frutti.gummi

I didn't go anywhere this month because I have been quite hardworking. :P So I thought I could save some money for traveling in the future. But instead, I went shopping and ended up with a monetary damage comparable to taking a short trip. Well, shopping does feel very good indeed, especially when I managed to buy most of what I wanted. :D And it has been a couple of years since I spent so much on clothes and shoes. A little over one third of the amount was spent on shoes so I don't think it's that bad.
I have been looking for a nice pair of black leather kitten heel and I saw them in the store 2 months ago. I thought it was a bit pricey and since I didn't need it asap, I decided to continue looking. A week ago, I finally gave in to the SALE signs everywhere and stepped inside the stores. Then it occured to me to check if that store would have the shoes on sale. And lucky me, it's 30% off and one last pair of my size. :D
Similar thing happened to another pair of shoes that I bought. I like the design but only the beige color was available for my size. I prefer the dark brown color so I decided to look around for others. A week later, I went shopping in Cologne which has a lot more variety. Still, I couldn't find anything that I like more so I decided to go back to the store to see if that pair of shoes is still available. This time, I saw a pair with my size and the color I wanted. SooOOoo happy!

Just feels so nice to shop here. Groceries are a lot cheaper than Trento especially the fruits and vegetables. I finally managed to buy seedless grapes here and chinese pears! There are also a lot more variety of candies, chocolates, chips as well as drinks. In the few supermakets that I've been, I've only seen soft drinks sold in bottle form. I'm looking for them in can form so that I can limit the amount I drink. Surprisingly, pasta and pasta sauce is very limited. Even fewer variety than what I can get in KL. No wonder there are so many food joints selling pasta. People here don't cook them at home I guess. Retail stores here are a much bigger too and with more well known brands like Mango, Zara, H&M, etc. After being in Trento, I don't find that clothes here are that expensive anymore. There are plenty of home decor stores and a variety of dollar stores that I scoured for cheap kitchen utencils and stuff for the bathroom. I found quite a few handicraft stores too selling beads, ribbons, paper, etc. Kinda reminds me of the times I made presents for family and friends. Oh, I did manage to go to IKEA in Heerlen, Netherlands. It's an hour away by bus from town. I bought a few things including a reading lamp. Some of the stuff are really cheap and I shouldn't have bought the kitchen utensils earlier in the other shops in town. Oh well, now I know where to go for cheap stuff.

The Christmas atmosphere here is awesome! At the Weihnachtsmarkts (Christmas markets) , one can find all sorts of things for sale. All pretty pretty things. As for food, one can find a variety of meat, potatoes, pastries, candies, roasted nuts, etc etc. They're all tasty! The famous drink is Glühwein, which is warm red wine with cinnamon and some other spices. Throughout the day and night, people would stand around small tables with a drink and chat. It can be cold sometimes but we still do it. It's all the fun with shopping and eating and drinking.


Some of my personal goodies include Christ-stollen, dominosteine, half a bag of chocs from France, and a souvenier mug from Christmas market in Bonn. The stollen a traditional christmas cake in Germany. I guess it's like the English fruit cake but the taste is different all together. It has sugar dusted on top and the one I bought had marzipan filling. Yummy! There are other variety of stollen too; some contains almonds, some has rum. Dominosteine are small layers of gingerbread with jam and marzipan covered with chocolate. I think these are the best choc fillings. Hehe. And the choc pralines are so smooth and it just doesn't feel like choc at all. I could have finish the bag in a day. Also, there's all sorts of Lebkuchen. I've never really liked gingerbread but the ones here are really nice. :D