Berlin, You stole what's left of my heart!

Dear BERLIN,

I never thought I would love you the way I do. After deciding that giving my precious heart to a city is perhaps a better idea than giving it to a human being, London had completely stole a better part of my heart. But I bumped Amsterdam to 4th place after I paid you a visit. You are like tartar / Mettbrötchen (raw minced beef on bread roll). I didn't know what I missed until I tried it. One serving is never enough, and the more I am "denied", the more addicted I am to you.

You are so full of flavour. You have the charm of a mature man and the energy of a young man barely out of his teenagehood. While London is the steady mature gentleman that I love, I am a young girl afterall, occasionally looking for excitement that London could not provide. And a self-proclaimed French girl, your French side is just the cherry on top of that delicious cake.

Taking Berlin in is just like having a slice of cheesecake with Gin & Tonic (Gosh, I love G&T); the thick creamy goodness resemble the history and G&T is zesty refreshing, just like the artsy fartsy side of Berlin.

One might think of you as the hipster haven. True, you are slightly too hipster for my liking. No help that for the entire 3 days I stayed at the marvelous Generator Berlin Mitte, wonderfully hipster and wonderfully energetic not to mention smack in the middle of party central. But if you take in all the history going back to World War I then World War II, Berlin is not as young as one perceived. Heck, it is older than my own country.

As a child growing up in a relatively young country, I did not have the luxury or the time to read up on World Wars in a wider scale. Generally history lessons are country-focused and as the first born of a Royal Malaysian Air Force Captain, I was exposed to quite some military stories. It wasn't as interested or as gruesome as some war stories but it was enough to get me interested in the nitty gritty details of wars. Everyone has their side of the story and Berlin, you are no exception.

You have your dark military past and your very colourful future. I fell in love with this marvelous combination because just like life, you are a mixture of important, yet often forgotten, past and bright, promising future. And I fell in love with you, exactly for that reason.

Romance and Germanic

I am more of a "French Girl". Not that I am French, though I am a girl. But I prefer the Romance language and culture more than the Germanic language and culture. The Romance includes: French, Spanish and Italian. As the name of the language group suggested "The more ROMANTIC language". The Germanic includes: English, German and languages from the Scandinavian. You could probably tell from the harsher pronunciations and tones of the 2 language groups. Culture wise, it wasn't subtle that the Spanish, Italian and French came across more passionate and "friendly" while their counterparts are portrayed as to be more reserved when expressing themselves.

I don't originate from either group and Chinese definitely fell into the latter. We have problem telling each other how we feel. But I am a firm believer in letting someone know how we feel about them and how grateful and privileged we are to be able to be more than acquaintance to them. So it is suffice to say I prefer the Romance culture and along with it the languages.

When Pretty Girl decided to go to Germany and asked me to join, I wasn't expecting anything but I am not a person that would passed on a chance to visit a foreign country and really just to see her face again. Afterall, its where most of my life education came from.

I am announcing that "Its my bad! I shouldn't have my judgement before I even tried." I formed my opinion based on a very small sample size and that is a premature decision. I hereby announced that I love Berlin. It is one of my favourite cities in the world. Oops! I got ahead of myself.

The fact that Pretty Girl is there with me might have influenced my decision. I may not be a fan of currywurst or overly salty potatoes, but I am a beer convert and tartar. Who knows raw beef can taste so sinfully good. If I am not already a carnivore, I am definitely more of one now. Serve me steak, I might think twice. Give it to me raw, YES PLEASE.

Without much of my rambling, I present to you COLOGNE / KÖLN. Yes, this is the place where Cologne was invented and hometown to a friend of ours.