My last post in Norway since I'll be flying off tomorrow. I know I have been totally lacking in updates, sorry, but the trip updates will have to be done when I'm back in Singapore. In this last time where I'm typing a blog post in my Norwegian Hostel Room, I will try and summarise the whole Norwegian adventure.

Life in Norway has been full of ups and downs. And it has mostly been me I think. The same old problem of thinking too much and letting myself bring me down. Some things cannot be helped. Like grandma. It is something that will stay with me for quite a while. But the experience here can never be replaced. The trips, the people, the food, even the things I learn. I've grown.

The trips I've made around Europe and even within Norway has made me seen so much more. The world is not that small after all. So much to see, so little time. If time and money permits, I'll definitely revisit the countries again.

As for the people, I've met so many different kind of people. Even the ones that I already knew. I've seen another side of them. Human are really socialising creatures. I doubt I would have survived these 5 months if I came alone.

Food. I CAN COOK! Discovery! Haha. Oh well, at least I can cook something decent and in fact, I'm much better at local food. Haha. I managed to cook nice prawn noodles, nice laksa, nice curry etc. As for western. Hmm. I'll need to eat more to know how to cook them. Hehe. Discovery number 2. I so prefer the fast food in Singapore. They taste so much better! Bah! McSpicy, Zinger... But if you are talking about cuisines, Belgium definitely left a very deep impression. The raw mussels, the fries, ice cream and even their random burgers. Heavenly.

Norway. I'll miss the slower pace of life here. The fresh air. The mountain that looks over me every single day. The long day to short day. The warm air to cold air. The snow. The Dota. The friends around me. Even the T-Bane and BI.

Seriously, I have no idea how to put my feelings into words. I'm looking forward to going back home, but at the same time, I want to continue staying here in Norway. I still want to go up North to see the Northern Lights. I still want to play with snow. But I want to go back to see my friends and K! I want to eat real Laksa and Rojak and all the local food! Oh well, all good things must come to an end right? So I guess this is good. I think I'm talking incoherently already. So one last shoutout.

GOODBYE NORWAY, KRINGSJA! WELCOME BACK TO SINGAPORE, HOME!

The mid-term trip with James, Bernice, Alicia and Yuan Sheng to Bremen. We practically just shopped. Haha. Not that I minded. So technically, we don't have much photos either. Who will be snapping pictures when we're all busy shopping?! Hehe. Plus we only went to the city center, where all the shops were! Whee! PS: The following post contains almost all the pictures I have of Bremen. Have fun!


On the way to the airport


Our first dinner. Recommended by YS. Don't ask me why I didn't take a picture of what we ate. I just have no idea
.



The huge sunflower someone grew near our hostel. Cool right?



It's like really popular in Europe to have the broken glass "concept". Haha. At the tram stop near our hostel.




The city center





My lunch. Kebab set. Our obsession with kebabs. :/



Ah this thing is everywhere! The Bremen Town Musician. I even bought a storybook about it for my little cousin! :)




SHOPPING!



Some rare pictures of us outside a shopping center. Hehe. And yes, in the first picture, the animals on the merry-go-round are the Bremen Town Musician!




And to end off our first full day here, we made a trip to a nearby supermarket! To buy cheap chocolates back. Hehe. Plus snacks and drinks to the hostel!


Oddly shaped vegetables and HUGE pumpkins!




We bought so much that we decided to push the trolley back to our hostel, thinking that it's only like 3-4 tram stops away. Hehe. So off we go, pushing the supermaket trolley back!



When we reached the hostel, the hostel owner was like in shock when he saw the trolley! Haha! And he made us promise to bring it back. He even came up the next morning to remind us. Hehe.

Our first drink. Becks Ice. Very mild and sweet. Great for beginners. :)



So the next morning, being good kids, we pushed the trolley back! And decided to walk all the way to the city center with a lunch stop somewhere in the middle. No regrets, the food was great. And we even went back for dinner!



The view while we were walking to the city center





The BTM Strikes Back! They are literally everywhere! Outside momuments, outside shops, on the streets and even in shopping centers.




The nice dinner place. The pizza looks plain and normal? But it is really Yummylicious!




Guess the lump! Duh it's Alicia! Haha.



More drinks. We met Audrey, Jenna and Hualing on our last day in Bremen, so we invited them over to our hostel for drinks and fun with our new game set. The Texas Hold 'Em Set! Whoots!



That ends off our trip in Bremen. Next up, London where I had the experience of my life. :)

Ok, I'm back as promised! Whee! I'm posting my 2 separate trips to Sweden. Once, we took a bus from Oslo S to Gotenburg and the 2nd time, Luna drove us up to do grocery shopping. The timeline now is no longer accurate cause I just wanted to blog about Sweden in one go, instead of doing a Sweden, Bremen, Sweden post. Hehe. So Sweden!

For Gotenburg, technically, we went to shop, so not many pictures. But still, it was a nice get-away.


View from the bus



The bus station and the Gotenburg taxi



The shopping centre




A market we walked into




Pictures we took outside! Finally. Jeans hanging across the street! For a jeans shop!



That's all for Gotenburg. Haha. Really short right? Haha. Next, Sweden with Luna. We bought a lot of groceries. Some of the things we bought, 9kg of chicken thighs, 6kg of chicken fillet, around 20 cartons of Capri-sonne, 24 cans of Coke, 24 cans of assorted drinks, 5kg of flour, 3-4kg of fish, 3kg of beef and many more that I cannot remember. :/

Pictures!

Luna driving! The rest in the car.




The freaking Huge Tobelrone and the meat place.




Next up, a trolley in H&M! Haha. Seen a supermarket trolley in a shopping store? The trolleys are everywhere in the shopping center. Plus the huge Pepsi can in the candy place (it's huge!) and how can we miss out on the all so common "pose with the teeth candy" picture. One group pic before we went to the supermarket and a Halloween decoration in the supermarket.



Fast-forwarding to the trip back. We decided to take the Ro-ro back, so pics of us taking before we went into the Ro-ro, the cars in the Ro-ro, the interior of the ship. It's a really nice ship, but it was one hell of a ride. My gosh, the ship was so rocky, we couldn't even walk straight! And it made us so so uncomfortable. The bad weather. It was raining. :(



The rocking got so bad that we decided to go up to the deck. Going up the deck is really so so so much better, but the downside? It's freaking cold and the winds were damn strong! Luckily, I'm fat, cannot be literally blown away. :/




Finally back in hostel, we had the chore of moving everything up from the car to our kitchen! Pictures of some of the food we bought.



And to end this post off, an UNGLAM pic of Bernice trying to pack stuff into our cupboard! Hehe. But it's ok, James still loves you. =p



Ok I'm tired of dragging pictures already. Bremen, another day, or maybe even tonight. Till then!

I'm back with pictures from the Pub Crawl in Berlin. Technically, we joined the pub crawl on the day we went for the walking tour and we were leaving Berlin the next day. But we still had fun! :) I doubt I had a lot of pictures cause we went to like 3 pubs and 2 clubs, and pubs and clubs aren't exactly the best place to take pictures ya? Haha.

First, the dinner we cooked ourselves in the hostel. With our new found friends, Aubrey and Jennifer from America. (Note, Aubrey and Jennifer do not know each other, we just happen to live in the same dorm. Jennifer is like what, only 19!)



Our entry "ticket" to the pub crawl!




Aubrey and I, Next Jennifer and I




This guy is really cool, he was performing the electric cello in the first pub we were at (free flow beer and subsequently, free vodka shots). James even bought his album.



Random shots, the first one is taken by the photographer from the Pub Crawl, that explains the quality. o.O




The second guy from the right is Enrico, he's someone I met during the Pub Crawl. A nice guy to talk to. :) He's Italian by the way.


That's it for our Berlin trip. And that marks the end of our pre-sem trip! Next up, some on the short Sweden trips and the mid-term trip to Bremen.

The last stop of our pre-sem trip. Germany! We went to 2 places. Koln and Berlin. Technically, we didn't do much in Koln except to find a doctor for me cause 1, it was freaking the others out. 2, it is really freaking itchy that I keep wanting to scratch it! I'll let the pictures do the talking!

Koln

The magestic cathedral that greeted us once we stepped out of the train station. The picture serious doesn't do the real the thing justice.



Our hostel room, on the way to the doctor's and me at the doctor's




Now for Berlin. One of my favourite cities so far. For it's rich history! :)

The super nice train station



Sand Sculptures we saw on the way to our hostel




Our hostel



A Singapore restaurant! Can you believe that? But the menu totally not Singaporean. :/

Lunch at this horrible place. Bleah. Chinese buffet some more. Yuck.



After lunch, we went to walk around plus dinner and one more ugly pic of my hand and to end the night off, super cheap beer! Wooh! Note the traffic light. It's unique to EAST Berlin. The traffic lights in West Berlin is the normal ones. Cool right? Left behind since the Soviet days.




The next day, we took a free walking tour to have a quick walk through to all the sights in Berlin. And boy, the guide was GOOD! :)

Starting point of the walk


A memorial



Guess where is this plot of barren land? The place Hitler commited suicide. It's a freaking carpark now!



Mural on the wall. I think it's the tax building. o.O And our nice guide! Her last day, last tour. With us!



THE Berlin Wall (very sad looking right? now you know)




Checkpoint Charlie



Musuem Island (See the beautiful rainbow at the fountain? Love this picture)


That's the end of our walk. There are a few places in the middle here and there, but these are the more famous ones. Went back to the Berlin Wall to see the exhibits there. In one of the pics, you can see the Wall on top and the exhibits below.



Berlin Part 2 tomorrow. I'm sleepy now. Hehe. Just one small part I think. About our Pub Crawl experience! Till tomorrow!

Eeeks! It's about time I updated. Haha. Will jump all the way back to when I first reach Europe and blog about my pre-sem trip. Hehe. Off to Amsterdam we go!

The lovely neighbourhood of Lelystad, where James' aunt lives.



The nice and windy Batavia! Where the Noah's Ark is but too bad it wasn't open when we went there. Plus more spastic jump shots. :) And oh, the other guy in the pic is Joey, the son of James' aunt.





The Noah's Ark! Plus a failed jump shot.




Inside of Batavia where we could shop!



Eat! More fries! Check out the long name!



The next day, we decided to head down to Den Haag which is bout a couple of hours away, to go see the famous Little Holland before we go back to Amsterdam. Technically, I think we kind of wasted our time and money there. It's just little things. Haha. Maybe I just can't appreciate it. But that caused us to only have like 2hours at Amsterdam? Gosh! I didn't see a lot of things!


Den Haag



Mini SIA! It can move too!



Amsterdam!


The Sex Museum, the only place we entered in Amsterdam. Due to the fact that there maybe underaged kids reading this, pictures in the sex museum will not be posted up, but feel free to ask me if you want to see it! :)


One last look at the Lelystad Neighbourhood before we say our goodbyes and head to Germany!



For those who know about the bites on my hand that I suffered. If you think it isn't bad, I can assure you, it was HELL! Save me!


Oh ya, and in case anyone is wondering why I have no pics of food in Holland, all I can say is that James' Aunt cooks such nice homemade Indonesian food that I can't wait to dig in and plus my camera is up 3 stories and I'm too lazy to get it down. So ya, you get the picture. But seriously, home-cooked food is always the best! Yum Yum!

Oh gosh! I realised I haven't updated in a LONG LONG LONG while! ARHH!!!

I know I haven't finished updating my pre-sem trip too, but I shall give some updates about my life in Norway first, before I continue about my Holland and Germany trip. Including the Bremen trip I took recently.

Ok, so far life in Norway has been slow and kind of boring. There is almost nothing to do except cooking. I've been doing so much cooking these days. My daily routine on a free day is like this. I wake up, prepare a meal, eat, decides to bake some stuff, eat more, and then prepare for dinner, and eat again. After dinner, we might just bum in Bernice's room for movies with snacks or poker or gaming in our rooms (Dota) and sleep. So see my routine? Eat, Eat, Eat. Gosh. And I thought I could slim down while I'm here.

But well, cooking a lot has it's perks. Let me update on the meals I've cooked myself for the others. I've cooked Tom Yum soup, 鱼片米粉, 虾面， fried rice, wrap, steamed fish, curry and fried long beans, fan choy, fried noodles. I think that's all. I can't really remember. Haha. As for all the other baking stuff, I did Chocolate Lava Cake, Truffles (twice), Cheese Cake, meranque (3 times?), some custard cake, and recently, not baked, but steamed, we attempted Chwee Kueh! Whooh! NICE! With cai pok too! And we going to try and make carrot cake. Yes. Cai Dao Kueh! I think I baked more cakes but I can't really recall. Some of them I just helped out. I haven't even included what the others cooked but I helped. So technically, I've cooked a lot of different kind of food!

Enough about food. I'm not even sure if I have pictures of them. Haha. Some eventful events in Norway. We had a BBQ by the lake. It was freaking cold! But we had it to celebrate Bernice's and Audrey's birthdays. It was quite fun. Seeing James start fire without fire starters and the wind was so cold and strong. Oh, did I mention we had lots of food too? Since I mentioned birthdays, ya, we celebrated Audrey and Bernice's birthday with surprises and cakes for them at 12am Norway time.

Hongyuan, a coursemate of mine, invited us to his place to celebrate his birthday with him too. So it was almost like a course party. Talking about course party, recently, we had another. It was a Hari Raya Cum Deepavali Party on Hari Raya itself. Haha. So amusing! They played Malay songs and even the Hari Raya song. Oh, and they turned the 1st floor kitchen into a club. Gosh. Haha. I think we were a nuisance. Just recently, we also had a steamboat. Just the 5 of us plus Luna and her friend. More about Luna. She is 19 and she is a cute and nice neighbour. She joined us for quite a few dinners already and I think she has tasted quite a lot of different kinds of food. Haha. Her parents are from China but she is borned in Norway and her major in Uni is Chinese. So she does occasionally come to us to help her in her Chinese. She knows Norwegian so she did help us in quite a lot of ways. Especially when Yuan Sheng had a toothache just before we went Bremen, Luna, stayed up, helped us research on dentist nearby and offered to drive him to the dentist on a Sunday! Yup, so we found a dentist that opens on Sundays and she drove us there. Now, she even offered to drive us to the border, into Sweden, to do grocery shopping one weekend. NICE?!?!?!

Oh ya! I must say this. I did plenty of shopping, but haven't bought anything in Norway until recently. I bought a pair of jeans for 99NOK which is about 25SGD? It's really nice! And you really don't see jeans selling at 99NOK. We'll walk past all the shops and the jeans on offer will be going at like 300NOK.

Oh well, that is all that I can remember for now. Sorry for the lack of pictures. When I'm back in Singapore, you can request to look at all my photos. Haha. Till then. Bye bye! Oh oh oh! Wait! I need to say this before I go off. I'm going to OLD TRAFFORD TO WATCH MANCHESTER UNITED! YES! A MATCH!!!!!!! WOOH!!!!!!!!!!