Category Archive
The following is a list of all entries from the Euro 08 category.
obrolan ringan tentang orang Jerman
Written on Monday, June 16, 2008, 8.46am Dusseldorf time.
Tadi pagi ngobrol2 dengan Tante Ate tentang orang jerman. Ya ampun, entah kenapa ngerasa kok orang jerman rada mirip dengan saya ya? Yang jelas sih nggak ramah [nyokap suka ngomel2 soalnya saya suka nggak peka ga suka basa-basi padahal kan orang indo pasti ini itu banyak basa basinya]. Misalnya aja kita ketemu acquaintance orang jerman terus tanya “Hey, mau kemana?”, mereka bakal mikir: “Lo siapa? Itu urusan gw,”. Apalagi kalo ditanyain “Anaknya berapa ya?” “Oh nggak punya anak?”, mereka sebel kalo ditanyain begitu. Astaga. Mirip banget sama saya, apalagi kalo saya ngerasa nggak penting untuk kenal mereka. (Nggak ngerti deh kenapa mental saya gini. Saya sih cuma mau basa-basi ke orang yang saya anggap perlu untuk jadi deket). Memang masalah hidup saya di negeri timur tapi over cuek gini. Mereka nggak akan nawarin sesuatu kalo dari awal mereka nggak mau ngasih. Beda kayak orang indo yang nawarin ini itu meskipun sebenernya mereka nggak mau ngasih (dan yang ditawarin demi kesopanan bakal nolak). Yah begitulah orang indo. Kayaknya asik juga ya kalo sampe (amin!) saya bias hidup di jerman. Itu keinginan saya dari dulu…mungkin nggak ya terealisasi?
Den Haag, Delft, Rotterdam
Written on Sunday 15 June 2008, 9.12pm Dusseldorf time
Hari ini jadwalnya pergi ke Den Haag terus ketemu Oom Steve & istrinya Tante Nike [kata panggilan oom dan tante tuh asalnya dari Belanda, lho...jadi pas banget digunakan sekarang 
]. Oom Steve orangnya tinggi rada kurus gitu, tampangnya serius banget pas pertama kali liat…eh tapi ternyata dia juga suka lupa jalan. Tante Nike kelihatannya masih muda, pake tas crumpler, dan suka enthu sendiri.
Pertama-tama kita ke Madurodam, tempat maketnya gedung2 terkenal di Belanda. Ada macem2, mulai dari tempatnya si ratu, gedung pengadilan, sampe pelabuhan kapal & Schiphol airport. Dahsyat lah pokoknya. Ngambil banyak banget foto disana (kampungan tp yasudahlah namanya juga turis, toh?).
Terus kita diajak ke TU Delft, univesitasnya Tante Nike. Ga boong itu GEDE banget. Bener-bener bikin NTU jadi cuprut secuprut-cuprutnya. Belom lagi librarynya yang lebi gede dikit dari LeeWeeNam tapi design sekeren ADM. Di design khusus biar banyak sinar matahari masuk. Keren banget!
Abis itu kita diajak makan di tengah2 kota Delft. Katanya kota ini cuma rame kalo ada keluarga kerajaan yang mati, gara2nya semua royal family dikuburin di gereja depan balai kotanya. Makanannya pancake dkk. Porsinya sepiring gede gitu. Wah kenyang sampe bunting dah. Enak lagi. Hmm… Ohya disebelahnya saya beli sepatu kamar bentuk sepatu belanda warna oren!
Tujuan berikutnya ke Kinderdijk, tempat windmills. Akhirnya baru deh bener2 ngerasa ke negri kincir angin…hehehe…salah satu bangunannya bias dikunjungin (tapi bayar sih ). Isinya…kayak balik ke tempat oma saya di Purbalingga sana. Banyak barang2 kuno gitu…yah sekali lagi pertanda bekas2 penjajahan.
Setelah itu kita dianterin ke Rotterdam, untuk naik kereta ke Dusseldorf via Utrecht (ada relative lagi disitu…namanya Tante Ate…ato mungkin saya harus panggil Oma ya?). DI kereta sempet sms si mami (sebelum nyadar kalo itu lagi jam 11 di Indo dan pastinya dia udah tidur) dan sms tepen juga. Duh kangen kalian smua, beybs!
Amsterdam
Written on Sunday, June 15, 2008, 04.41am Amsterdam time
So finally…Amsterdam!! Unexpectedly, this city is so damn cold, even though it’s still summer. I really wish to email my friend Hans, whom I once met when I was still in high school, but unfortunately there’s no free internet connection here! Yeah so that’s why I cannot publish my previous posts also.
Me, my mum, and my sister arrived at 6am in the morning. Imagine there’s nobody in the airport and the train station. We then stayed in Novotel Amsterdam, located near the RAI station. The location is good. It’s near both train and tram station. To go to the city, we just need to ride a tram number 4.
We went to Madame Tussauds yesterday. It was a great place, as everybody had said. First the tunnels lead us to the history of Dutch. Was quite boring [yeah I know the history of Dutch, ituloh yang mereka berlayar ke Asia Tenggara utk cari rempah2 n ujung2nya ngejajah 3.5 abad] but the wax statues was cool. Then it comes the Chamber of Horror, contains pirates but in scary way. They have wax statues picturing people hanged with opened stomach and all the blood. Urgh! The staffs even dressed in Jack Sparrow way. Well, Jack Sparrow was cool, IN THE LIGHT, but think again if you have to see him IN THE DARK. And that Jack is in the prison, trying to reach you, and EVEN HE GOT OUT OF THE JAIL…Ow shit. I know he’s trying to scare us, but PLEASE don’t get out of the jail. I was so scared I screamed. Oh yes it was embarrassing, but I don’t care.
Then finally we can go to the bright room with wax statues of famous people, like Dutch royal family, Princess Diana, US Presidents, and Mahatma Gandhi. The next room is for musicians, such as James Brown, Elvis, Bob Marley, and even Justin. Next one is filled with DJ Tiesto, Ronaldinho, and De Boer twins. Downstairs they have Hollywood, like Mel Gibson, Oprah, Julia Roberts, Brangelina, and JLo. After that the rooms are filled with Dutch stars, which I don’t really know.
But the highlight of the day was, of course, The Van Gogh Museum. It was beautiful. We have to pay 10 euros for adults and 2.50 euros for my sister, luckily, because she clearly didn’t enjoy this trip. I have to pay extra 4 euros for audio tour but who cares? I finally reach the city of Amsterdam and this museum. An extra IDR 60.000 is worth everything. The ground floor [or level 0] is for the paintings which inspired Vincent van Gogh. The first floor is for van Gogh collections, divided into 5 sections: The Netherlands, Antwerp, Paris, Arles, Saint-Remy, and Auvres-sur-Oise. Finally I can see the famous “Sunflower” in the yellow background, which is the like the signature of him and other beautiful works including the painting which I already seen in the ADM 280 class. I personally like “Still Life with Bible” because it contains a deep meaning. I didn’t really understand the items in the second floor, because my sister is absolutely bored and tired, and my mum insisted me to just scan the items quickly. Me? What to say? She’s the boss, even if I had said that I maybe will never go to that museum again. The one thing I notice in the 2nd floor is the analysis of a painting of a potato basket. It said if we rotate 90 degrees the X-ray scanning of the painting, we will see a shepherd figure with the sheep and a dog. Then if we rotate it again 90 degrees, we will see a woman figure knitting. Cool! It’s just like Da Vinci code, while this one is Van Gogh’s code 
.
The third floor is for the paintings inspired by van Gogh. Again, I have to just scan them quickly, because, after all, I was so damn tired because of jetlag and lack of rest. I cannot concentrate fully on the paintings.
Before I left the museum, I bought something at the souvenir shop for Nete’s bday. Hope you’ll like it, beyb!
After that finally we check in to the hotel and have a long long sleep. I slept from 3pm to 4am. Okay. I’m a piggy. But jetlag is really affected me. So now we are all awake at about 4am (which is about 11am in Jakarta).
Today’s schedule is to Den Haag, meet a relative and see some windmills. Cya!
KL
Written on Friday, June 13th, 9.55pm Malaysian time
Yeah right. I’m in KL now, in transit to Amsterdam. The plane has to be cleaned before we continue the journey to Amsterdam. It was a 747-400, and it’s HUGE. I think that’s the biggest plane I’ve ever used. It even has 2nd stories. And the meal was Malaysian. Yeah that’s quite a problem because they served it with a cheesecake also. Quite weird.Well, Kuala Lumpur International Airport is a nice and modern one, just like Changi. They also have the ‘skytrain’ but here they called it ‘Aerotrain’. It was nice, but nothing so special, I guess…ahaha…
Ah that’s the announcement. I have to go back to the plane!
