The Netherlands - National Tulip Day @ Amsterdam 2014

What's better than picking your own tulips for FREE?

Back in January we headed to the Dam Square in Amsterdam for the National Tulip Day. Apparently, this event is pretty touristic because none of my Dutch colleagues - even those who live in Amsterdam - were not aware of this event. Apparently, they do this every year to promote tulips. It's very nice of the government to sponsor this kind of event :)

Free plastic bags were distributed for free so everyone could bring the handpicked tulips home. You would get two bags, and I think they would be easier to carry if you bring a large tote bag with you.

People of all ages come to pick the tulips. Most of the visitors were foreigners, but there were also some Dutch people.

I came around 13:30 and waited in the line for about 20 minutes before I could enter the flower-picking area. The floor was filled with tulips an hour before I came.

My friend came earlier at 12:30 PM, and he said that the "golden tulips" were gone. He could still get plenty of the red tulips, though. I had to do an extensive search for the red ones that were hidden within a bunch of yellow tulips, but I managed to find at least five of them. It was kind of like treasure hunting.

The yellow tulips are generally not very popular compared to the red, purple and pink ones. Around 3 PM, the only ones left were the yellow ones. They were beautiful, but I suppose they were not as eye-catching as the other colours.

In the end, we had a lot of fun picking the tulips. I myself got two full bags of these beautiful flowers to decorate my apartment. I just had to cut the stalks from the bulbs and place the tulips in a vase with water.

Beautiful, aren't they?

Just a little tip for picking tulips. Tulips are very strong. They can still bloom after they are cut from their bulbs if you take care of them properly. If you don't manage to get tulips that have matured well because you were late, don't worry. As long as the buds have grown, they will most likely bloom. Mine bloomed even further in less than a week.

Interested? Keep checking the official website so you can come to pick your own tulips next year!

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Sweden - Lund

It's been almost a month since I arrived in Sweden, but I haven't been posting anything about my current city. Lund is a very cozy city, with enough things to do and yet is not so crowded. It's much bigger than I thought it was, and Lund is actually one of my favorite cities that I've ever been so far.

I had been busy with projects lately that I didn't really have time to explore the city. Sometimes living together with your project mates can be a bad thing - you can have meetings in your or your friend's living room at any time of the day, including close to midnight.

We arrived at the best time of the year where the sun is beaming, the flowers are blooming and the grass is green. There are tulips of various colours in most parks. For a little while in early May I was jealous by the fact that I was not in the Netherlands to see countless tulips blooming in Keukenhoff, but hey, these are pretty, too, and they made me smile! :)

The buildings in Lund are somewhat in between classic and modern, and the streets are made of stones. It has a nice feeling, but it can be quite a pain walking on the street with high heels, especially the pointy one.

There are in total of 27 churches in the city. According to the lady who gave us a tour around the city on our first day at school, most of these churches used to be Catholic, but now they have been converted into Lutheran. The building below is the Lund Cathedral.

And the tour guide said the area around the church used to be graveyards for people who died during the war against the Danish back then, and one lady who lived nearby the church once experienced a creepy feeling when the sun set when she was in the basement doing her laundry. Well, the laundry room always have weird noises (from pipes, machines, etc.), but you never know what the noises exactly are and when you feel something unpleasant, it's a wise decision to just... run away ;)

There are various shops around the city; nothing exclusive like Louis Vuitton or similar, but there are shops like H&M and Vero Moda around. Oh, by the way, I didn't know that H&M is actually a Swedish brand until I came to Sweden. I had always thought it was an American brand because it's  everywhere in the US.

There are gelato shops, coffee shops (not like the one in the Netherlands, for sure), sushi restaurants, Thai restaurants, pizzeria (of course, they are EVERYWHERE), Burger King, McDonald's... pretty much the food here is not too bad.

Last week I finally had a free time in the afternoon to explore the city further. I found a city park, about 5 minutes away from the city centre by bike.

Yup, that's my tiny bike. It's a little too small for me but I had no choice; we arrived in Lund in early May, just 30 days before the end of the school term. There were not that many bikes available for renting, and cheap bikes were kind of hard to find. This bike was the only bike left, and not having a bike in a group of bikers will make me a handicapped person. I had to get it. Well, it's a really nice mountain bike, so it's not too bad.

Back to the topic. The city park was quiet and serene. The sound of fountains, birds chirping, rustling grass and trees... it was a truly relaxing moment for me. I love being in the nature after having to sit down in front of my computer typing reports and all other school documents.

 Ah, and also in the city park, there is a small section at the corner with animal cages. Swedish hens are irresistibly cute!

If you look carefully at its legs, you can see that its legs are covered with thick feathers that look like brush tips. I've never seen hens like these before. Well, tropical hens don't need extra insulation against the cold; it's already hot enough.

They are really, really chubby, and if you look at them from the back, you see fur balls crawling on the ground. If there were no nets around the hens I would have tried to touch them! :D

 I really love this city.

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