Updates for the past few days

I realised, or rather I know I've not been really updating much here. Well, partly because the last two nights I was bunking in my friends' room somewhere else because we hung out till like the wee hours and the freaking temperature outside is so cold that I didn't really want to walk all the way back to my own place. We were all like walking ice creams even when walking to my friend's place, if I were to walk on further to my own place, I'd have become Mr. Snowman.

Sunday

Anyway, after my excursion to the south-eastern part of Sweden on Saturday, I went to the south-western part on Sunday. It's a very peaceful idyllic kind of place where retirees just stay there and relax all day long. And there's this very beautiful beach which only becomes crowded during the warmer summer days, according to one resident there. The wind there was so chilly but the people there still jump into the sea from the jetty without caring about the cold. That's really crazy.

*benedict from SMU*

*the bus we took*

*beautiful beach*

*at the beach*

*lunch*

*look at the kind of cars they drive there*

*mini fountain*

*bird watchers*

*jellyfishes*

*that man just came out of the water*

*testing the water for myself... brrr*

*on the jetty*

*last picture of the beach*

*going back to Lund*

Monday

After lessons, we went to eat dinner at Max - Sweden's famous fast food chain. The burgers are huge and I guess all of us really miss eating fries at that point in time. For my case, I changed my salad to fries haha!

*huge signboard*

*the fastfood chain*

*my yummy meal*

*mylene, huimin, sharon, me, clement*

*clement*

*mylene*

*huimin*

*well, i got bullied, all the flags on me*

Tuesday

Nothing great happened on Tuesday except that we had curry chicken for dinner... yummyz.

*curry chicken, finally!!*

Wednesday

I saw this car....

*get my point? haha*

Yesterday was great, we prepared our own chicken cutlet and fish & chips, just that funny things happen while cooking. The fire alarm went off cos when we deep-fry the fishes, the smoke detector sensed the smoke. faints. So everyone on the floor was alarmed, haha... wad an experience. No more deep-frying in future.

After dinner, we had a party to go to at one of the Student Nations. In Lund University, we have the Students Union and the Student Nations. The Nations are basically just different clubs and societies. Before the party, we had our own pre-party in the room with vodka and pepsi, as usual, afterwhich we headed down for the party. It's so much more cheaper than going Zouk seriously haha. Some of the music is really wonderful and the whole party ended with a couple of slow songs where you see everybody suddenly grabbing a partner to dance to the slow music, while we just stood there not knowing what to do. But still, it was fun... I wonder how the days will be like once school starts. I guess that everyone will still continue partying away, very much different from the students in Singapore.

*kaihong, huimin, me, clement*

*us with some other international students*

And here are some random pictures that I've got of us...

*us and Barbara from Austria*

*one of our dinner gatherings*

Alright, I guess that's all for now. I really hope the weather changes for the better, it's too early to be so cold I believe. Okay, I will update when more pictures come in ^_^ cheerios!

A trip down to southern Sweden

I took a trip down to southern Sweden today, a 2-hour ride from Lund, to the countryside region. Very nice landscape they have and the weather is really very nice. I had sort of a mini history lesson today, about the war between Sweden and Denmark many centuries ago, and how Sweden won over this county from Denmark. This county, which includes Lund, is known as Skåne (pronounced as score-ner), and it used to be part of Denmark until it lost it to Sweden in the war. But still some people here continue to have the strong feeling of a sense of belonging to Denmark.

Having embarked on that mini history lesson, let me bring you on a mini virtual tour to Glimmingehus. It is said to be the best preserved medieval castle in Scandinavia, and it used to act as a fort when the piece of land still belonged to Denmark.

*the castle*

*i was there...*

*the entrance to the castle*

*the kitchen*

The kitchen is where the "central heating system" originates and heats up the whole castle especially during cold periods. The hot air that is released from baking bread goes up into a hole (the red bricks above) and from there, it's like a duct which transports the hot air to every single room in the castle. That's high medieval technology for you.

*seats where people sit and chat during peace time*

*a typical doorway in the castle*

*this is the conference room, with the wine table in the centre*

*this is the banquet room*

Notice the floor of the banquet room is made up of half wooden planks and half stone bricks. The reason for doing so is that the wooden plank area is for dancing after the people living in there had their meals. The stone brick area is where the tables for meals are placed.

*a toilet in the banquet room*

*this is a religious artifact*

*this is not religious*

The person crucified on the cross is not Jesus Christ. And nothing in the Bible mentioned anything about a dog being present at the bottom of the cross during the crucification. The person on the cross seems to be the person who started the work on this castle, and the person kneeling down is some sort of advisor that is grateful to him for starting work on this castle. The dog, i can't remember whose it is... but legend has it that the ghost of the dog is still haunting the area there, and if one sees a black dog near that area at night, a loved one would die. Kinda scary huh.... sends chills down my spine.

*this is a table that is covering a hole which is behind a fireplace*

This artifact is actually quite interesting but kinda eerie too. It is said that during the Danish-Swedish war, a danish lady fell in love with a swedish soldier, and she leaked out Danish military intelligence to the Swedish army. Hence she was captured by the Danish soldiers and they kept her imprisoned in this hole behind the fireplace, and embedded a table into the hole to keep her in there and starve her to death. The hole on the left side is for her to breathe. Here comes the eerie part. Just slightly before Halloween, around the day that the lady died, there would be cries heard coming from inside, asking people to let her out. And if you are actually brave enough to put your hand into the hole, you can actually feel the hair of the girl. However, nobody is to actually remove the table upon hearing the cries, for it is said that if the table should be removed, the world would come to an end. Hence, to ensure that the table is not removed, somebody drew a picture on the table top to let people know that this table should never be removed. I feel cold when I'm typing all of these... geez...

*the moat and what used to be a draw-bridge in the past*

*me*

*Thomas, from Switzerland*

*Pieter, my neighbour from Belgium*

Well, I had to leave to head for my next destination which is known as Ales Stenar, which is located just above the small fishing village of Kåseberga. Along the way, I couldn't help but take photos of the countryside. The road is so narrow, the land is so large and is used for agricultural purposes. People in the countryside also keep geese, horses and cows.

*the road...*

*... so narrow that the car had to let the coach pass first*

*farming lands beside the road*

*a farm that grows vegetables*

But anyhow, we arrived at Kåseberga and the view is breath-taking. The blue colour of the sea is really beautiful and the wind is uber powerful there.

*the harbour*

*the sea*

*beautiful waves*

*beautiful bike*

*beautiful car*

*commencing the climb to Ales Stenar*

*eat and enjoy the view from above*

*view of harbour from the top*

*reaching soon*

*see Ales Stenar upfront?*

*Ales Stenar - Sweden's version of Stonehenge*

*the beautiful sea and breeze*

*i like this picture*

*X marks the spot*

*Patt, from Thailand*

*cows*

I began to feel hungry after that since it was lunch time and we headed back down towards the harbour for lunch. They sell fish-stuffs, like salmon and eel. I tried the fried eel with whipped potato - it's quite delicious actually.

*the grilled salmon wic i didn't try*

*fried eel with whipped potato*

*view from where i was eating at*

*Lea from Germany and Mag from Singapore*

On the way back to Lund, I was so exhausted that I fell asleep throughout the journey back. And soon after, my block had a gathering downstairs in a get-to-know-each-other session haha. Got to know quite a number of Japanese, Dutch, Germans... yeah all seem to be nice people I guess haha. And I realised that mine is an International Dorm. There were no Swedish students living with us. Doesn't really matter haha, if there were any Swedish, they'd most probably stick to their own clique.

Really tired now. Gotta go sleep.