After going through another section of life it was time for another trip. I wasn’t sure if I was ready for the trip, but I had to take it. The flight to Singapore was planned for a different purpose, but luckily I had a friend who wanted to join me. I wanted to use the flight to fly to Australia, but life changed. This is anyway not important for this blog post.
I had the flight booked from Berlin to Singapore, just 220 Euros, so I can’t complain about that at all! Especially due to the fact, it was a direct flight!
Going to Berlin
I went to Berlin the day before I was flying. I also went with Marcel, who was joining me on the Cheese Rolling as well. It was good spending more time with him. Marcel is living near Luxembourg, so we don’t meet each other often. In Berlin there was the final for the German Football Cup (DFB Pokal). In the final Frankfurt played against Leipzig, Marcel is a fan from Eintracht Frankfurt, so I had to join him.
Before all of that happend, we went by the Germany Ticket (Deutschland Ticket) with regional trains all the way from Hamburg to Berlin. It took a bit longer than other transportations, but it included the ticket. The Germany Ticket is a ticket for which you pay at the moment 49 Euros and can use all public transportations in the cities and all regional trains all over the country for a month.
I was booking it as well, even though I will be traveling for three weeks out of those four, but arriving in Munich at the end, so it will be worth it getting back to Hamburg with that ticket!
Doing things before the game
We were arriving in Berlin with a really packed train, which was quite annoying, but whatever. The location was great, directly at the Alexanderplatz, because I still had to get some stuff for the upcoming trip. We went to an electronics shop, after my phone was stolen in Mexico I wanted to finally get a phone with a better camera. Just after searching for over an hour the phone I wanted wasn’t there, on the second hand market it at the end also didn’t work out, which was quite a bummer. I was at least getting an extra storage card for the drone and the gopro, so that was great.
We were grabbing some food and walking in the heat of Berlin to the flat from my aunt, who was sadly not there, but left us the key for staying there. The apartment was amazing, I haven’t seen it before, due to her moving.
We were preparing the food and got ourselves ready for the game, to which Marcel really wanted to go. I received a scarf from the Frankfurt team, which felt wrong, but he did the same back then during a game from the Hamburg team.
The final game
We arrived without the tickets at the Olympiastadion in Berlin, while being surrounded by thousands, who also wanted to see the game. Some smoke bombs and flares were burned down and the tension was possible to feel in the air, due to the hate against Leipzig (basically a team from Red Bull). The people and also Marcel got really drunk, which was getting slowly annoying, because I stayed sober.
Until an hour before the game, we were wandering around the place and finally were able to sit down somewhere and relax. During that time three girls were sitting next to us, they were from Mexico, Taiwan and China, all were studying in Berlin. Super friendly girls, who were joining us to find a good place to watch the game, because it was not really possible to find a ticket, which was sold for a fair price.
Many people came there just to watch the game from the outside, to support the team in front of the stadium. We were going to the Biergarten to watch the game. The atmosphere was great and we were having great talks. Sadly Marcel ended up being done and didn’t really see that much of the game, which was fine because Frankfurt sadly lost. After the game the tension felt quite high and we were deciding to leave and not see what happens outside the stadium.
Flying to Singapore
I was sleeping quite well, but short. I was leaving the apartment before 6am, to get the flight, which was way too early after such a short night. Luckily all trains were on time and I got quite quick to the new airport from Berlin. Last time I picked someone up and now it was my turn to go flying from there.
There was nothing going on at the security check, nobody was there, it was great, but it led to me being there way too early.
I tried to rest and eat some snacks and tried to get my heavy and big backpack as hand luggage into the plane. It is a 48L backpack and weighs 13kg, but it worked. I was flying with Scoot, a cheap airline which is part of Singapore Airlines.
It was a 12h flight, without entertainment and food, so it’s important to have something with you on cheap flights like this! I didn’t know what was going on, but I was having an extremely strong headache, which I never had before. I am not a person who is taking medicine, but after 1,5h’s of suffering I was taking some pills. Luckily it helped, but I didn’t really understand it. The flight took forever, but wasn’t bad. I was having some quality talks with my neighbor. He was from South Africa and was traveling around the world and we were getting along really well.
Arriving in Singapore
Getting into Singapore was exciting, I was hyped seeing the airport, never before that was the case. I went with the guy from South Africa exploring at 4am and found a cactus garden, which wasn’t that interesting, due to the darkness.
We were entering Singapore, which was just super easy. No passport controls for me, no stamp and just “welcome to Singapore!”. It was a weird feeling and it just felt wrong, but seemed to be all good. I would have wanted the stamp though.
It was time to see the famous waterfall in the airport. When we arrived at it, it was not open yet. While being at it, we felt the heat of the country and it wasn’t what I was expecting. I was sweating at 4am, just crazy.
We were searching for the train stop, which was harder to find than expected again. My host was luckily explaining it somehow to me. You basically need to get out of the terminal and enter the mall, in which also the waterfall is, and walk then to the train station, which is in another terminal. Complicated by reading and in person, after seeing it once it gets easy though.
I leave this page without ads, so you can enjoy the reading of the articles more! For supporting me and receiving for example postcards or interacting more with me, you can become a → Patreon ← from my page! Also you can, when willing, donate something on Paypal. Of course a follow on my Instagram is also great!
Riding a train in Singapore
After arriving at the train stop, I was happily sending a message to the host, that everything worked, which was not the case. I wasn’t able to buy a ticket for the train, I had to download an app and sign my credit card up. After that worked out, finally I was getting out of the airport and got in the direction of my host.
Riding the train was actually super simple and fast. Many people were using the public transportation as well and everyone was just sitting on their phones. It was super quiet and everyone was minding their own business. After arriving at the station I was somehow managing the direction to the exit of the place, for my host to pick me up.
He picked me up after five minutes of waiting and it was the first time I saw his face, at Couchsurfing they didn’t have any picture. His profile was extremely good, so I risked it basically. Andrew is also an Ambassador of Couchsurfing and has the same amount of references as me.
We were driving home in his car and shared some nice talks already, but to this in the next personal blog post more.
