Yay I finally sit my ass down and make another blog entry about my exchange journeys! At the same café as the last time HAHAHA because I can't do anything productive at home. I mean this is not that productive considering I still have a billion things to do, mostly things that are privilege-laden though, so I shouldn't be complaining.
A LOT of things have happened since the last blog post but I kinda have to catch up since the last blog post's ending, so I guess you're gonna have to wait (let's be real though, who's even reading lol. HI EUSTACIA!) to know what dramatic things happened. But here we go.
So apparently I ended my last blog post with my first trip - Brussels, Bruges and Cologne (I had to re-read my blog coz I wrote it 1.5 months ago and have forgotten everything.) After which I finally moved to Bonn and settled in and everything. It was, a less-than-pleasant experience, to be quite honest: being alone and not knowing anyone, all the very complicated administration thingy that just proves to me how privileged I am to live in a super efficient country like Singapore (the most irk-y thing that happened to me: I got into my dorm room without signing the lease because the office for signing lease was closed, which resulted in me not having Internet for the first few days. Thank God for eduroam and 3G coz otherwise I be hella sad.) and a quick scare about my studies when the admin lady was like: "I'm not sure if there are any English classes for you to take" and I was like ARE YOU EFFING KIDDING ME (I didn't say that obviously coz I was raised right 😌). It was so much of a scare that I started thinking about all the possibilities e.g. leaving Germany after the orientation course (since I've already paid for it), being a complete joke wasting my family's money travelling all the way to Europe for nothing, and extending another semester in NUS... Fortunately none of that happened and I'm still here writing about my wonderful beautiful life.
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| My first Currywurst! At Koeln Hbf. |
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| My huge-ass room |
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| Yass |
German classes started and I made some friends (surprise!), went to house parties for the first time, experienced Caucasian-style socialising. As usual I'm the quiet and shy one except when I'm around my closer friends in which case I become cray (with the assistance of alcohol of course lol). Same ol' me I guess.
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| Taco night at my friends'! |
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| My German class! |
I was quite glad that I joined the German classes, otherwise I felt that I would have no friend lol and my German did improve quite a bit during this one month. I was quite bummed that I couldn't continue my German classes - but of course it is more important to get my credits and not waste my family's money in Europe so I can speak better German (which would be nice but not exactly at the highest priority). And the course had a few interesting activities organised for us as well. We got to go to Trier, which is the oldest city in Germany, and so far, one of the prettiest as well! I love the quaint feeling that Trier gave me as I walked through the small town centre, saw the Roman bath, and the different churches and cathedrals. I feel like everywhere I go in Europe, I have to go in some churches and cathedrals - but Trier's are really one of the standouts. I kept on wondering how crazy these people were hundreds and thousands of years ago building these crazy buildings with the technology and knowledge they had, and how these buildings have survived the time so now tourists can take photos of them and post on Instagram... Hehe.
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| Like. So pretty and detailed. |
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| Trier city centre! |
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| Our funky tour guide. She kept on asking the Asians whether we understood what she was saying, and asked them to translate what she said into Chinese/Korean/Japanese/whatever. It was... weird. |
The next highlight came about 3 weeks into German classes, when I got to see NICKI MINAJ. YASSSSS. I was so bummed for missing out on Pentatonix, so in the rage I bought ticket to see the Queen of Rap in Frankfurt, which entailed me to a weekend trip to Frankfurt as well. And boy I wasn't disappointed. While the experience of going to a concert alone was quite intimidating and my shy self wouldn't allow me to talk to random people (something I definitely need to work on - he said for the 1180321048 time), when Nicki came out I was like YASSSSSSSSSSSSSS QUEEEEEEEENNN worth all them waiting (she kept us waiting for like 30 minutes which resulted in a few boos - but the crew was also taking forever to remove the opening artists' stage and props so idk...) Speaking of which I got to see ESTER DEAN! Not like I'm a huge fan of her or anything but seeing someone I know was definitely fun, and she was really goooood. So was Trey Songz but I didn't know his songs so while everyone went crazy I was just like. Uhm. BUT NICKI WAS EVERYTHING! She was energetic, her voice was good, her rap was on point, her looks were on fleek. One of my favourite moments of the show was when she was introducing Anaconda and she was like:
"Now I'm not sure if you know this next song, but...[MY ANACONDA DON'T played in the background] [everyone went crazy]"
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| The Pinkprint |
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| QUEEN |
The next day I checked out and then explored Frankfurt on a walking tour. I met a Singaporean girl who's working in Frankfurt and we had a nice conversation along the tour. My tour guide was really great too and he showed us both the touristy and the less touristy sites of Frankfurt, which was kinda nice. Many people say Frankfurt is not really a tourist destination as there are not many interesting things there, and I guess that's kinda true, but it's always nice to just explore a new city. So that was what I did for the next few hours, and I SHOPPED a lot lol. It was kind of the plan that I'd go to Frankfurt and shop at Primark because there's no Primark in Bonn and at that time I couldn't just go to Cologne anytime I wanted to because I didn't have the public transport card yet. So I went a bit crazy.
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| Frankfurt Hbf. Apparenly 1.3m passengers pass by this station everyday. 1.3m. O.o |
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I like taking photos of train station signs. For some reasons.
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| Frankfurt Oper |
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| My Primark shopping bag, which as you can see, has some stuffs I bought earlier from H&M. Oops #shopaholic |
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| Frankfurt green sauce! It's really gooood. |
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| A piece of Berlin wall that made it to Frankfurt (and escaped the crazy graffitis in Berlin) |
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| It was a gloomy day in Frankfurt |
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| A bridge with love locks (seriously, which European bridges don't have love locks?) and random Greek inscriptions |
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| Frankfurt in a frame. |
Speaking of crazy, I HAD CHIPOTLE for the first time in Frankfurt! Being way over-hyped for no reason by YouTubers (blame shep689 and iisuperwomanii), I was very excited making my way to the ONLY Chipotle in Europe (which happened to be next to the concert venue) and had a burrito on Friday AND a burrito bowl on Saturday LOL. I took away the burrito bowl with the intention of eating it for breakfast when I came back to Bonn, but I couldn't resist the temptation on the train back and had it there. And it was soooo good. While the burrito didn't live up to (my unrealistically high) expectations, the burrito bowl was EVERYTHING - probably because everything was mixed around nicely so all the flavours were amazing.
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| 'Nuff said. |
The eventful weekend continued in Bonn because we had a small excursion/hike to the nearby hill of Drachenfelds. It was nice to go on a refreshing (and not that tiring) hike, and the view of Bonn from above was amazing! There was also a random ruin on top of the hill that I'm not sure was what exactly, but that didn't stop me from taking photos (duh.) I told myself and my friends that we should do another hike in the summer when it wasn't too cold, and I hope that that would come true because we have about a month left in Bonn haha oops.
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| I'm in London! But not really. |
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| Profile pic worthy? Hell yes (refer to my Google+ profile pic lol) |
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| Bonn from above! |
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| Not really sure where I was going with this (geddit?) |
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| <3 |
K and because it is so damn hard to add photos from Google Photos to the blog post (I spent 10 minutes scrolling down all my photos so it will reach the photos from March zzz) here is a compilation of random photos within this time period that I would like to share for no reason:
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| What the caption said. I think this is my first meal made ever. Sidenote: the food I make is either super unhealthy (like full of oil, mayonnaise, egg and unhealthy protein in general) or super healthy (vegetarian because I don't know how to cook meat) |
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| MY FIRST FRIED RICE and it was not bad. #lifegoalsachieved |
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| Karaoke night! I miss these already :( |
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| We had some fancy wine-tasting and cheese-eating. |
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| What kind of selfie is this I can't. |
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| THE SCHNITZEL IS HUGE. I was so full I couldn't breathe. |
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| A really nice cake from Café Blau. This is from the last day of German classes. |
I realised that this blog post is all over the place and not chronological at all. SORRY ABOUT IT. But seriously though, I think orientation was the best time I had in Bonn, and while all the subsequent travelling and stuff are fun in a different way, I miss my friends (even though we stay in the same city but different places and different classes haiz - I rarely got to see them after orientation.) Nonetheless I'm glad to have made some really good friends and in fact, I'll be off later to see some of them! There's so much catching up to do. And I need people to talk to (surprise pt. 2!) Lastly, I hope it won't be long until I post my next blog post, which will most likely be about my adventures to Muenster and the Netherlands! Wheee.
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