I'm just gonna do a quick photo blog entry on my Eastern Europe trip. hehe. This was a 9 day blitzkrieg tour of Eastern Europe with Chee Hui, my partner in crime...

Salzburg - 30 Mar - 1 Apr 07

Flew into Salzburg - hometown of Mozart, where we spent a couple of nights in Yoho Hostel.

The city at night.

It was quite a small city I must say (small = within walking distance from end to end) Made a couple of visits to the Mozart places:

Such as the Mozart Birth-house and Residence.

And we also visited the Fortress Hohensalzburg.

Day trip to Golling

We also made a day trip to Golling on the 2nd day cos we've kinda covered the main attractions in Salzburg and decided to head out to a less "touristy" place... which indeed was a great choice....

Set magnificently against the alps, Golling makes a wonderful getaway from the hustle and bustle of city life.



Of which, the main attraction was the Golling waterfall, which is 3km from the city centre/train station (took us ~30 mins to walk there), which we later found out was actually closed for the season, although we ignored the barricade and went through it...
Beautiful eh?

And then because we were thirsty and our bottles were empty, we decided to fill our bottles with nice, refreshing spring water from the river... and boy, i've never tasted water this good... (ok, maybe 2nd to Singapore's tap water... ;p) After a long and tiring trek to the falls, we headed to the town of Golling for some dinner.

We had initially wanted to try this restaurant which was recommended in our guide, but turns out that it's closed down/renamed and we couldn't find it, so we had to settle for something else, which wasn't at all a bad choice.

I can still remember the taste of the yummy roasted ribs.... SOOOOOO yummy... and of course, cheap beer to go with it. Eastern Europe is one of the few places on earth where beer is cheaper than any other drinks!

Gonna stop here for now to give me something to do for the next couple of days... ;p

Labels: Golling, Salzburg

aiyo, so sad, after watching Kanon... i'm at episode 19 of 24 now.. can't wait to finish it...

Apparently, it started off as a novel and got made into a game, and then got made into an anime (or so Wikipedia tells me). I must say the current animation is pretty amazing, with captivating musical accompaniment, with a pretty good storyline (it's a kinda fantasy, yet you want to believe it's true...) - you just can't watch one episode at a time... ;p

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Angele: well, i have exams till about 10 june i think, then after that i'll be in cambridge most of the time and then will be off to Scotland towards the end of june... when will you be in france/switzerland? come visit!

Jo!: i was in Austria (Salzburg + Vienna), Slovakia (Bratislava) and Czech (Prague + Pilsen). it was awesome... will post pictures and stories soon! :)

Labels: Anime, Kanon

Some shots of ducks and butterflies before I left for Eastern Europe which I have only managed to scan now... (It's another of my favourite roll of film... :))

A duck's nest... it appears that the mother duck has gone off for a little while... although she was back the next day...

For some reason, this photo didn't catch my eye the first time I saw it, and only when I was scanning it in did I realise what a beautiful shot this was... :)

Some plant which had leaves/flowers that looks like caterpillars...

Of ducks - my favourite shot in this roll... somehow this duck got into a nice pose when I clicked the shutter...

And butterflies.. this was somewhat the closest I ever got to a butterfly.. It was probably about 20cm from my lens, so close that I could see the proboscis going in and out of the flower sucking honey... Click on it and you will be able to see it up close... :)

The rest of the shots are available here. Don't be fooled by the poor quality thumbnails - the actual shots are richer in colour and contrast and detail. hehe.

Labels: Butterflies, Ducks, Photography

The last few weeks have been nothing but busy, yet amazing at the same time.

Having spent the first 9 days in Eastern Europe, back for a day, before zipping to training camp for two days and off again for a 10-day Geology field trip, i'm back in Cambridge feeling really spent, in addition to a fantastic tan - many thanks to the MANY HOURS spent in the sun, looking at castles, water and the rocks.

It looks like i'm being swayed to doing Geology next year now.... which I guess isn't all that surprising, considering that's what I applied to do in the first place...

For now, I'm doubly spent having had to unpack my room as well. I think I shall be heading off to bed early tonight!

I'm back! In the UK at least, although in less than 24 hour's time i will be scooting off to a training camp and then off to a field trip and won't be back for another 2 weeks or so. *frownz* am thinking if I want to go for the 2nd half of my field trip in the first place, since it's not compulsory for me, as i'm only doing Geology A......

In any case, it was an awesome trip to some of the central/Eastern European countries, and i'll try and put some photos up tonight, if not on Tuesday!

PS: and thanks for all the Birthday wishes!