My Norwegian Escapade

Last Post in Norway

2008-12-28T04:55:00.000-08:00

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!

Bremen

2008-12-06T13:57:00.000-08:00

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. :)

Sweden

2008-12-05T03:39:00.001-08:00

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!

Germany Part 2

2008-12-05T03:16:00.000-08:00

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.

Germany

2008-12-04T09:50:00.000-08:00

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!

Amsterdam

2008-12-04T08:45:00.000-08:00

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!

Updates

2008-10-05T02:29:00.000-07:00

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!!!!!!!!!!

Brussels!

2008-08-20T10:45:00.000-07:00

Finally, we've arrived in Brussels. Once again, a metro ride down to our hostel area and took a walk to our youth hostel. Was really worried that the hostel would not be good as we didn't know much about it, plus we would be separated into female dorms and male dorms. I've never stayed with strangers in a hostel before so I was a little worried, but to my pleasant surprise, the hostel was really good! It was there that we met our first foreign friend, Becky. Becky was from the US and we kind of like hit off and invited her to join us for dinner, but she declined and instead, suggested drinking later that night which we agreed. Back to the hostel. Our dorm was actually 2 levels. First floor had like a dining table and the toilet. The second floor was all the beds. It was really cool. Plus the hostel had a nice cosy bar and a table tennis table. Haha. :)

The dorm

The table tennis table!

After settling down in the hostel, which meant laying the sheets and claiming beds, we headed out for dinner. The area around our hostel was like an office area, thus there wasn't like much restaurant open, but we were so famished that we decided to just pop into the nearest one that was open and it was a Lebanese restaurant. Had a nice and filling dinner and the boss was just very funny. A very nice guy. Therefore, we decided to tip him with our change and he invited us back to his restaurant the next day so that he can treat us drinks. Like WOAH! We only tipped him 2euros lah!

Appetiser

Starters we ordered

Main dishes! Quail, Mixed Grill, Lamb and Chicken

Pita (Lebanese Bread)

Us and the nice owner

After our dinner, we went back to our hostel which was a mere less than 5min walk away, and settled down in the bar and went to call Becky down to chat and drink. Ordered my first alcohol on the trip and I gave it to a bottle of Hoegarden. Quite cheap. 1.30euros. Much cheaper than in Singapore. After that I had another bottle of Jupiler, which is a Belgian beer, so I tried it since Hoegarden was sold out by the time I ordered it. While in the bar, we met lots of interesting people. Firstly, Becky was totally nice and fun. There was this 1.97m German guy. The bartender was very nice and this drunk Belgian tried to hit on Karen. Haha! The night was really fun. We somehow ended up talking about Hokkien and they asked me to take out my MP3 player so that they can hear some Hokkien songs and the bartender went to play it out! Cool right? I had my MP3 player plugged into the speakers, which means the whole bar was hearing my playlist. Haha! I'll probably never ever have the chance to have my playlist being broadcasted like that. They will probably complain that I have bad songs. Haha!

The bar and my drinks

The Bartender

The German guy, Rainer

Us and Becky!

Our second day in Belgium was spent walking around aimlessly. It was not like Paris where they have like really really famous sights, so we just followed the map to this monument place took some photos and left. Belgium is really littered with chocolate shops and waffles shop. Everywhere I turn, I see a chocolate shop. Drools!

Monuments that I didn't know

Flowers for Mum :)

So as we walked down the streets of Belgium, we snacked quite a bit. First was waffles from a shop. Delicious! I had dark choc for mine, while James had white choc and Karen and Bernice had sugar icing. Really good waffles! After waffles, we had raw mussels. At first, I was scared. Thought that I wouldn't try. But when I saw it, curiosity got the better of me and I decided to try. It was FABULOUS! For a person like me who doesn't eat shellfish, the mussels were GREAT! It totally had no weird smell, or the xing wei, it was totally fresh and nice! We also had fries from a nearby stall. Huge portion and nice as well. After walking around the area and doing major shopping, we decided to head back to near our hostel to check out one of the Belgian restaurant that was recommended by Lonely Planet. It was raining and the restaurant didn't open that early so we were all stuck under some roof and waiting for the restaurant to open. Luckily we waited, cause the food in the restaurant was good, had a big portion. I had beef stewed in beer and served with some apple sauce that was really nice. Bernice had the nicest chicken I've ever eaten and Karen had this nice stew that tasted heavenly. James had liver or kidney, which I tasted but didn't appreciate. And the starters was nice. Some salmon thing. The best part about the meal? The dessert! The ice cream was, as how Karen would say it, ORGASMIC! Too bad we only ordered one portion. It was heavenly! Nicest ice cream I've eaten in my whole life. I was really full from my beef, but when the ice cream came, I couldn't stop! Gosh! HEAVEN!

Food Galore!

Waffles

The FABULOUS MUSSELS (and fresh too!)

The fries

Dinner (Starters, Bernice's, Karen's, James' and mine)

The orgasmic dessert that was their speciality!

After dinner, we decided to head back to the Lebanese restaurant as I realised that I left my umbrella there the previous night, so we headed back to get it since it was near our hostel. While I was trying to get my umbrella out, it got stuck and the door bell kept ringing, which caused the boss to come out and invited us in. But since he was busy then, he made us promise to go back to the hostel first to put our stuff, and then head back to join him for drinks. Therefore, we ended up back at the restaurant, paid for a drink and chatted with him. But we only paid for 1 drink. In the end, he served us 2 portions of mint tea twice, served us food, gave us more drinks and chatted with us. Seriously, this was the fullest night of my entire trip. Even James was so full that he had to go puke.

I had more Hoegarden and a glass of draft beer

Lebanese alcohol that is 53% and turns milky when water is added

Day 3 in Brussels, which is also the day we are leaving for Amsterdam, we packed our stuff, checked out early and carried our backpack for more walking at a flea market. Technically, I think the place was a market where the locals bought their foodstuff and ate things. Therefore, it was where we had another round of raw mussels and James tried his blood sausage burger and Karen a hamburger, which according to them, was really great. We headed down further and went in search for fries that were highly recommended in the map. It was just a normal looking road side stall and we ordered our fries and Bernice ordered a fish burger. Let me tell you this. The fries were great! The sauce, Samurai Sauce as they call it, was really good! And the fish burger, HEAVENLY! It's a simple fare, but it was really really really good! Totally loved the food! After our fries, we walked some more and rested in a park where we took wacky photos again before heading down to our train station by foot.

Flea Market

More mussels!

Blood Sausage

Fries!

Wacky Photos

And that's it for Belgium. For our Holland escapade, in the next post! :)

Paris Part 2!

2008-08-18T09:06:00.000-07:00

Day 2 in Paris was kinda boring. We woke up at like 8am to have breakfast at the hotel, since it was free breakfast, so must eat! Nothing special. The usual of bread and spread and orange juice and coffee.

Day 2 in Paris was more walking again. This time we went to this shopping place called the Forum des Halles. It was quite a decent shopping place and we spent some time window shopping. After which, we settled down in a park outside the shopping area and "suntan-ed" a bit. Had some of the left over bread that we koped from the hotel breakfast. After the rest, we continued our walk to the Louvre Museum and stopped by some pastry shop to have some macaroons.

The park

Pastries!

Reached the Louvre Museum and it was freaking huge! And packed too. We actually wanted to go in, but it was mid-day already and we figured we had other places to cover too. Also, James and Karen weren't interested in the paintings and sculptures, so we decided to give it a miss after we took many wacky photos.

More pictures for my lack of words

With that, we headed down to the famous street of Champs Elysees and also to see the Arc de Triomphe. After a long walk (the Louvre is so huge that we took a long time to walk pass it!), we unknowingly reached Champs Elysees and boy oh boy was I disappointed. The street was just any normal looking street with trees and further down, all the shopping boutiques. Blah! It's a long and hot stretch of road that has nothing to see! :( So disappointed. Even the Arc de Triomphe was like a blah in the middle of the road. Haiz.

Champs Elysees

Arc de Triomphe

By the time we had reached the Arc, we were all so tired and worned out that we decided to take a metro back to near our hostel, grab dinner and go back to the hotel to rest. Looking at the clock, we had already walked for like 7hours! And the previous day at least 9hours, not including the stairs I had to climb!

Dinner was kebab and the portion was huge again with drinks. But it's quite expensive. 9euros for all that. :(

Day 3 in Paris, which is also the day we are leaving Paris for Belgium, was spent in the train station since we didn't know how the train works for international travel. But we managed to finally eat our crepes and escargot. The crepes were so-so only, but the escargot was not bad. At least it didn't have any smelly smell that I expected it to have. Quite nice!

Crepe! And Escargot.

With our last meal in Paris, we headed on a train to Brussels, which was quite fast, 1hr20mins. On the train ride, we managed to see a rainbow stretching across the sky. Beautiful! About Brussels, till the next post!

Paris!

2008-08-17T09:05:00.000-07:00

My first post on my Europe trip. Decided that I'm too lazy to type all at one go, so I'll do it country by country. First stop, Paris!

Our flight on Norwegian Air to Paris was at 6am therefore, since we needed to check in like earlier, plus we had to first take the metro from Kringsja to Oslo S, then take a bus to the airport, we figured that sleeping in the airport the night before would be the best plan and so off we went and I had my first ever sleep in the airport. Boy oh boy. I really hated sleeping in the airport. First, I couldn't sleep at all. I'm constantly in some uncomfortable position. Secondly, I'm constantly worried about all our belongings and valuables. Thirdly, I keep getting woken up by some kids that were camping in the airport with their parents. Bah! No fun.

Us sleeping at the airport and the lack of sleep me

Finally, on to Paris. The first thing that comes to my mind. HOT! It's so freaking hot in Paris! The sun was shining so brightly and there weren't many clouds! Sweats. Our hotel, was relatively easy to find. Took a metro from the airport down and we walked there. The guy at the counter actually spoke not bad English. I kinda expected the French people to have like atrocious English that we will not understand, but it was surprising. And he knew his directions well.

The bus ride from Paris Orly Airport to the Metro station

The reception of the hotel.

Must I mention that the hotel room had such an open concept that I slightly shocked. Take a look at the pictures.

Luckily for me, we figured that that wasn't the toilet bowl. Haha. Probably a washing basin or something. If it was a toilet bowl, I'll probably cry. In front of the window and right in front of the bed! Gah! But the bad news is, the toilets are shared, so we have to get out of our rooms and use the toilet near the staircase. The toilets have no sink anyway. The shower is worse, it's on the first floor! And we stay on the 4th. Bah. Climb more stairs.

The winding stairs we have to climb just to shower. :(

Settling down into our hotel, we headed out for French lunch. Recommended by the guy at the counter. Think the place was called Tante Chante Alice or something. The food was good! And compared to Norway, the food is considered cheap. But in Singapore terms, nah! It cost us like 14.50 euros for the meal and added up to bout 16euros including water. But it was 3 course. Great food.

Entree. The third one was mine.

The main course. The third one is mine again.

The dessert. Again, the third one.

I loved my dessert the most. The entree was great, but I preferred the qwiche the most (the first one). The main course was not that bad. Minus that disgusting mush of vegetable. I mean, even though I hate vegetable, but that mush was really gross and I couldn't even bear to take a picture of it, so I cropped most of it away. My dessert was heavenly! Chocolate Mousse! It's so chocolaty that I flew to heaven with my first mouth! Woot!!!

And that was lunch. So after our really really really filling lunch, we decided to walk down to the Notre Dame. While walking down, we passed this Cathedral called the Saint-Merry Cathedral. It's dubbed as the little Notre Dame. It's a really really nice place. Nice and solemn and it felt like the Silent-Night Cathedral (as known by the TJChoir people ;) ). Bought a candle there and really felt at peace. In contrast, when we got to the Notre Dame, it was packed with people and though it was stated that there shouldn't be any flash photography, you can still see thousands of flashes going off. It was really quite irritating. Lost the whole solemn feel and I got quite disappointed. Made me feel like the Notre Dame didn't live up to it's reputation. But I still insisted on going up the Notre Dame, so Bernice and I got into queue while James and Karen sat in some cafe by the Notre Dame to wait for us. Seriously, I think I almost killed myself. Haha. More stairs to climb! More than 400 flights of winding steps. Gosh. But I was proud of myself. Haha. An unfit person like me managed to climb! Wootz! The view from the Notre Dame was great but if you don't appreciate views, then forget about the climb up the Notre Dame. Cause there is nothing else there.

Saint-Merry Cathedral

Notre Dame and stairs and view

After the Notre Dame, we decided to head down to the Eiffel Tower since they wanted to see the night view of Paris. Mind you, the sun sets at like 10pm. :/ So ambitious us decided to walk to the Eiffel Tower. Oh boy was it a long walk! We walked along the Seine River and luckily, we could at least still see some stuff while we were walking. Just that the weather was so hot! While walking, I passed by the bridge which I suspected was the place where Jaejoong and Yunho were at in the Paris Photobook shoot. Hehe. The bridge where Jaejoong was waving to all the people on boats and buses. Hehe.

Here it is.

Ok, back to the Eiffel. The queue at the Eiffel was scary! They were like really long!! But I felt that we went at a great time, cause we could have a great day view, sunset view and night view. Great timing! Oh, something to mention. They decided to climb the Eiffel Tower. :O
Climb up till the 2nd viewing gallery before taking the lift up to the top. Can you imagine how much I had to climb? I'm really so unfit! But, it was an experience. The view from the Eiffel was breath-taking and at night the Eiffel was shooting out lights. Super cool. Will post the video up. Really beautiful. I shall let the pictures do the talking.

Eiffel Tower

Video of the Eiffel Tower. Beautiful!

By the time we finished the Eiffel, all of us were so tired that we just stoned our way back to the hotel. And that's like almost 12am already. Climbed to many stairs for the day.

That's it for Paris Day 1. Wanted to finish Paris in one post, but I'm just too tired now. Spent hours on this post. So Paris Part 2 the next time! :)

PS. I tried to put as much photos as my fingers will let me. :)

Day 3, 4 and 5 in Norway!

2008-08-16T09:13:00.000-07:00

A quick update on day 3, 4 and 5 in Norway before I proceed on to blog about my 10 days trip to Europe! Whee!

Day 3 was finally one free day, so James, Bernice, Karen and I decided to go walk walk around Oslo Central Station. Walked for quite a bit, saw some stuff and the best part is, I got to see the sea! Finally! Saw the Nobel Peace Center, but didn't go in. Maybe some other day.

On Day 4, we went to explore the lake that is just behind our hostel. Heard from others that it is quite nice, so we popped down to take a look. It's really a nice place! Good place to chill out but better not go alone. Could be dangerous since it is in the woods. Hehe.

Day 5 was nothing but a moving and packing day. First, I moved rooms. From Block 30 Level 5, I moved to Block 12 Level 10. Luckily for me, I haven't unpacked every single thing so re-packing was so much easier. After settling down in the room, it is back to more packing. Packing for the Europe trip. I'll post some photos of my old and new room, plus one very interesting video. Hehe.

Old room

New room (see the difference?)

The view from my new room

The interesting video. The lift ride in my old block. Enjoy!

See what is interesting? Hehe. ;)

PS. Sorry for the extra photo of the video. Can't seem to remove the pic though.

Oslo, Norway! Part 2

2008-08-02T23:12:00.000-07:00

Day 2!

Technically, nothing much on Day 2, we just went around settling all our paperworks and walk around. Saw the marketplace that we were supposed to get our groceries from and we saw the Solar Eclipse through film strip. Ok, they were actually from floppy disks. We met some Norwegian ladies who were watching it and borrowed it to see.

The solar eclipse. But I don't think you can see it, But you get the idea.

Went to my school. It's really nice! Bah!

BI Norwegian School of Management

My first official eat out meal. Dinner. (Dinner on the first day was hot dog bun at Ikea. Lunch on day two was just bread and ham.) An official filling dinner was kebab at some Habibi's Take Away. The portion is huge and it is actually not bad. But it's the cheapest we found and it cost us 49Kr which is about 14SGD. 14SGD for a wrap. :(

The expensive wrap

Day 3, in another day. When I get the pictures from my friend. :)

Oslo, Norway!

2008-08-02T22:30:00.000-07:00

My long overdue first post. But hey, better late than never right?

30th July 2008:

Was seriously very touched that Meiyan, Serene and Weeboon rushed down in the middle of FOC, from hall, all the way down to the airport (not to mention the initiation food package with one extra fishball from last year ;) ). Although they came quite late and I couldn't really talk to them, but still, I really appreciate their effort! :) And of course, thanks to Ngian and Jas and Zhikang for coming down too. Oh ya, and to Edmund too. Hehe.

The feeling at the airport is actually quite hard to describe, so I shall just let the pictures do the talking.

My gandma and I!

My family!

TJChoir people, Ngian and Jas!

Hall people, Weeboon, Serene, Meiyan, Jas and Zhikang!

The plane ride was technically uneventful. Got up the plane, had a meal, watch some shows, listened to some music, sleep and wake, sleep and wake, sleep and wake (ok you get the idea) and after the last time I woke up, we eat again. Other then these period of time when we were having our first meal that the plane was going to a lot of turbulence, and my cup of coffee spilt like all over the table, the only other interesting thing was that I was listening to the Spice Girls Greatest Hits CD on the plane! Haha! I found it very amusing. Spice Girls was like from my Primary School era lah! But it is so ironic that here I am laughing at the presence of the Spice Girls CD in the in-flight entertainment system, and there I was actually listening to it and seriously, that's the only CD that I knew the songs to. Hehe. I'm really detached from all the English songs.

My Spice Girls playlist

The wine that I took a cup from Audrey (it's actually not bad!)

Nothing much at London Heathrow Airport. Just 2 things. 1, security. We had to take out our shoes and belts and let them be scanned. Real tight. 2, Plane delay. The plane was delayed for like 1.5hrs due to some problems with the hydrolic system.

Oslo Airport was the nerve wrecking one. Why? Cause I had a missing baggage. All the 12 of us who went, only I had a missing baggage. It's really nerve wrecking to be standing at the belt and watching all the luggages go by without seeing yours. Luckily it is only one of mine that was missing. I think I would have lost my cool if it was both. Hehe. Went to the BA counter and apparently they were expecting me. My bag was last found in London Heathrow Airport, so technically, it is still there, so they will arrange for it to get on the next flight and they will call me once they receive it and send it to me. Oh well, my other friends say that it is a blessing in disguise since one, I'll be able to claim insurance. Two, I get to slowly carry up my luggage (they all had to make so many trips from the main hall to the hostel and we had to drag like crazy!) Two point five, since we not using our things yet and they will be passing me my bag at 12midnight, it's really not that bad after all. Hehe.

After we checked-in, the first thing on our minds was GO IKEA! Haha. All of us had to go buy cutlery, pots and pans, pillows and quilts and bolsters and all other barang barang. But on our way to Ikea, we were like lost. We were trying to find the bus stop where we can take the free shuttle service! When maps don't work and all signs are in Norwegian, we can only ask. But asking = getting a lot of different directions. Haha! So we walked and walked and walked. By the time we got to Ikea, it was like 8 and we had to rush and we were done by 10pm. The sun was only about to set when it's 10pm.

The sky at 10pm. Outside Ikea.

It's getting long. Day 2 on the next post!