A Looooong Walk in Ludwigsburg (07.04.07)

Ludwigsburg is one of the lesser-known (at least to us) towns in baden-wurttemburg, but the bored (and cheapo) us were so desperate for a place to go on a baden-wurttemburg ticket that after a few minutes of research on the internet, we just decided on this small town about 2 hours away. The necessities were present: a residenz, a castle by the lake and a huge garden. aaaaaannndd off we go!!


the town itself was quite happening on holy saturday.. maybe it was coz the easter festivities were in the air! weirdly enough, there was tall sculpture of a snake and some wood in the middle of the road.. so outta the blue! quite unexpected haha.

the residenz was appropriately huge with a museum and gallery and we even saw a couple taking wedding pics there!


walking further into the castle, we paid for this all-entry pass and waltzed into their sprawling expanse of gardens!! the garden concept is rather cool.. there were these easter decorations made of bread (yes, bread) and fake easter eggs, an aviary where there were flamingoes and peacocks, a greenhouse of pretty flowers, a small pond with yuan1 yang1 and a boat, a 4-seat ferris wheel for the young at heart, a carousel, a japanese garden, and get this, a fairy-tale themed garden!

we walked to this tower and heard these 2 kids shouting like mad at the tower in german.. and we realized we were at e rapunzel tower! so cool! there was this long pigtail hanging from it, and when the kids shouted the german phrase which meant, 'rapunzel, let down ur hair!' the pigtail would lower.. haha so fun for the kids! we tried to shout but seeing that all four of us were non-native german speakers.. we decided pictures would do.


and after the residenz, we set off for the favourite castle, which was built by the duke living in the residenz for his mistress!!! haha so convenient la! called it favourite somemore.. it was only a short walk away and the castle was even smaller than the bruchsal one! but it did look quite pretty against the blue sky.

from there, we decided against ivina's less tiring judgement and made our way to the last castle, schloss monrepos on foot. it was about 1.5km away from the edge of favourite's grounds.. and god knows how far we walked from the castle to the edge. haha. anw inese was irrepressible! full of energy, that girl.. haha. and she survived on nuts! my gdness! okay, and a chicken burger, but still! she is amazing! walk and walk and not tired at all!


and so we arrived at schloss monrepos, by the lake, which ivina claimed was built for her, i forgot why. nice picture by the lake.. quite dark, peaceful and abit morose coz of the statue, for some reason. the lake doesnt actually look like this, it has too many rowers and peddlers on it, which makes this picture even more precious.

Cruising from Heidelberg to Neckarsteinach... (06.04.07)

Post-exam cruise trip! woohoo!! our international liaison officer, a very nice lady called jutta walz, organized an trip for us exchange students, cruising along the neckar river from enchanting heidelberg to small town neckarsteinach. we woke up early good friday morning to board a train to heidelberg and got on the 11am boat to neckarsteinach.. along the way, jutta, who had studied at heidelberg university (one of the oldest unis in Germany, or the oldest, i think) introduced some of the buildings to us.


the cruise lasted for about 1.5 hours.. and the boat just slowly made its winding way through the neckar, passing thru 7- and 12-feet barges and small quaint towns by the river. slow and relaxing it was..


when we arrived at the small town of neckarsteinach, it was time for lunchhh! haha.. waited rather long for our pizzas and flammkuchens and galettes.. but it was quite good! so after our rather long lunch, we had about an hour or so to our ferry at 3.30pm, so we embarked on a walk to three of the four small fortresses along the river.. breath-taking scenery along the way!! we climbed up the tower of the 2nd rather ruined-looking fortress to even greater views of the neckar valley.. haha weirdly enough, some pics turned out to have bluer skies than others.. dunno why also.


more groups photos at the scenic riverside and entrance of one of the fortresses! and yeah, we climbed up those steps.. looks quite a journey from here. haha.


so we got on board the very crowded last boat of the day back to heidelberg and there were no photos to take since we were stuck in the dining area of the boat. haha. many many kids to see in there, though. angmoh babies are the cutest!! and they have the most amazing prams here.

back in heidelberg, we went on a small climb to philosopher's way, which provided great great views of the neckar valley and heidelberg's ruined castle. we, or i, finally learnt that it was destroyed coz the tower containing explosives caught fire or sth, and that pretty much destroyed the castle. anyways the climb was a biiiiit tedious and we were slightly puffing our sunburnt faces away.. but the view was worth it!

along the way, flowerbeds, dwarves and sounds of 'da bian, da bian, da bian!' dotted our walk into the sunset.. third trip to heidelberg for us but still an enjoyable one at that!

Luanie's Heidelberg and Stuttgart Weekend (24-25.03.07)

and this is the weekend keith came to visit. we set off on an ominously cloudy saturday morning (50% change of precipitation) to nearby heidelberg and its the enchanting old town. and i helped keith fulfil his wish of eating his favourite bratwurst. haha what is it with singpaoreans living in london and their love for german sausages? i guess we'll appreciate the german sausages only when we're out of germany for good.

so we took pictures with the wonderful ruin of a castle and walked and walked along the main street in search of various stuff like birkenstocks, bratwursts, pubs to watch soccer, ice cream (gdness, the nutella ice cream was heavenly) and dresses to fulfil the shopping-crazy girl in me. i think we must have walked along the street about 3-4 times in total. it is a LONG street, mind you. and i was quite beat at the end of the day.



sunday we made our way on a baden-wurttemberg ticket to stuttgart.. decided to go there since it is the 'capital' of our province ( or state or something.. ) and jinteng was mightily urging me to go there rather than karlsruhe. and it wasn't a wrong choice! haha. partly due to the weather i guess. it was sunny and clear and every stuttgarter was out strolling around the park even though the shops were all closed. had a taste of the crepes jinteng was always raving about and it was GOOOOOD.

quite happy strolling around konigstrasse, the lake and castle area, and enjoying the spring sunshine. wonderful weekend altogether :)

The Most Fun we've had in Bruchsal

our sleepy little town of bruchsal finally has something exciting to offer!!!! ( haha i don think bruchsalers reading this will be happy.) but yeah, a funfair for us to relive our childhood :))) there was a ferris wheel, some pepsi-revolution-like thingy which blasted funny songs which sounded like cantopop at one point in time, reverse bungee, candy shops, funfair games like shooting and throwing darts at balloons and food stalls.

there was this ride which was just a row of seats going in wide circles and this group of firemen got on it..


quite weird la. they looked like they would have more fun sliding down their firemen emergency poles or going up the yun2 ti1 (very long ladders) on the fire engines haha.

anywayssss the highlight of the night was definitely the FIREWORKS!!! wheeee! haha we timed our ferris wheel ride to perfection and watched the amazing fireworks from our seats!

i only have one shot of it coz i took a video. walked around with the IU pple for a while after that, playing games and taking pictures. all in all a very enjoyable evening :)

One of the Days at the Backyard when its still Snowing~~

One fine day, when boring mr and boring Gerald aka Retard Chen, have nothin to do, they decided to go on an adventure to their backyard ( we dunno y they call it the backyard cuz its like hmm not so near our apartments and urmmm shldnt backyards be near to our houses??).

And all thanks to their bravey and great sense of curosity, here we are with the wowing pics of the backyard! haha and they caught the sunset too!

Our 1st Shopping Spree @Esprit @Dusseldorf! And The Gothic Catherdral @Koln (17 - 18.03.07)

as you can see from the silly face underneath that ridiculous yellow-green hat, yes, adrian koh is here to join us for our weekend trip to dusseldorf and koln. hahaha. adrian koh: sorry if the 2 cities were boring la.. we've already toured the more interesting cities liao.. haha..

so we left our bleary town on a wintry-cold saturday morning (cold snap when spring is supposed to come!) for dusseldorf on a 7am train. many train changes and mishaps later, which involved a shouting train driver, crossing forbidden railroads and a 1-hour wait for 3 of us, we FINALLY arrived at dusseldorf for our long-awaited shopping spree!!

you know, germans don't really like to shop. they're not as brand-conscious as parisians or londoners.. and thus, US GIRLS HAVE REALLY BEEN DEPRIVED!!! soooo the esprit factory outlet was like meeting an old friend and breath of fresh air at the same time!! wheeeee! it was crazily crowded with women just changing outta their tops and bottoms for everyone to see in front of the mirrors.. but us conservative and sane singaporean and indonesian girls kept to the changing rooms, thankyouverymuch.

we found tops for 1euro and whatnot, but they were few and far between. the girls mainly bought tops and the guys got some messenger bags. i think ADRIAN KOH has his 2 good JC friends to thank for clearing his shopping bags. if not he would have spent like 100 euros on a cannotmakeit spring jacket and other funny stuff.

tadah! so we were all happy people at the end of the day :)

latest news is that there's an EVEN BIGGER factory outlet 1-2 hours from our place!! wooooots!! metzingen, here we come!!


later in the evening we boarded a 20min train to koln hbf.. where our small and neat hostel awaited us. the cathedral caught our attention once we stepped outta the train station, however, and it took some restraining to get dinner before we snapped away using flash, no flash, night mode, mobile phones and everything.

next morning we took MORE pictures of the dom and also went inside for a peek at its stained glasses and high ceilings. it's really impossible to get a full shot of the cathedral from top spire to bottom, even though i tried my mum's method of practically placing the camera tilted on the floor. wells. anyways, the weather was really really bad that morning and it poured quite a few times. so we just hid at the tourist information centre and waited till lunch.

lunch was at a traditional german place where pork knuckle and koln beer (forgot the spelling) were specialities. walked around the oldtown for abit, but it was sunday and everything was just closed. walked here and there aimlessly, saw a singapore flag and took a pic with it, crossed a bridge over the rhine river to find more interesting places.

before we knew it, we were on a train back to bruchsal.. koln really has little more to offer other than the grand cathedral. maybe it's coz we were there on a sunday. wells. at least there were bratwursts to keep adrian occupied. hahaha.

Bruchsal Market & A Nicey Saturday Breakfast! =)

We went to our 1st "marketing" session on a Saturday and boy~~look at some of the stuff they've got! Colorful flowers of all sorts and healthy looking fruits! haha i love the strawberries!

Cheese's like the fav for almost all europeans. and nice cheese goes w nice wine~

And 1st sumptuous bkft at Pavilion. haha craving for full english bkft again after enjoying one at London so here's chi-de-hen-bao english bkft for me n mr. and quite-delicious-but-abit-too-dry spaghetti for ivina and chi-de-gen-bao-cuz-too-cheezy baguette for luanie

and den off we went to slack away a lazy saturday~~~