of the louvre

In an attempt to not bore anyone with all that I found fascinating in the Louvre (and there was a LOT, which isn’t so surprising considering it contains more than 380,000 objects and 35,000 works of art), I thought I’d just put up those that I found really, really interesting/fascinating.

So, here we have Milon de Crotone by Pierre Puget. I loved the intensity of the sculpture – it’s really the little things that culminate into something quite splendid, like the indentations of the lion’s claws digging into his thigh (I fancy seeing it like a freeze frame just before it actually does draw blood and make a bloody mess of the dude’s leg).

I think I’ve got a weakness for things such as Pierre Puget’s Alexandre et Diogene below – I think there’s something about the way how they just pop out at you… and again, I find it amazing how an artist can convey movement and emotion so well through such a hard medium.

There’s something about this statue’s expression and body language that caught my eye – anxious? nervous? worried? contemplative? He’s almost like shrunken into himself and that clasping of hands! Hmmm… So the plaque says that this is Gudea, Ruler of Lagash, a seated statue dedicated to the god. Interesting…

The Google-translated plaque tells me that this is part of the façade that adorned the throne room. Imagine living with those things looming over you as you pass through or come to see the king/emperor – you reckon it’s something that you won’t even notice over time? (Which I think would be such a shame, they’re so magnificent!! … The winged Taurus’s anyways)

Now this is something I wouldn’t want looming over me every day – so entirely intimidating!! There aren’t just one or two of these monstrosities in a room, rather there’s at least 66 of these in the courtroom in the palace of Darius the First. Oh, and mind you, this is just the top of the column, so they’d be totally looming over you as you walk by underneath, staring ever so sternly at you.

I love Ancient Egyptian stuff – I find it so fascinating (but sadly, like
everything else, it doesn’t seem to stick in my head who’s who and what’s what *sighs*). Hopefully I’ll be able to see a real live mummy (well, not really live but you know what I mean =P) and a sphinx in their native country.

What I normally do is take a photo of a work of art that piques my interest and then take a photo of its plaque so I know what the heck it is when I come to caption it. This statue drew me in with her languid pose and then struck me dumb with her anatomy: boobs and a penis. My thoughts pretty much went along the lines of “Eeeerrr… Am I seeing right?? Are those breasts? Is that…?? Omg!!! What the!!!” lol Anywho, so this sculpture is called Sleeping Hermaphrodite… Well… yes… duh much? (I suppose it got straight to the point though *sighs* No faffing about)

One of the most recognisable sculptures: Aphrodite (or also known as Venus de Milo). My brother asked why she’s so famous and I told him because of her missing arms because, well, that’s why I thought why she’s famous. He wasn’t convinced. haha

I noticed a lot of people don’t look up… above Aphrodite is this gorgeous, if ostentatious, façade and cherubs (?)… and then my brother spied an entirely overlooked statue, almost hidden among the gaggle of people gawking at Aphrodite.

“Is that her husband?” he asked, pointing to it. I looked over to see a statue of Apollo with missing arms. I giggled and told him that it wasn’t.

Now, the Louvre boasts of containing all these works of art in over 60,000 square metres of space – and that’s just for the permanent collection! – but I think it’s at such a number that the mind just boggles (well, I know mine did! lol). That factoid kind of fails to also include how big these halls really are:

Soaring ceilings, wonderfully high arches… I speculated aloud to my brother what it would be like living here back in its hey day of being a palace – even as a maid or something. It would have been really something…

Psyche and Cupid (or Google-translated plaque: Psyche Revived by the Kiss of Love) by A. Canova is such a pretty sculpture. I simply adore the body language and its simplicity in conveying emotion.

Ahhh, now this painting needs no introduction. She is smaller than you expected and they’ve cordon the area off so you’re at least 3-5 metres away in a semi-circle from her. Her keepers are also pretty nazi, but that’s totally understandable.

All over the museum (and all museums I’ve been to), if they allow photography, allows non-flash photography; seems like not a lot of people read signs or just don’t care. One of Mona Lisa’s nazi keepers actually waded through the crowd, shouting at people “No flash! No flash!!”, and tapping some of the closer offenders (I reckon she wanted to slap them across the back of their heads instead).

It looks like the room’s fairly well lit, but because it is a rather dark painting and you have to zoom to get a nice close up, the shutter speed can be quite slow… which really sucks when there’s lots of discreet pushing and shoving happening all around you, especially if you’re dead centre to the painting.

The Victory of Samothrace is beautifully majestic and, like all the photos I’ve take of the works of art here, does not do it any justice to how elegant and wonderful it really is.

At the beginning, we decided to split up (parents together, and me with my brother) and meet up at 3pm at the Cafe in the Richelieu wing (I amended it to 4pm, thinking that I’d really would like to make the most of finally being amongst the Louvre’s permanent collection). However, we somehow managed to bump into each other at the Victory of Samothrace and I realised that while it was only 2.30 I was really buggered! Mind you, we started at 11.30 as well… haha, no stamina or stamina leeched by my brother’s constant bored/annoying presence (which did get quite amusing near the end as he kinda went loopy from being so bored – in his defence, museums like this one are not his thing).

We decided not to go to the 2nd floor, which housed all the German, Belgian, Flemish and whatnot paintings, and I told my step mum that we’d meet them downstairs at the appointed place, as we’ve finished with all that we wanted to see. They still had to see the Mona Lisa, so my brother and I figured that they’d be done in about 30 minutes to 1 hour max.

Bought some lunch, munched on it and belated realised that we were lunching at the cafe in the Denon wing! We quickly scuttled over to the correct wing and waited… and waited… and waited…

Over an hour later (with my brother standing over at the Denon wing for about 15 minutes at a time), our parents turned up. They had gotten lost because my dad thought that if they exited the (Denon) wing, they would go all the way out and then wouldn’t be able to meet up with us. So they turned around and tried to navigate through the halls to Richelieu, which was on the other side… which would have taken at least 15-20 minutes to navigate if you knew where to go (well, that’s just my estimation and I could be totally off haha… could be maybe 10 minutes if the halls aren’t so crowded and you REALLY know where you’re going).

They were so stressed out and exhausted when we finally met up that they just wanted to go home.

And so we did… but not before some last parting shots:

of churches and getting lost

We have to take 3 trains to get to Sacre-Coeur from where we are, as it’s pretty much on the other side of the city. One of the stations we had to change at was Montparnasse Bienvenue, which was a bit bigger station than I had anticipated…

This is what a normal warren-like tunnel we would use to connect to another line:

And this was what at Montparnasse Bienvenue:

… yeah, it’s a bit O_O no? hahah So you could imagine it took some time to get to the line we wanted.

It was a loooong way to our intended stop, Abbesses, and we found out the hard way that it’s deceptively deep underground. We followed the crowd of people up the stairs and most seem to shun the elevators for some reason… and up and up and up and up we went, around and around and around – man, I would have gotten dizzy if I was going any faster lol.

We finally spiralled up above ground and spied a quaint little garden nearby: Jardin des Abbesses. The garden, interestingly enough, has a “Love Wall”, where the lady at the top says:

aimer c’est du desordre… alors aimons!

Which Google translates to: love is the disorder … then enjoy! On the wall, people have scribbled stuff like “I love you” (naturally), but there was one that caught my eye: a guy professing his love to two girls, one after the other and with an exclamation at the end “I love you both!!”. Interesting.

View from Square Louise Michel (a garden of sorts just in front of Sacre-Coeur):

I noticed that there was a sign out in front forbidding people from relaxing on the grass… ooookay, that’s a bit … nazi-ish. lol But I’m quite sure they have very good reasons… maybe.

The square is full of hawkers, like at Eiffel Tower, only worse, as there’s these guys who get you stick a finger out, loop some string around it, and they start plaiting whilst talking to you. When they’re finished and you try to extract yourself from it, they will demand that you pay them to release your finger. How dodgy is that?!

We saw a couple of people getting scammed and most would say, “Excuse me, excuse me!” to get your attention and rodeo your unsuspecting finger. I kind of smiled and shook my head whenever they tried to get my attention and they would, rather annoyedly, say, “I said: ‘excuse me!’” but I just ignored them. One guy was rather persistent and actually grabbed onto my arm, which totally freaked me out and I wriggled out of his grip, walking faster – not looking back.

Why is it though, that I feel bad in doing so? *Sighs* Anywho…

The view from Sacre-Coeur!

SC-238 sent Gunner out with the troopers to try and keep them focussed at the job at hand. However, Gunner really must like heights and/or the sprawling city beneath, as he exclaimed his enthusiasm of the view, totally forgetting why he was sent out with the troopers in the first place (who both sighed and traded a long-suffering look with each other).

Close-ups of Sacre-Coeur:

There was a Silent Prayer thingy on at the church and so photography was completely forbidden. There was a guy standing near the front of the door (on the inside) whose keen eye would espy on a non-observant tourist raising their camera to take a photo and would then sternly call out (whilst pointing at the offender), “No photos! No!”. Some people did manage to take photos (saw their flashes from afar) and some people did a dodgy like my brother:

I bought and sent a beautiful black and white postcard of stairs framed with snow-laden trees, the bottom of the stairs slightly obscured by fog (or falling snow)… when I found out that it was right next to Sacre-Coeur, I wanted to take a photo of it as well, just for kicks…

Ugh, remind me never to try and replicate postcard photos T_T Definitely should leave the job to the experts *sighs*

Not far from these stairs were another set of stairs that went down more directly to Abbesses Metro station and while it wasn’t as steep, pretty, or as long as the one above, it has its perks:

The expressions on the clones faces were priceless – Gunner even dropped his gun in disbelief that they had that many steps to go… (be thankful guys that we didn’t take the other stairs!! hehe)

We headed to the Louvre the long way (through the gardens), as we had some time to kill and we wanted to get some information for the next day (we planned to visit the museum), and got off at Concorde Metro station.

I adore this fountain for some reason, I have no idea why. Last time I was here they had the water on, but this is a nice change (it also allows me to get close without getting wet! yay!).

The troopers couldn’t stop staring (they definitely don’t have anything like this at home), but Gunner seemed a bit nervous, “You sure they’re not going to come alive and eat us?” Sometimes I wonder what exactly goes on in that helmet of his, but I think it’s better that I don’t know.

The Louvre, if you didn’t know know, use to be a palace… a massive palace! This is just one of the wings:

It’s hard to convey just how long the garden is, but this is looking back to where we started from:

You can see the Place de Concorde and the Arc de Triomphe! O_O I guess they really thought it out huh? I looked over to my left, where these neck-high hedges were…

Teehee… I had a bit of a giggle and my brother rolled his eyes, telling me to grow up (and then he went to take a photo himself haha).

At last, we finally arrive at the heart of the Louvre:

Gunner and the troopers decided to have a meeting, as they still haven’t seen any sign of Stormy (and his blasted blaster didn’t seem like it was enticing him out) and were rather worried about SC-238’s reaction to their lack of information.

I think they had come to a conclusion on what to say by the time we left, but they were being all secretive about it, so I just left them be.

Afterwards, we headed off to Notre-Dame. Now, I remember the first time we tried to find Notre-Dame, we kept on getting lost because while it looks like you can tell it’s on an island, you actually can’t – the island just looks like well… still part of the mainland.

I actually took the wrong exit coming out from the station, so we were much further away than I had anticipated. I tried to get my bearings as I got all confused which way I was facing (I knew what street I was on though but that didn’t help all that much).

I managed to get everyone on the right track and were crossing Pont Neuf when I looked back and saw some Gothic-looking structure peeking out between 2 buildings. I stopped, confused once again, and asked my dad if that was Notre-Dame, he looked and said that maybe it was.

Ugh. It wasn’t. It turned out to be St. Bloody Germain, we were on the right track before. *Sighs* So shouldn’t have looked back. We trekked back to the bridge and after a couple of almost wrong turns, we finally made it! Yay!

When I was taking that middle picture, I was in a fast moving queue that stopped and started irregularly. I was too busy focusing the shot whilst walking that I didn’t notice the line had stopped and actually walked into the lady in front of me. >_< oooopsy. Gave her a bit of a nasty surprise.

We were 15 minutes too late to go up the towers (they restricted access after 4.30pm), but on the bright side, we were allowed to take photos in here...

The statue was of Joan of Arc! I had forgotten that they have a statue of her in here. They also have some weird stuff happening on the exterior of the building (I guess that’s what makes Notre-Dame Gothic =P hehe)…

We had dinner at the Hotel de Ville McDonalds (for some reason we ALL got the Big Tasty, which is – I’m sad to report – wasn’t Tasty but was kind big… like a Whopper-sized big). We took our time as we were waiting for it to get dark.

It was a good thing that we did! When we came out, there was all this hullabaloo and we thought it was another protest, but it was an actual parade!! It was rather fun…. and we lost dad for a good 30-45 minutes, but he did get photos of the parade that I didn’t manage to get (ugh, sucks being short!!).

My brother left a couple of times to go look for him (hehe more like call him to come back to us), dad actually came back himself and so we had to wait for Tim.

The parade was the 12th Annual Carnival of Paris and this year’s theme was “Cosmic Carnival, Astronauts and Extraterrestrials” (which explained a lot of the costumes haha). It started at 3pm somewhere in Paris (i.e. at the bottom of the rue Le Vau, the 20th arrondissement) and ended up at Hotel de Ville (the 4th arrondissement) – that’s at least 3 hours! Boy, they must have been tired, but they didn’t look it! Such exuberance! =D

When we were finally together, we made our way to the Palais de Chaillot for some Eiffel Tower night shots…

Another long day had finished and we were so glad to put our feet up.

of friendly parisiennes

My last night in Berlin was spent swapping luggages (remember our 1-wheeled large suitcase fiasco?), looking for Rome accommodation, and trying to decide between a shuttle coach or risk a taxi to our hotel (we have 3 large suitcases and 2 small ones, plus 3 randomly sized plastic bags [one of which contains entirely of German junk food MUHAHAHHA]… and that’s not including my brother’s and my backpacks! I was a bit worried that they wouldn’t all fit into a taxi).

I think I got about 1 and a half hours of sleep that night, but then again, none of us really got that much sleep. So, it came as no surprise that all four of us were nodding off now and again while we were transiting on the Metro. We were lucky that we didn’t miss any stops!

There were a couple of hiccups along the way, but nothing we couldn’t handle. However, one really big hiccup left us stranded in the hallway of our relative’s building because there were lots of confusion about which unit number it was (we were given the access code and keys, but no unit number) and if it was really that building. It should have been straight-forward, really, as there was only one Giang in the entire building, but dad came back saying that the keys didn’t fit.

I told dad that we were in the right apartment building (how else would the access code and key work?) and that unit 202 should be our relative’s (who, which I think I should add, are on vacation in Toulouse so we have the place to ourselves)… and that it didn’t make any sense why the key didn’t fit!!

I think we were loitering around there (with my parents kind of wandering around, in and out, of the building) for a good 30 minutes (and with various of nice people trying to help us find the correct apartment number) before I had enough and exclaimed, “It doesn’t make any sense!! Here! Let us try the door again.”

Guess what? It fitted. *sighs* Then we found out that the elevator was broken and so had to lug our suitcases up to the second floor. *double sigh* lol

Anywho, after doing a spot of grocery shopping and lunch, we tried to find our way to the Metro station. A very nice lady stopped and asked us if we needed any help. She not only told us where to go, she took us there and made sure we bought the right tickets and everything! =D So very sweet.

Our first stop: The Eiffel Tower!

It was a bit disappointing to see that we came at a time that they’re doing maintenance on one of the pillars, but it’s still rather pretty and Eiffel Tower-ish hahah

What I didn’t notice or see last time I was here was the sheer amount of guys selling cheap Eiffel Tower keyrings and statues. “1 for 1 Euro… *we walk by* 3 for 1 Euro! Okay, okay, 5 for 1 Euro!!” I was very tempted in turning back to take up on his deal, but they seemed a bit dodgy… especially when I saw a handful of them high-tailing out of the area.

I wondered where the police they were running from were and about 10 minutes later I saw them:

Okay, they’re definitely not normal police people – I would so definitely run if someone like that was coming near and I was doing something wrong. We saw them at the airport as well when we went to pick up our luggage. Both times it was the female nonchalantly holding onto a big ass gun and both times it kinda freaked me out a bit. Eep.

A mandatory Eiffel Tower shot:

And of course we headed up the tower too (after a 45-minute line-up during which we saw a protest! … and you can see why it took us 45 minutes!! Crazy, it was like that with all three pillars!)…

The day wasn’t exceptionally clear (or sunny), but you can see the Grand Palace (the massive glass-domed building) and off in the hazy distance, sitting on a lonely hill top on the left of the picture, is Sacre Coeur.

It’s amazing how densely packed the city looks as well (does Sydney look like that??) from up top…

The sun was setting over the Seine (or at least I would like to think it was, if it weren’t for all those clouds!)…

This is where we’re headed off to next, the Palais De Chaillot, where it has several museums in it and… a cinema aquarium? *puzzled* Maybe it’s just an aquatic cinema… Anywho, it is a pretty good place to take photos of the Eiffel Tower…

I saw someone scrawled something funny, but too entirely true…

SC-238 sent the troopers out to the next rendezvous point for any sign or clue from Stormy. CT-275 hoped that bringing the blaster would somehow entice him out, but looking around, they didn’t see anything Stormy-related…

Pont D’Iena is the bridge that connects the Eiffel Tower and Palais de Chaillot; its beginning and end is lorded over by a couple of statues – one of which caught my eye…

Upon reaching Palais de Chaillot, the troopers were given a dressing down by SC-238 for not being able to find anything about Stormy (much to their dismay). Gunner, wholly oblivious to the lecture going on behind him, whooped enthusiastically at the view – they don’t have anything like this at home!

I found this rather strange:

Standalone petrol pumps?? Though come to think about it, I don’t think I’ve really seen a petrol station actually in the city at all, so I suppose it makes some sort of sense. =P

Some of the older (or perhaps just random?) Metro entrances has these fancier designs…

I quite like them and whenever I think of Paris’s Metro, I would think of these entrances; they seem to be from the 1920’s or 1930’s… or something (I’ve never been good at decor movements lol).

This is what a typical Parisienne subway station would look like if it was clean and didn’t have hundreds (okay, seemingly hundreds) of people on it:

So, we were making our way towards the Arc de Triomphe – we had it in our sights! – when dad got distracted by these old guys carrying flags.

“I think it’s a parade!” he enthused and dashed off to take photos of them. We sighed and followed suit.

I think it was a memorial of some sort, but after googling for a bit yielded nothing about a memorial being held on 21st February (or maybe my keywords sucked haha). They had to stop traffic for about 10 minutes for the procession and boy, there were some testy drivers when it was over.

I think I’m starting to get slightly obsessed with day/night shots:

We were so tired by this time that we pretty much fell into a deep sleep as soon as our heads hit the pillow, despite having a cold, cold apartment.

of a missing stormy

The clone troopers arrived at the designated rendezvous point and was surprised to see an abandoned camp site.

The clonies weren’t too sure what to be more upset about: the fact that a campfire was left irresponsibly unattended or that Stormy was nowhere to be seen. The commander, SC-238, decided that the missing Stormy was more upsetting, as no stormtrooper would willingly leave behind their blaster… and besides, he could give Stormy a good talking to about leaving campfires unattended once they found him.

When asked by clone trooper ST-631 what their next move was, SC-238 decisively replied that they would continue on to all the next rendezvous points where they would hopefully catch Stormy at one of them or perhaps find out whatever happened to him along the way…

… Meanwhile, Gunner and ST-275 were enjoying the heat of the campfire on such a cold night; ST-275’s delicate feet were especially frozen from tramping through the bushes all day and were blissfully thawing out (much to his relief, as he was certain that the commander would chop his frost-bitten toes off unhesitatingly).

of more sightseeing in berlin

I decided to do proper sightseeing during the day (plus it was snowing so hard the night before, everything looked so pretty… thought it would look awesome the next day! All white and stuff…) and was surprised that my brother agreed to accompany me on this little jaunt.

Humboldt University was founded in 1810 and is Berlin’s oldest university (thanks Wikipedia! lol). Imagine going to class in such an old place with so much history and so much it’s been through (e.g. Third Reich)… damn…

Whenever I’m in Europe, it never fails to remind me just how young Australia is as a country; in a way, it kind of makes me sad that we don’t have as long or as interesting of a history.

So, we continued our way down Unter den Linden (which is pretty much the main street for tourists as it’s where most of the old buildings are located on or nearby), stopping by the Neue Wache (New Guardhouse)…

The New Guardhouse now symbolises the victims of war and tyranny and I’ll refrain from giving a history lesson, but if you’re interested about its original purpose and who it was built by (*cough* Prussian King *cough*), there’s always Wikipedia ^_^ .

In the face of the ugly side of war, Stormy felt a bit doubt of his Lord’s plans of galaxy dominance and so wanted to clear his head a bit with a walk…

… only to belatedly realise just how deep the snow really was and kind of panicked…

After much struggling to get out of the snow, Stormy felt like he needed a much deserved break and plonked down to enjoy the view (even though he did get into such a mess all by himself lol)…

The river below Stormy was half frozen over and people had been throwing snowballs at the ice. Some broke through, while some just splattered all over the ice – I guess it was much thicker there than it looked hehe.

We thought Stormy had the right idea and followed suit to gawk at the Berliner Dom (Berlin Cathedral) and the museum with ancient Egypt stuff next to it (oh man, I feel so bad that I’ve forgotten its name T_T).

[Edit: Bien's helpfully supplied me with the name of the museum: Altes Museum (Old Museum, and yes there is a New Museum as well hehe). Thanks Bien! =D]

Not sure if you can see the two statues that presides so grandly by the entrance steps of the museum, but here’s a close-up of one of them:

I find it absolutely astounding how the artist has wrought metal into something that feels so fluid and emotional and yet so frozen in time. I love how detailed it is: the bunched muscles, straining tendons, the curled tail, and I think the thing that struck me the most, the lioness’s snarling face.

[Edit: I also found that it's called Amazon and Lion Fighter, designed by August Kiss and Albert Wolf.]

I was wondering why my toes felt so cold and literally like blocks of ice, until I looked down…

Hmm, I see! By the end of the day, my socks were pretty wet around the toes and they were so cold that they started to hurt >_< GG. I get now why most Germans wear boots or something similar hehe.

Stormy spied a banister and took it into his head to slide down it...

… and then vowed never to do it again when its covered in snow, as he tried to get all the snow from out of his pants.

We were walking a little bit too much for Stormy’s little legs, and so I suggested that we take a break and for him to have a little sit down…

He was not pleased at my joke. *Sighs* Some stormtroopers have no sense of humour =P

So we visited the Brandenburg Gates one last time (and actually for the third time haha), only because it was on the way to the Holocaust Memorial really…

I was pretty hungry by this time and I remember seeing a currywurst store at one of the end of the memorial. We decided to stop for a bite and then go back through the memorial to the park on the opposite side of the road.

So totally rorted: the currywurst store was permanently closed!! T___T nooooes… Feeling a bit dejected, we headed towards the park.

It was seriously like a winter wonderland. As we walked through the path lined with snow-laden trees, a slight breeze swept gently by and it was enough to dislodge snow balancing precariously on the branches, where it glittered and danced on the tail of the breeze to the ground. Oh it was so magical! We both had stopped in our tracks in awe at the sight.

The photo doesn’t do it any justice and there wasn’t as many airborne snow as when we had arrived. As I pointed the camera up to capture the snow covered branches, my brother yanked at one of the lower branches, which somehow managed to tip snow from the top branches down:

In all the excitement, Stormy somehow lost his helmet! Crap. He was quite upset and determinedly went looking for it…

… I’m a bit worried, because he’s been gone for a while now…

of sightseeing in berlin

So I’ve managed to be a tourist in the Motherland =D Yay!

It all started with Shao-Xi needing to pick up a friend at Hauptbahnhof (the main station now used for incoming international and inter-city trains), who was on his way to Japan (okay, that didn’t quite make sense, but it’s a fairly lengthy story and trust me, it makes perfect sense ^_^).

She wanted to show him around Berlin, so we decided to do the main touristy stuff (i.e. Brandenburg Gates and Reichstag, pretty much a parliament house) plus the dinosaur museum!! Yay dinosaurs!! ^____^ (Its actual name is the Museum of Natural History hehe)

His train was scheduled to arrive at 1.20pm… and it did… only without him on it. Wilhelm had slept in and totally missed it. *sighs* Thankfully, he was on the next (and last) train from The Netherlands, which would arrive 2 hours later.

We pottered around for a bit, trying to kill some time, but we kind of ran out of things to do. Shao-Xi brightened up and suggested that we visit grandfather’s old place.

Back in the day, I did my internship in Berlin (was here for 7 months) and I stayed at grandfather’s apartment, along with Shao-Xi, Mario, and my klepto aunt; grandfather and my aunt moved to Yi-Ji’s place after the renovations were completed. Anywho, we both have lots of great memories of that place, like the saggy-in-the-middle mattress that we slept on (okay, admittedly that doesn’t sound so great, but it was pretty funny waking up and finding out that we had both gravitated towards the middle) and the nightly chats, so I enthusiastically seconded the idea.

My brother just wanted to get out because it was snowing heaps!

Stormy wanted to make a snow angel, but as he laid there, he realised something…

… his arms weren’t made for sideways action… sadly enough. But I assured him that a stormtrooper shape was just as good ^_^

It was a bit silly because when we got to the old apartment, we realised that we had forgotten what floor and unit it was. lol Oh wells. By the time we got back to Hauptbahnhof, we only had to wait for a couple of minutes before Wilhelm’s train pulled up.

We headed for the Museum of Natural History, stored our gear (well, mostly Wilhelm’s backpack and things), and finally got to gawk at some dinosaurs.

Stormy was a bit relieved that the dinosaurs were long gone – his part in the galaxy domination plans would be that little bit harder if they weren’t, he thought.

The fossils fascinated me, especially at how well preserved they were…

I’ve heard about the “Missing Link” before, but always in passing and I never really got to looking up at what it really meant. Shao-Xi explained to me that while scientists knew that some reptiles evolved into birds, there were no evidence of such thing occurring… until some found it…

This “missing link” was found in I think 1932, and the museum boasts that it is the most exquisite specimen discovered… and it is really quite extraordinary.

The museum’s heavily armed with multimedia explanations of the displays and it’s so interactive! There was this circular screen that counted down the distances of things in the galaxy, zooming onto Earth… and it did it in a very special way:

It would start off near the ceiling and as the distance diminished, the screen would lower over the viewers lying down on this reclining couch… it was so cool. Unfortunately, there’s about a 7-9 minute wait for the next session and we didn’t quite have the time or patience to wait that long.

The museum is bigger than it looks, so we opted to cut our visit short (and my brother and I vowed that we would someday come back to finish it ^_^). By the time we got out, the light was rapidly fading and when we got to the Brandenburg gates, it was pretty dark.

We were getting peckish by this stage, so we hurried over to Reichstag, took some photos and then queued to get into the building (they let people in batches and we had to go through security before being taken up in a lift to the actual dome).

Afterwards, we had a hasty dinner at Friedrichstrasse, scoffing down currywurst and doner (that’s kebab to the Australians hehe).

Wonderful way to end the day ^____^

of grandmother’s bday celebrations

The big day has finally arrived… the reason why so many of the Lu family has congregated in to Berlin: grandmother’s 80th birthday.

We kind of slept in and so there was a big rush in getting ready. I’m not sure why we took two cars, but because Shao-Xi had to do a u-turn, we kind of got left behind. Driving from Truc’s place to Yiji’s place (where the first half of the party will be held) takes about 20 minutes… we took a little bit longer because we were semi-lost. lol

When we got there, it was a bit chaotic – people were running around everywhere and trying to get things done, but not really know what needed to be done.

Some of my cousins were in the dining room having breakfast, including our newest member, Ruby:

She’s so cute ^_^ And terribly smart too…

We were a little behind schedule when we started the felicitations and present-giving, but my grandmother didn’t seem to mind. Where the waiting for the rest of us to have a turn got a little bit tiresome, she seemed to be energised by it.

I think we’re a bit nuts on the documenting everything (this from Lisa, the other dslr photographer for the day)…

Afterwards, there were some performances from the kids, including a trio that played Happy Birthday (trio was piano, violin, and flute), and various group photos, one of which was the entire family (plus a couple of cousins):

It took a looooong time….

FINALLY, time for lunch. The “kids” ate first, then the adults. I’m not sure what happened or why it took so long, but Shao-Xi and I ended up in a bed having a girl chat and we somehow fell asleep. Hahah… We were woken up to do the next thing on the schedule: family photos at the Brandenburg Gates.

Again, there was chaos: no one was sure who was taking whom in what car and there lots of “take so-and-so!!” with replies of “aren’t they going with what’s-their-face?”. Somehow my brother and I were left without a car and then when it was organised that we were going to go with one of our aunts, we were bundled into Shao-Xi’s car… what the? lol But we weren’t going to complain because we had transport =P

Sleep clung to me like a limpet on a rock, as we were making our way to the city centre; I fought against it, but sadly succumbed to falling asleep, only waking up when we had to get out.

It was deathly chilly that day and wearing (quite vainly I admit) just stockings, boots, short sleeved dress, and overcoat… oh and a scarf… really doesn’t combat the cold. By the time we got to the Brandenburg Gates, my toes were numb.

Oh man, having so many family members in one spot at the same time is kind of… a sight to see – especially since we had some more joining the already fairly large group…

… and the scary thing was, that wasn’t even all of us! Some went AWOL.

I really like this photo because of the different expressions on my relatives’ faces, but mostly because of Yi-Ji having an awesome yawn in the background hahha ^____^

We finally stopped taking photos and we dispersed. Some of us went to Starbucks (Shao-Xi, Truc, Tuyen, my brother and me!) and others went straight to Samadhi (the family’s Vietnamese vegetarian restaurant). Armed with hot beverages, we trekked to Samadhi, where we were greeted with another chaotic mess – though this time it was a more organised chaos.

Dinner was served and we gobbled down the delicious fare in front of us. I love eating at Samadhi – they make vegetarian food sooooo yummy! Lots of flavours and you almost don’t realise that there’s no meat because the dishes are so complete as they are.

A few of photos during dinner, taken mostly by Shao-Xi:

After dinner was charades and then a presentation on grandmother’s life. Things got really interesting when old photos of our aunts and uncles, fathers or mothers, were shown. My aunt and uncle would throw it out to us, the “kids”, asking, “Who’s your papa or mama?” Hehe, it was pretty cool and funny (especially when one of my cousins got it wrong).

Then we came to the part where some people were waiting for alllll day: the cake cutting!

My aunt Mui and her friend baked it themselves. Half of it was pineapple and other half was coffee.

And then it was the end of a very long day…

…

Actually not quite… afterwards, Truc proposed for us to go clubbing, but after shopping for an air mattress and spending a long time at the billards place (we weren’t even playing, but waiting for his friends to finish up/arrive), his friends ended up going home and we just ate at Aroma.

Didn’t get home til about 3am… but didn’t sleep til about 4ish, perhaps closer to 5, as Shao-Xi, Truc, and I were talking in bed. Well, I’m using the term “talking” quite loosely here – I was super exhausted and you know how when you get like that, you just end up talking crap? We don’t remember anything from the conversation that night (hahah surprise, surprise), but I remember something about feet and saying it so often that it was practically second word. lol… And I remember giving up trying to keep up with the conversation after that lame attempt and fell into a deep sleep.

of celebrating truc’s bday

We haven’t been much of a tourist in Berlin, but I suspect that will (might?) change when my parents get here tomorrow (and when the birthday stuff are all out of the way). So, what have we been doing in Berlin all this time?

It was Truc’s birthday on 6th Feb and we pretty much had like a 3-day party to celebrate. (Disclaimer: we’ve been keeping rather odd hours of the day, so some days seem to have melded – and I most probably have forgotten some bits or even worse, mixed some bits together).

Thursday was pre-birthday drinks – I think we also had dinner at a sushi place (which is run by Vietnamese people) beforehand, but I could be wrong – at Zeitlos, which I thought was a pretty neat place. Zeitlos is a themed bar set in the tropics… furniture and “ceiling”/”walls” were made from bamboo and there was sand on the floor! My brother didn’t want to come out, so it was just me with some of Truc’s close friends.

Friday was to be dinner at his place and then karaoke til whenever. Tim and I tidied up Truc’s apartment for the impending guests during the day and then kind of bludged til people started to trickle in.

Tom was the first the arrive, carrying the cake. I thought it was rather amusing that the person who didn’t eat dessert – or even like dessert (I know!! That’s so weird!!!) – was the person in charge of the birthday cake (happy to report that the cake was a rather yummy chocolate mousse something or other). Truc was actually out with Aysen, buying drinks and all that, so I was a bit petrified in having to play host with my very limited and quite frankly, awful German. Interestingly, his English was very good – his accent tinged with a bit of American (I found out later that he was an international exchange student when he was in 8th grade and he spent about a year in Texas, also he’s spent some time in Manchester a little more recently).

The dinner consisted of a couple of Vietnamese dishes (ban cuon and ban something – it’s the white circular on with minced dried prawns on top), set out buffet-style on the now extended dining table. Oh and also some fried vegetarian wontons.

Although Truc was there, as well as Khanh Ha (his sister) and Lisa (our other cousin), I felt a bit out of place (both of my girl cousins had brought their boyfriends and so I was a bit shy in approaching them to catch up properly) and so relegated myself into Truc’s bedroom – reading.

I was rather surprised when Ky (one of Truc’s closest male friends) actively came over and started chatting with me, but I thought was rather nice of him to do so. Tom introduced me to Sonia and we chatted a bit stiltedly but steadily about work and her studies. I always seem to find myself shamelessly plugging EST and that night was no different. She seemed rather excited about it and I hope she likes our blog! =)

Aysen also came over and chatted with me, we both didn’t really want to go to the karaoke, but she decided to tough it out (knowing it would be a looooong night there)…. whereas I, upon finding out that there perhaps wasn’t any room in Truc’s car, decided to opt out of the karaoke.

Naturally, after making such a decision, I find myself a couple of hours later in Truc’s Volkswagen Golf with 3 other people in the backseat heading to the karaoke place.

Where was my brother all this time? Asleep… on the floor… next to the bed, hidden from view. *Sighs*

So we were at the karaoke place from about 1ish to I think 5.30. Actually, I left at 5.30 – Truc and a couple of his friends stayed for another half an hour or so. Crazies. I actually had fallen asleep twice!!

The room wasn’t very well ventilated and there seemed to be a thousand smokers there. Not only did I come out of there smelling like an ashtray, I got sick the next day because of the smoke plus being out in the cold (even if it was a bit) afterwards.