Right now I am still slightly north of the equator, in my Singapore hotel room. We soon have to check out, will have another look at the city before we take the flight to Sydney this evening. As the web access is for free here, I will share some of my impressions of the trip so far.
Departing in the early morning in Germany was, as expected, a cold experience, even tough we were dressed in onion-like layers of clothing. But, knowing that we will soon feel tropical temperatures, it was easy to spend half a cold hour at the train station. What really made me shudder was the train-station-bookstore. The category ‘Science / Research’ consisted of dozens of astrology, esoteric and spirituality magazines, promoting the end of the world in 2012, horoscopes (one for Roland Emmerich, too), and some really crazy ones about conspiracy theories, like some north-European mind-control project and one headline combining Adolf Hitler, Goethe’s Faust and demons.
I was relieved to see that the bookstores at the Frankfurt Airport were able to fill the same category with real science literature.
The flight was rather calm, with some turbulences at the start and in the last hour. The latter were rather uncomfortable as the Breakfast choice was somewhat uncommon for me: either omelette with tomato sauce, sausage and fried potatoes, or Asian noodles with beef, mushrooms and onions. And we were sitting right next to the kitchen (smelling the food all the time) and due to some technical difficulties the cabin lights were on for 11 out of the 12 hours flight. The announcement that the entertainment system had some error was cleverly made, too. The said: ‘We have a technical problem …’ then waiting for a looong time, only to finish with ‘ … with our entertainment system, we have to switch it of for several minutes.’ Without much experience in flying this was somewhat alarming, sombined with the turbulences.
Without sleep we arrived in Singapore at 7 in the morning local time, got our luggage and headed for the city in a cab. This was the moment when we were rewarded for leaving the late fall in Europe. A beautifully blue, cloud-less sky greeted us in a (very humid) 24 degress warm air. We passed by lots of palm trees, catched a glimpse of the sea and even got a room in the hotel this early in the morning. To avoid too much jet-lack we decided to visit the city right away, starting in Little India. Very interesting, and hopefully I can show some pictures later. After a short mid-day nap we went to see some other parts of Singapore, especially the big modern buildings. Several things stroked me here:
First of all, the city is really clean (except Little India, but there it would kill the flair). Most likely because of the many bans, fines and the extensive surveillance. Furthermore, I have never seen that many shopping malls next to each other in my life. In some parts of the city each block is it’s own shopping mall. And they are huge, compared to the German ‘Einkaufszentren’. And each of them has at least a McDonalds, Burger King, Starbucks, Subway or Pizza Hut restaurant. Luckily, there are also many local restaurants. This one displayed its offers in the vertical:
Especially here it becomes obvious that Christmas is not a religious holiday anymore. Even tough only 15 percent of the inhabitants are Christians of some kind, all the malls played the worst over the top remakes of Christmas songs, gave pre-holiday discounts and had Christmas decorations, one more kitschy than the other:
This all combined to a kind of Disneyland-Atmosphere, everything being somewhat artificial and planned, air-conditioned, high-gloss surfaces everywhere and sweets are way to sweet. It is a fascinating city, but better for a short stay I would say. Maybe not only the one day we spend there, but a week would be too much for me.
So, now I’ve got to go. I will report from the next continent in some days.
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Wow, I guess malls are the same all across the world huh? I don’t really go to the mall that much, but I still can’t escape the horrible Christmas music
Die Welt hält manchmal komische Erkenntnisse bereit: Vertikales Essen. Ein Traum & auf viele weitere Eindrücke, Marcel! Füttere meine weltenhungrigen Augen. Danke!
Viele Grüße & weiterhin sichere Straßen,
Fritsch.
Naja, vertikales Essen ist halt extrem Fotografenfreundlich. Man muss nicht auf den Tisch klettern und so
Mit den Straßen muss man hier aber echt aufpassen. Abends steht da gerne ein Kanguru drauf herum und guckt doof in die Gegend.
Forgive me, but I seem to get very confused by this. From what I understand, Singapore is a city-state, while the island of Singapore is the actual island itself with Singapore, the city, as its capital.Am I wrong or right? You rhelp will be greatly appreciated.
Dear ‘dance folk’: Singapore is the city, the state and the island. Actualli, they have several islands, but all in all it is one big city.
By the way: You don’t have to give your real names, but I don’t like it when the name is obviously spam related. I will remove your link in these cases, or even remove the whole comment (depending on the text and my mood
).
Mich begeistert das Essen, das in der Vertikalen an der Wand präsentiert wird. Ich versuche mir gerade vorzustellen, wie es eingeklebt oder künstlich hergestellt wurde oder mit Frischhaltefolie gehalten wird … damit es auch so schön kleben bleibt, dass man geradezu reingreifen möchte… und dabei doch vor einer Glaswand landet!
Schöne Grüße vor dem Mittagessen wohin auch immer in der Welt
Renata