Virus Festival

Was at the Virus Festival in school last week. Its basically an Arts festival: live bands, dance, films, and street acts. Had a special guest from Delft.. the virus herself! Hehe! Look at that pretty tights. She's got a grey one for sale. Hehe.



Sitting on the grass, enjoying the sunny weather.. we'll never do this in Singapore/Brunei. WHY?! Oh yeah, coz its bloody humid and you'll get attacked my killer mozzies. Haha.


(you can see Yixian that doesn't really know how to read, hehe)

Street act 1: Lindy-hoppers in the city

Street act 2: Lindy-hoppers at the Virus Festival



The real deal.


Dinner at the eatery.

Ciao Ciao!

This is HOLLAND!

Hello, hello again! Went to Zaanse Schans last weekend with Mun Yee and Kitty. Its THE place for tourists to see real windmills in Holland. Its one of those nice little rural towns that have been preserved but have also become a tourist attraction.

Little Zaanse Schans

Some Holland pancakes in the morning to give us energy. Money sucker! Each plate cost 6.95 Euros! Madness! Poor Asian exchange students had 2 plates to share among 3.

The first Albert Heijn from 1887! (its like the first Cold Storage in Singapore or the first Hua Ho in Brunei). Little grocer has been turned into a (free!) museum.



Look how cheap things were then! Rent for 1.50 Gilders per week! Why can't things be as cheap now?!

One of the Dutch icons: wooden clogs! They were less glamourous then, equivalent to yellow rubber boots in Asia. But they've evolved and come a long way!

Wedding (or proposal) clogs. The groom had to carve these intricate details onto the clogs for his future wife! Now modern men, can you DO that? Consider yourselves lucky to only have to buy a ring.


Pointy tips were in fashion then too! Haha.

And clogs now.




And finally, our reason for going there.


We visited a windmill that produced oil from crushing peanuts. The windmill itself is rather small. Its all business inside with all the gears and mechanisms. Rather dark and smoky too. Downstairs was where most of the work was done while upstairs is just platform probably just for checking the gears and parts and leads to the 'balcony'.
Upstairs (the whole of it is like that):



From the 'balcony' (the windmill was so huge that I couldn't take a full picture of it):



Downstairs:


Raw materials:
On the left- Dried peanut skin (do not touch!)
On the right- Raw peanut nut (do not eat!)

Outside the windmill


Old Mac Donald had a farm, ee-ai-ee-ai-oh!



Cheese farm museum



Duie!

Germany!

Easily the best trip so far. Probably cos we stayed with really hospitably German hosts, Steffi and Ching-Ping, where every meal was a feast! Oh, and we went about Muenster and a bit of Hamburg too.

First dinner at their fab home. Schnitzel with mash potatoes and salad. Mmm.. lekker!


Breakfast table.


On the second day, we went to the Aa (how original) River because we wanted to witness the love story between two impossible lovers.

A black swan, Petre (formerly known as Peter cos she was mistaken as a male earlier) fell in love with a white plastic swan boat! Petre swims around the swan boat 24/7 mooing and cooing, declaring her undying love, and even follows it if there are visitors pedaling it. Petre refuses to leave it even during winter, so a small bird house was built for her, although she apparently doesn't use it. And the caretakers can't just remove the swan boat cos Petre might just die of sorrow. Aaahhh.. tragic love!

Feeding the rubber duckies before visiting Petre. Steffi was the hottest source of food for them.


Pedal boats after.




Went to the Botanical Gardens after that.

My favourite desert plants. Dunno what its called, but look how cool it is, the way the 'leaves' arrange themselves to form the flowers. Awesome!





Funky doors at a church in Munster.


Second night dinner: chicken rice and chinese style cooked cabbages (by hostees (I guess that's what we're called)) and chocolate cake and papadam by the hosts. Lekker, lekker! (preps + finished output)



Muenster City Festival



Third night dinner: German-style BBQ, pasta (I miss it already!), salad, bread + spread and German beer. Lekker, lekker, lekker!



Host and hostess of the year

Yam-seng!

And to work of the stuff we put in our stomach, we went bowling and played a bit of pool. Yay! I was in 2nd place in bowling, not bad for a non-bowler, heh? The place was dark, so no pictures from my lousy camera.

P = Princess = me
P = President = Yixian
M = Monney = Mun Yee
S = Super Ching = Ching Ping
AM = Ang Moh = Steffi
MS = Mou Shou = Kitty

Saturday: Hamburg (people there are called Hamgurgers. Cool, huh! I wanna be a hamburger too!)




Hamburg was one of the heaviest bombed places in Germany during WW2. This whole cathedral, St. Nicholas, was bombed to smittereens, except for this tower which we went up. If you look carefully, you can see the ruined parts on the walls. Poor Hamburg.




Next stop: Miniature Wonderland, where the world is shrunk to thousands and thousands of times over. Imagine the work and attention to detail, how the 'masters' sculpt every individual in this world!! *faint*








We went to the redlight district after that just to take a look and we saw this cool machine.

Just before leaving for home on Sunday, we visited dear Yimin and KK at Essen but unfortunately, I don't have any pictures with them. Need to get them from the rest.

Germany = Excellent! Signing off! Tschüß (pronounced 'choose' = bye)!!