As I have mentioned in passing several times, earlier this month I moved out of the flat I have been staying here in Singapore for the past eight years.

A lot of people warned me that I would hate moving – it’s troublesome, dirty and tiring. While it was definitely not my idea of absolute fun, I found it pretty entertaining. Having stayed put in a place means I collected a lot of memories, as well as mountains of junk and forgotten things. The junk made me question my decision making ability (why would I ever think of buying those things?) while finding the forgotten things felt a bit like treasure hunting.

I will save you from the gory details of what junk I found in my house. Instead I will just show you the sole most important finding through it all:

I grabbed this Vanessa Anne-Hudgens and advertisement covered daily planner one day when I saw them piled up as free giveaways at my campus in Copenhagen (I love freebies, which explains the amount of junk in my house). And this diary has served as my travel journal throughout my stay in Europe in 2009.

I seemed to write persistently through it, which is a habit that I need to revive! Flipping through the pages, I’m sure glad I wrote all those things to keep track of my thoughts since I most certainly have forgotten a lot of the little details that happened back then. Here are some of my favourite findings from the journal:

1. My first travel out of Copenhagen was on September 9th 2009 (09.09.09!), to Amsterdam, and we packed sandwiches, boiled hot dogs and Mexican nachos.
2. My first meal in Amsterdam was a Mexican burger. I was clearly obsessed with anything Mexican at the moment because I had a crush on a Mexican boy in Copenhagen! Things I would do for a boy I like…

   

3. I fell asleep walking around van Gogh museum. That was the day I realised I was not a sophisticated museum person.
4. I missed Copenhagen after being away for the weekend. (I clearly haven’t changed since five years ago. I still miss Copenhagen now.)
5. Apparently a fried chicken seller in Brussels seemed to have a crush on me. I don’t even know how I even managed to come to that conclusion through a single purchase of fried chicken, but I guess the bigger question is, what was I doing eating fried chicken in Brussels in the first place??
6. I referred to Bradenburg Gate in Berlin as ‘Burgerber Gate’.

   

7. It seemed that I had the habit of reaching my train platforms 3 minutes before the trains were scheduled to depart. I’m really surprised now that we did not actually miss a single train journey.
8. Italy apparently made me sick of travelling. I know that I did not have very fond memories of Italy due to some unpleasant experiences there, but apparently my favourite things there stopped at the ancient rocks in Rome and Blue Ice Gelato.

   

9. Our hostel at Rovaniemi was called Hostel Rudolf, how apt.

   

10. I craved for ice cream all the time.

    

    

Some things clearly never change, don’t they? 🙂