Adventures in Zwickau

Ooh...another weekend over. Time to get back to the mundaneness of everyday Uni-life. But before I do that, I will write about the wonderful weekend that was definitely a welcome distraction from reality. Well, and also about the crap reality.

This week was really crap without a printer. I don't know how I survived one semester without a printer! In any case...you only realise how dependent you are on printers once yours fails to work. I was seriously ready to tear my hair out. Especially on Monday, when I desperately needed to print something out for Swedish class and the printer had some error problem which could not be solved by looking at the user guide. I called an authorised BROTHER service centre in Dresden and they told me to call BROTHER Germany to see if they'd honour the warranty..the guy was helpful but said they couldn't honour the non-international guarantee. Sigh. But he said they could probably fix the problem. So I went to the service centre in some ULU part of Dresden...but in my haste, I forgot about my ink cartridges, which spilled during the LONG tram ride to the silly service centre. The lady there told me that it wasn't worth getting it fixed because 1 manhour would cost 260 Euros and I may as well buy a new printer. Humph. I am pissed off because it's not like the damn printer broke in half. It is still perfectly ok except for something to do with the spooling...what a waste of raw material! No wonder we have wars for the control of OIL-rich countries...STOP the freaking wastage already! But, the scanning function still works..so I put an ad in the uni paper, hoping someone will want to buy it as a scanner. Trying to sell other stuff too. Realise that I have accumulated a whole bunch of crap over the years and it irks me.

Anyway, Marcus, being the wonderful boyfriend he is, decided to come over to Dresden to help me look for a new printer during the weekend. He came over on Thursday because he didn't have school on Friday. His school was apparently under renovation. Hmm...I should be so lucky! Anyway, I really did appreciate it...he also stopped by Lidl and bought ice cream for us.

Made couscous on Thursday evening for him...but I was too heavy-handed on the chilli flakes. Oops. The poor boy had to drink a lot of water.

The next day, I skipped swimming (well, I've actually only gone once this semester)...and had to force myself to go for lecture..which was, I suppose, interesting enough. The prof still lives with his parents. Hahaha. And apparently the ambulances were kept very busy that day. There were 2 police cars and an ambulance outside one of the newer hostels on Friday. Probably had to do with the screaming we heard early in the morning. After class, I headed on to AOK to get my insurance certification for my visa. Also decided to ask about some scheme they have..and promptly forgot to collect the certification. Ugh. Had to walk back...but thankfully I wasn't actually at home already.

Popped by the Asian shop to get tau geh and tofu. They had the Singaporean tofu!! I was soooo happy! You have to wait forever to get your hands on them..and I bought 2 packets, even if they cost 6 times as much as they do in Singapore. Then I could finally go home!

Marcus and I drove to Prohlis (or rather, Marcus drove me to Prohlis) because we needed to buy groceries and also cos there's a Media Markt there. I was determined to get a new printer that weekend..even though the damn things cost twice as much here as in Singapore. We had Döner Kebap for lunch..haven't eaten that since...erm...since August, when Marcus and I went to that place near my hostel. Then we did not go into any clothes shops..did not want to be tempted...but went straight to Media Markt. After looking around, I ended up getting another BROTHER printer...a DCP. It was 20 Euros cheaper than an MFC and I don't need the fax function anyway. The size is about the same as my old MFC too. Then we went to the supermarket and bought some stuff for the weekend, for Char Kway Teow (modified because he does not like a lot of things), Risotto and some Hähnchen-Kartoffel Auflauf...as well as bread rolls and other stuff.

The char kway teow turned out quite well. I only added half the chilli...and thankfully it wasn't too spicy. I don't really remember what we did that evening. Probably just watched TV...though I guess I didn't really pay much attention. Ah...I remember. We decided to go to Chemnitz the next day, using a Sachsen-Ticket...so I was planning and searching for information. We were considering abandoning our plans because there wasn't going to be good weather the next day though.

The next day however, the weather didn't look SOOOO bad..so we decided that we would go to Chemnitz..and it there wasn't much to see there, we would go to Zwickau as well...since it was the Sachsen Ticket anyway. There were lots of people at the Dresden Hauptbahnhof because it was the official re-opening after years of renovation work. There were also policemen around, so we figured Dynamo Dresden must be playing...they're totally the football team whose fans have the worst reputation for hooliganism...though of course not all Dynamo fans are hools.


Marcus on the train...the empty seat is where I was sitting.

While on the train, I suddenly realised that maybe it would be better to go to Zwickau first...after all, it was further away and we could pop by Chemnitz on the way back. So that's how we ended up in Zwickau. The train ride was over 2 hours and Marcus and I entertained ourselves by listening to music and playing mini-golf on his phone.

There were also policemen at the Hbf in Zwickau...and actually we had no idea where to go..and Zwickau was one of those towns which Hbf was not in the city centre. So we had to walk to find the city centre. But we found a board with a map..and some lady told us how to get to the city centre. Zwickau has a quaint little city centre.


This is me in front of the Stadt Cafe. We didn't eat here though.


What a funny name for a department store! And it was COOOOOLD!


The Hochzeitshaus..erm, don't know why it's called that.

We managed to find the tourist information office with help from another lady. The woman there gave us a brochure and map of Zwickau and told us about a few tourist attractions they had in Zwickau. I decided that what interested me most was the Horch Automuseum...with the history of Horch, DKW, Wanderer, Audi, the Trabi and Volkswagen. We had to take a tram out there though...and it wasn't super easy to find the place..but it was worth it. Erm, we had to schwarzfahren to get there because we didn't have time to buy a ticket from the machine and the one ON the tram only want to accept GeldKarte...so silly!It was a pretty museum with nice shiny engines and cars.


Nice green car with HUGE headlights..and I do mean HUGE!


Boys and their fascination with cars.


Me looking out of place between 3 mannequins..but since some guy wanted to take a photo there, we decided to follow suit!


Pretty car! Matches my top!

I have to admit I know nothing about cars and Marcus was surprised I wanted to go there because as he said, not many girls would want to go to a car museum...but hey, it was pretty cool, even if I had no idea about engines and cars. All I can say is that engines are amazing...AND complicated man! What I found most interesting was the info about the Trabi, THE ultimate East German car. It was made of some cotton-like material mixed with an adhesive agent, covered with some other material and heat-pressed together. So no metal...amazing man!


A dissected Trabi!


DDR Car!

They also had a mock-up street that was quite interesting...the museum was definitely not a waste of money. Lots of people were taking photos and Marcus and I also printed out some "Design your own car" things we did. :) We are like little kids. They also had this racing thing that reminded me of Daytona..but some boys decided to monopolise it. Sigh.

After that, it was pretty late..so we decided to head back to the train station. Ended up waiting 30 minutes for the bus. Which is tough when it's so cold! But at least I was with Marcus and not waiting alone.

At the train station, it was really loud because of the football fans who had apparently missed their train. There were tons of policemen there as well. We bought water and some sour gummis to eat. We ended up on the same train as the fans..but I think they were restricted to certain cabins..so we had a peaceful ride. We played mini-golf and I lost horribly again!

In Chemnitz, we had to wait about 35 minutes...so we went to the bookshop and then to Burger King to get a bite to eat. Then the train came and was surprisingly empty. We played Hangman..and it was quite hilarious. One of the words I gave was "Chemnitz" because Marcus said Dresden when he meant Chemnitz at least 8 times yesterday (in his own words). By the 4th time or so, I wasn't sure if he was kidding or if he really mixed it up. But he really did mix them up...it was funny, but to be honest, there's nothing wrong with it. We seem to like playing games...card games, board games, handphone games, paper and pen games...it's fun that we can be silly!

We got back quite late and pretty much went to sleep not long after getting home.

Today was household chores day. After breakfast, we did the laundry, baked muffins and while waiting, played "Stadt, Land, Fluss" which is a game where you're supposed to name a city/town, country, river, name, animal etc. according to each letter in the alphabet. Marcus won...because I was really bad at naming rivers and animals. Even the easy ones...we had "B" and I didn't think of "bear" or "J" and I didn't think of "Jaguar"...haha..so paiseh man! But it was very fun!

Then we made the Hähnchen-Kartoffel Auflauf for lunch...and after lunch, we played Ligretto. Marcus won also...I surrender..he is really good. Actually he wanted to leave at 2pm..but he ended up leaving at 6pm instead...*sigh* another 5 days before I see him again!

We made the