Heidelberg - what a wondrous time is spring

My friends in GBP said I was a tourist.

they were apalled at how little modules i took in skol, and how i am never ard durin lessons. me and angeline, durin our easter trips had more or less felt like tourists, and somehow we never truly belonged, much as we wld like to experience the heart and soul of a foreign place. i think it helps if you know somebody in the country, be it a native or a non-native (coz tt means u dun haf to think so much, and navigate urself in this entirely new country of which u have zilch language competency in) and more imptantly, it helps to know the language. this time in heidelberg, with anthony, it is finally the wake-up call for me to really learn my german! coz the students in his student dorm alll spoke german, and in germany, duh , everyone speaks german. and anthony, for example, from day 1 spoke german wif everyone else, and didnt use any english. we all know tt german is a tough language, and somesay it takes 5 yrs in germany to master the language. the grammer is totally topsy turvey from english, and the pronounciation is killin me - with all the umlauts like ü ä and ö. i am somewhat gettin it, but i can hardly manage. an example of a question literally translated from german is, ´cld u a photo for us take?´ and all nouns have a gender. which is so crap, and there is this thing called high german, which means u use sind sie to address someone on a formal basis and du for informal. and if u dun noe the language, u wldnt be able to communicate, number one. number two, u cant understand the jokes, which is only effective in german, number three, you cant feel and appreciate the culture of the place. so in short, yes, i will put more effort into german. coz if i am interested to get a job in europe, german is one of the best third language for me to master.

i now really thinkin of my future. i have a rough idea, but the possibilites are endless for me. i mean now in heidelberg, it is a place to kick off ur shoes and sit by the river to read, and juz takin a stroll and hike up a hill under the bare trees, cool air, and rustling branches are enuf to set my mind wandering ..... of what the future holds for me. as alfred had told me, the world is your oyster, and most definitely, i am living my wildest dream. and more rolling times to come, im sure.

oh yes, has anyone heard of Blue and also The Double Life of Veronika? Adam, whom we met from Poland, told me to try to watch these films. Maybe u can, too. And yeah, i am in love wif Monty Phython! It is so damn hilarious, i m gona watch the entire collection! it is so irreverently humorous. i watched it while i wuz doin my dreads. Groch, the dreadmaker, definitely has a good collection of movies, it is amazin - coz he has a good Irish friend, and tts y he speaks good english. it wuz a good 15 hours to remember for a long time.

meanwhile, here is heidelberg (somewhat south of frankfurt), i muz say that anthony has been and amazing host. he brought me to the most beautiful places, and i will upload these photos when i reach back austria. juz a running commentary of our itinery to date...if u r interested.

6th apr-wed
despite taking a 13 hr train ride wif two transits and having less than two hours of consecutive sleep the entire night, i wuz well able to persist till 11pm. we did a tour of the small city centre called bismarckplatz and walked along hauptstrasse (our equivalent of orchard road), visited the castle up on the mountain - koenigstuehl(the highest point in heidelberg), lay on the grass under the sun, had two cones of ice-cream, and went to the bookshop where i bought two books. anthony called me a voyeur juz because the books i bought were largely bout the study of the inner workings of pple. anyway.

7th apr-thu
here in schriesheim(a village, 20 min bus ride), are the most beautiful and quaint lil houses my eyes have ever set its sights on. u can see a stream running beneath a small lil garage! and the pavements and roads are so narrow, if u never saw the inhabitants, u wld think they were really little people with small feet and small cars. the juxtaposition of the woody colour of the houses with the riot of bright refreshing colours from blooming flowers in spring makes for a very pleasing feast for the eyes. Of course the fresh air and being on a hilly area makes the atmosphere even more compelling for me. Can u imagine a house on a hill overlooking the city, and to top it up, they have their own vineyard and also another piece of terraced land for gardening and building tree houses and the like? I could be exaggerating a little, but I really felt like I wuz in fairyland. And of course, the pastries were so good. Oh yes, my favourite beer brand now is löwenbräu and my drink-of-the-moment is kirschweizen! Which is also cherry beer. It’s so drinkable!

We also climbed up another hill, philosophenweg. It wuz a rather steep climb of about 1hr juz to see the Nazi stadium and there wuz also the 15th century monastery ruins. It wuz hauntingly beautiful. We climbed two hills in one day – I say we are pretty damn good. We were exhausted at the end of the day.

8th apr-fri
we went to speyer, a half hour train ride away from Heidelberg. We did the usual stuff everybody would do in Europe – visit the dom and the museum, and every church I go to will be holding memorial services for john pope II. And in speyer there wuz a carnival! It wuz great seeing the multicoloured ballons and stuffed toys hanging as prizes, and candy bars and sweets and chewing gum of all shapes and sizes. Anthony and I couldnt resist the urge to be little kids again, so we joined a bunch of kids at least two heads shorter than me, to go into the Waterhouse … we had to go thru 3 kiddy storeys of obstacles´ to avoid getting wet, and at the end of it, we had to run thru this exit where water spurts out periodically. I didn’t get wet, but poor Anthony did, and boy, did the girls giggle. Including me. Heheh. And the best wuz when we heard music and when we got closer, there wuz a band playing. They were dressed in the cutest, funniest and most ridiculous bird costumes. Something like celebrating the aftermath of easter I guess. Ok, not so funny. It comprised pple of all age and sizes and skin colour. They had drums on rollers and marched along as the carnival grounds, giving a very lively and fun atmosphere. Something u proli wld never experience in Singapore. Anyway, I really liked it. To end off the day, I had cheese cake and chocolate ice-cream.