picture in my mind

I have a new chess set. I bought it from Colmar, France, on my trip. I love it. I love every single piece on it. I love the king, the queen, the bishop, the castle and the horse, even though it looks more like a dog than anything else. I love the pawns too. But the problem with my chess set is that I don't have that many people to play with. There's my brother. And I played with him... but I lost. Which pissed me off (Am a sore loser to some extent, especially if it's against my brother!) so I haven't played with him again. My mum's too busy to play with me. My dad and my sis don't know how to. I taught my sis actually, but she doesn't seem interested anymore. So naturally, my chess set is sitting on my desk... unplayed. I wish I could conjure up an opponent...

I can still remember that particular shop in Colmar. It's one of the many in the Christmas bazaar. I tell you, it is so beautiful. The air is crisp and cold, though there are many people, it isn't noisy, just a light chatter, and the sky is a plain clear blue. There are so many pretty things to see. If I celebrated Christmas, I would have wanted to buy a Christmas tree straight away just so I would have a reason to purchase such pretty ornaments. Then I saw that shop. The chess shop. I was really surprised. I couldn't believe my eyes.

If you like chess and the fact that one of the characters in your favourite book loves it too and another of your favourite book series is named after it, you would be as amazed as me. I thought maybe I was dreaming. The shop (though it's more of a stall) sells nothing but chess pieces and chess sets! I couldn't take my eyes off them, I tell you. And I must have been grinning like an idiot. All I said was "Oh my god! Oh my god! Oh my god!" My mum was smilling too, I think, as she likes chess too. Now that I think about it, it's fortunate that the stall holder speaks little English, because he would have thought I was loony.

There was a huge green and white wooden chess set open on the table. There were carvings around the edges... which made it appear so... antique. And there were many more stacked all around. Of course... they're all expensive. But I knew right then that if I left empty-handed from that place, I would regret it for a very long time. So I got one. As a very early birthday gift from my dad. It's the cheapest one because we're not that rich and I don't want to make my dad look more pained than he already was after having paid so much for my trip. Nonetheless, I love my new chess set (I think I've made that clear enough from the beginning.). It's a polished wooden chess set...

And since I've talked about Colmar which is incidentally the first place I visited on my trip, I'll continue from there. With my new chess set clutched under my arm, we walked around some more. We ate some crepe (Is that right?) with nutella bought from another stall and despite them being HOT, we finished them up like piranhas. I think it's the cold weather. My hands are so numb the can't feel the heat from the food so I keep peeling the crepe bit by bit and stuffing them into my mouth. I might sound like a glutton or a pig, but let me remind you that airplane food sucks.

Basically, Colmar is like Diagon Alley, only the alleys are wider than what they show in the movie and the shops don't sell bats or rats or potions. But the shops do look equally quaint and pretty. The streets are cobbled as well. And it's cold. How many times have I said that? After Colmar, the tour brought us to Strasbourg, which is more or less the same. The same pretty alleys, the same pretty shops... Do I make it sound boring? It may look the same over there, but you never find such places in Singapore. So it isn't boring. There's a cathedral in Strasbourg, which is ancient... can't quite remember when they built it... perhaps the 13th century? It has only one tower, because the builders realised the foundation wasn't strong enough to hold two.

By 4pm, the sunlight has turned really orange and you know it's dusk. We left France and headed for Blackforest, Germany. There's a lodge there which is called Hofgut Sternen. A German name, no doubt. It's next to the highway and the forest. So it's pretty dark behind the building. I ended up rooming with my cousin while the remaining four members of my family settled into a family suite. I don't mind. In fact, I was glad because I would be far away from my brother and his sloppiness and his throwing all over the place habits and his complaints of no football on tv. It is a very nice, cosy room. Two beds - one for me, one for my cousin, Kak Naz. The bed is huge with white, fluffy sheets. I found all these really welcoming because it is incredibly satisfying to be able to lie flat on your back after having to make do with inclined seats in the plane and bus for long hours. I had a great night's sleep, waking only once during the night because the back of my earring had fallen off.

So imagine my surprise when my cousin mentioned after we left Germany the next morning, that she thought the room was haunted. Okay... maybe not the room, she says, the bathroom. And when she announced this to the rest of us, I was so relieved that we had left that place. She told me she felt extremely uneasy in the bathroom. And though she saw nothing really scary, she sort of envisioned it. She told us that the moment she closed her eyes to wash her hair, she'd see this face looming up at her, on the back of her eyelids. And she'd immediately snap open her eyes. The face was of a teenage girl's, according to her, with dark hair and dark holes as eyes. She could have imagined it, even she admits it. But why such a face? Why couldn't she have imagined the normal Pontianak instead of what was clearly, to her, a European girl? Whatever it was, real or not, I was glad we were moving on to a different hotel. That mystery will remain a mystery.

Blackforest, Germany, is famous for it's cuckoo clocks and blackforest cake. We didn't eat a blackforest cake... oh wait, we did! We did during dinner at Hofgut Sternen, where the haunted bathroom was. The restaurant served blackforest cake with cherry liquor as dessert. It was scrumptious. We went to a cuckoo clock factory too. Factory is not really an appropriate word... because the clocks are all handmade. They hardly use machines except simple tools to carve the designs. It's more of a cottage industry. Cuckoo clocks are run solely on weights, no battery. So it can last really long. My family bought one. Quite small but costly. It's hanging in my house right now, next to the dining area.

Lake Titisee was conveniently situated next to the cuckoo clock shop. It was very, very cold. It might have been freezing, I'm not sure anymore. There was mist on the surface of the lake. The water was as reflective as glass. And there were many ducks! I wonder, aren't they cold? Why haven't they flown south where it's warmer? The water must have been unbearably cold. Some of it near the shore had already turned to ice. My brother and me were ecstatic at the sight of frozen water.

The last place in Germany that we visited was the Rhinefalls. It's a small waterfall, but it makes a very beautiful view nonetheless. There was the constant sound of gushing water which I found really soothing. It drowns out everything else. We ate ikan bilis sandwiches my mum made by the water. Spicy, hot food in cold weather tastes much better, in my opinion. I think over there then, it's sort of still half autumn and half winter. Some of the tress still had leaves though they've all gone orange, yellow or the rare red. It's very pretty. There's a castle next to the waterfall, on top of a small hill. But we didn't go in there. I wish we could. Love castles.

At the end of that day, we finally arrived at our permanent hotel for the trip, Astoria, in Luzern, Switzerland. It's in the middle of the city but it's not noisy or anything. At night, it's quiet but not very dark. My stay in the hotel room was uneventful, without any looming faces or prickly feelings at the back of my neck, thank goodness. Dinner was slightly unbearable. By then we were sick of vege and fish. Wait, that's wrong. I was sick of fish and I have never liked vege in the first place. The fish.. which was very white and tastes bland was merely splashed over with some tomato sauce and peas. Soup was okay and the bread was soft and filling. But the fish was just... eeugh! Dessert was a sickeningly sweet strawberry sorbet which was very pleasant on my taste buds. However, with every spoonful it got harder to swallow because too much sweetness makes me blanch and for all the dinners there, I didn't finish the dessert. And before you ask, yes, the dinner at the hotel, is the same EVERY night.

The following morning was my mum's and sister's birthday. Woke up and gave my mum, who was in the opposite room, her present. This consisted of a little kitty soft toy in a forever friends tub and various messages from all of us. She seemed happy enough. Then, we set off for the highlight of the tour, a visit into the Alps - the mountains. The particular mountain we were going up was called Jungfraujoch (pronounced yong-frau-yock). We were armed with several layers of warm clothing which proved to be a lot of trouble. The moment you get onto the bus, you feel hot and proceed to take off your jacket and neck scarf. When you have to alight, you put everything back on. It is quite tiring. And I haven't mentioned going to the toilet. When it's cold, your bladder tends to become full faster, and signs leading to the toilets are the first things you look out for at every stop. Once you're in the cubicle, you have the task of peeling off your clothes one by one - first your neck scarf, then your overcoat or jacket, then your pants, then your long johns and finally your underwear. Good luck to you if your business is urgent. Be sure not to tear down the cubicle door while you trash around with your clothes. I recall my visit to one of the public toilets. It was not in any mall or building. It was like a cabin outside.. Ah, you know, like the ones along the beach? I got quite a jolt when I sat on the toilet. Now I understand why Roald Dahl was tasked, in his book Boy, to warm a toilet seat for one of the prefects.

As we went further into the highlands, we began to 'oooh' and 'aaah' at the scenery. Snow-peaked mountains... one after another... It's like flipping the pictures of a calender, only you're aware that it's real. That such beauty does not exist because of camera tricks. It's as beautiful as the pictures. We took a train from a station called Lauterbrennen, higher up into the mountains. We changed trains once. And while we waited at the station, which was hardly near the top of Jungfraujoch, it was already freezing. The wind chilled me right to the bone and my face, which I couldn't exactly wrap in a woollen scarf lest I couldn't see and fall off a ledge, got the worst of it. My cheeks were freezing and I understood the expression where "the wind was like a knife on my cheek".

There's a tourist centre on the mountain and when we got there, we were free to roam the place on our own. I was already feeling slightly giddy but this was dismissed immediately in the prospect of playing with snow. Finally, I thought. Snow. There was a door which led out to what was called the 'Ice Plateau' and the moment I stepped out of that door, the wind nearly knocked me off my feet. And, oh, it wasn't just the wind which left me speechless for a while - it was the falling snow as well. I was holding my videocam in one hand, switched to recording mode, but the moment I came out, I forgot all about it and swung around, putting my arms around me in a vain attempt to block out the wind. The snow was falling right into my eyes and I kept thinking, "How am I supposed to see anything?" But after a while, I got quite used to it and blinking more rapidly seemed to have solved the problem. My dad took over the videoing and I played with the snow.

It's so soft... almost like flour, but not quite. It's not very deep at that patricularly place... so imagine stepping in a snowy beach. We kept grabbing fists of snow and throwing them at each other. We went to the Plateau twice, once before lunch at the restaurant there, once after. Obviously, we had ample time to play with snow. My sister made snow angels. And lying in the snow, worried at first that I wouldn't get all the white stuff of my back, I discovered that it was really, really soft. And as long as you dont have clumps of snow attached to you when you get back into the warmth of the building, you won't get wet at all. Simply dust off all the snow on you before you get back in. My sister and I took off our gloves just to feel snow with our bare skin but after two seconds of holding snow in my palm, I felt my hand freeze up completely. It was number than I had ever felt. And it was also painful. I immediately threw the snow back down. Wearing gloves is a must, I realised.

There was a lift which brought visitors higher up the mountain, somewhere near the peak. It brought us to an open observatory called the 'Sphinx'. I suppose in the summer, it would give you a nice view of the sun shining on the snowy slopes. But all we saw was white. I couldn't tell the difference between the sky and us. We must have been in the clouds. And all the while, the snow kept falling steadily and slowly. I caught the snowflakes in my hand and looked at them closely. Each one was so pretty! I got one up close on video.

We all know that the air is thinner at higher altitudes. But I only knew how it feels like to be subjected to thin air when I was up on Jungfrau. I realised, after being quite hyper in the snow, that I felt really giddy. I felt like I was going to be sick. And several times, when we were back in the building, I had to sit down to ease the feeling. Some of the tour members did throw up, but I was determined not to. It's a mind over matter thing, you know. So I didn't. But the feeling continued until we were chuggind down the slopes on te train, back to where the air was composed of a higher percentage of oxygen. Nonetheless, Jungfrau was the best thing during the trip.

On the remaining days in Europe we went shopping and a little bit more of sightseeing. Milan, Itlay was supposedly a shopping haven, but that's only if you've got stacks of gold stored safely in your bank. Yes, all the branded goods are there, but they still cost a lot. The only branded thing we bought was my sister's birthday present - an Adidas school bag. There are many tourists there... and there were Godfather-like characters on the streets - an old man wearing an expensive-looking coat and holding the leash of an expensive-looking dog. Then there's shopping in Switzerland. We were mainly scouting around for souvenirs and there wasn't much that we could buy. A fridge magnet is approximately 8 SFr, converted to Singapore dollars - $11. And they're mostly horrid looking anyway. The best thing worth buying for people is chocolate.

The watches are great too. We each got new watches, but they're not cheap either. I got a Swatch watch. It's what's called a Swatch skin... with the rubbery type of strap. I just thought it was simple, looks good and will go with whatever I wear. It's labelled summer fashion over there, but apparently it's quite the latest thing over in Singapore. And oh, I saw Eunice's button watch! The exact same model. I got a jacket too, from Bern (another city in Switzerland... in fact, the capital city). And I got the well-known Swiss water bottle! It's white... with killer whales all over.. Haha, it's because it has something to do with WWF. Not the wrestling, the World Wildlife Foundation.

It'd be quite difficult to describe the remaining happenings of my trip. There isn't much to say because it was mostly simple sightseeing and shopping. A bear pit somewhere... lambs ina cage, donkeys... a sculpture... a bridge... a lake... all very beautiful and interesting. But I say the first three days were the best there. And I love snow.

Would I rather stay in Singapore or Switzerland? Oh, I would love to stay in Switzerland... the wonderful weather.. the beautiful scenery right out your window... the cleaner air.. but not forever. Because all the my friends and family are here in Singapore. Unless I can bring everyone over there, there's no point in staying. Furthermore, the food there is no match for asian food! I need chilli! Chilli is my life! I don't kow how they can stand eating what they eat ALL their lives...

When we came home, the first thing we ate was Nasi Rawan. And that alone was enough reason to come back... But I still like Switzerland. And given another chance, OF COURSE I'd go there again. =)