Entry 04: The Alps; Very Xiong but Very Schon!

The good news: WOW, I have reached the top of the Alps! The view is simply fantastic.
The bad news: I have also reached the photo upload limit of msn space and have to wait till next month when Bill Gate reset my limit before I can upload the new photos.

It was a happy and easy trip from Munich to the Alps. All you need to do is to take the BOB train to Tegernsee and drop at Lenggries. It is about an hour of train ride. Once there, walk along Bahnhofstrasse for about 10 minutes to reach the entrance of the track.

Beware: It is not a short hike up. Although the track is well maintained, it is long. I took 3 hours to reach the top. But the view is spectacular and the air is fresh. The best part is that you will feel like you are tracking in air-con. I was wearing a singlet and shorts when I hiked up.

Singlet + MP3 + Gd Weather = Good Hike!

Besides the beautiful views, I found out 2 things in this trip.
1. German girls are easy to get if you speak good German.
2. Mr. C is really a nasty person who is not worthy of my time.

Let’s begin with the happy staff~ My German teacher is attached with my fellow course mate who is in a more advance class. Well, their “scandal” was exposed during the hike when my course-mate who is from Poland held her hand and kissed in front of us on the track. Well, I guess they were really open to this kind of things. They even lied on the grass and started petting each other when we were having a break (“Get a room man!) What really puzzled me is that my course-mate will be going back to Poland this Friday and they only know each other for 2 weeks and they are kissing and all. (He does not go back to sleep in his room. So, you know where he is right… Ya, in her blanket sleeping~ Ya ri…)

Second point; sometimes, I wondered is it my luck or what. Every time I begin to find the place interesting, Mr. C will just find his way to destroy the “perfect-ness”. The story begins like this… After a 3 hour tiring hike, the group decided to eat and rest in the beer garden near the top of the mountain. Oh yes, they even have a beer garden in the middle of the mountain. As soon as I found out that they had no intention to continue to the top, I decided to go on my own. I mean, what is the point of hiking if you do not go to the top; the 3 hours effort of climbing will be meaningless if you miss the peak. As such, I stood up and asked when the group would begin the decent so that I would know when to U-turn if I were to continue to the top. With the timing settled (I was given only one hour, OMTian, but I would care less as long as I make it to the top), I wanted to ensure that one of them had my number just in case I had an accident and didn’t come back. Unfortunately enough, Mr. C is the only one who has my Singapore number and has a phone. So I turned to him and asked, “Hey Mr. C, do you have my Singapore number?” and he replied, “Yes I have. But I will never call you because it is too expensive.”

Fainted.

Too pissed off by his reply, I began my journey to the top. Luckily, there was an Indian in the group with similar mindset as me who decided to visit the peak. So together, we bitched our way up the mountain top to where the “cross” stood.
We were rushing as we were given only one hour to go and return. Climbing our lungs out, we eventually make it to the top in 30 minutes.

The view is simply beyond comprehension. It can only be appreciated by seeing it with your own eyes!

For a way-lesser dramatic effect, I have uploaded some of the photos to my album
I am exhausted. Till then~

Before I found out that they are going to stay here... and ya, that is Mr. C

"You piece of @#$%^&. I am going to make it to the top~ Chiong~ AH!"

00:00:00

*Bling* 00:00:10

The Top! The Top!

Even kids made it here. No wonder the Germans are big...

I am hungry...

Entry 03: Nuemberg, Sis's Blog & My Past Life

The excursion yesterday to Nuremberg was very interesting. Although Nuremberg is a bigger town than Munich, its town centre is so much interesting.

May be because it is a Sunday morning, there was a Flohmarkt at the town centre (Hauptmarkt). A Flohmarkt is a second hand market that only opens on Sundays and sells interesting staff. And the town centre was just pack with people, a rare sight in Munich where there is only 8 million people. The ice cream is really cheap, only 0.70 EURO for a scope. And so, many of us got one despite the cold weather.

Town Center: The Flohmarkt

The Flohmarkt aside, we visited many famous places. E.g. The Schoener in Hauptmarkt, the Gothic Church of St Lorenz, Heilig-Geist-Spital of the river Pegnitz and of course the Kaiserburg Castle. And what's more, we had a history professor walking along with us explaining the significance of each building. It is just lovely to hear the story in details from an expert and see it with your own eyes the remains of history. The only down side was that the road we took was basically made up of upslopes... and downslopes...

Gothic Church of St Lorenz

Front View of Gothic Church

The Schoener in Hauptmarkt

Kaiserburg. Up and Up...

What sex is this for? (Female)

Meet my friend, Paul the 0.5

I just love black & white

Although I have yet to ask Mr. C the question during lunch, I had lunch with Prof. Marinkovic, who studied the history of Nuremburg. It was so much more rewarding to find out why people hate you. It was an educational lunch as he walked me down the history of Germany from WWII to the present days, and most interesting of all, the defensive measurements used in the olden day warfare.

To sum things up in a lighter tone, I read my sister's blog after she left a comment on my last blog. Haha, for the first time, I begin to feel that she actually write like a girl. I am surprised. Haha, it seems that she has grown up to be a lady after all despite her manly behaviour when she was young and at home. hahaha. She has some interesting article in her blog and some nice captions on the photo we took together. So if you are interested on how she wrote about her brother, me, you can go to

http://157club-christina.blogspot.com/

And in her blog I found this funny test about my past life... http://www.thebigview.com/pastlife/

According to it, I was a male Irish handsome magician in 1475!! haha. Cool man. and 敏敏 was a sexy African dancer! Well, I think that really makes a wonderful and interesting couple. I will enjoy her sexy and wild dances, and she will be entertained by my romantic magic, may be that's how I charmed her =P

Danny's
"I don't know how you feel about it, but you were male in your last earthly incarnation. You were born somewhere in the territory of modern Ireland around the year 1475. Your profession was that of an artist, magician or fortune teller.
Your brief psychological profile in your past life:Bohemian personality, mysterious, highly gifted, capable to understand ancient books. With a magician's abilities, you could have been a servant of dark forces.

The lesson that your last past life brought to your present incarnation:Your task is to learn, to love and to trust the universe. You are bound to think, study, reflect, and to develop inner wisdom."

敏敏's
"I don't know how you feel about it, but you were female in your last earthly incarnation. You were born somewhere in the territory of modern West Africa around the year 1800. Your profession was that of a dancer, singer or actor.
Your brief psychological profile in your past life:Ruthless character, carefully weighing his decisions in critical situations, with excellent self-control and strong will. Such people are generally liked, but not always loved.

The lesson that your last past life brought to your present incarnation:Your lesson is to combat violence and disharmony in our world, to understand its roots and origins. All global problems have similar origins."

Entry 02: Oktober Fest 2006!

It is Oktoberfest! And I went to witness the opening of this great festive!
The atmosphere is electrical! The German wore their traditional clothing and the whole “platz” was filled with people, game stations and stores.

Well I got myself and 敏敏 a t-shirt each.

And I even tried out some crazy ride! Ok may be you can’t really see me; but if you enlarge the picture, I am the crazy guy with his hand in the air.

Well, beside the fun, I also confirm that Mr. C really has some negative feeling about me and that I am not over sensitive.

Ok, let the bitching begin~ =P (No more philosophical Danny like the last post)

Because today is actually the free day of our summer university program, we are on our own. So, I thought of going to witness the commencement of the Oktoberfest. However, not knowing the place in which the fest is held, I asked one of my classmates. She told me that she did not know either but invited me to tag along as Mr. C’s gang is going to bring her there.

Hence, this morning I go to meet them and on the train, Mr. C. asked his friend, “Why is Danny here?” (I overheard)

Saddened, I asked one of Mr. C’s friends and from his response I know I am not welcomed.
It really puzzled me what have I done to make Mr. C so mad. I don’t even know him if not for the Siemens award. I only met him when I got the award. And if I recalled correctly, I had less than 10 sms with him, and may be a 50 lines conversation so far.

So what I am going to do is I am going to ask him what I did that offended him. I can no longer take his childish behavior of ostracizing me anymore. I am too curious for that kind of cold war.
I am a simply person. You are not happy, say it.

Anyway, putting aside this person who has little position in my life, I am going to Nuremberg tomorrow and will be hiking in the Alps next week.

So far, I have visited famous castle of King Ludwig II. It sits on the largest island of the peaceful Lake of Chiemsee.

Just by stepping in the Royal Staircase, which is the entrance of the palace, you can understand why girls would want to be princess and man to be kings.

It is really luxurious and one can only wonder, how can a single person uses such a big place.
It is a pity that we are not allowed to take photographs inside the palace. (But I manage take a snap b4 they said that... =)

To get to the palace, you can take a train to Salzburg and drop at Prien. Then you take another train to Chiemseebahn and finally a boat ride to Herzlich Island.

Besides the castle, I have also visited the famous Detuch Museum. I would really want to spend a day there alone, reading in detail the story of the artifacts.

Today after the Oktoberfest outing, I went for a jog and wondered into the Olympic park and also onto the Olympic Burg behind my room. It is amazing! The view on top of the “burg” (Mountain in German) is just AMAZING and worth running your lungs out!
I have yet to solve my internet problem, it is simply too expensive to get a good transfer rate. The maximum they can provide (from private provider, “German Starhub”) is 16 Mps and it costs 50 EURO per month.

Although the internet remain unsolved, to call back Singapore is not that expensive against what I have expected. It costs 0.04 EURO a minute and lower if you use their pre-pay card at the public phone booth. Since I do not want to freeze to death talking to敏敏, I am going to call from their shop in winter.

As for the troublesome administrative problems, I still have not registered my address with the authorities because they need my health insurance and my matriculation card.
I am getting the insurance next week but I can only be matriculated on the 2nd, Oct. So, I have to wait.

OH! And for my birthday, I received a very touching gift. 敏敏 called me and sang me a birthday song and that is the third most sweet present I got so far in my 24 years of living. The most is her agreeing to be my girlfriend (I hope I have not used up all my luck in my life for that to happen), and the second is the knitting she gave me.
And so on my birthday in this foreign land, I celebrated with myself and cooked a very good meal for myself. And for the very first time, I managed to fry the egg and it actually was golden and remained the round shape that resembles my frying pan. (Yesh!)

Entry 01: Awakening

Lonely… Fascinated… Inspired…

It is a mixture of feelings. It is like a love-hate relationship.

My journey to Munich so far has not been a smooth sailing one. To begin with, I fall sick on the day of my departure. It is so ironic. I caught the flu at the clinic where I went to get a Flu jab.
Things, I believe will be so much better if I am with the right company. As a happy-go-lucky person as I always am, I thought that SEP students will naturally be friendly with one another. Well, it seems that I am quite wrong this time. The people who come to Munich is simply hmm… is quite into their own world la.

Sick and alienated, I am in this part of the world 107300km from my home, where English is not to be understood.
At first, I feel really sad and down, and don’t really like Munich despite its beautiful architecture until 2 minutes ago. As I am writing and trying to record down all the shity thing I went through, I realized that I really have to think hard to recall all the unhappy things that happened! And I realized they happened, and I forget about it unless I make an intentionally effort to recall them. That sounds real stupid right, to make an effort to dig out something unpleasant.

And that is not all, so far in Munich , the experience that leaves the deepest impression in me is not all this unpleasant experiences. That impression is so clear that my brain has been telling me to pen it down since I begin to write this email.

I was walking down the streets in Marina Platz and there I saw a crowd of people. Curious, I approach the crowd and suddenly, I saw a football pumped high up into the air. I squeeze through the taller European, expecting to see a handsome Brazilian performer doing amazing football stance. But what I see is a short figure wearing a Brazilian football shirt. He had short curly hair and dark skin. He was doing the football stance like any good football player. Just that, instead of standing on his feet, he was standing on artificial legs, and he was using his two walking sticks, his head, his neck to do his football magic.

I think he does more than football magic. I leave him a 5 EURO note for the lesson he had taught me.

Life is not always bad. It depends on how you live it. There is no limit nor barrier if you have a passion to do something.

I am not sure if he likes football, but he never gives up and sits down on the cold street floor waiting for a coin to be toss at him
I am not sure if he does it for a living, but when he does his tricks, his eyes are focus, his mind fix on what he is doing, he smiles.

Now that I am writing, I feel how weak I am. I have legs. I have arms. I am just sick. I have so much more.

I begin to remember myself sometimes saying to my friends, “Why are you always looking at the 1/2 glass of water that is missing, can’t you feel the weight of the water you already have?”
I think it is time that I said that to myself.

This trip is wonderful. So is Munich . The ugly thing is my mindset that I began with. No difficulty is difficult unless you think it is.
I think what the street performer has said was echoed by so many great people, “All is in the mind.”

“If it rains, smile. The rain will stop. But when it does, only those who keep their heads up will see the rainbow”

Danny =)Well I look forward to read this post again at the end of my Munich experience