Willkommen Zum Oktoberfest!

Beer + pork knuckles + big band + singing Germans + carnival + great friends + lotsa FUN = Oktoberfest 2008!!!

Salzburg - Sound of Music!

"The hills are alive with the sound of music

With songs they have sung for a thousand years

The hills fill my heart with the sound of music

My heart wants to sing every song it hears"

My visit to "Sound of Music" Land, though short, was a fantastic one!

Right after school on a sunny Friday afternoon, we SCOOTED off to the train station, and arrived in Salzburg after a 5-hr journey from St Gallen. (I love travelling by train. You get a comfortable seat and a good view through the large windows...it's probably the best way to travel around Europe!)

Oh and Ems, this photo is for you :) Doggie riding a train!

Janelle and I - being such good navigators (!!) - found our way to the youth hostel effortlessly haha :)

There's a free screening of the Sound of Music movie every night at the hostel too. Cool huh :) So all the tourists and Sound of Music fans can sit down and d0 a little "recap" of the songs and scenes before going for the tour the next day!

Early the next morning, we left for the much-anticipated Sound of Music tour! Do some of these scenes look familiar? :) Ems, go watch the Sound of Music again and see if you can identify these places!

Later in the afternoon, we also went for a tour of a salt mine (salt mining was a major source of revenue for Austria in the past). This tour was such an experience! We were dressed up in grey mining suits, took rides through kilometres of dark mining tunnels, slid down steep slopes, and crossed a lake on a raft. Almost felt as if we were in some theme park!

The tours also took us to 2 charming little towns - one by the Lake Mondsee, and another town called Berchtesgaden (this is actually a border town in Germany).

And of course not forgetting the breathtaking mountains and lakes that accompanied us everywhere. Indeed, every turn the bus made along the winding mountain road presented us with yet another mountain peak, another castle perched on a hill, another beautiful lake.

"The hills are alive with the sound of music
With songs they have sung for a thousand years
The hills fill my heart with the sound of music
My heart wants to sing every song it hears

My heart wants to beat like the wings of the birds that rise from the lake to the trees

My heart wants to sigh like a chime that flies from a church on a breeze

To laugh like a brook when it trips and falls overstones on its way

To sing through the night like a lark who is learning to pray

I go to the hills when my heart is lonely

I know I will hear what I've heard before
My heart will be blessed with the sound of music

And I'll sing once more"

The early arrival of winter?

This is my winter jacket - the thickest and warmest jacket I brought to St Gallen, and my supposedly "most potent" weapon against the cold weather here.

When I unpacked my luggage after moving into my room, I tucked this jacket away at the back of my wardrobe, thinking that I won't be needing it until a few months' time. But on Tuesday, I had to pull this potent weapon out from the depths of my wardrobe...because St Gallen is FREEZING!! Over the weekend, the temperature here dropped from 18 degrees to 5 degrees. CRAZY.

Maybe someday next week I'll wake up and see snow outside my window.

Rainy weekend travels - Lugano & Bellinzona

The weather forecast predicted it to be rainy across Switzerland over the weekend (with temperatures in St Gallen dipping to a low of 8 degrees C!). So I decided to escape the cold, dreary weekend to sunny Lugano in the south of Switzerland.

But even sunny Lugano wasn't spared of the rain, and we spent the whole Saturday exploring the city with soaking shoes and wet umbrellas :( Not exactly very enjoyable, especially when I know that Lake Lugano is supposed to look ten times more beautiful in good weather!


We woke up to slightly clearer skies on Sunday, however, and we grabbed the opportunity to take the funicular up to Monte Bre. The panoramic view of the lake, mountains and Lugano city definitely lifted my spirits!

Bits and pieces of Lugano look familiar to me, especially this William Tell statue along the lake!


I believe the Switzerland tour did take us here before...but it was like 7 or 8 years ago!! And we stopped so briefly at each city, I don't really remember what I saw at which place. I only remember we passed by Geneva, went to Lausanne (Olympic Museum), Lucerne, Lugano, St. Moritz, Zermatt. Took the cable car up the Matterhorn, and Mount Titlis (?), and also visited the Chateau de Chillon and Chapel Bridge. Oh and we popped by Lichtenstein too. But like all tour groups, we stopped so briefly at each place that it wasn't enough to form a "lasting impression". So I hope that I will have the chance to re-visit some of these places when I travel around Switzerland!

Anyway, after Lugano we headed up to Bellinzona, where we visited a magnificent old castle. The castle grounds are so well-preserved - just look at the photos!

A rainy but wonderful weekend, and a perfect start to the semester! :)

Missing home

I miss home on lonely afternoons and quiet nights
miss the delicious food mummy cooks (i don't even mind ah-ma's food)
miss my piano, my room
miss my family and my friends
miss Candy and how she squeezes with me for space on my bed
and i miss chatty giggly Emerline! :)

Homecooked meals

The food in St Gallen (and basically the whole Switzerland) is so expensive, we really have to cook our own meals!

My first few attempts at cooking:

Salmon cream pasta + a bowl of salad


Very healthy instant noodles with vege, beef, and eggs!

Doesn't look too bad right? haha :)

My beautiful room :)

Some pictures of my room/home for the next 4 months! It's bright and airy, clean, new and well-equipped. And I like my big bed :)

This is the common living area and my apartment mates! (Anya from Russia, Slavena from Bulgaria, and Joachim from Germany)

The view from my room window - there is a big park just opposite:

St Gallen!

It has been 5 days since I arrived in St Gallen. I've settled nicely into my apartment, done most of the administrative stuff (getting a residence permit and my St Gallen student ID card), bought a bus card, Swiss SIM card, and done my first round of groceries and laundry!

St Gallen is a REALLY small town, and you can get anywhere just by walking. Basically there's the university, a central marketplace (or town centre), and a train + bus station. Shops and supermarkets close early, bars and restaurants are usually too expensive, and there's practically NO SHOPPING!!! (I miss Orchard Rd and shopping malls) No wonder my apartment mates tell me that you don't come to St Gallen to get a life.

But while St Gallen might be "boring" as some people call it, I find the peaceful little town and rolling green hills a refreshing change from the skyscrapers and heavy traffic we get in Singapore. The university is situated on top of a hill, and when you look out of the window, you just see beautiful green hills and houses scattered across the fields. Halfway through German class, we can even hear cows moo-ing! Seems like a wonderful place to study and spend a semester :)

Looking forward to the start of school!