Approximately 2 weeks back from my Europe Summer cum Grad trip, with wonderful great memories, and I couldn’t have asked for more.
40 days (15 June – 24 July),
24hrs on the plane,
56hrs in the train (with 1 of them stuck for 1hr due to heavy storm which caused a tree to fall across the track),
5 countries (Germany, Austria, Hungary, Czech Republic & Netherlands),
16 cities & towns,
11 accommodations,
30kg of shopping (in total),
18-36 Celsius (in the day) experienced,
25 packs of instant noodles, 2 packs of bak kut teh & 1 pack of porridge devoured,
n H&M shops sighted,
n wurst spotted,
n Mozart seen & heard,
many friends made, and
3 happy travelers 🙂
The trip revolved around a Summer Program organised by HHL, but really, it was just an excuse to travel. Haha. It marked a lot of “first” and “-est” for me as well:
- Longest trip I have been on, travelling to 5 countries and changing accommodation 11 times: Really have to thank my travel buddies to pull this off without much hitch esp logistically wise
- Longest time away from home
- First time studying overseas: We had difficulty finding a sign in the campus indicating the school name. LOL. And we learnt how good our profs are (we even had a pair of 双簧 profs there. LOL). Opps.. Haha
- First time staying in a boat: what an experience it was. Our boat was quite small (or rather, cosy). We were not able to do many things comfortable, except perhaps to lie on the bed. Haha. During the first night as the wind was quite strong, it became quite noisy as well with the waves hitting against the boat. The shower and toilet, fortunately were very clean, were in a building nearby, thus it felt like a camp for us. The slogan for the stay was: 将就就好. Hahaha.
- First time spending many consecutive days with friends: it was a really fun and great experience
- First time experiencing a 18 degrees Summer in Europe: Having been to Europe a few times in Summer, I thought the weather this time round would be similar as well, thus my luggage was filled with clothes for summer, with my windbreaker as the only piece to protect me from any cold weather. How wrong I was. When we landed in Munich, it was only around 20-24 degrees with cooling winds. Vienna was even colder, with a day high of 18 degree. I had no choice but to reinforce my equipment with a jacket and a scarf. The temperature began to feel like Summer later on, hitting a high of 36 degrees in Dresden, but it fell back to around 20 degrees in Amsterdam, our final stop. It’s a full circle eh? We were also fortunate because 2 days after we left Amsterdam, there was a huge storm across the countries. Trains stopped running from Central Amsterdam and flights from Amsterdam Airport were delayed. Imagine – us in a boat.. what a scene it would be.
- Consumed the most amount of alcohol during the short period: Being afraid that I would be drunk given my past experience in Munich, I didn’t really drink a lot. But still, given the cheap and good wine and beer there, I drank much more than I am in Singapore (where I don’t really drink).
- First overseas outdoor concerts: enjoyed great outdoor music in Prague and Hannover
- First time seeing so many H&Ms around: In the past when I was in Europe, I did not notice that there were so many H&Ms around. There were H&Ms in every city and in some places, there were even 2 or 3 on the same street, not far apart!
- First time consuming so many instant noodles during a short period of time: Given that my parents’ massive disapproval of instant noodles, I had to go overseas to consume instant noodles. Lol
- First time cooking for my friends (apart from Home Econs exam)
Read moreSummer 2015
