Our second honeymoon destination was Germany. Honestly, I had never put a second thought about Germany before this trip. To me, my first impression towards Germany was....Hitler's face O_o
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| Psychotic dude with weird looking mustache. |
I didn't know that Germany is such a beautiful place, I was such a country rat, a little toad in a well. As we are very well aware, Germany was the trigger of the world wars, one of the richest country in the world and also a mother country to expensive cars like BMW, Mercedez-Benz, Audi and Porsche. Such unique country, rich with historical backgrounds and yet advance in technology.
THE TOILET
Did I tell you about their toilets?! OMG! I feel so jakun. I think they have the most advance toilets in the gas station. You need to pay about 1.50 Euro in their machine to enter the toilet, you'll get a 1 Euro token in return to purchase anything you like in the gas station. Such clever marketing gimmick, because everything in the gas station cost more than 2 Euro. Once you finish your business, instead of pressing or pulling the flusher, you just need to wave your hand at the sensor and it automatically flushes! No more touching the bacteria invested flusher! Do you know how freaking dirty the flusher is?! Everyone just touches the flusher with their hands after wiping, holding and doing whatever they do with their hands in the toilet. Super eww. With the sensor, no more touching!
And not only that! A panel ejects out and the toilet seat cover automatically moves in a circular motion to be wiped clean by the panel. OMG!!! Super advance! Clean toilet for everyone! No more covering the toilet seat with toilet papers or doing kung fu squatting style to pee or shit!!! Oh come on! I know you do that kung fu squatting style when you shit or pee in public toilet!
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| Wave your hand at the sensor to flush. |
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| The panel slowly ejecting out. |
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| And the toilet seat cover oscillate slowly while the panel cleans it! |
The husband gave me that WTF look when he saw these pictures in my camera. Yeah, I was that fascinated with the toilet I had to take pictures.
Enough hoo-ha about toilets. Let's get back to the trip.
We left Amsterdam the next morning at 8am and were transported to Germany via the same bus.
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| Was so excited even with some small patches of snow. Forgive me. it was my first winter vacation. |
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| On the way to Germany. Everywhere was covered with snow. |
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| So bloated due to the lack of sleep O=__=O |
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| One last picture before dozing off. |
We made a stop at the gas station where I was fascinated with their toilets. We took the 1 Euro token and topped up with I-forgot-how-much for a Conneto. Look at their Conneto's size comparing to ours! OMG!
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| Eating ice-cream while sitting on snow, whose brilliant idea?! |
The first thing we did when we reached Cologne, Germany was.... EAT!
I love the interior of this place, though I didn't manage to find out the name. The restaurant has that dark vintage and mafia look. The black walls, the lights and the portrait paintings.
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| The 4 course meal looked exactly like what we had in Amsterdam =____= |
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| Armoring myself to brace the cold temperature. |
COLOGNE GOTHIC CATHEDRAL
Cologne was one of the most heavily bombed cities in Germany during World War II. Almost the entire city was destroyed, except for one building, the Cologne Gothic Cathedral. The cathedral withstood 70 hits by aerial bombing during the war. It didn't collapse, instead it stood tall in the already flattened and destroyed city. Some people said it was a miracle and phemomenal, that among all buildings, the Cathedral survived.
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| Magnificent and mind blowing architecture. |
Restoration and cleaning of the building has been conducted since long time ago. But it was never free of scaffolding because of the wind, rain and pollution. Hence you can see the building is mostly covered with dark colors and some part of the building is marble white after cleaning.
Once we entered the cathedral, I was completely bewitched, awed and...hypnotized. I felt like I just stepped into heaven, I felt...spiritual.
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| Aisle to heaven. |
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| Light a candle and make a donation to aid the restoration of this beautiful and historical building. |
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| I lighted a candle and made a wish to Mother Mary to bless my grandma with good health and long life. |
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| As the sunlight shine through the windows, the painting on the windows looked so clearly beautiful. |
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| The captivating chapel. |
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| Even the floor is so beautiful. |
When we were strolling outside the church, a woman approached us and said I was so beautiful bla bla bla and handed me a rose. Thinking that being at this sacred place, it must be a sincere gift from a kind person. Until I took the rose from her hand and she requested for 2 Euro. I looked at the husband and he forcefully gave her 2 Euro. After that, he couldn't stop complaining about it. Expensive la, got conned la, yada yada yada. "So romantic of him" =___= I asked, "What's the problem with paying a bit to buy a flower for your wife during honeymoon?" He said the rose is going to die and will end up in the rubbish bin
So I made good use of it while it's still blossoming.
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| I made him posed with the rose in front of Germany's McDonald's. |
HEIDELBERG
We were transported to Heidelberg afterwards. But by the time we reached, the sky already turned dark due to winter season. And all the shops were closed early for their carnival. We could barely take any nice pictures =(
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| Heidelberg Castle. |
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| Heidelberg's quiet street. |
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| On the Karl Theodor bridge. |
THE HOTEL
We were transported to our hotel, Renaissance Karlsruhe Hotel after dinner. The room wasn't as big as the one in Amsterdam.
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| The bed area. |
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| Another side of the room. |
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| The bathroom, this time with bathtub! I didn't use it anyway, too tired to soak =___= |
LAKE TITISEE
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| Leaving the hotel sharp at 8am! This time looking less bloated and puffy! |
The next day we visited Lake Titisee before transporting to Switzerland. I was quite disappointed that there were no snow in Germany, until I saw this....
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| SO MUCH SNOW!!!!!! |
I was so overwhelmed to see so much snow, I jumped and exclaimed like a kid. It was even snowing and I caught snowflakes on my hands, there were so beautiful. I didn't know how can mother nature create such beautiful shapes. I only thought man-made machine could do that with mold Boy was I so wrong.
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| Errrr....yeah. That was how excited I was. |
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| Look how thick the snow got behind me! |
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| The husband playing with snow. |
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| After sitting for hours in the bus, he decided to cool his warm ass on the snow LOL! |
Lake Titisee is located in the southern Black Forest. The lake covers an area of 1.3km and an average depth of 20m.
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| How Lake Titisee looks like in summer. Photo source from Google. |
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| How it looks like during winter. It was barricaded to prevent people from walking onto the ice, it was all freezing water underneath! |
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| Feeling like the fighting scene in Breaking Dawn (Twilight). I could vaguely see Bella and Edward running across the snow! |
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| Right? LOL! |
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| Love this picture, very emo looking. |
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| Ma, look! SNOW! Love this picture too, the snow reflected the brightness so beautifully! |
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| Playing with the camera self timer before lunch. |
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| Thick snow everywhere! |
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| Inside the Cuckoo Clock Factory. The clocks are so pretty and expensive! |
We had our lunch at Lake Titisee trying out German's famous pork knuckle!
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| Pork knuckles with side dishes of fries, sausages, salted vegetables and rice! |
Their pork knuckles are a bit dry compared to our local version where we have lotsa gravy slathered on top of the pork knuckles.
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| Inside the restaurant overlooking the Black Forest, breath taking! |
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| Us with the Black Forest behind us! |
The husband bought me a Swarovski charm to add onto my Swarovski charm bracelet. It was so cheap in Germany OMG! It was on 30% sale and I got the VAT tax rebate on the spot. It was about RM130++ (if my memory serves me well) while Malaysia was selling it for RM300++ !!! OMG!
RHINE FALLS
We left Lake Titisee with a heavy feeling, the place is just so beautiful even though I didn't see a hint of green LOL. We were transported to Switzerland and the journey took quite a few hours. But we stopped by the Rhine Falls for a quick photo stop and toilet break before crossing the border of Switzerland.
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| Look at how the husband wrapped his hands around me, I think he was afraid that I will fall into the water. |
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| While on the way to Switzerland, I caught a glimpse of the sunset. How beautiful the mountains and snow looked underneath the sun rays. Feeling like The Lord of the Ring. |
We finally reached Switzerland at 6 something in the evening in which the sky already turned dark. Will blog about it in the next post. The more I blog the more the beautiful memories and feelings flashback in my brain. I'm feeling rather nostalgic now, hahaha!
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| My buys in Germany! Couldn't afford a real Cuckoo clock so we bought a magnet instead, LOL! Cheapo style. |
