Strasbourg is another must-go-destination in Alsace region (North-Eastern France). Whoever comes to visit me, I will bring them to Colmar then follow by Strasbourg. They might think I’m a expert or a native of Alsace, because I don’t need a map to navigate around these 2 area, I can  story-telling about the history and events in Alsace so good so well that they didn’t even know I was actually bull shiting them…. pls let me continue bull shitting you in this post =)

Strasbourg is the capital of Alsace Region, it is hosting a few European institutions such as the Council of Europe (with its European Court of Human Rights, its European Directorate for the Quality of Medicines and its European Audiovisual Observatory) and the Eurocorps as well as the European Parliament and the European Ombudsman of the European Union…

See, all the important European thinggy is situated in Strasbourg, if one bomb dropped into Strasbourg, the entire European institutions will be vanished! Great fun..

Now, I brought some of my friends to Strasbourg by train. Most of them, when they came out from the station, they will have a WoW expression.

Low Kei and Kalen at Strasbourg train station

The train station itself is very old, they built a sky dome for the train station to protect the premises. The architect reminds you about China Beijing Olympic bird nest Stadium

Low Kei took a picture of me, I like the clear blue sky and the sky dome of the train station 一望无际，海阔天空。。。

Justin visited me during winter, the experience was totally different

The train station look like the Beijing Bird’s nest stadium is deposited with full of Bird Droppings =)

Strasbourg is not really a big town, it is very convenient to walk around, just  like Colmar. The very first thing we arrived Strasbourg is to find the famous Strasbourg’s cathedral.

Well, it is very difficult to describe what I felt about the cathedral.

This cathedral is huge, bigger than Notre dame of Paris.

Look at the beautiful design, it is so majestic and beautiful…

I stood in front of the building, closed my eyes, in my mind I think

。。。

Thank god, I was not born during 1176 and 1439, imagine what will happen to this Cathedral if I was born in Strasbourg during  1176 – 1439 and was assigned to design and build the cathedral? (few example of my art at Art #1 and Art #2 .) I would have destroyed the whole masterpiece and no one will come and visit Strasbourg after 1000 years

Catheral of Our Lady in Strasbourg. used to be the tallest building in Europe between 1647 to 1874. It was so gigantic, I can just buy one ice cream near by and admire it from morning till afternoon, then buy one kebab sit down and look at it from noon till evening, from evening take a beer till midnight

Nice sunsent in Strabourg

Justin admires Strasbourg cathedral also

The color of the facade seems different, I loved it so much until I even..

licked at it and feel what it taste like, the conclusion is: Cathedral Our Lady of Strasbourg taste like 900 years old.

Old buildings in Alsace region are special

Strasbourg used to be an important town to produce wine

For those who wants to take a tour ride to visit the entire Strasbourg, I would suggest you to take a boat ride at River ILL

It will bring you around, around and around until you feel dizzy…

The ride story telling (not bull shitting ok!) everything nearby the river and Strasbourg. See the above picture, Low Kei was listing so intensely

The boat will pass by the European institutes..

The ride was long, we decided to cam whore

one is not enough, so we did another one…

We passed by Barrage Vauben..

.

stumbled upon a gigantic dog

you have to be careful, the dog bite everything that moves

Nearby there’s a Mega Virgin Store, I used to write a lot about Virgin

We walk around River ILL,

the river bed, 100 years ago, Many prostitutes tried to attract their client here. The house wives liked to wash clothes here.

I was exhibiting “the French” way to my friends

after all the wonderful experience, we went back to

.

.

.

Some years ago, some business man from Malaysia went to France. He visited a small town called Colmar in Alsace. He duplicated Colmar and created Bukit Tinggi in Pahang.

I never been to Bukit Tinggi but I heard it is a very nice place to be visited. However, I’d visited  Colmar city 4 times (Summer, Autumn, Winter, Spring) since last year. Colmar remains as one of my favorite and the most sought after place to visit in France.

Colmar’s attraction are concentrated in its old town, stunningly beautiful and well preserved. What I like this place most is the relax ambient in Colmar, it is small a very small town hence you don’t need to rush from one place to another. Although Colmar is small, it has loads of interesting stuff.

Low Kei + Karen visited Colmar in the beginning of Spring.

There’s some shopping in old town Colmar, so tempting……………

One of the main attraction is Maison des Tetes (House of Heads)

Why do they name it house of heads? because the house has many heads

Where did the head come from? If you look at the opposite side, it explains everything

Nice houses.

ice cream too…

eat eat eat…

Nice Colmar beer

and famous Colmar pork knuckle.. yum yum

nice to shop… with low kei and Kalen..

and we came to Petite Venice, very very nice place

From here on, it turned into winter… and Justin came by

at night at little Vanice

Justin teleported

me too..

.

.

.

but failed

.

.

.

.

A swan is an enchanted bird, it plays its part exceptionally well in portraying elegant and beautiful in fairy tales and legend.

It comes to you slowly, calm, pleasant and attractive… then it glides away slowly with charm…..

It is like a messenger sent by nature to tell you how beautiful is everything around us serenely.

Seeing them moving around you makes you feel everything around you is still..

.

Everyone has different Swan experience, I stumbled upon various interesting swan thingy in internet and I feel that I need to signify my swan experience here!

.

Musical Swan:

The old 007 agent Roger Moore as narrator and Mischa Maisky cellist collaborate together in

Carnival of the animal – The Swan Saint-Saens

also,

Yo-yo-Ma likes to close his eyes and squeeze out his Swan juice out from his brain

Jay Chow tried it in vain =P

.

.

.

Pipi‘s encounter in Interlaken 2009 (Switzerland):

and more……… make her dizzy and crazy

.

.

Pipi visit swan in Belfort during winter 2010:

We walked to the lake  early morning

Cold fresh air and serene sun rise…

she was trying something naughty..

the swans came by..

Pipi wanted to make friends with them

.

but the swan cannot break the ice with pipi, as it was too much icy and snow between them..

Swan get angry and do this.. and pipi LOL

.

.

What did Justin and FireMice did in Strassbourg with Swan?

We made SNOWBALL for them!!!

2 snowball for these 2 swans

3 snowballs for 3 swans

.

and we gave it to them……… EAT IT!!!

until they were afraid of Justin

.

Justin recorded the evidence… nothing is pleasant between swan and us and nothing musical about it.

.

.
.

It is actually scary as I don’t know how to go out.

-11C was the temperature.

It was like somebody painted the entire town into white during the night. Everywhere is.. white

My office is just opposite of my room.

I decided to go out for fresh air..

go through the park..

Cathedral..

cars…

I decided to go on-top-of-Belfort… to have a great view…

So i decided to climb the castle

I managed to make a tough climb… it was too windy and dangerous… I’m the only person there

but it was worth to see all the tiny things around Belfort

Poor lion of Belfort, your sculptor didn’t sculpt you winter clothings

went to the river after that

the bush…

FireMice made a dangerous attempt

I decided to go to the lake near my apartment. This lake is very beautiful during the summer.

I took this previous summer

look how big was the moon during that time.

and now,

I noticed some dog’s foot prints on top of the lake..

and I have a crazy idea.

I decided to

.

.

walk across the lake… dangerous attempt indeed, no one was there… i think it was worth to give myself a try… and stand in the middle of the lake.

after that, I noticed something..

some ducks were playing around the lake… I just realized, the lake was not frozen entirely, lucky me

Everything ends well with a nice sun set view..

]]> http://thefiremice.com/travel/europe/france/belfort-snow/feed/ 1 http://thefiremice.com/arts/journey-to-the-west/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=journey-to-the-west http://thefiremice.com/arts/journey-to-the-west/#comments Mon, 14 Sep 2009 21:59:12 +0000 firemice http://firemice.wordpress.com/?p=389

Sometime I think my mind doesn’t belong to me at all. I just came back from Paris after meeting a good friend Jackson from UTM. My mind was wandering during the daytime in the office. Yes! It is another unproductive day for me in the office and I don’t know why I keep thinking about Journey to the West 西遊記, one of the greatest Chinese Classical Novels  I read during my childhood.

For some reasons this story reminds me about my presence in The West and my own Journey to the West. Why am I here?

Journey to the West story is about a Chinese Buddhist Monk who set out India to retrieve the Buddhist scripture for China in the 1590s. He was aided and protected by his royal and faithful disciples on his Journey. At the end, they all attained enlightenment.

Am I doing that?

Well, I was told by my boss or maybe it is a little mission from my boss to send me to the West to attain some experience that might help our company new direction. Get pieces of details, trivia about their work in the West.. so that at the end of the day I can crap things to them..

Gosh! Journey to the West is a Big wake-up call for me to be serious and pay more attention to work… so I have to gear myself up and be more competent now.

The mood of drawing suddenly hit me at the end of the day.. I guess I can use some Graffiti again to express myself like what I always like to do..

I decided to draw one of the interesting story in Journey to the West. It is about the punishment given by the great Buddha to Monkey King when he tried to escape from Buddha’s palm . The Buddha trapped the Monkey King under the Wu-Zhi Five Finger mountain for 500 years until someone come and save him!

.

FireMice under the Five-Finger Mountain:

.

.

.

.

.

.

one finger is hidden.

I felt the pressure all the time…. OUCH!

.

Pics up there is my current staying place in Belfort (France). It is called Thomas Edison Apartment. This is my 4th month now. Why do they named it Thomas Edison? Maybe because the apartment is next to GE factory, apparently Thomas Edison is the founder of GE empire.

.

.

Ladies and Gentleman, this post is about to detail another piece of FireMice’s living experience. You are about to witness FireMice’s personal belongings or should I say Properties.

As I was living here alone all the while, I’d invested thoroughly to kill my time and also satisfy the “sins of Gluttony” of mine.  In conjunction to that, I’d owned a series of private collections indirectly and I am about to share everything out.

#1 bottles

I have plenty of beers bottles, red wine, rums…

that’s not all, I have another series at the other table

it came together with these

and of course, plenty of these…

not only alcohol bottles, I have plenty of other bottles… which makes spaghetti, sandwiches, junk, that makes your dung / shit smelly

#2 Magnum

Magnum ice cream is relative cheap if compared to Magnum back  home…

Hence, I have many boxes in my room

Now when I look it back at my collection, It is so sexy… Magum Golden Hazernut, Magnum classic, Magnum Honey Nougat, Magnum Ecuador Dark, Magnum Coconut, Magnum Columbia coffee (my personal favorite), Magnum Pistachio, Magnum Almond…

and of course, Magnums will end up with..

This is what I call 1Malaysia. What PM Najib used to remind our Malaysians. We are one, see different type ice cream actually will become the same after I ate them. All the sticks look the same…. me, you, us, no different