Luxembourg Bound!

Going off on a Study Trip to Luxembourg in just a few hours. Looking forward to seeing a new country, getting a tour of the European Court of Justice and hearing a case relevant to what I'm studying; not looking forward to a combined total of 24 hours on a Coach.

But I will bring my laptop along for entertainment. Hope this idea won't bite me in the arse, however that might happen.

People seem to be the most excited when you tell them you've been to London, Paris, Milan, Rome and Spain. They'll just give you a blank look when you tell them something like Luxembourg and sometimes I wonder if I should really bother mentioning about such travels. Its almost as bad as telling people you made toast and eggs for breakfast.

But I will have photos when I come back. Aha! And this is my blog and my right to post boring stuff. If you no like, feel free to Alt Tab :D

How you wish you have the best of both worlds

How you wish you were living independently overseas, yet have your loved ones and dear friends to turn to when you need an intermission from the Alpha Male charade.

How you wish you had a communal kitchen and dining place to know your neighbours, yet not have to worry about your stuff going missing or your privacy being intruded upon.

How you wish you could go to parties during winter, yet not have to go through the cold weather.

How you wish you could spend all the time on exchange enjoying the exchange and picking up skills, and not worry about studying and passing exams.

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I think watching Grey's Anatomy brings out the emotions. I should really stick to Boston Legal.

Nothing's much been happening the past two weeks. Maybe the most eventful was the Daylight Savings Time change. Denmark's going for elections Nov 13, but unfortunately I'm not going to be around for it.. not like I'm going to follow the elections or understand it anyway. And Christmas Beer (Julebryg) has hit Denmark on 2 Nov, also known as J-Dag. Tried it out for size while watching the Arsenal - Man U game today.. wasn't too bad. But more like a girly beer, heh.

Workload for school is picking up. Got to choose from 2-3 choices of exam dates for the courses. With luck I'll be doing an exam in Dec just before Christmas, and the other two will be in the middle of January. Seems like I should be studying a lot harder from now on.

Cultural Highlights of Odense

Located in Denmark's garden island Funen. Odense is also the birthplace of Hans Christian Andersen and Denmark's third largest city in terms of population.

First up is the Hans Christian Andersen museum which is a must-see, number one tourist attraction of Odense. Photos are below. Personally my childhood was more about TV than fairytales, so I did not really know what made me so interested in knowing more about HCA. Perhaps to know how legends are made, or to know how his fairytales have conquered over 150 language barriers, or maybe just the deep desire to dwell in imagination and fantasy of a childlike sort.

(Above): Papercuts, which he did as he was regaling children with his stories.

It is at this point where I apologise to all past Mandarin teachers/tutors I have had, for my inability to even pronounce the translation of Nightingale. If I had to guess it would be ye4 ying1. I laid down my Chinese Broadsword, Pen and Brush in 2000, so give me a break.

AND... Travis!

Whats this got to do with Denmark? Nothing. They're a Scottish Band. But they were actually the reason I bothered going to Odense, Funen, Denmark in the first place. It was an awesome concert, the cover band was an alternative Danish emo rock band Ave; you can listen to their music on their myspace website here.

Showmanship was good, vocals were great and they played all my favourite songs, and some which would later add to my list of favourite songs. Managed to get a few short clips of Selfish Jean, Love Will Come Through and Flowers in the Window with my trusty Canon.


The rest of the photos are just the nice scenery on the second day, while we were biking and exploring. Got to watch the strange Everton - Liverpool derby match as well but thats not worth blogging. Or not. Liverpool scored two penalties (duh) and the only goal they scored that was not a penalty was an own goal (clearance gone horribly wrong). Haha. Everton should have won. Liverpool could not even put a goal through when Everton was reduced to 9 men.

All thats left for me to visit in Denmark is probably Skagen for the meeting of the seas, and Frederikshavn to take a ferry out =)

My Hero

Oktoberfest

Photos from Oktoberfest 2007 in Munich. Did not spend my entire time in Munich there - first night to recee, second was a full day, and the final was the last night of the Oktoberfest.

Oktoberfest is basically just a huge carnival. May not make sense to everybody why there is a huge carnival just to drink beer at extortionist price and the crowd can be quite putting off. But everybody still goes to Disneyland and amusement parks - this one has exceptional beer on top of all that! Therefore rule out little kids, and add in open-minded, slightly tipsy tourists from all over the world, some wearing the traditional Bavarian costume, and theres definitely a recipe for fun. Food was fantastic too - grilled fish, metre long hot dog, fish and chips, and the delicious aroma from roasted chicken which I did not try.

Experience of a lifetime. For now I'll let the photos do the talking, so you can make your own judgement.

















Look closely at the final photo of the "Cupid" and you can see lots of knickers draped on it. Here's to a happy love life! Or sex life.. I honestly have no idea what it represents :)

Procrastination

is my middle name...

That, plus how much I do not want Facebook: Filled up my DOB as Christmas 2006, and got my email disabled. HAHAHAHA.

In other news, Denmark played Spain for the Euro 2008 qualifier yesterday in Aarhus. CESC FABREGAS!!! Only reason why it was in Aarhus was due to a spectator assaulting the referee in the Denmark-Sweden game, and subsequently Denmark had to play its next four home matches at least 250km away from Copenhagen by orders of UEFA.

Score was 3-1. Guess I won't be watching Denmark in Euro 2008. But the way they played was absolutely horrible - missing so many chances and showing a lack of sportsmanship.

Love the irony of this photo - Spanish guy holding up Denmark flag post-game :))

Of Berlin-Munich

I know I should kick start a post about where I've been and what I've been doing for a whole week (or 8 days to be exact) but I'm very reluctant for a few reasons. Firstly, the photos are split over a number of cameras and I've not gotten all the relevant photos. On this note, it means I have to get the dreaded facebook, something I have tried to procrastinate for as long as possible for no real reason. But thats just a minor thing. More importantly, I find it hard to reduce the great time I've had into words and photos. I'm not great at descriptive; I would suck as a novelist. But a friend kindly suggested that the photos would serve to remind me of the journey I have taken, the memories of which I hope would be etched in me for a long time to come, and which no camera lens can truly hope to capture in all its essence. So here goes...

Day 1 (Mon 1st Oct)

7.5 hour train journey to Berlin cooped in a small carriage with 5 others is no joke. I'm just glad I did not suffer any cramps, and I was sufficiently beat to sleep more than half of the time away.

First day was pretty much meeting up with Kyle and Khel, checking out our sweet accoms, and gushing at how the prices in Germany are so cheap compared to Scandinavia. I just remembered the day as eating all sorts of greasy food like Döner Kebab, Curry wurst, hot dogs, fries, hamburgers and thinking this was the life. Plus checking out a nice Mexican pub with a limited song list but good prices for beer and cocktails - three of us just spent some time catching up and doing some solid, intense discussion.

Day 2 (Tue 2nd Oct)

And we have a new member from Madrid! We all headed down to Potsdamer Platz intending to go on a City Tour but ended up going on the Third Reich tour, which was all about Mr Hitler and how well he made history. Our tour guide was really good - armed with interesting snippets and knowledge of things liks assassination attempts. It really made history come alive, unlike secondary school history lessons and textbook mugging.




Soviet War Memorial with a bronze Russian Soldier and his rifle hanging in the non-alert position. And the 2nd one is some grave which all I can recall is a memorial to victims, and it was felt that the size was too small in light of the sheer number of victims - 200 000 from 1939 to 1945. Disclaimer: Facts may not be accurate .. I really should have jotted down facts in a notebook.




This one goes out to all who like to make me 'lao nuah' over the food I cannot enjoy in Singapore. Muahaha. Towards the end of dinner it got a little uncomfortable because every other diner was in a formal attire.

Next we headed off to the super huge open-air concert set up specially for reunification day. My camera batteries conveniently died at the top of the ferris wheel we sat in, but here's a photo of the ferris wheel taken from on top the Reichstag:



There was a huge festive mood at the open-air concert. Young kids were dancing wildly, pushing into the people around them. The idea was that those people would join in and the wild dancing would grow contagious.

Afterwards we just bummed around because we were half expecting some form of countdown into the Reunification Day, but promptly at 12am, the crowd was gone and the stalls started closing. So much for a countdown.

Day 3 (Wed 3rd Oct)

City Tour Day!

Jewish Memorial: sides of the blocks have been coated with some substance that would allow easy removal of graffiti/dirt. Its rather tasteful compared to alternatives such as a giant vat of blood or giant ovens, which apparently had been suggested for the memorial. Various theories have been suggested what these blocks represent, one went along the lines of a bar chart representing the victims over the years.

Next photo is the Berlin Wall. Huge piping on top of the wall is to prevent people from getting a grip on the top. Apparently barbed wire was not enough to deter desperate people, and our tour guide gave us funny stories of how some made it across the wall - dressing up as a cow, using the ID of a west berliner who looks like the fella's gf in east berlin, sob story of having a dying grandmother and forgetting the proper papers etc.

Finally Checkpoint Charlie. Its so commercialised now, saw someone posing with the fake American guard there and paying him money afterwards.

After the tour we parted ways - me and kyle headed off to shop, liz and khel went to see some museum and have a romantic candlelight dinner together. Okay thats all the gossip I'm leaking.

However, shops were closed on this fateful Public Holiday, and we were so shacked out that we nearly went back to the hostel to nap for a bit. Rather glad we didn't. Spent some time at the Topography of Terror before heading to the Reichstag. Caught a beautiful sunset along the way.




This is Kyle resting up before the pub crawl at night!



No photos of the pub crawl simply because this is a family-oriented blog. Hahaha. Anyway this marks the end of my stamina and energy for this post. Of course I should have added Part 1 to the title, or deleted Munich from it, but then I would not be able to say SURPRISE!!! now, would I.