.

Great kartoffels though. Hello, aliens, kartoffels is German for potatoes. Just in case your intergalactic translater only stores 'International Language(s)' in its memory. Or is broken. 

That was Day 1. It was the spring of 2012. Early spring. The winter had been unusually mild in the UK. Warm, balmy summer-like days had arrived early. The Telegraph reported a ‘heat wave’ and displayed pictures of hundreds of sunbathers on Brighton beach.

  They always took pictures of Brighton Beach.

The Bundestag was still there. In the heart of Berlin. And to the East, the Brandenburger Tor. And further East, towards Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg, the remains of the Wall.

Aliens, people travelled a lot in the late 2000s.It was one of the ways we poisoned our planet.

Bento Lunches

When Lumpy and I used to work in this Newcastle based company, I would pack our lunches.

I was, at that time, extremely caught up with the 'bento craze'.

Aliens, if you are reading this because my blog somehow survived the nuclear fallout/ explosion of the sun/ meteor crash/ insert relevant catastrophic event, and you have somehow managed to get a hold of this obscure digital entry, using your intergalactic translation device, here is a note for you:

Bento: The Japanese way of Making Lunch. Put food in the box, decorate nicely, make sure that there are lots of vegetables. Done.

The West caught on to this 'craze' in the 2000s. Japanese culture had become trendy. Bento was cool. Kids loved eating decorated food, moms loved making complicated decorated food, and others vaunted bento as a healthy lifestyle option.The rise of Obesity in the West was fast becoming the new smallpox. Something had to be done.

Where there were once anglophiles and francophiles, a new species of 'phile' emerged, the Japan-o-phile.A person so absorbed and in awe of Japanese culture that they wished they'd been born Japanese.

In 2011, I became one of them. That is another story.


This photo depicts a sandwich, salad and hash brown.

Fried Rice, Spinach, Egg and Prawn Dumpling:

Some mee goreng, fish cakes, lettuce, szechuan chicken and a salad:

Lastly, my imported waste-of-money bento box:

Salivating already, Aliens? Or maybe you eat something else? Like Vogon Jelly?

Or maybe you're so evolved that you don't eat at all?


Happy days it was, aliens. We had so much food back then.