mid-easter crisis

it's depressing to think abt how nothing really excites me anymore. i suppose it's tiresome, trust me, even to myself, to constantly be the cynic or pessimist with everything. maybe i've just been in a spate of go with the flow. somewhere down the line in the past two years, i lost my spark. maybe it was army, maybe it was the frustrating prolonged end to a tangled relationship. do u not notice that in me? the general withdrawal and reclusion. the lack of enthusiasm and spontaneity? i haven't been able to excite myself about anything to desperately want to enjoy something in particular. i feel i've just been letting the waves wash me up any shore, slapping at me constantly. i don't really feel like going for any surf.

i'm back on campus now. the week-long easter trip was....uneventful. maybe it's cos i'm starting to get satiated with the whole europe scene. after a while, the archaic buildings lose their novelty and they resemble each other, indepedent of nationality. the fare u get is vaguely similar with separate emphasis on different pub foods; and the people, well, i suppose u meet like an infinitessimal proportion of the population, totally unjustified in drawing stereotypes. so it was to be that i grew tired of the sightseeing aspect of travelling on the first day of walking about each city (amsterdam, cologne and berlin, in that order). really wanted to do something objective. maybe like skiiing (we did consider that, but fell thru due to travel financial reasons) or something (though skiing was really the only thing that occured to us). couple of slight perks that did surface was a particular experience in amsterdam (which i'm more comfortable sharing in person), and driving across germany from cologne to berlin. i was really quite ecstatic abt the idea of driving in europe (mind u it's left hand drive, and on the right side of the road) and especially on the infamous german authobahns! averaged speeds of 150 and up to 180! which was rather scary cos a slight movement of the wheel caused the car to swerve qt a bit. pity we rented a shitty nissan micra which took ages to accelerate to required speeds, and left my fingers numb from the vibration of the wheel at those speeds! hair raising too, that i kept forgeting traffic was on the right side of the carriageways (turned into a wrong lane once)!

amsterdam and cologne had that small town charm with little rustic houses and small alleys. pubs (or coffeeshops in the case of amsterdam) adorning every corner and a lovely sunny weather with cool (at times chilly) winds, gracing ppl with the mood to sit at alfresco cafes sipping coffee and leeching off free music (haha!). amsterdam's crazy network of canals was rather refreshing, considering i've never seen a place like that before (no comparison made to venice), but its culture, i would say really resembled everything i've become used to in the uk. well, except for the whole drugs and explicit porno thing. ok maybe not. i'm sure uk has its fair share of porn. it's just that amsterdam has a redlight district bloody close to their main train station, and tourists remember it for that (the xxx on their coat of arms doesn't help a bit hahaha). dutch food didn't sound like anything really perculiar to their culture, although i must compliment their waffles! you've not experienced amsterdam till u've tasted their waffles! the chocolate coated ones with really rich sweet cream, with sugar glazed straberries and bananas stuck in the cream! simply delectable! had me going back for one everyday of the 3 days i was there! i hate dutch mushrooms. yucks.

berlin, on the other hand, was an utter disappointment. let me give u the best part about it first. its modern architecture. simply divine. they've buildings combining glass, steel and what not in shapes and designs so unconventionally pleasing to the eye it was breathtaking. and i'm honestly not exaggerating. especially remarkable was the jewish war monument in its clever design! it's got cuboid blocks of cement of irregular heights arranged unifomly across this massive plaza..simply brilliant in its design, though its message seems persistent on vindicating the common german man in the orchestra of the holocaust (ok sounds wrong to use orchestra on sth like the holocaust, but it was indeed an intricately massive plan..) i'll post some pictures when i'm bored. but other than that, berlin was a total drab. apart from the main commerce and politcal centres, the city still seems to be in shambles. graffiti dons almost every wall (and train and canal?! really, the most impossible places u can think off..like roofs), such that we totally thought nothing of the berlin wall, driving past many sections of it, until we saw pictures of it in lonely planet. incredible. the city doesn't seem as lively and exuberant as london due to its massive land space. germany's got acres upon acres of land so i suppose there's no reason to compact and stack everything. and u can't get proper chinese food. that's enough to exasperate 3 of us in our 3 day stay in berlin. hah. on a separate note, i do feel sorry for the poor berliners. they seem a city whose contemporary culture, monuments and history are plagued by the desperate need to apologise to the rest of mankind, and also upon its sad fate as the sodding bone with which the soviet union and the allied powers messed about!

with those thoughts, i came back to warwick couple of days back, and haven't been able to get down to any work. inertia bites once again..i'm hoping i'll be able to get some skiing done before easter's up. next thing i'm looking forward to is jieming's visit! haha..