We got to try some Indonesian Roti. Each dish was like a dollar!! We watched the staff at the restaurant tossing and spinning the dough and everything. They have plain roti, roti with sausage, cheese, onions, or even dessert roti!

Getting around is pretty easy with the many taxis around or even a motorbike rental. I’ve read that there have been altercations between taxi drivers and Grab drivers, but I didn’t experience that while I was there, except for some areas clearly marked as not Grab friendly. There aren’t a lot of gas stations around, but a lot of stores fill up petrol in vodka bottles and sell them.

This section of the beach was part of a restaurant/bar/resort called Ku De Ta, and people could just sit back and enjoy a drink or two (cigars are on the menu too!) while enjoying the beach. Locals own the chairs on the beach and charge people to sit on them.

We couldn’t chill on this beach, but we did have a pool in our villa! Mike made an amazing video tour of the villa in his video below!

I spent my time in the pool learning how to swim (at this point, I didn’t even know how to float). I started off being super uncomfortable even leaning back to float, and was really frustrated at not being able to do basic actions on the water. I looked up YouTube videos on how to float and tread water and eventually figured it out! We basically stayed in the pool until we got hungry for dinner – this time to try local seafood. Mike, if you’re reading this, you missed out by not recording this part.

After the meal, we went back in the pool. I practiced some more, and when I got tired, I floated on my back and gazed at the stars.

I was disappointed to leave this amazing villa, but alas, all good things must come to an end. The next day, we took the plane and flew back home, where we resumed our regular lives.

For my photos of Bali, click here.

The flight was to arrive in Kuala Lumpur at around 13:00 and we would depart for Bali at 21:50. Arriving at 13:00, we should have been able to arrive in the city via Grab between 14:30 – 15:00, but it took at least an hour at the immigration line so we didn’t get to the city until after 16:00. This would leave us around 5 hours in Kuala Lumpur, which is not great, but not terrible.

We had only eaten breakfast, so by this time, we were starving. So we went to Lot 10. Everything looks super good, but in actually only tasted okay. I thought it’d be on par with my trip to Singapore.

Next, we visited a nearby street market. The market reminded me a lot of Singapore – similar food options (bak kut teh, chili crab, stingray, etc.), which makes sense since Singapore used to be a part of Malaysia.

Our next destination was the iconic Petronas Twin Towers, but all of a sudden out of nowhere, it started pouring with thunder and lightning. At first the thunder was a few kilometers away judging but how long it took to hear the sound, but not long after it was right on top of us.

We got on a Grab to head over there, but the sudden rainstorm brought traffic to a complete stop and it was barely moving. After being in the car for 30 mins and having gone less than a kilometer, the driver advised that we head to the airport directly as there wouldn’t be enough time to hit up the twin towers and make our flight. We reluctantly agreed.

During the car ride, I chatted with the driver about living in Kuala Lumpur. The driver was Cantonese in enthnicity but was born and raised in Kuala Lumpur, which I didn’t expect at all. I had forgotten about how stuck we were in traffic while chatting with the driver (at one point the driver took a bathroom break and left the keys in the ignition).

Eventually, I looked on Google Maps, and saw there was no way we’d make it to the airport by car. We decided to get dropped off at the metro station in the pouring rain and we’d take public transit the rest of the way. Check it out in Mike’s video (the raining part starts at ~5:10).

That was pretty much our trip to Kuala Lumpur. After a big delay at the airport and the freak rainstorm, we really only had 3 hours in the city to do stuff, which was too bad. See the rest of the photos here.

We took a Grab (the Southeast Asia version of Uber/Lyft), which costed only ~$15 USD for some 30 km, which is super cheap. I have no idea how the economics of that even work since the cost of a car is about the same everywhere. The driver dropped us off at the base of the temple and we had to walk up a long flight to stairs in the burning heat.

The temple grounds has a lot of rooms like this for worshipping. They all have big golden statues in them too.

The Thai royalty is also a big deal too.

Not far from the temple was the palace gardens of Bhubing Palace. It was a nice scenic walk, but otherwise there isn’t much to see.

As usual, Mike has made a video about this part of the trip. Check it out!

On the way back, the same driver who took us here to begin with was still hanging around, apparently looking for people to drive back. When he bumped into us, he offered to drive us back for a rate less than what Grab charged (way to cut out the middle man)!

That ends our touristy day trip. See more of my trip to Chiang Mai here.

Each elephant has a story of what it spent its life doing while in captivity such as elephant riding, or illegal logging, etc. Some even have injuries like broken hips from their past abuse. But now they get to live out the rest of their lives in the sanctuary.

The santuary is not just for elephants, but for cats too! There are also dogs lazing about as well.

We started the tour off with feeding the younger elephants. Even though they’re only a few years old, they’re still huge. It was cool to feel the elephant grab an entire bunch of bananas with its trunk and put it in its mouth. For a brief moment, I felt the scaly skin of its trunk, covered in dirt, brush against my hand. The reason elephants are covered in dirt is because the dirt protects their skin from the sun.

We got to pet a few of these elephants. I learned that elephants actually have hair! Some elephants had less hair due to their abuse. The guide explained that when they are used as riding elephants, they tend to lose a lot of hair from people climbing on and off of them. Their skin feels scaly as one might expect, but the sparse hairs are quite stiff – kind of like the bristles on a toothbrush.

It was so hot that day, they went playing in the river. It was probably the hottest day of the trip so far. So hot that I really didn’t want to move out in the sun.

This guy came running right for us. The guide said some of these elephants were the same ones we fed, and so it was possible they recognized our scents thinking we had more food. There are no fences in between humans and elephants, and there are attendants everywhere that the elephants listen to.

The guide told us that the more sunken in the elephant’s head is at its temple, the older it is. As it ages, the air inside the elephants skull slowly leaves, which causes the sunkeness. I definitely noticed this between the smaller/younger elephants and the larger/old ones.

Be sure to check out Mike’s video about the elephant park. It’s got clips of us feeding the elephants and us trying to dodge them as they charge toward us. There’s even an elephant that peels the bananas before eating them!

Going to this place was totally awesome and I definitely recommend it for anybody travelling to Chiang Mai. For the rest of the pictures of the elephant sanctuary click here.

And now for the dish we came here for…

When the lid is opened, the shrimp immediately try to jump out, so the lid can’t be opened for very long. They’re hard to grab too because they keep wiggling.

They taste like eating small pieces of shrimp sashimi, but at the same time I had to chew through the shells. There’s a little bit of flavour from the spice and herbs that were added, but it’s subtle. We were given some chili sauce on the side to give it more flavour. The spicy sauce is what you’d expect from chilis and cilantro.

I have no idea how “clean” this dish was since it’s raw… I could only bring myself to eat a couple for fear of getting parasites or some other foodborne illness. My friends on the other hand were completely grossed out by this even though they initially wanted to eat it. To be fair, this is the first time I considered shrimps to be like bugs at all.

My buddy made a video summarizing the entire experience. See below.

Otherwise, that’s it for eating live shrimp!
See all the photos here

The museum focussed on German tank developments since the beginning: World War I. Definitely an awesome museum. I’d recommend it for anyone interested in the subject.

During the interwar period and World War II, the Germans took the tank concept and built it into a very effective war machine. This museum is paradise for tank nerds like me.

This museum is also paradise for mechanical engineers too. Here is an interactive exhibit on the tank’s transmission. Yanking on the lever let you shift gears and one can see how the gears move around through the clear covering. Definitely real cool for people who are into that sort of stuff.

There are lots of tanks here. This is only one of the many rooms.

There’s also an exhibit showing how kids learn how to play war at a young age and it questions the morality whether or not this is okay. Ironically, when we were there, a group of children were going through the whole museum screaming about how the stuff in the museum was the coolest stuff ever.

Right behind that, was an exhibit of guns and how humans engineered death.

The exhibit on how armour piercing rounds work was especially cool.

And also the cool cross-sections.

What’s a tank musum if you can’t actually go inside one?

And of course, one can’t look at tanks without thinking of margaritas and Katy Perry…

After visiting the museum, we stopped in Hamburg to grab a bite to eat. We ate at this restaurant with a mysterious set menu where we knew neither the price nor what we would be served. We ended up eating different kinds of seafood over a few courses (swordfish, among them!), and it was ~40 euros!

Link to photo album: here

Dog lovers out there beware, some people eat dog meat in Korea – in a stew form, called Bosintang. We had to go to a shady shop in an alley in Myeongdong to get it. I didn’t know that it wasn’t a mainstream thing to eat until the lady at the tourist info center told us.

The meat was very tough (typical carnivore meat), and it tasted a lot like lamb. To be honest, it was pretty good, but it’s not something I would eat more of, since beef, chicken and other mainstream meats taste so much better.

Now for something less weird than dog meat. Our friend who lives in Seoul took us to a Korean restaurant to have something more mainstream.

It’s nice to know a local who is able to introduce us to such delicious food! Aside from the pork, we had acorn jelly, chives, seaweed, etc. Next, there is eating fresh seafood at Noryangjin Fish Market – a giant warehouse looking building where people sell seafood and then buyers can take their purchases to a nearby restaurant for preparation.

Somehow it was clear to all shop personnel that we were Chinese, and people kept yelling at us in Mandarin to buy their seafood. One shop kept insisting to us that we buy crab, and as we kept refusing, they kept lowering the price even though we actually did not want to buy it for other reasons. This “unintentional” haggling, however, did get us a slightly better deal on fish, giant prawns, clams and octopuses.

Eating the octopus raw is interesting since when the tentacles were served to us, they were still squirming as they were freshly killed. I learned that the whole point of eating this is to feel the tentacle grab on to the inside of the mouth as it is chewed, but otherwise it is pretty tasteless.

We also had Korean barbecue, although for some reason, the place we went to was super expensive for very low quality meat.  We still don’t know why it was so expensive.  We went to another Korean barbecue place that was a lot better and cheaper, but I felt that the Korean barbecue restaurants were on par in terms of quality.  And oh yes, there was also lots of kimchi.

E-Sports

I’m not a fan of StarCraft, but I play DotA 2, so naturally we watched a DotA 2 tournament. There was no cost to watch the game, but there wasn’t that big of an audience either, so a rowdy audience was definitely missing. The game was exciting and we saw a lot of pro plays, but the cast was all in Korean.

Before entering the stadium, we saw people at the entrance wearing Zephyr shirts, and I thought, “they must be fans of that team or something” and asked them for directions for where to get food. Later, I found out they played for Zephyr. Awkward.

During the intermission, I got to chat a bit with “Whiplash”, one of the English casters, who was casting the game for Internet viewers. It was weird at first since he introduced himself by his online name – quite unexpected. From him, I found out that teams who play in Korea generally live together in the same house so it’s easy to practice together.

Pet Cafes

I heard much about them before my trip. It definitely sounded intriguing. Go in, get a drink, pet the animals, right? Kind of, only if you find one that likes being pet by you! Most of the animals we saw didn’t really pay any attention to us except for this one beagle who was licking my friend’s face non stop.

Plastic Surgery

Ads. Ads everywhere. In the street, in the metro – complete with before and after pictures. Walked by a lot of clinics too. Yup it’s definitely a thing in Korea.

Link to more photos: here

The day after my friends and I went to Berchtesgaden, we went to Wilhelma, the Stuttgart Zoological Botanical Gardens.  It has a fancy name, but it basically is a zoo with exhibits for other life such as plants and insects.

Seeing as how I’ve never been to a zoo before (at least I don’t remember), but I have been to the safari and Biodome in Quebec, this trip to the zoo was quite interesting for me.

To get in, my friends used their student ID’s to get a student discount, but I however, didn’t have my ID anymore since I lost it.  I ended up using a letter of enrolment from my university to prove my student identity.  The best part about doing that was that I managed to communicate what I wanted speaking only German.

When we entered, we looked on the park map to see the best route we could use to see everything, but since the zoo had a plan for that, we decided to follow it.  It had a strange system of showing visitors which path to follow.  The intended path was marked by a yellow elephant with a direction to walk in and the path back to the beginning was marked by a blue elephant.  We tried our best to follow this route, but we didn’t really manage too well.  We still ended up diverging from the path.

Our first destination was a group of greenhouses that had plants from all over the world, but in particular, we saw a lot of cacti.  For some reason, the people at the zoo really like cacti.

Moving on, we saw a flock of flamingos just chilling there.  They didn’t really do much except just stand there and drink water.  We did get to see some flamingos standing on one leg just like what a lot of animal documentaries show.

Moving further along, we saw a peacock just wandering around the park.  We didn’t get to see it open its tail, but it was still pretty cool to see one live.  It kept trying to move away from the little kids that kept trying to chase it, but I still got a picture.  Apparently, according to Wiki, the umbrella term for the animal is “peafowl”, while the name “peacock” only refers to the male peafowl.

While we walked around the zoo (while deviating from the yellow elephant path), we came across a lot of signs that pointed to the “Titanenwurz”, which in English means “Titanum”, the tall and large plant local to Sumatra that has a smell similar to rotting corpses when it blooms.  Apparently, this zoo holds the world record for the tallest Titanum plant during blooming.

Moving further along, we ended up indoors and the only lights that illuminated the inside were a set of blue lamps inside a display.  In the display, there were bats.  Some of them hung there while others flew around randomly.  They didn’t shriek or make any noises for echolocation or anything like that though.  They were also bigger than I thought they were.

Moving further along, we came across plants that reminded me very much of Pokémon.  I guess the Pokémon were modeled after this plant.

The next part was the best part of the zoo: monkeys.  The monkeys here were really small and all they did was jump around from one branch to another.  While I was taking pictures of them, I moved my camera a little too close and it tried to grab my camera strap.  I felt its fingers brush against my hand before I moved my camera away.  While watching the monkeys, I kept hearing little kids yelling “baby monkeys!” in German.

There were other monkeys too, but those weren’t as interesting because they mostly just sat around eating (especially the apes).  Next, we moved on to see the more exotic animals – the big cats.  For some reason, these animals weren’t really in the mood to do anything.  Instead of sitting around like the monkeys, the big cats pretty much were just lying there.  None of the cats did anything special except the leopard when it got up to eat.

Next we saw other exotic animals like okapi (never even heard of this animal before) and various African/South Asian animals.  It was pretty cool to see an elephant duck down to grab food with its nose to eat.  I’ve never seen anything like that before.  The giraffes were cool too, but they weren’t quite as tall as I expected, but maybe these ones are of a different species or are just younger.  The rhino wasn’t very cool either since the zoo staff got rid of its horn, but maybe it’s safer that way.  But then again, a pissed off hippo could probably destroy a rhino.

The zoo also had some less interesting animals such as cows, chickens, lambs and various other farm animals that people eat on a regular basis.  This was probably the most boring part of the zoo.  These animals smelled absolutely terrible and weren’t very interesting to look at.  The cows here were only penned in by a electrified rope (which my friend touched and received quite a nasty shock – that was quite hilarious).  The next bunch of animals were saw were the bears.  Seeing the bears promptly reminded me of Stephen Colbert’s famous quote, “bears are godless killing machines!”  They do look quite menacing, except for the polar bear, who didn’t really feel like doing anything at all.  Maybe it was too hot or something.

The zoo even had some animals from Australia like crocodiles/alligators (I know the difference between them, but I don’t know how to “see” the difference) and kangaroos.  We didn’t get to see the kangaroos up close because some zoo personnel were cleaning the area at the time.

At this point, I realized that the zoo was a lot bigger than I thought.  We had already walked around for about 3 hours but there was still so much more to see.  Here are some more animals we saw.

Here comes the nastiest part of the exhibits – the insects.  Here they showed a lot of just purely disgusting pests like cockroaches, although, there were some cool ones like the insect that is able to disguise itself as a leaf.  They camouflaged themselves so well that it was almost impossible to see them.  However, on the more pleasant side, butterflies are always nice to see.

To finish our adventure at the zoo, we saw penguins.  I had no idea that there are some species of penguins that can survive such warm temperatures (or maybe all of them can – I don’t know).

After about 5 hours of walking around the zoo, we saw almost everything.  By now, our legs were very tired and we didn’t really have the energy to walk around anymore.  Instead, we did have enough energy for video games because afterward, we all went back to my flat for a good Team Fortress 2 (thanks to Valve for making this game free to play) LAN party.

More photos here

Our latest trip took us to Prague, the capital of Czech Republic.  After going there, I’d say that Prague is one of the most beautiful cities in Europe. The city managed to retain its wonderful architecture because the city was not heavily bombed (relative to other cities) during WWII. Otherwise, we could not see this wonderful architecture today.

Since I lost my wallet, I couldn’t use my Bahn25 for my discounted tickets anymore, so I ended up cancelling my train tickets and instead went with others who were going by car.  We met at around 7:30 in the morning and began our journey.  As usual, I slept for most of the car ride.

The Mosaic House Hotel

We first went to our hotel to meet up with the others.  When I first walked into the hotel, I was surprised at how nice everything was and we only had to pay 72 euros for 3 nights.  The lobby of the hotel was also a restaurant/pub and each night, the hotel would hold events/parties.

The hotel room even had the coolest shower.

Normally, I don’t post about showers, but this one was too nice to ignore!

Czech Crowns

Since Czech Republic didn’t adopt the Euro, we had to go to the currency exchange.  Before leaving we learned that the rate was about 1 euro for about 24 crowns.  When we got our currency exchanged, we felt so much richer because of all the extra zeroes.

The Czech bills look cool too, but maybe that’s because I’ve never seen them before.  I really hate the change though.  Apparently a 1 crown coin exists and those were really annoying to carry around.

Old Town Square

At the old town square we saw some of the most well known historic landmarks in Prague such as the Týn Church, Jan Hus Monument, St. Nicholas Church, and the Prague Astronomical Clock.  We went here on the first day as well as the second day when we went on the free walking tour.  Many of the historic landmarks survived throughout the Second World War unlike many other cities because this city did not get bombed as heavily as other cities.

The tour guide talked about the history of Czech Republic briefly and explained the significance of the buildings and interesting factoids about them.  For example, he explained the story of how Jan Hus was burned at the stake, how the astronomical clock doesn’t actually correctly predict the correct positions of the sun and moon since it assumed that the Earth was in the center of the universe, and that the designer of the clock was blinded by people who did not want him to build a similar/identical clock elsewhere (what a terrible way to be treated after such an accomplishment).  He also talked about the defenestrations that occurred in Prague prior to the Hussite and Thirty Years War.  He even told us about random facts like how pedestrian lights in Prague only stay green for 9 seconds.

Random Frisbee Game

On our way up to Prague Castle, we decided to stop for a beer nearby.  I got to try one of the Czech beers called Gambrinus, a type of Pilsner.  It tasted similar to all the other kinds of Pilsner I’ve tried.  Afterward, we came across a grass field and decided to play some Frisbee.  While passing around the Frisbee, we somehow got the Frisbee stuck in the tree and spent about 10 minutes trying to get it down.

We even played a game of Ultimate Frisbee too. I ended up running so much, and I surprised myself as to how long I ran for. I guess going on all these trips and walking around all the time really boosted my endurance without me realizing it.

The Tears of Stalin

While walking toward the castle, we came across a giant metronome on the hill.  In front of it, a huge sign read “The Tears of Stalin” with some missing letters.   According to our tour guide, he said that the area used to be the site of the world’s largest representation of Stalin until the statue was destroyed in 1962.

The picture is crooked because I took it while crossing the street, but at the top of the hill, the words can be see (although some letters are missing).

Prague Castle

When we arrived at the entrance to Prague Castle, we saw two palace guards dressed in a really formal uniform and they behaved like the guards at Buckingham Palace.  Each one wore a blue uniform with a rifle fitted with a bayonet.

When we reached the courtyard of the castle, we came across a bunch of people coming out from the cathedral while chanting.  They even had people wearing backpacks with a giant speaker coming out of it.  I remembered that the day was Corpus Christi and that would probably explain what was going on.

Once the people passed, we saw the St. Vitus Cathedral up close.  It seemed as massive as the cathedral in Cologne.  Apparently, this cathedral here is the largest in Prague.  We didn’t get to go in though because of the Christian holiday.

Everywhere around the castle were examples of really well kept architecture from hundreds of years ago.  It was quite an amazing site to be able to see all of that.

On our way down the mountain, we took tram 22.  Before going to Prague, I had read on the travel report for the city and it explicitly stated that lots of pickpockets operate along that tram route specifically targeting tourists.  So in order to prevent myself from getting pickpocketed again, I was extremely vigilant in watching my surroundings and protecting my stuff (I think I’m quite paranoid with that now).  Nothing happened and I didn’t notice anything suspicious either.  I guess the time that we went wasn’t exactly the peak traffic time.

Church of St. James

The next day, we went on the walking tour around the city.  We began at the old town square where our tour guide explained a lot of Czech history.  He also took us a number of other locations.  The next location we went to was the Church of St. James, where someone happened to be getting married that day.  That’s a pretty cool and unique sight if you ask me.

The tour guide also went on to talk about the history of this place.  In particular he told the story about Vratislav was buried alive by accident in the church.  Story says that the man climbed out of his coffin, but could not get past the stone doors.  Some thought his screams were because his spirit could not find peace so they tried to resolve the problem using holy water.  When the tomb was opened several years later, people found his dead body outside of his coffin.

Also in the cathedral is a statue of a mummified forearm which belonged to a thief who tried to steal from a statue of Virgin Mary inside the church.  Apparently the statue grabbed his hand and refused to let go.  After the thief’s hand was cut off, it was kept at the church to serve as a warning for all thieves.

Franz Kafka

Moving on to the next destination, the tour guide showed us a statue of Franz Kafka, a famous author from Prague.  The statue represented him conquering his demons in his dreams.

Before Kafka died, he did not want his works to be published.  He requested that all his works be burned, but the friend that he entrusted this task to felt that it would be a waste to do such a thing.  After publishing his works, Kafka became very well known and is now considered to be one of the best writers of the 20th century.

The Jewish District

Our next destination was the Jewish district of the city.  This is where we got to see a lot of synagogues build hundreds of years ago.  One of the synagogues, the Spanish Synagogue, had a design unlike most synagogues.  The tour guide said that the synagogue looks more like a mosque and could be due to the fact that the synagogue was built with the help of Muslims and the mosque-like design served as a thank you to them.

The next synagogue we went to was the oldest synagogue in Europe.  Known as the “Old New Synagogue”, it doesn’t look very beautiful as far as architecture goes.  If the tour guide did not mention that it was the oldest in Europe, I would have walked past it thinking that it was just any old building.

The last synagogue we saw was known as the “High Synagogue”.  Unlike the other two, this one didn’t have as interesting of a history.

After seeing the Jewish District, the tour proceeded close to the Vltava river, the river that runs through Prague.

The Rudolfinum

Near the river, was the Rudolfinum, which is a music auditorium.  It is also the home stage of the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra.

Walking further along the river, we could see the Charles Bridge.  And further in the distance up in the mountain, we could see Prague Castle.

Charles Bridge

The Charles Bridge, named after Charles IV, used to be the only bridge across the Vltava river and therefore, this bridge was used extensively as a trade route between Western and Eastern Europe.

While on the bridge, it started to rain and all the artists selling painters instantly covered up their art to protect it.  Unlike last week in Munich, I brought an umbrella.  On a different part of the hill, we could also see the tip of what looks to be a lookalike of the Eiffel Tower.  Apparently, it is an lookout tower and a transmission tower.

One the bridge, there were so many statues across its length.  One of them however, according to the tour guide, was of John of Nepomuk, who was thrown into the river hundreds of years ago.  This man is usually portrayed with a halo of five stars.

For some strange reason, the weather couldn’t really make up its mind at the time, so I got interesting pictures of the bridge with rain clouds and white clouds hovering over it.

Epic Karaoke

That night at the hotel, they had an karaoke event.  Those who were brave/drunk enough, went up on stage to sing for everyone.  When we were there, it was quite rowdy, and our group had quite a bit to drink too.  Some of my friends went up to sing “Summer of ‘69” by Bryan Adams.  They were like the Backstreet Bro(y)s.

While they were up there singing, the audience was really into it too.  People were dancing too.  I guess that’s a good thing.  Just for kicks, I took my friends lighter and started waving it back and forth like at a real concert.  Later on, with some “encouragement” from my friends (probably peer pressure), I went up with them too.  Never went up on a stage like that before, but I guess it worked out.  Afterward, the others went to the largest club in Prague.  Apparently it has six floors.  I didn’t go though, because I really hate clubbing.

International Music Festival

While in Prague, the International Music Festival happened to be on and so we went there to check it out.  I wasn’t that excited for this, since I’m not exactly a fan of any of the music they played there.  What was cool was that the event people shipped a truck full of beer and hooked it up to all the beer taps.  It’s like a dump truck (but with a smaller container that didn’t spin) carrying beer being transported over water.

When we left the festival, we came across the weirdest demonstration of modern art.  Just looking at it confused the hell out of me.  It just made no sense.

Modern Art

There was an modern art exhibit that people could walk through.  We didn’t go in it, but as we walked past the exit, we looked inside and saw some pretty strange stuff.  There was a couple standing in a room with glass windows on all sides and all they did was hug each other.  They stayed in the same hugging position and didn’t move.  Another exhibit had a tent with white cloth draped all over it with someone inside dressed in a similar way (I didn’t notice at first until he/she started moving) and all he/she did was move around randomly inside.  It made no sense.

There was also this thing called a “Sleeping Box”.  I guess it works really well for people who want to block the sunlight while sleeping outside.  Or maybe it was part of the modern art thing.  I don’t know.  The weirdest part about it were people randomly walking around holding a copy of “The Great Gatsby” that had an iTouch/iPhone taped on one of the pages and walked around reciting lines from a play.  It just didn’t make any sense.

The National Museum

Since the modern art exhibit was close to the box office for tickets to the opera, we decided to see if there were any tickets available for that.  Unfortunately, all their tickets had sold out.  Instead, what we did was go to the National Museum to see a mini classical music concert.

The concert played music from famous composers such as Vivaldi, Bach and Mozart.  When I heard the sound of the violins playing, it sounded so nice as I heard the instruments themselves as well as the echo.  I really admired the skill that these people had in music.

Food

In addition to just visiting landmarks around the city, we also tried some of their cuisine.  For food, I got to try their pork knuckle and their goulash.  They also served more mainstream things like perogies and burgers.  The perogies and burgers don’t sound very Czech (maybe not the pork knuckle either), but it was still very delicious.

The menu said that the pork knuckle was only 250 grams, but when they served it to me it seemed more like a kilo of just pork.  Somehow, I ate all of it (except for the really fatty part).

We also went to another restaurant called the “Iron Curtain”.  It was set up using the most stereotypical communist way.  It was underground and in every hallway was some paraphernalia from the communist times.  They were items like propaganda posters, or really old motorbikes.  They even had busts of Stalin and Lenin.  The front cover of the menu even said we’d have a “propaganda experience” and indeed we did.  The item with the best name on the menu had to be the CCCP Burger, where CCCP stood for the “Classic Capitalist Cheeseburger Plate”.  Oh the irony.

The “Iron Curtain” had the best restaurant atmosphere I’ve ever seen.  We left them a generous tip and the waitress was very happy about that.

Drinks

Many know that Pilsner beer comes from the Czech Republic, so everywhere in Prague, people drank Pilsner.  They had lot of brands, but the two most common ones were Gambrinus and Pilsner Urquell.  Apparently, the original Budweiser, came from Czech Republic and not from America.

We also tried another drink called Absinthe.  It is highly alcoholic (45 – 74% ABV).  According to Wiki, it says “Absinthe has been portrayed as a dangerously addictive psychoactive drug” and so, many countries banned it (Canada included).  However, it isn’t proven that the drink is any more dangerous than other types of liquor.

We prepared it by lighting a mixture of sugar and absinthe on fire and then dunking that mixture in a glass of water.  By lighting the mixture on fire, the sugar would caramelize and the absinthe would lose some of its alcohol content.  Apparently, that is one of the mainstream preparation methods for the drink.

We drank it and depending on the concentration of sugar, the drink would either be too bitter or too sweet. I didn’t like it very much. We even tried it without the sugar. We just lit the absinthe on fire and had a flaming shot. That drink just burned as it went down. Someone mentioned that it was kind of like Bacardi 151.

Going Home

On the morning of the fourth day, we went back to Stuttgart.  On the whole, the trip wasn’t very expensive.  It only cost me about 200 euros with transportation and accommodations included.  We even ate out at a restaurant every night.  If I had a wallet at the time, it wouldn’t have hurt at all.

More photos here

Whenever one mentions the city of Brussels, a few things come to my mind, mainly chocolate and beer.  Before actually visiting the city, I really expected that sort of thing, but I was wrong…oh so wrong.

We left in the morning of the 11th in a very uneventful train ride that lasted for about six hours before we actually reached the city.  Upon arrival, we got off the train in a very typical looking European train station.  We walked around the city and found our hotel.  They assigned us a room for four people even though our party only had two people (we would have had more people if we could have arranged it in time).  The room even had a flat screen TV and a bathtub (not just a regular shower!).  What a great first impression.

After dropping off a few things, we went out to explore.  We didn’t really have a plan as to what we wanted to see, so we walked from one place to another with an attitude like, “hey, that looks cool, let’s go there.”  Using this method of exploring, we saw a few buildings with really cool architecture, like the Basilica of the Sacred Heart, and the Square Ambiorix.

After reaching the basilica, we realized that we ventured really far from the city center, so we decided to take the metro to the city center.  At the metro stop, we looked on the map to see which direction we needed to go in.  One of the local with his family waited at the metro stop and saw us looking at the map and so he explained how to get to the city center.  I suppose he could instantly tell that we were tourists.  The guy seemed nice, but almost too nice.  I found that kind of suspicious and we avoided him for the rest of the metro ride.

We went on the metro, and off we went.  A direct route to the city center didn’t exist from where we were so we had to transfer to a different train.  One thing I noticed right away at our transfer station was the fact that there were so many people trying to cram on a train.  I saw this and knew that could be trouble.  Before going to Brussels, I had read on the Canadian foreign affairs site about what to look out for in Belgium.  It explicitly warned travellers about pickpockets operating at metro stations.  Knowing this bit of information, I pretty much kept my hands in my pockets the whole time to prevent anybody from getting in there.

As I got on this crowded train, I did my best to get on the train while watching out for any petty thieves.  At one point, my mind wandered, and my hands left my pocket.  During the time between getting on the train and cramming on with everyone else, the dextrous hand of a pickpocket reached into the left front pocket of my jeans and grabbed hold of my precious wallet.  Not long after, I noticed my empty pocket and immediately knew what happened.  I had let my guard down for less than a minute and disaster struck.  In a panic, I looked around for where my wallet could have gone even though I knew that all of my attempts would prove futile.

I looked at my friend and simply said, “somebody stole my wallet”.  My friend then looked at me with an expression that said, “are you kidding me?”  Normally, I joke around a lot, but never about something like this.  I was dead serious.  I knew what I had to do next.  Call the credit card company to block my credit card and go to the police station to report the crime.  I didn’t really see a point in reporting the crime since they couldn’t really do anything to get my stuff back, but I might need the report as proof for losing the cards that I had in there.

I talked to the first staff member of the metro I found and asked him where one would go to report a crime.  I followed his instructions and when I arrived at the station, I found a police outpost.  I went inside to talk to the police about the crime, but they simply told me that they were closed for the day and directed me back to the place I came from for help.  Really?  Are the police in this city that incompetent?

Knowing that I couldn’t really get these people to help me, I went back to where I came from.  I went up to the information point and asked an employee there where I could go.  Two security guards came out and directed me to yet another police outpost.  This one had closed too.  Okay, whatever, so what if the police here suck?  At the very least, I had to call to cancel my credit card.  I asked the security guards where I could have access to a phone to cancel my card.  They led me to the nearest phone booth.  Really?  My wallet was stolen.  How could I possibly have any money to make a phone call?  They clearly weren’t very bright. 

Afterward, one of the security guards took out his cell phone and called a number for stopping credit cards.  After talking to the guy on the other end, I found that he could only block credit cards local to Belgium and he gave me a different number to call (I really hate bureaucracy).  The security guard looked at the number I just wrote down and just shook his head.  He probably didn’t want me calling it because it was a long distance number.  I guess he cared more about his phone bill than helping someone out.

The next thing they did was direct me to an actual police station nearby.  Luckily, they were still open when I arrived.  I borrowed their phone and called the number that the security didn’t let me call earlier.  The guy on the other end told me that this number only works for Visa cards.  I had a MasterCard.  I was given yet another number to call except this time, the number didn’t work.  I don’t know how I was able to interact with so many incompetent people in one day.  I thought about what I could do next and realized that I could call home and ask my parents for the correct number.  I briefly told them about what happened over the phone, assured that everything else was okay and that I didn’t lose my passport.  They gave me the number; I called it; and then got my card blocked.  I even arranged for a new card to be sent to me.

The next step thing to do was to get the police report.  I waited around for an hour or two and finally got everything done.  I basically told the guy what happened, where it happened, and what was in my wallet.  My wallet had 170 euros, driver’s license, my student ID, two bank cards, a credit card, my Bahn 25 card, and my Stuttgart metro pass.  By now it was 8:30 at night.  I hadn’t eaten since the morning either so I was immensely hungry.  Using money I borrowed from my friend, I went to eat at McDonald’s.  Afterward, I spent the rest of the night walking around the city.  Despite the fact that I wasn’t in the mood to do anything anymore, I still walked around the city and saw what I could.  During my walk, I could see how shady the city actually was.  Some parts of the city were dominated by shady streets full of foreign immigrants.  I suppose that’s the reason for why some people here need to resort to stealing to make a living.

The next morning, we took the first train out and went to Amsterdam.  We had already booked our accommodations there before leaving Germany, so it didn’t make sense to go home early.

When I told my friends this story about my wallet, a few of them found it really surprising that pickpockets managed to steal out of a front pocket.  It surprised me at the time too.  Some of my friends even shared stories about how someone they knew once got pickpocketed in Brussels too.  If only I had known that earlier.  I guess it’s like what my parents said afterward, “I learned my lesson the hard way and paid for it with my wallet.”

More photos here