Archive for November 24th, 2008

Reunion with FlipFlop’s drummer

On Thursday, 11th September 2008, I took a night train to Frankfurt and arrived on Friday, 12th September early in the morning. It was a reunion time with my old comrade: Dheni. We used to live in the same boarding house in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, formed an amateur band called FlipFlop where he played the role of a drummer and I played the role of a keyboardist. We also went to the same university: Gadjah Mada University, but different major (he took the chemical engineering major whereas I took computer science).

He came to Göttingen, Germany, to attend a training (for about a week) assigned by the company where he’s working at, Indocement. Friday, 12th September 2008 was his return day to Indonesia, and we managed a small reunion in Frankfurt, since the plane took off around 10 p.m. or so.

He arrived in Frankfurt about an hour after my arrival with 2 other training attendants, Mr. Son and Mr. Kim, from South Korea. A funny event happened. Since Dheni was working as an engineer, I thought they were also working as engineers. So I asked Mr. Son whether he was working as an engineer. Then he smiled and gave me his name card, and whoaaaaa…… it’s written there: Deputy General Manager of Tong Yang Cement Corp. :| Mr. Kim then gave me his name card as well. His position was Assistant Manager. Gossshhhhh…… How could Dheni attend a training with these big guys?????

So we had a lunch together at the McDonalds and walked around the city center.

frankfurt-withdhenihauptbahnhof

Frankfurt – with Dheni in front of Frankfurt’s hauptbahnhof

frankfurt-together

Frankfurt – at the main square (Mr. Kim, Mr. Son, Dheni, me)

Mr. Kim and Mr. Son left earlier to the airport to catch their flight back to Seoul. I and Dheni had a long chat at the train station and had our dinner together once again at the McDonalds :-D . Then we went to the airport.

It was a nice reunion to me. Hope our friendship will last for years to come….

Trentino summer trip 2008: Molveno

On Sunday, 31st August 2008, I, Galiya, Mu, Rakib, and another Bangladesh guy whose name I forgot Adnan had a trip to Molveno. Alexis was planning to join as well, but he missed the train that we took (in fact, we saw him running chasing the train but failed to catch).

We went up the hill using the cable cars and took a walk around. Just to refresh our brains :-)

molveno-cablecar

Molveno – the cable car view

After getting back down, we had a pizza lunch and continued walking down to the lake.

molveno-4guys

Molveno – Galiya, Mu, dunno Adnan, Rakib

We rented 2 water bikes: I and Mu using one, Galiya, Rakib and his friend using another one. We cycled for about 1 hour, then returned back to Trento.

molveno-waterbike

Molveno – Galiya, Rakib and his friend Adnan posing on the water bike

molveno-me

Molveno – me posing on the water bike

Summer 2008 trip III: Zürich-Luzern-Lugano-Como

This is another very late log of my summer trip (it’s already snowing outside :-D ) to Zürich, Luzern, Lugano, and Como with my senior, Ferry. Now I realize that making logs aren’t as simple as I thought, especially when level of details are concerned. Well, I guess I’ll just write quite simple logs onwards (without considering timeline details very much).

We left Trento on Saturday, 16th August 2008, to Zürich by train. The main train we used for this first trip was the Cisalpino from Milano to Zürich, a cool train that can be tilted when turning left or right. My first experience riding a tilting traing :-) After arriving at Zürich’s main train station (it was late at night already), we headed directly to the hostel that we had booked and slept.

On Sunday, 17th August 2008, we walked around to see Zürich’s famous spots (mainly around the city center), and also the botanical and Chinese garden. Well, actually not really walking around since there’s a cool free bicycle rental place, so we traveled around mostly by riding bicycles (one bicycle each).

zurich-bike

Zürich – free ride in Zürich :-)

zurich-bridge

Zürich

zurich-grossmunsterbackground1

Zürich – Grossmünster church at the background

Our trip rule was still the same as the previous ones: visit famous spots according to the free city map (which we could get for free at the train station), Wikipedia, and Wikitravel. And since we were riding bicycles, we could manage to visit the spots even faster. The monumental event during our trip to Zürich was the lunch. We had a lunch in a restaurant to taste the Swiss traditional dish: the Fondue. What made it special was that it was the most expensive dish I’ve eaten…. €17!!! Well, I’m only a student who rely on the generous European Commission’s Erasmus Mundus scholarship for living (at least for the time being). €17 for a meal is pretty expensive :-D But anyway, trying the Fondue was a nice experience :-)

zurich-fondue

Zürich – the expensive-but-nice Fondue :-)

Guess what? It was 17th August 2008…. Indonesia’s 63rd anniversary (independence day). Sorry but we just couldn’t really express our nationalism by gathering with other Indonesians. But we met 2 Indonesians as well that day. In the evening we decided to visit Luzern the next day.

On Monday, 18th August 2008, we took a morning train to Luzern. We took the free city map as usual and visited the major spots, including the Kapellbrücke and the lion monument, and the old city wall. Since I hadn’t been using a watch for several years and we were in Switzerland, I bought a Swatch watch here.

luzern-kapellbrucke

Luzern – Kapellbrücke as the background

luzern-lionmonument

Luzern – the lion monument

During the visit to the old city wall we found several clock towers and went to the top for each one of them (around 3 or so). It was so tiring and during our way back to the city center we found weird-looking bulls or buffaloes (I can’t really distinguish them :-D ).

luzern-weirdbull

Luzern – weird-looking bull (or buffalo?)

After feeling enough with Luzern, we took a train back to Zürich, shopping for a while, then headed to Lugano with another Cisalpino train :-) We arrived in Lugano at night and went directly to the backpackers’ hostel.

On Tuesday, 19th August 2008, we went downtown and strolled at the bank of Lake Lugano. It’s a bit funny that the train station is located on a hill above the city center.

lugano-down

Lugano – on the way to the city center

lugano-lake

Lugano – Lake Lugano

Then we went to Melide by train to visit the Swissminiatur. It’s quite fun seeing the miniature of major spots in various cities around Switzerland. We had lunch there as well.

melide-swissminiatur

Melide – Swissminiatur

In the afternoon we went to Como by train, went to the city center, and went up the hill using the funicular. Didn’t do much up there.

como-hill

Como – a view from the hill

Then we walked around Lake Como before finally departed back to Trento in the evening.

como-bridge

Como – Lake Como

It was another nice trip for me.

Snow covered the land of Trento….

I thought it’s still autumn, but surprisingly when I woke up this morning, the snow already covered the land of Trento (at least Povo :-D ). The land was dry yesterday during my visit to the Christmas market in Piazza Fiera. It means winter has arrived. Need to prepare my clothing well.

Christmas market

Trento – Christmas market (yesterday)

Borino covered with snow

Trento – Via Borino 63 (this morning)

We can also see the different view of the IRST building (the place where my courses taken place) this morning compared to the one in October.

IRST October

Trento – IRST building (in October)

snowy IRST

Trento – IRST building (this morning)


 

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