Meeting up with Contikian

Tonight, we will meet up with our tour manager and tour mates. Well, i heard of Contiki few years back from newspaper. The wonders of this tour are - only for age 18-35 (cause we have a lot of party and clubbing time!), you will have your own free time to visit around (cause is half guided tour, half on your own), the price is not that cheap.

However, it still worth to join contiki for this eastern europe trip.From my research, train ticket itself can cost up to RM2k if we backpack. Contiki cost me around RM6k for 12 days tour (including hotel, transportation, add on and most of the meal). Its even cheaper when you sign the package during matta fair.

Everyday, our tour manager - Ali (pronounce as Ally) will stick this notice at hotel lobby, from this notice, we know what is our itinerary and departure time.First night dinner is for us to get to know each others. Most of the tour mates were from US, Australia & Canada. 1 from Taiwan, 5 from Singapore, 1 from south Africa and 3 from Malaysia.
Although is an ice - breaking dinner, but i only get to know 2 friends from Malaysia - Chloe and Calvin. Who i already knew them. Well, perhaps we are not that popular among western people.
The best thing of joining tour, we always have 3 course meals. For my last backpack trip, almost every day we ate sandwich and maggie mee. But this time...hahahah! i even gain weight after back from the trip.
This is super delicious dessert!
First night in Berlin. We are going to Berlin wall tomorrow!

Arriving in Berlin

Finally, we reached Berlin. (ha, took half year to reach...)Our hotel was near to this metro station. We had difficulty to pronounce the street and station name in Germany. But thanks to be anak malaysia, we pronounce it using suku-kata. Ie for the street name above, we call it "bu-lo-strase" For some name which cant even pronounce using suku-kata, Chloe and me will communicate in " find the road name start with K", or " it on road name start with DK..." hahahahhaha! malunya
Finding the hotel. "Yam" by google map, it lead us to the wrong place. Luckly Calvin had GPS on his phone.
The hotel room, not bad la. After settle down everything, we decided to go out for a walk before meeting up with our contiki mate tonight.
Our first stop - Hard Rock Berlin. Maybe we truely got the Malaysian look. The cashier asked us where we from. End up, he was from Penang! I asked him, "do you want to go back malaysia?" As expected, he refused to. The life here was so good.

If dog poo-poo, please took a paper bag to clean its shit. We walked along this shopping street, which is start with "F". Not to forget visit Longchamp shop.
The famous Bratwurst become our lunch. The sausage was damm nice! 弹牙又爽口！Only Euro 2.00
People here drank beer all day long. The sausage was very long too.
A building which been destroyed during war time.
Definitely we had no problem to pronounce this station - Pan Kou!
After wonder for about half a day, its time to go back to hotel for tonight dinner!

Trip to Eastern Europe

Gosh... I never though i will go to Eastern Europe. Yes i knew Prague was beautiful, i knew berlin wall was in Berlin -.-"

I wanted to go Italy, but after so much of frustration in finding the cheap flight ticket, i finally gave up. I told myself, instead of paying RM4k to buy the ticket to Rome (which i can get 1k cheaper if got sales), why not i spend it on some countries that airline do not offer promo price.

So... i knew Prague was beautiful and end up choosing the 12days eastern road by Contiki. Reason being was i wanted a hassle free holiday yet with backpack feels. :)

By purchasing Contiki package during matta fair, i got 10% discount, then we were taking the triple share room, save another 5%! total saving close to RM600 !!

On 28 August 2010, 3 of us (calvin, chloe and me) fly from KLIA to Berlin, transit at Amsterdam. This time, we took KLM. KLM had excellent in-flight entertainment, but the seats were lousy due to 3-3-3 setup.

Second time at Schipol airport. Ohh.... kind of missing it. I try to find the cow that i saw last times but was not successful. This time, nobody hug me. haha. However when i was at the custom for transit, i had been molested by a female cop there! What The...the alarm rang when i go through security door, i don't know why. Then i had been checked from top to toe including to confirm the bra i wear was a real bra...-.-" What a shame in front of everyone. I turn over my head, and saw my friend laughing at me behind. Speechless....
We had our first luxury Europe's breakfast. Coffee and Sandwich. After i back to Malaysia, i saw this cup at some coffee house. And before that i though only Amsterdam had it! haiz... so sua gu.

Another 1 hour flight from Amsterdam to Berlin... so here we started our Eastern Europe semi flash-packer trip.