♥; Simple Pleasures of Life.

Friday, April 04, 2008 @Friday, April 04, 2008

This is the 1st wk I seriously attended lessons and really feel like a student from CBS. I will be having 3 day wk lessons from now on- monday, tuesday and friday:) not too bad.. I thought that it would be worst. This is the week when I start to open my textbooks, flip it and do notes! I guess these 2 months I will be busy studying until 2nd june, my last day of exams for marketing.

From now onwards, I will start on my routine student life. I have decided that these 2 months, I will stay in copenhagen. Besides studying, I want to improve on my culinary skills, keep abreast with the latest business and global news, exercise, and learnt more about denmark. I want to visit the Tivoli, catch a ballet performance, have a picnic in the park, visit the Carlsburg museum before I leave denmark.

Yesterday, I started on my jogging regime! Yiling and I jogged from our residence to stroget, which is the main shopping street. Jogging is a great activity as I get to keep fit and at the same time, explore new places that I have not discovered yet. While jogging, I realised that the park which we past by everyday when we take the bus from norreport to our residence is actually a cemetary! The cemetary is really a serene place.. and I found Hans Christian Andersen's grave there too. While jogging past the city center, we witness a peaceful protest. It was interesting to see how the students carry out their peaceful protest. They were speaking in danish, so I had no idea what was the reason for protest.. but I guessed it was for peace or some sorts. The funniest thing is that some of the students were carrying bottles of beer while protesting! It's a pity I didn't bring along my camera during my jog. Jogging in Denmark is definitely different from Singapore. Though it is spring now in Denmark, it is still relatively cold. I think my body is still not acclimatised to jogging in the cold yet. My limbs and neck feels numbed after jogging for 1 hr. But nonetheless, it was a good start and a good experience. I will be jogging once a week and exploring different jogging routes.

I will be coming back to Singapore tentatively on the 1 july. My parents decided that they would not be coming over as my mum is too busy with work. Caryn will be coming over to Sweden and Denmark for her business study mission trip from SMU.. so we r organising a short trip from the 20 june to 29june around europe. We are probably going to belgium, portugal and frankfurt.. but everything is still in the preliminary stage and nothing is confirmed yet.

Flipping through my journals, I realised that trolls have significant meaning in the norwegian culture. Then, I was determined to find out more about the trolls in norway.

These are the facts I have found from wikipedia:

A troll is a fearsome member of a mythical race from Norse mythology. Originally more or less the Nordic equivalents of giants, although often smaller in size, the different depictions have come to range from the fiendish giants – similar to the ogres of England (also called Trolls at times, see Troller's Gill) – to a devious, more human-like folk of the wilderness, living underground in hills, caves or mounds. In the Faroe islands, Orkney and Shetland tales, trolls are called trows, adopted from the Norse language when these islands were settled by Vikings.

Nordic literature, art and music from the romantic era and onwards has adapted trolls in various manners – often in the form of an aboriginal race, endowed with oversized ears and noses. From here, as well as from Scandinavian fairy tales such as Three Billy Goats Gruff, trolls have achieved international recognition, and in modern fantasy literature and role-playing games, trolls are featured to the extent of being stock characters.

I realised that travelling around, you learnt alot- implicitly and explicitly. Sometimes, there are just too many things that I have learnt in a day that I could not remember to record them down at night. So below are just some of the stuff that I managed to jot down.

Milan

Our 1st destination as to Milan. We had to transit and stay overnight at berlin airport before catching our plane from berlin to Milan. This was my 2nd stay in the airport and it was just yiling and me. Yiling had a better rest than me because she decided to open up her sleeping bag and sleep in the bench but I refused to do so because my sleeping bag is too long for me and opening up my sleeping bag will result in my sleeping bag sweeping the dirty floor.

The ironic thing is that we stayed overnight in the airport, yet we almost missed our plane! We were too complacent, thinking that we have a lot of time since we need not check in and we can head straight to the gates. However, I was stopped at the customs for carrying too much liquids in my handcarry bag! I had to dash to the check in counters, check in my bag and queue up at the long line infront of the customs again. Luckily after I cleared the customs, a police officer immediately direct me to my gate. I learnt from yiling that she approached the police officer to direct me to the departure gate while she tries to plead the airport personnel from closing the gates! phew.. i was 3 min close to missing my plane.

Milan is a cosmopolitan city. It is suppose to the the fashion paradise but it was not as glitz and glamourous as I had imagined. I expected to see more fashion chic or people dressed in querky clothes.. but they tend to dress just like the rest of the europeans.

The roads in Milan can be rather confusing at times, compared to rome, were the roads tend to be perpendicular to each other. I realised that the tourist information center (TI) in most countries tend to be the hardest to find in most countries. Milan's TI was located at an obscured corner in the central train station, Stazion Centrale . It was extremely difficult to find it as the train station was undergoing renovation.

The best architecture in Milan is definitely the magnificent Duomo, which means cathedral in Italian. You can definitely see the Duomo from any metro exits from Duomo station. It takes 500 years to build this cathedral. The structure is so intricate and inside Duomo, there are countless tainted glasses depicting the life of Jesus. The columns supporting the structure was like 5 storeys tall. I can imagine a service conducted in this chapel with thousands of people seated inside. It is just impressive thinking that 500 years ago, with their limited technology then, they can build this structure. The sheer size of the project involving thousands of workers, engineers and architects just amazes me.

As I travelled, I realised that the internationally cheap food in europe is definitely the kebabs. You can get a filling meal from kebab eateries for less than SGD10! A great meal in replacement to Macs. However, I refrain from eating too much kebabs as it is not healthy. I tend to eat their local food. In Italy, ice creams are my daily emdorphins.. pizza's crust is thin and crispy and pasta tasted cheezy and fabulous too..!

In my opinion, Italians can be rude and tactless in some ways. I have witness some incidents where one italian scolded another for blocking her way and when one italian scolded another for allowing the dog to poo in the grass patch. But there are also some incidents where we received directions from passer-bys and there are some Italians who recognised that we were tourists and approached us to offer their help.

Ok.. i shall continue with my travel blog another time.. gonna cook for dinner now! tata