Pirna, Königstein and Lunch with the Neighbours


Marcus and me in front of the Elbe at Pirna


Some random but pretty building in Pirna.


Yummy ice cream! I definitely recommend "Omas Apfelkuchen". The "Blue Banana" was also good...I'm a sucker for blue food. :)


Festung Königstein - Sächsische Schweiz


View from the Festung...the weather wasn't good but hopefully you can still see the beautiful colours of the autumn leaves :)


More autumn leaves - the only reason I like Autumn


The Elbe and the town of Königstein


A nice sandstone mountain (erm, don't know what's the correct term)


Marcus, me, Mai and Phuong in Fu Wei's room


Me and Marcus

The whole week was stressful. That isn't news anymore, I guess. There's no end to the work to be done. Just have to grin and bear it. I just hope my body doesn't give up on me...or that I suffer a nervous breakdown. To be honest, I know I'll get through this...things usually feel worse than they really are I guess.

But it really helped that Marcus came on Thursday. I mean sure, I have less time to do work when I spend time with him...but this time, I managed to finish the glossary for my project on Thursday night, while we watched TV. It's really great to have something to look forward to when things get tough.

I ponned lecture on Friday morning..but it's nothing serious because I'm allowed to "legally pon" twice a semester...we went shopping in Prohlis instead. I collected my photos...Marcus bought a new pair of jeans and I bought new underwear from C&A...been slowly "collecting" new underwear because a lot of those I had were really old and ugly and some had holes in them...Marcus bought a new sweater in H&M because his sister gave him a 20 Euro voucher for his birthday. I think he looks good in it. He's wearing it in the second last photo. I have other photos with him wearing it..but I don't think he wants me to put up those photos here...haha.

That evening, we played "Mensch ärgere dich nicht" aka Ludo...and I won...the silly thing was that I made the victory sign and said "Hee hee!" And now Marcus won't let me forget it. Haha...I admit it was a really dumb thing to do, but now it's a big joke between us.

On Saturday, we decided to go on a day trip to somewhere nearby...and decided on Pirna. It was 12:50pm when we got there and all the shops closed by 1pm...so the place was like a ghost town!! We kept seeing the same people over and over! We found a parking lot that had a parking limit of 1 hour...and we thought that wouldn't be long enough...so we drove around and found another one with a limit of 2 hours. We thought we might have to move the car later..so we asked the lady at the tourist information office, who told us that the parking lots at the main square were free after 2pm...but we ended up managing to see all the main sights from the outside, except for Schloss Sonnenstein within 1 hour...haha...no wonder the parking was free after 2pm...everything was CLOSED! So we decided to have ice cream. There were so many flavours man! But we both chose "Omas Apfelkuchen" and that was really good. There were apple bits and cinnamon...yummy!

After that, we decided to head to Königstein in the Sächsische Schweiz. It was a whole lot livelier than Pirna. Lots of tourists, even though the weather wasn't so good. We decided to climb up...even though I am very unfit and always practically die when I have to climb up this Burg or that Berg. Wanted to save money...and though it's tiring, the climb really is part of the experience.

The Festung is HUGE man...when we finally got up there, we took nearly forever to walk one round of the periphery. Of course, we weren't exactly walking at top speed..but we weren't crawling either. We saw lots of people eating cake from the in-house bakery...and they were huge man! The view was excellent..and the Mischwald meant that the colours of the leaves were very very pretty. If the sky had been blue, it would've made for excellent photos...but it was still beautiful. However, it started to rain after a while and we had a small meal of Frikadelle and mashed potatoes before we decided that the rain was getting too heavy and decided it was better to leave. They had no main museum building or anything though...which was kinda weird...but ok...it was meant for defence and not really some royal residence.

Climbing down was slightly tricky, thanks to the rain. But we made it down in one piece...and we drove home...but were stuck in a jam for over an hour...it was a one-lane street...so no way to get out of it. We stopped at Wal Mart Supercenter in Heidenau...and bought some junk food for the rest of the ride home...as well as some other stuff...it was a weird experience..there are so many things that you lose the overview very quickly.

We had a lunch in honour of Liu Jian, who just came back from her overseas semester and from her holiday in China...Fu Wei's friend and Phuong's friend was there too. I made Hainanese Chicken Rice and Fu Wei and Mai made fried noodles. Phuong fried keropok...and that was our lunch. For dessert, we had muffins from Liu Jian and fruit salad from Phuong. After that, Marcus suggested we play Ligretto...and boy was it chaotic! We had 6 people at first and believe me, it was nearly impossible to see the cards! Marcus won the first time (he was the first person to get more than 100 points) and I was second...beat Fu Wei by just one point. Mai left and we played another round..and I won this time... :) yay! Well, it definitely was an ego boost from feeling stupid and useless most of the week...not it's not like it requires much intelligence...which means it's the perfect game for me.

That evening, we watched Dodgeball...it was quite funny...the funniest scene was when the guy's mail-order bride made a "Loser" sign and he said "L für Liebe"...haha!

Monday was a busy day. Had classes but Marcus and I went to town in the morning. He bought his stuff and we bought strawberry chewing gum, which actually tastes quite good. My old Fossil watch died...despite me having changed the batteries while in Singapore...I guess it was too old..either that or the guy gave me damn lousy batteries. I had been wearing a plastic kiddie watch for the past week or so...and I decided that I had to get a new watch. Was deciding between Swatch and Fossil..but I wasn't too satisfied with the metal ones that Swatch had (Marcus said I may as well keep my plastic kiddie watch if I was gonna buy a watch with cartoon characters on it...well..he's right. I could get away with those watches when I was in school cos these things don't clash with your school uniform...but when you wear different clothes every day, your watch has to blend in..not stand out.) and so we went into CHRIST, a watch and jewellery shop. Well, actually, we saw the watch in the display window. It's a simple metal watch with a light blue face, which has a flower pattern on it. It's not as funky as the blinking heart watch I used to have...but it's a very pretty watch. I'm very happy with it.

Marcus made lunch and dinner that day...because I had class till 8pm. We had pancakes for lunch and Schnitzel for dinner. Both were good...man, my boyfriend is really a good catch (even with his Maggi and Knorr fetish). He also vacuumed my floor and cleaned up my room a bit! I was so tired after dinner that I fell asleep practically right after dinner...Marcus continued watching TV but I didn't notice a thing...not even when he turned off the TV.

Today went by super quickly...only did laundry and made pizza for lunch..and played Mensch ärgere dich nicht again...and I won...haha...ok, I suppose I am lucky...it's got nothing to do with skill at all.

But I was really sad when he had to leave :( VERY VERY sad. Time spent with him flies by super super quickly...but him going home also means going back to reality...to the piles and piles of homework and stress. In any case, I have never felt like this about anyone else before...oh man...I am really head over heels in love this time.

Ok, it is seriously time to get back to my homework! Have to summarise a Swedish article for class tomorrow.