Interlude: As if Back in Time

Last days I saw in TV, actually one of my favorite movies in childhood, BACK TO THE FUTURE trilogy. Do you remember that movies / have ever seen it? Back to the Future is a 1985 science fiction–comedy film Starring by Michael J. Fox and Christopher Lloyd. The film’s basic storyline involves the premise of time travel being used to breach the generation gap.

What do you want to do, if you can back in time – past or future? Imagine that you could use a time machine to journey back in time.. Ever wish you could reach back in time and change the past? Just Imagining..

As for me, I want to go back to the past in Dutch colonialism era in Bandung where I live nowadays in. Well, I want to see the real situation, buy a huge land to build own palace in the present, kidnap the most beautiful dutch lady to go with me to the present, taking photograph with Charlie Chaplin & ask for his signature. Heh?? LOL.

Bandung?! Check this out!

However, Bandung (City of Flowers), is the provincial capital of West Java and Indonesia’ s fourth largest city – host to the historic Asia Africa conference in 1955. Bandung known in colonial times as the “Paris van Java”, was a name which means approximately the Paris from Indonesia, deserves this name because it has a number of interesting tourism objects, namely natural tourism, shopping tourism, artificial tourism, religious tourism and also various special snacks and foods offered in food stall, café, even restaurant – well, actually we can say because of its European ambiance and sophistication for sure.

(old time clip, 1912)

Bandung shares with Miami a fine legacy of Tropical Deco architecture dating from the 1920’s. Situated on a plateau in the beautiful Parahayangan mountains, Bandung’s pleasant climate and lush surroundings have offered an escape from the heat of the lowlands since the mid 19th century when it was the heart of the region’s most prosperous plantation area.

(Hotel Homann, 1880)

This is the view of the old Grand Hotel Homann and surroundings. Hotel Homann was founded around 1870 on the Groote Postweg (now Asia Africa Street) as a simple hotel, but grew to be the most popular hotel of Bandung. Many famous people stayed there (Charlie Chaplin stayed in 1925, Mary Pickford and many of the Third World leaders), but besides that it was very well known for its rice-table. In 1938 / 1939 the old hotel was replaced by a modern Indonesian new-business-style (art deco style) building by a design of architect Aalbers, with the new name Hotel Savoy Homann.

(Hotel Savoy Homann, present)

Fokker airplanes of the KNIL (Dutch Army) airforce are flying above the Department of Government Buildings (Gouvernements Bedrijven) in 1925, betterknown as Gedung Sate. North of this area are no buildings on the picture, only the Geological Laboratory, beside which the Geological Museum later was to be built, is already completed. This city-district mainly was reserved as an building-area for other departments from Batavia (Jakarta), but those transfer-plans were cancelled. South of the Gedung Sate roads are built and the first country-houses are to be seen.

(1925)

(Gedung Sate, present)

(Clip of tourist tour in bandung, 1993)

Some contents are taken from Bandung City & Indahnesia.