My Christmas Time in Thessaloniki

Hi all,

Today is 25th of December 2009. I have my first Christmas time in Greece. I have a really good time at Christmas last year in UK. And now I get also really wonderful Christmas in Thessaloniki. I will tell you what happen to me on 24th and 25th of December 2009.

At 24th there are 2 families invites me to their house. So I go to the first one in Tom's house around 1 o clock. They invite a lot of people in that party. I stay there until 4 o clock. Here is the photo when I am there.


Then I back home and I go to another family from my church that invite me for dinner. They are a German couple that recently move here to Thessaloniki. We have great conversation and great time together.

After that I go home and sleep.

In the 25th I go to the church and talk with some of the member of the church there. I take a picture with my pastor and a really nice old lady in my church. Here is the picture.

When I am on the church suddenly my friend from couchsurfing send me an SMS and asking me if I have plan for that day and he invite me to his house to eat lunch with his family. I directly accept his invitation. I don't have a plan anyway. Then I eat really big meals on his place.

I have a wonderful time on Christmas. I just hope it will be the same as your Christmas time.

Wish you Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.

TIps and Trick for Cheap Travel in Europe

Hi all back again writing for the tips and trick,

I was doing a lot of traveling in my summer. Like I say in my previous post, I have already traveling around Europe. I travel with quite little amount of money compare with other people but I am not doing that much compare to the one that really-really don't have money. I will explain later the difference. I will tell you about the tips and trick for traveling in Europe.


1. Transport.

- Low Cost Airlines (Ryanair and Easyjet)
For transport I use Ryanair flight which is really cheap. I get the promotion ticket for 1 euro that time. So everytime I fly I just spent 1 euro. So that time I will just look at their map (where they fly) and then I just make the route and find the promotion ticket. Usually they have the promotion almost everyweek, just register with them and you will have the promotion sent to your email. The problem with this Ryanair is the airport is quite far from the city so you need to spend more money to get on the bus or train to get to the city. The other problem is there are so many regulation that you have to pay attention to, otherwise you will pay more money. You will be allowed to bring only 1 bag for 10 kg (55cm x 40cm x 20cm), for your carry hand baggage. For more information about baggage you can find out (here) You will need to print your boarding pass or otherwise you will need to pay 40 euro in the airport.

- Local Transport
I always go to the tourist information office for the information of everything. Usually you will have a free map and all the information you need. You can ask for the daily ticket or any ticket that is for tourist. It will save you quite money if you using it a lot, but everything is depend on how you want to travel. For sure it will be cheaper to walk all around.

- HitchHike
I haven't use this but I guess I want to try to use it some time in the future. I have meet quite a lot of people doing this and they say it is working and this is the cheapest way for the transport. The tips and trick I get from them is just find the road to get out from the city, write your destination in cartoon or big paper and then just raise your tumb. One of them say that the longest time for them to get the pick up is 1 hour even that he already traveling around europe.


2. Place to sleep

- Couchsurfing and Hospitality Club
I use couchsurfing in almost all places I have been in Europe, but in some cities I stay with my friend. Couchsurfing and Hospitality Club is the website that people can offer their house for someone to sleep on for free. Usually is for several days and they want to host people to make friends and meeting other people from different culture. My tips and trick of staying in couchsurfing is just be nice and just do whatever you can to help your host, for instance washing dishes is one of the simplest one. If you can cook, cook for them. If they ask you to go out for a drinks, pay for their drinks also (if you have quite money to do that). All the other that you need, you can read in their profile I guess, what they like, what they don't like. And always write personal message. What I mean by personal is maybe at least more than 3 lines. You can explain yourself and why you want to go there.

- Cheap hostel
In Europe there are a lot of cheap hostel. You can find most of them easily, by looking in some website like www.hostelworld.com or www.hostel.com. You can read the rate and their location there. You can ask in tourist information also if you have already in the city.

- In airport or park
I know some people that doing this. They bring sleeping bag or tent and they can sleep anywhere. But it is quite dangerous if you do in the winter. In summer is fine but that is my last option. There is no point of doing this because compare to couchsurfing you will have a comfortable place to sleep also for free.


3. Food.

- Bread from supermarket
That is the cheapest one I can find. I don't know about the food you usually have but this works for me. I just buy the bread, ham and some cheese and put it together to become a sandwich. I eat this for my breakfast, lunch and dinner.

- Cook
If you can cook and if you using couchsurfing you can cook for them. You can buy all the stuff you need in the supermarket and use their kitchen to cook. There is only 1 times that I failed ^^. All the other host really like my cooking.

- FastFood
I guess the next option is the fast food. A lot of people do not feel like to eat fast food because they think that is not healthy. But it works for me as long as it was the cheapest one. I guess in Europe Fast Food is the cheapest one, but not in Asia. So just take a look on the price first before you decide.

- Restaurant or Bar
The next option for me is restaurant and bar. You can not avoid it if you using the couchsurfing with the guy that don't eat fast food. So just follow them, you can offer to cook for them but if it's already the time to eat .. just eat. You can separate the bills or if you have some money you can pay for him also.


4. Go around the city

- Plan where you go
You have to know at least what you want to visit in that place. All the rest you can ask the information on the place. But even if you don't know anything about the city you can ask in tourist information. Usually there always 1 in each airport or in the train station or in the city center.

- Tourist Information
It's always good to visit tourist information. Usually you can have free map. They can explain you all the time schedule what to visit and all the free places you can go. This is the favourite question I always ask.
"I will be here for ... days can you suggest me where to go and what to see ?"
"Is there any free places or free museums ?"
"What is the most famous monument/place in this city ?"
"Is there are any travel/pass card for tourist ?"

-Information from couchsurfing host
There are more information you can get from your couchsurfing. Sometimes you will have something that even the tourist information forget to tell you about. Or maybe he know the beautiful places that is not shown on the map. One of the advantages if they can have the time to show you around the city. So what I say to you is just use couchsurfing. Of course if you are a girl I am not recommend you to travel alone using this. At least have 1 friend with you.

I guess all of my explanation cover almost everything you need in traveling cheap in Europe. ... SO Happy Traveling

My summer experience

After a long time not writing this Blog. Finally I am back. I will catch up with you because there are so many things happen.

The first one is my summer holiday. I get three months summer holiday which is really-really long period of time. I want to return to my country Indonesia, but I have to pay a lot for that. So in the end my parents just told me to stay in Europe and try to save money. It's not worth to spend the money on the flight ticket and then doing nothing in my country. I guess that is the best advice I got. So I am beginning my journey to go around Europe.

I will make it short because 3 months is too long to describe all. So I will just write down only the important stuff. I am traveling with Ryanair and they say it's the cheapest airlines in Europe. I get the promotion ticket which is only 1 euro each time I fly, so I make the route and book many flights that time. Then I have another problem because I will spend a lot of money in hostel and other stuff, but my friend told me about couchsurfing and this is really change my life. I stay with someone in couchsurfing in different countries for free. I will describe all of this in my later post. But for now I will keep short. I will just tell you all the countries I went in summer. Here is the list :

- Netherlands (Eindhoven, Rotterdam, Delft, Den Haag, Amsterdam(only airport))
- Denmark (Copenhagen)
- Sweden (Malmo, Gothenburg, Stockholm)
- Norway (Oslo)
- Finland (Turku, Helsinki, Tampere)
- Germany (Hamburg, Berlin, Postdam, Wittenberg, Luneberg, Stade, Bermen, Munster, Osnabruck, Koln, Frankfurt)
- Italy (Milan, Venice, Bologna, Florence, Pisa, Roma)
- Belgium (Brussels)
- United Kingdom (Liverpool, Manchester)
- Spain (Madrid, Aranjuez, Granada, Cordoba)
- Portugal (Lisboa, Sintra)

So I guess that is the list of the country I have been in the summer. I am sorry I can not write all of my experience one by one but I will tell you more information about my long summer trip on the next post. I will try to write down all of my travel experience in Europe. I will also explain a little bit about the tips and trick how to do that.

Oke ... that is all for now. I will try to update this blog as soon as I have time.

Hope all the best for everyone

Baptized today ... and God answering the question of my life

Hi there,

I am so happy today because I have been baptized. I don't feel much different though. After baptized I expect something spectacular, but I just feel the same as before ^^.

There is something different today though, in this big occasion of my life. God answer my question, the question I have been asking for several years. The question I have been asking for is "What is the purpose of my life ?". My friends here in Madrid giving me one book as gift for my baptism that maybe is God answer to that particular question. I don't even talk about this particular question to my friend here in Madrid, because we just meet for several weeks, so in the end I just think that this is God answer through my friends.

The title of the book is "THE PURPOSE DRIVEN LIFE" by Rick Warren, I am sure that this book can answer my question. This book will take 40 days for me to read. The book explain why we need 40 days to read it. There will be 40 chapter to read and we have to read one chapter each day and think about it before continuing to next chapter. I will dedicate my time to read this book everyday in the next 40 days, even though I have exam in next day and next week. I think it will be fine because I will need to only read one chapter each day.

I will face my exam tomorrow, the day after tomorrow, the day after that and in the next several weeks. So I really need your help. Please pray for me so God will give me strengths. I believe He will give me all the best, and I can face the exam easily.

Hope all the best for everyone.

Best Regards,

Djohan Wahyudi.

Don't give up

Hi again,

Just want to share you a song. My friend put this song on his MSN status. So I click it and this is really nice song and it encourage me.

I will do my dissertation in Greece

Hi,

I want to tell you all that I have to do my dissertation in Greece. After a long process of thinking and asking for supervisor, finally they told me that I have to do my dissertation in Greece. Maybe this is the way GOD want for me. Actually I have already thinking about it a lot and I have already imagined that I will be in Greece. My professor have already agreed my proposal so I do not have anything else to worry about.

Oh maybe there is something I have to worry about. That is about my visa to go to Greece. I know that I can go to Greece using the student visa I get from Spain, but they told me that I have to apply for another student card for Greece. It will be different, I still do not know about it and I guess I will have to handle this situation by myself because it's looks like no one knows about it.

I will take a look on Greece embassy website, how to apply the visa and how to fulfill all of the requirements. I will try to figure about it before I go to another country, but I'm sure that I can finish all of this before go to another country for summer.

And about the summer. I plan to work for summer internship, I have apply a lot but I still do not know if I'm going to get the job or not. Besides I have already plan to traveling around Europe also, I plan to go to Skandinavian Country, Germany, Italy, Belgium, Netherland, Paris and Poland. I do not know if I am going to be able to visit all of this countries but that is my plan for now. It might have a little change but overall this is the plan.

Hope me good luck okay ... I hope that I can finish all of this plan and visa problem before going to another countries.

Hope the best for everyone

Best Regards,

Djohan Wahyudi.

Care about our earth

Hi,

Today I watch the video from my friend
http://www.youtube.com/homeproject

It's cool movies. It's about the earth creation, where the life coming from and how human make the difference in earth. In the end it show about the global warming and how human try to handle it. The movie touch me and I wish I can do something to this earth, but I do not know what I can do. But someday I'm sure I can do something for earth and human kind.

Hope all the best for everyone.

Best Regards,

Djohan Wahyudi.

In Spain

Hi there,

I am in Spain .. now. I met several Indonesian student here, they all so nice to me. I have been to several city in Spain (Madrid, Granada, Toledo, Valencia, Barcelona). I will post you for the photo later because until now I still haven't see them yet. I do not know what is happening but for sure I feel that I do not have time to do everything, even though I watch movies and traveling for some time but I always feel that I do not have enough time here, I don't know why. In here I don't like my place but I can not do anything because I have paid the deposit, I live with one family that have a baby. The baby (one year) is always shouting without reason and the husband and wife often fighting. I don't like it to be in this situation. But anyway I will be in UK or Greece, I will only need to hang on for another month, hope I can stand it.

Let me tell you about my project now. I will do my theses project in Stock Market Trader Agent. The idea is to buy and sell the stock automatically. The agent should make the decision to buy and to sell. Right now I have been assigned to UK to do the project, but I still confuse because until now I still can not find supervisor there. I am really glad to be assigned in Reading, but after talk with other people and can't find supervisor there, I don't mind if I have to go to Greece. I will post to you later where I will be for the project. Right now both is okay with me. I think I will wait for my coordinator decision. I don't mind at all to go to UK or Greece.

I will explain to you also my comparison between UK and Greece. In UK there wouldn't be any trouble in communication because they use English. I have a lot of friends there and it will be so nice to be there. There wouldn't be any language boundaries to work in UK. While In Greece, you will have free food and you do not need to cook. You will save a lot of money by staying there. The teacher will help you for sure doing your theses. All the comparison I made is only the positive one, because I will be assigned in one of this places anyway, so I need to be in positive energy about the place.

Hope I will be assigned in the place I should be. I am really confuse now and still can't decide what should I do. I just keep praying and hoping that I can have the best of it. I just wait for GOD decision for me. I am sure He will give me the best place to go. I believe in Him.

Please pray for me ... And Hope the best for everyone.

Aegean Sea

I'm sure many of you have see the romantic movies with title Aegean Sea. This film was shoot in Greece in some island like Santoriny and others. I'm not aware that the sea in Thessaloniki is also Aegean Sea. I just know it from my friend. I bet many of you are envy me this time because I have been in Greece.

This is some photo I take, Hope you like it.

Sooo many assignment in Greece

Sorry, because I have already abandon you for some time, because there are so many assignment right now I have to face.

The first assignment is Neural Network and Fuzzy logic, we have to build a program to handle the classification in Neural Network and the fuzzy logic we have to build the model for some dataset. For both of them we use Matlab.

The second assignment is come from database course. There is two assignment in database, one is presentation and the other is data mining task.

In presentation we are divided into 7 groups consist of 3 people. and we have to choose different topic that our professor interested in. There is some restriction we have to face in making the group because there is people who don't have any computer background should not be in the same group. Another restriction we have are We only have one week to prepare the presentation and the report. We chose a topic about Text Mining. This is really broad area and in here we just try to explain everything and not so deep, and apparently our professor think that we don't understand much about this topic. But I think we handle the presentation quite well.

In data mining task we are also divided in groups, but here we are given the dataset from KDD Cup 99 which is handle with intrusion detection. In here we have to know if we have the intrusion, and classify them into 4 different class of intrusion. One of my friend in Taiwan make this one as his thesis in his master degree. I was surprise that we have this kind of project in only 2 weeks course. We only have time one month to do all of this stuff. Thankfully we have WEKA as our tools, otherwise we don't know what to do.

The third assignment we have are Virtual Reality in Human Computer Interaction. In here we have group also, with different task. We choose the most simple one, that is building Robot with VRML. We have to create the interface to control the robot. The other have to deal with Speech recognition, GPS System and other stuff. I guess we are really lucky to get this kind of task. I will do it right after I finish my assignment in Data Mining and Neural Network.

The last but not least is the assignment from E-Business. In here we have to build some application with PHP, that is what I know anyway from the information. We still haven't do the class, So I still don't know what we will face in this, but what I know is maybe it will be big application, and it will have personal assignment ... maybe, not group anymore.

And in the last week we will have the exam for all of the courses. We have to study about all of the slide in one week, I will try to read from now, I still have around four weeks before the exam. I guess I can manage to study all the material.

Okay, hope you have the picture of what I am doing right here in Thessaloniki, Greece. They put a lot of information to us and they hope we manage to get all the information. They already reduce the number of information but anyway they have a lot of time, I mean in one semester for other student, and we only have like 2 weeks for one course. Too much information in relatively short time.

I hope I will finish all of these assignment as soon as possible. Please pray for me and hope me good luck.

Hope the best for Everyone ...

Bye bye

Win 50 euro ... Lucky Me

Hi There,

Last time I told you the story about travel alone in Thessaloniki. Right now I will tell you how GOD answering my question.

The day before yesterday, I ask to my friend, Should I give the money to the church and how much to give ? And after that, yesterday, He answer me. I never have direct answer from GOD before, but right now I know that GOD do that to me. Yesterday, I attend the christian community here in Greece (the name of the community is Campus Crusade, you can find the "Agape Student" group in facebook). They hold an event every year. The first meeting after New Year, they will cut a big cake and there is a coin inside. Everyone who get the coin will get 50 euro as the price.

And you know ... I am the one who get it. I don't know what you think of it ... about this situation, but I think that GOD is answering my question. He is really nice to me. I hope He will be nice to you also.

That's all for my write today. I feel that I am really lucky and I am really happy winning the 50 euro money.

Hope the best for eeveryone...

Djohan Wahyudi

Travelling alone in Thessaloniki

Hi there,

Right now, I have already in Thessaloniki for one and a half week. So far so good, I like the free food here. I don't know what is the reason that the student here get free food. I really like it because I don't have to expense my money. I have already found the church here, and I might like the church here. They are really nice people and there is also free food after the service. Some cakes and other stuff.

Few days ago I go by myself to the White Tower. I found that the place is really nice. This is the first time I go alone, I never go by myself before, I am really dependent, I don't like that. But because of my room mate here don't like to go travelling and prefer to stay at home, I prefer to go by myself than staying at home.

My friend Anna want to go to Meteora today, in her birthday. I want to join her, but because that I have to wait for my friend, so we can't catch the bus and can't make it. I don't like this situation, waiting for someone and being punished because of someone else. Later I might consider myself more than another person. Or if I have to make some appointment I will make sure that everyone is not messing with me and take it all seriously. Because of his mistake right now Anna celebrate her birthday alone in Meteora

... I hope all the best for her ... Happy Birthday Anna ...

New Years Eve and Thessaloniki

Hi there,

Already leave you for some time ... Sorry for that. I will tell you my new years eve experience, then I tell you the story how I got to Thessaloniki. I have really wonderful experience in New Years Eve. We go to the London Eye to see the fireworks. It was really amazing. We admire the fireworks. This is the photo that I took. After that night we back to Reading directly. And sleep in bed after that right away. I get back in Reading maybe 5:00 in the morning.


In 7 Jan 2009.

I go to Thessaloniki using British Airways. We (I and my Vietnamese friend) sleep in the airport that night. After that we go to Thessaloniki by British Airways. After we got to Thessaloniki we pay too much for the taxi, it takes about 25 euro which the right price is 15 euro. And after that we go to our flat and I found that our room is quite nice and everything is good, and then after that I go to several place in Thessaloniki. I hope the picture can explain everything.

This is the seaside








And this is the castle in the old town of Thessaloniki