Konstanz

Some eons back, I went with my Taiwanese friend to Konstanz. The Konstanz trip was actually her idea, she wanted to visit the Bodensee and the little villages around it. Since I had the time, and wanted to visit other places too, I went with her. Sad to say, this isn't one of my more pleasant trips. It also made me more appreciative of myself when I went on the Benelux trip alone. Company might be good, but wrong company can be a pain in the ass. Granted, my friend is a great person and everything, just not compatible to me.

My sister asked me, why don't I have many pictures of myself in my photos, it's so unlike the Joan we all know. Usually I don't have people to take photos for me, and when I do, I'm quite shy to ask them. It's like not very nice to impose on people, especially people you don't know very well. hai... It's times like this when I miss my personal photog so much. I must I must I must find a girl for him and repay him back in kind for all the trouble.

The trip to Konstanz included two transits. I hate transits. But well, after my Benelux trip, transits are no problem for me, but that's another story altogether, I'll dictate the story when the time comes. On two of the trains, I met this Hong Kong family. The parents were about in their late 30s to early 40s, the son about 10 years old. At first the family were conversing in Cantonese, then somewhere in between, the mother started interrogating the son in British-crisp English. The son haltingly answered in grammatically and politically English answers to the questions. I then realised that the mother was making her son practise for a school enrollment interview.

This brought me back to a Hong Kong drama I once watched a very long time ago. There's this parent who wanted to enrol the kid into this prestigious school, and brough the child to the interview, not before a series of practising. But one of the questions from the interview was not scripted, rather than fumble, the child answered the questions from his own thinking, and displayed his child-like innocence. The principal was impressed by the child's answer. If I were an examiner, I'd hate those politically correct answers that sound scripted. This is an interview for the child, not for the parents to stage their homecoming drama. In a way, I do pity that child, for his parents' expectations weighed heavily on his little shoulders.

Some people say Singaporean parents are kiasu, but I think Hong Kong parents are even more competitive, and they all have that metality of wanting to win. From some little exchanges I had with the mother, I found out that she too was from a boarding school in England when she was young, that explains the accent, and the perfect English. The father spoke no English, maybe it isn't as good as the mother's, or perhaps, he just doesn't speak English. From the nuggets of information, I think I can conclude that they should be a quite well off family, or at least the mother is from a well off family. After all, boarding schools don't come in cheap

But for education, all parents are willing to spend.

Finally, we reached Konstanz~


It took us like half a day to decide on taking the Rundfahrt on a boat. Correction, it did not take US half a day, it took SOMEONE half a day. One thing about Joan is that she has extremely short attention span, and if she wants to do something, chop chop she'd do it. Many of the time I need to tell her to decide on what she wants to do. If I decide, she'd come up with half a dozen arguments to question my decision, so I gave up deciding. Besides, I'm fine with anything, so as long as it's not something major, I'd go along with it. If it were something major, I'd wouldn't even have let her go into her second round of deciding.

This is how she decides something. Look at it, this one round, and ask me for opinion which I won't give because it's just so ridiculous. Continue stare it at for about another ten minutes until I ask her the second time, what's her decision. She'd then think about it for the second time wasting about another ten minutes. Then after about 15 min more she'd walk off saying forget it. Repeat this process in every restaurant we go to except that she'd finally make an order which she'd regret when the food arrives.

Enough of my complains, i don't really want to get started in the middle here. So, on the boat, we enjoyed the sceneries of the Bodensee.


Just enjoy the sceneries, I'm not going to describe them, there's nothing much to describe anyway unless you want me to say things like, this is a church, this is a clock tower, these are railway tracks. kauz...

Actually I was very tired on the boat journey and almost dozed off after I'm done with taking photos. The weather was nice and windy with a bit of sun, and with enough clothes on me, it felt really great to just lie in the middle of the lake and sleep. Okay, I did not have adequate sleep the night before because I had to get up hell early in the morning to catch the train. But once I'm started with the camera, I'm all energetic once again. Speaking of the boat and sun, I really don't understand why some girls hate getting tan. Especially those of the far Eastern Asia. You see a whole lot of Japanese and Korea whitening products and the Taiwanese so dig into them. I like to be tanned, and I think most of my girl friends share the same thoughts with me.

Wile taking photos somewhere around in Konstanz, this weird guy approached me. At first I thought he wanted me to help him take a photo of him, but he actually wanted to take a photo with me. He was so interestingly dressed that I thought it'd be well, interesting, to take the picture.


he looks like he's killing me. lol~ Maybe the beer's getting into his sytem.

After the tour of the sea, we went to the city centre itself and just took pictures of the towns and everything. Konstanz is interesting. Konstanz is one of the very few European cities not to have been affected by the World Wars of the 20th century. Because of it's proximity to Switzerland, and Swiss neutrality to the wars, few dared to bomb Konstanz for fear of stray bombs landing in Swiss territories and alluring the Swiss into the war.

There is this one thing that Joan likes, is to take pictures of water, and fountains, and stuff... And innocent little children...


Seeing those kids, I realised that I'm old.

Whenever I see kids playing with pigeons, running around a Platz filled with pigeons and attempt to catch them, I thought of the times when I was still a kid. I relished feeding pigeons, and always wanted to catch them, or just run into them and watch them flutter around. That was when I was still living in England, and touring Europe at like three years old. The pigeons in Singapore are absolutely digusting, because they mostly congregate under HDB blocks near the rubbish cutes, and they shit everywhere. yucks...

Speaking of under HDB blocks,
"I just threw a durian seed out of the window!
I've been throwing lychee and durian seeds out. Hope that they will all grow into tall, sturdy, fruit-bearing trees in a couple of years! :D
Pretty trees. :D"
- written by some prominent blogger
This is why I have a phobia of walking under HDB blocks. I really have no idea what those people in HDB are thinking, inconsideracy is at a new high, together with ignorance and naivity. Now all those crazy young HDB living girls will do the same, I shall vow never to walk under HDB flats when I go back to Singapore. NEVER.

Anyway, back to the pigeons, I still hate them now even though they are no longer under HDB blocks, but in the big open Platzes like when I was still 3 years old. Seeing children frolicking with pigeons now make me wonder if those children will get like sinus problems or god-forbid bird flu. And I stare hard at the ground to see how much shit those pigeons have shitted. And worse, I get a depraved kind of excitement when I see pigeons like this.


This is taken by Gabriel, but spotted by me. I don't know why I didn't take a picture of it, perhaps it was because I didn't want to stand in the middle of the road and look like a fool.

In Konstanz, I finally ate my first strands of spaghetti after leaving Singapore. think the last strands of spaghetti were with Cindy at Liquid Kitchen, the Seafood Pasta one... I like seafood pasta~ I want to go to Pastamania, or Cafe Cartel, or even back to Liquid Kitchen, but oh well...


Although not seafood, but it's still prawns~

Maybe I shall go opposite later tonight to buy pasta, or lagsana, or even pizza. Yesterday's dinner was terrible. I asked my housemate what I should eat, she said lagsana, but of course I didn't have ingredients. I saw the menu for the restaurant opposite my hostel, but finally decided that I'd cook pasta, not spaghetti though, the spiral ones, don't know what they're called. I don't know why, but it turned out totally horrible, almost inedible. Something when wrong with the pasta, and also the sauce was weird, and the ham was out of place. hai...

Back to Konstanz, I'm almost done already, bear with me a little bit more. I've taken a liking of taking pictures of flowers here in Europe. Especially when all the flowers are so beautiful and colourful. And that I've mastered the art of using the macro function of my camera, pictures of flowers taken close up looks just so beautiful. One day, I want to compile all my nice pictures of flowers and make a postcard collection or calander or just a photography album~



With that, let's say goodbye to Konstanz~

Note, I've used lesser animated gifs and lesser crappy descriptions, but because of the pictures, the length of the post seems longer. I hope those people not happy with my animated gifs being too fast for you will like this post better. But then again, there's nothing much to be said about Konstanz that sleepy little town anyway. We spent like one day and one night in Konstanz that we got so bored of it that we wanted to go and watch a movie, but as you know how she makes her decisions, we didn't watch it in the end. lol~

I shall now go and fiz up on the other travel logs. And maybe upload more photos up into my travel journal photo album. I'll put the link up maybe at the end of my whole trip, then you can save the trouble of going back there to check for updates every now and them.