Chapter 1
I was off to Europe again in July for 3 weeks. At the beginning I journeyed alone, then my best friend Yan joined me. I’ve seen a few more places, met and talked to some very interesting people, learned so much about Europe history and of course, took so many beautiful pictures!
Anyway, I will lift the veil now and show you what I saw.
The Schonefeld airport in Berlin was quite small, unfortunately. I had, however, successfully managed to find my way to the Berlin Hauptbahnhof for my train to my first stop - Dresden. I saved my yoghurt on the flight, and only swallowed it when I found the train to the Berlin city centre!
I was showered in the beautiful Berlin sunshine. The weather was so awfully nice! I had an hour or two walking around the Hauptbahnhof, I wrote my first journey entry sitting under the bridge shade, overlooking the beautiful River Spree.
A good start!
…or not. I wouldn’t say my short train ride from Berlin to Dresden wasn’t eventful. First, silly me forgot to bring the credit card which I used to buy my train tickets, so I had to buy a new ticket (and holy cow, I bought a few tickets using that credit card!); and second, the air-con on the train was kaputt! Now that was very unforgiveable! Those nice people who shared the little compartment with me on the train were really nice, they thought I could speak German - well, I sort of do, but it just wasn’t so good as expected - so they kept talking in German to me, haha, to my surprise I understood them quite well! The picture was a good one :) We had to fan ourselves! It was too damn hot! Even I was sweating!
Things got weirder.
After I arrived Dresden looking quite as un-beautiful as one can be (well, that’s how you’re gonna look after 13 hours on a plane), I bumped into my friend on the tram to my hostel. Now, that was a very curious thing. This German friend I had never met before, he’s a friend’s friend, whom I supposed to meet only afterwards. I was sitting there when he got up the train, we were staring at each other, he basically just came up and asked me “Are you Joey????!!” and I was dumbfounded. How small is Dresden! How amazing is this world! (Until now I still cannot explain why he could just recognise me as we had never met before, may be it was very obviously that I look like… a Joey!) Anyway, he was leaving town at that time, so we were to meet later on.
My hostel overlooking a beautiful European-style building.
So finally I was there in Dresden, alone! I managed it! This was the first time I travelled alone to so far away, alone. It was wonderful experience, I fell in love with it only afterwards - I didn’t enjoy it so much at the beginning, this I have to admit.
