Berlin and Singapore

What do Berlin and Singapore have in common? Not much, besides the fact that I recently traveled to both. I went to Berlin a couple of weeks ago for a workshop and conference on survey methods, and I spent the following week in Singapore for a conference on Life Cycle Engineering, where I presented some of my work.

We will go chronologically and start with Berlin. While I've been to Germany a couple of times, including my 3-week study abroad program in Kassel during college and last month's dalliance in the North Rhine-Westphalia region (see my last post), I had never been to the capital city. After spending four days there, I must say that this is one of my favorite European cities. There is so much recent history, with Napoleon, World War I, Nazi rule, World War II, the Cold War, and the relatively recent reunification and modernization of East Berlin, each of which left its mark on the city. I went with one of my colleagues, and we arrived about a half-day early so that we could see a little bit of the city. Our plane landed at noon, and at 1pm we had checked into our hotel and were starting a 3.5-hour walking tour around the center of the city. I was amazed at how much there was to see and hear about in such a small area - we saw the Reichstag (Parliament building), the Brandenburg Gate (which was constructed in the 1700s), a large memorial to the murdered Jews in Europe during WWII (built just a few years ago), the place where Hitler shot himself (now a parking lot), the former headquarters of the Luftwaffe, one of the few remaining pieces of the Berlin Wall, the site of the old Gestapo and SS headquarters buildings, Checkpoint Charlie, the city concert hall, Bebelplatz (where the famous Nazi book burning took place), and Museum Island (where 4 or 5 museums are located - on an island). I could have easily spent a week in Berlin to look through the museums and explore all of the other parts of town, but I guess that will have to wait for another visit. We met up with a friend of my colleague the first two nights, and the third night we had a conference dinner at a rotating restaurant on the top of the TV tower, which gave us a really nice view of the city. Oh, and we drank beer every night, as one feels obliged to do in Germany. For some reason that I may never comprehend, beer always tastes better there.

Upon returning from Berlin, I had 30 hours in Gothenburg before departing to Singapore. Unlike Sweden and Germany, Singapore's primary language is English. While this might not be evident from communicating with some of the cab drivers, in general I felt less out-of-place approaching people and speaking English than I do in Sweden or Germany. Singapore is quite a diverse city, with many of the people having Chinese origins, the culture bearing strong British influences, and about a third of the population having moved there for work. The city is very clean and safe, and the architecture is strikingly modern and beautiful. Aside from the conference, I had an extra day on each end to sightsee, so I did a lot of walking around the city and taking pictures (see the album link to the right). At the conference, I met a lot of people, nearly all of whom were European, as well as an American guy who is also living in Sweden and working at Chalmers. The first night of the conference, a group of us went out for dinner and drinks, and I counted that five out of six of us were living in a different country than our homelands: We had two Americans living in Sweden, a Brazilian living in France, a French person living in England, an a Finn living in the US. And we all had to go halfway around the world to Singapore to meet. The ironic thing was that this was a conference focusing on sustainability, and few people mentioned the fact that over a hundred westerners took highly carbon dioxide-emitting flights to Singapore to talk about reducing carbon emissions and other sustainability issues. While there were some moments of guilt about this, it was still a very cool experience, and hopefully we all learned some things that will more than compensate for the ill environmental effects of the trip.

After the conference ended on Friday night, a few of us decided to check out the famous "Night Safari", which is basically a zoo centered around nocturnal animals that is open after dark. By the time we were ready to go, our group had grown to nine people, and so we took a large van-taxi there. Upon arrival, we immediately and unintentionally lost half of the group, so we were split into a group of 4 and a group of 5. Unfortunately, we had not anticipated this and had no meeting plan, it was crowded and dark, and since we were foreigners, most of our group members were not using cell phones (nor had we exchanged numbers). So, the four of us walked around the zoo, saw the animals, took a tram ride, and saw a couple of shows, all the while searching and yelling out for our friends to try and find them. We started to make up stories about how they had gotten eaten by the lions, tigers, and hippos at the zoo, and I even asked some of the staff if any Europeans had been eaten that night. They told us "no", but we figured that they just didn't want to scare us. Finally, about three hours after we arrived at the zoo, just after we had given up on any chance of them still being alive, I got a call on my cell phone (I had given my business card to some of the others) - they were alive, well, and waiting for us at the entrance! It was a miraculous reunion, and we all went out for drinks afterward to celebrate life.

One more fun fact: Singapore is the farthest south I have ever been in my life, being just 85 miles north of the equator. My recent trips to Norway took me the farthest north I have ever been, being about 350 miles south of the arctic circle. I am truly broadening my scope of world travels this year!

In all, these were two amazing trips to very cool places that I hope all of you have a chance to see at some point in your lives. Just watch out for the man-eating hippos at the Night Safari.

Until next time,
Steven