Let’s Cross The Street… Diagonally!

This is no surprise really. There are lots of people in Tokyo. The crazy thing is that at the Shibuya crossing, the lights for cars can be red at the same time for all directions, and allows pedestrians to cross the intersection in any direction they want.

Their Metro System Is Complicated

That picture there shows only the metro lines operated by the JR Railway Company. There is another set that is run by other companies such as the Tokyo Metro Company. Route planning apps save the day!

Nintendo Is Big Around Here

Akihabara has many shops that sell used gaming consoles like Gameboys, Super Nintendos, and N64’s. They even sell tons of used games for them too. I managed to pick up a used copy of Tetris DS before I left.

I Finally Played TGM3 at the Arcade

TGM3 is a Japanese variation of Tetris that is designed to be very very hard (see this). The video starts getting crazy at about 3 minutes and becomes completely insane at about 5:08. Ever since playing lots of Tetris during my undergrad and learning about this game, I finally got the chance to play this at the arcade and not on an emulator. This was at HEY (Hirose Entertainment Yard) in Akihabara.

People Still Like Pokemon

I don’t think kids today in North America still watch Pokemon, but in Japan it’s still popular – popular enough for Pokemon themed stores.

Japanese War History

Yasukuni Shrine is a shrine that commemorates those who died serving the Empire of Japan. Some of these commemorated people happen to be considered war criminals, where 14 of them are A-Class war criminals, which makes this place quite controversial. It was reported that Shinzo Abe, as the Prime Minister of Japan, visited this shrine, which angered the governments of China and Korea. Near the shrine itself, there is a museum that chronicles Japanese war history, known as the Yushukan, where visitors can see various relics and artifacts from the different wars that Japan has been involved in.

The Future Is Here

The Miraikan, also known as the National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation, displays the latest cutting-edge technology from Japan. Asimo, the Honda Robot is one of the main attractions here, as well as the display of humanoid android robots (like the picture below).

Odaiba, A Less Busy Part of Tokyo

Odaiba is an artificial island in Tokyo Bay, and has lots of attractions like scenery, museums (like the Miraikan), shopping, and amusement parks (like Legoland and Joypolis).

Lots of Temples and Shrines

Tokyo has no shortage of temples and shrines. The Sensoji Temple in Asakusa is among the famous ones. To me it is that Japan is to temples and shrines as Europe is to churches and cathedrals.

Scenery at High Places

Tokyo Skytree is the tallest structure in Japan and features an observation deck that allows visitors to see the surrounding area. I felt my ears popping as the elevator took me to the top because of the sheer height of the building. At the observation deck, there are touch screens that give information on various landmarks that can be seen. On a clear day, it is possible to see Mount Fuji from here.

For Collectors of Figurines

The Akihabara Radio Hall has a collection of stores with lots and lots of figurines from various anime series. Other stores even sell models of tanks, battleships, etc. There was one in particular that sold giant models from blockbuster Hollywood movies like Robocop, Batman, and Terminator. Would have liked to take a better picture, but they had a strict no photography policy.

WTF

It’s true. Japan has lots of weird stuff. That picture below is for a place called the Robot Restaurant. It’s hard to explain. It’s better to watch this (it starts off pretty weird and just gets weirder).

Links to more photos:

• Tokyo
• Akihabara
• Asakusa
• Yasukuni Shrine
• Odaiba
• Tokyo Skytree

The eerie music played continuously in the background.  I don’t remember what the music was, but reading more about it, it is the source of an urban legend surrounding the “Lavender Town Syndrome”.  Apparently, there was a brief peak in suicides among 7-12 year old kids shortly after the release of Pokémon Red and Green in Japan.  I don’t remember being that frightened by the ghosts when I was little.

I also remember talking to the old man in Viridian City who taught the player how to catch Pokémon and then using him as an exploit to get to MIssingNo off the coast of Cinnabar Island.

All sorts of weird stuff happened like seeing level 100+ Pokémon and the massive replication of items in the sixth inventory slot (that’s a lot of Masterballs and Rare Candies).

And then there was Gary, who was probably the biggest jerk ever encountered.  At every step of the game, he’d ALWAYS be one step ahead of the player.  In the beginning, he purposely picks the Pokémon that is your pick’s weakness.  And later in the game, after the player gets all the Gym Badges, it turns out Gary got them all before the player.  And he still remains ahead even after fighting the Elite 4.

At least, at the end, there is a great feeling of satisfaction after beating him.  If I remember correctly, according to Professor Oak, he didn’t give his Pokémon “trust and love”.  Gary was a bit of an ass, so I guess he deserved it.

Area 51

I think this was the first rail shooter I ever played.  All I remember from this game was shooting aliens with the light gun at the arcade or on the PlayStation.

Gauntlet Legends

I played this game when I was like 9 and I’d all I’d do was mash buttons and things on the screen would die (except when I ran into those stupid door traps).  It was great.  Surprisingly, one of the most memorable things about this game was when the narrator would say something like, “Warrior needs food — badly!”, with the most epic tone possible.

House of the Dead

Here’s another super classic rail shooter.  I played this when I was like 8 and it was so scary back then.  Now that I look back, this game came out way before people thought the idea of zombies were cool.  Each boss in the game had a special weak spot that the player had to shoot at in order to kill them faster, but the last boss didn’t have one.  And…I always shot the hostages…

Hydro Thunder

The most memorable thing about this game for me was when the game narrator would announce “HYDRO THUNDER!!!” really loud the moment the game started.  It made the game sound more epic than it was.  I don’t think this game was ever as good as the shooters though.

Metal Slug X

This is the game that every Asian shopping mall had.  People put in quarter after quarter trying to beat this game.  The player died so easily in this game and the game made so much money that way.  I don’t think I played this at the arcade often, but it was a great game.  The player had to fight through hordes of enemy soldiers while rescuing POW’s that looked like Tom Hanks in Cast Away and for some reason, these POW’s would somehow give the player powerups (as if they couldn’t use it themselves).

Star Wars Trilogy

This rail shooter was probably one of the most unique ones.  Rather than using a light gun, the player had to use a joystick and shoot at the enemies on the screen.  Since it also followed the Star Wars storyline, the player got to shoot TIE-Fighters in an X-Wing to blow up the Death Star(s), use a blaster against invading stormtroopers on Hoth and even tie the cable around the AT-AT’s legs to knock them over.  The player even gets to fight Darth Vader and Boba Fett.  Even though I played this game so much, I could never defeat Darth Vader.  Every time he threw down his cape right before his next slash, I’d always miss the block.  That was annoying.  The best level was Death Star II.  The recreation of it in that game was just amazing for its time.

Time Crisis II

I thought this game was so cool just because the player got to step on a pedal to hide.  That never happened in all the other rail shooters I’d played.  It was so awesome.  Each click on the light gun felt really nice too because the slide would go back every time the gun was “fired”.  It gave a really nice plastic clicking sound that I always associated to this game.

Tokyo Wars

This was one of the few multiplayer games at the arcade where people could play against each other (other than racing games).  It was so fun to just rush in with a tank and just start firing without a care for any strategy whatsoever (as if I had any when I was 9).  Somehow I was still pretty good at the game.  I’d always look at the minimap to see where the enemies were so I never drove around randomly.  The narrator in the game would also say something like, “enemy tank to the rear!” and every time the player fired a shot, the whole chair would shake.

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

Here is my next travel blog entry about my visit to Berlin. In a short three days, we managed hit up quite a few places in the city, especially the historical areas about the Cold War and the Second World War. I would have liked to have posted this sooner, but my computer refused to cooperate.

Massive Train Delay

I was always under the impression that the Deutsche Bahn was always on time, but I guess that’s not true anymore. The City Night Line was supposed to leave at 12 AM from Mannheim and arrive in Berlin at around 7:30, but due to a train crash causing a chemical spill in Switzerland, our train took a detour. It arrived three and a half hours late. At first it was supposed to only be a 170 minute delay, but as time went on, the delay went longer and longer. To pass the time, we walked around Mannheim late at night, and pretty much saw the entire city, AKA the schloss, in about an hour. We spent the rest of the time just moping around the station. It was cold at night too and I never expected to be waiting so long so I ended up freezing when I was outside. I tried sleeping on the benches, but that didn’t really work for me, and instead ended up sitting there eating snacks until the train came. Maybe we should have chilled at a bar instead. Because of the long wait for the train, I didn’t sleep too well. It also didn’t help that I forgot to reserve a spot that had a bed, and I instead reserved a reclining seat instead. Because of the late train, the conductors handed out a giant form in pure German for people to fill out to get part of their money back.

Berlin Hauptbahnhof

We arrived in Berlin at about 10:30 in the morning, 3 hours later than scheduled. We all got off the train, still super tired, and started our journey in Berlin. The Berlin main station was the biggest station I’d seen so far. It had a really modern look using glass everywhere they could. Its sheer size allowed for a lot of businesses to open inside the station. The station had three floors with two floors used as train platforms. Coincidentally, it was also the station’s fifth birthday. When we got outside, we could see the German Reichstag within a walkable distance.

German Reichstag

Seeing that we could already see the Reichstag when we walked out of the Hauptbahnhof, we proceeded there first. Since I played so many World War II games, I already knew what the Reichstag looked like. Over the years, the Reichstag underwent a few renovations such as the glass dome that was added after the war. The rest of the building looked so similar to what I had seen in video games and historical photos that as I walked up the stairs, it briefly reminded of me of the guy with the flamethrower in the cut-scene in Call of Duty 5. I also remembered some of the iconic photographs I’d seen such as the soldier waving the flag of the Soviet Union on the roof.

Prior to going to Berlin, I had reserved spots for the roof terrace and the dome (according to their website, people couldn’t go up there without a reservation). Before going in, I had to put my stuff through their X-Ray machine (maybe they’re afraid of terrorists or something). They had confiscated my Swiss Army Knife for the duration that I was up there. At the roof terrace, the staff issued audio guides to every guest. While walking to different areas of the dome, the audio guide would automatically begin talking about parts of the city that one could see from that part of the dome. I didn’t really pay attention to the boring voice of the audio guide and the information that it had wasn’t all that interesting (it really didn’t matter to me if I knew how many rooms were in a particular building or the land area it took up).

Brandenburg Gate

From the top of the Reichstag, we could see the one of the symbols of Germany, the Brandenburg Gate. It is located at one end of the street Unter den Linden, and was used as a sign of peace during the Prussian Empire. Since it is also one of the most famous landmarks in Europe, there were naturally a lot of tourists here. So much so that there were people dressed up in weird costumes to earn money from people taking pictures with them. There were a few people holding American and USSR flags and even people dressed up as Star Wars characters. Near the gate were also a embassies of various countries such as France and the United States. One of the buildings even proudly waved the flag of Quebec (I don’t know why and it wasn’t the Canadian embassy either).

Eastener Hostel

By now, we were already super tired from the lack of sleep and from carrying our bags around all day. We took the city train to our hostel for a quick rest and to drop off some of our stuff. The man at the hostel was super thorough in explaining the rules of the hostel (with his East German accent) and even took the time to give us a map and point of the major tourist destinations on it. Using this map, we were able to find all the places we wanted to go to. By the end of the trip, the map had tears in several places and random folds here and there, clearly showing how intensely I used it.

Ampelmann

While walking around the city, I noticed that the pedestrian traffic light signals had a different design than the rest of Germany. Apparently, the traffic light man used in some places in Berlin were based off of the design used in former East Germany. I thought this Ampelmann guy was pretty cool.

The Remains of the Berlin Wall near Nordbahnhof

One of the locations that the map pointed us to were to some of the remnants of the Berlin Wall. Before coming to Berlin, I had a thought of posing at the wall with a hammer, but I never got one and I don’t think the people would have been very happy with me doing that. The segments of the wall here showed a lot of graffiti along its entire length. The city also preserved the guard tower and showed some of the methods of preventing escapes. Also in the area was a memorial for those who died while trying to flee to West Germany.

East German Cars

One of the peculiar things about Berlin was the fact that tourists can still take rides in cars (known as a Trabant or Trabi for short) that the GDR once used. I looked inside one of them and it just seemed so old and run down. I figure the only reason that these cars are still around are because of their historical/moneymaking value.

Really Cool Old-Style German Font

When I walked through some of the old train stations, I came across a really cool looking vintage font that I felt was so characteristic of Germany. Maybe I watched too many documentaries or something.

Checkpoint Charlie

Taking the train from Nordbahnhof, we made our way to Checkpoint Charlie, one of the border crossings once used before the unification of East and West Germany. The old border crossing booth and the sign telling people they’re leaving the American Sector still remains today. Standing outside are also two people holding American flags. Near the border booth, there is a giant sign with an American soldier on it and on the reverse side, there is a Soviet soldier. On the street, street vendors sold random things like fur hats with the logo of the Soviet Union on it, gas masks, and flags of the GDR and USSR.

Haus am Checkpoint Charlie

Adjacent to the border crossing, there was a museum dedicated to the documenting the border security between East and West Germany. The museum documented various methods of escape such as hiding people inside the hood of a car and using a hot air balloon. Also displayed were tools that people used to escape like special wall climbing footwear and stories of escapes. Seeing all these different methods made me realize how smart these people were. I would have never thought of something like that. Sadly, I was already super tired while walking through this museum and I was ready to just go back to the hostel and sleep. It was still light out at the time. Unfortunately, we weren’t allowed to take photographs in this museum.

DFB Cup Final

While in Berlin, we saw a lot of people walking around wearing stuff from football teams and apparently the DFB Cup Final was to be played in the Berlin Olympic Stadium. To catch the football game, we went to a bar to tune in. While at this bar, I got to try Berlin-style wheat beer. Theirs was different than the wheat beer I usually drink because here, they had beer cocktails. I tried the red and green Berliner wheat beer. The red one had a raspberry flavour while the green one had a woodruff flavour.

The Fernsehturm

The Fernsehturm is the TV tower where people can go up to see a view of the city. It is also one of the tallest buildings in the European Union. We didn’t go here since we didn’t really care so much about the view and we went to see other landmarks instead.

Potsdamer Platz at Night

According to my boss at work, Potsdamer Platz was a must see at night, and after seeing it for myself, I totally agree with him. The beauty of this place was the architecture that looked so beautiful in the night, especially the Sony Center. The roof of the Sony Center was shaped like an umbrella and its color would gradually change between blue and purple.

Französische Straße

Located on this street were the Französischer Dom, Berlin Concert House, and Deutscher Dom. Each of these three buildings have quite a bit of history and are all have amazing architecture. This place is definitely the place to be to see old-style architecture in Berlin.

Fassbender & Rausch Chocolatiers

This chocolatier is quite well known and their store is frequently visited by tourists. What makes it so special is that they built many of the landmarks in Berlin out of chocolate. Anything made of chocolate is cool. The longer I stayed in this store, the bigger craving for chocolate I had.

Führerbunker

During the Battle of Berlin, Hitler stayed in his bunker beneath his New Reich Chancellery. I went to the location of where the bunker once was only to find the area replaced by pretty regular things like shops and apartments. The side of the street here had plaques explaining the history of this area and its use for Hitler’s Bunker.

Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe

Near Hitler’s Bunker was a memorial for the Jewish victims of the holocaust. The memorial had thousands of concrete blocks, or stelae, of varying heights arranged in a grid pattern. According to one of the designers of the memorial, Peter Eisenman, he stated that “the stelae are designed to produce an uneasy, confusing atmosphere, and the whole sculpture aims to represent a supposedly ordered system that has lost touch with human reason.” Walking through the memorial reminded me so much of Bomberman. The memorial had the grid pattern just like in the game. It would probably also be really fun jumping from one block to the next, but it would have been really disrespectful.

Potsdamer Platz during the Day

To take a break and relax during the day, we went back to Potsdamer Platz for a beer. Now I understand why my boss told me to come here at night instead of during the day. It doesn’t look as nice at this hour.

Victory Column

Similar to the Arc de Triomphe on Avenue des Champs-Élysées in Paris, the Victory column stands in the end of the street Unter den Linden and is similarly surrounded by a giant roundabout. The column serves to commemorate the Prussian victories in the Danish-Prussian War, Austro-Prussian War, and the Franco-Prussian War. Surrounding the column are other smaller statues. One of the statues, I thought I saw my last name on it, but looking more closely, I realized it said “Roon” instead of “Poon”. What a bummer.

Schloss Bellevue

Located in the Tiergarten District of Berlin is the official residence of the President of Germany. We sat on the grass outside the residence to take a rest and to admire the beauty of the schloss and to watch the bike race that was happening just on the adjacent road.

Soviet War Memorial

Built using stone from the Reich Chancellery not long after the end of the Second World War, this memorial remembers the war dead of the Soviet Union, particularly the 80 000 soldiers who died in the Battle of Berlin. The memorial is of a statue of a Soviet soldier and on its left and right sides are two 152 mm Howitzer artillery pieces and two T-34 tanks (for some reason, birds like to go inside the barrel of the tank’s main gun). When I looked at the artillery piece, I tried to open the chamber for where the rounds go and tried to change the angle of the gun, but none of that worked. I’m pretty sure they didn’t want people messing with it. Behind the building is a small museum documenting the memorial’s construction and the Battle of Berlin. The memorial used to be guarded by Soviet troops during the Cold War even though it was in the British zone of occupation and now it is managed by the city.

Hackesche Höfe

One of my friends suggested that we go here since this place is known for its beautiful courtyards. It had eight interconnected courtyards, each with its own unique design. Some of the courtyards had tables for people to relax with coffee or beer while others had gardens.

Berliner Dom

Located on Museum Island, the Berliner Dom is a cathedral that belongs to the Evangelical Church. What was weird was that when we arrived there, we saw a group of people there having a cosplay party. There was one guy waving around a flag of the Empire of Japan. I never knew Anime was that big in Germany. Even weirder is that some of these kids were frolicking in the fountain in front of the Dom.

Museum Island

Another well known landmark in Berlin is Museum Island, which is an area with five internationally well known museums. They are the Altes Museum, Neues Museum, Alte Nationalgalerie, Bode Museum, and Pergamon Museum. We didn’t go in any of these museums since none of us were that interested in what the museums had to offer. The Alte Nationalgalerie had a look that seemed to have been inspired by the Greek Parthenon (but I’m not sure). While we were there, the sky started raining for about 15 minutes. It was quite refreshing since it was really hot earlier in the day.

Food

Although we didn’t try any food that were unique to Berlin (such as currywurst), we did splurge for one of our meals, and I found the food we had to be really delicious. Since Berlin is a lot closer to the coast than Stuttgart, I got to enjoy better quality seafood.

New Synagogue

Prior to the Second World War, the synagogue was badly damaged during Kristallnacht and the synagogue could no longer hold any services. Since the war, the synagogue was reconstruct and it is now the main synagogue for the Jewish community in Berlin.

Olympic Stadium

The current stadium was originally built for the 1936 Summer Olympics. Since the stadium was built during the Nazi period, the architecture of the building follows the Nazi style. Apparently, it was at these Olympic games that the tradition of the torch marathon began.

Potsdamer Platz for the Third Time

On our second night in Berlin, we went back to the Sony Center to relax for a little bit again. This time I got to try new kinds of beer such as mango and passion fruit flavoured wheat beer. It had an interesting flavour, but I thought the regular kind tasted a little better.

The Brandenburg Gate and the Reichstag at Night

When we arrived here at night, we found this place to be deserted even though the landmarks here looked amazing in the night. It was a good thing for us since there weren’t any tourists around. It allowed me to get really clear shots of these places.

The East Side Gallery

This area contains a continuous segment of the Berlin Wall that is 1.3 km in length. Along the wall are paintings from artists around the world to promote freedom in the world. The gallery also features the iconic political painting of Leonid Brezhnev and Erich Honecker kissing during the days of the GDR. There was also a souvenir shop here that stamped people’s passports with the GDR stamp for one euro. I thought that was a cool gimmick.

The Topography of Terror

To document the terrible deeds that the Nazi regime and the SS perpetrated between 1933 and 1945, an open-air museum was set up at the site of an old SS installation. It talked about how the Nazi’s transported people from conquered areas to the concentration and extermination camps set up across the continent. There was even a special exhibit just on the war crimes perpetrated by Adolf Eichmann. Near the museum were also SS buildings that have been converted to government offices.

Going Home

After three days of travelling in Berlin, we were all very tired and we were ready to go home. We went to our train platform for the ICE Sprinter about five minutes before the departure to find out that our train wasn’t there. We had no idea were it was and we didn’t want to miss the train. Apparently, some arsonists damaged some parts of the railway so the train ended up stopping on a different platform. Luckily, we found out in time and we managed to get on before it left. On the way back, I got to see some fantastic scenery of the German country side.

Souvenirs

I found that it was this trip that I spent the most money on souvenirs. I ended up buying Ampelmann themed cell phone accessories and a full sized flag of the USSR (not that I’m a communist or anything).

More photos here

Once I fix it, I can use it as a file sharing, remote desktop, and print server.  More importantly, I can delegate high memory tasks that don’t require my constant attention.  I can even play Warcraft on it.  One problem though is that I won’t be able to get Internet on that computer unless I move it downstairs or use a bridged connection.  If I move it downstairs, I can’t play Warcraft, and if I use a bridged connection, I can’t get Internet computer if I’m not home.  Maybe I can get a wireless stick.  I don’t know how good network transfers are going to be on that though.  I must do research.