The Last of Stockholm

These photos were taken in early June, the last few weeks left in Stocholm (after which it would be my last trip). I'm now back in Singapore, but I remember being bipolar then - wishing that I was already home, yet wishing not wanting exchange to end. But all these only goes to show how blessed I am to have had so many enjoyable things in my life that I hold so dear to me, whether it's exchange or Singapore.

This was taken close to 11pm. The sun doesn't really go down, it just gets dim. Kinda reminds me of how my life is, that the sun doesn't really go down on me, not entirely.

Princess cake! The Swedish food that I enjoy the most (or rather the only thing I'd miss heh).
Sponge cake, rasperry jam, vanilla cream, whipped cream, and a fondant layer!

The back of my hostel, Idun

Food festival at Kungstragarden, with tons of stalls of different types of cuisines. We were really excited about it, but if you think about it, our hawker centres are just like this!

Biker gang polaroids ^^

Random atas neighbourhood

Double rainbow ^^

Went to the Vasa Museum in Stockholm, which is essentially a museum on a war ship that sank 15 mins after setting sail... It's supposedly the most interesting museum in Stockholm. Okay it was pretty cool, but I'm not really a museum type of person tbh.

The diving bell had wifi

 

The last of my biking days! SY, Kenelm and I went to Hagaparken to cycle and roll around and clown around. We even filmed ourselves singing 'Obviously', being pretentious YouTubers, calling ourselves the Stockholm Squirrels... (I blame SY)

This is Xiaoming, one of my neighbours along the corridor. It's funny how I'm the first person that she meets when we moved in, and I'm the last person she sees in Idun before she leaves.

When Nigel & Chunhan both left, and Idun was so quiet. I thought that the day after that would have been a long day, but there were little perks that helped brighten my day. Went out for fika with Kenelm, skyped with JW, and got this in the mail from Lydia!! :D

Barcelona Day 3 - A Very Powerful

Sagrada Familia is about the most spectacular religious building I've been to in Europe, even though it has not been completed. In Europe, there are tons and tons of religious buildings - churches, synagogues, temples, basilicas etc, but hands down this one actually MEANT SOMETHING.

If you do go there, please get an audio guide to better appreciate this building. As a Christian, the building was really quite powerful (as Yip had told me earlier), because of all the symbolism behind them. And you can see that the symbolism isn't easy to create, and there was massive detail in the sculptures and different art forms. The building hasn't been completed, so there's so much more that I haven't even seen (ie the Glory facade, and the 'roof') and I've already been blown away.

The pillars were designed in the shape of trees, to represent community 

The Nativity Facade, depicting Jesus's birth/childhood

The Passion Facade, representing the events leading to the crucifiction of Christ

It has been 200 years since construction began, and there's about 20++ more years to go. I hope to be able to see the completed building someday!

Barcelona Day 2 - Montserrat

Heeding the advice of Louis from cell, we took a daytrip to Montserrat to enjoy some scenery! Montserrat's a mountainous region, and mountains look just like gigantic fingers! 

It was a morning of breathtaking views, and enjoying creation :) It took us a bit of a hike (on top of spending quite a bit on trains and funiculars) to get to a good viewing point. But it was extremely rewarding - the view, the quietness, the breezes and sunshine. Enjoy the photos!

Throwing rocks down the mountains. I made sure no one was below, but I killed a deer. KIDDING

Part of the route in Montserrat has a series of sculptures of Jesus's life, which was really interesting. Though towards the end, there was stuff on Santa Maria (Mary), because this is actually part of the Catholic pilgrimage to begin with.

Monastery in Montserrat!

Barcelona Day 1 - Parc Guell

Alright, so on the first day of exploring Barcelona we kept getting lost trying to find this place 'Parc Guell'. As such, it was the only place we had gone to that day... :( Made the mistake of walking instead of taking the bus directly from our hostel. In the end, we were so sick of being lost that we took the bus instead.

With Xinying, whom I met in my internship last summer. She was an intern too!

Parc Guell was like a life-size candy house from Hansel & Gretel, with all the brightly-coloured tile fragments and brown bricks. It was constructed by Gaudi, who also made the plans for Sagrada Familia. He's really one creative soul, that man. After being to so many buildings, I would say that I've never seen anything quite like this.

Btw, all the colourful portions in the whole place were made by tiny pieces of broken coloured tiles. The house was probably the size of few landed properties in Caldecott Hill. The effort in constructing this building is just craaaayyyyy.

Madrid Day 2 - Ignorance is bliss

This is really long overdue. But so much has happened over the past few weeks (exams, moving out, trips). Hopefully I'll be able to update the events properly.

The morning and afternoon of the second day in Madrid was pretty boring, just going around to take pictures and all.

Temple

Aerial view of Madrid from Temple

The evening, on the other hand, kept us very excited (more of anxious really), because we bought tickets to catch bullfighting! Well, we didn't know what bullfighting REALLY was, we thought it was just a bull charging at red flags. So when SY told me bullfighting was cruel, I Googled it and the two of us were like

WHATTTTTTHHEEE?FLJDFLG./?

Google if you don't understand why the commotion.

To make matters worse, this was the first article that appeared when I Googled "San Isidro, bullfighting". 3 matadors injured the night before.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/may/21/spain-san-isidro-bullfighting-festival-suspended-matadors-injured

The audience would wave something white (handkerchief, scarf, hat, shirt, cloth) if they wanted to pardon the bull for 'outstanding behaviour'. But... I'm pretty sure the bull died so I have no idea what that was for lol, maybe to recognise its efforts

Look at how near the matador positioned himself! Crazy and tense atmosphere

Matador strutting around like a hero after finishing that bull. After that they lifted him and paraded him around, gave him a press conference in the ring, and lifted him into a van which drove off. They're treated like superstars.

After the game XY and I were stopped by 2 Spanish men while we were trying to take pictures. One of them kept gesturing to my camera and tried to take it from me to help us take a picture. For a moment there, I was wondering what elaborate pickpocketing-camera-stealing ploy it was lol. Turns out that they're just really really friendly people who were rather intrigued by 2 small Asian girls going to watch a bullfight.

We tried to have a conversation and it was challenging because they barely spoke English and we hardly knew any Spanish words. We did understand enough to know that they wanted to give us a cheek-to-cheek Spanish greeting hehehe.

These are my friends

Typed on 11 April 2014

I'm lying in siying's room right now. We are having a sleepover last night of milo and face masks. Reminds me of that time with jx in the study when I forced her to take a selfie when we had our masks in haha.

Exchange feels like gaining a lot more siblings. Siying and I do a lot of crazy shizz like fight and sing stupid songs, like what jx and I do in the evenings. Nigel and Chunhan are like 2 brothers annoying me whenever I see them haha. Most notably getting poked and shoved and being told "shut up la" by Nigel. Chunhan laughs and doesn't help me when I get bullied. And I don't get how he can laugh at his own jokes hahaha.

I'm still getting my worth of being bullied. Things here aren't that different from SG I guess...        

6 June 2014

The countdown begins and people start dropping like flies. Okay that was overly dramatic. Tomorrow, Chunhan will be leaving for his trip. And the next time the Biker Gang gathers will be in Singapore.

It feels immensely surreal, that exchange is actually ending. To think that I dreaded exchange at the start, because it would mean being away from community I have in SG.

At some food festival in Kungstragarden

Because losing everything

Feels like

The sun going down on me...

Indomee for the last supper as we watched Grand Hotel Budapest

11 June 2014

People dropping like flies part 2 as Nigel also leaves. Idun seems uncomfortably quiet now, not because my room mate isn't around, but there's no room to go to to hang and talk nonsense. I didn't think 5 months would have made the waterworks turn on, much less when I was walking back in the evening. Thankfully I had my sunglasses heh.
         

Siying and I chasing after the bus that Nigel got on, for like 10metres.

On to more light-hearted news, today, the Stockholm Squirrels filmed their debut! HAHA

Basically we were filming us singing songs in Hagaparken, and the original video was so funny because of the ridiculous NGs we had. For preserving whatever reputation we each have left, we're definitely not posting the video :P

Madrid Day 1 - Collecting postcard places like collecting pokemon

Xinying and I happened to have common free days, and Ryanair was having cheap flights to Barcelona so we were like HEY LET'S GO TO SPAIN!

The first day of Madrid wasn't much. Just running around the city centre area to snap photos of recommended places. Thing is, I don't think Madrid is a touristy as Barcelona, so a lot of the buildings were really average European buildings. There isn't much history that I know at the back of my mind about Spain, which was why we were taking photos like collecting pokemon.

Puerto de Sol

Palace

Cathedral behind the palace

Garden behind the palace

Oh, I got hungry along the way and got myself a paella (which means rice in Spanish). And it's part of the Spanish culture to eat tapas style - which is eating in smaller portions or as a snack - a ploy for people to order more food. Unfortunately, as a small Asian girl, sometimes, the portions were sufficient.

Plaza Mayor

Iconic bear and tree, Idk why. Just Google if you're interested.

Congress

Retiro Park! My favourite part of Madrid, because it's so nice to chill and talk nonsense.

Crystal palace in Retiro Park

And it's called Crystal Palace because it's essentially a glass palace. They've got nice armchairs and books around the area for people to chill and read. It's so quiet that you can even hear the birds chirping outside. Very very lovely place.

Plaza de Espana

After the first day, we realised we had conquered ALL the places on postcards, and there wasn't a postcard that inspired us to explore Madrid hahaha. And so, we thought that Madrid was boring...

Until we looked at the Madrid guide book and realised that IT WAS THE BULLFIGHTING SEASON!

And hence without thinking, two small Asian girls booked two tickets to watch bullfighting. The guy at the counter was half-scoffing-half-laughing when he saw us collect our tickets, and we didn't really know why. 

To be continued in Madrid Day 2