Missing Europe.

So I’ve been home for almost half a year now.

Some friends have said I’ve changed since I came back, especially those who’ve been attempting to study with me for this semester’s finals. I’m more ‘slack’ (or distracted, in a way), less intense about studying, happier, but definitely slacker.

Is this really a ‘return from Europe’ syndrome? Not sure how the rest are faring, but half a year in Switzerland and traveling across more than 20 cities in Europe has taught me more about life than the close-minded, narrow-sighted tunnel vision rat race that we run, constantly and daily, as a Singaporean youth facing Singaporean pressures.

I have learned to relax. To enjoy time. To enjoy people. To have a clearer understanding of the ‘eternal perspective’.

I have been reminded to treasure the people God has blessed me with, to put people above results. To put human beings before goals. To value a person above perfection in their work. To let go of things I cannot control.

I have learned to treasure the gift of time. The gift of time to spend with family, loved ones and treasured friends. To appreciate the fact that at the end of the day, my grades are not going to save me, they are not going to make me happy, the endless chase for perfection can only satisfy for so long, and that my life would be meaningless and worthless if I had no one to come home to, and no friends I can call to share my happiest and crappiest moments with.

I don’t want to wait till I lose somebody, someone gets a terminal disease, or face a near-death experience to realize that it’s time to say ‘I love you’, ‘Thank you’, and ‘I’m glad to call you my friend’ to the people who matter.

So, don’t forget to tell the people who matter to you that you love them. Love them now, not tomorrow, not when the exams are over, not when you have the time, not when they become perfect or do the right thing, not when you can finally prepare something grandiose. But love them simply, and love them fully, and love them now.

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This post is titled Missing Europe. So here are some other photos from my travels, some from later trips than the last Europe photo post which was of us in Spain. If any of the juniors going to Europe are reading this, please, get excited, travel lots and don’t just be caught up in the photos, but be caught up in the experience.

I am a bit apologetic to say this but I cannot remember which lovely mountain range this is.

Open park. Vienna, Austria.

Home of 'The Sound of Music'. You can take 'Sound of Music' tours, we saw the steps where they sang 'Do Re Mi', the road lined with trees where the kids were climbing when their father returned, the church, the graveyard that inspired the one in the movie, etc. Salzburg, Austria.

Second trip to Bern, Switzerland. In Summer this time.

Memorial to the murdered Jews of Europe. These are massive, walking through them is a bit of a maze. The concrete slabs are designed to produce an uneasy, confusing atmosphere, and the whole sculpture aims to represent a supposedly ordered system that has lost touch with human reason. Berlin, Germany.

Jewish Museum. Very modern. Berlin, Germany.

Sachsenhausen concentration camp, actual prison cell. While not as famous as Dachau or Auschwitz, Sachsenhausen was one of the earliest concentration camps, designed in every possible way to inflict terror and despair (these were carefully thought out in the architecture, hierarchy, design and placement of camps, layout etc). Many of the later camps were modelled after Sachsenhausen. Outskirts of Berlin, Germany.

Park Guell. Barcelona, Spain.

Dancing on the streets. Barcelona, Spain.

Small lake nearing the end of winter, still cold. Lugano, Switzerland.

The Dutch would like you to know Amsterdam has more canals than Venice. Amsterdam, Netherlands.

Nearing sunset, Florence, Italy.

View from Hitler's Eagle Nest. Obersalzberg, nestled between Germany and Austria. They blasted a vertical tunnel right through the mountain and built a brass elevator that goes 400 feet all the way to to top, where they built a house. They presented it to Hitler for his 50th birthday. Unfortunately, their Führer was not much a fan of heights, didn't like it much, and rarely ever went back.

El Mercat de la Boqueria, Barcelona, Spain

I know the description on the sidebar says that I’ll try to shoot more and talk less, but I’ve been talking a lot. Well at least I said ‘attempt’ to shoot more and talk less.

Can’t really edit photos proper so these photos are mostly untouched, just resized using GIMP, which really isn’t all too bad and I should be grateful I can even use, though the process of opening and resizing one photo is inefficiently taking more than a minute per shot.

This is the popular and rather famous (by its sheer convenient location on the Ramblas stretch) La Boqueria Market in Barcelona. It was probably our favourite place in Barca because Junhua and I were there every day.

Bought a kilo worth of cherries and indulged on them while nua-ing in Park Guell! Must say Italian cherries are sweeter though. Or maybe it’s because we bought the cheap ones…

Expensive ones.

I love fresh squeezed juice!

Good looking and ridiculously expensive chocolate. Average price was 6.90EURO per 100grams. Crazy much. We didn’t buy any.

But of course if you’re a Japanese tourist you can afford anything.

Fresh food section.

Live crabs.

And the last picture is a little gross so I’m sorry if anyone gets nightmares of dead sheep afterwards.

(Chinese readers should be okay since we can’t comment because half the things we eat is also makes it to the gross list of most angmohs.)

Oh yea, if anyone noticed any difference in the photos (ie. you were thinking is it just me or do they look better than usual, they look sharper, the bokeh is nicer, etc), it’s because they were shot with the Tamron 17-50mm f/2.8. I have officially given up on my kit lens and if anyone wants to buy it from me when I come back do tell me. It has offered me good range for the past 15 months or so but there is far more it cannot offer me, so it’s time to part ways dear friend.

Don’t know if I’m going to expand anymore because Canon is making me lust after the 5D MkII and even the counterpart to the D90, the Canon 550D has way better video quality than the jellied mesh produced by the Nikon D90. But if I do… a 70-200mm and an 85mm prime would be nice… (Just dreaming…)