Hamburg/Buccholz: Part I
After leaving Changi Airport, we embarked on a 16+ hour trip to Hamburg via Paris. The first flight was a-okay and the landing was pretty rad, heh, but the Paris airport was a nightmare! We arrived at about 6.30 a.m. Paris time, and only 5 immigration booths were opened for at least 3 flight-loads of people! The immigration officer [ugly French guy btw] also gave me alot of shit and kept interrogating me like where I was going to stay in Paris, etc etc. Hello, do I look like a bloody terrorist or smuggler to you?!
So, we finally reached Hamburg airport and travelled for about half an hour by car to Mr. D's (bf's mum's ex-boss, confusing, I know...) place. The future parental units stayed with Mr. D while En en and myself got Mrs. Phisher's (I think that's how to spell their surname -.-''). I had pictures of her place which was absolutely gorgeous, but the pictures from the first part of my trip were deleted, big bummer. We had the entire second floor to ourselves and the area included a living room with a very, very nice patio, a bathroom (with a shower and bathtub, etc) and even an attached kitchen! The bf stayed at the Dr's place, who was out of town, so he had the whole house to himself. All I can say is that German hospitality is astounding!
I never liked staying in the suburbs cos I always thought myself more of a city girl, but the 6 day stay at Buccholz was really wonderful. All of the houses had huge front or/and back yards and most families had dogs which they took for the walk in the nearby woods (?!) There are fields of flowers all around the area which Mr D said were harvested to make honey and oil, and there's so much nature and greenery it's hard not to feel happy and at ease. We had a little sausage barbeque dinner and we tumbled off into bed at around 8p.m. (JETLAG!)
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We started the day with a hearty 'German' breakfast. Loaves and loaves of bread, all kinds of spread (liver pate, cream cheese, red herring salad [?!]), sausages, cheese, yoghurt and cereal. We then set off to this little seaside town. I can't really remember the name of the place but the beach was called Cuxhaven and we were at the North Sea! Exciting stuff, how many tourists' actually get to go to the North Sea?
We also made a stopover at the ice cream parlor, where I had snickers scoops which I didn't like very much. En en had strawberry which I usually hate but I thought it was really good, mmm. The whole town is really quaint and lovely, and every 10 minutes or so, some horses would trot down the lane, haha!
So, after a picnic lunch out of the boot of our mini van, we sat on the gigantic horse buggies for a trip out onto the North sea. Yup, you heard me right, we took horses instead of ferries because during low tide, the North sea is literally exposed and you can even walk to the island that we were heading to on foot if you liked. The whole journey there and back took a good many hours though, I think around 6 hours? So if you walked, wow, kudos to you. I was freezing my arse off the entire journey, which was why on the way back I was wrapped up more tightly then an eskimo and all you can see of me in that picture is a blob of blankets and my sunnies.
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Day 3 was horribly boring. Mr D wanted to take us around Buccholz and look at the nature reserve (zzz) and ride on horse carriages around that area (more zzzzs), but unfortunately, or fortunately, we weren't able to do so because of the weather. There wasn't thunder and lightning, but it was wet and cold enough to have to switch on the heater in the car, brrrr. After spending about 3 hours driving there and back :( we finally reached back. I volunteered to cook, heh heh, and we had seafood pasta (made from scratch kay (;) and red wine for lunch.
After that, the 3 of us were so bored so we decided to escape! We were in the suburbs, mind you, so the supermarket was actually pretty far away, it was a good 25min walk in the rain, but it was fun. I was dying to replenish my stockpile of cherry tomatoes too, and boy were they really good!!! I've never ever eaten such great cherry tomatoes in Singapore before (; Oh, we also found Shisu Sushi and little toy car-trolleys. I think they used to have these in Sg last time in the Cold Storage at Jelita (?) but I don't see them anymore. Dinner was steak, fresh from the grill and salad, yum!
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Updates on Hamburg Part II/London/Paris soon!