...the cliffhanger is resoved!
On Sunday we work up around 1pm to discover that Brandon, the guy
from Budapest by way of San Francisco, that we'd met upin Berlin after
becoming friends over the internet, was, in fact, a normal person (collective
sigh of relief)!
If you recall from the last entry, we'd met up with Brandon late the
previous night for the very first time and he was acting so crazy that
we were starting to worry about whether or not this was a guy that
we could stand having as our tour guide for the next week.
Now sober,
"Normal
Brandon"
explained to us that he'd started drinking at around 8pm the previous
night figuring that he'd be in the perfect "party zone" to
greet us when we arrived around 11ish. But between our plane being
delayed and us getting horribly lost on the way over, we didn't end
up making it to Ferdinand's (Brandon's friend) house until almost 2am
and by that time Brandon was completely shit-canned (or at least that
was his excuse for why he spend the entire first night we met him talking
in an accent like Borat from Ali G and not even breaking character
once! Hahaha). Ok, on with our day!
Sunday, February 6th
So our big plan for the day was to take a train about 60 km
minutes southeast
of Berlin to visit an "indoor tropical resort"
called "Tropical
Islands" that Grant wanted to write a travel
piece about for a NYC-based magazine. Get this: An Indonesian
billionaire heard that a German manufacturer of enormous cargo
zeppelins was going out of business and decided to he wanted
to turn their manufacturing facility (which is the largest
self-supported structure in the world) into a clima-controlled
recreation of a tropical island!
Tropical Islands is in a dome that is 1180' long, 688' wide
(that's over 811,000 square feet of floor space!) and 351'
tall (which according to their web site means the building
could house the Statue of Liberty standing upright or the Eiffel
Tower laying down). The place is filled with pools, waterfalls,
sand, over 500 species of tropical plants and trees, is
kept at a constant temperature of 83°F, and stays open
24 hours a day, seven days a week. How insane does all this
sound?
The guy spent hundreds of millions of his dollars gambling
that Germans would take a train to this giant stadium to escape
their winters instead of hopping on a plane and going to real
tropical island.
The place had just opened a few weeks ago and we were really
curious to see if it had caught on yet.
Our quick internet research at Ferdinand's house led us to
believe that we'd have to take a bus to some far train station
on the outskirts of Berlin. So we hopped on the subway to
seek out the bus stop that we needed.
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Check out the font on the tiled
wall that they use to write all the names of the subway stops.
Grant saw it and was like "I can't believe they still
use that font! Don't they know that everyone else thinks of
it as the
Nazi font?" Now check out Brandon and Grant in
the reflection. Emo? Or just plain hung over?
.jpg)
Definitely emo.
Apparently, this is where we needed to be to find the bus.
We got off at the station, and wandered around the neighborhood
looking for the bus station. After a fruitless hour of wandering
in the cold, confusing the natives by our probably-offensive
attempts to ask questions in German ("Ja, hallo! Ver ist
die autobus station? Die grosse Tropical Island?"), we
decided to give up. I don't know which I was angrier about:
that fact that we had such a half-ass plan or that it turns
out that Frau Barke, my 9th grade German teacher who hated
me was correct
about me one day regretting the fact that I didn't pay attention
in her stupid German class.
Instead, we decided to head to Potsdamer and check out some
of the famous stuff in Berlin.
Like the Berlin Wall!
I always imagined it would be bigger. I guess it's a big deal
and all but I can't understand why all the Germans just didn't
walk around it.
Those wacky Germans, they're obedient to a fault. Speaking
of German obedience, that brings us to our next tourist attraction...
...the new Holocaust Memorial they're building!
While they're not so great at questioning authority (I write this as our own
half-witted president gleefully and indiscriminately drops bombs on brown people
everywhere. So, irony noted), one thing Germans are great at is being totally
direct and literal. Germans do not mince words. For example,
in English we'd call this the German Holocaust Memorial. The literal translation
of what it's called in German is: "Donation Monument for the Murdered
Jews of Europe."(For
reals.)
 Here's
what the architect who designed the memorial said about it: "the
enormity and scale of the horror of the Holocaust is such that
any attempt to represent it by traditional means is inevitably
inadequate ... The memorial attempts to present a new idea
of memory as distinct from nostalgia ... We can only know the
past today through a manifestation in the present."
Each of
the granite cubes looks like a tombstone, and the effect of
all 2,700 of them sprawling over the acres made me think of
a the biggest graveyard I'd ever seen. Pretty powerful schtuff.
On a lighter note, hey look! Cranes!
Berlin is a beautiful city with the most beautiful trash cans
I've ever seen.
If I lived there, I so wouldn't be a Verizon customer.
The Brandenburg Gate!
The statue on top of the gate is a sculpture called the "Quadriga."
In 1806, Napoleon stole this shit and brought
it back to Paris with him. (How fucking hardcore is that?)
It 1814, after the wars were over, the Prussians (Berlin was
part of Prussia back then) brought it back and put it back
on top of the gate. Insanity.
Can you feel the history?
Speaking of famous, historical spots - here's the balcony where
Michael Jackson dangled his baby from.
Hey Frank! Check it out, it's Dunkin Donuts in Berlin! It's just like Dunkin
Donuts here except that it's IN GERMANY!
We stopped to get our motherfucking Currywurst (pronounced
"VURST!") on.
Mmmmmmm. But it was just really to warm ourselves up for another...
...Doner Kabob. We sat in the doner kabob place for a while,
ate and had a few beers and tried to figure out an alternate
plan for making the trip out to Tropical Islands. After a quick
review of our budget, we decided that we probably had enough
wiggle room to...
...rent a car and drive out to Tropical Islands!
While we didn't get this one...
...we did manage to score a brand new BMW 550i! Who the fuck
rents a car like this to a group of kids like us for about
$100?
Six-speed standard shift. 320 horsepower V8. 0-60mph in 5.5
seconds.
Guess who got to drive?
Awwwww, yeah.
We couldn't figure out how to make our car sprechen sie English and
it ended up taking us longer to enter our
destination into the car's navigation system than it did to actually drive
there.
But that's mostly because we got to drive on the
A13. Do you know what the "A" in "A13" stands
for?
That's right, the motherfucking Autobahn. I took this picture
to commemorate the first time I'd legally broken the 100mph
mark (181 kpm = 100 mph).
This is an actual German road sign. It means "the speed limit
no longer applies." Amazing.
Around 9pm (less than an hour later after leaving Berlin),
we'd arrived at Tropical Islands! Despite having a GPS navigation
system, the place was in the middle of nowhere and took us
forever to find!
The building was mammoth.
Here's what you see right when you walk in.
When we walked 200 yards towards the entrance gate and
the back of the place didn't seem to get any closer, we started
to understand just how big the place is.
The entrance gate.
A Thai-inspired restaurant at the end. (Keep in mind, the
peak of this restaurant's roof is three stories high).
See how high the ceiling is? So insane
Heated swimming lagoons.
Real trees and plants everywhere.
And even a giant paper "moon" that rose and fell in the sky
as the hours passed.
Now, there's not going to be too much of a narrative here so
I'll just post a bunch of the pics I snapped as I walked around
and explored the place.
Lifeguard hut!
Another pool.
on the other side of the place, there was a party beach! The
place had a huge sound system, a light show and a dancing platform
in the middle of the pool.
Bananas.
The view of the "party side" from the back corner.
Check out the stairs that come up out of the water and lead
to the mid-pool dance platform!
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Where ist das party?
Jake's pictures of Grant swimming.
Hahaha.
The paper moon low on the horizon.
On the way to the bathroom, I stopped periodically to take
pictures. I was snapping a few pics in this long orange hallway
when this big, chubby German guy came over to me and demanded
(first in German, then in perfect English!) that I delete the
picture I took of him. I told him I was taking a picture of
the hallway, not him. He insisted I had and asked me to show
him. So instead of showing him the last picture I'd taken (that
did have him in it), I hit the "Jump" button on my
camera and showed him a picture several back that he wasn't
in. I'm guessing he was worried that I'd post a picture of
his large man-boobs on the internet. And if someone doesn't
want their man-boobs displayed for the whole world to see...
...you should respect their wishes.
Back to more pictures of the place!
Oooooh!
A closer examination of the "moon" revealed it to be a giant
hot-air balloon.
Me snoozing.
Jake was kind enough to burn me a CD of all the photos he
took on the trip so that I could use them to help retell our
trip. Too bad about one third of the 329 photos he took were
of himself "winking"...
...and/or "pretending to yell." Thanks Jake!
When Brandon fell asleep in a lounger around 3am and...
...Grant pointed out that if Brandon hadn't turned out to be a normal guy
that we were excited to have as our tour guide, this would've
been THE PERFECT opportunity to ditch him. Hahahah.
More pictures of the party side with the paper moon and beach.
I forgot to mention, the place was practically empty. I don't
know if it was because it was brand new, or because we were
there late on a Sunday night, but something tells me that Tropical
Islands isn't going to be around that much longer.
Around 3am, we decided to get something to eat (Brandon wanted
to keep napping).
Catch the Giant!
At 4:30am, we decided to grab our stuff in the locker rooms
and head out.
We had to drive back to Berlin, pick up our
bags at Ferdinand's apartment, drive to the airport, drop off
our rental car and catch a 10:30am flight to Budapest, Hungary!
-8°C = 17°F = Our dope rental car covered in frost.
Pretty!
We made it back to Ferdinand's apartment at around 6:30am only
to realize that we'd forgotten our key. Which meant that we
had to stand outside ringing the bell over and over until we
woke somebody up and they came down to let us in. I think Jake's
expression pretty much sums up how this made us feel...
...hahahah. Douche Chills!
I don't know if you know this, but Germany is famous (at least
in my mind) for its fascination with feces. This immediately
becomes apparent when you see a German toilet. Rather than
a large bowl of water, German toilets have a flat shelf
that you poop onto! It's sole purpose is to give the pooper
a chance to better examine what they've just produced!
In
jest, we decided that this platform was called the "Platzfürscheiße"
("place for shit") and were shocked to later find
out that we weren't all that far off!
This type of toilet is actually called a "Flachspueler" (Flat
flusher). If this diagram hasn't helped you understand what
I'm talking about, maybe this next picture will help clear
things up...
...Booyah! Let's hear it for the shit-shelf!
Hahaha.
After rounding up all of our bags at Ferdinand's (and taking
an impressive shit!), we packed up the car and headed for the
airport. Noting that we were running ahead of schedule, we
decided to take a detour and drive around through the industrial
outskirts of Berlin where great portions of the Berlin wall
remain intact.
Here's the four of us posing in front of The Wall (using our
$90k rental car as a tripod for my camera).
Seeing that we still had time, we decided to take picture of
ourselves leaning against the wall and looking tough.
Tough as nails! Too bad none of use could manage to...
...keep a straight face for more than three seconds.
Jake's tough face.
Hahaha.
My tough face.
Hahah.
While the roof of our super-expensive rental car worked great
as a tripod for my 1lb camera, Grant points out that
it did not make an excellent "step ladder" so that 150lb "Jake
the Idiot" could try to see over top of the Berlin Wall.
This photo probably explains best why you should be able to
rent a $90k car for a little more than $100 a day.
Horrified Grant!
While I usually manage to capture a lot of "action shots" I
missed capturing Jake "accidentally" kicking Grant
in the mouth while doing a jump kick.
I did, however, manage to capture
approximately 30 frames or so of Grant freaking the fuck
out and pummeling an apologetic Jake.
Hahahaha. Grant felt that Jake's apology came more out of not
wanting to be hit than it did out of genuine remorse.
So when Jake fell asleep with his mouth open in the car on
the way to the airport, Grant asked me to hand him back my
camera and exacted out some old school retribution.
Wait, what's the that Grant's about to drop into Jake's mouth?
It's one of Grant's boogers!
The booger-receptacle awaits!
Release the booger!
Grant released the booger, but instead of falling into Jake's
mouth as planned, it landed on Jake's bottom lip. Which was
somehow, even funnier. If you look carefully, you can see the
booger perched there. Just waiting for him to wake up and lick
his lips. Hahahaha.
The rising sun coming through the window even made for artsy
"booger on lip" shots.
We made it to the plane without event (and Jake none the wiser about
the whole booger thing). Next stop, Budapest!
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