A summary of my Scandic trip
Stockholm
Thought that it would be warm in Stockholm, like when I was in Helsinki, because anyway the 2 cities are around the same latitudes, but I was so wrong. It was raining when we got there, and also the wind was terribly cold, probably because it was near the sea.
We checked into a hotel and stayed together (but in 2 separate rooms on the same floor).
Stockholm is beautiful, much more so than Helsinki, and its Old Town is really pretty. Even within the city centre itself, the architecture is charming and the facades of the buildings are unlike modern cities where everything is so sharp and angular and made of glass. Rather, the buildings are made more of bricks (like most buildings in Europe are) and most have some sort of sculptures on them, enhancing the facade’s beauty.
We went to Gamla Stan, the Old Town of Stockholm, but I must say I wasn’t terribly impressed by the buildings there because I had already seen the beauty of Stockholm in the city centre. Admittedly, the Old Town had its own appeal, but to each his own. The change-of-guards (COG) ceremony was quite interesting, but I wouldn’t go so far to say that it was impressive. I’d think that Singapore’s own COG ceremony would be much better, because the Military Police contingent is doing drills on a full-time basis (I don’t know if these royal guards are) and also the COG in Singapore is on a monthly basis (every FIRST Sunday of the month), so the guards are more perked up to do it better, than they would if they had to do it everyday. Maybe it isn’t so, but it’s my two cents’ worth.
We went for a cruise along the river as well, and we alighted at a park near the royal family’s private residence (Drottingham palace). We ate at the restaurant nearby and then walked through the vast green vistas of the palace. The pretty fountains, birds chirping, and little human presence added to the charm of the place and we enjoyed about an hour of peace in the park. We then wanted to get back to the city centre via the ferry, but alas we found that the next ferry would be 2 hours away. So we took the bus back to the centre and also the metro, which we rode for free cos the bus tickets were still valid. =)
All in all, I think that Stockholm is a beautiful place to visit and if anyone wants to visit one of the cities in Scandinavia, it should be Stockholm. Or maybe Norway’s Bergen or one of the other towns with fjords.
Copenhagen
Arrived at 1255 (Denmark is on the same time zone as Sweden and Norway) in Copenhagen.
We then took the bus to our hotel. The bus fare was like 200++ DKK for the 7 of us (1 Euro = about 5 DKK => 1S$ = 2.5DKK), so you can appreciate how expensive this Copenhagen trip was going to be for us all. And we weren’t even talking about taxis or trains yet.
The accommodation was supposedly to be a hotel for ZM’s parents, aunt and brother and a hostel for me, ZM and WL. But in the end we found that we could all squeeze 7 of us into the hotel room (by sleeping 3 of us on the floor in our sleeping bags) so we chose to save money and do so. Otherwise it would be 96 euros for his parents and 43 euros for us, PER NIGHT. By squeezing us all into one place, we had savings of about 50% and also the convenience of staying in one place (the hostel was about 30 to 45 minutes walk away from the hotel).
Again, Copenhagen was rainy and windy like Stockholm, and being Singaporeans (luckily I had winter experience in Oulu, but still it was cold for me!) we didn’t really enjoy being out in the cold wind. Besides Copenhagen wasn’t exactly as interesting as we thought (ZM had heard from Kwang and Yuanheng that it was really interesting, but apparently all of us thought otherwise), so we were rather disappointed on the first day that we were going to stay 4 nights in this place!
We had a river boat cruise for 150DKK (or thereabouts, I just know it was expensive) but it was worth it cos it was a hop-on hop-off cruise, where we could stop at any place and hop onto the next boats as we wished. The cruise proved to be the most worth it as we managed to take many pictures on the trip itself, and many good ones at that. We visited the Little Mermaid, an icon for Copenhagen and Denmark, but well, for me it was just that, a little mermaid sculpture. Many people were taking pictures with it, and being kiasu (check out www.talkingcock.com’s definition!) Singaporeans, we queued for a while for our chance to do so (queuing being the national pastime of Singaporeans.)
Other than that, we spent a lazy Sunday doing nothing much but lazing at home, since most shops were closed and only a few shopping places and kebab eateries were open.
ZM, WL, Zhengwei (ZM’s bro) and me also visited Erotica Museum (at an “amazing” 15 euros entrance fee) but it was a waste of money cos we only took 1 hour to finish touring the place. My recommendation? Watch porn on the internet if you ever feel any urge to visit the museum. And the information provided there, though interesting, but I guess it could all be found on the internet, if you knew where to look. Besides, the library is also a useful place for getting all that information as well!
One place we didn’t visit was the Guinness World Records Museum and another was the Louis Tussaud’s Wax museum. I think those two places would have been rather interesting to visit too.
Anyway, Copenhagen is a place which you should visit only if you have nowhere else in Scandinavia to go to, and if you have lotsa money to burn, cos otherwise you wouldn’t really get to enjoy much in that city.
For any Danish people reading my blog, I am sorry to offend any sensitivities on your part. I’m not saying that Copenhagen isn’t nice, just that it is far too expensive a place for backpacking or touring for Asians, and maybe other Europeans as well.
Oslo
Another rather dull place, which looks like any ordinary city with shopping centres. I guess Orchard Road in Singapore is much more interesting than their city centre. No old buildings were found in the district we were staying in, but I was really impressed with the contours we managed to see on our way to Oslo. All the mountains and beautiful scenery was rather eye-catching. I guess nature-lovers would love Norway in general, for its mountains, rivers and greenery.
Norway trains are really clean and fast, but they are terribly expensive. However they were the cheapest and most convenient way to get to our hotel. Again, we found that the hotel room that ZM booked for his parents was so big, and we could all sleep together instead of paying for our hostel room, which was situated in a rather unsafe location (with lots of black and Middle Eastern people.) It was a 3 star hotel that cost us S$300 a night, so we decided to make the best out of it.
Toured the place a little, found that there was nothing much to see and anyway the area was quite small. It was rather fortunate for me that I found that the Oslo Bus Station is quite close to where we stay, so at least I don’t have to run up and down the place to find it on the day when I’m alone. Phew!
The next day we took a train to Bergen, to visit the famed fjords. Again the train was very high tech (it had a children’s playground and a restaurant car, among other facilities. And also different trash bins to throw different categories of litter (reminds me of Finland). The scenery along the way was very pretty and one could practically sit in the train for 7 hours watching the mountains and rolling green meadows flying past. Not to mention there were very cute babies on board! The picture-perfect scene should be best seen in person, but since many of you out there might not get to see Bergen’s scenery, I’ll try to describe it as best as I can, to do some justice to what I saw.
The sky was baby-blue, with cotton clouds seemingly pasted on to the blue “canvas”. The sea, in a shade of blue so inviting (and so blue you thought it was some primary school student’s artwork), you’d almost want to jump in yourself to experience the clean refreshing glacier water flowing down from the mountain tops via waterfalls and streams. The trees and forests in all shades of green imaginable, pristine and sitting pretty on the mountain sides, definitely housing so much nature in them that it would be such a waste for nature lovers not to visit them, if of course, you could even get there yourself. It’s pretty inaccessible unless you kayak or hike from a very far-off place.
Flam-Bergen Train-Cruise
Apart from the official information from the brochure I got, one way to describe it in plain simple words, WOW!
A mind-blasting experience, too much beautiful scenery to take in at one go. For me, it was just taking photos and videos for the first 2 hours of the cruise. Then it got a little tiring to stand for so long and to withstand chilly winds which were blowing so strongly for the simple reason that the ferry was going at a very fast pace (being a EXPRESS ferry, for once the word EXPRESS lived up to its name.)
For anyone visiting Bergen, I would say this is a must-go and if you don’t have time, you better make time for it, else you’d definitely regret it! =) We were lucky that the whole day was sunny and we got very good pictures. Towards the end though, the sky became cloudy. Well, we couldn’t ask for too much, since Bergen is famous for its rainy weather (it gets about 200 rainy days per year.)
This sort of wraps up my Scandic trip. I think I will not bring my laptop along for the backpacking trip as it is very dangerous and risky (I don’t want my laptop to be stolen or robbed from me!) Well, it still depends on whether CJ or JX have their portable hard disk drive with them, because if they don’t, then I’ll be forced to bring the laptop with me and take a risk (I’d need to upload my pictures from the camera to somewhere!) If they have, then I can have the option of requesting ZM’s parents to bring the lappie back to Singapore with them.
Bye bye Scandinavia, hello the rest of Europe!
This is my updated schedule of travelling (and accommodations in brackets).
5 - 9 June
London (Picadilly Backpackers’)
10 - 13 June
Paris (Hotel Bellevue, Aloha Hostel)
13 - 16 June
Rome (Hostel Roma Inn 2000)
16 - 19 June
Budapest (Gabor’s sis house)
19 - 21 June
Vienna (Believe-it-or-not Hostel)
21 - 28 June
Prague (Sir Toby’s Hostel)
28 - 30 June
Helsinki (Paula’s apartment)
1 July
HOME SWEET HOME!
Thought that it would be warm in Stockholm, like when I was in Helsinki, because anyway the 2 cities are around the same latitudes, but I was so wrong. It was raining when we got there, and also the wind was terribly cold, probably because it was near the sea.
We checked into a hotel and stayed together (but in 2 separate rooms on the same floor).
Stockholm is beautiful, much more so than Helsinki, and its Old Town is really pretty. Even within the city centre itself, the architecture is charming and the facades of the buildings are unlike modern cities where everything is so sharp and angular and made of glass. Rather, the buildings are made more of bricks (like most buildings in Europe are) and most have some sort of sculptures on them, enhancing the facade’s beauty.
We went to Gamla Stan, the Old Town of Stockholm, but I must say I wasn’t terribly impressed by the buildings there because I had already seen the beauty of Stockholm in the city centre. Admittedly, the Old Town had its own appeal, but to each his own. The change-of-guards (COG) ceremony was quite interesting, but I wouldn’t go so far to say that it was impressive. I’d think that Singapore’s own COG ceremony would be much better, because the Military Police contingent is doing drills on a full-time basis (I don’t know if these royal guards are) and also the COG in Singapore is on a monthly basis (every FIRST Sunday of the month), so the guards are more perked up to do it better, than they would if they had to do it everyday. Maybe it isn’t so, but it’s my two cents’ worth.
We went for a cruise along the river as well, and we alighted at a park near the royal family’s private residence (Drottingham palace). We ate at the restaurant nearby and then walked through the vast green vistas of the palace. The pretty fountains, birds chirping, and little human presence added to the charm of the place and we enjoyed about an hour of peace in the park. We then wanted to get back to the city centre via the ferry, but alas we found that the next ferry would be 2 hours away. So we took the bus back to the centre and also the metro, which we rode for free cos the bus tickets were still valid. =)
All in all, I think that Stockholm is a beautiful place to visit and if anyone wants to visit one of the cities in Scandinavia, it should be Stockholm. Or maybe Norway’s Bergen or one of the other towns with fjords.
Copenhagen
Arrived at 1255 (Denmark is on the same time zone as Sweden and Norway) in Copenhagen.
We then took the bus to our hotel. The bus fare was like 200++ DKK for the 7 of us (1 Euro = about 5 DKK => 1S$ = 2.5DKK), so you can appreciate how expensive this Copenhagen trip was going to be for us all. And we weren’t even talking about taxis or trains yet.
The accommodation was supposedly to be a hotel for ZM’s parents, aunt and brother and a hostel for me, ZM and WL. But in the end we found that we could all squeeze 7 of us into the hotel room (by sleeping 3 of us on the floor in our sleeping bags) so we chose to save money and do so. Otherwise it would be 96 euros for his parents and 43 euros for us, PER NIGHT. By squeezing us all into one place, we had savings of about 50% and also the convenience of staying in one place (the hostel was about 30 to 45 minutes walk away from the hotel).
Again, Copenhagen was rainy and windy like Stockholm, and being Singaporeans (luckily I had winter experience in Oulu, but still it was cold for me!) we didn’t really enjoy being out in the cold wind. Besides Copenhagen wasn’t exactly as interesting as we thought (ZM had heard from Kwang and Yuanheng that it was really interesting, but apparently all of us thought otherwise), so we were rather disappointed on the first day that we were going to stay 4 nights in this place!
We had a river boat cruise for 150DKK (or thereabouts, I just know it was expensive) but it was worth it cos it was a hop-on hop-off cruise, where we could stop at any place and hop onto the next boats as we wished. The cruise proved to be the most worth it as we managed to take many pictures on the trip itself, and many good ones at that. We visited the Little Mermaid, an icon for Copenhagen and Denmark, but well, for me it was just that, a little mermaid sculpture. Many people were taking pictures with it, and being kiasu (check out www.talkingcock.com’s definition!) Singaporeans, we queued for a while for our chance to do so (queuing being the national pastime of Singaporeans.)
Other than that, we spent a lazy Sunday doing nothing much but lazing at home, since most shops were closed and only a few shopping places and kebab eateries were open.
ZM, WL, Zhengwei (ZM’s bro) and me also visited Erotica Museum (at an “amazing” 15 euros entrance fee) but it was a waste of money cos we only took 1 hour to finish touring the place. My recommendation? Watch porn on the internet if you ever feel any urge to visit the museum. And the information provided there, though interesting, but I guess it could all be found on the internet, if you knew where to look. Besides, the library is also a useful place for getting all that information as well!
One place we didn’t visit was the Guinness World Records Museum and another was the Louis Tussaud’s Wax museum. I think those two places would have been rather interesting to visit too.
Anyway, Copenhagen is a place which you should visit only if you have nowhere else in Scandinavia to go to, and if you have lotsa money to burn, cos otherwise you wouldn’t really get to enjoy much in that city.
For any Danish people reading my blog, I am sorry to offend any sensitivities on your part. I’m not saying that Copenhagen isn’t nice, just that it is far too expensive a place for backpacking or touring for Asians, and maybe other Europeans as well.
Oslo
Another rather dull place, which looks like any ordinary city with shopping centres. I guess Orchard Road in Singapore is much more interesting than their city centre. No old buildings were found in the district we were staying in, but I was really impressed with the contours we managed to see on our way to Oslo. All the mountains and beautiful scenery was rather eye-catching. I guess nature-lovers would love Norway in general, for its mountains, rivers and greenery.
Norway trains are really clean and fast, but they are terribly expensive. However they were the cheapest and most convenient way to get to our hotel. Again, we found that the hotel room that ZM booked for his parents was so big, and we could all sleep together instead of paying for our hostel room, which was situated in a rather unsafe location (with lots of black and Middle Eastern people.) It was a 3 star hotel that cost us S$300 a night, so we decided to make the best out of it.
Toured the place a little, found that there was nothing much to see and anyway the area was quite small. It was rather fortunate for me that I found that the Oslo Bus Station is quite close to where we stay, so at least I don’t have to run up and down the place to find it on the day when I’m alone. Phew!
The next day we took a train to Bergen, to visit the famed fjords. Again the train was very high tech (it had a children’s playground and a restaurant car, among other facilities. And also different trash bins to throw different categories of litter (reminds me of Finland). The scenery along the way was very pretty and one could practically sit in the train for 7 hours watching the mountains and rolling green meadows flying past. Not to mention there were very cute babies on board! The picture-perfect scene should be best seen in person, but since many of you out there might not get to see Bergen’s scenery, I’ll try to describe it as best as I can, to do some justice to what I saw.
The sky was baby-blue, with cotton clouds seemingly pasted on to the blue “canvas”. The sea, in a shade of blue so inviting (and so blue you thought it was some primary school student’s artwork), you’d almost want to jump in yourself to experience the clean refreshing glacier water flowing down from the mountain tops via waterfalls and streams. The trees and forests in all shades of green imaginable, pristine and sitting pretty on the mountain sides, definitely housing so much nature in them that it would be such a waste for nature lovers not to visit them, if of course, you could even get there yourself. It’s pretty inaccessible unless you kayak or hike from a very far-off place.
Flam-Bergen Train-Cruise
“An engineering challenge to build the railway that snakes down from the Myrdal
Plateau to the Flam Valley. The railway line, 20km long, has 20 tunnels that
cover 6km of the way. The line was laid along steep slopes and around sharp
bends to enable the train to snake its way up and down the sheer inclines.
Almost 80% of the railway line has a gradient of 55% the equivalent of
1:18.”
Apart from the official information from the brochure I got, one way to describe it in plain simple words, WOW!
A mind-blasting experience, too much beautiful scenery to take in at one go. For me, it was just taking photos and videos for the first 2 hours of the cruise. Then it got a little tiring to stand for so long and to withstand chilly winds which were blowing so strongly for the simple reason that the ferry was going at a very fast pace (being a EXPRESS ferry, for once the word EXPRESS lived up to its name.)
For anyone visiting Bergen, I would say this is a must-go and if you don’t have time, you better make time for it, else you’d definitely regret it! =) We were lucky that the whole day was sunny and we got very good pictures. Towards the end though, the sky became cloudy. Well, we couldn’t ask for too much, since Bergen is famous for its rainy weather (it gets about 200 rainy days per year.)
This sort of wraps up my Scandic trip. I think I will not bring my laptop along for the backpacking trip as it is very dangerous and risky (I don’t want my laptop to be stolen or robbed from me!) Well, it still depends on whether CJ or JX have their portable hard disk drive with them, because if they don’t, then I’ll be forced to bring the laptop with me and take a risk (I’d need to upload my pictures from the camera to somewhere!) If they have, then I can have the option of requesting ZM’s parents to bring the lappie back to Singapore with them.
Bye bye Scandinavia, hello the rest of Europe!
This is my updated schedule of travelling (and accommodations in brackets).
5 - 9 June
London (Picadilly Backpackers’)
10 - 13 June
Paris (Hotel Bellevue, Aloha Hostel)
13 - 16 June
Rome (Hostel Roma Inn 2000)
16 - 19 June
Budapest (Gabor’s sis house)
19 - 21 June
Vienna (Believe-it-or-not Hostel)
21 - 28 June
Prague (Sir Toby’s Hostel)
28 - 30 June
Helsinki (Paula’s apartment)
1 July
HOME SWEET HOME!
Greetings from Finland @ 11:57 pm
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