Stockholm CNY (16th to 18th Feb)

My first CNY away from home.. decided to make a long-awaited trip down to Stockholm to join the guys for reunion dinner... Stockholm's really different from Linkoping.. you practically see asians everywhere you go... the capital also feels more lively and vibrant.. Anyway didnt really do much on the first night besides cooking a successful meal of carbonara with duan and heading down to town for some nightspots to chill with a couple of NOC guys.. but wasnt all that happening at the club since the ppl seemed to belong to another generation and the music sounded really weird..

Our first attempt at homecooked carbonara... Tastes GOOD!

Duan brought me around to explore the various parts of the city the following day... Well, as usual he was busy with his photo-taking while i had to play his porter carrying his camera bag around (kinda like Phileas Fogg and his manservant Passepartout).. but no complaints since i left some of my stuff in his bag too.. headed down to Gamla Stan which is the old town of Stockholm... it was a splendid trip indeed... the town consists of medieval alleyways, cobbled streets, and archaic architecture.. we visited the Royal Palace built in the 18th century guarded by Swedish soldiers and also marvelled at the charm of its medieval and Renaissance architecture of the town.. the cafes and restaurants along the streets exhibited a delightful ambience in the evening hours..

Stockholm City:

The Master...
And his Slave.

The main shopping street: Drottninggatan

The shopping malls:

Gotta try this sometime man!

Gamla Stan: Royal Palace

We found this in one of the alleys... not sure what it symbolises though.
Care for some Ice-cream in this cold weather?

Our reunion dinner plan met with a major hiccup as 4 of the group were trapped in Riga.. me duan and jm had no choice but to go ahead without them.. it wasnt exactly that bad since the 3 of us got to finish up all the meat that we bought... had a great time gorging ourselves though cooking in 2 pathetically minute rice-cookers which took ages for the soup to boil...

The spread...
With the dwindled participants...

Woke up really early the next morning to skype home to wish my granny and family... Feels really weird that i'm seeing them on the computer this year round... but it certainly feels good to see everyone happy... I miss my new year goodiesss!

Okie that's all for now.. time to hit the sack.. enjoy the pics and Happy Chinese New Year everyone! ;) Anyway thanks to duan for his kind hospitality!

A recap on the happenings over the past week.. Headed downtown on tues for an ASIAN buffet at a restaurant by the name of "Ming Palace".. Upon entering the place, it gives a very Chinese kinda feeling... probably because of the decor and the chinese waiters... However, these waiters cant speak mandarin.. they spoke to us in English and we later realised that they could converse in Cantonese too so we reckoned that they might have come from Hong Kong or something... Well, the food at Ming Palace wasnt exactly that fantastic.. there was a lack of variety but at least we got the rare chance to try some asian food after all.. it wasnt really that cheap too... around 17sgd per pax.. but the thought of asian cuisine was too tempting to resist..

"Asian Food Galore"

If you think that we ended up gorging ourselves, then you're wrong.. i think we only spent like an hour there even though we planned to spend 3 initially... I myself only had 2 servings of food.. Apparently, we noticed that the Swedish dont exactly maximise their full potential for a buffet meal.. some of them only came in for 1 serving of food.. as if it was just a normal meal.. perhaps they were put off by the lack of variety too.. LOL...

Got really pissed that some of my food disappeared from my kitchen as some of you might have known alr... suspect it's the doing of some neighbours of mine... Wait till i catch them RED-HANDED! Anyway, had my first swedish language lesson too.. it is really difficult.. especially when i cant seem to roll my tongue to pronounce some words.. hopefully i can manage a pass..

Another potluck party at Martin's place yesterday... this time round it felt more enjoyable... the food was good too... we had fried rice, wanton and stewed sausages.. the swedes were busy teaching us swedish language while we singaporeans reciprocated by teaching them some chinese words and phrase... it was totally hilarious since both groups of us had difficulty pronouncing each other's mother tongue..

The host with his guests

The food and Booze

Okie... time for bed.. to end it off, here's some pics of the food that we singaporeans have been preparing for our dinner here...

Clockwise from left: Steamed egg with minced pork, chicken with mushroom, kailan with carrots.

Weekend getaway at Kaunas (2nd to 4th Feb)

It wasnt exactly fun for one to be up at 5am in the morning but i did it with great anticipation as i embarked on my journey to Skavsta Airport in Stockholm, all set for a weekend getaway at Kaunas (Lithuania). This happens to be my first trip out of Sweden and the fact that my air tickets only cost me 2SEK made it even more satisfying. Anyway, the journey to the airport took me 2.5 hours and i did it by asking around and figuring out my way there. By the time i got to Skavsta, i was really early and had to wait another 2 hours for duan and his friends. They were really nice and friendly, most of them from NUS too.. apart from 2 Italians and 1 Canadian.

This is what Linkoping looks like at 5am.. Not a single soul in sight...

Check out those sleepy eyes.

Skavsta's really a small airport which serves only budget airlines around Europe like ryanair and wizzair... the flight there was pretty alright.. the aircraft was actually a Boeing 737... Arrived at Kaunas within an hour or so and everything seemed to be so rushed as the bus was arriving soon.. After grabbing a local map from the Kaunas airport and doing some asking around (as usual) on board the bus, we finally made it to the town.. Due to some minor screwups and miscommunication (the Lithuanians speak really lousy English), we only managed to get to our rented apartment at 4pm in the afternoon... But i must say the apartment was fantastic... super spacious and equipped with most stuff... supposedly a 6-person apartment but it accomodated 9 of us comfortably! What's more it's really cheap... just 30sgd for 2 nights... LOL..

Skavsta Airport:

Waiting.. waiting.. bored!~=(

A look at the surroundings of my lodging:

Make a guess what's this!

Check out my apartment:

New Friends: Kudus, Fabian, Jackson and Marcus from Italy..

1 out of 3 of the rooms.

The rest of the day was just spent walking around the city for nice restaurants and nightspots for us to chill... the weather at Kaunas is comparable to that in Sweden, cold winds blowing throughout the night... and i must say the central is like a ghost town.. even on a friday night... the streets were really empty with occasional passers-by brushing past us...

Me and duan having our first meal in Kaunas..

Passed by a Casino along the main street... there are several casinoes around the area...

Kudus, Fabian and me savouring some piping hot kebab while out in the cold streets...

The next day was spent mostly walking around the town again... exploring the shops around the area, scouting for cheap stuff which we can bring back to Sweden.. finally the city seemed less dead on a Saturday afternoon and we saw a few of the familiar big names like Nike, Adiddas, MNG and Sisley... but the stuff that they were selling were no less expensive... we actually witnessed a demonstration against capitalism by some young punks... havent seen such stuff in Sweden before.. Tried some Lithuanian cuisines along the way and decided to walk down to the Old Town instead to take pictures and explore the Kaunas Castle which wasnt really that exhilarating frankly speaking... so we ended up going back to our apartment empty-handed..

Kudus' sourvenir from Kaunas was a brochure by the demonstrators.. lol..

Lithuanian pork-chop.. coated with an omelette.. Good Stuff!

Now for the Old Town:

Finally had the chance to wear my shades..

Kaunas Castle

On the whole, Kaunas is really boring... except for some of the cheap goods like groceries and alcohol.. what's more exasperating is not being able to communicate effectively in English with the locals! But it's been really fun hanging out with the new guys!=)

Graffiti's really common in Lithuania...