Kiruna & Stockholm Trip 20-24 Feb Part 2

Day 1 Night - Mushers Lodge

We spent our first night in Mushers Lodge. It was a very nice and cozy place and was like a countryside resort, very relaxing and comfortable. Basically, we had nearly the whole place to ourselves and it was really cool. We cooked our own dinner to save money and we had pasta with sausage and mashed potatoes that night.


Dinner Preparations


All of us in the dining room


Main hall


Bedroom


Outside the lodge the next morning

Kiruna & Stockholm Trip 20-24 Feb Part 1

I just had my virgin trip out of Denmark from the 20-24 February ever since arriving in Denmark on the 24th January. Basically the 9 of us Singaporeans skipped 3 days of school from Wednesday to Friday to go to Sweden. First we went to Kiruna to visit the Ice Hotel and then for a 2 day Northern Lights tour (to see aurora) and then followed by one and a half days in Stockholm.

It proved to be a good decision to skip school because it was all worthwhile. The 5 day trip was really enjoyable and it was one of the best times I had ever since I touched down in Europe. Adventure, scenery, eye-opener, everything was great! All 5 days were well spent and I don't think words can describe the amount of fun I had there and so here are some pictures to tell the story =)

Day 1 - Touch down at Kiruna Airport



"Welcome to Kiruna" - the whole block is made of ice!

After we reached Kiruna, we went by cab to the Ice Hotel. Basically, the whole hotel is built out of ice and it is rebuilt every year during winter (it takes 8 weeks just to build the exterior), because during summer it melts. This explains why it costs about 300+ SGD to stay there for one night.



Me and Baolai at the entrance to Ice Hotel


At the lobby of Ice Hotel


At Lobby - Joey, Joel, Me, Brandon & Baolai

Some of the hotel rooms. YES .. guests sleep in these rooms built out of ice, even the beds are carved out of ice! They sleep in warm sleeping bags placed on top of reindeer furs which is laid on the ice beds.

Some of the concept rooms:



Joey posing =P


Jialiang and Kendrick taking a break

Absolut Icebar inside the hotel


The cups made out of ice!

More photos ..

Brandon acting cute with his mermaid =)


A photo with a car that 'crashed' through ice


All of us!


After the Ice Hotel tour, we went to our accomodation for the first night - Mushers Lodge where we cooked our own dinner and then went to bed, eagerly looking forward to the next day when we would set off for our Northern Lights tour - which will be updated soon in Part 2.

Anyway I will be going to Norway - Oslo to ski this weekend with 10 other friends. My second trip in a span of 2 weeks! =) Will update about Kiruna/Stockholm and also Norway when I come back next week, as soon as I have the time!

Christiania

Just visited Christiania in Copenhagen one weekend ago. Basically Christiania is also known as Freetown Christiania and it is a partially self-governing neighbourhood of about 1100 residents. It has established semi-legal status as an independent community and has been a source of controversey since its creation in a squatted military area in 1971.

We can see the drug addicts openly selling and consuming drugs (hash and cannabis) and here, open drug trade is tolerated by authorities. However, we were not allowed to take pictures of the main street where they are dealing with drugs openly. However, it was an eye-opener as the streets really looked like those run-down areas in the movies, with metal bins with fires, masked men who are selling drugs, addicts with bloodshot eyes and yellow skin walking around, etc .. something that we can never see in Singapore.

However, we could take pictures before and after the main drug peddling street. The buildings are all decorated with graffiti and some of the graffiti was really very artistic and beautiful.







And below is something interesting that we found at the entrance/exit of Christiania.


Entrance to Christiania


Exit from Christiania

Yup that's all for now. I will be going to Kiruna, which is in Sweden from Wednesday to Sunday to see the Northern Lights and Ice Hotel and I am skipping school from Wednesday to Friday for this trip =). Will then stopover in Stockholm for one and a half days to explore the place before heading back to DTU. I am already looking forward to this trip and I can't wait for Tuesday to end!

More updates when I come back =)

Chinese New Year Reunion Dinner

This year is the first year I am having my Chinese New Year reunion dinner overseas away from my family. However, it is also a totally new experience and something very different from the usual dinners back home in Singapore.

We had a combined CNY dinner in our container kitchen consisting of Singaporeans, Koreans and also some of our container mates from Australia and USA. It was really crowded and we had 18 people in total! Of course, we had lots of food that night to feed all of us. We had many dishes, ranging from Korean spicy pork, dumpling soup, Bah Kut Teh, brocolli with scallops, sambal chilli prawns, chicken drumsticks, prawn and sausage omelette, cabbage, mushroom stew, dory fish, Sangría, etc .. For a full list of the photos of the food, please visit Baolai's blog: http://www.baolai.blogspot.com/ for the full range of dishes haha (I am lazy to upload all the pictures of the dishes but I will upload some, especially those I cooked hahaha)

Here are some highlights from the dinner:

First introducing the 2 main chefs of the night: Baolai and myself. Joel on the left is trying to pick up some culinary skills from us =)


And for those of you guys who think I cannot cook .. here is proof that I can!!



Here are some of my creations:

Omelette with prawns and chinese sausage.


Cabbage with chinese sausage. (YES I can COOK VEGETABLES, although I don't eat them haha)


Sambal Prawns with onions

Introducing some other dishes ...


The colourful dish on the left is Dory Fish by Baolai and the dish on the right is Mushroom Stew by Jialiang (apparently Jialiang got some secret recipe which he refused to share .. just joking haha)


Most beautifully presented dish - Brocolli with scallops by Baolai


Pork Dumpling Soup by our Korean friends


and another delicious dish by the Koreans: Spicy pork


and not forgetting Joey, Joel and Brandon for their Sangría (a Spanish alcoholic drink) which tasted great!


Spread of dishes


And while everyone else is busying cooking or helping to spread the dishes, we can see Kendrick in the background slacking and taking photos of the dishes haha =).


All of us - 18 in total with the sumptuous meal


Thanks to Joel, Joey and Brandon for washing up


The ASIANS - Singaporeans and Koreans


And HAPPY NEW YEAR from all of the Singaporeans with our mandarin oranges!!

Great food, great company and a night of fun. Although this year's dinner did not come with expensive dishes like shark's fin and abalone, it was really enjoyable and I am sure everyone else had fun chatting and interacting with one another.

Introduction Week 29/1/08 - 1/2/08

DTU organised a four day orientation from Tuesday 29/1 to Friday 1/2 for the international students before lessons started officially on the 4th February. It was a fun filled week and I got to know many other international students that week.

On the first day, we were divided into different groups and then given an introduction to the school, after which we were brought around the DTU campus. In the afternoon, team building games were played and it was good clean fun, unlike in NUS when orientation always involved you getting dirty. First, we were given a quiz to solve which involved us having to move around the DTU campus to find answers. After that, we were made to build the tallest tower which could hold the most cans of beer. Though these activities might sound simple, but they were really fun and effective to bring the group together.


My group's tower, however it only could hold 2 cans of beer =(


My orientation group!


Baolai's group. I put this pic here because of the pretty Polish girl in red =)

Went to the Cellar Bar inside DTU after dinner on the first day and we met some of the other Singaporeans from Mechanical Engineering in NUS. Great to see other Singaporeans here as well! We got about a total of 10 of us from NUS doing exchange in DTU.


Joey, Junhao, Baolai, Me, Brandon, Joel

Did I mention that beer is very CHEAP in Denmark? It is even cheaper than soft drinks and the cheapest beer here is the Dansk beer which cost only about 50 cents SGD. Other beers include Carlsberg and Tuborg which are also very cheap and this probably explains the beer culture here. Nearly everyone drinks beer and they drink it like they are drinking plain water .. haha.

On the second day, we were brought around Copenhagen in a bus tour and we visited some of the more famous places like Amalienborg Palace, Little Mermaid, etc .. as I mentioned in the previous posts. After the tour, we were brought to this restaurant for buffet dinner and then we went to this club called the Student House in Copenhagen drink (socialise) =)


Photo with my new Italian friend Julia


Dinner with the international students

On Thursday, we went to visit the Carlsberg Brewery where we got to see how beer is made and the different types of beers available. Each of us were given 2 beers to taste which was included in the admission fee. The beers were freshly brewed and they tasted really good, and the alcohol percentage in the beers were higher than usual. I think some of the more special beers are not available commercially. I tried a Carlsberg 47 and Tuborg Guld and my face turned red (apparently the beer alcohol content inside the beer is 12.5%). I shall not post any pictures with my red face haha.


Carlsberg Brewery


Me acting surprised to see this fencing mask in one of the rooms! Don't know why it is there anyway haha.


Found this sign which was quite interesting .. haha. I dedicate this specially to Jason Pek who loves to drink beer =)




Posing with all the beers =) .. I didn't drink all of them!!

On the last day of the Introduction Week, each group was to prepare a dish for dinner and our group was made to prepare chicken. It was pretty simple as we only need to put the chicken into the oven to heat up since they were already marinated and pre-cooked. So our group spent our time chatting away while the chicken was cooking. We were not allowed to steal food though so we had to resist eating the nice smelling chicken =(


At the dinner table with some of the members from my group. Look at the beer cans on the table ..

After dinner we went to another club in DTU itself to club. I bought a shot and a cup of vodka orange. Really cheap! But I resisted the temptation to buy more alcohol or beer as I do not want to kill my liveror get a beer belly.


With another new friend Moritz from Germany

Well, that's all for Introduction Week. Really fun and I definitely had a great time!