San Francisco is one of those cities that is very hard for me to define. No matter how many times I visited the place (thanks to my stint in Berkeley, I had the privilege of living 45-minute BART ride away from THE San Francisco), I never felt like I got to know the city well. Perhaps it was my fault that I hardly spent a full day there just to explore – I normally visited San Francisco when I was meeting a friend or if I had to go there for a reporting assignment. But maybe it was the city’s ‘fault’, that it just had so many different things to offer.
In the end, I gave up that internal battle in my head and came to accept that it was just the way things were. Perhaps, San Francisco is just like that intriguing friend of yours who always shows a different side every time you see her. She’s not someone you are meant to figure out and fit into a box. She is just that, San Francisco, with its many facades.
She is as much the Victorian buildings that form the Seven Sisters…
One that was recommended to me by a Bostonian was the lobster roll at Neptune Oyster. I first encountered the name of the place through Yelp, but I was highly suspicious that it could have just been a tourist trap. Seriously, what could be more cheesy and touristy than having lobster in Boston? But when my friend, who was born and raised in Boston, recommended it, I just knew that I had to try it.
And boy, I sure was glad I did.
Normally I would let the picture speak for itself, but I will try to be helpful and give you some heads up and tips in your pursuit for one of the best lobster rolls there is.
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 Banegårdspladsen. We passed by several beautiful winter sceneries like this.
When we first caught sight of the deer, it was pretty exhilarating.
HELLO CUTIES.
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.
This little guy even tried to eat my sister’s camera.
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.
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.
On my last trip in NYC, my friend and I decided to be a bit more cultured after practically eating our way through Manhattan and Brooklyn for a few days in a row. We decided to splurge some money and get tickets for Sleep No More, an interactive theatrical experience based on the tragic story of Macbeth by William Shakespeare.
The play is located at the McKittrick Hotel. Don’t be misled by the name though – the McKittrick Hotel is no hotel. It is an old warehouse which has been converted into five-storey sets that mimic the structure of a hotel. It’s got a bedroom, a ballroom, a bar, etc, very much like a hotel, except you can’t stay in there, and trust me, you wouldn’t want to.
I did not do much research before going to the play, apart from reading up on the story of Macbeth. The upside of this was that I went in not knowing what to expect and was pretty blown away by the whole experience by the end of it. The downside of this was that I was not mentally prepared of what was to come. Macbeth storyline isn’t the most cheerful in the first place, and when being put in a contemporary setting, it could get rather creepy.
Plus, you are not allowed to talk throughout the whole thing, which probably explained why I could hear all my thoughts very clearly. So clearly that I decided to share some of them with you which could possibly be useful in case you are still deciding whether to go for it or not.
I remember feeling slightly dreadful when I arrived here late at night a few months ago, jet lagged from my long plane ride from Denmark. In the dark, the place did not look like much – the sparsely-lit streets looked depressing and unfamiliar; the shadows of the houses looked rather creepy and I wonder if I had just moved from a small Danish city to an even smaller town. I started questioning, as I always do, what in the world I had gotten myself into.
The next day, however, draped in the famous Californian sunshine, Berkeley became beautiful. The Victorian houses turned charming, the campus buzzing with life, the streets outside quiet and peaceful, the green trees a nice change from the leafless ones that I got used to during the Danish winter.
I fell in love with the place from the very first fiery sunset.
And then one day I walked past an Indonesian restaurant. I did not realise it until then, but I was missing home and felt a surge of relief and excitement at the sight of the place. When I finally went there with a friend that I was (and still am in many ways) very fond of, and spoke a few words of Indonesian to the waiter, I immediately felt at home.
Sunshine, a trusted friend, and excellent food – life could not have been better.
If only I had found a place to live. I came here only equipped with two days of Airbnb room booking. On the second night, I woke up at 4 AM (partly because of jet lag but mostly because of the panic of not having a roof for the next few months yet), and started firing emails to every single Craigslist listing that I saw (that I could afford). By some stroke of luck, I found a place in a beautiful house, for a reasonable price, and with the most wonderful, fun-loving and caring roommates I could ask for.
Life in Berkeley was finally in order.
Then the heavy rain came, something that apparently California had not seen in many years. I was never one affected by the weather, but I was alone, away from my friend (who had been excellent in showing me directions) for the first time after days, and I was stuck in the middle of the campus, lost, my umbrella barely keeping me dry. I suddenly felt miserable and realised for the first time that I was in this all by myself and did not have the luxury of my friends in Denmark who wouldn’t let me out of their sight when something bad happened to me. I started questioning, again, what in the world had I gotten myself into in this miserable city.
One of my favourite songs of all time is “I’m not that girl” from the hit musical Wicked. It is probably the most depressing song of the whole play, but one that I could definitely relate to during one period in my life, when I did not like myself for being this awkward person and not the conventional pretty girly girl that guys like.
One line of the song particularly hits home with me.
Don’t wish, don’t start
Wishing only wounds the heart I wasn’t born for the rose and pearls
But don’t worry, I am not about to launch into a sappy story about my love life. The reason why I’m telling you this is because I was reminded of the very line of this song when I visited Stanford a few weeks back.
Before coming to Berkeley, Stanford was just the name that I had heard being thrown around by very smart people around me. My super smart junior high school crush graduated from Stanford a couple of years back, my colleague-turned-friend went there after quitting his job. I didn’t have any idea where Stanford was, nor did I care to find out – the elite air around the name suggested that the place was somewhere too remote and had long ago been filed in my brain under the category of “unreachable places I will never go” (said the girl who had travelled all the way to the Arctic to see the Northern Lights).
Life, though, has a funny way of working itself. I somehow ended up visiting Stanford not because I was particularly eager to see the place, but because my friend, who lives in South Bay, and I were trying to find a hiking trail that would be accessible for both of us. Stanford Satellite Dish Trail seemed to be the best place for us to go that weekend, and my friend then of course very kindly requested her friend to bring us around to see the campus.
If any of you have read my ‘about me‘ page, you would agree that I could be considered as one of the worst kind of travellers, and certainly not someone you want to get stuck travelling with.
But time and again, as I mentioned, people do get tricked into travelling with me. This time round, it was 3 of my now friends that I got to know here in Berkeley who had to feel the brunt of travelling to the Grand Canyon with me.
And unlike most other trips where my annoying sides are only showing once I’m already on the road, I was already being quite a pain right through the planning stage for this trip.
I basically went into a panic episode when I found out that I would be sleeping in a tent in the freezing cold. I contemplated (out loud to my travel mates whom I barely knew at that point) about pulling out from the trip because I didn’t want to die in the cold I didn’t have any experience in winter camping. And in the process, I might have made one of my travel mates freak out a little too.
But before you discount me completely, this is the part that I’m always proud of myself. My love for travelling is often great enough to conquer my fears. So before completely deciding to bail out from the trip, I decided to go on a research rampage, finding out as much as possible about winter camping and hiking at the Grand Canyon.
How cold does it get?
Will you die sleeping outside in subzero temperature?
Are there any animals?
Can I hike in Grand Canyon without hiking shoes?
How steep are the trails?
But the real question that I was trying to answer was: Would someone like me – a beginner (and somewhat unfit) outdoor traveller, who has no skills in camping, lighting up a portable stove let alone cooking on it, setting up a tent, blowing up sleeping pad,… the list goes on (I did not tell them these. They found out on their own pretty quickly the moment we arrived at the camp site.) – be able to survive a three-day two-night camping trip and hiking at the Grand Canyon?
Almost exactly a year ago, I made the decision to uproot myself from Singapore and move all the way up north to Denmark. I remember it was during the Easter holidays that I had a long conversation with my parents about quitting my somewhat decent-paying job and pursue something completely different (and one that is potentially not going to pay me very well).
It has definitely been one of the best decisions in my life.
I have learned a lot of new things, become a little street-wiser (although I know someone who thinks I still have a looong way to go, to the extent that I need to live on the streets in Nairobi before I can even be somewhat decent. Yep, he is brutally honest, but we are also still friends, which probably means that I agree with him), travelled to some amazing places in Europe, seen the Northern Lights and lived in two new cities (so far).
But it has also been one of the most confusing situations that I have got myself into.
I have been having a lot of difficulty in updating what’s been happening in my life on this blog. Whenever I sit in front of my computer, I simply do not know what to write. Not because nothing has been happening and that I have very few things to update. In fact, I have a whole Airbus-sized-cabin to update, but I just can’t find a way to do so.
The A380 that brought me here.
At first I couldn’t quite place why this is the case, but these days I have come to realise that the reason I have been having some writer’s block about my own life is because things have been happening so fast that nothing has properly sunk in on me yet. I left Singapore, my home for nine years, last September, tried to settle into my new home Aarhus, only to find out a month later that my supposedly one-year stay would be cut short to mere 6 months because I got this incredible opportunity to finish my first year of Master’s at UC Berkeley. So within a span of half a year, I have had to move across three different countries in three different continents.
Hello, it’s me I was wondering if after all these weeks you’d like to hear What I’m up to in USA They say Cal’s supposed to be sunny But all I see is rain here
Hello, can you hear me? I’m in California studying at UC Berkeley But don’t you worry ‘bout me I’m still moving to London before I graduate next year
There’s a time difference between us And a million miles
Hello from the other side I must have moved a thousand times From Indo to SG and then to Denmark For a whole year I never seem to be home
Hello from the outside At least I can still send Whatsapp To tell you my dear friends that I’m missing you And you still matter to me though I don’t see you often anymore
Hello, how are you? It’s so typical of me to talk about myself I’m sorry I hope that you’re well I did at last make it out of Aarhus where nothing ever happened
It’s no secret that the both of us Can’t wait to leave the place
missruslee 