garden gnomes

garden gnomes. this is one of the first unfamiliar sights i encountered when i touch downeded in europe. i was in a metro from munich airport to the city and caught sight of this at a stop on the way.

we don’t have a culture for garden gnomes back home. we got all sorts of other ornamental stuff, like frogs or swans and stuff for feng shui purposes but no gnomes.

my only knowledge of garden gnomes are from fairy tale books that i read as a kid. i learnt that garden gnomes are a german thing and gnomes symbolise helpfulness and the gnomes are said to come alive and help with the gardens at night.

but gnomes are also known to be the object of pranks. another german thing. i don’t know if i understand it well enough, but it is something about stealing the other guy’s gnome and making it reappear somewhere else.

sounds like fun, kan? i am so going to put a gnome when i get my own garden nanti. sorry la, gambar is taken from jauh. i don’t think it would have been very polite to climb into people punya garden to take a picture of their gnomes. nanti they think i’m trying to steal it pulak.

the people we meet

this post is dedicated to all the people i met while i was in europe. i actually regret that i have not taken more photos, especially with my roommates. i am glad that some of us have hooked up via facebook tho.

that’s from the meeting i attended. i don’t often put work related pictures on this blog, but he was wearing a lederhosen and i wanted to share that. i have an awesome story about lederhosens and an old german beer house in munich. if we ever meet, ask me.

that’s my free tour guide masa kat munich. well actually, there were four of them and there were a big group of us. i actually found a group picture on the tour website but i am tiny there.

the picture is of jared, but i fell into heidi’s group instead. she’s in the big group picture.

and that’s spike, the guide in paris who’s from the same company. i like the idea of free tours. i know that it would never work in malaysia because we don’t have a tipping culture and we’d be too cheapskates to make it worthwhile for the guide anyway. but i think have free tours in europe is so cool for poor asian backpackers. spike is a history major at a college in paris and i think its so awesome that she takes time to look up trivia and interesting facts to share with us during the tour. i suppose when you work on tips, you really got to impress the customers.

i wish i had a picture with ena, my bosnian-swedish roommate at that hostel in paris. ena, if you are reading this, i hope you and the spanish guy are having a wonderful time with your apartment with a garden! :)

and i wish i took a photo with the bulgarian guy who was eating cheese at the hostel courtyard, just in case he was telling the truth when he told me that he’s an actor and he’ll be world famous someday.

and that is my guide in barcelona and he’s every bit as a hippy as he looks. he’s from a different tour company, but they also offer free tours for the cheapskate traveller. the way the tour is conducted is basically the same but this guy is more casual than the other company. casual is not a bad thing, though. since the group that gathered for the day were mostly young and curious, we moved at a very relaxed pace.

lupa pulak nama mamat ni.

that’s me with some of my roommates (claire and lilian – both on the right) who went on the barcelona free tour. i found out that the tour company is actually on facebook too and has pictures of us on their photo page there also.

my roommates in barcelona were an unforgetable group of people.

the dorm had eight beds and the thing is, i spent quite some time in barcelona and i met many roommates who came and went.

thing was, there were these other three guys who stayed almost as long as i did and we introduced and reintroduced ourselves to new roommates over and over again.

the three guys are spanish, one of the canary islands (see oscar – i remember!!!) and the other two (fernando and pablo) from a district near madrid. i had the funniest time testing my barely developed spanish with them.

oscar, if you are reading this, i hope you’re having fun in barcelona and have found a job already! :)

escrida is left. deretcha is right. i will not forget that. i just hope i got the spelling correct.

two of the guys speak very little english but they were just the funniest. they gave me some spanish mp3s which i know i will never completely understand.

now you tell me – doesn’t the guy in the baju belang nampak macam edward cullen from the twilight movie?

i met these girls for two evenings in barcelona because we’re supposed to go see flamenco together. the one on the right is italian. the one on the left is spanish. thing is, we needed a foursome to get the tour group going and after two days, it never happened. instead, we spent the evenings by the fountain talking about everything from rome to art to boyfriends.

speaking of rome, i have already introduced you to carlo, one of the two femes photographers i met up with. i followed his friends and family to the world press photo exhibition while i was there too, which i pretty damn cool. his daughter andrea, is an intense ball of energy. put her with her cousin and they become unstoppable.

last, but not least, this is one of my six roommates in rome. he’s irish. i forgot his name, but i remember that it starts with an “F”. evidently, he is unconscious. the reason for that is that he came back at 4am the night before completely intoxicated. just how drunk? by 5am, he has puked all over the shared bathroom floor and dragged some of the mess into the dorm. that’s not his bed he’s landed on either. his pants and shoes are in the corridor and his passport is on the floor.

so there you have it, folks. just some of the colourful characters that made the trip all that more interesting. have an awesome weekend. peace. out.

the first world state of mind

i actually had a lot of expectations in venturing to western europe. of course i wanted to see the art and the history and all. but i had expected a wise air of maturity. a sophistication. all that stuff they told us in morals and ethics classes about a well-behaved civil society of cultured people.

you know where i am getting but mind, i was not completely disappointed. flying over germany was exactly how i envisioned a first world country would be. solar panels. wind turbines. and then in the train to the airport, i notice a little graffiti in the tunnel walls and thought, its okay, we got some creative vandalism at home too.

but as i traveled to paris, the graffiti got more and more and from tunnels, they spanned onto walls of almost the entire track passage. in barcelona, the graffiti crept onto parts of the train. by the time i got to rome, the trains are completely covered on colourful spray paints (pic).

and while the trains themselves are efficient – they come every five minutes, tops – but they are old. i suppose it says something about their engineering if old carriages like those are till used, but i remember standing in a train station in paris feeling kinda disappointed that the train arriving was a box-shaped thing with doors that snapped like an impatient french lady.

heck, i remember taking the train back to my hostel in paris one night, and a drunk man sat beside me and started mumbling to me. he went on and on and on. i was still a few stops from my station and i swapped seats since the train was not full. people looked. it was not nice.

i had maybe too high of an expectation of what a first world state of mind would, or should be. appreciation for health and well-being was one of them. but here’s the truth, majority of the locals i met smoked. you think a lot of people smoke at home, well double or triple that make them all chain smokers while you’re at it. in a crowded street, every other person you see is smoking.

i have nothing against smokers, but i am just shocked by the magnitude. there are cigarette vending machines almost everywhere. people in business suits smoked. parents would smoke in front of children and even while pushing prams. young people, old people, rich-looking ones, homeless, boys, girls, there is specific no demographic to it.

there was a time i was sitting on some steps in trastevere, rome, and a girl with dreadlocks asked me if i had a lighter. and i told her that i did not smoke. she had to pause awhile to register that idea before moving on to ask someone else.

and the LITTER! oh. my. god. they litter everywhere. there is a bin there, but they still litter. i think this is my greatest shock. name it, they’ve discarded it. sweet wrappers. cigarette boxes. cigarette buds. used plastic cups. bits of whatever. in germany, not so bad. paris, more (to my absolute shock and horror). as for barcelona and rome, there was a joke in my hostel that those two cities smell like washrooms – and this is not completely untrue.

crossing roads. in germany, they wait until the little red man turns greens before they cross the streets – even if there are no cars on the road. in paris, if there are no cars, they would sometimes cross the smaller road even if the little red man is not green. in barcelona, if you gather a group big enough, you can stop traffic. in rome, if you run fast enough, you can get across the road before oncoming cars bashes you to bits.

the homeless and beggers on the street are not a nice story. i mean, homeless and beggers anywhere is not a nice story. but over here, i am confused and a greater part of me really does not know how to feel about it. i see immigrants, mostly illegal i am told, on the streets, and refugees and gypsies – all looking for a handout. they tell me stories of war and dead family members and how they come in search of a new life.

and i hear stories about syndicates and how they use these sob stories of the war to pry for money. they wait at the gates of great churches and cathedrals and bear family photos. a number resort to stealing and pickpocketing – i hear so many stories of these too.

walking on the street at night, i see some streets staggered with drunkards, with a bottle in one hand and a foul word on their lips. they eventually collapse on the steps that would be their refuge for the night. steps that are more often a monument of some of the oldest and greatest civilisations in european history, or in the shadow of one, at least.

these are just some examples of my experiences. i had a brazillian roommate in barcelona who shared the same concerns. the latin american people are more caliante, she tells me. i tell her that asians are friendlier.

you know how there are all those campaigns at home that tells us to look to the west for technology and and the first world mentality? i fear that i don’t quite know what is that first world mentality anymore. for the most part, i am undecided about how i feel about europe. i have no regrets taking the trip and would certainly do it all over again. but, you know.

there is something about roving in that continent that gives me the acute awareness of my asianness, and a sense of pride that i have for being an asian. there is just something about these europeans that i just don’t want to be, and i can’t quite put my finger on that that is.

and it is not that europe was a terrible experience. i had loads of fun that i will share with you on the next post (wait for it! it’s gonna be awesome).

maybe i just went about europe the wrong way. maybe things would have been a universe of difference if i stayed at one of those posh hotels with thick embroided drapes and egyption silk bathrobes. things might have been different if i took those fancy tours with a flag waving guide and everyone had matching hats.

but this is the tale of the poor backpacker who walked in the back lanes of europe and found some of the cobbled roads a little uneven.

eating through the world

i have been catching up on my food this past few days. my nasi kandar. my hakka mee. my nasi lemak. char kuey teow. my ayam madu. my rendang. my assam fish. everything pedas pedas pedas! god, how i missed the flavours… how i missed food that actually had any trace of flavour at all!

fine. i’m being unfair. italy tasted like tomato.

thing is, europe IS expensive for the poor asian backpacker. i remember what mom used to tell me when i was put on a budget back in university – the poor student stinges on everything except food. so i walked everywhere on campus (kolej matrix was the furthest thing you can get from the faculty back then) and bought second and third hand books from seniors. but for the humble RM50 per week, i could still scrape at least two square meals a day and ice cream when i felt like it.

fast forward ten years and a whole different continent, one modest meal with no drinks costs me 10 euros. that’s 47.50 ringgit. and that’s drinking from water fountains and eating in narrow cafeterias. for 6 euros, maybe i could get a sandwich with yesterday’s baguette.

and so, i fell into the routine of the poor backpacker scrimping through, just to see the world. hog as much bread as possible from the hostel breakfast no matter how awful they are. one, and only one meal a day outside. and for dinner, cheap dried pasta and tomato sauce that i buy from the local grocery store and cook myself in the hostel kitchen.

i know this sounds so sad, but one of the happiest time i had in barcelona was when i found dried mee sua in the tiniest grocery shop an hour away from my hostel. i bought a packet for 90 euro cents (almost 5 ringgit), a box of chicken stock for 2 euros (almost 10 ringgit) and a packet of chopped vegetables for 60 euro cents (when nobody buys fresh vegetables and they are no yet bad, but just old, they chop it up and sell it in packets). i went back to my hostel kitchen and portioned the box of chicken stock in two. that made two pots of mee sua noodle soup. that’s two days’ worth of dinners. PROPER DINNERS, mind you! i tell you, i happily burnt my tongue eating the noodles.

other times, i found microwave packed food and most of them are as lousy at it sounds. the only consolation is that it is cheap. it is not as filling as i would like it to be, but drink enough water and the growling goes away.

i know what you would tell me the magic word is: maggi! i almost burnt my mouth off drinking maggi soup in paris. the kitchen had a pot, but no bowls, and no spoons. please, don’t even try to imagine. thing is, you don’t want to live on just maggi. seriously.

the worse worse worse is rice. european rice is so different. we have nice long grain whole rice. they have short, fat sticky rice. the rice does not absorb any of the flavours from anything. there was a time i bought a box of mircowavable “curry flavoured rice” and it was the most tasteless thing i have ever put in my mouth. every grain was hard and even though i tried to steam it with water, it stayed hard. i mixed the rice in a bowl of instant chicken soup which resulted in disaster.

i found the word “basmati” on some of the microwave packs and even that was unfamiliar. i found that the rice grains were mixed with european rice. the result was weird. the pack came with a packet of microwavable chicken masala which was anything but spicy. no trace of curry. no trace of chili. just pepper and tomato.

one of the travellers in the kitchen says, you can tell an asian by how she inspects her rice. that is true.

i find that a lot of europeans can do with cold food for days and days and days. there is no urgency for hot food. there is simplicity without attention to strong flavours. and while i am so so so fascinated by the history and art and culture and technology of european countries, i don’t think i can eat like them. even if i was not the poor backpacker and could afford proper meals, i don’t think i can be the one who eats cold food for days at a stretch.

would i do it again – of course i would. everything about europe was a new experience and i have no regrets for seeing what i had. but i might packed a little differently. i would have left the cream crackers i brought with me at home. i would have packed dried bee hoon and little bottles of spices and dried chilli with me. i would have packed rice. heck, i would have packed ikan bilis.

i love malaysian food.

someone spotted me being a cheapo in munich

do you believe in *magic*?

a self gratification kinda post but hey, you’d do this too is you were me so don’t start with me on being perasan. i am a poor asian backpacker in a continent where the currency is almost five times greater than mine. i am therefore entitled my jakun moments.

so yes, i am pretty big in germany too, apparently. kthxbai.

doing that nazi hitler thing is illegal here

it is sunny in munich. now who are all those people asking me to bring a thousand layers of jackets to europe, har? who’s the genuis who’s telling me to bring scarves la, gloves la, and all those things? it is so sunny, it is almost like back home.

two days of meeting here, but plenty of time to walk around. don’t ask me where i have been. i can’t pronunce anything in german and i’m not even going to try because they’re mostly glottal. but i’ll tell you this: it’s nice and pretty here in munich. very much like a first world country, and what i’d imagine it to be.

people here have a chill out attitude. my favourite is the whole thing about being able to just go out and sit and watch people and i would fit right in because everyone is doing it.

saw a bloomed tulip for the first time. does not look like a tulip like those back home. so that’s pretty cool.

the hang man’s lunch

the hang man’s lunch at munich airport – a fine demonstration of the german sense of humour.

of course, convert 95 euro cents into ringgit, and that item is almost five ringgit, man!

it’s so windy here… whoooo~~~

with love from munich. whee~!

did you know that there is no speed limit for highways in germany?! and with all those german precision cars?! have you any idea how fast these people actually go?!!!

am in munich, germany (can’t you hear the cuckcoo clocks?) and completely out of sync with my biology. the temperature is weird. the way the sun sets is weird. the humidity is weird.

yesterday i went to sleep at 5pm local time and woke up somewhere around 4am.

hello, jet lag.