Gday all, hope you're having a great weekend. Its 6am and I just came back from a ridiculously great night out in Berlin. Anyway, brief update...
Futbol in Spain is nuts. Was lucky enough to get a ticket to see some of the football greats - Beckham, Roberto Carlos, Ronaldo ... Spaniards are friggin crazy about their football - pretty normal to hear some pretty nasty death threats (at least that's what I think they were) after a pretty standard foul by the away team (Madrid). Being a smart little Asian, I wore a bright red shirt to watch this match - forgetting that Spain (among many countries) don't really like red-shirted Koreans, particularly when they cheated their way to victory of the last World Cup (don't deny it kimchis, you know you did!) Despite all the star players from Real Madrid, they didn't seem to get much love from the home crowd. A couple of the Madrid fans who were sitting next to me seemed pretty reluctant to voice their support too.
Almost got pickpocketted too, I was walking around like a fobby tourist reading Angels and Demons by Dan Brown (whose cheap thriller-esque action-slash-poorly-researched-tripe-of-a-book I blame for all of this). Some douchebag pretended to fall on me in the subway, spilling an empty drink cup on me, and began to frantically wipe my jeans ... meanwhile another nice gentleman on my left is trying to pick my pocket. I shinkuu-hadouken-ed his ass of course. Worse thing though, is the entire subway was full of wide-eyed people - none of which thought helping a single person getting robbed is the decent sort of thing to do. Barcelona turned out awesome though, thanks especially to a awesome crew of Brits that I was hanging out with over there. Definitely one of my favourites so far on this trip.
Amsterdam is expensive - especially when u average like ... 6 meals a day. Cool culture though, there's actually stuff to see and do around there. Things I can remember:
- Walking down the red light district, and seeing no less than FIVE indian men come bounding out of a red-light window entrance (i'm assuming something must've happened because the blonde girl inside was waving goodbye and thanking them all). Everybody repeat after me ... "Wot-da-fark!?" (along with the appropriate Italian accent and gestures).And the funniest thing - I couldn't help but wonder if they went together to get a discount?
- During a particularly contemplative period, I began to wonder if there was a blue-light district. Where nice old grandmas smile and wave to you and offer you fresh apple pie ... yeah, dunno know where I was going with that either.
- Going to this crazy club and listening to some wicked music ... it was some sort of house music blended with jazz - can't remember the exact term but it was awesome to groove into. Thought the whole night that all the smoke inside was coming from those smoke generating things, and then realising its cos there were about 2 million people smoking in the club.
Berlins awesome ... got home from one crazy night not long ago. Basically started heading across from one side of Berlin to the other side. Stopped in the middle of this dodgy neighbourhood at, quite literally, a gap in a fence. Remember the rave scene from Blade? Where the entrance to this huge party is like through an abandoned warehouse (or was it a meat factory?) Well, it was about 3 and a half times more dodgy than this - upon climbing through said fence, we padded along down a completely dark alley, past some abandoned cars, until we stumble upon a red-carpetted entrance all lit up beautifully. The bar was spectacular - picture the nicest, classiest bar you've ever been in ... then add lots of white beds with fluffy pillows - and you got the idea. Last club we visited had about 3 or 4 lounges, with one of them having an indoor swimming pool connecting the rooms (also had bloddy rnb so ... bleh).
