Germany

I'm a rail nerd, which is not surprising news to many of you reading this. At uni, I wrote my thesis about trains, and I've spent an alarming amount of my quiet time in recent years thinking of things like: where would you put a monorail in Melbourne? and wouldn't it be cool if there was a high-speed train between Melbourne and Sydney that took 3 hours one-way? You know, that sort of stuff.

European trains haven't helped diminish this affliction. Our first high-speed, highly efficient, highly-catered, highly-comfortable trip was from Zurich to Munich, then after a few days there we went to Berlin, then later, from Berlin to Paris. It all cost a bomb, but as someone who paid to see Bon Jovi from the front row would say, it was worth it.

Our Munich adventure involved a lot of wurst and potatoes done in several ways. The first white asparagus of the season was on sale almost everywhere and I had some of that too, in a soup. And roast pork with potato dumplings. And apple strudel. Oh yes, and beers.

That was all great, but not as great as what we saw when the weather turned sunny on the Sunday afternoon we were there. We thought: nice day, big park, why don't we enjoy these two things? So did much of Munich. Including the middle-aged nudists. One of whom strutted on the gravel walkway for close to an hour making noises with his todger by slapping it against his thighs. I don't have any photos, only painful memories.

There are some visually appealing things in Munich though, like this building that I forget the name of. It was in the complex that King Ludwig's mob called home for a while:


Shortly thereafter, we went to Berlin. On the first day, we took a free tour of the city that went for four hours, was fascinatingly and entertainingly done by a very funny guy from Liverpool or Birmingham or somewhere, and ended up costing us quite a few euros in guilty tips.

We also saw that "cupola" on top of the Bundestag. You are supposed to be able to see down into the chambers of parliament from the top - you know, democracy and transparency and all that. But you can't, which made me think that Norman Foster was being a smart-arse.


Obviously, it's not all fun-filled sight-seeing in Berlin. We went to the holocaust memorial; most people walking through the rooms, looking at the exhibits and listening to the stories, were either in tears or near to it, myself included.

We stayed in the former East Berlin, among many potent built reminders that the book of Communist architectural glory is very thin indeed. Look at this as an example of how to perfectly complement a charming cityscape:


What is that concrete dildo doing in the background?

Switzerland

Our original plans involved flying out of Kuala Lumpur to Hong Kong to Paris, via Dubai. Drawing this journey on a map, it starts to look a bit like that infamous "Knowledge Nation" diagram of Kim Beazley's a few years ago (well, a bit). So we canned the idea, smiled at the helpful Emirates sales assistant, changed our flights, handed over some extra dollars and flew to...Switzerland.


Before we got to Switzerland, we spent just under a day in Dubai, mostly in an air-conditioned mall. The highlights of the mall included prayers broadcast over the loud-speaker, which didn't seem to halt the furious commerce taking place, and the most kebab-laden food court I have even seen. Next time, we'll probably spend some time outdoors.

We got to Zurich and wandered the cobble-stone streets for a few days, marvelling at such novelties as cold air and rice-free food. I bought a watch, Bron bought some Swiss Army picnic cups (the "Swiss Army" tag applies to everything from USB sticks to home heating, but the cups would be genuinely useful in a combat situation...one lobbed like a grenade would take down a platoon of French soldiers no troubles).

In Lucerne, we scaled Mt Pilatus with some assistance from two cable cars. There's a stop halfway, some of which is depicted in the photo above. Then, as the serious business of reaching the peak is about to begin, you are led into a heavy-duty steel box with thicker cables and a guide who is dressed like a model from a Kathmandu winter catalogue. At the top, it's spectacular:

Perhentian Islands, Malaysia

There's really not that much to write about for this part of the journey: 11 days of lying around in truly horrible settings such as the above, sipping cocktails and Carlsbergs, and sleeping properly for the first time in God knows how long, aided by the soothing hum of the diesel generator. We ate just about everything on the resort's menu, and read about a million books, all big ones too.

Here's another photo:


And when we left, Bron made friends with some genteel old character at the Kota Bahru airport: