IKEA-ed

It was just minutes before lunch time. I was getting ready to walk out of the room to prepare my lunch and suddenly a email appeared on my mailbox. It was from the real estate agent.

I thought I told you to checkout before 11am! They called me saying that all your belongings are still there. Please checkout NOW, otherwise you’ll need to pay the bill for today, yourself.

And she attached a email from 3 weeks ago asking me to checkout before 11am, cc-ed it to my secretary.

Before I even get to pickup the phone to call her, the secretary came in and asked me to go checkout the right away. They won’t be paying the bills if I was charged for today’s stay. My initial plan was to checkout after work as the landlady of my new is only available after 6pm. So, I totally forgot that I need to be out by 11am.

There I went. I had only 1 hour.

In 1 hour I had to go back to my , pack my things up, checkout the room, then take a taxi to the new , some 2km away. When I finished packing, I realized that there are quite a lot to carry. A luggage bag, 2 backpacks and 5 bags of foods in all. Some of the foods were mine, some were passed to me when my colleagues left.

The heavy rain this afternoon just made things worse. Within minutes of calling them, the taxi arrived but it was parked some 100m away. And I had to carry everything to the taxi under the rain.

The new was very near to the main train station, less than 200m away. There was no elevator. Again I had to carry all these bags 3 floors up. I ended up staying at the roof unit.

Afterall the packing, carrying things around while getting wet under the rain, I was greeted with my new for the next 4 months.

It was definitely much better than the old one.

Everything in this new unit is from IKEA. I can even see the phrase For IKEA From Whirpool on the microwave cum oven. I feel much better here. At least now I feel more at home. The previous (was it even an ?) had the bed, toilet, kitchen and living room everything in 1 room.

I was complaining about the old to my colleagues when I first came and they told me to see theirs where the kitchen is inside the cupboard! The only good thing was that it’s very near to downtown. Downtown is now 15 minutes walk away, not too far either.

Anyone coming here?

October 17, 2008 | Filed Under Travels | Leave a Comment 

When Google Earth Comes Handy

What would you do if you’re traveling to a big city for the weekend, and you haven’t done even the slightest research about that place all week?

And when you finally have the time to do the research, that’s 2 hours before departing, you suddenly realized that there are  quite a lot of places to cover for a short period of just 1.5 days..

In less than 2 hours, you need to decide which one to go, which one not to go…

How to go to each and everyone (public transportation, walk, get lost?)

Where are they located..

My answer : + Earth (obviously!)

Been so busy all week long that I just had the time to make a quick on before my train departs later tonight. In 10 minutes, I somehow came up with a list of so called interesting places to go. But the list is too long to cramp everything into 1.5 days. Some places which are not-so-worth going have to be removed, but I didn’t know which one.

The important thing is, they must look good on my camera.

So I looked for Earth. Searched each and every place on the list, clicked on the photos geo-tagged by others and I’ll have a feel of how the place is like.

If I like the place, I’ll look for the nearest public transportation; metro, train or trams in Earth. The thing with big cities is they’re all shown there. It’s so easy, convenient and saves me a lot of time. Saves me lots of money as well from buying Lonely Planet or Rough Guides.

I just realized that there’s actually still sometime left in the 2 hours to squeeze in a blog post!

Okay, . I’ll see you there.

October 11, 2008 | Filed Under Travels, Web | Leave a Comment 

Simply Beautiful

I had to make sure I had everything with me before I go.

5 batteries for camera, 2 sets of rechargable AA batteries, 16gb of storage, polariser, lenses and camera sensors cleaned, and I’m set to go.

And after 12 hours of night train (one way!), 2 hour of hiking, 100 euros spent on transportation, and this was where I got myself to over the weekend.

Konigsee

Simply beautiful isn’t it?

This place is in Berchtesgaden, a small town 3 hours train away from Munich, very near to the German-Austrian border. The main attraction of this place if of course, aka the cleanest lake in . I was hoping that there will be blue skies on that day, but for once the weather forecast was spot on. Previously, it wasn’t reliable on a few occasions so I was hoping for the opposite when it shows cloudy day.

is a damn small, dead town and everyone who’s there are only going to 3 places; , Eagle’s Nest (Hitler’s summer vacation home) and the Salt Mine near Austria. I think the majority of them came from Munich for a day trip.

There’s nothing there besides these 3. The town is as good as dead during day time. Forget about night time.

The mountains were really beautiful.

Snow mountains in the background, reflections on the lake, plenty of foreground objects but minus the blue skies! *sigh* But it was well worth the trip all the way there to enjoy the scenery. It would definitely look much better next month towards the end of autumn and the lake will freeze during winter.

Probably I should drop by again for a day or two during winter.

Here’s how Konigsee and Berchtesgaden looked like.

September 23, 2008 | Filed Under Sports, Web | Leave a Comment 

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