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Updates/Changes/Announcements:

For those who came here for tips on exchanging in Europe/netherlands,

go here for my travel plans.

https://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=0AZPl3jx8TCoLZHg3Y2R4eF8zNWZiZnNqeGc3&hl=en

I'm sorry that my blog is not up to date, but you'll find a summary of the places i've been to in the above doc :)

My SEP pictures

my feb/mar images(sweden[stockholm, kiruna, icehotel, northern lights], Italy[cinque terre, pisa, florence], Amsterdam, Utrecht, around Eindhoven, ...):

http://snowyyoga.shutterfly.com/

my apr/may images(France[st malo, mont st michel, paris], Istanbul, my solo germany trip[Koln, Heidelberg, lake constance, Neushwanstein castle at Fussen], cycling at Harleem near amsterdam[beach, keukenhoff, flowers]):

http://yoganl.shutterfly.com/

my june images(final meetups within Eindhoven) : http://yogajune.shutterfly.com/

my July images(my 2-night stay@schiphol airport, aalsmeer, efteling the FANTASTIC themepark near Tilburg/'sHertogenbosh, my finale trip to Germany[Hamburg, Berlin, Munich, Koln], Austria[Ice caves], Belgium [Brugges, brussels], Luxembourg[cover the whole city by foot in half a day]): http://finaltrips.shutterfly.com/

The list above acts as a compilation of the various cities that i've been to too!

shutterfly rocks my winter socks :D

Azri's Birthday

Date: 6th May 2010, day 99 of my exchange to The Netherlands
The plan was to have a surprise belated party for his birthday. So, we planned to have a picnic by the lake. Fong Chi, JH and I had earlier on that morning, met to get him some guitar strings for present. I went down to Kai Hee's place to help her make potato salad. We then brought Azri down to the lake using a route that he suggested. He was told that Kai Hee and I were going to have some picnic over there. Once we were there, we had to find the 'right' spot to meet up with others. Since the others had already been informed, they were all hiding behind a bunch of trees. We eventually found them. I then announced the sad news from Italy, which was that Johnny couldn't join us for Azri's birthday celebration :S

We then went down to the tables by the lake to eat the sandwiches and drinks. Pau joined us after sometime. It started getting too cold for us to stay there and so, we went over to Fong Chi's place. That's where we had a birthday cake and played some cards before going back home :D
Pics on facebook, if you are my fwen :)

Cycling at Harleem

Date: 24th April 2010, Day 87 of my exchange
I was invited to go cycling at amsterdam area by the Rubenstraats. I googled for some tracks we can take in order to keep us entertained for the day, but they didn't seem to be good enough. The rubenstraats seemed to have a route in mind too. We met very early in the morning at the train station with our bicycles and loaded them onto the train. There were obviously too many bikes chucked into the corner but we didn't care. We just made use of whatever space was available to sit around for the 1+hr journey. We finally arrived at Harleem after changing to another train at Amsterdam centraal station. We then went to the VVV and cycled around the saturday market in action.
We managed to get a decent looking map and some travelling advice from this centre. We then aimed to get ourselves to a beach and come back to another station nearby. We also planned the route such that it will take us through lovely tulip farms, rivers, keukenhoff and country side.
The first part of the journey took us through some countryside places with lots of houses along the roads. We began to see some tulip-filled lands before our lunch time :) After nearly getting lost at several hidden corners, we ended up at a side of a river bordering on an uncultivated farmland for our picnic. the place had 2 tables which were perfect to host us for our lunch. After lunch came LOTS more of tulip farms. We got off our bikes now and then to take pictures while the farm-owners were not out ;P We came across Keukenhoff gardens too, but did not go in. There was a flower procession just outside for us to enjoy :D
We then got to the beach where we started munching on emilie's crepes. We also had a surprise birthday celebration for Flo as we revealed a set of cards with rubenstraat people's faces on it. We then went on to cycled through some hilly areas till we came to another beach. After taking a 5 mins break, we pushed on to the train station and tried to get back before it got dark.
As our train approached amsterdam station, Azri realized that he lef this bag at harleem station. The bag had his passport, camera and other valuables. Aysun then went back with him to look for it. The rest of us went on to a turkish place across the river at amsterdam centraal to have our dinner. Azri came back without his bag, after having made a police report on it. We then made our way back to Eindhoven for a good night's rest. Pics on facebook. No more pics here since blogger has restricted space for uploading pics.

France Day 5

This is on 19th April 2010, Day 82 of my exchange

We had a great brunch: Pastaa~ haha, We cooked it :D And YW and FC packed sandwiches for lunch.

After that, We went to the Basilica of the Sacred Heart of Paris. It was a great cathedral! It is built on top of a slope and so, there was a carriage on sloping rails to bring people up. If you go to this place, you'll have to be careful: There were guys who just approached people to tie strings on their hands and asked for money. Luckily we ran away as they approached us :)We then went behind the Basilica to find a market where i bought my first crepe in paris at this shop called Galerie Montmartre :)

We then took a train down to the Lourve. We split up to explore the lourve on our own and decided to meet up 3 hrs later. I first went to look at the apple store! It was a fantastic place! But the iPad wasn't out yet :( After spending about 15 minutes there, I went on to enter the museum.

First was a section of History of Lourve, the museum itself. This section's setting was a cave-like surrounding with a wooden raised platform for people to walk around. Next, I happened to go into the egyptian section. There were lots of statues of pharaohs, sphinxes, mummies, tools, nile boats and so on. After going through more sections I got lost.

The map was a little unhelpful since the numbers of the paintings and the sections didn't really match. So, I started to look for the mona lisa before time was up. I had to walk for about 45 mins more till i found it :) Tha place was HUGE! Seriously! You can spend days down there if you wanna take a good look at every thing on display! Well, the cordoned off area was pretty huge for the mona lisa painting when compared to the other paintings. There were about 40 people gathered infront of it, taking pictures of it and with it.

I then went through several large halls before I found the exit to get out of the museum. I met JH and Johnny and brought them to the apple store. They were quite reluctant at first but got hooked on the ipods and headphones once they got in :P We then went down to meet up with Azri, KH, FC and YW to go have dinner. I went out to do a couple of stuff while the slow pokes were taking their time to eat. First stop was the Shakesphere bookstore. I had seen this bookstore on TV/ some youtube video before and HAD to go look at it. A couple of famous artists had stayed ther before. There were books all around me from the time I entered and it was just sooo cozy and warm inside. I would have loved to stay in such a place! It was a bit cramped but i didn't mind at all. There were even place for discussion, and some comfy reading chairs.

Second up was the beret shop. I just had to get one of those things for myself. Kai hee got a pink one and I got a grey one. I then went over to the vegie falafel place that i saw earlier to get myself a delicious filling sandwich. That place gives you a piece of open broodje to fill up with whatever stuff you want. So, I stuffed in as much as I could! The variety was awesome!

We then went back to collect our bags and go wait for the eurolines bus. We had to wait a long time to go check in with our ticket. there were some commotion in the queues. We then took our bus back home :D END OF PARISS TRIPP :D

France Day 4

This is on 18th April 2010, Day 81 of my exchange: Paris walking tour

This day, JH, YW, FC, Johnny, KH and Azri went down to the meeting place of the Sandeman's Free New Paris walking tour, which was infront of the fountain at Place St Michel. We met Xiao Fan there too!

He is a common friend of FC and me, in the french double degree programme for direct masters! It was a wonderful tour by Arnaud, but i can't remember much from it since i'm blogging abt it a year after the tour. oh, one of the things was that you can tell the nature of death of a person by looking at the statue built in their memory. It depends on the no of legs of the horse which are not touching the ground!

We walked along the river saw some cathedrals, the Lourve pyramids, the park nearby, the view of the eiffel tower from the park. I came across this person dressed like a egyptian mummy, sitting on one of the park benches. I thought that was cool and went to take photos with him/her. I didn't know at that time that i had to put money into the cup infront and he/she didn't seem to mind too! lol!

We then explored some buildings nearby. Then went into the place with the tomb of Napolean. It was huge!

We then took a train down to see the arc de triumph. Some climbed up, but I didn't go up. We then had dinner at this expensive place suggested by Xiao Fan that had cheese fountain thingy that only fong chi ordered. I had salad with the complimentary bread :D and a bit of the molten cheese with potato as well!

We then went to the Eiffel tower just in time before the queue counter closed :D We managed to go up. I didn't go up all the way cos i was at the 1/3 mark and figured out that the view must pretty much be the same. And after coming down form the eiffel tower, we noticed that there were a lot of guys selling paris tower models below. Johnny and I decided that we'll be able to strike up a better deal if we approach them together. We also had an upper hand cos they were nearly done for the day! So, we got the 3 eiffel tower models and a few keychains really cheap!

We then took a train back to our Bastille apartments to sleep for the night!

France Day 3

This is on 17th April, Day 80 of my exchange

I woke up early as usual to get dressed up first and to pack up my stuff. After saying goodbye to our hosts we (FC, YW & JH) then started out on a long drive from Rennes to Versailles. We made contact with Johnny, KH and Azri on the way through phone. After a long discussion, it was decided that KH and Azri would go tour some places on their own and meet us at the hotel later while Johnny would come along to tour Versailles with us :)

Upon reaching Versailles, we had trouble finding a parking lot. After driving through some of their narrow streets made narrower by cars parked at their sides, we managed to find one as a car left from the carpark area! After parking, we were lost as to how to pay for our parking since the ticketing stand wasn't working the way we expected it to. ither that or we couldn't figure it out :P Well, someone came along and told us that it was free parking on that day till a certain time or sth.

We then took a slow walk to the palace of Versailles. We passed by pretty flower street shops along the way and saw a bunch of Eurolines and other tour busses stopping there and bunches of foreign tourists popping out from them! lol! hmm, These tours of these tourists on busses are kinda restricted to the places and the routes that the bus takes. Whereas the 3 of us can pretty much roam around freely with little restriction :D Anyway, we met up with johnny inside the palace and got ourselves tickets to push our way in through the crowds, after the security check at the entrance.

The entire place had 2 parts to it: the palace building itself and a park-kinda place outside. We were led into the palace first. This was one of my 1st time in an european palace before and it looked great. There were paintings all over the walls, extending upto the ceilings. But after a few rooms, it pretty much starts to repeat itself. The rooms have variations of tables, chairs, sofas, mirrors, wardrobes, and fancy lights. That's about it! Oh, paintings too! The kind that look expensive! lol! and statues! and fireplaces! and staircases!

Then, we emerged into the park area. It was HUGE! There was a circular fountain abt 50 meters in diameter, followed by some grass patch areas and a long wide canal which had boats on it! We had some free and easy time to roam around and take pictures before we gathered at the other end of the park.

There were ducks at the canal area. We sat down there to have our lunch! Mine was a baguette, quarter of which went to the ducks at the canal :D After that, we needed to spend some time before the musical fountain show. So, we went around the woods nearby before going over to the front of the park to wait for the show.

Honestly, I expected something like Sentosa's musical fountain show but it was afternoon there! The show was quite disappointing since it involved the turning on of all the fountain pipes available, with no 'dancing' of water :( Oh well, it was pretty nonetheless!

After leaving Versailles, we drove to the hostel that we booked to unload our stuff there. YW and I then went on to return the car and head back to the hostel. We then took a train down to some point to walk along a river to the Lourve museum which was closed at that moment.

Nevertheless, the glass pyramids were great :D I've seen them on pictures/videos before but to be there physically felt quite surreal! FC's camera wasn't good at taking night shots and I hadn't gotten my camera's charger and battery yet :( I had to make heavy use of the tripod and have really great stability.

We then returned to our hostel for a good night's sleep. :D

France Day 2

This is on 16th April, Day 79 of my exchange:

2nd Day in France :) We left off with our group (YW, FC, Me, JH) ad a guy who was a friend of the girl who hosted us! haha, lucky guy! and we were lucky to get to stay there too! After several hours of driving, YW parked our car at a place near St Malo and we went to walk around the beach to take in some sceneries. It was not easy to find a parking place, but we managed to park it, thanks to the european culture of parallel parking at roadside with 2 of the wheels on the pavement :P HAHA! If I saw that in s’pore I’ld think tt the car got into an accident!!

Anyway, onto the wonderful views!! Here:

 

And there were lots of pretty flowers too!

There was a ship-building place and some castles around. Initially, we were thinking of just walking over to St Malo, but upon climbing onto one of the castles, we found that it was still quite inaccessible :(

We had to go all  the way back to find our car and drive to St Malo, find a parking place nearby (I think we might have parked in a reserved spot, but who cares! St Malo is a small walled city-like place. The tall fortress-like walls surrounding the city gives it a scenic look great for pictures and of course, tourists like us! Another side of its beauty is that it’s mostly surrounded by water!

And below is a view of the high-rise buildings inside. The ground floor is covered with shops, but i’m not sure what or who is inside these buildings. We walked around the buildings a bit before settling at a place to feed our hungry stomachs. Too bad I couldn’t afford those GIGANTIC cakes :(  But no worries, they had something vegetarian for me! I forgot the name of my lunch, but it had salads and some pastry thingy with lots of veges baked into it!

Next, we went into some of the buildings: Cathedrals, creperies, random sweet shops by the roadside.. and then, we climbed onto the wall and went over to the other side of the St Malo.

 

And there were beautiful little parks and beaches by the walkway! We could see the inside of the city on our right too! And then, we spotted a nice thin extension of land into the sea and since ppl were there, we went down to get ourselves there too! But before that, a wonderful shot: I had to take about 20 pictures before getting to this one:  Do click on it to make it bigger! There is a bird sitting at the edge of the cannon with a kid looking on:

And a jump shot of the peeps travelling with me:

The pathway was filled with seashells, I felt so bad stepping on them. Anyway, we had to climb up this slope and everyone got tired. But the weather was wonderful, we stopped for a rest. It also happened to be a scenic photo place :))

And then, it was time to move on to the top!

And the wind was super strong at the top! All of us just laid down on the grassy ground to enjoy the wind and rest! After reluctantly getting up to leave, climbing down was the best part cos i got to jump over rocks to make my way down on the other side! We then decided to go on to another castle-like ‘island’ nearby which was connected too! And this was fun cos the climbing needed some balancing skills!

I wished I could spend several more days here, but I guess it’s better to leave cos I also didn’t want such a wonderful place to get boring :P We went back to the walled city and tried to make our way to the exit as shops propped up on the streets for the evening sale. And for those waffle fans out there, here are the french making waffles!

haha, I dunno why i kept thinking that they were expensive. They sold at 5 sing dollars for the plain one. Okay. It IS ex :( HAHA.

Every place I visit is like a secret location, hiding lots secrets. The secret book opens up when i visit it and closes as i leave! haha, away from the secret world of St Malo, our car remained untowed so that we could get on it to ride back to Rennes. All of us slept on the car except YW. Poor thing! He’s really a super man for managing to stay awake and alert for hours to drive us around! We dropped by a supermarket to buy some groceries for dinner, thanks to the guy who was with us to give us directions to it! We also refilled our food bags with some supermarket goodies to last us for the next few days. Getting back, we made dinner at the girl’s room WHICH was a SINGLE room with attached KITCHEN and BATHROOM and TOILET! and she was paying about the same fees as us!! Their dorm building reminded me of Ridge view residences, when I went to visit pradeep. Alrights, folks! That’s all for the dayy! More coming up, stay tuned!

France Day 1

This is on 15th April, Day 78 of my exchange:

Fong Chi, Jiang Heng and I left for France from Eindhoven on a Euroline bus on the night of 14th april. The bus was supposed to leave at 11:59pm, but I think we got there about 2 hours early. Johnny earlier missed a Euroline bus and ended up taking an expensive train. ~200 euros, i think! ouch :( The night was cold, but still, bearable. I didn't bring my down jacket, so I had to make do with my sweater and jackets and bag! We kept running between the 2 sides of the road and around the area since we didn’t really know where the euroline bus would stop at. There were some familiar faces but they got onto another bus. When a euroline bus pulled up to the other side of the road, we rushed over to board. There were lots of ppl boarding and the bus was crowded. There were barely any seats at all!

Welcome to France!

The bus ride was quite horrible since I was squeezed in with this fat fellow who took up a portion of my seat :( There were breaks in between during which i had to remain awake, waiting for him to come back and take his seat! anyway, we made it to the euroline interchange in paris at about 7 in the morning. We were supposed to meet up with Fong Chi’s BF before going up north to some American memorial. We took the subway to the main train station in France. And we walked around a bit once we got there. We had a small breakfast consisting of stroopwaffles, some packed bread and milk :)

We rented out the car once we met up with YW. I treid driving and managed to get out of the parking lot, after which we decided that it would be safer for YW to drive! haha, my previous driving experience was during my driving test :P We then tried to change the name of the driver to him, but that wasn’t possible, he was added as the secondary driver.We also had to go back again to get a new GPS system since the one given to us wasn’t working!! After about 200+Km/5 hours of continuous driving, we got to Omaha beach memorial. There were lots of Americans there, and some school kids were having their field trip as well. The memorial building was small but very thoughtfully built. The beach was gorgeous and the wind was chilling since spring wasn’t full blown yet.

After the memorial visit, our pro driver started driving again! I wondered how he could keep the alertness up all the way for hours! The GPS system got quite cranky in its directions now and then and so we got lost once in a while. But it would always reroute and bring us back. We used the road directions a bit to help us get the the expressways was well. Finally, after another ~100km of driving for abt 3 hours, we started getting glimpses of Mont St Michel! It was an amazing scene! I’d seen pictures of it on the net but seeing it for myself was GREAT!! Here is one of the first few sightings of it! Thanks to the quickness of FC’s camera which was in my hands for the trip :)

And then, it started getting bigger and bigger until we got on to the bridge linking it to the mainland!! Yipee! haha, I took this shot with the mont and our dear driver:

We had to park by the road since the ‘carpark’ below would be drowned when the tide comes in in the evening. HAHA! What a strage thing, rightt! 

It felt really cozy walking in to the Mont. Such a small snug place with creperie, restaurants, houses but still with a stunning view. We went up and down, trying to set our little feet on every part of it! HAHA! Here is the stunning sea view of the tide coming in! I took the below pic as i was playing around with the modes in FC’s camera!

Going there and walking around made me feel like I’m in some fairy tale world with castles and a princess for me to save! And there was a museum inside too! And here is my dinner for the night: We caught the beutiful sunset as we came out of the Mont. But I noted that it’s not really possible to cover the Mont and the sun together cos the sun was in a different direction. So, all those sunrise/sunset postcards were photoshoped!!  don’t buy them!

After driving for several more hours, we arrives at Rennes, where we were supposed to meet FC’s BF’s friend’s malaysian friend to stay at for the night. That place had a university and so we stayed in their dorm :) The place was quite difficult to find with the GPS cos it failed us again, so YW had to call the ppl up for directions. One of the guys’ room was empty since he was travelling during that time and so the 3 of us guys took his room. FC slept with the girl. It was a great night for us as we all had blankets, unlike FC :P haha, onto the next day!!

Sweden Day 7: Back to Eindhoven

This is on 30th march, day 62:

Our night train left Stockholm pretty much on time. We were very well on our way to Malmo. I was on the uppermost berth. It had power points and all. Here:

Azri and I went to sleep after brushing our teeth. Here is a pic of the sunrise at 530am!! NICE RIGHT!!

We reached malmo on time to change to the next connecting train. We got down fast and managed to find and board the other train in time. I forgot my camera's charger and battery though. It was still on the night train, charging. It was too late to go and get it. And here is a beautiful pic along the journey, near copenhagen:

The train was crowded with office-goers. We finally reached copenhagen at 7:17am!! yipee!! Our connecting train was to leave at 7:45. So, we had some time to take pics of Copenhagen :D

And then.. our ICE train finally arrived. It was our first time on a ICE train. The seats were wonderful, like in some aeroplane. It was supposed to take us from Copenhagen to Hamburg. The conductor on board was smart enough to ask us to write the date. So, that's 2 days gone on our ticket.

And we had our breakfast of bread with honey and apples on board :D Roedby was one of the stations along the way. OUR ICE TRAIN WENT ONTO A SHIP!! We had to get out and stay outside of the train for about 45 mins. We went around to see the ship. We then figured out that there were 2 other trains on the ship as well!! And there were busses and cars on another floor. We had to go to the top few floors where there was a restaurant, supermarket and a place to view the sea. The video below shows the journey on a bridge from Vordingborg station to Nykoebing F station and a view of the ship that our train was in on the way to Puttgarden from Roedby:

I saw a lot of windmills as we were leaving Puttgarden. And it is really difficult to take a good picture from inside the train. It moves super fast, my camera takes forever to focus and there is the window reflection problem on top of that. Nevertheless, I managed to take this shot:

And we finally reached Hamburg. You'll see another copy of this picture soon :P

And we managed to again, switch to the connecting train at Hamburg since we had 30 mins in between the trains. We were both tired by this time. We reached Dusseldorf after a good sleep.

And later, reached Kalden Kirchen, which is the last station before getting into Netherlands!! We had to take a small and old train to Venlo which is on the border of Netherlands. We felt at home the moment we reached Venlo. Everything seemed to familiar and comfortable, unlike the places that we've been to.

We got off at Venlo and went to a sheltered place. I then realised that one of my gloves had dropped off somewhere. I last time I wore them was during the ship ride and I wasn't sure where they were. So, I asked Azri to take care of my stuff and ran back to the train to have a look at the place where we were sitting. I checked the place and glove was not there. That was when the door closed by itself! I tried to open it, but couldn't! And then.. the train started moving!! oppsie!! hahah, I went down the train and found 2 conductors chit-chatting. I told them what happened. They checked the train timings for me and told me to alight at Kalden Kirchen to take the next train back to Venlo in 45 mins. Well, I alighted at KK but didn't want to wait for 45 mins for the next train. So, I decided to walk back to Venlo, along the train tracks :D The walk took about 1 hr. I managed to take some good pics along the way though. It was sunset!:I had to crawl through some bushes for this pic of a house along the way:

I had to pass by a depot before entering the Venlo Station. There were some conductors there who approached me to ask me where I was coming from. I told them that I'm from Germany :P They didn't understand everything at that. So, I explained the whole story to them. They then told me that it is forbidden to walk near the tracks and asked me where I was heading to. I said I was heading to Eindhoven. That guy happened to be a conductor and so, he said ".. yea, get on the train! We'll pick up your friend and head on down to Eindhoven!" This will be one of the most unbelievable things that I had heard during my exchange term.

So, I boarded the train and it started rolling towards Venlo in about 10 minutes. I positioned myself at a door where Azri would be standing in front of. I was off by 1 door. I managed to re-position myself in time :D The door opened and he was about to board it! hahaha! He was thinking of getting everything down to Eindhoven first. We found a nice seat, got back to Eindhoven, bid farewell and reached home :D

This post marks the end of the Sweden trip!! yay!