anywhere in the world

Mumbai, India (Jan 2011)

2011-01-14T11:09:00.000-08:00

With a long story to get the Indian visa (I needed to go to Koeln five times), my trip to India was already quite a story. I consider I passed the motivation test to go there :-) My first impression of Mumbai was dusty, there were autoricksaws everywhere which gave me a familiar feeling, it reminded me of Jakarta. I was on a business trip with three other colleagues. Our first five days there were spent between the hotel and the office in north of Mumbai where the company we are working with located so I could not say I really saw Mumbai :-). We only went outside the hotel three times in the evening, two times to the mall close to the hotel (trying to get an alternative restaurants and bit of shopping ;-)) and one time, one of the manager took us to a bar to have some drink and food. Then we had one full day on Saturday to explore Mumbai.

On Wednesday we were invited to join the outing of our development group there which was quite an experience. We definitely had fun that evening. There were some team building games which are interesting (and I never had before). Oh my group won by the way :-). Then we had dinner and the dance session. The dance session was awesome, never knew that Indians are good dancers. Well I know the Bollywood movies always involve dances, but I haven't really seen the Bollywood dance live. That evening I proved it, they are good dancers :-).

After five working days, we were so excited to have the Saturday to explore Mumbai. Mumbai is huge and the southern part of Mumbai where almost all the interesting places located are quite far from where we stayed. We were lucky to have a car and a driver, and Kaustubh, one of our Indian colleague who was so kind to be our guide that day.

We started around 10am, and went directly to visit Dolby Ghat, the manual laundry service in Mumbai, which is an interesting spot. Then we went to the Hanging Garden to have a small walk. The weather was nice (a dream weather for the people from the area with a temperature close to 0C degree at that time ;-)). The next destination was the promenade a long the Marine Drive. It's a nice place to stroll with friends and family. Around 2pm we had our lunch in Maheshlunchhome, a seafood restaurant which was recommended by a colleague. The big prawns and fish were delicious.

After lunch we went to the Gateway of India, which is located close to the Taj Mahal Tower Hotel where the 2008 terrorist attack occurred. We spent some time there (and some photo sessions for sure) and then went shopping/cafe time in Colaba and Fashion street. After that we dropped by to taste a local street food called Panipuri. I can still imagine the taste of it ;-) And then we decided to call a day, which was quite a good decision since we caught a traffic jam on the way back to our hotel.

Having a week there I could see the big gap between rich and poor. I saw some slums and some homeless people. Being Indonesian it should not be surprised me, but I traveled mostly to developed countries recently (and lives in Germany) and that somehow still made me feel 'strange'. I always like to observe the surroundings and I remember a scene when we trapped to a traffic jam. It was under a fly over and some people live there. From my car's window I saw a woman and a small child sitting on the ground surrounded by some cardboxes (or something I don't know exactly, it was dark already so I could only see the silhoutte). There was a young man slept beside her and she tried to wake him up. It looked like he was sick and she asked him to drink/eat something. He ate it finally and that scene, the three of them only several minutes, somehow touched me and was kept on my mind. First I thought that the woman was his mother, but after the car moved I recognized the woman was also still young, so they might be a young family. Well they could be anything actually, it's just something like a silent movie that you can interpret it to whatever you want.

After all, it was definitely an interesting 'sneak preview' of India. Some people said that you don't really see India in Mumbai and that could be true, I just have to visit it again to explore it properly and discover the real India someday. Fingers crossed!!

Japan (April 2010)

2010-12-02T05:53:00.000-08:00

Japan Day 1 (Tuesday,30.03.2010)
I arrived around 7am in Narita and directly welcomed by some kawaii things (plus nice toilet experience ;-)). I only reached the Khaosan hostel in Asakusa, where I stayed for one night, around 10:30.
After dropping my luggage at the hostel, I started my Tokyo exploration. Visited the Sensoji temple and strolled along the interesting Nakamise Dori, could not stand to buy some fridge magnets and a small green tea snack :-P.
From Asakusa area I took metro to Ueno, exchanged my Japan Railpass, reserved the train seats for tomorrow's trip to Nagaoka, and experienced the Hanami in Ueno Koen. Ueno Koen (Ueno garden) was so crowded as I expected, the cherry blossom viewing was beautiful but people did not really have the infamous picnic on the grass but in both sides of the pedestrian street (still below the sakura trees though).
After Ueno, I took JR's Yamanote line to Shinjuku for another cherry blossom viewing in Shinjuku Gyoen which is recommended by LP. Indeed Shinjuku Gyoen was less crowded (we had to pay 200 Yen to enter the park though) and more real park to me. People also did the picnic like what I expected ;-)... The park itself is also beautiful with small river in the middle.
I planned to go to Tokyo Metropolitan Center for a free Tokyo viewing from the high floor, but I decided to walked around Shinjuku through a lot of -doris. Shinjuku is full of shops, along the small streets as well. I returned back 6pm to Kuramae using Toei Oedo line and then walked along the Edo street to reach Asakusa. Got lost a bit actualy, since I chose the wrong direction from Kuramae in the direction to Asakusabashi and Kanda river :-P. But it was also nice to walk around the neighborhood where people live, felt really in Japanese Dorama :-P
I managed to reach the hostel around 7:30pm and so exhausted....

Japan Day 2 (Wednesday, 31.03.2010)
Woke up early morning, several minutes before 6am..I tried to catchup the shinkansen at 8:30am and I wanted to avoid the peak hours of Tokyoers who will go to work. Thankfully I slept like a dead person from 8:30pm and did not wake up at all during the night..
I reached Ueno station around 7:30am, was lucky since it was not yet that crowded using Ginza line metro from Asakusa to Ueno. But I saw the surge of people in Ueno station, was bit scary seeing they all looked the same with office suits and walked very fast to your direction :-P
Finally met Bibip in Nagaoka...after 7 years, she was my house mate during my university years in Surabaya, it was my only reason to drop by in Nagaoka (since I have the rail pass anyway) :-) She picked me at the main station then we went to the only shopping mall there since she needed to buy a present for a friend...and for sure I don't mind. A lot of kawaii things (again), good that I only bring a small suitcase :-P
We went to Nagaoka Institut of Tech campus to pick up Mas Handri, her husband who works there and we had lunch together in a sushi restaurant (the one with conveyor). The most delicious sushi I've ever eaten...oishii ne...and thanks to Bip and Mas Handri for the treat :-P
After dropping Mas Handri back to the campus (it was working day), it was already around 2pm and I plan to take the train at 3pm.... Bibip took me to the Haifa monument (I hope the name is correct :-P) then dropped me back to the main station.
It was not a long reunion, but it's nice to find someone you know (especially someone whom you did not meet for quite a long time) in a new country :-)
I continued my trip back to Tokyo, then to Shin-Osaka with the shinkansen. I planned to stay in Osaka for three nights and the small hotel that I booked is quite luxurious for a backpacking trip, the single room is small but has the private toilet and shower, tv, internet (cable) connection, tv, fridge and hair dryer.

Japan Day 3 (Thursday, 01.04.2010)
I started the day around 9am and visited Osaka castle (and ate torayaki for the first time..yummy). Decided to take train to Nara after lunch, Nara used to be the first permanent capital of Japan, not so far from Osaka. It was bit raining when I arrived in Nara, but Nara is compact and most of the interesting sites to visit are located around the Nara-koen so walking was still a good option. I walked through a street with a lot of shops and visited small and big temples. The most interesting for sure is Todai-ji with its Daibutsu (Great Buddha)which is one of the largest bronze figures in the world. It was originally cast in 746 but was re-cast in the Edo period. The park, Nara-koen, is the home of around 1200 deers and yes, they were roaming freely in the park (which reminds me of the monkeys in monkey forest in Indonesia). It's kind of cute at the first time, but they can be agressive, I mean really agressive. I walked around with free Nara's map and some brochures I got from the Tourist Information Center on my hand. I did not realize there was one cheeky deer interested to what I held, and he/she just bitten the pile of papers that I held. I was like..whaaat..I did not really mind that the deer wanted my papers, but he (let assume it's a male deer ;-P) wanted to eat them and I just could not let him eat papers (or do they actually eat papers?)..so I tried to pull the papers from his teeth and managed to get part of them (it must have been quite funny to see my 'fight' with the deer :-)). But he still got the Nara's map on his mouth and believe it or not, he ate the paper...completely. I wanted to take a picture of it, but I was a bit afraid that he would chase me after that, so .. I decided to run away. That's the point that I think they are no longer cute anymore and I tried my best to avoid any of them after that :-P.

Japan Day 4 (Friday, 02.04.2010)
It was raining in the morning and I decided to take shinkansen and ferry to Miyajima, a small island close to Hiroshima (around-3-4hrs trip from Osaka, to make use of my railpass ;-)). I always love to ride a train, so I don't mind to spend some time on shinkasen. Miyajima is a UNESCO World Heritage site and one of famous tourist attractions in Japan. It is a touristy area, but Miyajima has a lot of scenic spots. I don't really mind to stay one night there. The famous floating torii, the beautiful Itsukushima-Jinja, and the lovely walk paths are the main attractions of Miyajima. It's also interesting to see and try the local sweets and foods. Saw a japanese wedding of a japanese woman with a western man there as well. I arrived back in Osaka early evening and still did not want to call it a day. I decided to visit Dotombori, the liveliest nightlife district of Osaka, with a lot of restaurants, shops, and all the neon lights.

Japan Day 5 (Saturday, 03.04.2010)
I left the hotel in Osaka quite early in the morning. I have booked a room in Kyoto for one night and I had appointment to meet Cartoon, my Thai friend who was my classmate when I studied in Magdeburg and now she works in a city close to Nagoya. I met Cartoon and her Thai friends

Japan Day 6 (Sunday, 04.04.2010)
Leaving Kyoto in the afternoon for Takayama, another shinkansen trip, thanks to Railpass :-) Arrived in Takayama in the evening. I stayed in a temple which provides ryokan (a traditional budget hotel/hostel) facility. It was nice finally to try the Japanese style bedroom. I slept in a small room with tatami (with the Wifi connection ;-)).

Japan Day 7 (Monday, 05.04.2010)
Exploring Takayama and its markets in the morning and decided to take bus to Shirakawa-go (something that I never regret though the bus ticket was quite expensive). Shirakawa-go is definitely a recommended place to go. It's indeed like an open air museum (a lot of tourists for sure) but it still gives a nice traditional Japanese experience. The village has a lot of Japanese traditional houses. I love the view from the peak with the village and the surrounding mountain plus the green river. Took almost the last bus back to Takayama, I still managed to walk around a bit after arrived there and back to the ryokan happy and satisfied.

Japan Day 8 (Tuesday, 06.04.2010)
One last walk around Takayama in the morning (I love its cute shops and morning markets) and visited the Takayama Yatai Kaikan where we can see some multi-tiered Yatai (floats) that are used in Takayama Matsuri. I was only several days too early to watch that festival, one of Japan's greatest. It has two parts, the Sanno Matsuri (the one in April) includes the parade of a dozen decorated Yatai around the town, and Hachiman Matsuri (in October) which is a slightly smaller version of the the other one.
It was almost dark already when I arrived in Tokyo, three more days to experience Japan. This time I stay in a ryokan in Minami-senju area. It's a bit long walk to the metro station, but it's only three stops to Ueno-eki.

Japan Day 9 (Wednesday, 07.04.2010)
I started my day very early to go to Tsukiji fish market, but unfortunately it was closed that day. I only found an empty market, but at least I can imagine how big and crowded when it opens. I dropped by to Imperial Palace and walked along the surroundings before I met Yuko in Ueno station. She is my Japanese friend who I knew in Duesseldorf and we had a trip in Scotland together before she left Duesseldorf. It was nice to see her again and it's very kind of her to be able to accompany me to explore Tokyo in her working days :-).

We walked along the Ameyoko Arcade and then went to Shinjuku for amazing view of Tokyo from the top of Tokyo Metropolitan Government office. After that we continued to Harajuku (which made us teenage girls again, too bad I could not find Kimutaku's poster anymore ;-)) and Shibuya. It was a bit raining when we were around Shibuya, but I got a beautiful view of the famous Shibuya crossroad with a lot of people in different colors of umbrellas from a cafe oversee it. Lovely!
I only returned back to the ryokan around 10pm and I felt that I really hurt my leg a lot after the whole-day walking activity. Tokyo definitely needs more than 2 days to explore. I still haven't seen all the interesting places I want to see, but as usual it gives me another reason to come back again. It's definitely one of my fave metropolitan cities. Oh and today was my first time to eat Okonomiyaki, Japanese pizza (or tortilla). It's delicious and we had it in a DIY restaurant so basically we cooked it by ourselves.

Japan Day 10 (Thursday, 08.04.2010)
It was quite a sunny day so I made up my mind to go to Hakone (instead of Nikko, I think I saw too many temples already). I took train to Hakone from Shinjuku. Arrived in Lake Ashi around noon and I could not get any sight of Mount Fuji :-(. After walked along the lake and had my lunch, I took the cruise boat (it's included in the Hakone freepas) and then cable car to drop by at Owakudani. I saw a glimpse of the top of mount Fuji when I was in the cable car, really a glimpse of it since not long after that it's hidden by the clouds again.
I returned back to Tokyo late afternoon, did some final souvenir shopping since it's my last evening in Japan ;-).

Japan Day 11 (Friday, 09.04.2010)
Packed my stuff and left for Narita (and then Jakarta). It was definitely an interesting experience. It's great to visit the place that you really wanted to visit for some time. I love the food, the kawaii things and Japan is a place where I found a lot interesting things but also gave me the familiar feeling at the same time.

Budapest: Day 3

2009-11-26T14:30:00.003-08:00

I did some photo sessions in Parliament building and Synagogue. Tried to go to Memento park but failed, could not find the public bus to the park ( I even asked two policemen but they had no idea :-(). I know I can take a private bus that serves the route from Budapest to the park but .. I like more public bus (it's cheaper :-P and you can get more 'local' experience), besides.. I had to go to another side of Budapest to take that private bus. Didn't want to waste time in my last day in Budapest, so I decided to go to Buda again for souvenirs and then ... Gellert bath.

I was bit sceptical with the thermal bath idea at first (I am not into water when it's cold outside :-P). But some people recommended the thermal bath experience, it is in fact better when outside is cold. And well....indeed I like it (too bad I did not have much time :-(). I realized now that I am more into thermal bath than swimming pool :-P. It's a relaxing way to spend some time after a lot of walking (in the cold) plus Gellert bath has an awesome interior...it's just like having relaxing time in a palace's pool.

To sum up...Budapest is lovely even in such a crappy weather (don't forget a visit to thermal bath :-P).

Budapest: Day 2

2009-11-26T14:30:00.001-08:00

Woke up quite early but only managed to leave at 08:30am. I went directly to the Great Covered Market not far away from the hostel. It's quite a huge market, kind of the combination between the (covered) market in Riga an Helsinki. Clean and huge market. It consists of two floors, the first floor basically for the food materials, from spices to meat, oh and strudels (yummy). The second floor is for the souvenirs, traditional clothes, bags or something like that. In the other side there are some food sellers too, kind of warung or Imbiss. I could not resist to buy the strudels and yeah it's delicious :-)

After the market, I walked along Vaci Utca in the direction to the Vorosmaty Ter (all are in Pest side). I joined a free walking tour for 2.5 hours (yup it's quite a long walk). It was kind of cloudy and cold morning when we started around 10:30pm. I was one of the earliest person to show up at the meeting point. I was surprised that finally quite a lot of people joined the tour, I think there were around 50 people (in such a crappy weather, I could not imagine what happens in sunny summer :-P). Gabor who guided us, gave us a lot of interesting stories about Hungarian history and architecture (and thermal bath wohooo, it's a must he said :-P) and he did a good job to make it interesting and fun for us. We walked along the Pest area, then crossed the Danube river to Buda. We climbed the Castle hill, visited a strange small Russian monument (it was inspired by the famous Basilica but it's a small one so it's kind of weird :-P), the colorful Matthias church (too bad it's still being renovated), and the Fisherman Bastion. We finished the tour several minutes after 01:00pm.

I explored the Buda area myself after the tour, visiting some souvenir shops and booking a folk dance show for the evening in Touris Info Center. I then took bus to return to Pest and visited the Weihnachtsmarkt again before going to Danube Palace to see the folk dance. The performance was interesting, but I run out my camera's battery, so no pics from that show :-(.

Budapest: Day 1 (20.10.2009)

2009-11-26T14:29:00.001-08:00

Budapest welcomed me with a foggy afternoon when I arrived today. It was almost dark with the fog though it was only around 3:30pm. I was disappointed but it was late autumn almost winter so I was kind of prepared. I took train to Nyugati train station (around 20mins trip), it's not the main station and was bit strange one (supported by strange language that I had no clue at all :-P)..at least it took me several minutes to figure out how I could get to the Metro. I went directly to the hostel that I have booked before, it's located in Ferenciek Tere, after I bought a three-day ticket for public transportation in Budapest (which was a really good idea).

After putting my luggage in the hostel I tried to do my orientation of Budapest. I went to the city center in Pest area tried to find the Tourist Info Center and visited the Weihnachtsmarkt (Christmas market) then hurried up to find the Hungarian State Opera House to see a ballet performance called Karamazov testverek (Karamazov brothers). Good that I managed to get the ticket that evening :-)

The Opera house is so beautiful inside, even when you're still at the hall area. It's not that big actually but beautiful (I know I said that before :-P). To be honest I never heard about Karamazov Brothers before, I just wanted to see a performance in the Opera house :-P. Luckily I sat next to a nice lady who told me the story and also about how famous the story and Dostoyevsky (the Russian author who wrote Karamazov Brothers). I do not have any clue on Russian literature and neither most of Indonesians I think...:-P It was a modern ballet performance from Boris Eifman (a Russian choreographer). The performance was great, better after I knew the story for sure :-P

After the ballet performance, I strolled along the Andrassy boulevard to the Vorosmaty Ter (the Weihnachtsmarkt again :-P) then to Danube promenade. Had some photo sessions of the Chain bridge and Elizabeth bridge in misty Budapest..

Switzerland trip: Day 4

2009-11-19T15:34:00.000-08:00

I woke up bit late today, decided to have a relaxing time in Lucerne. After breakfast I started to walk along the city wall which is basically at the back of the hostel. I climbed the Mannlichturm (the city wall has several towers) to get a nice view of Lucerne. Then I continued to the old town area, the shopping street and the famous Lion monument(a sad lion indeed). I returned back to the old town following the city guides walking tour that I got from the Tourist Info Center yesterday.

I was late to catch the boat trip, but it's okay since I think I had enough sun (and lakes) already). I visited Rosengart Collection instead (tried to avoid sun a bit :-P) for its Picasso collections (also Paul Klee's and some others that I forgot the name). It was great collection since it was personally collected from Picasso (or other painter) so we got more stories behind the paintings.

After around two hours there I decided to buy lunch and some souvenirs. Then taking my luggage from the hostel. It was around 5pm already. My train departed at 05:54pm to Basel and then from Basel to Duess (oh this time I got a first class ticket with a cheap price...nice..). I got another nice sunset view on my train trip back to Duess, what a great way to finish my short trip to Switzerland :-)

Switzerland trip: Day 3

2009-11-19T14:52:00.000-08:00

Started the day quite early to have a walk to Chateau de Chillon, the YH has really good location, it is exactly in the middle between Montreux city center and the castle along the lake Geneva promenade. It took me around 15 minutes to reach the castle and got a beautiful view of the castle and lake Geneva (a lot of nice pictures for sure :-P). I walked back to the YH and took my luggage to go to the city center. Spent some time to visit some souvenir shops (:-P) and to exchange some Swiss Franc there.

I headed to the train station to take the Golden pass trip to Lucerne via Zweisimmen (passing through Interlaken). As you know, I always love train trips so this is one of the highlight from my Switzerland trip (still have to try Glacier and Bernina express though..:-P). The Golden pass trip wad great, we passed through some beautiful lakes around Bernese Oberland area and pretty wooden houses on the green valley along the way. Though we only used the panoramic train between Montreux-Zweisimmen only.

I had two hours transit time in Zweisimmen, so I decided to explore the village a bit, bought some postcards and some food at the Coop supermarket. Then we continued the trip with a normal train, next stop was Interlaken Ost (too bad I could not spent some time there - for Jungfraujoch for sure). We had to change another train there, it was so warm outside and in the train but thankfully we had a great view outside the window :-P

I arrived around 7pm in Lucerne, still managed to visit the Tourist Information Center at the train station (and got a lot of info :-P). After having a dinner in a fast food restaurant (whose name I never heard before)I went directly to the hostel. I was tempted to join a tour to Mount Pilatus (because of the man at the hostel resception who promoted the tour and gave a good discounted price for it :-P). But not so long after I had shower, it was raining heavily (the first rain since I was in Switzerland) so I decided to leave out the Mount Pilatus trip.

Switzerland trip: Day 2

2009-11-18T14:56:00.000-08:00

I woke up early to catch the train to Lausanne at 08:10am. Arrived in Lausanne around 08:45, still quite early.. I went directly to the old town. The map that I had was a bit confusing and I could not find the Tourist Info Center at the old town. Lausanne has hilly landscape..had a bit exercise to walk around it. My ultimate plan for Lausanne is to visit Musee de l'Art Brut, which shares the same idea with Prinzhorn Sammlung (Prinzhorn collection) in Germany. L'art Brut itself can be translated to 'raw art'. It has an art collection from people who did not get or experience art education or stayed outside the art institution, mostly some psychiatric patients, or just some eccentric people.. It was impressive, looking through the collection sometimes you're wondering how people consider something as art or not :-)..but I like it a lot, it's unusual and has some interesting stories behind it. There is a painting collection that looks like kind of Japanese manga collection (a bit erotic one though) which always pictured someone with military uniform. In fact it was painted in the beginning of 20th centuries..by Aloise who worked as a teacher and governess in the court of Kaiser Willem II in Potsdam. She had a crush with the Kaiser. It's kind of platonic love that made her obsessed and she ended up in a psychiatric institution. Duh..it's sad indeed..

I took the train at 02:20pm to Montreux, decided to go directly to the Youth Hostel but turned out it only opens after 5pm. Good thing that Chateau de Chillon is located not far away from the YH (and they have luggage storage :-P). It's nice castle with the beautiful view of lake Geneva..I stayed there until around 6pm and returned back to the YH. I spent the rest of the day walking a long the lovely promenade to the city center of Montreux, watching people, visiting Freddy Mercury's statue at the market area. I was lucky with the nice weather and bit regret that I did nor bring my swimsuit since the YH is located really close to the lake. I got a beautiful sunset by lake Geneva that day...lovely..

Switzerland trip: Day 1 (15.08.2009)

2009-11-18T13:32:00.001-08:00

I arrived in Geneva around 2 pm by train (yup it's quite a long way from Duess), decided to go to the Youth Hostel (YH) with tram. I stayed in YH this time.. after some time..Switzerland is quite pricey and I don't want to spend 100EUR for staying at a normal hotel :-P.
I met and Italian man with his son at the tram stop close to the hostel. We are both looking for the YH and after some efforts to communicate to each other since he could only speak French (and Italian), we managed to find it.

My first destination is to go to the Red Cross museum which is located in United Nations area. Oh I got free two-day transportation tickets plus 50% disc of the Red Cross museum from the YH...nice... it's really wise to stay there :-P The museum was okay, a bit small but it has interesting collection. After that I headed to the city center for Jet d'Eau, the famous fountain of Geneva, and then walked around the old town. Initially I wanted to go to Cine de Lac (Orange cinema) which is a open cinema by the Geneva lake. I was there already actually but changed my mind since the movie played that day was in French :-P. I had dinner in Globus, eating a delicious Pad Thai (quite expensive though :-(), then returned to the YH around 11pm.

Exploring Germany

2009-08-31T11:55:00.001-07:00

I did several trips in Germany this year...tried more to explore the area where i live now :-). I have my wish list destinations in Germany and i did not realize i did quite good this year, thanks to some bank holidays on Thursdays which enabled me having some short trips :-P :-)

My first trip was a one-day trio to Bremen, I haven't explored the north side of Germany that much (only Hamburg), so one day I decided I want to go there. Got some tips from Tobias, my colleague who is originally from Bremen. Ole decided to join me for this trip (so I had a photographer :-P). We took quite early train (forgot exactly how early it was) and joined a guided tour in Rathaus (town hall) which is one of the Unesco World Heritage sites. Then we just enjoyed Bremen by foot..admiring the Roland statue in the Marktplatz and for sure the famous Bremer Stadtmusikanten. Walking along the pedestrian passage of Boettcherstrasse, the promenade, and the Schnoorviertel, the oldest quarter in the city. We managed to visit the art museum in Paula-Modersohn-Becker-Haus. We're lucky to have a nice sunny spring day and we left Bremen after an early dinner in one restaurant at the main square (forgot the name already :-P).

My second trip was to Nuernberg, my initial 'obsession' with this city is because its famous Weihnachtsmarkt (Christmas market), but Ole convinced me that it would be hard to enjoy Nuernberg during that period since there would be lots of people around. So during one of the Bruecketag (we took friday off because thursday was bank holiday) we went there. Nuernberg is a nice city with its pretty medieval old town. We stayed there one night, in the first day we basically walked around the old town, visited the Schoener Brunnen, the beautiful Kaiserburg, Albrecht-Duerer-Haus, Ehekarussell,and dropped by at the Japanese art exhibition in Stadtmuseum. The next day we went to Dokuzentrum in the Reichparteitagsgelaende (seriously I had to try several times before being able to pronounce it correctly :-P). It was an impressive experience to spend some time there, it's a must if you want to learn more about German history. We returned back to the old town around noon, had our lunch and then had another museum visit in Germanisches Nationalmuseum which is quite important museum in Germany (too much museum visit that day but Nuernberg has quite a lot of interesting museums indeed).

My last big exploring Germany trip was to Wuerzburg, Bamberg, and Rothenburg ob der Tauber, all of them (as well as Nuernberg ) are in Bayern (Bavaria) area in southern part of Germany, I did a solo trip this time. Wuerzburg was my first destination. First I visited the beautiful Fuerstbischoefliche Rezidenz which was considered as Balthasar Neumann's masterpiece. It is a UNESCO World Heritage site and one of the most important Baroque palaces in Germany. Then I walked to the Rathaus area in the city center, had lunch there, and walked trough the promenade of Main river. I ended my walking tour by visiting the Festung Marienberg. I stayed overnight in Wuerzburg that day.

The next day, I took train to Bamberg. Bamberg is already in my wish list destination for some time. Some people recommended me to visit it and I instantly like this small city. It has a scenic old town with nice landscape, no wonder that the old town of Bamberg itself is a UNESCO World Heritage site. I love the view overlooking the Altes Rathaus (old town hall) across the river Regnitz or the frescoes in some buildings (do not remember the names anymore :-P). I continued my walk to the Dom area and decided to head up to the Kloster St. Michael. After that I just walked around the old town, enjoying the atmosphere (was nice weather and only some tourists around). I visited the Naturkundenmuseum (natural history museum) actually to visit its famous Vogelsaal (Birds' hall)which is claimed as one of the most beautiful early classical museum halls in Europe. But unfortunately it was being renovated when I was there :-(. Around late afternoon I left Bamberg for my last destination, Rothenburg ob der Tauber.

I arrived in Rothenburg odT around 8pm, directly to go to the B&B I have booked. It was located inside the old town area so I could not resist the temptation to explore the town directly (it was summer btw, so it's not dark yet). And..yeah Rothernburg made me speechless, it's kind of an open air museum to me :-P (reminds me of Tallinn with its town wall). You'll get the feeling of coming to a medieval time, but you also get the feeling that everyone around you are tourists :-P. The beautiful Rathaus, the pretty houses and the cobbled lanes ...I could not stop taking pictures there. I walked around until the Alte Burg which is actually a garden surrounded by the town wall where we can look over the Tauber river (as its name, the town is located by the Tauber river). The next day I explored the small town more, visited its Reichsstadtmuseum, and basically just enjoying the medieval town including trying its specialty: Schneeball (snow ball), which is quite okay (though Lonely Planet wrote it as one of the worst local specialties in Europe :-P).
I left Rothenburg in the evening...totally satisfied with my three-beautiful-city
trip...

Euro trip with mom and dad

2009-08-31T11:54:00.001-07:00

My mom and dad visited me last Spring..yes I know it's been a while already :-P Got no motivation to update my blog lately. Life was bit busy especially with my short-time travels that I did quite often this year :-P

My parents arrived in Germany end of April. It was my dad's first time to visit Europe but my mom's second time. I hadn't booked any trip yet when they came since everything depends on their physical ability (e.g. jet lag recovery etc), but I had some itineraries for sure. My dad wanted to visit Italy so I prepared an itinerary to visit Rome and Venice (plus Milan since I found cheaper flight tickets to Milan compared to Rome or Venice).

I was surprised when the next day after they arrived, both my mom and dad were so excited to start their European trip already, so we decided to visit the Netherlands for the long weekend. We had a day trip to Roermond (yup..a shopping trip indeed...) but I like Roermond city center too, it's quite a lovely small city. The next day we took the Duess-Venlo train route again, this time to Amsterdam (only a glance of Amsterdam actually) and Volendam then stayed over night in Den Haag. We managed to walked around Den Haag in the next day after visiting the lovely Keukenhof and had lunch in Java House (my fave Indonesian resto in DH :-P). Then we headed to Roosendaal to visit my aunt before returned back to Duesseldorf. My dad was so excited with the whole train trip (thanks also to my 40% disc card :-P), he always wrote down the name of every station that we passed through in his notes :-)

The next week was some relaxing days in Duess for my parents since I had to work :-P (but also to give them some recovery time after quite a long journey). We departed to Milan in the weekend, quite early in the morning (I took one week holiday). We still had some time to experience Milan with its Duomo. Which was actually my hidden agenda since the last time I visited Milan the Duomo was still under construction. Milan's Duomo is one of the most beautiful cathedrals that I have visited imo. Then we took train (that I have booked before) to Rome. We arrived in Rome late in the afternoon after finally managed to find the office of the apartment that we rented (it's quite an adventure with our luggage and considering that my parents did not get used to walk that much, oh and plus it was quite warm in Rome). Had a relaxing evening in the apartment, the location was great, only less than 50m to the famous Colosseum also it has small supermarket and some restaurants nearby). We stayed in Rome for three nights (but only) two days since we left Rome in the morning to Venice. Rome was definitely nice and has a lot of things to offer but my parents were not that happy with such crowded, noisy and warm Rome (they said they like Duess more :-P) ...

We arrived in Venice late afternoon after quite a long train trip. Again a bit adventure to get the apartment keys. But this time I learned from our previous experience, I asked my parents to wait at the train station with our luggage so that I could find the office of the apt rental faster. The apt in Venice was better than the one in Rome. It's more modern and also cheaper. We still had some time to walked around Venice that day (and my mom likes it a lot..yup a lot of nice shops :-P), visited San Marco, did some window shopping, and bought some stuff in the supermarket close to the apartment. We only stayed one night in Venice (the one that my mom regretted :-P..). After doing some walk around again and some photo sessions, we left Venice for Milan in the afternoon. Our flight back to Duess was late evening from Milan.

We returned back from Italy on Wednesday night after spending five days there. Initially I planned to take my parents to Paris for the weekend but could not find the cheap tickets to go there anymore. Accidentally I found a good train ticket deal to Bruges (38EUR return/person with ICE). Bruges is one of my fave cities, so we went there on Friday morning and spent two days there. Bruges was still lovely but it was quite cold and rainy when we were there.

The next week, the third week, was another relaxing days for my parents (and I worked again), but that Thursday was a bank holiday and I took another day off on Friday so we had a long weekend to explore some places around Duess before my parents left for Indonesian on Sunday. We went to Bonn-Bruehl-Koeln and also explored Duess too :-P I invited some friends for lunch to meet my parents. And yeah it was great having my parents here, happy that they are still healthy for the long trip and we also had fun baking some cookies and cooking together in my apartment. I took them to Frankfurt on Sunday and was really glad that they enjoyed their three-week holiday in Europe.
Thanks a lot mom and dad for the visit, love you always :-)
See our pics here.

Cantabria - Basque country: Day 4

2009-07-12T00:58:00.000-07:00

My ultimate destination in Bilbao was to visit Guggenheim museum though for sure I still wanted to see around Bilbao, one of the city in Basque Country. I started my day before 10am and walked around Bilbao a bit before went to the museum. Bilbao was once an ugly industrial city, some friends told me that there are not so many things to see there. But I found out it was quite a nice city, the old town area is quite nice though it was not that 'bling-bling'. I read somewhere that the city really put a lot of efforts to make itself pretty recently. The Guggenheim museum was one real example of the effort to attract visitors to Bilbao. The museum was designed by Frank Gehry around 1997 (that's one of my motivation to go there since we also have one of Gehry's building in Duesseldorf). I have to admit it is an impressive building inspired by anatomy of a fish and the hull of a boat.

I joined the free English guided tour at 11am and was a nice way to walk through the museum. Lucky me...there was an interesting exhibition from Takashi Murakami (nothing to do with Haruki Murakami....at least as far as I know). I like it so much, the permanent exhibition is quite cool and also the Guggenheim video collections. I have watched one of them which really impressed me, forgot the name though..

It was late afternoon when I finally decided that I had enough time in Guggenheim museum. I went back to the old town area, picked up my luggage and returned back to Santander to catch up my flight. It was a short refreshing holiday, a bit adventurous one but was nice...really nice to get a glimpse of warm before returning to the cold :-P

Cantabria - Basque country: Day 3

2009-04-05T15:17:00.001-07:00

After collected all bus and train schedules that I need for my Cantabria trip, I successfully managed to find the optimal itinerary (after implemented all the methods I knew :-P, but seriously it took quite some time to get the solution given that I only had one day). The plan was to take train to San Vincente de la Barquera (in the direction to Oviedo, which was recommended by LP as the scenic train along the Cantabria-Asturia region), spent some time there and take bus to Comillas before return to Santander to take another bus to Bilbao (since I have booked a hostel in Bilbao that night).

I started the day around 9am to catch the train to San Vincente de la Barquerra, it was indeed a scenic train trip, made me feel like I was in Scotland, was not a long trip though, only around 1.5 hrs. I should try the whole route to Oviedo someday :-P What surprised me was the San Vincente's train station is very small and it is located somehow in the middle of nowhere. I could not imagine if I arrived there when it's dark already :-P.. It was good thing that there were 2 more people stop at the station so I could follow them to the town center. I imagined that San Vincente is a bigger town with a lot of tourists..that's why I really made sure several time that the name of the train stop was really the town that I intended to go, and it was indeed the right one :-P The train station is a bit far away from the town center, it took me around 15 mins walk to reach the center. I went to the town hall and the castle but found that it was closed at that day :-( I found the Tourist Information Center to get more info on what else I could see (and to make sure where is the location of the bus to Comillas). Then I walked to the direction of the port with its colorful boats. It was really warm around 21C, but it did not stop me to enjoy San Vincente.

I planned to take the bus at 15:15 to Comillas and decided to have a real lunch (seafood Paella...a huge one.. that's it :-P). I was at the bus station around 15:05 and there were nobody there except some people at the bar, no sign that there will be bus departing in 10mins and I know that San Vincente is the starting point of the route. I was waiting...until 15:15 and still there was still no sign and I started to get worry.. I decided to ask people at the bar and found out that nobody could speak English :-( So I tried my best to use any possible communication tool, I pointed my schedule and one guy and the waitress tried to explain me something....but I did not get it. They told me (or actually they wrote me the time)the next bus would be at 17:00. I asked them if I could go by taxi there, since Comillas is actually about 10 mins trip from San Vincente. But they told me it will be expensive and he started to draw something which finally got me. There was a construction on the way from San Vincente to Comillas, so they have to use another way which took another 15 mins or so... and that what happened with the bus schedule, they made the departure time 15 mins earlier so that they could catch up the next schedule at the other towns.... Hwaaa I finally got that (I saw the sign of 15 mins blablabla at the bus...but since I did not have any problem with the schedule previously so I did not really care about it :-P). That was a short version of how I finally understood the problem, the real one was a bit...hmm painful :-P. Well so I gave up the idea to visit Comillas (and visiting one of Gaudi's) which gives me another reason to visit this area again :-).

At the end of the day I made it to Bilbao....was quite late but it was a good time to go directly to bed :-)

Cantabria - Basque country: Day 1 and 2

2009-04-05T14:15:00.000-07:00

I haven't decided to take this holiday until the last minutes but I have read some info about this area before. I like that kind of reading as you might know :-P To those who do not know Santander, it is one of the big cities in Cantabria region, a region in the north of Spain which famous of its spectacular coast line along the bay of Biscay. This area, I learned from several sources, is quite different from the other areas in Spain with its mountainous landscape. It's kind of coasts and mountains in the same area region.

I arrived in Santander quite late around 9pm, I have booked a pension close to the train station in Santander and I was so happy that I followed my intuition to buy a Spanish dictionary at the airport. The lady who welcomed me at the pension could not speak English at all, she knew that I could not speak Spanish (she asked me when I just arrived) but she continued to speak Spanish to me :-P I haven't been in Spain for quite some time (last time was my Segovia-Madrid-Seville-Granada-Algeciras-Barcelona trip in Dec 2005-Jan 2006...gosh 3 years ago...did not realize that) I forgot most of my basic Spanish for survival sentences :-P That lady tried to tell me something but I had no clue at all what she wanted to say and after saw my blank face she decided to grab someone who can speak English (and Spanish) as a translator. It turned out that she wanted to ask me whether I was happy with the room she showed me because otherwise there was a bigger room in different building :-P So much for my first day in Santander...lol..

The next day, I planned to go to Santillana del Mar and the famous Altamira cave. After checking the bus schedule, I found out that the earliest bus that day was at 11:30am (and I really had to be careful with the bus schedule since there are not so many departures...again it's quite an adventure to rely on public transportation). I spent some time to explore Santander that morning, strolling around its promenade and visiting its beautiful cathedral which really reminded me of a building in Oxford when you went inside.

I arrived in Santillana del Mar around noon and I knew from the tourist office in Santander that I had to go by foot or by taxi to reach Altamira cave museum from Santillana. At first I was really thinking about taking taxi (yeah it's holiday, wasn't it :-P) to save some time (quite a valid reason I would say..hehe) but I could not find a taxi there or actually I could not find the taxi driver (there was a taxi parked nearby the bus stop). So I had to walk...first of all I was not sure where to go, I had a map though but took some time to figure out the direction :-P The guy at the tourist office told me Altamira is about 2 kms from Santillana but he did not mention that it was uphill..it was noon, I had no lunch and it was quite warm (which was good but could be exhausting too). Thankfully the view was nice...though it was really only me who walked in the direction of the museum at that time :-P

Altamira museum was impressive...it made me think how's life 18000 years ago. It's a pity that we could not see the real caves but the museum was great (it was free of charge when I visited there). By the time I finished my museum tour I knew that I could not take the bus I planned to take to return to Santander. I arrived back in Santillana around 4pm and almost all the shops were closed for siesta, so I only walked around the scenic village. Santillana is beautiful village with its cobblestone street. I visited the roman Colegiata de Santa Juliana, a beautiful 12th century monastery which is the highlight of the village. I also visited the Museo Diocesano, another monastery at the other end of the village which I found had quite bizarre collection. First of all, I was the only visitor there and it was almost dark already when I was there and their cryptic collection (plus its two level wooden floor) did not really make me enjoying the moments I spent in that museum. But overall Santillana is pretty and I managed to catch the latest bus to Santander around 7pm...:-)

Cantabria and Basque country - Introduction

2009-04-05T13:40:00.000-07:00

Haven't had time to update this blog with my latest trip in north Spain in March. Life has been busy lately, during the weekdays and weekends :-). Basically I lost my fight with my addiction (yeah traveling addict that's it). I should have been in a traveling fasting period but I could not stand for cheap flight deals, so somehow someday (in Feb I think) I found a cheap flight (2 cents for return trips) to Santander in northern Spain. I haven't been to the north of Spain before and to be honest I haven't heard about Santander before I knew those cheap flight deals, all I knew about north of Spain was Santiago des Campostela and Bilbao. I was interested when I found more information about the city and decided to book the flight...it was only 2 cents anyway that's after tax though I had to pay 10 EUR for my credit card charge....but still...it's a cheap deal (besides I did not know that charge until I saw the confirmation email :-P..and I could not imagine 2 cents charge on my credit card hehe).

Okay I booked those flights but I haven't decided to go at that time, sounds weird indeed but it happened :-P. I still had 2 days from my annual leave last year that I had to finish before the end of March so four day holiday (plus weekend) was a good option. But I was not sure to spend some money for my holiday (outside the 10.02 EUR that I have paid for my flight tickets) as I said I should have been in my traveling fasting period :-P.

My flight was on Saturday evening, March 7 and I finally decided to go when I woke up on that Saturday :-P I felt like I had to go to Spain that day...lol... so I just packed my stuff after that...and I did not really care about my battle with my traveling addiction (besides I have some friends who supported me with my 'go for holiday' decision :-P thanks guys!!).

Karneval and movies weekend

2009-02-23T21:58:00.000-08:00

It was Karneval time again several days ago. This year I managed (finally) to see the Rosenmontagszug (the carnival parade) in Koeln, which is considered as the center of the Karneval celebration in Rheinland. It was my second Karneval in this area and last year I joined the celebration in Duesseldorf. I remembered watching the Rosenmontagszug in cold and rain for three hours with Yuko, see my previous post.

The big carnival celebration starts from Thursday before Ash Wednesday at 11:11. We had Berliner at the office as what we had last year and after office hours Luam, Andreas, and I went to the Altstadt (Old town) of Duesseldorf. A lot of people have started wearing their carnival costume since that Thursday and it was fun to see their creativity :-) We were in the Altstadt around 18:30 and the area was already full of (drunk) people...We only walked around the Altstadt for a while and decided to leave, was so d*mn cold that evening.

On Friday I decided to start my movie weekend, the Oscar award announcement was on Sunday evening (which was Monday early morning for us in Germany and we were free on Monday, a good chance to see it live on TV), so it's kind of good excuse to watch some good movies that were nominated for Oscar. I watched Frost/Nixon in the previous weekend and Milk on that Friday, then Benjamin Button on Saturday, and The Reader on Sunday (thanks to Fai).

Cyna and Irma - Cyna's friend joined me to see a small parade in Koenigsalle on Sunday afternoon. It was small parade but quite nice, a lot of people also some children with their carnival costumes (so cute). I invited Cyna and Irma to my apartment after walking along the Rhine and around Altstadt. Cyna baked a cake ;-) and I cooked Pecel or actually I pushed them to finish Pecel that I have cooked in the morning. After that, it was watching Oscar time with Cyna who stayed overnight at my apartment. I slept around 6am, Cyna has 'gone' before that :-P

We woke up around 9:30am (less than 4hrs sleep for me :-P) and then got ready for Koeln. We planned to take the train around 10:40 but did not make it because there was no tram to Hauptbahnhof (main station) from my apartment. Not really big deal actually...it was around 20 mins walking but the plan to be in Koeln before 12 was ruined :-P. Finally after a bit waiting time and standing all the way to Koeln (so crowded as it was expected), we reached Koeln around 13. Koeln was already full of people with costumes. It was difficult to find a place that still enabled us to really see the parade, but we found a spot not so far away from Koeln Dom together with two Indonesian friends of Cynara that we met accidentally.

I think the parade in Duesseldorf last year was even better or maybe because the financial crisis also affected the spending to decorate all the cars, have no idea. But sure being in Koeln in Rosenmontag was quite experience. The people were 'wilder' and they knew (at least the people around me) all the Koeln songs by heart and they danced too even we stood so close to each other (which made us join them) :-P The most interesting thing was the generosity of the sweet things that were thrown. It was not only small candies or chocolates, but they also 'thrown' us boxes of pralines. I got one small and one big boxes and also some candies and chocolates (see picture below). It made us a bit hesitate to leave the parade before it was over (hehe), but we decided to leave at 16:00. On the way to Hauptbahnhof, we met another friend of Cyna with her Brazilian group. We talked a bit and took picture with Brazilian flags (and accused to be Brazilian by one of her friend :-P)... Then.. we returned to Duess, still found no tram to our apartments, was quite a struggle indeed but we were happy we made it :-)

Some weekend getaways..

2009-02-15T06:34:00.000-08:00

No big traveling plan until now.. quite unusual to me, especially because (so far) I plan to stay in Duesseldorf during Easter holiday. Normally I always have a traveling plan during Easter...we have a long weekend here from Friday to Monday, with another four days off, we can get 10 days holiday. Last year I had my Scotland trip with Yuko, the year before...I think it was South France trip with the Eindhoven guys..

It is quite hard (seriously) to avoid the temptation to book the flight ticket (or train ticket..:-P), but so far I am still strong enough. The reason is that I don't have much traveling budget for now..still have to"fill up" my apartment and I plan to travel to Italy with my parents who will visit me in May, so that's my only traveling plan for the first half of this year.

But talking about not having traveling plan, it does not mean that I did not travel at all actually..... On my first weekend in Germany after returning from Indonesia, Ole asked me to join him for skiing in Winterberg, my first skiing experience.

Mid of Jan, I had Kick off meeting in Noordwijk, the Netherlands from Thursday-Saturday. I continued the NL trip to Eindhoven having alumni meeting and dinner with some friends there. Stayed in Houten at Anna's. Then visiting Ichsan-Chika in Den Haag...hehehe, touring NL indeed. I fell in love with DH because the shops there open on Sundays (also because they have a lot of Indonesian restaurants) :-P....

Last weekend, Nanda invited me for her housewarming party since she just moved to Sassenheim, 15 mins by bus from Leiden. So another Netherlands trip. Meeting some Eindhoven guys there...having a fun Indonesian gathering (thanks Nanda)...missed that so much :-) I stayed at Nanda and Ari's house and the next day leaving for DH for grocery shopping and visiting Ichsan-Chika again (though we just met the day before hehe).
I met also Dina-Ricky, Fai, Aryo, Dina's friend...and they asked me to join them to Java House. I could not resist the temptation, though initially I planned to take the train at 3pm to return to Duess via Venlo. I left them (still) in Java House around 5pm, but I was not lucky that time. There was an electricity problem somewhere around Rotterdam, so I had to take train to Utrecht, Utrecht-Eindhoven, Eindhoven-Venlo, Venlo-Monchengladbach, Monchengladbach-Duess.....a long way to Duess :-( I arrived home several mins before midnight....completely tired but had a fun weekend :-)

Flores trip: Day 7

2009-01-14T12:56:00.000-08:00

We left the hotel around 6am, our flight was at 7am and there was already quite a long queue when we arrived at the airport. We queued up for check in and somehow it was a bit chaotic. After a while we just realized that everything's done manually (including the manual weight meter for our luggage). They wanted to issue a new ticket for us (did not really get it at that time why we had to get a new one). There were three persons behind the desks busy writing the new tickets and the boarding passes. Basically we showed the officer our tickets and his colleague weighed our luggage and gave them tags. Then we had to wait until he called our names and gave us our new tickets and the boarding passes. At that time we realized that we got a bonus transit to Kupang, in west Timor which is actually in the opposite direction to Denpasar. They said that was because the flight to Kupang the previous day was canceled. I was still thinking positive about it, giving me another island to step on..that's quite a bonus :-P... though a bit worried for Runi since she had her connecting flight at noon to Balikpapan.

Everything's okay, we landed at El Tari airport in Kupang and I thought that we only dropped the people that originally wanted to fly to Kupang. But they asked us to leave the plane. I was still excited, yee another island for this trip. When we reached the arrival area, I saw there were several officers surrounded by some passengers. There I heard that our flight to Denpasar would be at 3pm, which was like more than six hours transit time in Kupang. After making sure what I heard (yeah 3pm) I also knew that actually the plane that brought us from Maumere still continued the flight to Surabaya (or Jakarta) via Denpasar. I did not really get that actually, what I knew was they still flew to Denpasar but not with us (the people who just flew from Maumere). Runi was a bit panicked and she decided if she could get a ticket to Jakarta, she would fly there to get another connecting flight to Balikpapan since there are more options to fly from Jakarta than Denpasar. Ole and I just waited for Runi to get the solution for her problem (the one that I regret later on since I should have fought for the flight ticket to Denpasar that morning), we still confused what to do for the next six hours stranded in Kupang. When finally we met Runi, she got the ticket to Denpasar that would depart immediately without having to pay anything. That was the time when I felt that we did a mistake to just given up flying to Denpasar with the morning flight, we should have made up a connecting flight that we had to catch...but anyway, the idea was too late, all the seat were taken already.

So to make the story shorter, we decided to enjoy Kupang a bit. Getting the info from Lonely Planet, we decided to visit the museum. The airport is a quite far away from the city center and the taxi costs us 60K rupiahs...we decided to use angkot, a typical public transportation in Indonesia in the form of a small minibus. It has been quite a while for me to use angkot... when was the last time... I could not remember it anymore :-P

The museum visit was quite great , glad that we decided to do it. We had a guide who explained almost all the things that were displayed in the museum. It displays some traditional clothes from different areas in East Nusa Tenggara (Kupang is the capital of East Nusa Tenggara), which is very interesting. I learnt several types of traditional sarongs and recognized the differences among them (songket, ikat, sutis, the three types of the traditional sarongs in East Nusa Tenggara). We also saw the skull of the famous Flores hobbit there. Somehow the museum visit made our Flores trip complete..

We returned back to the airport using angkot and ojek (a motorbike taxi), then finally we left Kupang for Denpasar, ending our Flores trip from the capital city of its province. It was really a nice experience, Flores is beautiful with its people, culture and nature (miss the long winding road with White lion's and Bon Jovi's songs as soundtrack :-P) . We have not visited all the interesting places there...so there's always a reason to visit it again :-)

Note: thanks to Ole for the pics on this post.

Flores trip: Day 6

2009-01-11T01:15:00.000-08:00

Our itineraries for Flores all have been fulfilled and we stayed in Maumere only for our flight to Denpasar. Initially we planned to leave Flores that morning but we could not get the ticket for all of us, only one ticket (that we gave to Desy since she had to go back to work the next day), the other three tickets were for the next day (even it was not that easy to get them). That means we had one more day in Maumere. I said good bye to Desy when she left us around 6am, then did some expenses calculation with Runi (thanks Run, you're the best..:-)) and had a walk a bit at the beach.

The beach at our hotel was not that interesting, so we planned to go a bit farther from the city to Ahuwair (around 24 kms), hoping to get another beach day. But when we arrived it was low tide, so the beach was full of rocks. The sea area around Maumere used to be regarded as one of the finest dive site in Asia before the earthquake and tsunami in 1992 destroyed its beautiful reefs (but now they said they are in recovery mode). We planned to take a boat to Babi island or Pangabaton island to have another snorkeling session. But because of the low tide, we could not take the boat from Ahuwair, we had to go to Nangahale, which is about 8 kms from Ahuwair. The boat rent that was offered was also quite pricey so we decided to forget the snorkeling idea.

We did not have any more ideas what to do in Maumere :-P Donatus suggested visiting Watublapi, a village close to Maumere to see dance performance but we suppose to reserve it first so they could prepare the dance performance when we arrived there. Unfortunately none has the contact number of the people in Watublapi. But we decided to give it a try to go there directly. And as what we're afraid, they could not do that without reservation at least half day before but they offered us to see Ikat weaving process demonstration. At first a bit pessimistic actually (too comercial for me because we had to pay for that, they're quite professional with the tourists) but it was still around noon and we did not have any idea what to do the next half day.

It turned out it was a nice demonstration on how to make Ikat, they showed us how they did the dyeing process using natural materials, like from mengkudu fruit (is that for red color, forgot already hehe). Then the spinning process from cotton and the ikat weaving itself...interesting... and now I could imagine why the price of one cloth of Ikat is expensive :-P We bought some Ikat at the end of the demo, but only some small pieces, the price is expensive as they use natural dye for their Ikat.

We dropped by at Ohe, a point close to Watublapi where we can see both coasts (north and south coasts) of Flores. Then we returned to Wailiti around 4pm, was a bit raining (or wasn't it :-P), I only remember we decided to chat until dinner hehe.. Oh before that, we said good bye to Donatus since it was the last day we rented the car. He is a nice guy, got a lot of info about Flores from him.

Note: thanks to Ole for the pics on this post.

Flores trip: Day 5

2009-01-09T15:04:00.001-08:00

We woke up at 4am to get ready to leave 30 mins later to catch the sunrise at Kelimutu. I was a bit worried actually... after unsuccessful trip to a foggy and rainy Bromo (and foggy Tangkuban Perahu for Ole) somehow it was concluded that Ole did not have a good history visiting mountain's craters :-P And after hundreds kilometers of winding road ...it would be too disappointing to see a foggy Kelimutu...

It was still dark and nobody was around when we reached the parking area, we only met three other people when we were almost at the crater of the two first lakes. Kelimutu is a volcano with its famous three colored crater lakes. The lakes are changing their color throughout the time which can be scientifically explained (will not try to explain it here :-P). But somehow the local people believe that the color changes of the lakes means something special will happen (in Indonesia generally). These lakes are also a sacred place for them, they believe that the soul of the dead people will go to one of these lakes. The first two lakes that we approached are Tiwu Nuwa Muri Koo Fai (Lake of Young Men and Maidens - the turquoise lake) and Tiwu Ata Polo (Bewitched or Enchanted Lake - the dark red lake). They are separated by a wall which in the past could be passed by people, but not anymore now, the crater wall is quite thin. I could not stop watching the turquoise lake with its 'unreal' color. Going a bit farther, there is a staircase to the Inspiration point to see all the three lakes, the third lake is Tiwu Ata Mbupu (Lake of Old People - dark blue/black lake), located a bit separated from the two lakes. We spent some time at the Inspiration point, taking lots of pics, watching (and enjoying) the sunrise and the beautiful view, chatting with a Norway couple that we met there. Yes, finally I had a nice sunrise experience at the crater (that's even very true for Ole)!!

Leaving Kelimutu, we returned to Moni and dropped by at the small waterfall close to the village. After having breakfast, taking shower, and packing our stuff, we visited Moni's traditional market. There were some nice ikat woven clothes, but it's still a bit overwhelming for me to buy one of them. We met some school girls who adored Desy so much :-) and had an interesting time with them.

We also visited a Lio traditional house across the traditional market before left Moni around 1pm. We stopped by to Jopu village in Nggela region which is famous with its Ikat clothes. Initially we wanted to see the weaving process but that day we only found one girl doing it. I finally bought my first Ikat shawl here.

We then continued our journey to Maumere and managed to visit Sikka village, a coastal village with a pretty Portuguese style church and the home of Sikkanese weaving. It was a bit quiet when we arrived at the village and we decided to visit the church directly. But when we went out, there were quite a lot of women offering their Ikat in a house close to the church (since we wanted to see their Ikat clothes). I bought myself an Ikat sarong, I did not intentionally want to buy a sarong, only found a nice Ikat sarong and then gave the woman the price I would like. I did not think she would give me, but she followed me and after some bargaining process, I was still 'tough' to not display my interest, but when she said that she wanted the money to buy rice for Christmas... I was not that strong anymore and decided to pay the price she wanted...that's how I bought my first Ikat sarong.

We confirmed our Merpati flight tickets right away after arriving in Maumere. After that, our usual activity to find accommodation made us touring Maumere. We finally decided to stay in Wailiti hotel, kind of resort hotel by the beach (indeed we increased our accommodation budget every day :-P).

Flores trip: Day 4

2009-01-09T12:42:00.000-08:00

We started around 8:30am to go to our first destination, Bena village. Bena is a scenic Ngada village on the foot of mount Inerie. There are some other Ngada villages around Bajawa, but Donatus recommended Bena since according to him the others are not that traditional anymore (some modern buildings around). Bena indeed is a pretty village with two lines of traditional houses facing each other. On the space between them, there are a megalithic tomb structure for the sacrifice ritual and nine-pair Ngadhu and Bagha to represent each of the sub-tribe that lives in the village. Ngadhu is a kind of totem pole dedicated for male ancestors while Bhaga is the one for female ancestors (but not really a pole, is more like a small house). We had a guide to whom we could ask a lot of questions about Ngada's beliefs and customs which are still strictly followed. Thomas, our guide (I am not sure his name anymore actually, keep on mixing the name of our guides throughout this trip :-P, but I am quite sure it's Thomas), told us that the wood of the pole is a special wood that should be acquired from a certain place. So when a pole is damaged they will perform a kind of ritual to decide where they can get the wood material and it could be anywhere in Flores. They have to bring that wood material to Bena with a special ritual ceremony too, he told us they could spend 40 million rupiahs just for replacing a damaged pole! They believe they have to do it to avoid something bad happens to their family or sub-tribe. It was amazing to learn the beliefs and customs of the tribes during our trip even for me as an Indonesian.

We spent the morning in Bena and then we decided to have another visit to Boawae village, a traditional Nage-Keo village. Nage-Keo is another tribe in central Flores (besides the Ngada), what I remember about the Nage-Keo's custom is that a man required to give ten of everything (like 10 buffaloes, 10 cows, etc) to propose a woman to get married to.

After that we drove to the direction of Moni to visit Kelimutu lakes. We stopped by at Blue stone beach on the main road to Ende which is indeed full of blue stones (and also other colored stones too actually, oh and dark black sands which made someone regretted the fact that she did not take some of the sands as souvenirs :-P). We brought some nice stones with us too (like 10 big bags of them...just kidding).

We then passed through Ende, passing the house where our first president Sukarno had lived during his exiled time there (it is a museum now, but it was closed already when we passed it). We reached Moni around 6am, almost dark and we struggled to find accommodation there. I think we visited all the places that offer accommodation in Moni. At the end we decided to stay at Hidayah which is the nicest one compared to all of them (and the most expensive rate, but we managed to bargain the price, thanks to Desy :-P).

Flores trip: Day 3

2009-01-08T11:34:00.000-08:00

We left the hotel around 8am after breakfast, dropped by for a while (sure, photo sessions) to a complex of traditional houses in the center of Ruteng, and also managed to send some postcards at the local post office. We headed to Golo Curu (means a hill used as a meeting point - according to Donatus) in north of Ruteng. It is a pilgrimage area where you can find a shrine with a statue of Virgin Mary at the top of the hill. We got a beautiful view of terasiring rice fields from the top and also met a hyperactive cow that wanted to follow us (or was it only Ole, I did not remember exactly :-P) in a 'scary' way.

Leaving Golo Curu, we continued our exploration to Compang Ruteng, a Manggarai traditional village. We visited one of the two traditional houses in the village with a guide to show us around.

After spent some time in Compang Ruteng, we started our journey to Bajawa with a stop by at Ranamese lake which is located right next to the main road Ruteng-Bajawa (surrounded by a wall, made it kind of a hidden lake :-P) and a palm wine refinery.

We reached Bajawa around 3pm and decided to stay at Edelweiss hotel with a nice view of Mount Inerie. After taking a rest a bit at the hotel, we went to Mangaruda hot spring at Soa, about one hour from Bajawa. The water is quite hot at the main pool so we moved to the side pool which has some jacuzzi effects (ask Ole for that :-P). We left the hot spring before dark and returned to the hotel afterward.

Flores trip: Day 2

2009-01-04T08:37:00.000-08:00

We had a 'wake up call' at 5am because the boat started to leave Rinca for Komodo island. It was dawn already. The sea was calm and the islands that we passed through was so beautiful creating a such tranquil image. Almost forgot that I woke up too early that day :-P

We reached Loh Liang in Komodo island around 7am and after registered at the PHKA office (we still can use the entrance ticket that we bought at Rinca), we joined a free 1-hr trekking around Komodo island. We did not see so many komodos in Komodo island, we only saw some of them around the PHKA office, but there are some special birds and we found a small poisonous green snake (scary!) , and saw some deers too. We did not spend a long time there since we had to reach Pink beach early before the current came.

We stopped around Pink beach area, still a bit far away from the beach... we could see the colorful fish, blue starfish and beautiful corals through the clear green water. It was beautiful even for me who could not do snorkeling at that time. It must have been more beautiful to see them under the water.

After spending some time snorkeling and watching people snorkeling (that's me :-P), we left Komodo island for Kanawa island on the way back to Labuan Bajo. Kanawa is about one hour from Labuan Bajo and it was mentioned that it has a bungalow resort. But when we arrived, the island was so quiet we even thought that it was only us there. It looked like a deserted island, there were some bungalows indeed but nobody's there. The beach was beautiful with a crystal clear water so that we can see the swarm of fish swimming. We walked along the beach and had some (jump) photo sessions. It was really sunny and warm on the beach but we could not help spending some time there, so much for darker skin (that I regretted later on) :-P

We reached Labuan Bajo around 3pm. The car that we have rented through Pak Tasri has been waited for us with Donatus, our driver for the next five days. We started directly our road trip to Ruteng, a four-hour winding road from Labuan Bajo.

It was a bit raining (and dark and we were all tired) when we arrived in Ruteng around 7pm, so we decided to take a big room for all of us in Rima hotel, the first hotel that we found in Ruteng based on Lonely Planet's recommendation.

Flores trip: Day 1

2008-12-31T11:59:00.000-08:00

We officially met each other during breakfast in our hotel in Kuta and we left for the airport around 9am. Our flight was scheduled at 10am and unfortunately it was delayed for one hour. The good thing about the delay is that we managed to have our return flight tickets from Maumere to Denpasar that day since we were on the waiting list in the previous day.

It was my first time flying with Fokker 50, kind of funny experience because we had to weigh ourselves and our cabin luggages during the check in. But the flight was okay, it was not as scary as I thought :-P

We arrived in Labuan Bajo around 1pm and were picked up by Ino, the guy who arranged our boat rental, to the port. Then we met Marzuki and Rusdi, the captain and helper of our boat, we departed directly after we arrived at the port since we were already late because of the flight delay and we had our first lunch on board not so long after.

We reached Loh Buaya, in Rinca island around 4pm. Loh Buaya is one of the two developed visitor site in Komodo national park, the other one is Loh Liang in Komodo island. After registered and paid the entry tickets at the PHKA office, we took a two-hr trekking around the island. Oh and we encountered the komodos for the first time when we entered the PHKA office, there were 3-5 of them under the houses. They look lazy but scary. We did 2-hr trekking in Rinca and it was a bit muddy because of the rain (but the trekking was great, nice sceneries and we met some more komodos). After the trekking we decided to go to the toilet to clean up a bit and our guide has left us alone.Then as you can guess, there was one Komodo approaching us without we knew his coming. It's really quite close to us (like 2-3 meters) and we screamed to call the guide but thanks God, the komodo decided that we were not that interesting after all and he just returned back after ... had an eye to eye contact with us :-P

We left the PHKA office in Rinca around 7pm and was too late to go to Kalong beach to see the swarm of bats coming out from their nests. It was dark already and we were a bit dissapointed that we missed it (blaming our flight delay again :-P) but it turned out that they would not come out anyway if it rains... at least that was Marzuki told me, maybe to comfort us :-)

We stayed overnight on the boat, first time experience to me to stay overnight on a wooden boat :-P

Flores trip: Introduction

2008-12-31T09:13:00.001-08:00

The Flores trip is my ultimate destination for this going-home trip this time. I did not remember why exactly I chose Flores, but the main motivation is to visit Komodo island to see the dragon and since there is also the three-colored lakes of Kelimutu nearby in the eastern part of the island, the idea is to combine them in one trip. First I discussed the plan with Runi, my travel mate from some of my European trips who has returned back to Indonesia (so it's kind of reunion for us :-)). Then Ole, my German friend who planned to visit Indonesia during my holiday became the 'victim' to join us for the trip. The last one to join us is Desy, Runi's friend who was not sure to join until the very last minute, but glad that she finally made it :-)

Runi and me (well..Runi was the main coordinator, I was more like the supporting one) have been busy preparing the trip several days before I left Germany, discussing the itinerary, trying to find the cheapest boat and car to rent, finding info on the flight tickets, etc.

The four of us met each other in Kuta, Denpasar. Ole and I were the first who arrived in Bali at 10th of Dec morning from Malang with an unforgettable night trip with the minibus shuttle. After finding some rooms for us in Poppies lane, we had a mission to finalize the flight ticket bookings, including collecting our flight tickets to Labuan Bajo for the next day. We managed to walk around Kuta shopping streets and spent some time on the beach and had dinner in Jimbaran (that was after we got the tickets on hand :-P).

Runi arrived around 9pm from Balikpapan and Desy arrived around midnight from Jakarta, was totally slept when Desy arrived since I (and Ole) did not have a normal sleep the night before.

From Scheveningen to Muenster

2008-10-18T11:18:00.000-07:00

I have not posted anything after my Baltic trip, mostly because I was so busy with my work (and getting back to real life :-P). Time just passed by so fast... a lot of deadlines at work and especially because finally I found a new apartment (so exicted!!), I have signed the contract already and will move soon (1st of Nov..). So it is going to be very busy in the near future too..

It means also there will be no traveling (no budget anymore :-() before my going back home in December (that will be very exciting too since I will meet my nephew who was just born last month... :-P).

Those are my excuses for have not traveled that much after Baltic...though actually the weekend after Baltic I went to Scheveningen, the Netherlands for Ruben's birthday party. Scheveningen is a famous beach area in the Netherlands (the most famous one I think), it is located close to Den Haag about 3.5 hours from Duesseldorf. Ruben is my ex colleague in TU/e and he moved to DH after getting a job there and he invited some of his ex colleagues. It was my first beach party, very nice one and we're lucky to have quite a nice weather (the weather forecast said it would be rain that day), there was no rain though it was a bit chilly later on. It was always nice to meet some old friends and I was a bit surprised that it was really lovely in Scheveningen by night :-)

After that I spent one day in one weekend to visit Muenster, an old town nearby Duesseldorf that I planned to visit for quite a long time. There was a marathon when I was there, so the town was crowded with people and I was lucky that day was kind of Open Day for Muenster which means that some museums and some special buildings gave free entrance to the visitors. I spent the whole day walking around and visited some interesting places...indeed Muenster is a lovely old town.

Baltic (5-end): Helsinki

2008-09-15T14:23:00.000-07:00

We arrived in Helsinki around 17:30, it was a bit rough sea trip but I managed to sleep for a while during the trip. We directly went to the Tourist Information (still with our luggage) and got several useful information (such as how to reach our hostel :-P). After checked in and dropped our luggage, we walked to the city center. Helsinki is lovely city though I have heard from some friends that it's not really a city worth to visit. I like Helsinki more than Oslo or Copenhagen, but I am not sure to compare it with Stockholm, still love Stockholm so much.
I like the atmosphere in Helsinki, the pedestrian area, the Senaintorri square where I sat to see the clouds moved, and the Esplanade garden, oh the train station was also nice. I only don't like the price there :-P That late afternoon we visited the elegant Tuomikirkko and Uspenski orthodox church. We finished the day with a late dinner in a local fast food restaurant called Chilli (welcome to Helsinki...no more fancy restaurants :-P).

The next day was the last day of our trip, time is indeed passed by so fast when you are in holiday :-( We checked out and put our luggage in a locker in train station. Our first destination was the old market hall. It was not so big but very nice market hall (very clean) and they also sell some interesting things, such as mint marmalade :-P We had breakfast there and then we went to the nearby market square to do...souvenir hunting hehe. We then took a ferry to Suomenlinna, the famous fortress island 15-min by ferry from Helsinki. It is a Unesco World Heritage site and has an original name, Viapori from the Finnish, before was named Sveaborg (fortress of Swedish), and finally re-named as Suomenlinna (fortress of Finnish). It was raining when we arrived there, but thankfully it stopped when the guided tour was about to start. The guide was so funny and expressive which made the guided tour more attractive on that cloudy day. The fortress has a very interesting history. It actually consists of six small islands which were connected and was designed as a fortress with some underground tunnels.

We left Suomenlinna around 14 and decided to explore Helsinki more. We had our lunch at Wrong noodle house (strange name, isn't it) and then took tram to Temppeliaukio kirkko (gosh, difficult name!). It is quite a special church in Helsinki since the interior was excavated and built into the rock. The natural light comes through from the glazed dome and it is used frequently as a concert venue due to its excellent acoustics. Our last program that day was watching a free folks musical performance in Esplanade square, which was really interesting, before going to the train station to get the airport bus. Our flight was at 21.25 and we arrived safely around 22:30 in Duesseldorf. Ja, wieder zu Hause... :-)

Baltic (4): Tallinn

2008-09-13T13:06:00.000-07:00

We left Riga at 10am using Eurolines bus and arrived inTallinn around 14:00. We passed through Parnu which looked like a nice small town with a lot of timber houses. The scenery was beautiful a long the way to Tallinn, somehow I felt that we were already in Scandinavian countries. The bus station is located a bit far from the city center so we had to take tram to go to Balti Jaam (railway station), dropped our luggage to our hotel and then we started our exploration in Tallinn.

Tallinn is so medieval, you can find the old medieval wall everywhere in the old town area, but it is also very touristic compared to the Baltic cities that we have visited (got the feeling that the old town is dedicated for tourists...hmm like open air museum hehe). We had early dinner in Olde Hansa, a very pretty medieval style restaurant (told you everything in Tallinn is so medieval), they even have a medieval toilet and wash basin (seriously, it was like going back to medieval time :-P). We walked around the old town and did some souvenirs hunting (but the price for souvenirs in Tallin is unbelivable expensive, kind of warming up to Finland's price maybe..) and we reserved a bike tour (yes biking is addictive :-P) to Laheema National Park for the next day.

We started our bike trip using minibus to Palmse around 9am and it was foggy in Tallinn and was even more foggy in Palmse :-P. There were five of us in the group, Aneeka from Germany, John from England, and Shinichi from Japan (yup five people from five different countries :-)). We visited its visitor center and watched a 17-min movie about Laheema National Park there. Then we officially started our bike tour after stop by for a photo shot at the misty Palmse manor. We headed for Sagadi, and had another photo shot in Sagadi manor with a pretty souvenir shop, then we passed through Oandu and Altja. We have been recommended to have lunch in Altja because it has a very nice old tavern, but unfortunately it was reserved for a private party when we were there, so we decided to have our lunch in Vergi after did a bit walk in Altja. It turned out that the only restaurant in Vergi was located at its port which was a bit far from the main road in the middle of nowhere and ... yeah it was still foggy. After lunch we continued our bike trip to Vosu, stopped by at its beach before cycled to Kasmu, our final destination where we would be picked up with the minibus to return to Tallinn. It was still around 16 when we arrived in Kasmu (which is a pretty village with again a lot of timber houses), in our meeting point we met the girl from the City bike who arranged the trip and and she encouraged us to take another route to Vana-Juri and Palganeem (errr that's if we were right reading the map, because we just followed the road in the wood). It was a nice additional trip since it was more like doing mountain biking inside the wood. All in all we did around 40km bike trip and we returned to Tallinn around 19. Shinichi decided to join us for a dinner in Clazz, a classy restaurant in front of the Olde Hansa. We had a nice dinner together and kind of funny to realize that day was 17th of August, Indonesia's independence day and I spent that day with a Dutch man and a Japanese man, a proof that we can live in harmony now :-P

The next day we went to Kadriorg park to visit Kadriorg palace which has a lovely small garden. We walked to Russalka monument and had a bit walk along the famous Pirita tee, before taking bus to Pirita beach. Too bad that the monastery was closed for visitor that day, so we directly walked to the beach which was almost completely deserted that day (it was a chilly Monday afternoon). We had a drink in a cafe called Velvet (which has a strange luxurious bathroom :-P), spent some time there and then decided to return to the old town. After a bit walking (hmm did we really walk in the old town that day? :-P) we dropped by at Kehrwieder, a nice cafe at the Raekoja square (oh yes it was raining, that was our excuse to have cafe hopping that day :-P). But at least we managed to visit the medieval street called Laboratoriumi and its Ukranian church. We had dinner around 18:30 at Venaejema Jures which has old decoration and cave-like interior, then left to the Raekoja (town hall) to see the Chamber music festival which was a beautiful performance.

After breakfast the next day, we visited the market behind the train station which reminded me of Indonesian market with better cleanliness (and different things to sell for sure). We planned to walk through the secret tunnel below Kiek-in-de-Kook, a tall tower built in about 1475 , but they only had group guided tour and the only available group that day would be done in Estonian. So we decided to visit Museum of Occupation which has an interesting display of Estonian history during German and Soviet occupation. We stayed there until around 13:30 and had our lunch in Kompressor, a budget restaurant famous of its huge and delicious pancake (had strawberry, whipped cream and chesse pancake there .. yummy). After lunch we picked up our luggage and walked to the Lindaline port for our ferry to Helsinki at 16:00. It was a nice time we had in Tallinn, a bit more relaxing than what we had in the previous cities but still we had to say good bye to the lovely medieval Tallinn that afternoon.

Baltic (3): Riga

2008-09-07T02:42:00.000-07:00

The weather was not on our side when we arrived in Riga that afternoon after around 5-hr bus trip from Klaipeda. We walked to the old town area to have lunch and it was shower, on and off. The sky was completely cloudy but it did not demotivate us to explore Riga. After having lunch, we decided to take a self-guided walking tour recommended by the Tourist Information Center. We started to walk from the Town hall square, visiting the beautiful Blackheads building - St Peter Church and then went to the direction of the Elizabeth iela - Alberta iela where we can find the amazing Art Nouveau buildings along those streets. It was quite a long walk and we ended our walking tour with a dinner in one of the famous Lido restaurant in Riga (you have to try that restaurant if you visit Riga...).

The next day, we started our trip quite early to Sigulda. We took bus around 9 and arrived one hour later in Sigulda, which is part of Gauja National Park. After dropped by to its visitor center, getting a free map and some important schedule, we decided to take a cable car to Krimulda at 11. The Krimulda castle is now being used as a rehabilitation cente. We also visited the ruin of the old castle and then walked (a bit hiking actually) around 30-40 mins to reach Turaida castle. We visited the museum, climbed the tower to get a nice view of the national park, and spent sometime exploring its surounding park. We took a bus to return back to Sigulda to visit the Sigulda castle before leaving Sigulda at 15:50. It was a nice castle hopping :-)

We reached Riga around 17:00 and agreed that it's completely too early to end the day :-P We decided to go to Jurmala and after getting some info on how to get there, we took train to Majori at around 17:30. Jurmala is a beach resort 32-km from Riga which is famous as Baltic riviera. It consists of 14 townships spreading along the coast and Majori and Dzintari are the main townships of Jurmala which is linked by Jomas iela, a 1-km pretty pedestrian street with a lot of restaurants and shops, and a lot of timber houses. After walked along the Jomas, we explored the beach and had a dinner in a Thai-Indian restaurant. The food was delicious, I drank my fave mango Lassi (a bit strange combination indeed Thai food with Lassi :-)). It gave me a proof that I am still Asian who loves Asian food (no more potatoes plizz :-P).

We started the next day around 9 and took bus to Bauska then to Pilsrundale to visit Rundale palace. Pilsrundale is not that far away from Riga (ca. 75 km) actually, but the public transportation to reach it is not that good, so we really have to plan our schedule carefully. We reached the palace around 11:30 and bought the ticket to visit the palace and its French garden. The palace is quite impressive, a bit remind me of Versailles, but the garden is not that big (I know it is difficult to compete with Versailles :-P). We finished the visit around 13:00 and thought that we could catch the bus at 13:29. But apparently the schedule is not there to be applied, we finally got the bus to Bauska at 14:30 (no idea, whether it was too early, since the next bus was supposed to be at 14:49, or too late :-P).

We arrived in Riga around 16:30 and visited Riga central market which is close to Riga bus station. It was quite a huge market consists of six hangars, we went to the old town again after exploring the market. That day was the first day of Riga Svetki event where we can enjoy several programs around Riga. We planned to see a free musical perfromance on town hall square at 21:00 and decided to spent the time in the old town (hmm also known as souvenir hunting :-P) before having dinner in Lido restaurant in old town.

It turned out to be a very nice performance, especially the bell choir from Liepaja. It lasted about one hour and on the way to return to our hostel after it finished, we found out that there was another musical performance in Vermanes garden. It was a live orchestra playing along with a movie, Vidzeme Symphonic Orchestra Latvian film music evening, Riga: old glory seen with a modern eyes.. It was really a beautiful performance, I have never seen something like that before... kind of perfect way to end our visit in Riga.

Baltic trip (2): Klaipeda and Curonian Spit

2008-08-31T06:34:00.000-07:00

It was raining on the way to Klaipeda, but it was perfectly sunny when we arrived there at around 14:30 (it was 4-hr trip from Vilnius) :-). Klaipeda is the third largest city in Lithuania, a port city located in the western part of Lithuania, so that was our first encounter with the Baltic sea in this trip. The main reason for visiting this city is because it is the gateway to reach Curonian Spit. Curonian Spit national park (as you can read on the link) hosts some of the most beautiful sand dunes in the world and is recognized as a World Heritage Site of Unesco since 2000. The Spit itself is divided almost equally by Russia's Kaliningrad region in the south and Lithuania's national park in the north.

As usual, we dropped by to the local Tourist Information to get some advices. There were not so many things to see in Klaipeda, though I was impressed by quite a lot of Fachwerkhauser (German half-timber house) in this city. Historically the city was a Prussian city of Memel, so no wonder there are quite a lot of German buildings and also German tourists :-P. We then decided to take a short ferry trip to Smiltyne, the northern part of the Spit which is the closest part to Klaipeda and visited its quiet beach. The funny thing is that I did not realize that they have several kinds of beach there (good that Remko read something about that before). Basically they have beach for woman, man, family, and the nudist one... So we have to be careful to read the sign before entering a beach area :-P

The next day, we took the ferry again to the Spit and since the weather (at that time) was quite good we decided to take bike to Nida from Smiltyne (it is about 50km away). It is possible to rent a bike in Smiltyne and drop it at Nida so we do not have to cycle again to Smiltyne (otherwise..no way hehe). The bike trip was great, though on the way to Juodkrante (half way to Nida) it was raining quite hard....but cycling when raining can also be fun :-) We had a light lunch in Juodkrante (after 25 km and the rain... I need something to eat :-P). The area is famous of its smoked fish which reminds me of bandeng asap (Indonesian smoked fish). I had salat with smoked fish and it was good. We then continued cycling (thanks God it was not raining anymore), passing by the scenic villages of the Spit: Pervalka and Preila with their pretty timber houses.

Finally we reached Nida around 16:30. Nida is nice village and was surprisingly quite crowded with tourists. We visited the 52-m high Parnidis dune (or the Great dune) which is really beautiful. It was nice view from it but the stairs really hurt my legs (well I have not cycled for more than one year and that day I had my 50-km bike trip). After spent some time in Nida we returned back to Smiltyne by bus, it was one hour trip and along the way we met a group of forest pigs (and the bus stopped to let us having some moments with them :-P). We reached Klaipeda around 20:30 and had dinner in Kurpiav, a nice restaurant with jazz live music. It was really a nice day to end our visit in Klaipeda and Lithuania, since the next day we had to leave for Riga, Latvia.

Baltic trip (1): Vilnius

2008-08-31T02:13:00.000-07:00

I had my summer holiday (finally!) three weeks ago, this time I had 12-day traveling in some Baltic countries: Lithuania (Vilnius-Klaipeda-Curonian Spit), Latvia (Riga), Estonia (Tallinn-Laheema National Park), and Finland (Helsinki, but well I am not sure whether Finland is included to what so called Baltic countries...but at least it's still in the area :-P). This year I visited some Eastern Europe countries which are just recently included to Schengen agreement (meaning no additional visa needed for me, it is kind of my celebration :-P). I still miss Hungary, Slovakia, and Slovenia though... hopefully I can visit Budapest this year, keep my fingers crossed :-).

Remko, my Dutch friend who is just recently returned back to the Netherlands after working in Indonesia decided to join me for this trip. We started the trip with a flight delay (yeah what a start :-P), but I was so excited with the idea of having 12-day holiday... so I did not really care at that time.. We should have been departed at 08:45 but the flight was delayed to 10:10...quite a long delay actually...I only thought that I could sleep longer :-P

We arrived in Vilnius at 13:30. After getting the free map and advices from the Tourist Information, we walked around the old town. Vilnius has a lot of churches....I mean really a lot... I can not remember the names, only one church that I find a bit different than the others: the St. Anne church which is a bit gothic. That day we had a nice dinner in Balti Drambliai, a cheap vegetarian restaurant in the old town.

The next day, we started early and went directly to the bus station for Trakai. We took bus at 09:15 and arrived in Trakai around 10:00. Trakai is a very nice small town (or village?). It was quite important place around 13th century as the Grand Duke of Lithuania lived in the island castle of Trakai for some time. Before reaching the island castle, we passed through some colorful timber houses a long the main road. Trakai also famous of its Karaite sect people. They are originally from Baghdad and were brought by Grand Duke of Lithuania Vytautas from Crimea in ca. 1400 to serve as bodyguards. There were about 380 Karaite families at that time and now only around 63 remain in Trakai.

The island castle is beautiful, though it's really obvious that they just recently renovated it. We visited the Trakai museum inside the castle and then we visited the ruin of Peninsula castle and had a light Karaite lunch on the way back to the bus station.

We reached Vilnius around 15:00 and visited the Gediminas hill and castle to see the view of the old town from the top of the tower. Our next destination was Uzupis area. It is kind of artist district of Vilnius which in 1998 unnofficially declared the district as a breakaway state called Uzupis republic with their own president, anthem, and 41-point constitution (zoom in my pic below to read a bit of their constitution). During April Fool's day, they even stamp the visitors' passports. We had dinner in Uzupio Kavine just by the river of the Republic's main gate. We left Vilnius the next day for Klaipeda.

The castles along the Rhine

2008-06-29T09:23:00.000-07:00

I have mentioned on my previous post that my fave train trip in Germany is along the Rhine river from Mainz to Koblenz... I passed the area several times and always wonder if I could visit some of the castles there. There are lots of castles on the valley and I didn't have any idea how to reach it.

Well, someone apparently helped me to realize it. Thanks to Chris, my VT friend! We talked about it from quite a long time ago and initially we planned to join a boat trip to do the castles hopping. We just talked about the plan again on Thursday and Chris offered me to do it on Saturday by car (and he's so well prepared for the trip...:-)).. We met each other in Bonn Hbf at 9am (quite an achievement on Saturday morning). We drove directly to Bingen, got a glimpse of our first castle of the day: Burg Klopp there. Then we took a ferry to cross the river to Rudesheim, starting our castle journey that day. Our plan (well actually it's Chris' plan :-P) was to visit the ruin of Burg Ehrenfels , we stopped in a very scenic village called Assmanshausen, which is also a starting point for the people who want to go to Niederwald denkmal. It turns out that it's still quite a long way to reach the ruin and considering it was our first destination and it was only ruin, we decided to skip it and continue our journey. We also took some pics of Maeuseturm (mouse tower) on the middle of the river.

Our next stops were some spots to see and take a picture of some castles on the other side of the Rhine: Burg Rheinstein, Burg Reichenstein, Burg Sooneck, Burg Fuerstenberg, and Burg Stahleck, close to the town of Bacharach. The ruin of Nollig castle on our side was the next object of our camera. Yes, we stopped by like every 5 minutes drive, because the castles are everywhere. Great that I have a good driver who did not mind even to return to the missed-spot-for-a-good-pic on such a narrow street along the Rhine :-P

Pfalzgrafenstein castle, a former custom tower on the middle of the river was our next object. Then we stopped for Gutenfels castle after finding a parking space right in front of the way to the castle. We climbed a bit to reach it and found the castle was closed (it was used as hotel before, but apparently it was just recently sold). The scenery from outside the castle was beautiful and we (well Chris actually...I only followed him :-P) just walked around to find a good spot to take a good pic of the castle. We met a friendly woman who was visiting the vineyard around the castle and got some info from her about the castle (some insider info..). We then climbed down and had a glimpse of Kaub, a village on the foot of Gutenfels castle.

Our next stop was for Schoenburg castle across the river, close to the town of Oberwesel. Then we passed through the famous Loreley and Loreley statue. We took some pics of Burg Katz along the way (we could not visit it since it is privately owned by a Japanese), we dropped by at Dreiburgenblick to get a good spot to take some pics (what's else :-P) of Burg Katz, Burg Rheinfels, Burg Maus.

We visited Burg Maus and planned to have some drinks there, but it was only opened for Eagle and Falcon show at that time (and we're a bit late actually). We joined the one-hour show and it was interesting to see the eagle, falcon and owl... After the show and took some pics of the castle (it's a pity we could not go around the castle), we climbed down to the parking lot (they said it took 20 mins to reach the castle from the parking space, but I think we managed to do it less than that...which was quite an achievement for me hehehe..).

The next destination was the two castles Burg Liebenstein and Burg Sterrenberg which are famous as the hostile brothers' castle. The two castles is divided by the so-called hostility wall, legend says that the two brothers killed each other in the nearby church. Burg Liebenstein is a hotel and a cafe..just wondering must be nice to stay there...:-P We had a drink, then returned back to Burg Sterrenberg where we parked the car and had a lunch/dinner there. The food was delicious and it was really warm when we were there (it started to be very warm in Gutenfels when we had the bird show, someone got quite bad sun burn out of it, sorry Chris, seemed that I brought too much sunshine that day). The view from the terasse and tower of Burg Sterrenberg was very beautiful.

It was around 6pm when we had our lunch/dinner and we still had several castles to go...:-P We passed through Boppard on the other side of the river. It really looks like a beautiful town..
We stopped to take some pics of Marktsburg (and got a perfect blue sky as a background). We visited Burg Lahneck which was closed already but we did not give up on taking some pics. Strangely the castle had a red-white flag on top of it which made me imagining if someone from Indonesia owned it (or a new Indonesian embassy) hehehe... Our last castle was Stolzenfels across the Rhine river..

To sum up...we did 20 castles in one day, it was around 350 kms round trip from Bonn and when Chris dropped me at Bonn Hbf again, it was almost 9pm already, so we spent almost 12 hours for our castles hopping ...:-)

More pics on http://dhina.shutterfly.com?a=1

Japan-Tag in Duesseldorf

2008-06-29T04:24:00.000-07:00

I will not tell a long story on it. It was several weeks ago already (14th of June 2008), see this link for further info http://www.japantag-duesseldorf-nrw.de/index.php?id=305&L=1

Ole came over for the festival eventhough the forecast predicted rain during that day :-). We started the day with a lunch in Mosch-Mosch. Then we walked to the Burgplatz where the stage was located. An interesting Japanese music group opened the performance (forgot the name of the group :-P) then some kindergarten kids presented their performance...very cute...after that, the rain started to pour... heavy rain with wind ...

We waited for quite some time till they could continue the performance. There were also some exhibition stands too along the Rhine....we joined a session on Papierflieger (making plane with paper) and I also joined an Origami session...which was fun..

The main highlight for that day was ...the pop-culture style kids....very impressive :-P I saw some kids wearing that kind of style before in Duesseldorf Hbf....dressing like manga character...quite a big effort sometimes, but did not realize it has something to do with Japan (manga).

Windsor - London trip, June 2008

2008-06-08T00:56:00.000-07:00

No, that pic is not the famous Windsor castle :-P In fact I could not manage to get there during my two-day stay in Windsor, England. I had a team building activity with the Product-Development group in our company... We had a great program, though we, from Duesseldorf, had to be at the airport around 6am to fly to London Heathrow. We arrived at the Oakley Court, our hotel in Windsor at 9am and was totally excited with that awesome hotel...that's the pic of the hotel from the backyard, btw... It has a huge garden and in the backyard, there's Thames river flowing...

Our first activity was karting, not my fave one to be honest. At first they planned to have a dragon boat racing at Thames for us, but due to rainy days several days before (at that time we had a perfect weather, sunny and warm which was quite special in England :-)), there was a warning announcement to have any activity on the river. (Wie schade!). Seriously I prefer to have something on the water than karting, I don't like racing or driving (which is a bit strange considering my driving experience, i.e. Bandung-Malang or the most recent one Malang-Denpasar). But the karting event was okay finally, it was my first time and to me it's a bit scary (especially because Arpad told me before that one of his previous colleague broke her ribs because someone hit her during the race) but in the end I could enjoy it...a bit :-P.

After lunch, we went to London, was so excited that we stopped in Soho area which was one of my fave area in London. Our second activity was to get a cocktail recipe in some bars around Soho and to demonstrate how to make it in front all of us. It was cool, and my group even got a crazy idea to kidnap a bartender to present "Manhattan" recipe (with the budget that was given to us, 30 Pounds). It was quite a nice walk to find some bars on the list that was given.. it's a pity that I could not drop by at some interesting shops (or should I say.. I was lucky hehe).

The cocktail presentations was okay, funny ones :-), we had dinner after that and then had some free time for about 1.5 hrs before returned to Windsor at 10pm. We used the free time to stroll around the area to find Tesco hehe... Daniela and I wanted to buy some choco-caramel shortbreads... we passed through the Chinatown on our way back.

The next day was more serious activity, some speeches and group discussions and presentations. But it was not that bad as I imagined before. I got to know some other colleagues from Harpenden (besides the BA group for sure), Oslo, and Warsaw. There were almost 50 people joined the event. It was indeed a nice experience..though I wish I could spend more time at that hotel and to visit the Windsor castle or Eton college or Legoland... think I should go back there again :-P.

Karlsruhe VT Meeting 2008

2008-06-07T10:38:00.000-07:00

I joined VT (see my page at http://members.virtualtourist.com/m/a040a/) three years ago because I needed to get some info for my traveling. I lived in Eindhoven at that time and I saw there was a VT meeting in nearby Maastricht. I decided to join the meeting and did not regret my decision. It was quite a big meeting of about 40 people and I met really nice friends from the Netherlands Belgium, and German. After that I was invited to several small meetings in Eindhoven and Antwerp. I have to admit that I am not that active to join the meetings or to build my travel pages, but I had several best friends whom I kept contact almost every day. We shared the same addiction to travel, it's just nice to share our travel experience and to get some travel tips from someone who have visited or even from someone who lives at the place where we want to go. For me, a nomadic person for the last five years, it's even better. For example, when I moved to Duesseldorf, I had a friend already in this area and he invited me to join the VT group in NRW.
Last weekend, we had a EuroVT meeting in Karlsruhe. It was my first time to join the EuroVT meeting (it was the biggest VT meeting so far with 139 people) and I was so excited to meet some friends that I have met before. There were five-day program of the event, but I decided to only join the weekend session. I took train to Karlsruhe, around 4-hour trip from Duess using IC/ICE train. I arrrived at 9am, dropped my bag at the hotel and joined Karlsruhe walking trip at 10am. I met Sabs and Thomas, my neighbor in Duess, Carin from Eindhoven, Ilse's family from Breda, and Win from Remagen. Karlsruhe is a relaxing city and it has beautiful castle and botanical garden.

I joined the excursion to Ettlingen after lunch. I was not quite sure to join it at the first time, since I did not know anyone who joined it. But the excursion was really nice, had a great time in Ettlingen. Ettlingen is a small pretty town close to Karlsruhe, only a tram ride from the city center (about 30 mins) and I have to admit I got to know some nice friends from this excursion, it was like we knew each other for so long after the excursion :-)

We had a big dinner event in the evening, it was nice event since we had it at the same place where VT was born nine years ago. The restaurant building (it was a brewery actually) is quite impressive. Again, I knew some new people from this dinner.
The next day, I managed to join the brunch session, though I woke up late :-P. My train was at noon, but I still had a nice time to chat with some people, especially with Win who just arrived very late the previous day. Somehow this trip made me realize that I need to explore Germany more...it has been a while since I travel around Germany...

Wroclaw - Krakow trip, May 2008

2008-06-03T13:57:00.000-07:00

It was just a sudden idea when I realized we had three bank holidays in May. There's no way I would waste that opportunities (hehehe), especially after checking some flight tickets and I got a good price for flights to ... Poland :-) I traveled solo this time, after quite some time (the last one was Heidelberg trip almost a year ago), mostly because I did not have time to 'promote' my trip and try to find someone to join my trip.

Day 1

It was quite early when I arrived in Wroclaw, after 'not an easy' trip to Dortmund (I almost missed my train...it's only my very strong will to visit Poland that I was able to wake up at 4am that day :-P). I walked around the beautiful market square, took lunch in a vegetarian restaurant (part of my freedom of traveling alone hehe), continued walking to cathedral island, then visited the 360 deg Raklawicka panorama .. I took train to Krakow around 4pm. It was ca. 4-hour trip and I was happy to take it. It gave more opportunity to get a glimpse of Poland...

Day 2
The single room in a youth hostel that I booked was a nice one (not to mention it's cheap!!). I started the day a bit late, exhausted from the previous day trip and also because I wanted to have a relaxing holiday this time. I visited Wawel castle, and was lucky to get the free entry to its State room and Lost Wawel room. Then walked to the famous Krakow's market square (guess what, they just recently opened Hard Rock Cafe in Krakow). After a lunch in another veg resto, I decided that I should manage to get to Wieliczka salt mine before 4pm (to have an English guided tour there). I did not want to join a tour to go there, partly because it's cheaper (backpacker mode on :-)) but also because it's more adventurous to use the local public transport. I found the place where I should get the minibus to Wieliczka, and was lucky to get it soon. The minibus reminded me of the luxurious version from microlet in Indonesia. I did a stupid thing that I chose to sit at the back of the minibus (and also did not realize that Wieliczka is not the end destination of this minibus). To make the story short, I realized that I missed the Wieliczka stop after I saw a sign of Wieliczka with a strike through on it :-P At that time, I thought that I would follow the driver until the end destination and returned with him to Krakow, but I was a bit panic when after half an hour, the minibus passed through small village roads and I could not see other minibus (or car) from the opposite direction. There were only a couple people left, I looked around to find someone who could speak English, and I found the young man sat behind me. Through him, I was able to communicate with the driver who unfortunately forgot me and 'my Wieliczka destination'. It was not so long until finally we reached the end destination (forgot the name of the village) and I followed the driver to return to Krakow. He felt guilty about forgetting me, especially when I told him (I know some survival Polska) I wanted to go back to Krakow, since I knew I missed the 4pm guided tour anw..

Day 3
My first destination of the day was...Wielizcka :-), I was fully prepared from my experience the day before. Everything was smooth... the salt mine was great experience, two-hour walking trip to underground tunnel was okay..it was unbelievable that people put a lot of effort to dig that huge tunnels only to get salt. I returned to Krakow at noon and decided to go to Auschwitz, which is about 1.5 hours from Krakow. Again, I decided to take a local transport which was a very very old bus (see pic). I only managed to visit the museum in Auschwitz since it was quite late when I arrived there. But I was fully aware of it since to be honest, it was not in my top list for 'place to visit'... I have been in a concentration camp before, in Oranienburg, close to Berlin. I know how's the situation, it's a depressing feeling.. But I am glad that I made it to Auschwitz, though I need several days to get rid of what I have seen there... Even when I returned back to Duesseldorf already, I kept on imagining the hall with the victims' pictures on the both sides...
It was sad, scary, depressing, and shocking feeling altogether...

Day 4
My last day in Poland and I planned to have a relaxing day in Krakow. I walked around Kazimierz, a jewish area in Krakow. Then to Wawel castle one more time and spent some time on the market square before saying good bye to Poland. Dzikuje!

Movies weekend

2008-04-27T13:53:00.001-07:00

Initially I planned to go to Eindhoven this weekend, but I was too lazy to go there (or to wake up early on Saturday..:-P) . So I decided to go to the cinema, there are several movies that I really want to see for quite some time. Recently I am so crazy to go to independent cinemas, small cinemas where they play independent movies. We have seven Filmkunstkinos (what they call them here) in Duesseldorf and I am really happy for that (I have visited four of them already so far). First of all because they usually have a lot of interesting movies from all over the world not only Hollywood or German movies (though everything is dubbed in German most of the times, or subtitled in German but the original language is Chinese :-P). Second reason is because the cinema is small, mostly there are not so many people (for example today I only watched the movie with two other people). It gives the feeling of 'your own cinema' :-P. Third reason is because the ticket is cheaper than the normal cinema's and with the member card, I can get more than 20% discount from the normal price (so in total it's 50% cheaper than the ticket for normal cinema).

On Saturday I watched Into the Wild, a movie that was recommended by some of my friends. I was so curious about it, though I have read a lot about it before. I know the whole story, I have read the pros and cons, but watching the movie, it still gave me a strong impression. Somehow I can understand him and I am happy that he was able to realize what he wanted in the end (though it was a tragic end).
"Happiness only real when shared" (Christopher McCandless, Into the Wild).

Today I watched My Blueberry Nights, a debut film of Norah Jones and the first feature length English-language film of Wong Kar Wai. Norah did not make a very special appearance on it, but the movie was okay. At least it's not the usual Hollywood love story :-P The music (as you expect) is nice and I like the original idea of the movie.
"There's nothing wrong with the Blueberry Pie, just people make other choices. You can't blame the Blueberry Pie, it's just... no one wants it" (Jeremy, My Blueberry Nights).
"It took me nearly a year to get here. It wasn't so hard to cross that street after all, it all depends on who's waiting for you on the other side" (Elizabeth, My Blueberry Nights).

I was tempted to go for a second round today, still want to watch Kite Runner (I know it's not a new movie anymore but I missed it when it's played in normal cinemas). But I decided to enjoy the very good weather outside instead (summer mode on..it's about 20C today). I walked home from Oberkassel (the area on the other side of Rhine river, my first time there and I really like the area..) and passed through the Hofgarten, watching people having their picnics or just laying down on the grass. Hofgarten is so beautiful today.. I could not resist the temptation to sit and read my book there. I decided to continue my walk home when I felt hungry and realized that I needed something to eat..:-P

The most scenic train rides..

2008-04-18T13:27:00.000-07:00

It has been quite a while since I had the idea to post this on my blog. Mostly because I just realized that I love traveling by train and I did several train rides which are considered to have the most beautiful sceneries in Europe (or even the world). I will put two lists here, the train trips that I have experienced so far and the train trips which are still on my wish list.

My fave train rides:
1. Oslo to Bergen (including Myrdal to Flåm) - Norway
We joined the infamous Norway in a nutshell tour which was worth it. The train stops very close to a waterfall and they even made a special attraction there. The views are so amazing. Just imagine that in several stops, a lot of passengers go out from the train to take some pictures and then return back in hurry before the train continues its journey :-P

2. Inverness to Kyle of Lochalsh - Scotland, UK
On our way from Inverness to Isle of Skye. Previously I planned to take the Jacobite Steam Train, which is famous because it was used for Harry Potter's Hogwarts Express train scenes for the movie. But its route did not fit our plan, we decided to take another scenic train trip from Inverness. We had snow during the trip and it made the view so beautiful. I have a book on my lap but decided to put it off, I did not want to miss a single thing! :-P

3. Mainz to Koblenz - Germany
This train ride along Rhine river is my fave train ride in Germany. You can see the Rhine valley with a lot of castles ..really like this area...

4. Seville to Granada - Spain
I did not expect that I would have the scenic view during my train ride, but it's so beautiful especially when we almost reached Granada with Sierra Nevada view.

5. Rome to Genoa - Italy
I love Mediterannean sea and this train ride gives a glimpse of Mediterranean sea a long the trip....

6. Somewhere between Marseille and Nice - France
I forgot which part is really the beautiful one. I just remember that we have a great view of Mediterranean..

My wish list:
1. Trans Siberian from Moscow to Beijing
2. Glacier Express - Switzerland
3. Bernina Express - Switzerland
4. Jungfraubahn- Switzerland

Harpenden Story

2008-04-18T11:42:00.000-07:00

First of all I went to Harpenden (a small town about 25 mins by train from London's St Pancras Int. station) for a training/group meeting, since most of my group mates work in the Harpenden office. So it was not for holiday and I would not write a blog on it, if it was not because something that I will tell later :-P It was my first time to Harpenden office and I was so excited (though I just returned from Scotland several days before) to meet some new colleagues who just recently joined our group and also to see Muhammad, Dez, and of course Tony, my boss again.

My flight was at 6:30am (thanks God that I live not so far away from Duesseldorf airport), I woke up around 4am and I managed to catch the bus around 5am. I did the web check in before, so everything was okay and I had quite relaxing time in the airport. We took off and then flew for about 15 mins before the pilot made an announcement that we had to return to Duesseldorf because they had a problem with the windscreen (which reminds me of one episode of NG's Air Crash Investigation program that I have seen before). Thankfully we landed safely in Duess and they decided to fix it and let us waiting on board (you could imagine a lot of people started to call with their cell phone or Blackberry...you name it..most of the passengers traveled for business purpose on that morning flight). I sent a text (since it was still early morning in the UK) to Tony informing that I would not be there at 8am as it was planned.

After 1.5 hrs or so, the mechanics have finished with the repair and we got ready to take off. But before we reached the runway, the pilot made another announcement to inform us...that they still had that windscreen problem. They decided to cancel the flight and transfer us to the next flight of their airline.

So we returned to the terminal building, transferred to another terminal building where the next flight (which was at 10:30am!) supposed to be, and waited. Not to mention that I have to pass the security control again (and took off my boots again, unpacked my laptop again...). We boarded around 10am but finally because of several things, we only took off around 11:30 (well my training supposed to be started at 10am). Finally I landed on England soil (London Stansted) around noon. I was a bit worry about how to get to Harpenden from Stansted, it supposed to be one hour drive and Faye from Harpenden office had ordered someone to pick me up from Stansted to the office, but it was for 7 in the morning and I was 5 hours late. I just started to call Tony to ask him how the best way to get to Harpenden when I saw someone holding a board with my name and my company's name on it. I was so relieved and the guy who picked me up was really waiting for me that long, he almost returned to Harpenden but someone from the office asked him to wait (I said "sorry" to him several times :-P).

I arrived at the office around 1pm and the guys in my group were so nice to wait me for lunch, oh and the view from Stansted to Harpenden was quite nice also. I joined the training for the next half day and after that Tony took us for some drinks in George, a very nice pub in Harpenden.
The next day, we had a group meeting and I headed back for Duesseldorf in the evening...this time everything was so smooth. The funny thing, I met a woman who also took the same flight with me before, she also recognized me and told me that she hopes that it would not be like yesterday again... hehe, well definitely I could not stand for another 5 hrs delay...(it was 8pm already) :-P...

All in all...Harpenden is a nice small town, the guys in my group were great, and we had a good time together. The flight delay just made my first Harpenden trip unforgettable .. I think..

Scotland trip, Easter 2008

2008-04-03T15:06:00.000-07:00

My second trip to Scotland, but this time I planned to discover more of it, not only Edinburgh and the surroundings. At first I thought about joining a 3-day or 4-day tour offered by Haggis or Macbackpackers. But after several discussions with some 'experts' on Scotland (thanks to Win and Collin), I decided to create my own trip, since I want more than what they offered :-P I almost did this trip alone, but I am lucky that Yuko would like to join me (thanks Yuko :-)). The funny thing is that since we knew each other from our German class, we get used to talk in German (even when we went out several times together). In fact, I just recently found out that she can speak English.., but German has already been our first language when talking to each other :-P So I was a bit wondering which language that we would use in this trip. It turned out that we still spoke German even when we were in Scotland. I can say that I improved my German in Scotland :-P

Prestwick-Edinburgh-Inverness

We started the trip in Wednesday evening after we arrived in Prestwick airport. We went directly to Edinburgh to stay overnight there. The next morning, we took bus to Rosslyn to visit Rosslyn Chapel (remember Da Vinci Code?). Rosslyn is a small town about 40 mins from Edinburgh and actually not only famous with its chapel but also because of Dolly, the famous clone sheep, that was cloned in Rosslyn Institute. We managed to return to Edinburgh around noon and had a walk around High Street and Edinburgh castle (and also visited some souvenir shops). We left Edinburgh for Inverness around 15:00 and arrived in Inverness in the evening (it was raining). Luckily the B&B that we booked was a very nice one. Catherine, the owner is very nice (and she gave us a big Scottish breakfast everyday).

Inverness-Culloden-Loch Ness

After a very good sleep, our first destination was Tourist Info Center. Our original plan was to go to Glen Affric and Loch Ness, but we found out that we just missed the bus to Canich (and it’s only twice daily :-(), so we decided to join a tour to Culloden battlefield and Loch Ness. Culloden battlefield visitor center was a nice one, though it was nothing too special, they really reconstructed the battlefield so we could imagine it. Good thing that now I know about Bonnie Prince Charlie and also that Culloden battlefield is the last hand-to-hand battle fought in British soil. In the afternoon we continued the journey to Loch Ness, visiting Urquhart castle.

Inverness-Kyle of Lochash-Portree (Isle of Skye)

We took train from Inverness to Kyle of Lochash the next day. The view was great especially because it was snowing. We continued our trip to Portree in Isle of Skye by bus; it was great view during the trip. We arrived in Portree around noon and after left our luggage in our B&B we decided to have a walk to Tourist Info Center. But again, we have to deal with the fact that we could not rely only on public transportation. Our only choice was to go to Aros visitor center, we decided to take walk there, only visited its shop and café, back to Portree, and it was quite heavy rain after that.

Portree-Fort William-Glencoe-Glasgow

After breakfast we still had sometime to walk a bit around Portree and we left for Glencoe around 11 by Citylink bus. It was four-hour trip, but I just realized when I was on the bus that actually we stop in Fort William (which is close to Glencoe already) for one hour to have lunch break. I was a bit worried about this trip because I do not know how the situation in Glencoe. I only know that the bus stops at Glencoe crossroad on the way from Portree to Glasgow. The plan was to take the next bus from Portree to Glasgow since we would stay overnight in Glasgow. It gave us about four hours to explore Glencoe. When we stopped in Fort William, I asked the driver how far the stop at Glencoe to the Glencoe visitor center. Instead of answering my question, he offered me to drop us in Glencoe visitor center and I was happy with that (since I thought that it must not that far away). As you might guess… the Glencoe bus stop is quite far away from the visitor center which is in the middle of nowhere. We passed through the bus stop first and we just realized it …Yuko and I only stared to each other, thinking how we could go back to the bus stop (for our trip to Glasgow). We could not see the pedestrian way…it was only highway with some hills and valley in the middle of nowhere. So.. the driver dropped us on the way to the visitor center (still have to walk to go there) with our luggage. A bit panic actually (I thought about hitchhike some cars that pass through the highway) but we still tried to enjoy the beautiful view of Glencoe with some snows at the hills, which reminds me of marmer cake and powder sugar on top of it, and for sure we were also busy taking some pics. We went to the shops (still with our luggage) and I asked the man there how to get to the village from the visitor center. Thankfully, there is a walk path from the visitor center to the village, which he said about 20 mins walk. To make the story short, it turned out that the walk path was one of the recommended walk paths in Glencoe area and it was beautiful. We passed a small forest with a small river (and the water was green). The distance is about 2 miles and for sure we could not make it for 20 minutes :-P But it was indeed our fave walk during this trip. It made me want to go back to Glencoe again in summer (and try other walking route) :-)

Karneval in Duesseldorf

2008-02-04T12:49:00.000-08:00

Helau!!! (that's a carnival greeting in Duesseldorf). We just had a big celebration of carnival in Duesseldorf! I know there is a big celebration in Koeln, our neighboring (and also rival) city, but I only recently knew that there is also a big celebration in Duesseldorf. It's actually one of the highlight of Rhineland carnivals, together with the celebration in Mainz and Koeln. This year is my first carnival in Duesseldorf.

As other carnival celebration in other countries, this celebration is also originated from religious reason. The carnival celebration is actually started from 11th of November every year, but the real big celebration is started on the Thursday one week before Ash Wednesday, in a so called Altweiberfastnacht. The day when women take the power and the tradition is they cut the tie of men around... see more on www.karneval-in-duesseldorf.de.
After that, every day you can see a lot of people with funny costumes. I have seen the carnival celebration in Eindhoven before and I always admire the effort that all the people put for their carnival costumes. I was surprised when last Thursday in my office we sort of celebrate the carnival by having a lot of Berliner (a filled doughnut covered by sugar usually with strawberry filling) in the kitchen. It was really funny when later that day I had a discussion with Daniela at her office, Peter another colleague came by and shouted Alaaf! (that's greetings from Koeln, since they are both originally from Koeln) then they sang together a carnival song and pushed me to follow them knocking the table. That was really funny :-P

The big celebration is on Monday (we had holiday on Monday) and is called Rosenmontag when they have a big parade (Rosenmontagszug). I had an appointment with Yuko, a Japanese friend of mine from my German class. We met several minutes before the parade started and finally got a nice location to stand. It was a bit rain and cold. But the parade was great, I shouted a lot of 'Helau' today :-P I finished 1 Gb of my memory card and just realized that I was wet and almost freezing. That was after almost 3 hrs standing in the crowd :-P

Singapore - Indonesia Trip

2008-01-28T12:31:00.000-08:00

One and half weeks after my trip to the UK (it also means that I only worked for that period in December), I started my going home trip. As I did last year also, I chose Singapore as my destination from Duesseldorf (by Emirates again...it's good for my Skywards points :-P), then continued to Surabaya by JetStar (Valuair). I like that route since I do not have to go to Jakarta and change to domestic flight to Surabaya, and also because I like Changi airport so much :-)

This year I stayed in Singapore for three days and explored it with my parents who joined me there. My flight from Duesseldorf arrived around 2am in Singapore. I decided to sleep at Rainforest lounge until around 9am, took a shower, had my breakfast at Toast Box (yummy....see..that's why I love Changi), walked around the duty free shops, and then I decided to go to the hotel, that I have been booked before, at Scotts Road. I picked up my parents at the airport in the evening and after dropped the luggage in our hotel, we walked along the Scotts road and had dinner in Far East Plaza which has quite a lot of muslim restaurants. We spent two days exploring Singapore using hop on hop off bus. We also went to Sentosa island to see Song of the Sea performance, which was okay, but it's been better if it was not that wet because of rain.I am happy to be able to explore Singapore (finally) , though to be honest, our main activity was shopping (from Mustafa Center, Chinatown to Orchard Road) :-P

We went back to Surabaya after spent three days in Singapore, then continued the trip to Malang, and finally home...
I spent 10 days in Malang, having relaxing days (the days have gone so fast for sure), visiting relatives, eating lots of foods... I also went to Surabaya at one of the days there.

I continued my trip to Bandung at 2nd of Jan. Meeting Yayan, my bro.. stayed at his place for two days. I met Remko, my Dutch friend who works in Medan, and we spent one day exploring Bandung...well actually we only went to Kawah Putih, which I have not been there before, then ate at Kampung Daun. But I was impressed with Bandung now... with the fly over, the toll road...

I returned to Jakarta with Remko and went directly to the hotel. In the evening (it was Friday) I met Eva, Aris, and mbak Helena. We chatted a lot (first, dinner at Setiabudi building then moved to Menteng to have some drinks) until almost midnight. My parents and Caca joined at the hotel that evening, and the next day, we were finally full team. Yayan arrived from Bandung, Didit and Nia also joined us in the morning from Bekasi, oh and also Hendra, Caca's boyfriend who works in Jakarta. It was nice to finally meet the whole family :-)

I spent four days in Jakarta, mostly for family gathering in the weekend, but I also managed to meet Robin, mbak Elvi, and Bing bing on Sunday evening. On Monday, I had lunch with Wira (finally we met each other :-P), then met Ocha in Pasar Festival, who was so kind to accompany me to visit Diery, and her Ira, at her house. I had my first experience using Busway by the way :-P Directly after that, I met Runi, who waited for me already in Plaza Semanggi....that was really busy schedule for my last day in Jakarta. The next day... we left early from the hotel. I had my trip to Singapore (then Dubai-Duesseldorf) and my parents returned back to Surabaya (and then Malang).

It was really nice to meet my family, relatives, and my friends in Indonesia....three weeks seem so fast. The next day after I arrived in Duesseldorf, I had to go back to work...to my real life, and I still could not imagine that I have left the office for three weeks already :-P

London - Scotland trip

2007-12-15T15:34:00.000-08:00

It was really a surprise trip to me. I thought that 2007 would be a year without so many traveling activities. I managed to go to Provence-Cote d'Azur-Monaco last May. But after that (even during summer!) I felt that my traveling activities were buried somewhere beneath my working activities. I have admitted myself already that my other big trip this year would only be my going home trip for the year end holiday. But it turned out that I had a chance to go to UK (again!).

I went to London because of a three-day conference last week and I was really happy to be able to stay in West End area where the conference took place. I think I like London more after this trip :-P. The hotel where I stayed was in the Strand area, close to Covent Garden (Covent Garden market was totally cool), Charing Cross, Leicester Square (well I mentioned the three closest Underground stations from my hotel :-P) and Trafalgar Square.

When I knew that I was going to stay in West End area which is surrounded by theaters, I could not resist the temptation to watch one of the performance there and I was so excited when I found that I would be able to see Phantom of the Opera. I booked a seat for Phantom of the Opera in Her Majesty's theater in Haymarket when I was still in Dusseldorf :-P POTO was kind of an obsession for me. I really like its songs for quite a long time. There was some melancholic reason behind it (a ha :-P), my ex-boyfriend gave me Think of Me lyrics when we decided to separate (the lyrics is sooo touching). And actually it was my first introduction with POTO's songs. I like that song so much and I wanted to know more songs from the performance and I ended up liking most of them. So watching POTO is the highlight of my London tour this time. It was just amazing. I love their performance (the songs) and the stage decoration. It left me speechless :-P I just really really like it. No wonder the show is still running after 21 years!! I just wondering how it was when Sarah Brightman and Michael Crawford played it for the first time.

After four days and three nights in London (gosh I think I miss walking through the Trafalgar Square from my hotel to the conference venue every day in those three days....it just felt so cool :-P), I flew to Edinburgh for my Scotland trip. I arrived almost midnight because of the flight delay. I was lucky that I booked a hostel close to the airport bus stop, so I do not have to put a lot of effort after quite a long day. I was so impressed with the night view of Edinburgh even when I was on the way from the airport to its city center. Indeed Edinburgh is so beautiful with its old buildings and its castle. I joined a free walking tour for three hours at 11 pm in the next day and it was worth it. Now I know more about it's unique culture and history.

Later in the evening, I met Vivi and we stayed in a very nice B&B that night. Early in the morning (around 7:30am...) we left the B&B already to join a Highland tour. We went to Trossachs National Park, visiting Loch Lomond and other Lochs (I do not remember their names :-P) , Inveraray (a nice small town, famous with its jail, later a friend of mine told me that Inveraray actually is pretty close to Oban, the ferry port for several interesting islands in Scotland), Killin (a scenic village). We also dropped by to Kilchurn castle (to take a pic) , Doune castle ( I managed to buy nice postcards and souvenir there), and Hamish (a cute highland cow :-P). It was an interesting trip, especially because I experienced my first snow this winter during the trip on the highland (and yes it's freezing). Greg, our guide tour is a good entertainer, he talked a lot about Scotland (about how they hate English people hehe....it's funny to hear it from them), about the clans conflicts (now I know that MacDougall does not get along with Campbell), about Scotland's dark history (I heard it before from my walking tour in Edinburgh). I think Scotland is beautiful and Scots have a unique culture and character (and also accent hehe, it's bit difficult to understand their English sometimes).

After the tour, we went to Dundee where Vivi lives now. I took a train to return back to London the next morning. It took around 6 hrs from Dundee to London, but it's nice to be able to catch a glimpse of UK from almost its North to South.
All in all....I am happy finally I made it to Scotland (yeeeee!), also to be able to visit London again for the second time. I was completely exhausted this week and now I have to prepare for my going home trip but it was a nice feeling to be able 'on the road' again.

Singapore, Indonesia, my next destinations...I am coming :-P

Music and Lyrics

2007-11-25T14:59:00.001-08:00

Another movie review...
I just watched this movie several minutes ago :-P The story is simple, but I like the soundtrack, especially 'Way back into love'. You can find the video here and here is the lyrics:

Way Back into Love (Hugh Grant and Haley Bennett)

I've been living with a shadow overhead,
I've been sleeping with a cloud above my bed,
I've been lonely for so long,
Trapped in the past,
I just can't seem to move on!

I've been hiding all my hopes and dreams away,
Just in case I ever need them again someday,
I've been setting aside time,
To clear a little space in the corners of my mind!

All I want to do is find a way back into love.
I can't make it true without a way back into love.
Oooooh.

I've been watching but the stars refuse to shine,
I've been searching but i just don't see the signs,
I know that it's out there,
There's got to be something for my soul somewhere!

I've been looking for someone to shed some light,
Not somebody just to get me through the night,
I could use some direction,
And I'm open to your suggestions.

All I want to do is find a way back into love.
I can't make it through without a way back into love.
And if I open my heart again,
I guess I'm hoping you'll be there for me in the end!
Oooooooh, Ooooooh, Ooooooh.

There are moments when I don't know if it's real
Or if anybody feels the way I feel
I need inspiration
Not just another negotiation

All I want to do is find a way back into love,
I can't make it through without a way back into love,
And if I open my heart to you,
I'm hoping you'll show me what to do,
And if you help me to start again,
You know that I'll be there for you in the end!
Oooooooh. Oooooooh. Ooooooooh. Oooooooh. Ooooooh Ooooooooh. Ooooooooh.

Nice lyrics, right :-P There are several scenes from the movie that made me laugh, especially the Pop! videoclip. It was soooo 80's (but I like the song) and I could not imagine Hugh Grant did it :-P
To sum up, it is an entertaining movie...

Marie Antoinette

2007-11-25T14:48:00.000-08:00

I knew that movie for quite sometime, at least I knew that Kirsten Dunst played the role as Marie Antoinette and I knew a bit about Marie Antoinette, that she's been killed by guillotine in French revolution. But this movie gave me something more about her.

At first I was also surprised with its opening, I mean, I do not expect a movie which portrayed 18th century setting has kind of 'funky' opening song. It reminds me of Clueless, the series :-P
But it was okay, I am more interested with the story itself. In the end, I was surprised about the story of Marie Antoinette. I ended up wiki-ed (I think we should add this new verb as we do it for 'google-ed") the stories of French monarch and French revolution for the rest of the evening (or night :-P). Interesting...how could you inspired by a movie!

Another trip is coming..

2007-11-25T13:53:00.000-08:00

Yee, I am happy that I got my UK visa two weeks ago and got the confirmation to join a conference in London last week. I plan to join that conference for a long time, initially to join a workshop with the same provider last September but since I could not get the visa on time (it takes ca. 10 days to process it) I could not make it. This time it was such an experience to apply the visa and to register for the conference (long story..), so I am quite happy so far...

The conference will be from 4th to 6th of Dec and I plan to take a day off on Friday to fly to...Scotland :-P I will meet Vivi who has recently moved to Dundee... Scotland is one of my wish list destination, so I am really excited for this trip, though it will be only for two days. I have to go back to London on Sunday. So many places to visit so little time, always the same story. Another problem is...I just got another news that a new boss of mine who is based in Austin, Texas will visit us in Dusseldorf at the same time when I will be away... There is a new reorganization in our group so it is quite important to meet her.. so...let's see...I hope at least, we can meet on Monday the 3rd of Dec before I leave...I keep my fingers crossed...I do not want to ruin my plan :-(

Yesterday I went to Eindhoven to buy several things for my going home trip, I just spent around two hours there and went back to Dusseldorf in a rush. I planned to visit the Weihnachtsmarkt in Dusseldorf, but when I reached Hauptbahnhof I decided to go back home instead..especially because I still could buy Reibekuechen in a stall in front of Hauptbahnhof :-P
I think I will do it this week on working days.

I went to Duisburg last weekend. There was a special consular service from Indonesian Consulate in Frankfurt. I was so glad that I knew about the service on time, so I do not have to go to Frankfurt or Berlin to register myself in Indonesian Embassy..huuuih. I did not waste my chance to walk around Duisburg. Surprisingly it has a beautiful Rathaus :-P I met some of my VT friends here before, but it was in the evening and we only walked around the cafes in Innenhafen area. It was a quite nice area.

Uuugh I am so looking forward to having my trip to London and Edinburgh...:-)

Autumn feeling

2007-10-28T14:09:00.000-07:00

Yeah it's almost the end of autumn now...but I am feeling more like winter already...it's around 5 degree in the morning now....just wondering how it will be in the winter...:-(
Everything seems running fast and faster, I was really busy recently as we prepare for the new release of our software. Also with german course for twice a week. But that's nice....it's getting closer to my going home in end of December....it's already less than 2 months to go now :-) I plan to stop by in Singapore, meet my mom and dad there, and spend three days exploring Singapore. I will spend one and half week in Malang then I will visit some friends in Jakarta and stay there for more or less one week. Hope everything goes as it plans..

My VT friend, Win, had an idea to have a fall foliage trip to the valleys along the Rhine river and we did it last weekend. I passed those areas twice by train, when I visited Trier several years ago and Heidelberg last August and I really admire it. It is so beautiful region with the Rhine and the valleys in both sides of the river, plus several castles on it. We expected several friends to join us, but unfortunately only the two of us finally made it. The weather was not in our side that day, it was cold (around 7 degrees even in the afternoon) and it was raining lightly, so it needs quite a strong courage to still go with the plan.

I met Win in Remagen, a town where he is currently building his new house. I just realized that after Bonn hbf the areas in the direction of Koblenz are already hilly areas. Our first destination was Bad Neuenahr and Ahrweiler. He showed me some nice spa resorts in Bad Neuenahr (it has Dorint and Steigenberger hotels) which is famous as thermal bath, spas and special clinics for the people with long term illness. We visited Ahrweiler, a small town surrounded by city wall. I thought that it is just a small fortress, but in fact it is really an old small town which has beautiful old german houses….really pretty ones. The wall is still complete and it is quite touristic, but more for local tourists. The shops were even open when we were there on Sunday.

Then we visited Maria Laach abbey, a beautiful Roman abbey dated from around 1000 AD. I do not really interested in church with Roman architecture before (because it looks plain) but Maria Laach is a different one, I like the small garden (it's called paradise) before we reach the main gate.

After that, Win drove me to Deutsche Eck and we walked around the city centre of Koblenz. It was a nice trip, I love the autumn feeling when I saw the brown-red-yellow color of the leaves, and it made me realize my buried passion (recently) to travel and explore new areas again. Now is 'nach dem Urlaub ist vor dem Urlaub' mode on!!

Weekend stories

2007-09-08T23:18:00.000-07:00

Things have been pretty settled down now. I got my contract phone and just started my German course (twice a week). So far everything seems okay to me. I am still enjoying Duesseldorf.
I have no special plan this weekend, intentionally I want to make it a relaxing weekend (except for cleaning my apt and doing my laundry :-P). I had 'busy' weekends recently, at least the last two weekends.

Two weeks ago, I went to Aachen to have lunch with Runi at our fave Japanese restaurant there. After that, I stayed overnight at her place in Sittard, helping her packing her stuffs (well, actually that's also because I joined her to send some of my stuffs to Indonesia also) since it was the last weekend for her before she went back to Indonesia for good. The next day, she joined me to Duesseldorf to eat sushi in Kikaku hehehe.... yeah we both loved two things (madly), traveling and Japanese foods :-P

The next weekend, I went to Heidelberg. I really want to go there for sometime and I knew that weekend, there's going to be a firework in Heidelberg, it's called 'castle illumination'. So everything's been planned well, took the ICE train with 50% discount and booked the hotel. And Heidelberg was nice, I like the city. I walked around the old town and visited the castle. Oh and the funiculair was also cool, I rode until Koenigstuhl which is the highest station. Then I checked in to the hotel, had some rest for a while (I took the train at 7am from Duesseldorf) and went to the old town again to have dinner and see the firework. It was a great evening and I walked around 17500 steps that day (uhm yes...I count my steps using pedometer), my best record so far.

Some first posts...

2007-08-20T13:56:00.000-07:00

August 18, 2007

After a lazy half day, I went to city center to accompany a colleague from Singapore office walking around Duesseldorf. He just arrived last weekend and I just knew several days ago that he is a Malaysian who works for our branch office in Singapore. We went up to Rhein Tower (which was my first time also). The view was great, thanks God for the nice weather. I never thought that I can get a nice view from that tower :-P. The good thing is that we do not have to climb stairs, just go in the elevator and after several seconds, we reach 172m height in the peak of the tower. The next destination is Medienhafen, where there are three famous buildings of Duesseldorf, designed by famous American architect, Frank Gehry.

We chatted quite a lot, one that surprised me is that as Malaysian, he does not need to get visa to visit Germany and UK (I think also other EU countries) for less than three months period. I know about Singaporeans, but I do not know about Malaysians. Wow…I have to admit that I am jealous, especially after I could not join the workshop in London on 4^th and 5^th of Sept because…yes, you know… I can not get the UK visa before that date. Last week I tried to apply online on the website and after taking some times to fill in the form, I had to arrange the appointment only to find out that the earliest date available is 3^rd of September. So forget the workshop, though I know that Sven, my boss will, again, amaze with all the documents that I need to travel or stay in Europe. Last time when I told him that I need a visa to go to the UK, his reaction was…”what...you need a visa to go to the UK? You just got your residence permit for Germany”…and then I have to explain about Schengen treaty….bla bla bla…

It is not that I regret to be born as Indonesian or something like that. No, I am proud to be Indonesian. I am jealous why they can get such privilege and we can not. Are we that bad compared to them? Or we did not have a good enough diplomatic relations? Or it is related with the Commonwealth status… no idea…

August 17, 2007

Happy Independence Day for my beloved country, Indonesia!!!

Hmm a long weekend for everyone in Indonesia I guess…J

I went to Ikea after work. Helen already reminded me to not spend a lot of money there hehehe…But sorry Helen, it did not work…at all …hehehe. I got everything I want (hmm unless the computer desk that I dream of…still have to think how to carry it…btw) and also several things that I did not plan to buy before….hehe…as usual.

August 15, 2007

Got surprising news from Dimitri this morning about the killing of six people in the area close to Duisburg Hbf. Duisburg is only 30 mins away from where I live. Later, it turned out that all the six people are Italian and connected to one of the clans in southern Italy. See more in http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070815/ap_on_re_eu/germany_shootings.

After work, I had dinner with Liz, Helen, Daniela, and Jennifer. We went out to Mantgold, several minutes by tram from our office. The food was great, I ordered pasta with king prawns….and it’s not bad choice indeed. I really like the pasta…yummy…

August 13, 2007

Today I arrived in Duesseldorf with a different feeling….the feeling that finally I deserve to live here since I just got my working and residence permits. I really want to shout ‘welcome to Duesseldorf’ to myself when I reached Duesseldorf Hbf, although I moved to my apartment in Duesseldorf already :-P It was a long story…four-depressing-month to wait these permits, but when finally I got it, I felt that it was not that terrible after all…

Now I can really start my life here in Duesseldorf, unpacking some of my stuffs which still untouched (in boxes) in my apartment, decorating my apartment to make it more cozy (I have to go to Ikea this weekend) :-P, thinking about which mobile phone contract that I am going to take….that kind of things…. besides, for sure….I feel so relieve….I am so happy today :-)