Helsinki Zoo

Today the Singapore gang went to the Helsinki Zoo! It’s not fancy and beautiful like Singapore’s zoo… it’s more like a park. I shall put up some pictures and tell you about the lion story!

The entrance to the Zoo…

Monkey, duh. Haha but quite a cute one

An eeeky anaconda!! Haha this picture is to make my mom get goose bumps Haha!!


A really disgusting duno-what



This is a mongoose… and guess what? Haha one zoo “tour guide” took some rose beetles (which was an exhibit opposite from the mongoose) and fed the mongoose!!! Hahaha it was quite a funny scene… an exhibit feeding another exhibit. *faintz*

This is a real crocodile… riiiight

Camels!

Brown bears

3 owls in a row! Haha so cute

Ok, there are more animals but nothing fantastically different; these are the slightly more blog-worthy ones.

Now for my lion story!!! Ok see this lion? It’s less than a meter away from me… security is not very high you see. Anyway, stood there for quite a while talking and making noise to see if he would “wake up” and face us… and we were all joking about grabbing a long stick (which so happened to be one the ground in front of us) to poke it.

I forgot to mention that animal rights people please dun get offended.

Anyway, ya, so I was saying that in Singapore you’ll never get this close to a lion! So close that you can actually put your finger in there and touch its fur (which of course you would probably not get your finger back, haha). Anyway we lingered there and then I got tempted to try getting its attention.

See this little stick? I threw one at him… and then *jaws music*. The little twig brushed the lion’s mane and wow, he’s reflexes are amazing!

In a split second he practically jumped up into this position with a growl. And xia4 si3 (stunned) the guys who didn’t know that I just did that. Haha.

So then he turned around to face us… which was totally fun cos we got to take so many close up pictures with him!

And then… he stretched and gave a huge yawn!

close up of the yawn!

And then after a while… he returned to his backside position… haha.

That’s all! But it was really cool to have a chance to be so close to a lion!

“Overview”

HAha… I’ve just flooded my blog with 5 new long posts about each country which I visited… so this is a warning and an overview! Haha!

Berlin – fantastic for all it’s history stuff
Prague – food fest cos of the Easter market
Vienna – picture taking and I find that it’s a beautiful place
Brussels – ASAP, chop chop see stuff
Amsterdam – fun fun fun
Stockholm – only a short while there but it seriously feels like 3rd home (cos it’s similar to Finland, except that they have more people living there. Haha.)

Anyway, just to sum it all up, I enjoyed my Easter trip and it was great that everything went pretty smoothly on the trip!

Germany - Berlin

Okays… I’ll start with three things which are completely irrelevant but cute/interesting… haha, firstly their traffic light!

See the green man?

Now the red man!

The second thing is that while we were in Berlin, the sun was super strong and it was actually hot! I didn’t have to wear my jacket! For the first time in Europe I walked out of my room (in this case hostel room) like as if it was Singapore. And guess what? I got sunburn! So fun! But even though it was “hot”, it’s still not like Singapore hot. Haha.

And the third thing is… guess what? The world is getting small, seriously. Cos I crossed paths with Michelle in Berlin! Goodness! Haha, again nice to see a familiar face!

Ok back to serious stuff. Berlin is a very historical place… and I totally loved learning about the history! Gosh… I think I’m still a history bug at heart. Haha. I’ll love to share all about the stuff I learnt… but that will make my blog too wordy. Haha, so sadly I’ll have to skip that… anyway, here are some of the many pics!

Holocaust Memorial – this design for the memorial has a lot of symbolism… and it was inspired by the Jewish Cemetery (which was the one I visited in Prague! – this is why I said to take note of that picture)

Brandenburg Gate*

Berliner Dom

A lovely rainbow which was in the garden (Lustgarten) in front of the Berliner Dom

A memorial to the books Hitler burnt… it’s a room of empty shelves build underground at the spot where the books the burnt. Again, it has a lot of symbolism involved.

Gendarmenmarkt – there are two identical churches here facing each other (again for historical reasons)

Close up of one of the churches

The Berlin Wall - with Yvonne and I doing a wu liao pose. Haha.

Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church*



Siegessaule

Reichstag*

On top of the Reichstag

Inside the observatory… can you find mini me? Haha I doubt it.

Ok! Serious stuff over. Here are some pictures of a chocolate version of some of the above places!!! Amazing right?

Brandenburg Gate

Reichstag

Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church

And of course… food!

My third ice cream in Europe! This one is the cheapest and really nice to eat! Again, it’s Italian ice cream… =)

This is a famous currywurst store (the hostel people told us)… currywurst is a sausage (Germany’s famous for that) with curry ketchup and curry powder on it.

This is a super yummy kebab! It’s very very nice to eat lo! As a side note, Germany is the one which started the doner kebab (bread with the meat)!

Czech Republic – Prague

I’ll start with the hostel… it was also a unique hostel cos our lockers where located below the beds!

Haha… and for the first night I had a good laugh because this was what happened:

Me: after you lock the bed where are you going to put your keys?
Pinx: I’ll just put it in my fbt pocket (in case you don’t know fbt is the brand of shorts that we wear)
Me: huh… isn’t that so comfortable to sleep with keys in the pocket?
Von: actually, do we need to lock since we are sleeping on top?

And then I could not stop laughing for a while at my own blurness. Haha.

Anyway, an irrelevant point: the hostel owner, Lubo, was a very funny guy… not in terms of jokes, but in terms of his mannerisms… haha, he looked abit like and spoke like Borat!

Now for some pictures of famous Prague stuff…

The Astronomical Clock

Charles Bridge

Prague Castle

Jewish Museum (one of the 6 synagogues which are now functioning as museums)

This is the oldest Jewish cemetery in Prague and it is believed, that it is also the oldest Jewish cemetery in whole Europe… and the fastinating thing is that people were buried in layers due to limited space… the most crowded part is up to 12 layers! And take note of this cemetery because I will refer to it in my Berlin blog post.

Ok, now about the Easter Market!!!


It was this that made the time in Prague so fun! Cos we got to shop around for things and to try many different Prague food here! Haha… I shall put the pictures in the order of the yummiest one coming first (but seriously almost all are really delicious).


1) Trdelnik – it’s like sweet biscuit and bread combined… will surely sell like crazy in Singapore if we had it at home.


2) Grandma Pancake – like really thin pita bread with tomato, herbs and cheese inside.




3) Roasted pork in hot dog bun – yummy!



4) Potato Cake – like potato pastry with garlic and melted butter spread on it



5) Roasted almond with sugar – very nice also!

6) Czech wafer – it reminded of the Apollo wafer we have at home, but the hazelnut flavour is quite nice.

7) Langose – this is like a huge circular you tiao with cheese… it’s not as nice as the rest, but still not bad.

And we also had fresh stroop waffles!! This is not in the list because it’s Holland food. Haha, but we didn’t have the chance to try the fresh ones in Holland, so it was very nice to eat them here. The owner comes from Holland… and the waffle is really delicious.



Ok that’s all for the Easter Market food… haha now I shall talk about my most lovely meal in Europe so far. We went to this restaurant and I had rabbit’s leg in cream sauce and jasmine rice… oooh, it was so nice and only cost 8euros! Maybe you are thinking “8euros is S$16… cheap?!” but it is in Europe terms! In Finland for 8 euros I can get a McDonald’s meal and with about 2euros left for a doughnut. That’s it. But in Prague, I had a lovely restaurant ambience and delicious exotic food! Rabbit tastes like very soft chicken.