All the good food I have eaten in Goteborg

Typical Swedish Dessert, herring with wine and cheese.

Other types of desserts…

Their main dishes.

I’m back in Singapore!

YYYYYYYYYYYEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH

Back to Goteborg!

Empty go, FULL back.
11kg go, 17 kg back.

It is sooo good to be back… although I am even more excited about going back to my REAL home on Thursday!

This song is ringing in my mind right now…
“My Singapore, the place that I called my home… ”
Ha, never felt so patriotic before.

Quick updates

The Blue Mosque (Sultanahmet Camii), one of the most prominent landmarks of Istanbul. What is unique about this mosque is its 6 minarets.

Called Hagia Sophia in Greek, Sancta Sophia in Latin, Ayasofya in Turkish, it was built on the site of Byzantium’s acropolis by Emperor Justinian (527-65 AD) in 537 AD.

It was a church…

but converted to mosque…

now a museum.

Yup, Formula One was at Istanbul that weekend! But I didn’t get to see it of course. Just spotted a bus which brought people there.

It was incredibly hot in Istanbul! 35 degrees. No clouds at all!

We went to one of the beach of Black Sea. My first remark when I saw the sea is, “Why is the black sea not black?”

I was out in the sun for more than 3 hours, under the direct sunlight, busy looking for shade but can’t seem to find any. I thought it is really ridiculous to pay an entrance fee to the beach. And it is not cheap at all! Around SGD10 dollars per person and you are only allowed to swim in the small beach. There’s a guy in the water on the look-out, blowing his whistle to ensure that no one swims across to the big beach.

Woh! Good service award.

Good service award goes to Citibank!

It was a great contrast. (If you know which bank I’m comparing with…) I received my replacement card today, just in time for my trip tomorrow. Thank you sooo much! Not only did they send it to my company, as requested, they couriered it to me when I told them I need the card urgently. From calling them to receiving the card only took 3 working days! 3 cheers for Citibank!

Still so empty…

For the first time, I am having difficulty packing my luggage because it is way too EMPTY.  It’s not even 25% full.

I will be going away on a business trip for 1 week and the only luggage case I have is meant for 3 months. It’s a bit embarrassing to use this big luggage case for a 1 week trip, but no choice… the luggage bags sold here are extremely expensive and I can’t claim for it.

Concert at my doorstep

It’s the annual Goteborg Culture festival. During the festival, a packed programme of entertainment (dance and music) on stages and venues in the heart of the city.  And one of them is just at my doorstep! It’s a six day event, I expect more events in this coming weekend. Yeah.

Woh! Rainbow!

 What a big rainbow!

From its left…

it stretches…

all the way down!

I was so excited that I message my colleagues who are living in this region. It really brightens up my day!

Norway – Oslo and Fjord Tour

The highlight of our trip to Norway is the Fjord Tour, “Norway in a Nutshell”. It is the most expensive part of our trip but it is almost a MUST if you ever go to Norway. We took tonnes of photos that day.

So what is a Fjord?

A fjord is a long, narrow estuary with steep sides, made when a glacial valley is flooded by the sea. The seeds of a fjord are laid when a glacier cuts a U-shaped valley through abrasion of the surrounding bedrock by the rocks and sediment it carries. Many such valleys were formed during recent ice ages when the sea was at a much lower level than it is today. At the end of such a period, the climate warms up again and glaciers retreat. Sea level rises due to an influx of water from melting ice sheets and glaciers around the world (it rose over 100 m after the last ice age), inundating the vacated valleys with seawater to form fjords. – Taken from Wikipedia

A glimpse of the scenery on the train.

Glacier. (It’s summer by the way.)

The spectacular water fall! (I’m busy protecting the lens of my camera from the water… wet, really wet)

The Fjord tour includes train rides, bus rides as well as ferry ride! The 2 hour ferry ride along the Fjord was relaxing but freezing.

Photos taken from the ferry.

Photo taken from a high viewing area.

Oslo, in a glimpse

Firstly, they have an interesting traffic light…

I wonder why they need 2 red man…

Highlights in Oslo

1. Munch Museum

Does Edward Munch ring a bell? One of his famous works is “The Scream”.

2. City Hall

This building is best known today for the awarding of the Nobel peace prize.

Comparable to the City Hall in Stockholm, the interior of this City Hall is superb.

The banquet hall.

One of the rooms

The ceiling of a room

Stockholm – What a beautiful city

Every picture can be a postcard.

A view from the top of the tower…

Stockholm is a really beautiful city, in comparison to Goteborg, Oslo and Copenhagen. It is a city surrounded by water. I think it is a MUST to go to Stockholm if you ever visit the Scandinavian countries.

As I have only 2 full days in Stockholm, I only visited 2 of the islands, Gamla Stan and Djurgarden.

Gamla Stan aka the old town is the closest to the Central station. It has a spectacular entrance, linking the mainland to the island.

The town is filled with tourist and souvenirs shop, colorful houses and narrow streets.

One of the main attraction there is the Royal Palace. We are lucky to be able to catch the change of guard parade. The parade is elaborated and took 1 hour!

There are many other beautiful architectures in the town, especially the old churches. There are carvings on most doors, roof and pillars.

We visited an old church in Gamla Stan and it was an eye opener. (Since this is my first trip to European countries.) It has 2 huge wall paintings about Christ (too big and dark to get a good picture of them) and many artifacts/statues.

Another attraction worthed mentioning is the Stockholm CityHall. It is one of the most beautiful and well known buildings in the world and the yearly Nobel Banquet is held in its ballroom. The guide brought us around the building and provided an interesting and detail description to the design of every room. Every room has a different theme and is bound to impress you equally.

One of the room which I thought is the most impressive is this room filled with golden wall paintings.

In Djurgarden, we visited the Vasamuseet, the national maritime museum. Heh heh, this is where they showcase the real  Goteborg ship, the one that sunk and excavated. The ship (worse than Titanic), sunk on its maiden sail.

2 days is really not enough, we still have many other museums which we did not have the time to visit. If you are planning to go Stockholm, I would recommend around 3-4 days.

Stranded in Copenhagen, penniless…

Yeah, I’m back from vacation!

Mummy and dear arrived in Goteborg 2 weeks ago and I had been occupied with bringing them around. No time for dramas or blogging.

My vacation started last Saturday, 3 Scandinavian capital in 9 days! Wohoo, Stockholm -> Oslo -> Bergen -> Copenhagen. Although the sceneries are captivating everywhere and over 1000 photos were taken, the most “memorable” part of my trip was the incident 2 days ago…

2 days ago in Copenhagen S-Train Station…

When I was about to board the train, a man carrying a big hand luggage, blocked the door and used his luggage to stop me from entering the train. He was shouting in Danish, asking the passengers whether the train goes to station X. Then he alighted the train frantically just before the door closed. I’m sure you can guess without me telling, my wallet was stolen!

Penniless! Both my credit cards are inside and we had less than 70 Kr with us. Mummy and dear had credit card but they did not know the pin number to get cash. Credit card can be really useless in times like this. We did not have enough money to buy the return train tickets. Yes, we were stranded in Klampenborg station. Fortunately, there is a convenient shop in the station which accepted Swedish kronor.

Of course, the first thing I did was to call the banks and cancel my credit cards. I had such an unpleasant experience with DBS customer service that I wrote in to complain. (typical Singaporean…)

“Dear Sir/Madam,

I would like to share with you my recent unpleasant experience I had with DBS credit card customers service. Since this incident, I am greatly disappointed and lost confidence with services from DBS.

My wallet (with my DBS credit card) was stolen in Copenhagen two days ago. I tried to terminate my card via the hotline (+65 63272265). In the process, I was put through several call waiting and transferred between several service officers. This is really inconvenient for me as overseas call is very expensive and my calling card had limited value.

To further elaborate the above, I had already indicated “Lost of credit card” earlier via the phone filtering service, but was asked to be transfered to the “credit card” department by the service officer. I would suggest the phone filtering to be omitted if calls have to be further transferred. Or perhaps a specialized line to service “Lost of Credit Cards”?

I had to wait another 5 mins for the right person to handle my case.

However, this service officer was unable to handle all the basic procedures I needed. For example, she was only authorized to cancel my card, but not authorized to view/block all the transactions that may had taken place before termination of card. As a result, I was unable to verify if any unauthorized transactions had taken place.

I requested for the replacement card to be sent to my overseas residential address, where I am currently working. This request was not met over the phone as well. I was told to fax a letter to verify. I think this policy/procedure caused great inconvenience and is very inflexible. I had no access to a fax machine. Furthermore, the credit card is absolutely necessary and very important for survival for expatriates like us.

Having related my case, I am sure you would understand the difficulties I had to go through, especially after I lost all my cash and having to put through such a long difficult call. I think that my case could have been handled much better. Although it may be unlikely for others to be in a similar situation to mine, I think it would greatly benefit others if you can look into the current procedures and policies to enable higher efficiency and greater flexibilities.

FYI, xxx bank (I mentioned the bank’s name in the letter) was able to process all the above requests promptly with one short phone call, no call transfers. “