#justanotherrandompost

Its been about a month since I started my exchange studies in Strathclyde University.

I'm really glad that I went for exchange because within this short time, I've learnt so much more things than i would if stuck back home. Though i might not have gotten the best flat facilities here, my flat mates more than makes up for it. Even after a month of living together, there never seems to be a lack of cultural exchanges.

The lifestyle here is so much different compared to in Singapore. Here, they encourage a balance of study and play over the concept of just acquiring academic knowledge. I wouldn't have dreamed of living the lifestyle im currently in back home, to the point of feeling guilty of having 7hrs of sleep every schoolday. and yes, the concept of level asian do exist. although i've mapped similar modules, the syllabus here is so much lesser compared to the ones back in NTU.

The highlight of every week is of course the weekend getaway to another town,city,country. and again i cannot express how happy i am for this! okay i'm getting abit sian of blogging. till next time!

random family guy screening night. 

27-28 Oct, Galloway Forest Park

Galloway Forest Park, the largest forest park in the UK, south west of Glasgow, about 2hours drive. Situated in a region commonly known as the Lowlands. 

So after forfeiting a trip to Paris, we decided to go on another road trip to hit some walking trails. Acclaimed for their many bike trails, their walking trails were not too bad itself. Walking into the forest, one could not help but feel the serenity of the towering century old trees. It feels like walking into an enchanted forest, one that you usually see in movies or the forbidden forest in the world of Harry Potter. Keep a look out for those centaurs! 

Spent a day driving around Castle Douglas (apparently its a town and has no castle. so misleading) and its surrounding to the Threave Estate where you can find the castle not douglas but the ruins of the Threave Castle. It sucks to have the sun set at 5pm but we were treated to some fireworks at night!
The next day, we attempted to hit the trails around the forest park but due to the inclement weather aka RAINING the whole damn day, all we could do was drive around and stop only to admire the sights from within the warmth and comfort of our car. Pretty scenic i would say and better still if we could walk around. The autumn colours and scenery of the tree line was a treat and it would be stuck in my memory as what fall is like. Also it was the only 25hr day, always great to have extra sleep without feeling guilty because the clocks were turned back by an hour. 
Finally leaving, Galloway Forest Park headed for Ayr, we drove down the western coast and the coastal winds were able to blow us away at Girvan. Ayr was quite a big coastal town and could finally see shops that were open. So where are discounts and shops, its time to go shopping! 

Overall it was an okay trip. would be so much better if it had not rained. The scenery of the lowlands is so much different than the highlands where it's still generally green and loads more of farm animals, mainly the meh mehs, moo moos and neighers. Was quite a nice drive around the changing landscapes . Place would be nice for the summer though with all the water sports and mountain trail biking. Kind of went at the wrong time because most of the places including some of the Information centers were closed from october onwards. We were quite suay because when we arrived at clattershaw's loch information center to get some hot cuppa in the cold weather for some mood booster, it was the first day of their winter closure. 

 Toad, Vern & Amanda in the forbidden forest.

 Autumn Colours

 Meh Mehs!

 Threave Castle, ferry services closed for the winter. 

Some fireworks at night at the Threaves Estate

 Bunkhouse lodge at the Galloway Activity Center

 Moo moos  along the road at the Raiders Trail

 Wild scottish goats

 The coast of Girvan with the view of Ailsa Craig

 Extreme winds!

11 Sept, Day of the packed tours

so after saying to ourselves many times that we have 5 nights in prague and having kept pushing some of the tours to the next day, we finally headed out for the castle tour! I think part of the reason it was such was cos 3 of us were down with bad vernonlimsitits. Honestly, i felt that the tour with discoverwalks wasn't worth the money and we were kinda forced to give a higher tip than usual cos she said that you should give at least 300 CZK for such tours.

We went for the castle tour after the charles bridge tour. The guide was slightly better but because we gave quite abit to the previous guide, we had no choice but to give a lower tip. =/ Oh ya. we met up with the CTU guys today, Sai Chang and Yu Heng. I would recommend newpraguetours's castle tour over this one and its only 250 CZK, somewhat lesser than what we spent on tips for the 2 lousy tours.

It was quite funny to see new comers to prague struggle to finish their food as we saw such from sai chang who couldnt finish those hearty rice dumplings of his. Okay kinda tired now and rather lazy to blog and the moment. here's the video log.

St Vitus Cathedral in the Prague Castle

welcome sai and yuheng

some beer brewed in the monastery!

the last time in our lives seeing the astro clock

9 Sept: The Bone Chapel

Today we headed to Kutna Hora. Founded in the early 13th century as a silver-mining town, the name comes from kutati 'to mine minerals' and hora 'mountain' or 'rock', a reference to the fact that at this time minerals were mined predominantly in mountainous country. This town really honors its miners alot with many symbolic references to them even in the church.

 The tour was informative and we had a great guide by the name of Filip, a local who works with newpraguetours. The highlight was of the day was the Church of the Saints, which is made famous with the Bone Chapel. Decorated by the bones from forty thousand people it looks pretty cool (dont know if im sick or what) but its a pretty unique chapel. It originally had 6 pyramids of bones stacked up without support but later 2 pyramids were used to decorate the chapel including the bone chandelier to what we see today. However, i think the bone displays in Cambodia are more interesting compared to this one. Maybe cos of those bones collected in Cambodia were from the holocaust of the Khmer regime and had a more gruesome story behind it. Again, I found this chapel too touristy that it loses the feeling of eeriness that is meant to be inside. The message this unique bone chapel puts across is that the body is insignificant to God. When we proceed to the afterlife, our body decays and whats left is our soul which we should have nurtured during our time on Earth. With the church as the final stop, we proceeded back to Prague.

 I thought that the tour was quite worth with us paying only 540 CZK (with ISIC discount) compared to other companies which charge 1100 CZK. Whoaaa. Also checked out transport from Prague to Berlin, apparently, the bus is almost twice as cheap (~25 Eu) and slower by 15min. What kind of sorcery is this! The only downside are the timings. We depart 730 am and arrive in Berlin at 1230.

Well, i guess after staying 6n in Prague, we can't wait to get out of the place. Don't know why, but we were kinda of sick of the hearty meaty czech food that we decided for some chinese food next to our accommodations. Wouldn't say its the best asian food but the feeling of using the chop stick again with some fried rice and fresh vegetables just reminded us how much we miss home and singaporean food. 

Actually the day was great, but i think i didn't really enjoy it as much as i should is cos of my stupid cold. can't taste much, can't drink beer and worst of all, my nose is leaking now. think i should be getting some rest. tmr is another lepak day with activities only starting after noon.

 nights!

St Barbara's Cathedral

Patron Saint for Travelers: St Christopher

lunch @ Daricky Pivnice. Do try their fried cheese.

Church of All Saints, Bone Chapel

Coat of Arms of a Donor made from bones

Day 25: Eat till you drop

Its been a while since I blogged. Been rather tired and shit. And feeling dam sian cos I’m falling sick. Must be the opened carriage window in the train that caused this. Nose kinda leaky now. =/

Anyway, greetings from Prague! It’s a really beautiful city, full of history and its own unique culture of beer drinking. It’s a tad bit too crowded though. But oh wells, its rated as the top 3 must-go places in Europe even with the crowds. Its transiting into Autumn now and the temperature is getting colder. The first time we stepped off the train, we were like O M G why isit so cold! But thank goodness it warmed up towards the afternoon!

Like all the Eastern European countries, its relatively cheap and I must say the meal portions here are enormous! I think their plan is to stuff tourist with so much food that they can’t stand up after the meal to control the crowd in old town. Haha.  Beer here is awesome. We are literally drinking it like water! With hundreds of microbreweries around, we get to try a new beer every meal! The price of restaurants here is gauged by their beer prices. An affordable one would have a 0.5l of beer going from 25-50 CZK (1-2.4 Eu)! Real cheap! I think most of Czech cuisine consists mainly of meat. Very hearty meals indeed! But I think the grilled and smoke style of cooking is so much less gerlat compared to the polish and Hungarian style.

Would recommend

Free walking tour (www.newpraguetours.com) by sandermans, great walking tour although it aint led by locals.

Head to

U Medvidku (Ns Perstyne)

And order any kind of meat. It’ll be awesome. They are the original brewers of Budweiser.

Pivoarsky Klub (Krizikova 17)

A little bit pricier but like freaking huge selection of beers! The beer menu is thicker than the food menu. Pork Knuckle goes for 0.5 CZK/g.

Corsaire (Linhartska 134/2, Praha 1)

Good service plus good food too!

through the wooden door that opens with an old school key to our apartments

the toilet with a discussion table

one of the sleeping rooms.

didnt know here got race! would be interesting if i could run

it does have the best rates in town

 time for some beer at U Medvidku

view of the prague castle from across the river

 shit load of tourists heading across the charles bridge

vintage tour cars!

bugel call

check out the size of the pork knee at Corsaire

Chicken leg

super cool astronomical clock.

cheers to prague!

smoked pork with spinach and bacon bread topped with friend onions!

one of the many beers at Pivavosky Klub

YY's desperate attempt to get wifi

4 Sept, where humanity didn't exist

Although Poland was under the rule of communism, unlike Budapest, the scar left from history was by WWII. Visited Auschwitz-Birkenau today. Tour was great but i felt that there were just too many tourists there that you couldn't feel the solemness in the place. I really cannot understand how humans can be treated with such cruelty and so inhumanely. Deaths were based on efficiency and productivity and a system was even established to make mass killings as efficient as possible. Living conditions were not even fit for animals. Jews were slaughtered, children were used as experiments that never contributed the scientific world and many many many other war crimes. Its quite sad to hear all these stories at the place where these things were committed. There were rooms, storehouses full of their old belongings and the most disturbing one was a display full of human hair which the germans used to make certain fabrics . 

been slow on posts the past few days due to the really hectic schedule. dont really have time to write a full post but i'll update on the places to eat!

Budapest

Try their signature dishes like goose brease meat, goose thigh and beef stolin @ Spinoza Café (Vll Dob utca 15). Kinda pricy in Hungarian standards but still rather cheap on european std. They say if you can play the piano and the guests are entertained, you get a huge discount for your meal there.

If you're there, do go for the Sunday Bazzar (www.gouba.hu), a flea market selling many random things from handicrafts, food to vintage cameras. They have some live jazz too!

Do try Pastries @ Frohlich koser Cukraszda(Vll Dob utca 22). Good stuff!

Krakow (so far)

-       Pastries @ Galeria Tortow Artystycznych (ul Bozego Ciala 22). Almost all their cakes are dam nice!

-       Free walking tours! (www.freewalkingtour.com). Great and knowledgable guides. Good english too! Do not mix them up with the red sign! We joined them by accident and the guide's english was horrible! But at least i found my RAG (Random Asian Girl) True Love for 10mins haha.

-       Drinks @ Wodka Café bar (ul Mikolajska 5). 100 Flavors of Vodka, never liked vodka till today!

Quote of the day would be Troll like the Polish Do.

Sept 1, Hungry in Hungary

tired is the word to describe how i feel now. pretty much out the entire day. Started the day off with crawling through the labyrinths of Pal-volgyi cave. Almost didnt go there cos me and toad were kind of lazy to travel there. It required a 2 bus transit to get there. But when i got there, i didnt regret anything. The guide was fluent in english (although it was quite fast at times) and fun! It was caving on a different level man, we had to squeeze through tiny holes which even I had problems crawling through, nothing which i've experience on other caving trips. I'll recommend you to do this if you want a break from walking through towns and ancient cities. You can check out their website here. You can drop them a email for their caving timings and reservations.

Ended about 1 plus. There was a free communist walk that runs only on mon, wed, fri and sat and we kinda rushed to meet it, but did not regret much. The guides lived through those hard times and it was a real insight to how Budapest was during the communist and post communist period. I honestly did not know how a young democratic state it was. However, i think because of the sudden transition from a communism to a democratic system, the country faces alot of hardship and corruption due to the lack of good governance. They were ruled with an iron fist during the initial communist period and relaxed during the years of 'happy communism' and transited into a democracy in 89, but i still think they're ruled by a dictatorship with political parties opposing each other on surface but are allies behind. But optimism hangs in the air, the people are looking forward to better days ahead, trying to dislodge from the past which i think is the key to change. So i finally realized why stuff are so cheap here. Their cost of living is actually v low with an average income of 600 euros/mth (specialist only earn 800 euros wts). Inflation was 40% after communism ended. Taxes are high and i fong get it that although there is a public healthcare system, you need to bribe the doctors to get proper attention in the hospital or you'll get neglected or given less care or like what the guide said, normal human service. I think this actually tells alot about how much the country has to progress. But it definitely has it challenges of being a post communist democracy overnight with the lift of the iron curtain. Kinda no time to write much on this but if you're interested on my experience on the tour can just facebook me. The guide was great and very knowledgable on the topic. You can get more information on their free tours here.

so gotta run! gotta pack and head out for my last day in budapest. hope the 11 hrs overnight train to krakow has wifi. 

This is an interesting documentary about the hungarian revolution during the communist times.

justing getting stuck in the cave

hall 2!

with our guide

bullet holes in the buildings

bridge symbolizing the transition between communism and democracy

communist ID

hungry shuk