POST-EUROPE

It is the longest time I have travelled in my life... just slightly exceeding the time in USA and Tokyo a few years back.

3 weeks in exact.

In these 3 weeks, we travelled on plane, bus, train, ferry, and of course on our trusty two legs all over west Europe. Tired but happy, we have finally finished our Euro trip, safe and soundly.

Shall not write like a diary style about what happened in those 22 days but I will try to make it more on insights on my travel...

Firstly just a collection of a representative picture of each of the places that we travelled :) (very hard choices as I took almost 2000 photos. See my facebook for more pictures:P)


First Stop: LONDON

Our must-do thing in London this time round was to catch a musical which we didn't the other time round as we had to leave by night that time. So we caught the Tailor Made Man which was a very new musical that was not as famous as the other musicals in London like Wicked and Phantom of the Opera but nonetheless a very good musical. It was about 2 gay lovers in the old Hollywood times and the ups and downs of their lives while living in the public eye. Something that you probably will never see in Singapore probably.

We sure couldn't sing like in a musical but being in the rain is something we did a lot throughout our time in Euro.

Second Stop: WINDSOR, BATH and STONEHENGE

While still in England, we took a student tour to go see the must see sights of the land of the English.

Windsor was where the queen stay during the weekends (she was there when we went but of course we didn't see here) and it was a lovely castle and a beautiful park at the back of the castle that was opened to public.

Bath is the only place in Great Britain with natural hot spring and even though we really wanted to, we didn't go soak in the water that proclaims such mythical capabilities (dun they all do :P)

But the greatest sight of all was the Stonehenge... why they hell would somebody but rocks standing in the middle of the field???

it was FREEEEEZZZZZZZZZIIIINNNNNNGGGG!!!

Third Stop. AMSTERDAM

SEX.DRUGS.WINDMILLS.PANCAKES.BICYCLES.

"EXTREMELY Windy weather" - from someone living in Aberdeen and from Singapore.

Fourth Stop: PARIS

Super touristy by day. Most romantic city in the world by night. Most smelly subway i have ever been to.

Night paranoma of Paris from Sacré-Cœur

Fifth Stop: ROME

You feel like you are time travelling back to the past as you seek out the ruins and ancient buildings of the roman empire. BELLISSIMO and DELISIOZO! My tongue taste palates had the time of its life in Roma!

Don't ask how much I paid for this photo haha

 Sixth Stop: VENICE

Water city. The only place in the world where I know everybody takes water transportation to get around town (you have to). Also the only place in the world where I look forward to see it flood (aqua alta).

Don't miss out me in the picture!

Seventh Stop: INNSBRUCK

Snowsports capital with FREE ski buses to all the ski chalets in the alps which are all maximum half an hour away. The most adrenaline pumping part of my trip!

Better snow than in Scotland definitely~

Eight Stop: MUNICH

BMW, Audi, Mercedes. Everywhere.
Beer. Beer halls. Beer gardens. Everywhere

Prost!

Ninth Stop: AUSBURG, ROTHERBURG, WURSBURG, FRANKFURT, MAINZ, KOBLENZ, KOLN

Scenic train ride along the romantic road from Munich to Frankfurt.

Scenic train ride along the middle of the rhine river from Frankfurt to Cologne.

Beautiful! (I am talking about the scenery of course!)

TENTH STOP: ABERDEEN

It was great to be back in english land.
It was much warmer than we left.
Seeing the familiar street, familiar faces, familiar room and bed (even though it was dirty).
HOME SWEET HOME.

EUROPE HERE WE GO!!!

Finished with all my lessons and READY for Easter Holidays!

OUR PLANS:

ABERDEEN
|
LONDON
|
AMSTERDAM
|
PARIS
|
ROME
|
VENICE
|
INNSBRUCK
|
MUNICH
|
FRANKFURT
|
COLOGNE
|
DUSSELDORF
|
EDINBURGH
|
ABERDEEN

Booked all the hostels and majority of the train/bus/plane tickets
Gonna have so much fun!!!!
WEEEEE!!!

Despite the snow, ITS A BEAUTIFUL DAY!

I'm such a stud! HEHE

Its always a joy to go for skiing lessons with these beautiful ladies hehe! But more on that later!

Despite the snow and wind which threatened to ruin our field trip to Stonehaven and postponed our Moray Firth field trip, we still had some fun over there, fighting the weather, learning about safety stuff and doing a short field survey. Hopefully the weather become better when we get back!

Stonehaven field trip!

So cold the photo turned blue!

Field trip leader Professor McDonald

Explaining the rock formations!

Field Surveys!

Today was our last skiing lesson :( I really love skiing. It is one of the most fun sports I have ever done! No wonder it is so popular! Why can't there be snow in Singapore!!! Anyway we finished learning how to do some basic turns and it was time to try the ultimate slope!!! Did my first jump today!!!! It was a really short jump about 1 second in the air but the exhilaration was immense!!!! WOOOOOOO!!!!

Where we ski! Without snow!

Haha here is the real picture! Photoshop magic! :P

 One more physics test and full day petroleum geology course and its time for EASTER HOLIDAYS!!!!

St Patrick's Day

Its Saint Patrick Day!

Long story short, its to celebrate the patron saint of Ireland and celebrated all over the world by people who are of Irish descent (estimated at 100 million which is 15 times the population of Ireland itself)

A brief history of St Patrick is that he was born in GB and was kidnapped and brought to Ireland as a slave. One day in his sleep he had a dream where god told him to get to the shore where he would be rescued by a ship and brought back home. After returning, he became a priest and later went back to Ireland to spread Christianity (apparently with the shamrock as seen above to explain the Holy Trinity)

And to celebrate today, its time to go to another ceilidh! St Patrick Day theme! (which means you have to wear green!)

House Party. I like!

I went over to my aberdeen classmate Siguang's house party last night and I enjoyed myself more than any other drinking event over here. Its probably because I knew or at least met most of the people over here, and the conversation was much better! Or maybe because there were more chinese over here too, though all were PRC. (I could finally use my HCL to good use haha.)

But probably the reason why I like it is because of the unending amount of good food!

HOUSE PARTY FTW!

Ain't no party animal

Gonna stay and do my 3000 word assignment this weekend even though its St Patrick's Day...

The beer to drink on St Patrick's day!

Irish night was not very exciting, too little people and boring things to do...
Only remember one Gaelic word: Póg mo thóin (kiss my ***)
Didn't really like the Pub Crawl...i guess i wasn't in the mood...and left after the 2nd pub

Went back to a rowdy crowd at my laundry (yes my laundry!) where I knew a little more people...but I just didn't enjoy myself that much...I really think its the 3000 word assignment that I am constantly thinking about.

Laundry Party!!! (I dun know this guy)

There is one more party this night organized by chinese friend! Maybe it will be better!
One more chance to reveal the party animal in me!

Herding Calls!!!

This week pass rather peacefully by exchange terms...

Skiing lesson went exceptionally well! I am progressing to the higher slope now and able to edge better.
We had a new teacher this week. And he was really great with his instruction!
I can totally see some of the ICP qualities in his teaching. The praising, using the analogy of wanting to clamp someone's hand on the tongue of the boot to showcase the kinestatic part of learning, the touching foot technique, thumper technique, followed by the proper technique explanation, and the last part of playing a game by asking us to follow his action! Together with his praising to reward us, giving us an extra run, correction of technique, assessment of our individual skills, he makes another model for me to aspire to be a better coach!

Whisky tasting was good to me as well!!! Won a rocking glass that will never falls at whisky tasting! First time lucky!

Went to many talks this week as well. There was the ExploHub talk about this place for the masters level student to engage in real life simulation of exploring for oil and gas reserves, the Arctic drilling talk about how its so much rubbish, a talk by a wildlife TV show presenter about her experience diving around UK region. They were all really insightful and showed how vibrant Aberdeen is despite the small town that it is.

Nice place for the sharing session with wildlife expert! With mic for everyone!

I also went for this Scandinavian Singing Workshop that was SUPERB. We played many fun singing games that could be very good orientation games and it also stretches my vocal cords alot!!!!
Eg. Singing a pitch to the person next to you and passing it on,
Shouting the person's name in a loud manner and emphasizing on the syllable to transmit the word 20 miles!
Dancing while singing while twirling around!

Unbelievable fun! I never imagine that with my lousy voice I could do all this in a singing workshop. Totally dispelled whatever notion I had about my singing voice!


I also heard kulning from our teacher! It is simply out of the world. Basically it is the old way of herding live stock (in the middle of north Sweden) and of communication between herding women on mountains and between them and the home places down in the valley. This was a way of for instance crying for help, telling the family that a sheep had gone missing or crying for the hearding women to come home.

Hearing it live is 100000 times more mindblowing!

One of the songs that i learnt!

Love the room at King's College where we had the workshop!

This weekend is St Patrick's Day! Should be quite rowdy everywhere! Shall try to study a bit and do my assignment also!

Ciao!