Eastern Europe Day 3 - Berlin to Dresden to Prague

Good Morning! 

we are getting used to the cold now and the 6 hour difference between Singapore and Germany.

here's the view behind our hotel...there's a pretty river with nice landscape

lunch - pork knuckle with light beer.

i was surprised that my pork knuckle was not baked or fried to crispyness! it was stewed!!! OMG.

luckily our tour manager bought Singlong chilli with him. I ate my pork knuckle with the chilli and i managed to ate more than 3 quarters of it.

beautiful dresden - a retirement home for many

Eastern Europe Day 2 - Berlin

we joined a tour group of 37 people including ourselves by Chan Brothers. The flight was from Singapore to Germany Berlin, transit for 2 hours in Istanbul Turkey. The flight we took was turkish airlines which served very delicious Turkish Delights.

upon arrival, one of tour mates luggages had 2 missing wheels, so time was lost in filing a report. But that was okay cos everyone was really tired from the flight. Nobody was in a rush for anything yet.

Once the report was done, we embarked on a tour of beguiling Berlin, one of the trendiest and most cosmopolitan capitals in the world that is also steeped in a wealth of history and culture.

The first stop was to Potsdamer Platz, which is an important public square lying 1km south of Brandenburg Gate (3rd stop) and Reichstag (German Parliament Building) and close to the southeast corner of Tiergarten park.

This is also where we had our German Lunch! It's right next to a residential building by Richard Rogers.

Next stop was the iconic Berlin Wall at East Side Gallery where you can find many graffiti on it. The Berlin wall divided Berlin from 1961 to 1989. It is an open air museum with a section of the awll covered in approximately 106 paintings from all over the world as a testament for freedom.

my local guide tells us that this is one of the most famous painting - The Kiss

 Checkpoint Charlie - name given by the Western Allies to the best-known Berlin Wall crossing point between East Berlin and West Berlin. It is the third checkpoint (Alpha, Bravo, Charlie), hence the name Charlie is given. 

A "Berliner Mauer 1961-1989" plaque is placed on the floor here to signify where the wall stood.

Bradenburg gate - 18th century neoclassical triumphal arch in Berlin and one of the best known landmarks too. It is built on the site of of a former city gate that marked the start of the road from Berlin to the town of Brandenburg. It was commissioned by King Frederick William II of Prussia as a sign of peace. The gate is now closed to vehicle traffic and has been turned into a cobblestone pedestrian zone.

we also dropped by the Mercedes Benz Arena by JSK Architects with a seating capacity of 17,000.

Europe Day 04- Germany Titisee

Today's Itinerary:
Leaving from hotel Leonardo where we spent a night there.
Road trip through Germany's Black Forest
Reach Titisee
Attend Cuckoo demostration
Lunch: Local Pork Knucles, sausages and German beer
Dessert: Black Forest cake!

More road trip...
On to Schaffhausen
View the mighty Rhine Falls - Europe's largest waterfall

More road trip
On to Lucerne
Visit Chapel Bridge and Old Town
Shopping

Dinner on your own. Bleah...but luckily, a few of us have made good acquaintances with each other and could gel quite well with each other...so dinner was at Movenpick with them.

Supermarket is at train station which is near our Hotel Astoria.









a travel distance tracking device for the coach...here in europe, the coach drivers cannot drive more than 8 hours a day, and they are only allowed 2 days within a week to drive up to 10hours.


road trip photos of Germany.




so sunny!!!








lots of snow here in Titisee...and it's very very cold up here...next, our tour guide telling us what to buy here at this village: Hanuta Biscuits and ice-wine. But...some aunties in the tour group were so kiasu that they bought all the biscuits in the shop until there was nothing left for me to buy!
On the right is a paper cuckoo clock which we were very interested to buy but it was the only piece left in the shop and it was slightly dented. And THEY didn't even offer to give us a lower price! So we left without buying it.







can you see the chalk markings on the door frame? Over here, the food is very difficult to get, or rather it's making the trip down to the supermarkets, thus the owners of the shops leave chalk markings in their own secret code to say how much grocery they want to buy from the vendors, so by leaving these markins on the door, the vendors will know what to bring next time!
That's how they grocery shop here!!!!


us with tons of cuckoo clocks here! German hand made, everyone of them.






see how big our plate of German sausages and pork knuckles???






and our only buy from Titisee....a very original cuckoo clock.