There is nothing quite like your first love (in Europe).
Everyone remembers their first love.
It probably happened a long time ago.
For some, it might have been just a short-lived crush. But for many, it lasted for a few years.
Because for some reason, you kept coming back for more…
And more…
Happy Christmas everyone! 🙂
While I am very grateful for my part-time job here in London, I often complained that being confined in Camden Market for 7 hours a day for the greater part of December meant that I completely missed out on the Christmas atmosphere that has been going on all over the city.
Before I knew it, the last month of this year has flown by – it’s Christmas Eve and it is time for me to pack for my trip back home.
As I was backing up my pictures to my hard drive and looked through some of the photos that I took over the past few weeks, I realised that I have actually visited a number of Christmas-themed landmarks in the city.
The good thing about London is that it is crazy about Christmas. The festivity has started since early November, practically right after Halloween. While some people including me find it slightly off seeing Christmas baubles being sold everywhere so early, it actually came as a saving grace this time round since that meant that I still managed to enjoy some of the beautiful Christmas lights sprinkled throughout the city.
Although I do have to admit, sometimes London did take the whole Christmas thing a bit too far. They had a full-blown event for the Oxford Street Christmas light-up, which was basically when tourists flooded the street – I am ashamed to admit that I was one of them –  in the rain and freezing cold waiting for two hours for Craig David to flick a switch, with a prelude by some substandard band blasting their songs through crappy sound systems.
But other than that, the rest of the Christmas atmosphere was wonderful.
The alleyways right next to the busy Oxford Street was very charming for example.
I just met a good friend for dinner, and we realised something.
The last time we met more than a year ago, life could not have been more different for both of us. Especially for her.
The last time we saw each other was in October last year in Copenhagen. At the time, I was wide-eyed with fascination after moving 10,000 km up north, while she had felt trapped living in Singapore and wanted to move somewhere else. That was what compelled her to go on a solo trip to Europe, and I was lucky enough to have her visit me while I was still studying in Denmark.
Fast forward a year later, she is living half a world away in San Francisco, a whole new world of opportunities right in front of her. While what brought her there might not be a job like how she had planned, she did break free in the end and is in the midst of her own kind of adventures.
Whereas for me, I am situated slightly less up north than last year. While I knew that I had signed up for a life of uncertainties when I decided to drop everything back home and enroll into my Master’s programme, it still did not prepare me for just how different and unexpected things could be in a year’s time.
Exactly this day last year, my sister would be arriving at the Central Station in Aarhus and we were about to embark on an exciting adventure in Norway. I would have broken down the night before because my computer had crashed 10 minutes before my exam deadline, forcing me to submit an incomplete paper without the bibliography. I would have feared that I might get expelled for accidental plagiarism and might have called my programme coordinator crying and begging her to still allow me to go to Berkeley even if I were to fail that exam (I passed). I would also have barely recovered from the shock of having my room broken into in the midst of my exam period.
This year, I am having a quiet night in my cosy room in London (theft-free, hopefully) on a Saturday, my legs sore from standing for 7 hours a day for the past 5 days working in a shop in Camden Market. Instead of going further up north for my winter break, I am flying home to see my family and friends again after having been away for only 4 months.
And as I am sitting on my bed overlooking the misty night pondering about this, I realised something else about myself.
That I truly am a procastinator.
It has been exactly a year ago since I went to Tromsø. Whilst I did manage to scrape something up about my successful Northern Lights chase, I have completely ignored writing about another major nature wonder that we did in the lovely city (and had spent equally a lot of money on): the whale watching.
Being a great travel planner that I am, I did not even know that whale watching is a highly recommended activity in Tromsø. It was not until a random guy who came to teach us fishing in the freezing cold on our first night there told us about it that we came to know about such expeditions.
At first we brushed the idea aside as some kind of tours that tourists get cheated into. However, when we failed to see the Northern Lights on our first attempt, my sister and I resolved that we would not leave Tromsø until we saw something else other than some snow and the all-day darkness.
A beautiful, non-touristy art gallery at the heart of the scarily touristy Oxford Street.
When a Londoner friend once told me that he would avoid Oxford Street at all cost, I remember looking at him slightly perplexed.
I was a tourist then, and while I wouldn’t describe Oxford Street as my favourite place in London, I didn’t detest it. After all, the area is practically a one-stop shop/street of every brand imaginable. Whenever I travelled to London, I could delay all my shopping until the last minute (as I do with everything else in life) and just head there to buy everything that I don’t need and shop for souvenirs for friends.
But now that I have lived in the city for two months, I began to understand why Londoners have such negative sentiments towards Oxford Street. The place is always overcrowded, big brands seem to be haphazardly put next to each other and in between them tacky cafes try to rip you off with their substandard food – a tourist trap in short, which is why you can hardly find a single local person shopping there.
Perhaps it is some kind of a rite of passage for living in London, but I find myself disliking Oxford Street more with every visit (plus it always rained whenever I was there).
But in the midst of this chaos, there is a gem hidden just 5-minute walk away from the main street. At Manchester Square stood the Hertford House, a beautiful mansion which houses the national museum for the Wallace Collection, an art collection by the Wallace family.
The art collectors of the Wallace family consist of four Marquesses of Hertford and Sir Richard Wallace, the son of the 4th Marquess. I don’t mean this to be rude, but after visiting the museum, I concluded that art collectors are practically hoarders with a lot of money.
(I hoard things too, but I don’t have that much money. You should have seen the thrash that I accumulated when I was moving house.)
These five guys, for example, have accumulated a whole mansion of art, paintings, sculpture, china, armoury, arms and everything else you can think of that can be classified as art work. It was only when Richard Wallace had the sense to realise that their family’s collection could be a museum that he decided to work on leaving the collections to the Nation. The administrative process was so long that after he died, his widow Lady Wallace had to finish off the job and eventually made ‘the single biggest bequest of art treasures to a Nation.’
My friend and I visited the place spontaneously on a rainy Sunday afternoon, and it was quiet, a stark contrast to the bustle and elbowing at Oxford Street. It was as if I was magically transported to a different era of civilisation, to the time when women’s fashion was about covering your body with as many layers as possible and there were literal knights in shining armour.
Continue reading “The Wallace Collection at Hertford House, London.”
Remember, remember, the 5th of November.
It hasn’t been an easy week, one marred with lingering uncertainties, crushing self-doubt and sinking disappointment of an invitation that never came. The cold wind and autumn rain have crept in through the colourful fallen leaves. On top of these, I fell ill right at start of the week, which had not helped to lighten my mood.
It has been such a crappy week that my lovely flat mate decided that we needed this for dinner last Friday.
Don’t even ask why we were stuffing fat into our body at home on a Friday night instead of going out like normal young people do.
In our defence, I did feel instantly better after the first bite of our dinner. The crispy tortilla chip/crisp covered in greasy cheese dipped into guacamole was exactly what I would call the recipe for the perfect comfort food.
But then I started eating too much and not long after, I fell into a state of stupor and increasing regret that all the sugar-free days and exercises I did for the past week just went down the clogged artery drain.
In summary, it has indeed been an emotional roller-coaster of a week, although admittedly some of the miseries were self-inflicted.
Good thing I have Primrose Hill at my backyard that I could simply take a walk to and clear my head (while desperately try to increase my metabolism rate after the said food). It is such an understated luxury to live within walking distance to one of the best places where you can get a vantage view of London.
Continue reading “Guy Fawkes Night from Primrose Hill, London.”
My favourite walk in London.
When I like something, I have the habit of going back for it many times it’s borderline ridiculous.
I have visited Copenhagen, London and Stockholm countless times, when I could have spent my money and time exploring new cities and countries. I always went for the same super spicy noodle at the same small Thai restaurant in Berkeley. I go for the same hoisin duck wrap every time I visit any Pret-A-Manger chain for lunch. I would have gone for the same chocolate chunk cookies too every time I’m there, but they always tend to run out of that particular flavour it breaks my heart.
And there is something else that I realised recently have made it to the list of things I will never get tired of doing: strolling along the River Thames at South Bank.
I have seriously lost count on how many times I have done the walk over the past few times I have been in London. It is very touristy, yes, but somehow the charm is never lost even when thousands of other people are flocking the place at the same time.
For those of you not in the know, South Bank is a riverside walkway that stretches along the south side of the River Thames. It is London’s biggest cultural hub where you can walk through it while getting a magnificent view of many of London’s world-famous landmarks, including the Houses of Parliament.
Previously, I have always visited the South Bank from Waterloo station, starting from the most touristy bit where the London Eye is and down towards Blackfriars Bridge. But due to London’s infamous tube suspension last Tuesday, I was forced to go to South Bank through a different route, starting from London Bridge and walking towards Waterloo Station. I have to clarify that I did not discover this route by myself, but I was lucky to be in the company of someone with a much better sense of direction than me.
I like the new route so much that I decided to retrace it last night. Also, because I was too stuffed from a Diwali dinner that I just had to take a post-dinner walk to prevent myself from exploding.
It was only when I started walking down the route that I realised how much detail I had missed because IÂ was so absorbed in the conversation that I was having the first time I was there.
I vaguely remember this, but I did not realise it was so beautifully gothic.
But I completely did not realise that I walked past this LED tunnel.
Just around the corner from there, the magnificent river view started for about 2 miles.
One of the most interesting and heartbreaking museums that I have been.
As much as I would like to claim that I’m a sophisticated person who loves museums, I’m not.
I fell asleep while walking along the rows of painting at the world-renowned Van Gogh museum in Amsterdam. I pretended to understand modern art exhibitions at ARoS and Tate Modern but could not be bothered to read the descriptions. The Natural History Museum in New York was pretty cool, but let’s be honest here, I was just there for the dinosaurs.
Anyway the point is, I’m not a museum person. As much as I would like to be engrossed in the development of human civilisation, it wouldn’t take me long before I started yawning and wondering how the hot chocolate at the museum cafe would taste like.
I am a horrible product of our ancestors. I know.
But even in the most hopeless of cases, there is always an exception. In my case, The Museum of Broken Relationships in Zagreb was my exception. Not only did I successfully stay awake throughout, the exhibitions managed to captivate me, so much so that I spent two hours in what was supposed to be a 45-minute visit.
When I first saw the sign of the museum while walking along the hill leading to St Mark’s Church, I thought it was a joke or something that was lost in translation from Croatian to English. Perhaps, the name of the museum didn’t mean what I thought it meant – maybe it was something to do with how the relationships between Croatia and some other countries were broken during wartime.
But no, upon entering the museum, it was precisely about what I thought it wasn’t: it was a museum about people who have broken up with their boyfriends/girlfriends.
Or to be precise, it was a repository of artifacts donated by people who have gone through heartbreaking broken relationships (who hasn’t?) be it with their ex-partner, family members or friends.
The concept of the museum started out in Zagreb, where it is permanently located (along with another one in LA), but they tour to display heartbreaking stories from around the world. The museum will be coming to Copenhagen (Denmark), Pittsburgh (USA), Heidelberg (Germany) and Jeju Island (South Korea).
At the time when I visited Zagreb, I was freshly out of a heartbreak. The concept of the museum naturally piqued my interest, but I was worried whether it would make me feel too sentimental and start to wallow in my sadness again.
Fortunately, the curiosity got the better of me (as usual) and I decided to take the risk. Taking a deep breath, my friends and I paid the HRK 20 (USD 3) entrance fee for students and walked into the exhibition area.
I didn’t really know what to expect and what I saw was rather bizarre in the beginning.
London’s tallest garden offers a breathtaking view of the City and beyond.
It has been one whirlwind of a time ever since I arrived in London a few weeks ago. In a style that is truly mine, I arrived at a new city having no place to live and was ready to push my luck once more in order to find a roof over my head in one of the most expensive cities in the world with the following criteria:
These apparently were too much to ask. While most of the flats that I saw fulfilled one or two of these criteria, one of them actually failed all five. And I would like to think my requests were reasonable, something basic that you would expect in a livable living condition in a first-world country.
Clearly, I was mistaken. Save for the first day, I spent most of my time gasping for air in the harsh realm of London property market – all while trying to adjust to a new city (again) and being enrolled in a new university (which was a different nightmare on its own).
Then with a stroke of luck, things suddenly fell into place. Or to be more precise, things suddenly trickled into place, bit by bit. My friend and I found a flat when we were only half-jokingly looking at the listing, decided to contact the person and it was love at first sight. Not only was there no hole in the wall, the flat was brand new – it wasn’t even done when we viewed it, but we knew right away that we had to get it. Then came the nerve-wrecking waiting period for the draft of the contract to be sent, the negotiation phase and finally the signing of the contract, where I had to literally run to meet my landlady. I swear I must have grown some grey hair in the process, but as if by magic, everything worked out really well. What was more miraculous was that we managed to get the place and figured out a way  to still have some money left for actually living in London.
To cut the story short, here I am, writing this post on the first Saturday I don’t have to spend flat hunting, using the house WiFi that is finally working.
After three weeks of sieving through Spareroom listings and saying no to various social activities, I felt that I had to make up for all the lost time. This was why I decided to book myself for a slot at the Sky Garden, a modern ‘garden’ at the peak of the Walkie Talkie building (or 20 Fenchurch Street, the building’s less known official alias), and began catching up with the past few weeks that I had missed out on London.
It turned out to be an excellent starting point.  Standing 155 metres tall, you get an unrivalled vantage view of the whole City and beyond.
I know, I know, the title of this post sounds rather absurd. You must be thinking, what is there to survive at the Deer Park (or Dyrehaven in Danish), when it is full of, you guessed it, deer?
I mean, how can creatures who can give such look be even remotely dangerous?
Okay, you are right. There is nothing dangerous about the Deer Park…
Unless you are an occasional moron like me.
When I was moving to Aarhus, Dyrehaven was one of the top items at my to-visit list. But because it was far and hilly to cycle there I was too busy studying, I put it off until my sister and her friend came to visit me in December. I had the perfect excuse to take the bus instead since it was way too cold and my sister and her friend were not accustomed to cycling on the road in the cold.
It took us quite a walk after dropping off from bus 100 from BanegĂĄrdspladsen. We passed by several beautiful winter sceneries like this.
When we first caught sight of the deer, it was pretty exhilarating.
But soon we realised something was amiss. The deer came to us for a few seconds, and left, looking dejected. Then they came back again and sniffed at our backpack, and that was when it hit me: we forgot to bring food for them.
These deer, cute as they were, were much more interested in being fed than being pet. What they wanted was not our love, but our food. I felt rather guilty for seemingly coming to trick them, luring them to me, making them think I had some food and then HA! nothing.
But it was a seriously honest, albeit stupid, mistake from our part. I could not even have given them anything even if I wanted to since I had nothing with me (apart from smoked salmon sandwiches on Danish rye bread, but the idea of a bunch of bambis gorging on salmon just seemed barbaric to me that I decided to save the sandwiches for our lunch). I tried hard to apologise in the most deer-like manner as I could. After a while, the leader of the pack seemed to sense that we were a bunch of liars, so he came and showed himself, angry.
After a few more attempts to make friends with the deer, we decided it was best for us to leave. Good thing a couple other visitors came and gave them some food. I felt slightly better that the deer wouldn’t go starving on that dreary winter day.
So my only tip for going to the Deer Park is: bring some carrots or apples with you if you want to leave with a clear conscience, and if you were to forget them, please, for the life of you, don’t dress up like a giant carrot.
They might end up trying to eat you instead.
I rave so much about Copenhagen and London in this blog – and rightfully so, they are my two most visited cities in Europe – that you would think I love no other cities in this beautiful continent apart from those two. But there is a third city that I have visited just as many times, and adore just as much, but have not written a single post on it in this blog.
Stockholm.
And like I said, it’s not because I dislike Stockholm in any way – in fact, the capital of Scandinavia has always been one of my favourite cities; there is nothing not to love about its beautiful architecture, the people, the culture and gorgeous waterfront views.
missruslee 