i'm back!

i'm still in the "i wish i'm still there" kind of mood. Although it was only a short 4-day trip, it was just enough to tune my bio-clock to europe time. that's why i'm still happily awake and feeling hungry at 2.24am. luckily i'm still clearing my leave! no need to day dream in the office tmr...

i think i have been too pampered by the business trips - hotels, proper meals in cafes and restaurants (proper = appetiser, main course and sometimes coffee/dessert), cabs - that i've forgotten how it's like to travel like a backpacker, especially in europe. this trip brought me back to earth and i love the spontaneity (though sometimes bizarre) of backpacking!

this time i stayed in 2 different hostels at odense, birthcity of Hans Christian Anderson, and copenhagen. Boy, was i nervous to meet my roommates for the night, especially because i'm staying in a dorm with all strangers for the first time. I had the weirdest time in odense. my roommate was this 65 year old auntie from Mon, an island south of copenhagen, who doesn't speak a word of english. i thought we had already establish a common understanding that we can't communicate due to the language barrier, but she kept wanting to talk to me! eventually through handsignals and some doodling on paper, i gathered that she needed some help to use the computer/internet at the TV room. ok, i thought i could help her. so after we went down she gestured towards the computer, asking me to use it! she thought i might want to use the computer! OMG. then she brought me to sit down at the sofa at the side. we sat down and i was totally bewildered. there was this group of danish guys watching soccer on TV, staring at us, wondering what we were doing. i asked her if she wanted to watch TV, and she shook her head. WTH. By this time, i'm totally tired and i thought i've done my best to interact with her, so i just told her i'm going back to the room to sleep. back in the room, immediately i climbed up to my bed at the upper deck. i think i must have felt rather insecure bout this old lady and my fear of height didn't quite help either, i woke up almost every hour of sleep.

i'm glad i only had such encounter once! the night at the copenhagen dorm was much better. there were 1 japanese tourist and 2 canadian sisters. All of them happened to have just quit their last jobs to come to this trip. The canadians have been on the road since March and they will not be going home until May! When I told my father bout this, he commented that "they (ang mohs) are like that... they only settle down later in their lives". well, the first thought that came to my mind was why couldn't Asians be like that too? why can't I be like that?

yeah, you get the idea... on this short trip, i had some reflections on my current state of life and how i may want it to be in the future... guess this's one of the advantages of travelling alone, you get more time to THINK about yourself.

so that's one of my stories from the trip.. too bad i didn't take a picture of my Odense roommie. But i've got nice flowers blooming from denmark for you!