Not much to say about today other than that it was awesome! Hanging out with my third cousins here in Stockholm is better than I could have imagined.
Today, for the first time in what feels like ages, we had SUNSHINE!!!!!
Daniel, who is really into history, took Laura and I into town and guided us around telling us bits and pieces of information about the area and buildings. I think he was holding back a little though because he didn't want to sound nerdy or bore us with his 'lecturing'. Around 1, we decided that no, it wasn't too early to have a beer. We found a cafe and tried a Swedish beer there and got into a good conversation.
Then we moved on and kept walking. Soon we found another cafe with a sunny, huge, outdoor cafe in the middle of a great people watching square, and decided to stop again for another beer. The conversations flowed so easily and we just chatted and laughed for hours. A bit later, Helen met us at this bar and after one more drink we moved on.
Sandra had called and she also works at a bar, so we headed to her bar next. Now I had officially met all three of my third cousins here! We again sat outside and had some beer and ordered some food and just kept on chatting and laughing. Soon, Linn (Daniel's girlfriend) came to meet up with us. Eventually, we decided to mosy on over closer to home to Daniel's favorite local bar.
At some point at this last bar, I looked at my watch and realized that is was 10 PM! I literally had not looked at my watch before that since that first beer around 1 PM. It stays so light outside here that I had completely lost track of time, I was shocked at how late it was! That just goes to show how much fun we were having!
People here seem very curious about Laura and I. My favorite part of the day though was when people would ask, "Oh, so how do you know Helen?" and I could respond, "Yeah, we're third cousins, no big deal..." And then they look kind of surprised! Somebody else asked what I was doing in Sweden and I told them I was trying to find/meet/get to know my family here. And then I said, "check!" as in 'I have accomplished this!' and when the guy looked a little confused Daniel chimed in, "We're 3rd cousins!" For some reason it just makes me so happy to be here with them and tell people how we are related. I can't get over how cool it is that our great great grandfather was the same person. It's such a long journey from Sweden to the States and I think it's amazing that I've kind of circled back and made it here to meet the family line that stayed in Sweden. I'm just continually amazed and elated by being around and getting to know them.
Helen and Daniel are also excellent hosts, they are so excited to show us around and do things with us and keep telling us that we need to say if we're bored or tired or want to be alone. We have to keep assuring them that this is perfect - we're not here to visit churches and museums and try to do everything there is to do in Stockholm. I'm here to hang out with them, and I'm quite sure I'll end up seeing some of the best parts of Stockholm along the way :)
Sandra and her new puppy Harley came and met us at the bar a little bit later, and we stood outside playing with Harley for a while before finally walking home.
In truth, we saw very little of the actual city today. But I think it's a huge accomplishment just drinking beer in the sun with your third cousins all day. Today was absolutely great.
Today also though is the beginning of June. This is quite sad because it means I am home in 22 days. Most US companies give you only two weeks of vacation time. I think the fact that I'm sad about coming home in three weeks might cause some problems for me later in life...It's weird too because we only have Sweden and France left, so the pace will be much slower. Also, if you were just normally working, have 3-4 weeks off to play in Sweden and France would be a great vacation, so it's amusing to me that we have this special time to spend in the last two countries at the end of a rather fast paced 9 week back packing trip. It almost feels like it's piecing two different trips together, if that makes any sense.
Anyway, I hope I will be able to come back to Sweden and I REALLY hope that our generation will stay in touch. That would just be inexplicably awesome.
Quotes:
Far too many, I wouldn't even know where to begin...everything was just funny today.
Accomplishments:
See above.
Travel Tip:
Take advantage of shaved legs and sunshine and wear skirts!!!
Showing posts with label Travel Tip. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Travel Tip. Show all posts
Tuesday, June 1, 2010
Monday, May 31, 2010
Roots
My day started by taking one last bath before we leave Kyrkhult, and I even shaved my legs - so I'm officially a girl again.
I had my last two Danish pastries for breakfast (yum) and did some 'computer-errands' that had been accumulating while Leif flipped through pages and pages of family history stuff. Leif had told me a couple of days ago that the way the United States Matsons connected with the Swedish Jonssons was because Uncle Bob (my Grandpa Howard's brother) placed an add in a newspaper around the area he thought our Swedish family was from. It was an add looking for descendants of Jons Mattisson. One of Leif's aunts saw this ad and brought it to Leif's attention. They were pretty sure they were the people being sought after. Leif then wrote a letter to Uncle Bob, but he did not have Bob's exact address, just that Bob lived in Monmouth, Illinois. As Leif was going through his folder of family papers, he showed me a copy of the letter he sent to Uncle Bob! That was really cool to read! Amazingly (or maybe not amazingly, Monmouth is tiny) the letter did reach Uncle Bob and from thereon the two branches of the family had established a connection. Without email though this connection took at least a year to form though I think. That part does seem amazing to me - imagine just placing an add and wondering for months if anybody will actually see it, and then sending a letter to Monmouth wondering if it will ever reach the right person that hopefully still lives there. It's pretty incredible.
Leif also found some typed up documents explaining rough facts about Jons Mattisson and his second wife and their children. It was from an internet site so I want to go read more on the site. Some of the details seemed hard to line up with each other, and I have a lot of questions but have still been able to piece a fair amount together.
Leif also was kind enough to draw out family trees of the Mattissons in the States and the Jonssons in Sweden so that I could refer back to them as I continued learning about different people and places.
Then Leif and I headed out again (Laura chose to stay home and Eva was at work) to go see some important places. We saw the house where Jons Mattisson was born (and where Per, Leif's grandfather was also born we think), and the original house is still standing and being lived in! But, because it is currently being lived in we couldn't get too close to it or really stop to take a picture of it. Then we also went to go see where the big red house used to be (there are pictures and paintings of this house because it was exceptionally nice for its time). Per lived in the big red house but later (when they didn't live there anymore) the house burned down. This is really sad, as it would be wonderful to see how pretty it is in real life. All that's left are some of the stones from the foundation. Now, there is a summer house built close by the foundation on the same site that is hardly used and not in our family's possession anymore. There is also a barn that hasn't been touched in ages. There are no windows in it anymore and inside there are broken down tools and wheels all the same shade of dust covered brown. On the inside of the window sill there were some bones which was really weird and kind of creepy and gross! One bone looked like a leg bone and still had what appeared to be an animal's paw on one end. Another bone there was the better part of something's spine! EW! Especially after seeing Hannibal Rising the other night this was a very weird thing to see!
The site is surrounded by meadows and forests and for as far as the eye can see, Jons Mattisson used to own all of this land. It is quite sad that our family doesn't own all of it anymore because it is a lot of beautiful trees and forested area.
Some of our other stops included the cemetery where Leif's grandparents are buried as well as the town that his grandmother and step-grandfather moved to when they left the big red house. Leif referred to this town as being 'forgotten by God' and it certainly appeared that way. There was however a sign with English on it explaining that in the 1930's this town was where people mined and worked with granite. Apparently the town used to be a pretty happening place 80 years ago. It had a train station and two shops (which was a big deal back then) - but now it really does look pretty forgotten and grown over.
The other places we went I will need Leif to give me the proper spellings of but essentially we drove around the streets where all of our ancestors grew up. Everybody stayed pretty close to home, so the entire area we drove through was the stomping grounds for many people related to Jons Mattisson. It was sunny out today so it was a very big treat to drive around and see the Swedish countryside where my family came from! I am very thankful to Leif (who took the entire day off work) for showing me around and teaching me what he could!
When we arrived back home, it was time for Laura and I to pack our bags. We decided to head to Stockholm today rather than tomorrow or the next day or Christmas because it will be easiest for us to get picked up on the other end this evening. It will work out very well because Hokam, Helen's boyfriend, will pick us up at the train station, and Eva gave us a map of Stockholm, so tomorrow we will wake up already in the city with a map! It will be like magic! (We usually spend so much time looking for a map the first day in a new city.) After we had packed, we had an early dinner which Eva had prepared before going to work. Tonight our lucky meal was a delicious traditional Hungarian dish of chicken in a paprika sauce with potatoes and some Hungarian food that kind of reminded me of a mix of beans and noodles. However I have no idea what they are called because they're Hungarian and nobody knew the translation. Neither Laura nor I had ever seen anything like them before, but they were good!
After dinner, I took some time to sketch out a Matson family tree for Leif and Eva and used Facebook to show them pictures of my generation of cousins and second cousins. There are some family reunion pictures posted so that was helpful in showing what everybody looks like now. I hope that they found it at least a little interesting what everybody looks like and what we're all up to (I gave them extremely brief summaries of our lives) stateside.
Then, since the generosity never seems to end with Leif and Eva, Leif drove Laura and I to a train station an hour away because a high speed train passes through there that would get us to Stockholm in 3 hours. We told him that wasn't necessary, but he insisted on making our trip as simple and as smooth as possible. We got to the train station about half an hour before the train arrived and Leif stayed with us until it showed up. I will really miss Leif and Eva and their incredible sense of hospitality! It was a simply amazing few days of rest, delicious food, baths, massages, movies, and desserts. It was a perfect little break and now we are healthy, clean, and refreshed: ready for our last 3 and a half weeks! Especially our 'rock and roll week' ahead :)
We arrived at the station to find Helen waiting for us. We began chatting and laughing immediately and soon Helen stopped and announced that she didn't know quite where we were. This was really funny because Eva had told us stories about how Helen gets lost very easily. Helen had to call her boyfriend Hokam and soon we had cash (finally) and found our way to the car. They gave us a mini tour of Stockholm by dusk on our way back to their flat, pointing out important places here and there. It will be unusual and cool for us to wake up in Stockholm tomorrow morning already with a map and a slight glimpse of what the city is like! We're not quite starting from square one, which will be nice.
I was really excited to see their flat after watching the TV show about redesigning their place. It is a really cute apartment and I think the TV designers did a great job! Helen, who is clearly her parents' child, immediately started making us grilled sandwiches and putting out multiple varieties of juice out on the table for us (at 11 PM) all because we told her we just needed a tiny little snack! She also brought out yogurt and cereal and milk, just in case. Too cute. It is pretty funny and a little strange meeting somebody when you've just hung out with their parents for three days. I arrived knowing about her parents, her ancestors, her hometown, and even what her apartment would look like! It's also interesting to me because family is so important to me so that, in a way, I gauge how close I am to people by how much I know about their family. People's families tend to explain quite a lot about them. Anyway, it's kind of a funny feeling already knowing so much about Helen (and Daniel and Sandra) before meeting them, but in a nice way. I don't know them all personally yet, but I know that we both came from the same great great grandfather. That just blows my mind when I think about it!!!
Quotes:
"Did they, like, move the doors or something?" - Helen, trying to get us out of the train station :)
"Usually I just walk and hope for the best." - Helen, on crossing the street (super funny, since I often accidentally do the same thing...)
Hokam: "Don't you guys have a four flags?"
Helen/Laura/Hilary: "Six flags?"
Hokam: "When I was growing up there were only four, ok!?"
Accomplishments:
Saw where my great great grandfather was born!
Travel Tip:
Check if your train has a required seat reservation. We didn't do this, and our train did have a required seat reservation. Luckily for us, the ticket checker guy forgot to come back and make us pay for it!
I had my last two Danish pastries for breakfast (yum) and did some 'computer-errands' that had been accumulating while Leif flipped through pages and pages of family history stuff. Leif had told me a couple of days ago that the way the United States Matsons connected with the Swedish Jonssons was because Uncle Bob (my Grandpa Howard's brother) placed an add in a newspaper around the area he thought our Swedish family was from. It was an add looking for descendants of Jons Mattisson. One of Leif's aunts saw this ad and brought it to Leif's attention. They were pretty sure they were the people being sought after. Leif then wrote a letter to Uncle Bob, but he did not have Bob's exact address, just that Bob lived in Monmouth, Illinois. As Leif was going through his folder of family papers, he showed me a copy of the letter he sent to Uncle Bob! That was really cool to read! Amazingly (or maybe not amazingly, Monmouth is tiny) the letter did reach Uncle Bob and from thereon the two branches of the family had established a connection. Without email though this connection took at least a year to form though I think. That part does seem amazing to me - imagine just placing an add and wondering for months if anybody will actually see it, and then sending a letter to Monmouth wondering if it will ever reach the right person that hopefully still lives there. It's pretty incredible.
Leif also found some typed up documents explaining rough facts about Jons Mattisson and his second wife and their children. It was from an internet site so I want to go read more on the site. Some of the details seemed hard to line up with each other, and I have a lot of questions but have still been able to piece a fair amount together.
Leif also was kind enough to draw out family trees of the Mattissons in the States and the Jonssons in Sweden so that I could refer back to them as I continued learning about different people and places.
Then Leif and I headed out again (Laura chose to stay home and Eva was at work) to go see some important places. We saw the house where Jons Mattisson was born (and where Per, Leif's grandfather was also born we think), and the original house is still standing and being lived in! But, because it is currently being lived in we couldn't get too close to it or really stop to take a picture of it. Then we also went to go see where the big red house used to be (there are pictures and paintings of this house because it was exceptionally nice for its time). Per lived in the big red house but later (when they didn't live there anymore) the house burned down. This is really sad, as it would be wonderful to see how pretty it is in real life. All that's left are some of the stones from the foundation. Now, there is a summer house built close by the foundation on the same site that is hardly used and not in our family's possession anymore. There is also a barn that hasn't been touched in ages. There are no windows in it anymore and inside there are broken down tools and wheels all the same shade of dust covered brown. On the inside of the window sill there were some bones which was really weird and kind of creepy and gross! One bone looked like a leg bone and still had what appeared to be an animal's paw on one end. Another bone there was the better part of something's spine! EW! Especially after seeing Hannibal Rising the other night this was a very weird thing to see!
The site is surrounded by meadows and forests and for as far as the eye can see, Jons Mattisson used to own all of this land. It is quite sad that our family doesn't own all of it anymore because it is a lot of beautiful trees and forested area.
Some of our other stops included the cemetery where Leif's grandparents are buried as well as the town that his grandmother and step-grandfather moved to when they left the big red house. Leif referred to this town as being 'forgotten by God' and it certainly appeared that way. There was however a sign with English on it explaining that in the 1930's this town was where people mined and worked with granite. Apparently the town used to be a pretty happening place 80 years ago. It had a train station and two shops (which was a big deal back then) - but now it really does look pretty forgotten and grown over.
The other places we went I will need Leif to give me the proper spellings of but essentially we drove around the streets where all of our ancestors grew up. Everybody stayed pretty close to home, so the entire area we drove through was the stomping grounds for many people related to Jons Mattisson. It was sunny out today so it was a very big treat to drive around and see the Swedish countryside where my family came from! I am very thankful to Leif (who took the entire day off work) for showing me around and teaching me what he could!
When we arrived back home, it was time for Laura and I to pack our bags. We decided to head to Stockholm today rather than tomorrow or the next day or Christmas because it will be easiest for us to get picked up on the other end this evening. It will work out very well because Hokam, Helen's boyfriend, will pick us up at the train station, and Eva gave us a map of Stockholm, so tomorrow we will wake up already in the city with a map! It will be like magic! (We usually spend so much time looking for a map the first day in a new city.) After we had packed, we had an early dinner which Eva had prepared before going to work. Tonight our lucky meal was a delicious traditional Hungarian dish of chicken in a paprika sauce with potatoes and some Hungarian food that kind of reminded me of a mix of beans and noodles. However I have no idea what they are called because they're Hungarian and nobody knew the translation. Neither Laura nor I had ever seen anything like them before, but they were good!
After dinner, I took some time to sketch out a Matson family tree for Leif and Eva and used Facebook to show them pictures of my generation of cousins and second cousins. There are some family reunion pictures posted so that was helpful in showing what everybody looks like now. I hope that they found it at least a little interesting what everybody looks like and what we're all up to (I gave them extremely brief summaries of our lives) stateside.
Then, since the generosity never seems to end with Leif and Eva, Leif drove Laura and I to a train station an hour away because a high speed train passes through there that would get us to Stockholm in 3 hours. We told him that wasn't necessary, but he insisted on making our trip as simple and as smooth as possible. We got to the train station about half an hour before the train arrived and Leif stayed with us until it showed up. I will really miss Leif and Eva and their incredible sense of hospitality! It was a simply amazing few days of rest, delicious food, baths, massages, movies, and desserts. It was a perfect little break and now we are healthy, clean, and refreshed: ready for our last 3 and a half weeks! Especially our 'rock and roll week' ahead :)
We arrived at the station to find Helen waiting for us. We began chatting and laughing immediately and soon Helen stopped and announced that she didn't know quite where we were. This was really funny because Eva had told us stories about how Helen gets lost very easily. Helen had to call her boyfriend Hokam and soon we had cash (finally) and found our way to the car. They gave us a mini tour of Stockholm by dusk on our way back to their flat, pointing out important places here and there. It will be unusual and cool for us to wake up in Stockholm tomorrow morning already with a map and a slight glimpse of what the city is like! We're not quite starting from square one, which will be nice.
I was really excited to see their flat after watching the TV show about redesigning their place. It is a really cute apartment and I think the TV designers did a great job! Helen, who is clearly her parents' child, immediately started making us grilled sandwiches and putting out multiple varieties of juice out on the table for us (at 11 PM) all because we told her we just needed a tiny little snack! She also brought out yogurt and cereal and milk, just in case. Too cute. It is pretty funny and a little strange meeting somebody when you've just hung out with their parents for three days. I arrived knowing about her parents, her ancestors, her hometown, and even what her apartment would look like! It's also interesting to me because family is so important to me so that, in a way, I gauge how close I am to people by how much I know about their family. People's families tend to explain quite a lot about them. Anyway, it's kind of a funny feeling already knowing so much about Helen (and Daniel and Sandra) before meeting them, but in a nice way. I don't know them all personally yet, but I know that we both came from the same great great grandfather. That just blows my mind when I think about it!!!
Quotes:
"Did they, like, move the doors or something?" - Helen, trying to get us out of the train station :)
"Usually I just walk and hope for the best." - Helen, on crossing the street (super funny, since I often accidentally do the same thing...)
Hokam: "Don't you guys have a four flags?"
Helen/Laura/Hilary: "Six flags?"
Hokam: "When I was growing up there were only four, ok!?"
Accomplishments:
Saw where my great great grandfather was born!
Travel Tip:
Check if your train has a required seat reservation. We didn't do this, and our train did have a required seat reservation. Luckily for us, the ticket checker guy forgot to come back and make us pay for it!
Sunday, May 30, 2010
The Peninsula
Once again we woke up to another delicious breakfast of eggs, bacon, and hash brown type things.
Today was the day for us to go on a Swedish road trip! Our first stop was at the cemetery where both Leif's and Eva's parents are buried. Today is Swedish Mother's Day so they had prepared vases with pretty flowers. It was a very peaceful and well kept cemetery, probably the nicest one I've been in. It almost looked like a park, with lots of grass, well manicured lawns, benches, and lots and lots of flowers. Almost every headstone had fresh flowers places in front of or next to it, and even the grave stones seemed more unique than what one would typically find in a cemetery. Also, the gravestones weren't places in uniform rows, but the cemetery was slightly hilly and the headstones seemed to line the walking paths. It was a calming experience and I am glad I got to go with them to place the flowers.
Then we drove for about two hours back towards the direction of Denmark. We arrived in the town called Hoganas which is where Gunvor lives. Gunvor is my father's second cousin (Leif's first cousin) and her daughter Anna is my third cousin. Anna is older than me but I'm not sure of her age.
Hoganas is an adorable little beach town that is quite popular in the summer, and Gunvor lives right on the Nordic Sea. Her house is literally on one side of the road and the beach and water is on the other; it's amazing! When we arrived at her home, she welcomed us with a perfect summery salad with bacon bits, cucumbers, and pineapple pieces. After the delicious salad, Gunvor wanted to show us around the entire peninsula, which is supposedly one of the most beautiful areas of Sweden. We unfortunately had crummy weather, but seeing as to how Laura and I are used to Seattle and always prepared with our rain jackets, it really wasn't that big of a deal. Everybody kept apologizing to us about the weather, but some clouds and rain don't dampen all of the beauty of the areas we visited! Leif and Eva drove with Gunvor and Laura and I drove with Anna. It was a great pleasure to talk with Anna and I found it amusingly coincidental that she studied finance, like me, and French, like I wish I had. She spent about two years living and working in various parts of France, but now works as a hotel contractor for Spanish hotels.
Gunvor lives on the west side of the peninsula, so we first headed up north along the west coast. We passed through the small towns of Strandbaden and Nyhamnslage. We got out of the car at Krapperup where there is a small castle with a moat around it and gorgeous gardens. Even though it wasn't sunny, the garden grounds were really pretty and the walking paths led us around lakes, over bridges, to fountains, and around the castle. Then we got back in the car and drove farther up north to Molle, which is another small harbor town very popular among Swedish tourists in the summer. Nobody else wanted to get out of the car in the rain, so I popped out long enough to take a picture and then sat back down in the warm and dry car. Next we went to the tip of the peninsula, which Leif says is his favorite spot in the world! On a clear day you can see Denmark across the water, but today the horizon blended into the clouds. You could still see pretty far and there was more than 180 degrees of water spread out before me. The jagged rocks and lighthouses and tiny sailboats fighting the wind were all extremely picturesque. After this, we headed back down the eastern side of the peninsula passing through Arild, where I was told Norma and Howard stayed for a night in one of the hotels. Last, we passed through Skaret on our way back to Hoganas.
On Mother's Day here in Sweden, as well as on a few other holidays, Swedish people all hoist the Swedish flag. I think it's a cool idea, and today driving around nearly ever house was flying the blue and yellow flag. I just thought this was an interesting observation and tradition.
Back at Gunvor's house, Anna brought out a map of the area we had just toured and people explained to me exactly where we'd just been. Anna let me keep the map, which is both great for my collection and quite helpful in accurately spelling all the places we visited today! They were all very gorgeous so I would love to come back in the summer sometime and see all of these things again in the sun :) Hopefully I will be back someday!
While we were looking at the map and chatting, Gunvor was in the kitchen heating up homemade quiches. In case you didn't know, quiche is one of my favorite foods! One quiche had cheese and ham in it, and the second quiche was just made with a special Swedish type of aged cheese. They were both delicious, but I had to go back for seconds of the Swedish cheese quiche. It was just too good!
All of a sudden, it was 7 PM - I hardly realized how late it had gotten! I ended up falling asleep for most of the two hour car ride back to Kyrkhult, but I tried to keep my eyes open as much as I could to appreciate the beautiful Swedish country side with all the cute red houses!
We got home around 9 PM and relaxed for a bit until it was time for another movie! Leif said he had another one he thought I would like, and I told him it just better not have as much blood at gore as Hannibal Rising. So tonight we watched K2, and it was really good! Way less bloody and a great adventure movie. Though for the record I would prefer my dad to stick to Mt. Rainier and not attempt K2.
By the way, these restful days have allowed me to fully recover from my slight cold and I have almost completely stopped coughing. Yay! These slower paced days are working out quite well for me :)
Quotes:
"Summer comes on Tuesday." - Leif
Accomplishments:
Met more family!
Toured a gorgeous part of Sweden that I would never be able to have seen via the typical trains and buses routes we usually take.
Travel Tip:
Look at a map; know where you are.
Today was the day for us to go on a Swedish road trip! Our first stop was at the cemetery where both Leif's and Eva's parents are buried. Today is Swedish Mother's Day so they had prepared vases with pretty flowers. It was a very peaceful and well kept cemetery, probably the nicest one I've been in. It almost looked like a park, with lots of grass, well manicured lawns, benches, and lots and lots of flowers. Almost every headstone had fresh flowers places in front of or next to it, and even the grave stones seemed more unique than what one would typically find in a cemetery. Also, the gravestones weren't places in uniform rows, but the cemetery was slightly hilly and the headstones seemed to line the walking paths. It was a calming experience and I am glad I got to go with them to place the flowers.
Then we drove for about two hours back towards the direction of Denmark. We arrived in the town called Hoganas which is where Gunvor lives. Gunvor is my father's second cousin (Leif's first cousin) and her daughter Anna is my third cousin. Anna is older than me but I'm not sure of her age.
Hoganas is an adorable little beach town that is quite popular in the summer, and Gunvor lives right on the Nordic Sea. Her house is literally on one side of the road and the beach and water is on the other; it's amazing! When we arrived at her home, she welcomed us with a perfect summery salad with bacon bits, cucumbers, and pineapple pieces. After the delicious salad, Gunvor wanted to show us around the entire peninsula, which is supposedly one of the most beautiful areas of Sweden. We unfortunately had crummy weather, but seeing as to how Laura and I are used to Seattle and always prepared with our rain jackets, it really wasn't that big of a deal. Everybody kept apologizing to us about the weather, but some clouds and rain don't dampen all of the beauty of the areas we visited! Leif and Eva drove with Gunvor and Laura and I drove with Anna. It was a great pleasure to talk with Anna and I found it amusingly coincidental that she studied finance, like me, and French, like I wish I had. She spent about two years living and working in various parts of France, but now works as a hotel contractor for Spanish hotels.
Gunvor lives on the west side of the peninsula, so we first headed up north along the west coast. We passed through the small towns of Strandbaden and Nyhamnslage. We got out of the car at Krapperup where there is a small castle with a moat around it and gorgeous gardens. Even though it wasn't sunny, the garden grounds were really pretty and the walking paths led us around lakes, over bridges, to fountains, and around the castle. Then we got back in the car and drove farther up north to Molle, which is another small harbor town very popular among Swedish tourists in the summer. Nobody else wanted to get out of the car in the rain, so I popped out long enough to take a picture and then sat back down in the warm and dry car. Next we went to the tip of the peninsula, which Leif says is his favorite spot in the world! On a clear day you can see Denmark across the water, but today the horizon blended into the clouds. You could still see pretty far and there was more than 180 degrees of water spread out before me. The jagged rocks and lighthouses and tiny sailboats fighting the wind were all extremely picturesque. After this, we headed back down the eastern side of the peninsula passing through Arild, where I was told Norma and Howard stayed for a night in one of the hotels. Last, we passed through Skaret on our way back to Hoganas.
On Mother's Day here in Sweden, as well as on a few other holidays, Swedish people all hoist the Swedish flag. I think it's a cool idea, and today driving around nearly ever house was flying the blue and yellow flag. I just thought this was an interesting observation and tradition.
Back at Gunvor's house, Anna brought out a map of the area we had just toured and people explained to me exactly where we'd just been. Anna let me keep the map, which is both great for my collection and quite helpful in accurately spelling all the places we visited today! They were all very gorgeous so I would love to come back in the summer sometime and see all of these things again in the sun :) Hopefully I will be back someday!
While we were looking at the map and chatting, Gunvor was in the kitchen heating up homemade quiches. In case you didn't know, quiche is one of my favorite foods! One quiche had cheese and ham in it, and the second quiche was just made with a special Swedish type of aged cheese. They were both delicious, but I had to go back for seconds of the Swedish cheese quiche. It was just too good!
All of a sudden, it was 7 PM - I hardly realized how late it had gotten! I ended up falling asleep for most of the two hour car ride back to Kyrkhult, but I tried to keep my eyes open as much as I could to appreciate the beautiful Swedish country side with all the cute red houses!
We got home around 9 PM and relaxed for a bit until it was time for another movie! Leif said he had another one he thought I would like, and I told him it just better not have as much blood at gore as Hannibal Rising. So tonight we watched K2, and it was really good! Way less bloody and a great adventure movie. Though for the record I would prefer my dad to stick to Mt. Rainier and not attempt K2.
By the way, these restful days have allowed me to fully recover from my slight cold and I have almost completely stopped coughing. Yay! These slower paced days are working out quite well for me :)
Quotes:
"Summer comes on Tuesday." - Leif
Accomplishments:
Met more family!
Toured a gorgeous part of Sweden that I would never be able to have seen via the typical trains and buses routes we usually take.
Travel Tip:
Look at a map; know where you are.
Saturday, May 29, 2010
Relaxation
When I finally awoke from my slumber, Leif was making us breakfast. All of this was almost too much kindness to take in! I said thank you a million times but those two small words never felt sufficient to express my gratitude. Leif was making eggs and bacon and brought out bread, butter, and juices to accompany it all. Needless to say, it was delicious. Again well fed, I was prepared for the day.
Laura decided to stay home while Leif took me out and about to learn about my roots. Laura has also been trying to recover from a cold so she was more than fine with having a day of nothing to do except read (I finally got her to start reading Outlander!). Leif took me to the harbor where essentially all Swedes living in southern Sweden emigrated to America from. It is one of the deepest harbors in Sweden and Leif said he thinks voyages were made across the ocean probably once a month. There is a monument there commemorating the people from Sweden that emigrated. It is a man, looking across the ocean, holding the hand of a woman, looking back at Sweden, and a suitcase. Leif said that Norma and Howard visited here too and it is so cool to me to be seeing the same thing so many years later.
After the harbor, we drove through a number of small, typically traditional Swedish towns. Most of the houses out here are painted a deep, dark red color that I love. I think the name of the paint color is Nalu Red...I need to get the exact name because I would love to paint something that color someday. We passed by the high school that Eva and later Sandra attended, and also drove past where Eva works. It was a pleasant day and we even got some patches of blue sky and sunlight in! It was quite nice to spend time with Leif asking random questions and having him tell me other stories and tidbits of information about our family and about Sweden.
When we got home I felt exhausted. Off the top of my head, I didn't really have anything to be exhausted about - I'd just slept soundly for a luxurious amount of time. But, I've also been traveling for 9 weeks and am getting over a cold and for the first time in months I don't have to cook for myself, or worry about maps, or what the exchange rate is, or any of the normal city-couch-surfing-traveling things that I'm always highly in tune with. I figured I'd just take a quick nap and wake up when I was ready. Well, I woke up two and a half hours later! I can't even remember when I took a nap that long and that restful in the middle of the day. The best part was that I didn't feel like I was missing out on anything. It was a perfectly quiet day, there was nothing to disturb me, nobody waiting on me, nothing else that I felt like I should be doing.
I finally had the presence of mind to wake up and went to the couch in the living room. Eva came in and promptly served Laura and I a glass of red South African wine before inviting us to dinner. Dinner was again delicious, and the dogs again got some gourmet mashed food out of it! The dogs are so cute and funny; it is really great to be around playful little animals again.
One thing that Leif told me about during our car ride today was that Helen, who lives with her boyfriend Hokam and her brother Daniel, had written a letter to an apartment makeover TV show; the TV show thought it was really interesting that she was living with her brother and, long story short, her apartment was selected to be renovated and aired on TV! The result of this is that all three of them were kicked out of their apartment for a week after telling the TV show people what they had in mind for the living room. Then the TV show's designers and carpenters and everybody else whipped it into shape, also redoing Daniel's room as a surprise as well as the kitchen as a surprise for Helen, the only female in the apartment. This all happened last August I think, and getting on this show is equivalent to winning a lottery of sorts because everything the show does to your apartment, you get to keep. Helen, Daniel, and Hokam's flat thus got around 15 thousand euros of free stuff (paint, carpeting, kitchen table, wall paper, flat screen TV, etc)!!! The show aired in February and Leif had a DVD of it that we wanted to see. We were about a third of the way through it when the DVD stopped working for some reason.
It was at this point that Eva, who owns a business selling products that help maintain peoples' health and has had traditional and Thai massage licenses for the last ten years, offered to give Laura and I massages. YEAH! After 9 weeks of carrying our bags, nothing could have sounded better than a massage!!! I let Laura go first so I could continue to enjoy the anticipation, and in the mean time Leif, who never gives up, resorted to pulling up the aired apartment makeover TV show online. We watched the rest of the show on the computer and it was so funny to see how surprised Helen, Daniel, and Hokam were at the end of the show!! Especially Helen's reaction was just so excited and overjoyed, it was really funny to watch. It's also really exciting that we'll be there in a couple of days and will see this sweet apartment for ourselves!
Then, it was my turn for a massage...oh hallelujah. Eva has a whole separate massage room in the house, with a real massage table, candles, soft music, etc. The room even smells relaxing. She then proceeded to give me hands down the best massage of my life. It was so careful and so thorough and I felt like jelly afterward. It was funny to compare it to the massage I got at the baths in Budapest, although it was so different it was difficult to compare. Eva started with my back, working on the knots I'm sure are there from carrying my big bag. Then she did my limbs one by one and ended with a face and neck massage. It was glorious. I am one super lucky kid.
Coming out of my massage daze, I found Laura and Leif in the TV room with 4 ice cream sundaes on a platter. This all must sound like one huge dream (which it pretty much was), seriously it just kept getting better. We popped in a movie ("Bruno") which Leif seemed excited that I hadn't seen yet. The movie was thoroughly trashy and pretty fun; it was a great, brainless way to laugh. I thought it was super funny though that Leif voluntarily watched it because it totally seems like college boy humor and I love that he laughed as much as I did during it!
After that, we continued our movie night but switched it up to bloody gore. Leif put in Hannibal Rising and I'm quite proud of myself for getting through that movie! It was definitely good, but more disturbing, violet, and bloody than I usually go for. After our movie night, I finally went to bed which was a little difficult due to that wonderful nap earlier...
Quotes:
Leif: "It is about a homosexual."
Eva: "He is a gay!"
(Trying to describe to me what the movie "Bruno" is about.)
Accomplishments:
Saw where my ancestors came from.
Took a nap.
Got the most amazing massage ever.
Travel Tip:
Let your body sleep if it needs it.
Laura decided to stay home while Leif took me out and about to learn about my roots. Laura has also been trying to recover from a cold so she was more than fine with having a day of nothing to do except read (I finally got her to start reading Outlander!). Leif took me to the harbor where essentially all Swedes living in southern Sweden emigrated to America from. It is one of the deepest harbors in Sweden and Leif said he thinks voyages were made across the ocean probably once a month. There is a monument there commemorating the people from Sweden that emigrated. It is a man, looking across the ocean, holding the hand of a woman, looking back at Sweden, and a suitcase. Leif said that Norma and Howard visited here too and it is so cool to me to be seeing the same thing so many years later.
After the harbor, we drove through a number of small, typically traditional Swedish towns. Most of the houses out here are painted a deep, dark red color that I love. I think the name of the paint color is Nalu Red...I need to get the exact name because I would love to paint something that color someday. We passed by the high school that Eva and later Sandra attended, and also drove past where Eva works. It was a pleasant day and we even got some patches of blue sky and sunlight in! It was quite nice to spend time with Leif asking random questions and having him tell me other stories and tidbits of information about our family and about Sweden.
When we got home I felt exhausted. Off the top of my head, I didn't really have anything to be exhausted about - I'd just slept soundly for a luxurious amount of time. But, I've also been traveling for 9 weeks and am getting over a cold and for the first time in months I don't have to cook for myself, or worry about maps, or what the exchange rate is, or any of the normal city-couch-surfing-traveling things that I'm always highly in tune with. I figured I'd just take a quick nap and wake up when I was ready. Well, I woke up two and a half hours later! I can't even remember when I took a nap that long and that restful in the middle of the day. The best part was that I didn't feel like I was missing out on anything. It was a perfectly quiet day, there was nothing to disturb me, nobody waiting on me, nothing else that I felt like I should be doing.
I finally had the presence of mind to wake up and went to the couch in the living room. Eva came in and promptly served Laura and I a glass of red South African wine before inviting us to dinner. Dinner was again delicious, and the dogs again got some gourmet mashed food out of it! The dogs are so cute and funny; it is really great to be around playful little animals again.
One thing that Leif told me about during our car ride today was that Helen, who lives with her boyfriend Hokam and her brother Daniel, had written a letter to an apartment makeover TV show; the TV show thought it was really interesting that she was living with her brother and, long story short, her apartment was selected to be renovated and aired on TV! The result of this is that all three of them were kicked out of their apartment for a week after telling the TV show people what they had in mind for the living room. Then the TV show's designers and carpenters and everybody else whipped it into shape, also redoing Daniel's room as a surprise as well as the kitchen as a surprise for Helen, the only female in the apartment. This all happened last August I think, and getting on this show is equivalent to winning a lottery of sorts because everything the show does to your apartment, you get to keep. Helen, Daniel, and Hokam's flat thus got around 15 thousand euros of free stuff (paint, carpeting, kitchen table, wall paper, flat screen TV, etc)!!! The show aired in February and Leif had a DVD of it that we wanted to see. We were about a third of the way through it when the DVD stopped working for some reason.
It was at this point that Eva, who owns a business selling products that help maintain peoples' health and has had traditional and Thai massage licenses for the last ten years, offered to give Laura and I massages. YEAH! After 9 weeks of carrying our bags, nothing could have sounded better than a massage!!! I let Laura go first so I could continue to enjoy the anticipation, and in the mean time Leif, who never gives up, resorted to pulling up the aired apartment makeover TV show online. We watched the rest of the show on the computer and it was so funny to see how surprised Helen, Daniel, and Hokam were at the end of the show!! Especially Helen's reaction was just so excited and overjoyed, it was really funny to watch. It's also really exciting that we'll be there in a couple of days and will see this sweet apartment for ourselves!
Then, it was my turn for a massage...oh hallelujah. Eva has a whole separate massage room in the house, with a real massage table, candles, soft music, etc. The room even smells relaxing. She then proceeded to give me hands down the best massage of my life. It was so careful and so thorough and I felt like jelly afterward. It was funny to compare it to the massage I got at the baths in Budapest, although it was so different it was difficult to compare. Eva started with my back, working on the knots I'm sure are there from carrying my big bag. Then she did my limbs one by one and ended with a face and neck massage. It was glorious. I am one super lucky kid.
Coming out of my massage daze, I found Laura and Leif in the TV room with 4 ice cream sundaes on a platter. This all must sound like one huge dream (which it pretty much was), seriously it just kept getting better. We popped in a movie ("Bruno") which Leif seemed excited that I hadn't seen yet. The movie was thoroughly trashy and pretty fun; it was a great, brainless way to laugh. I thought it was super funny though that Leif voluntarily watched it because it totally seems like college boy humor and I love that he laughed as much as I did during it!
After that, we continued our movie night but switched it up to bloody gore. Leif put in Hannibal Rising and I'm quite proud of myself for getting through that movie! It was definitely good, but more disturbing, violet, and bloody than I usually go for. After our movie night, I finally went to bed which was a little difficult due to that wonderful nap earlier...
Quotes:
Leif: "It is about a homosexual."
Eva: "He is a gay!"
(Trying to describe to me what the movie "Bruno" is about.)
Accomplishments:
Saw where my ancestors came from.
Took a nap.
Got the most amazing massage ever.
Travel Tip:
Let your body sleep if it needs it.
Friday, May 28, 2010
Leif & Eva | Heaven
Before leaving Jan's flat, I cooked for myself for the first time this entire trip. It felt so nice to create something again, even though it was just a small snack. I boiled my two potatoes and sauteed my cute little diced shallot. When the potatoes were done, I set them on some aluminum foil, buttered them a little bit, put some dollops of left over sour cream with green onion dip (from vegetable pancake dinner night), poured my shallots over them, and wrapped the foil up. They smelled amazing and I couldn't wait to eat them!
Jan took us all the way to the train station and it was a little bit sad to leave him. He has definitely been one of the easiest hosts to get along with naturally, and it felt like we'd all been friends far longer than 72 hours. Jan babysat our bags while Laura and I went on a Danish pastry hunt. I spent my last kronors on 4 delicious looking pastries.
The train ride to Bromolla (where we were to be picked up by Leif) was very quick and the only eventful thing that happened was that I gave into the aromas of my potatoes and they were a deliciously satisfying snack!
I think traveling should be partially about self exploration. I believe it is probably inherently that way for many people, but it's especially good to be aware of it. I have known that I am 1/4 Swedish for as long as my parents have told me my heritage, but I've never had any contact with my extended family who still live in Sweden up until a couple of months ago. Regardless of whether or not meeting any of this family would be possible, I wanted to use this trip as an opportunity to at least go and see the country where I (partially) originally came from. I don't think many American travelers visit Scandinavia in general or Sweden in particular, and I also like to travel off the beaten path a little bit. So I have been very excited to visit Sweden for quite some time. My grandmother Norma was able to put me in touch with Leif and Eva who live in Kyrkhult, a small town about a 4 to 6 hour drive south-ish from Stockholm. Leif is my father Eric's second cousin, which means his children (Daniel, 28, Helen, 25, and Sandra, 21) are my third cousins. Aside from Leif's family, I have also been in touch with Gunvor, another second cousin to my father, who lives across the way from Denmark in a town called Hoganas. Once in touch with Leif, he generously offered for both Laura and I to come stay with his wife and him for as long as we like...even until Christmas! At first I was very surprised by this offer, I figured my new found relatives would want to maybe meet up for a day or an afternoon or a meal, but I was not expecting them to suggest hosting both Laura and I for a few days! I wanted to get to know my family though and this was a perfect opportunity, so I very happily accepted their offer. That was a few weeks ago, and I have been looking forward to meeting them since then! Finding out you have 'new' family doesn't happen every day! Family is really important to me and I like learning about my family's history and my roots, so staying with them was a very special offer.
Leif picked us up in a car (another car!) from the train station and drove for about 20 minutes until we arrived at his adorable home, where Eva was inside cooking us something that smelled AMAZING and two little fluffy dogs were eagerly jumping on the newcomers! They had a whole bedroom prepared for us - imagine that, our own personal space and a separate mattress for each of us! There was even a TV in the room and a huge bowl of chocolates and candies. There were two bathrooms in the house, one upstairs and one downstairs. Laura and I were staying downstairs and Leif and Eva sleep upstairs, so it even felt like we had our own bathroom. As if all of this wasn't overwhelming enough, the downstairs bathroom had a BATH TUB in it, and Eva had left little bath packages (with bath fizzies and bath gel) on big, clean, terry cloth towels on each of our mattresses. We were in heaven. A Swedish countryside heaven. With new family. And dogs. And a bathtub.
After putting my bags down I sat down and began playing with the elder dog, Wayne. Soon Wayne was curled up in my lap, soaking up the attention, and Leif came in to tell me that he wanted to give us a quick tour of the house and that if I didn't just stand up I'd be sitting there for two days with Wayne in my lap! After becoming familiar with the house, Eva asked if we had any laundry we wanted to wash. LAUNDRY? Yes, please! We happily unloaded all of our stinky, over used clothes that we've been wearing for days and had enough to do I think three loads. By the time Eva announced that dinner was ready she had already put some of the filthiest things in to wash. Before dinner we had an aloe vera juice shot - you read it right. I didn't know aloe vera could be produced in a drinkable form, but you really do take a shot of the juice and it is supposed to work wonders for balancing your stomach and helping digestion. So that was fun! And then...
Dinner...in case you can't imagine our completely overwhelmed and excited evening thus far, Eva had prepared a home cooked meal of traditional Swedish meatballs - and not the kind you can just go buy at IKEA. These meatballs were to die for, and they were accompanied by the literally the best gravy I have ever had. And I've had a lot of gravy in my life, because I love gravy. There was also a salad and boiled potatoes to balance the meal out, and for the first time in months Laura and I both had the pleasure of drinking milk. Ahhhh I forgot how much I love milk!!! This incredible feast was followed up by fresh, homemade rhubarb pie with vanilla whipped cream (and more milk). Seriously, we were in heaven.
The dogs here, Wayne and his daughter Gucci, are also spoiled - so it's not just Laura and me. The best depiction of this was after dinner when there were a few Swedish meatballs left. Leif and Eva split them evenly on their plates, added some potatoes, lovingly mashed them all up together, and even poured gravy on it. And then gave it to the dogs! Those dogs live well, let me tell you! That is some high quality dog food right there!
After dinner, Leif brought out some old family pictures for me to look at. I think these are photos that Norma has sent him over the years. The most entertaining pictures for me were one of my parents with Erica in 1986, and another one of Great Grandmother Mor Mor with Grandpa Howard, Uncle Al, and a tiny little baby cousin Andrew! I told Leif Andrew wasn't quite that small anymore...
We migrated to the living room and lounged on the couches while the rain and wind picked up and we were officially greeted to Sweden with a thunder and lightning storm. These are always very exciting to me because in Seattle we very, very rarely get storms like these. In fact, the only place I really see these storms is when I'm visiting Grandma at the lake house, so it was quite fitting that I got to watch another storm with Leif and Eva.
Once the storm calmed down, I treated myself to a long bath complete with one of the bath fizzes Eva had left for me. I was so incredibly happy to be in a house, in a bathtub, full of delicious, traditional home cooked food, surrounded by incredibly sweet, caring, and funny relatives. It was a huge treat that I am so incredibly thankful for. Getting out of the bath, I did feel a bit like I had been a dirty, malnourished, exhausted, sickly child now that I was clean, well fed, and prepared for a solid night's sleep with no schedule for the next day save for fully recovering from this cold in the countryside and learning more about my family. It was perfect.
Quotes:
"You must have an easy weekend and rest, because Daniel says you will be having a hard rock and roll week next week." - Leif
Accomplishments:
Met family!
Travel Tip:
If it is at all possible to get out of the big cities, to spend time in the country side, or to meet family living abroad, you should do it.
Jan took us all the way to the train station and it was a little bit sad to leave him. He has definitely been one of the easiest hosts to get along with naturally, and it felt like we'd all been friends far longer than 72 hours. Jan babysat our bags while Laura and I went on a Danish pastry hunt. I spent my last kronors on 4 delicious looking pastries.
The train ride to Bromolla (where we were to be picked up by Leif) was very quick and the only eventful thing that happened was that I gave into the aromas of my potatoes and they were a deliciously satisfying snack!
I think traveling should be partially about self exploration. I believe it is probably inherently that way for many people, but it's especially good to be aware of it. I have known that I am 1/4 Swedish for as long as my parents have told me my heritage, but I've never had any contact with my extended family who still live in Sweden up until a couple of months ago. Regardless of whether or not meeting any of this family would be possible, I wanted to use this trip as an opportunity to at least go and see the country where I (partially) originally came from. I don't think many American travelers visit Scandinavia in general or Sweden in particular, and I also like to travel off the beaten path a little bit. So I have been very excited to visit Sweden for quite some time. My grandmother Norma was able to put me in touch with Leif and Eva who live in Kyrkhult, a small town about a 4 to 6 hour drive south-ish from Stockholm. Leif is my father Eric's second cousin, which means his children (Daniel, 28, Helen, 25, and Sandra, 21) are my third cousins. Aside from Leif's family, I have also been in touch with Gunvor, another second cousin to my father, who lives across the way from Denmark in a town called Hoganas. Once in touch with Leif, he generously offered for both Laura and I to come stay with his wife and him for as long as we like...even until Christmas! At first I was very surprised by this offer, I figured my new found relatives would want to maybe meet up for a day or an afternoon or a meal, but I was not expecting them to suggest hosting both Laura and I for a few days! I wanted to get to know my family though and this was a perfect opportunity, so I very happily accepted their offer. That was a few weeks ago, and I have been looking forward to meeting them since then! Finding out you have 'new' family doesn't happen every day! Family is really important to me and I like learning about my family's history and my roots, so staying with them was a very special offer.
Leif picked us up in a car (another car!) from the train station and drove for about 20 minutes until we arrived at his adorable home, where Eva was inside cooking us something that smelled AMAZING and two little fluffy dogs were eagerly jumping on the newcomers! They had a whole bedroom prepared for us - imagine that, our own personal space and a separate mattress for each of us! There was even a TV in the room and a huge bowl of chocolates and candies. There were two bathrooms in the house, one upstairs and one downstairs. Laura and I were staying downstairs and Leif and Eva sleep upstairs, so it even felt like we had our own bathroom. As if all of this wasn't overwhelming enough, the downstairs bathroom had a BATH TUB in it, and Eva had left little bath packages (with bath fizzies and bath gel) on big, clean, terry cloth towels on each of our mattresses. We were in heaven. A Swedish countryside heaven. With new family. And dogs. And a bathtub.
After putting my bags down I sat down and began playing with the elder dog, Wayne. Soon Wayne was curled up in my lap, soaking up the attention, and Leif came in to tell me that he wanted to give us a quick tour of the house and that if I didn't just stand up I'd be sitting there for two days with Wayne in my lap! After becoming familiar with the house, Eva asked if we had any laundry we wanted to wash. LAUNDRY? Yes, please! We happily unloaded all of our stinky, over used clothes that we've been wearing for days and had enough to do I think three loads. By the time Eva announced that dinner was ready she had already put some of the filthiest things in to wash. Before dinner we had an aloe vera juice shot - you read it right. I didn't know aloe vera could be produced in a drinkable form, but you really do take a shot of the juice and it is supposed to work wonders for balancing your stomach and helping digestion. So that was fun! And then...
Dinner...in case you can't imagine our completely overwhelmed and excited evening thus far, Eva had prepared a home cooked meal of traditional Swedish meatballs - and not the kind you can just go buy at IKEA. These meatballs were to die for, and they were accompanied by the literally the best gravy I have ever had. And I've had a lot of gravy in my life, because I love gravy. There was also a salad and boiled potatoes to balance the meal out, and for the first time in months Laura and I both had the pleasure of drinking milk. Ahhhh I forgot how much I love milk!!! This incredible feast was followed up by fresh, homemade rhubarb pie with vanilla whipped cream (and more milk). Seriously, we were in heaven.
The dogs here, Wayne and his daughter Gucci, are also spoiled - so it's not just Laura and me. The best depiction of this was after dinner when there were a few Swedish meatballs left. Leif and Eva split them evenly on their plates, added some potatoes, lovingly mashed them all up together, and even poured gravy on it. And then gave it to the dogs! Those dogs live well, let me tell you! That is some high quality dog food right there!
After dinner, Leif brought out some old family pictures for me to look at. I think these are photos that Norma has sent him over the years. The most entertaining pictures for me were one of my parents with Erica in 1986, and another one of Great Grandmother Mor Mor with Grandpa Howard, Uncle Al, and a tiny little baby cousin Andrew! I told Leif Andrew wasn't quite that small anymore...
We migrated to the living room and lounged on the couches while the rain and wind picked up and we were officially greeted to Sweden with a thunder and lightning storm. These are always very exciting to me because in Seattle we very, very rarely get storms like these. In fact, the only place I really see these storms is when I'm visiting Grandma at the lake house, so it was quite fitting that I got to watch another storm with Leif and Eva.
Once the storm calmed down, I treated myself to a long bath complete with one of the bath fizzes Eva had left for me. I was so incredibly happy to be in a house, in a bathtub, full of delicious, traditional home cooked food, surrounded by incredibly sweet, caring, and funny relatives. It was a huge treat that I am so incredibly thankful for. Getting out of the bath, I did feel a bit like I had been a dirty, malnourished, exhausted, sickly child now that I was clean, well fed, and prepared for a solid night's sleep with no schedule for the next day save for fully recovering from this cold in the countryside and learning more about my family. It was perfect.
Quotes:
"You must have an easy weekend and rest, because Daniel says you will be having a hard rock and roll week next week." - Leif
Accomplishments:
Met family!
Travel Tip:
If it is at all possible to get out of the big cities, to spend time in the country side, or to meet family living abroad, you should do it.
Wednesday, May 26, 2010
Postcard Perfect
I accidentally slept in until 11 AM and woke up still not feeling great. Boo :( At least it was sunny out! This is the first time that it hasn't started raining the second we walked outside in what feels like forever!
We took Jan up on his suggestion to do a harbor tour of Copenhagen to soak up the good weather. The harbor tours are boat cruises through Copenhagen that leave from Nyhavn - an adorable man made canal lined with brightly colored houses. It is exactly what you would picture Scandinavian houses on a city waterfront to look like, it's just like a postcard! Jan gave us a little insider tip - there is a very visible company at end of the canal closest to the city center. These are expensive. But, if walk up the canal like 30 meters there is another less visible company that gives you basically that same hour long tour for $5!!! Sweeeeet. Their $5 price is cheaper than the expensive company's children's price. So we figured that was a fantastic way to spend $5 and a sunny afternoon and hopped on just a few minutes before it left. I got a nice seat on the 'window' side (but the windows can be pushed up and towards the center of the boat so they're not clouding the view) and got my camera ready.
The harbor tour was really cool. I don't think I necessarily learned that much, it was just SO nice to be out on the water in the sunshine, slowly going past beautiful buildings. I am just so excited to be in Scandinavia! It was a really pleasant experience though - definitely a quality use of $5. Some things that were on our tour:
The Free Town of Christiania - 30+ years ago some hippies knocked down a fence to an unused barracks or something and declared themselves a separate Free Town from Copenhagen. They have their own post system, their own laws, and are seriously just a bunch of hippies hanging out in this area they claimed. The government was going to allow it only temporarily but has since decided to allow it to continue as a 'social experiment'.
The Navy ships,
The Royal Yacht,
The Opera House, given to Copenhagen by the shipping giant Mersk. This is why the front of the building looks like the back of one of their huge shipping ships.
Where the Little Mermaid used to be (Copenhagen is famous for this tiny little statue but it's on loan to Shanghai for 2010 for an Art Exposition so there's just a boring white sign in it's place above the rock where the statue sat).
The Castle, which originally was built by 4 rich noblemen and later it became the royal residence of the Danish royal family - this is why it has 4 practically identical buildings that don't look that much like an actual palace.
We saw some other stuff too but I don't remember it. It was all just pretty.
After the harbor tour, we walked past a tourist information center where I picked up a plethora of handouts and brochures and free tourist guides and magazines. I had read about a specific publication called Copenhagen This Week in a guide book before I left. It's supposed to be this free guide of things to do in the city. But, the people at the tourist center said that it didn't exist any more. One strike against that guide book. There were enough other materials to take though, and I left the building feeling like a walking tourist information center.
Then we were on our way to Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek Museet, or the New Carlsberg Glyptotek Museum. The guide book I read back home said it was free on Wednesdays and that it had a number of Rodin sculptures. Well, it's Wednesday, and I love free stuff and Rodin, so it seemed perfect. However when we got there, there were signs that said only Sundays had free entrance! And real entrance was like $10! Strike two against the guide book! But, me being me, I went up and asked somebody at the ticket desk and just said that I'd read in a guide book that the museum was free on Wednesdays, was that not true anymore? She said, no, that's not true anymore, it's only free on Sundays....BUT - BUT!!! Today is the Crown Prince's birthday, so the museum is free today! What the heck?! How random is that / HOW GREAT is our timing?! / How awesome is it that I go up and ask what most people probably would think are dumb or inane questions?! Woohoo! Rodin only really got one room in the museum but it was all great stuff. Most of his works are about expressing emotions through sculptures, so I find them very interesting. And of course, The Kiss and the Thinker were there. By the way, I'm really confused about how many "original Rodin" copies of the Kiss exist, since I've now seen three of them (Paris, London, Copenhagen). Wow that sounds pretentious. Oh yeah, something cool about this museum is that a lot of the artwork, especially Rodin, was bought from Rodin himself by Carl Jacobsen and later donated to this museum. Crazy! The museum also had a lot of Greek, Roman, and Egyptian art which was interesting. I really liked the Egyptian art because they had actual tablets with hieroglyphics on it that were sweet!
After the museum, we began aimless walking with the pretense of looking for food. Food is usually our pretense. However, we are so frugal and so picky that we usually end up walking for hours and then either just going to a grocery store or getting something cheap because we're starving. We accidentally found the city center area which was filled with restaurants, expensive stores, and tourist souvenir shops, so it was actually really cool to walk through all the pedestrian streets and squares bustling with people. After a few hours of this, we headed back to Jan's flat where we told him we'd meet him at 7 PM. On the way, we stopped at a mini market where I picked up what looked like chicken flavored Ramen noodles, 2 potatoes, and 1 shallot. This cost me an amazing $1.5! Pretty awesome for being in Denmark.
When we arrived, we found that Jan also had not eaten yet, and so we ditched our lame idea of Ramen and went to a real super market (the kind that we were hopelessly looking for the whole evening). Jan tried to describe his idea of dinner to us and while we didn't totally understand it sounded good so we followed him around picking up ingredients. Back home, I tried to help and he wasn't having any of it. He just worked away by himself, and soon called us to dinner. Dinner was AMAZING! He made a version of Rosti, I think. In Switzerland, Rosti was just potatoes (I think). Here, it was potatoes, onions, carrots, and peppers which all got shredded and mashed up together. In a separate bowl flour and eggs were mixed. Then it all goes together and you make little vegetable pancakes that get fried in a skillet with oil. On top goes a sour cream esque sauce that also had green onions in it. It was seriously amazing! And Jan didn't let us do a thing except for eat. When I asked him what I could do to help clean up he told me I could "go to my room." Thanks, Jan. Laura and I insisted though and the three of us whisked the kitchen clean; after which I remarked to Jan to look at how fun that was!
Oh I forgot to mention earlier - Jan has never hosted anybody from CouchSurfing before! He's surfed through Eastern Europe, but never hosted. You would never be able to guess this though! Picking us up with beers and making us dinner were so great. And when he picked us up he was prepared to pay for our train tickets to get to his flat but we didn't need them since we have our Eurail passes. Then when we got home, he had a map ready for each of us! It was crazy awesome. It's really exciting to be the first surfers, because I am pretty sure we will leave a great impression :) Especially since Americans tend to have such an awful reputation, it's nice to just break that mold right away.
After dinner, we decided not to go out for any reason since I'm still sick and we have a lot we want to do tomorrow. I'm feeling a bit better but I want this cough to go away!
Quotes:
Hilary: "What can I do to help?"
Jan: "Go to your room."
Accomplishments:
More great timing with free museums (p.s., good job, Crown Prince, way to have a birthday today!)
Travel Tip:
Never hurts to ask questions...
We took Jan up on his suggestion to do a harbor tour of Copenhagen to soak up the good weather. The harbor tours are boat cruises through Copenhagen that leave from Nyhavn - an adorable man made canal lined with brightly colored houses. It is exactly what you would picture Scandinavian houses on a city waterfront to look like, it's just like a postcard! Jan gave us a little insider tip - there is a very visible company at end of the canal closest to the city center. These are expensive. But, if walk up the canal like 30 meters there is another less visible company that gives you basically that same hour long tour for $5!!! Sweeeeet. Their $5 price is cheaper than the expensive company's children's price. So we figured that was a fantastic way to spend $5 and a sunny afternoon and hopped on just a few minutes before it left. I got a nice seat on the 'window' side (but the windows can be pushed up and towards the center of the boat so they're not clouding the view) and got my camera ready.
The harbor tour was really cool. I don't think I necessarily learned that much, it was just SO nice to be out on the water in the sunshine, slowly going past beautiful buildings. I am just so excited to be in Scandinavia! It was a really pleasant experience though - definitely a quality use of $5. Some things that were on our tour:
The Free Town of Christiania - 30+ years ago some hippies knocked down a fence to an unused barracks or something and declared themselves a separate Free Town from Copenhagen. They have their own post system, their own laws, and are seriously just a bunch of hippies hanging out in this area they claimed. The government was going to allow it only temporarily but has since decided to allow it to continue as a 'social experiment'.
The Navy ships,
The Royal Yacht,
The Opera House, given to Copenhagen by the shipping giant Mersk. This is why the front of the building looks like the back of one of their huge shipping ships.
Where the Little Mermaid used to be (Copenhagen is famous for this tiny little statue but it's on loan to Shanghai for 2010 for an Art Exposition so there's just a boring white sign in it's place above the rock where the statue sat).
The Castle, which originally was built by 4 rich noblemen and later it became the royal residence of the Danish royal family - this is why it has 4 practically identical buildings that don't look that much like an actual palace.
We saw some other stuff too but I don't remember it. It was all just pretty.
After the harbor tour, we walked past a tourist information center where I picked up a plethora of handouts and brochures and free tourist guides and magazines. I had read about a specific publication called Copenhagen This Week in a guide book before I left. It's supposed to be this free guide of things to do in the city. But, the people at the tourist center said that it didn't exist any more. One strike against that guide book. There were enough other materials to take though, and I left the building feeling like a walking tourist information center.
Then we were on our way to Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek Museet, or the New Carlsberg Glyptotek Museum. The guide book I read back home said it was free on Wednesdays and that it had a number of Rodin sculptures. Well, it's Wednesday, and I love free stuff and Rodin, so it seemed perfect. However when we got there, there were signs that said only Sundays had free entrance! And real entrance was like $10! Strike two against the guide book! But, me being me, I went up and asked somebody at the ticket desk and just said that I'd read in a guide book that the museum was free on Wednesdays, was that not true anymore? She said, no, that's not true anymore, it's only free on Sundays....BUT - BUT!!! Today is the Crown Prince's birthday, so the museum is free today! What the heck?! How random is that / HOW GREAT is our timing?! / How awesome is it that I go up and ask what most people probably would think are dumb or inane questions?! Woohoo! Rodin only really got one room in the museum but it was all great stuff. Most of his works are about expressing emotions through sculptures, so I find them very interesting. And of course, The Kiss and the Thinker were there. By the way, I'm really confused about how many "original Rodin" copies of the Kiss exist, since I've now seen three of them (Paris, London, Copenhagen). Wow that sounds pretentious. Oh yeah, something cool about this museum is that a lot of the artwork, especially Rodin, was bought from Rodin himself by Carl Jacobsen and later donated to this museum. Crazy! The museum also had a lot of Greek, Roman, and Egyptian art which was interesting. I really liked the Egyptian art because they had actual tablets with hieroglyphics on it that were sweet!
After the museum, we began aimless walking with the pretense of looking for food. Food is usually our pretense. However, we are so frugal and so picky that we usually end up walking for hours and then either just going to a grocery store or getting something cheap because we're starving. We accidentally found the city center area which was filled with restaurants, expensive stores, and tourist souvenir shops, so it was actually really cool to walk through all the pedestrian streets and squares bustling with people. After a few hours of this, we headed back to Jan's flat where we told him we'd meet him at 7 PM. On the way, we stopped at a mini market where I picked up what looked like chicken flavored Ramen noodles, 2 potatoes, and 1 shallot. This cost me an amazing $1.5! Pretty awesome for being in Denmark.
When we arrived, we found that Jan also had not eaten yet, and so we ditched our lame idea of Ramen and went to a real super market (the kind that we were hopelessly looking for the whole evening). Jan tried to describe his idea of dinner to us and while we didn't totally understand it sounded good so we followed him around picking up ingredients. Back home, I tried to help and he wasn't having any of it. He just worked away by himself, and soon called us to dinner. Dinner was AMAZING! He made a version of Rosti, I think. In Switzerland, Rosti was just potatoes (I think). Here, it was potatoes, onions, carrots, and peppers which all got shredded and mashed up together. In a separate bowl flour and eggs were mixed. Then it all goes together and you make little vegetable pancakes that get fried in a skillet with oil. On top goes a sour cream esque sauce that also had green onions in it. It was seriously amazing! And Jan didn't let us do a thing except for eat. When I asked him what I could do to help clean up he told me I could "go to my room." Thanks, Jan. Laura and I insisted though and the three of us whisked the kitchen clean; after which I remarked to Jan to look at how fun that was!
Oh I forgot to mention earlier - Jan has never hosted anybody from CouchSurfing before! He's surfed through Eastern Europe, but never hosted. You would never be able to guess this though! Picking us up with beers and making us dinner were so great. And when he picked us up he was prepared to pay for our train tickets to get to his flat but we didn't need them since we have our Eurail passes. Then when we got home, he had a map ready for each of us! It was crazy awesome. It's really exciting to be the first surfers, because I am pretty sure we will leave a great impression :) Especially since Americans tend to have such an awful reputation, it's nice to just break that mold right away.
After dinner, we decided not to go out for any reason since I'm still sick and we have a lot we want to do tomorrow. I'm feeling a bit better but I want this cough to go away!
Quotes:
Hilary: "What can I do to help?"
Jan: "Go to your room."
Accomplishments:
More great timing with free museums (p.s., good job, Crown Prince, way to have a birthday today!)
Travel Tip:
Never hurts to ask questions...
Tuesday, May 25, 2010
Jan - CS #20
Today we began our adventure to Scandinavia!
We spent the morning in Hamburg wandering around on foot (!) by ourselves, as we didn't exactly invite Alex and Martin had to work and the Peruvian girls were headed back to Barcelona. We had a few hours to kill before our train in which we did some enthused window shopping before finally finding a cafeteria/food court/grocery store type of thing. We figured we could be warm and dry inside, so after buying some vitamin C cough drops, more Maoam's, and that amazing coconut candy that Steph left on our pillows, we found a table that we could loiter at. We got some Chinese food for an early lunch, and grabbed some German pastries on the way back to the train station.
It was a really quiet, kind of boring morning but that's alright sometimes. We luckily got a comfortable spot on the train and I continued the process of playing catch up with blogging. The train ride was going normally, until they made an announcement that the train was getting on a ferry, and all passengers had to get off for the crossing of the water. What?! Hahaha. So, the entire train (which I think was only 4 cars long or so) parked itself on a ferry, and we all got out with only our valuables and headed up to the ferry decks. I didn't even know trains did this!!! Going through the English Channel tunnel we all stayed on the bus, which drove onto a train that went through the tunnel. But a train rolling on to a ferry? So bizarre and funny.
It is FINALLY sunny out and the water looked gorgeous. It made me a bit nostalgic for SAS seeing the great expanse of water in all directions and not being entirely sure exactly where I was. The ferry crossing was only about 45 minutes long and then we all piled back onto the train, which was now magically in Denmark. The scenery is beautiful so far and I am so very excited to finally be this far north and to see Scandinavia! The only bittersweet thing is that being here means that we have only a short month left before this amazing trip comes to an end...
Our newest host, Jan ("Yahn" - he's a guy) greeted us on the platform and as soon as we came into view he revealed the three Carlsberg beers he was holding! BY FAR the coolest way we've ever been greeted by a CouchSurfing host! We set out bags down at the station and got right to the point enjoying Danish culture...and by culture I mean beer. We clicked instantly with Jan and spent the next half an hour just laughing outside of the station. It's always so wonderful when you get along with a host so well and you can just tell that your stay in that city is going to be a lot of fun.
Jan is 26 and is working on his master's thesis which involves researching and studying things relating to tourism and transportation. He is originally from Germany and has a tendency to break into spontaneous songs and dances. The first such song was a terrible little diddy that now has a terrible tendency to get stuck in my head. There is a music video in case you're interested, but the part Jan always sings literally goes, "McDonalds! McDonalds! Kentucky Fried Chicken and a Pizza Hut! McDonalds! McDonalds! Kentucky Fried Chicken and a Pizza Hut!" And YES there are definitely hand motions / a dance that go with it. Yeah...
Unrelated to anything, while we were lounging in his flat chatting and trying to figure out the internet password (which was Johnny Cash, but not spelled correctly - spent hours trying to figure this out), I heard Treble Charger come on. I was like, "WHAT?! You know them!?" They're a band from Canada that I loved in high school, and Jan likes them. Crazy. More point for him!
We arrived at Jan's flat in Norrebro (which he lovingly calls "NorreBronx" - complete with gangsta hand motions) and he announced he was making us tacos. No complaints there! I always offer to help prepare food and Jan let me work on the guacamole. However, I had already halved the avocado before realizing it was wayyy not ripe enough to make real guacamole! The solution to this, since it was far too hard to mash with a spoon, was to put little chunks of hard avocado through a garlic press. Extremely creative, if you ask me (Jan gets the credit for this genius idea). Soon we sat down to a hard shell and soft tortilla feast with chicken and all the toppings. So that was delicious.
After dinner, we decided to go out for a beer at a small bar close to Jan's flat. We had heard that Scandinavia was expensive and wow - people weren't lying. A beer here (not in the center of town!) was 40 Danish Crowns which are about 6 crowns to the dollar. So almost $7 for a normal half liter of beer! Yikes! It was good beer though, and over said beer we tried learning some Danish. Turns out Danish is extremely difficult. It's funny how you can hear something repeated so many times and still not be able to make the right sounds with your mouth.
I have not been feeling 100% healthy lately (I have a slight cough) so after this beer we called it a night and walked back home. It is so weird, this far north there are not that many hours of darkness! It doesn't get pitch black til about 11 or 1130 PM and it's already getting light again by 3 AM. This dusk light makes it feel like it's 8 PM for hours, but then all of a sudden it's late. So days are long here, but we only have two of them so we need to make the best of them!
Quotes:
"Seriously? Whoa. Wow where's the knife ya'll?" - Jan, in response (I think) to Laura saying she was from the 'hood
"Sometimes I'm in a hip hop phase and I come home and am like, yea yea yea yeah what up YO!" - Jan, about what kind of music he likes
"Just smack the door on your way out." - Jan, funny English moment
"Really, Danish is much easier to learn after a couple of beers." - Jan, about some of the more difficult Danish sounds
"Car-yeah...." - Laura (we have a tendency to say the exact same thing at the exact same time; it's embarrassing. I had just said "Cards would be fun" and Laura was literally about to say the same thing but only got to "Car" when I beat her to it...it was really funny when it happened).
Accomplishments:
Took a train on to a ferry.
Made it to Scandinavia!
Travel Tip:
Cards seriously would be fun, I maybe should have brought/bought some!
We spent the morning in Hamburg wandering around on foot (!) by ourselves, as we didn't exactly invite Alex and Martin had to work and the Peruvian girls were headed back to Barcelona. We had a few hours to kill before our train in which we did some enthused window shopping before finally finding a cafeteria/food court/grocery store type of thing. We figured we could be warm and dry inside, so after buying some vitamin C cough drops, more Maoam's, and that amazing coconut candy that Steph left on our pillows, we found a table that we could loiter at. We got some Chinese food for an early lunch, and grabbed some German pastries on the way back to the train station.
It was a really quiet, kind of boring morning but that's alright sometimes. We luckily got a comfortable spot on the train and I continued the process of playing catch up with blogging. The train ride was going normally, until they made an announcement that the train was getting on a ferry, and all passengers had to get off for the crossing of the water. What?! Hahaha. So, the entire train (which I think was only 4 cars long or so) parked itself on a ferry, and we all got out with only our valuables and headed up to the ferry decks. I didn't even know trains did this!!! Going through the English Channel tunnel we all stayed on the bus, which drove onto a train that went through the tunnel. But a train rolling on to a ferry? So bizarre and funny.
It is FINALLY sunny out and the water looked gorgeous. It made me a bit nostalgic for SAS seeing the great expanse of water in all directions and not being entirely sure exactly where I was. The ferry crossing was only about 45 minutes long and then we all piled back onto the train, which was now magically in Denmark. The scenery is beautiful so far and I am so very excited to finally be this far north and to see Scandinavia! The only bittersweet thing is that being here means that we have only a short month left before this amazing trip comes to an end...
Our newest host, Jan ("Yahn" - he's a guy) greeted us on the platform and as soon as we came into view he revealed the three Carlsberg beers he was holding! BY FAR the coolest way we've ever been greeted by a CouchSurfing host! We set out bags down at the station and got right to the point enjoying Danish culture...and by culture I mean beer. We clicked instantly with Jan and spent the next half an hour just laughing outside of the station. It's always so wonderful when you get along with a host so well and you can just tell that your stay in that city is going to be a lot of fun.
Jan is 26 and is working on his master's thesis which involves researching and studying things relating to tourism and transportation. He is originally from Germany and has a tendency to break into spontaneous songs and dances. The first such song was a terrible little diddy that now has a terrible tendency to get stuck in my head. There is a music video in case you're interested, but the part Jan always sings literally goes, "McDonalds! McDonalds! Kentucky Fried Chicken and a Pizza Hut! McDonalds! McDonalds! Kentucky Fried Chicken and a Pizza Hut!" And YES there are definitely hand motions / a dance that go with it. Yeah...
Unrelated to anything, while we were lounging in his flat chatting and trying to figure out the internet password (which was Johnny Cash, but not spelled correctly - spent hours trying to figure this out), I heard Treble Charger come on. I was like, "WHAT?! You know them!?" They're a band from Canada that I loved in high school, and Jan likes them. Crazy. More point for him!
We arrived at Jan's flat in Norrebro (which he lovingly calls "NorreBronx" - complete with gangsta hand motions) and he announced he was making us tacos. No complaints there! I always offer to help prepare food and Jan let me work on the guacamole. However, I had already halved the avocado before realizing it was wayyy not ripe enough to make real guacamole! The solution to this, since it was far too hard to mash with a spoon, was to put little chunks of hard avocado through a garlic press. Extremely creative, if you ask me (Jan gets the credit for this genius idea). Soon we sat down to a hard shell and soft tortilla feast with chicken and all the toppings. So that was delicious.
After dinner, we decided to go out for a beer at a small bar close to Jan's flat. We had heard that Scandinavia was expensive and wow - people weren't lying. A beer here (not in the center of town!) was 40 Danish Crowns which are about 6 crowns to the dollar. So almost $7 for a normal half liter of beer! Yikes! It was good beer though, and over said beer we tried learning some Danish. Turns out Danish is extremely difficult. It's funny how you can hear something repeated so many times and still not be able to make the right sounds with your mouth.
I have not been feeling 100% healthy lately (I have a slight cough) so after this beer we called it a night and walked back home. It is so weird, this far north there are not that many hours of darkness! It doesn't get pitch black til about 11 or 1130 PM and it's already getting light again by 3 AM. This dusk light makes it feel like it's 8 PM for hours, but then all of a sudden it's late. So days are long here, but we only have two of them so we need to make the best of them!
Quotes:
"Seriously? Whoa. Wow where's the knife ya'll?" - Jan, in response (I think) to Laura saying she was from the 'hood
"Sometimes I'm in a hip hop phase and I come home and am like, yea yea yea yeah what up YO!" - Jan, about what kind of music he likes
"Just smack the door on your way out." - Jan, funny English moment
"Really, Danish is much easier to learn after a couple of beers." - Jan, about some of the more difficult Danish sounds
"Car-yeah...." - Laura (we have a tendency to say the exact same thing at the exact same time; it's embarrassing. I had just said "Cards would be fun" and Laura was literally about to say the same thing but only got to "Car" when I beat her to it...it was really funny when it happened).
Accomplishments:
Took a train on to a ferry.
Made it to Scandinavia!
Travel Tip:
Cards seriously would be fun, I maybe should have brought/bought some!
Thursday, May 20, 2010
Good Timing
After the last two days, my mind was exhausted. I slept in for as long as possible and finally faced the day close to noon. Germany has so much important history that unfortunately it's impossible to cover all of the depressing things in just two days.
Our first stop today was to the information center underneath the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe. I didn't learn very much new information here, but I thought the information center was extremely well done. It had six rooms. The first covered general history. The second room was the most challenging for me. It was actual artifacts that had been found in camps or thrown off trains, mostly postcards. They were heart wrenching, and I think all of the people that wrote them were murdered. Reading their thoughts, in their script, mere moments or days before they were killed was extremely tough. The third room highlighted 10 to 15 families and described who each person was, what they did, where they lived, and what happened to them in a portrait style fashion. The fourth room had brief biographies of people that were murdered. The statistic there was that if they read all of these biographies that were approximately the same length (maybe a minute or two) it would take over 6 years to go through them all. The fifth room was set up with video reels, pictures, and audio stations where you could listen to survivor stories. They were all awful, of course. One story was of a woman who survived a mass shooting by jumping into a mass grave full of corpses right before the gun fire and then felt fresh corpses fall on top of her. She had to push them off of her so that she wouldn't literally be buried alive. Somehow she got out of that... Another person described the selection process and asked for her mother to be able to stay with her kids. The Nazis happily obliged; what the poor woman didn't know was that children and the elderly were being sent straight to the gas chambers. She's lived with that guilt for the rest of her life. The last room was set up with stations connected to the Jewish foundation that tracks as many of the deaths of Jews in WWII as possible and you can search by name for people in this huge database. Overall, not a "fun" experience but it is so important to learn about these things so that I can tell other people. The more people that try to understand this catastrophe the better.
After that, we used our awesome timing to go to some museums (a rarity for us). Turns out that on Thursdays lots of museums are free here. We arrived at a modern art museum that was free between 2 and 6 PM around 330, but the modern art was stupid and worthless to me, except for the Warhol stuff which I liked a lot. Seriously, filling up a tunnel with animal lard and cutting it into 6 pieces and putting them all in a room is NOT art. Also, putting a lemon next to a yellow light bulb? ALSO, NOT ART.
Then we went to the Pergamon Museum (we've gotten multiple recommendations to go see it). We arrived at 5 but found out it had free admission after 6! We thought the Pergamon Museum was an exception to the free museum Thursday rule because it is so cool, so that was a bonus that we didn't have to pay for it. Well, we went to Alexanderplatz for an hour and got ice cream, and then came back at 6 when it was free. But, we were sneaky, and put our bags in a locker when we got there the first time at 5! Hah! One hour less of carrying stuff around! We are so clever...though taking our locker key off museum property felt a little like stealing, though it was genuinely just slightly prolonged borrowing.
The Pergamon Museum was cool but the only things that I understood the significance of (after googling both things, because I don't remember learning about these things in real life) were the reconstruction of the Pergamon Alter and the Ishtar Gates of Babylon. Both were really impressive. Everything else was pretty and probably famous I just had no idea what I was looking at. Ignorance is kind of a bummer. Also, when we arrived at the museum at 6 I saw Ashley (half of our new Canadian couple friends) in the window next to Andy! Random! We wandered around the museum with them until about 7 when Laura and I decided to head out to go change and eat before meeting up with Nicole later that night.
Dinner was, of course, another 2 euro gyro. SO GOOD. Seriously.
We met Nicole (the girl I met on our Prague free city tour) at a U-Bahn station close to a bar she suggested we go to. The bar was called Madam Claude and Thursday has 2 for 1 beer nights. And a beer is 3 euros. It was glorious. After being there a short while, a ton of Nicole's other university friends joined us that are also studying here in Berlin! It is always so nice to hang out with new people our own age. The night was really fun but before we knew it, midnight had arrived. The last metros stop running at about 12:30 AM and we were a couple of transfers away from home, so we finally made it out shortly thereafter. However...it was not soon enough, and we had a miserable time taking the public transportation home! When we got to our first transfer point, the second subway we needed had already stopped running for the night, so we had to go back to where we came from and wait for a metro that hadn't stopped running yet. Ugh.
Of course we made it home though and set in for another night of much needed sleep. It feels like we've been going non stop.
Quotes:
Nicole: "Que Pasa (a bar) has really great cocktails for cheap; they pour really strong."
Steph: "Yeah but if I can taste the alcohol then it's not a good cocktail."
Nicole: "Oh, I like the taste of whiskey....sours."
Hahaha
Accomplishment:
Had perfect timing to go to two free museums that normally would have cost 5 euros each! Booya!
Travel Tip:
When people tell you that the last U-Bahns leave at 12:30, believe them, and plan accordingly.
Our first stop today was to the information center underneath the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe. I didn't learn very much new information here, but I thought the information center was extremely well done. It had six rooms. The first covered general history. The second room was the most challenging for me. It was actual artifacts that had been found in camps or thrown off trains, mostly postcards. They were heart wrenching, and I think all of the people that wrote them were murdered. Reading their thoughts, in their script, mere moments or days before they were killed was extremely tough. The third room highlighted 10 to 15 families and described who each person was, what they did, where they lived, and what happened to them in a portrait style fashion. The fourth room had brief biographies of people that were murdered. The statistic there was that if they read all of these biographies that were approximately the same length (maybe a minute or two) it would take over 6 years to go through them all. The fifth room was set up with video reels, pictures, and audio stations where you could listen to survivor stories. They were all awful, of course. One story was of a woman who survived a mass shooting by jumping into a mass grave full of corpses right before the gun fire and then felt fresh corpses fall on top of her. She had to push them off of her so that she wouldn't literally be buried alive. Somehow she got out of that... Another person described the selection process and asked for her mother to be able to stay with her kids. The Nazis happily obliged; what the poor woman didn't know was that children and the elderly were being sent straight to the gas chambers. She's lived with that guilt for the rest of her life. The last room was set up with stations connected to the Jewish foundation that tracks as many of the deaths of Jews in WWII as possible and you can search by name for people in this huge database. Overall, not a "fun" experience but it is so important to learn about these things so that I can tell other people. The more people that try to understand this catastrophe the better.
After that, we used our awesome timing to go to some museums (a rarity for us). Turns out that on Thursdays lots of museums are free here. We arrived at a modern art museum that was free between 2 and 6 PM around 330, but the modern art was stupid and worthless to me, except for the Warhol stuff which I liked a lot. Seriously, filling up a tunnel with animal lard and cutting it into 6 pieces and putting them all in a room is NOT art. Also, putting a lemon next to a yellow light bulb? ALSO, NOT ART.
Then we went to the Pergamon Museum (we've gotten multiple recommendations to go see it). We arrived at 5 but found out it had free admission after 6! We thought the Pergamon Museum was an exception to the free museum Thursday rule because it is so cool, so that was a bonus that we didn't have to pay for it. Well, we went to Alexanderplatz for an hour and got ice cream, and then came back at 6 when it was free. But, we were sneaky, and put our bags in a locker when we got there the first time at 5! Hah! One hour less of carrying stuff around! We are so clever...though taking our locker key off museum property felt a little like stealing, though it was genuinely just slightly prolonged borrowing.
The Pergamon Museum was cool but the only things that I understood the significance of (after googling both things, because I don't remember learning about these things in real life) were the reconstruction of the Pergamon Alter and the Ishtar Gates of Babylon. Both were really impressive. Everything else was pretty and probably famous I just had no idea what I was looking at. Ignorance is kind of a bummer. Also, when we arrived at the museum at 6 I saw Ashley (half of our new Canadian couple friends) in the window next to Andy! Random! We wandered around the museum with them until about 7 when Laura and I decided to head out to go change and eat before meeting up with Nicole later that night.
Dinner was, of course, another 2 euro gyro. SO GOOD. Seriously.
We met Nicole (the girl I met on our Prague free city tour) at a U-Bahn station close to a bar she suggested we go to. The bar was called Madam Claude and Thursday has 2 for 1 beer nights. And a beer is 3 euros. It was glorious. After being there a short while, a ton of Nicole's other university friends joined us that are also studying here in Berlin! It is always so nice to hang out with new people our own age. The night was really fun but before we knew it, midnight had arrived. The last metros stop running at about 12:30 AM and we were a couple of transfers away from home, so we finally made it out shortly thereafter. However...it was not soon enough, and we had a miserable time taking the public transportation home! When we got to our first transfer point, the second subway we needed had already stopped running for the night, so we had to go back to where we came from and wait for a metro that hadn't stopped running yet. Ugh.
Of course we made it home though and set in for another night of much needed sleep. It feels like we've been going non stop.
Quotes:
Nicole: "Que Pasa (a bar) has really great cocktails for cheap; they pour really strong."
Steph: "Yeah but if I can taste the alcohol then it's not a good cocktail."
Nicole: "Oh, I like the taste of whiskey....sours."
Hahaha
Accomplishment:
Had perfect timing to go to two free museums that normally would have cost 5 euros each! Booya!
Travel Tip:
When people tell you that the last U-Bahns leave at 12:30, believe them, and plan accordingly.
Monday, May 17, 2010
Steph - CS #18
Last night seemingly continued into this morning, as we both woke up promptly at 7:30 AM - not in our CouchSurfing host's kitchen, where we belonged. We said goodbye to Miguel and Toni, asked where the heck the metro was and where the heck in the city we actually were, and left. We have not been up this early in so long. I was surprised to see so many people out!
I got some bread at a bakery but then we were close to the Museum Square and we decided, at 8:30 AM, that street sausages were really the best breakfast imaginable. That was more or less true; my street sausage the other day was better. But after that, we kept pretending to our stomachs that it wasn't before 9 AM and topped it all off with some ice cream as we waited for our tram.
Back at Leah's, we packed up our stuff and I found that sadly, my Eastern European adapter piece was NOT in the wall where I left it. Really sad about this for a number of reasons. 1) I didn't do it, 2) I hate losing things, 3) It's part of a set, which somehow makes it worse, and 4) There's nothing I could have or would have done differently. I figured it must be close by, so I searched and searched but to no avail. :(
Leah woke up while we were packing because I needed to ask her if she knew where my adapter piece was. She didn't, and her roommate was in a meeting at work unable to answer his phone. But once she was up, she went off about economics for probably 20 minutes (that's what she's studying). I think she had some big things going on at school this week, but it was really funny packing and sipping tea super early in the morning (OK, it was 1030 by now) listening to a whole spiel about economics! My brain was not ready for that...
We left for our train and I felt sure we were on the right train this time, which is a great feeling. The train ride was easy, I napped and did my end of country accounting, listened to some music I'd been meaning to listen to, etc. We were surrounded by people that spoke English though - seriously, tourist season has started. We are not alone over here anymore :/
Finding our new host Steph's place was pretty easy. She lives in the Turkish district and there are tons of gyro places around her neighborhood. I'm very excited about this! I LOVE a good gyro! Meeting Steph and seeing her flat was wonderful! She lives at the top of 5 floors of stairs with no elevator, and I actually forgot her last name so it was a bit awkward finding her apartment (we got some help from the janitor and a neighbor). Her room has lots of girly pink things in it, there are purses on the wall, an entire wall of shoes outside her door! She also is letting us sleep in her queen size bed - ahhhhh! AND there was a towel with a candy on each of our pillows! TOO CUTE! She is a little new to CouchSurfing, we're her 2nd and 3rd surfers, so I told her, "you know, you don't have to give up your bed and feed us candies like a 5 star hotel!" But it was adorable. So nice to have some space and know that we were going to sleep in a REAL bed!
She has Monday dinner night with guys from the neighboring flats, which really reminded me of our old Sunday dinner nights back home! We went to one of her friends' flats and there were at least 8 other guys there. We spent the entire evening waiting for pizzas to come out of the oven, one by one. It forced us to have a delicious, leisurely, typically European meal. For dessert we had brought ice cream and frozen fruit - which some genius turned into a warm fruit sauce - and chocolate sauce. Everybody spoke in English for us the whole night and some of them hardly had accents. That would definitely never happen in the State (a group of people our age just speaking perfect German for a whole evening). It was great fun talking with everybody and a nice welcome to the city! The only bad thing was that these people CHAIIIIIN SMOKE and I could not handle it, I felt like I was suffocating. By the end of the night (around 1230), my throat hurt and it hurt to inhale all the way. Yucky.
Then we came home to sleep on a gorgeous, comfortable queen size bed :) What a treat!
Quotes:
"Please let me be in the same city, or at least the same country!" - Guy at dinner, on waking up after a long night
(Another) Guy at Dinner: "I have a Saxon accent."
Me: "What? A sexy accent?"
Accomplishments:
Got into a political conversation within mere hours of being in Berlin.
Travel Tip:
Write down your host's last name...so that it's easier to find them once you finally reach their flat.
Nice People Alert:
Man on Stairs and Janitor that helped us figure out just which flat belonged to Steph!
I got some bread at a bakery but then we were close to the Museum Square and we decided, at 8:30 AM, that street sausages were really the best breakfast imaginable. That was more or less true; my street sausage the other day was better. But after that, we kept pretending to our stomachs that it wasn't before 9 AM and topped it all off with some ice cream as we waited for our tram.
Back at Leah's, we packed up our stuff and I found that sadly, my Eastern European adapter piece was NOT in the wall where I left it. Really sad about this for a number of reasons. 1) I didn't do it, 2) I hate losing things, 3) It's part of a set, which somehow makes it worse, and 4) There's nothing I could have or would have done differently. I figured it must be close by, so I searched and searched but to no avail. :(
Leah woke up while we were packing because I needed to ask her if she knew where my adapter piece was. She didn't, and her roommate was in a meeting at work unable to answer his phone. But once she was up, she went off about economics for probably 20 minutes (that's what she's studying). I think she had some big things going on at school this week, but it was really funny packing and sipping tea super early in the morning (OK, it was 1030 by now) listening to a whole spiel about economics! My brain was not ready for that...
We left for our train and I felt sure we were on the right train this time, which is a great feeling. The train ride was easy, I napped and did my end of country accounting, listened to some music I'd been meaning to listen to, etc. We were surrounded by people that spoke English though - seriously, tourist season has started. We are not alone over here anymore :/
Finding our new host Steph's place was pretty easy. She lives in the Turkish district and there are tons of gyro places around her neighborhood. I'm very excited about this! I LOVE a good gyro! Meeting Steph and seeing her flat was wonderful! She lives at the top of 5 floors of stairs with no elevator, and I actually forgot her last name so it was a bit awkward finding her apartment (we got some help from the janitor and a neighbor). Her room has lots of girly pink things in it, there are purses on the wall, an entire wall of shoes outside her door! She also is letting us sleep in her queen size bed - ahhhhh! AND there was a towel with a candy on each of our pillows! TOO CUTE! She is a little new to CouchSurfing, we're her 2nd and 3rd surfers, so I told her, "you know, you don't have to give up your bed and feed us candies like a 5 star hotel!" But it was adorable. So nice to have some space and know that we were going to sleep in a REAL bed!
She has Monday dinner night with guys from the neighboring flats, which really reminded me of our old Sunday dinner nights back home! We went to one of her friends' flats and there were at least 8 other guys there. We spent the entire evening waiting for pizzas to come out of the oven, one by one. It forced us to have a delicious, leisurely, typically European meal. For dessert we had brought ice cream and frozen fruit - which some genius turned into a warm fruit sauce - and chocolate sauce. Everybody spoke in English for us the whole night and some of them hardly had accents. That would definitely never happen in the State (a group of people our age just speaking perfect German for a whole evening). It was great fun talking with everybody and a nice welcome to the city! The only bad thing was that these people CHAIIIIIN SMOKE and I could not handle it, I felt like I was suffocating. By the end of the night (around 1230), my throat hurt and it hurt to inhale all the way. Yucky.
Then we came home to sleep on a gorgeous, comfortable queen size bed :) What a treat!
Quotes:
"Please let me be in the same city, or at least the same country!" - Guy at dinner, on waking up after a long night
(Another) Guy at Dinner: "I have a Saxon accent."
Me: "What? A sexy accent?"
Accomplishments:
Got into a political conversation within mere hours of being in Berlin.
Travel Tip:
Write down your host's last name...so that it's easier to find them once you finally reach their flat.
Nice People Alert:
Man on Stairs and Janitor that helped us figure out just which flat belonged to Steph!
Sunday, May 16, 2010
U Fleku
Today was kind of our left over day in Prague. There was nothing we really "needed" to do, and it's nice to not be rushed in the places we visit. I got up early to desperately attempt to catch up on blogging, and eventually we left to go chip away at our mundane errands.
We went with David to a potato pancake place that Rubin (Leah's roommate) recommended to us. Finding the place was pretty easy, and thank goodness Rubin warned us to split one. These things were HUGE, and smothered with meat, onions, and sauce. Really good, but about 2/3 of the way through my 1/2 of the pancake I was feeling a little nauseous. It was heavy. Oh yeah, and this meal cost $9 total, but we were splitting it, so yeah - woohoo Prague!
Then it was time for another new friend to leave us as David headed to his bus. After that we began our search for our normal souvenirs. I stopped in a store with lots of kitschy tourist plates and asked the lady if she had any traditional ceramic plates. She said no and I asked her if she knew where I could find some. I really didn't know if she would a) understand or b) help me buy something that was not one of her 40 plates I didn't like. BUT SHE DID! And the shop was only a few meters away (yeah I'm getting sucked into the world of meters). Laura spotted the big sign that said "Keramics" and we had found the jack pot. The woman in the store helped me pick out the "most" traditionally Czech colors and pattern (when I told her I'd been all over central Europe, and no offense, it all kind of looked verrrry similar to me). So I found a plate, and on we went. Then we also found the chocolate shop where there are demonstrations, but we thought the demos and tasting were free but they weren't! Bummer. After that I was on a mission to find this church where there is supposedly a thieves' arm that was cut off hanging from the wall. We FINALLY found the freaking place only to find it was totally locked up with no visible way in. I guess it was closed for the day. Lame.
THEN the real adventure starts.
I had in fact called Miguel from Skype, and we had plans to meet up at 5:30 in the Museum Square. Sure enough, he and Toni were right on time. The four of us now seeing each other all in the daylight for the first time clicked just as well as the night before and it was awesome to have some new insta-friends, especially with Jackie and David gone! We headed to U Fleku, a traditional Czech beer hall that was recommended to me by someone back home. Miguel said that was a great idea (he lives in Prague and Toni is visiting him from Australia...they met at a hostel in London - love these stories!).
The beer hall was great, it's almost like a really pretty, much smaller cafeteria just lined with wooden benches and tables. You pick a seat wherever you can find one and sit under pretty chandeliers. They only serve one type of beer, brewed on the premises, and one type of shot, some kind of plum shot which is supposedly the national shot of Czech? Who knows. They also have live accordion and/or tuba music going at any given time. It was a really, really fun place. Online it said they only took cash, and I had exactly 120 crowns left. That's good for 2 or 3 beers, depending on how expensive they are. We told Miguel this and he was appalled that we were only planning on having a couple of beers even though it was literally the last of our cash and it would mean going without food.
Then, this is where the game changed. Miguel asked the waiter if they took card - and they said yes. I grumbled at Miguel because I KNEW that meant game over. We had literally nothing else to do and we were at a super cute beer hall! Miguel insisted we try Czech's national shot and beers kept landing in front of us and it was all downhill from there. We definitely had beer for dinner and completely forgot to eat. We spent hours just sitting around and laughing with these kids, they were so great. I made a few quality one liners and Miguel decided he liked my humor (don't hear that everyday!) Then we resolved that Laura and Toni were the "hot" ones and Miguel and I were the "personality" ones, the "witty" ones. I'm alright with that. I think I'm funny so it's cool when other people do too. It was a ridiculously fun night, and I have no clue what time we left the beer hall. We went to a grocery store to get snacks (which I didn't eat), and stopped by a friend of Miguel's apartment briefly. Then we went back to Miguel's flat and sat around talking and laughing more. At this point, fatigue came out of nowhere and I was simply exhausted. I ended up crashing on Miguel's roommate's bed (who wasn't home) and sleeping solidly through the night.
TO BE CONTINUED....(in the next blog post).
Quotes:
"You can't go to a beer hall and only have two beers!" - Miguel
"Oh yeah, I used you as bait. Sorry." - Miguel, in regards to using me to try to get his friend Hansa from last night to come hang out with us (turns out Hansa apparently had a little crush on me).
Accomplishments:
Experienced the full force of a Czech beer hall with new friends from Mexico and Australia - sigh, traveling...!!
Travel Tip:
Be ready for anything...even beer for dinner - though I don't think I would recommend that, generally speaking...
We went with David to a potato pancake place that Rubin (Leah's roommate) recommended to us. Finding the place was pretty easy, and thank goodness Rubin warned us to split one. These things were HUGE, and smothered with meat, onions, and sauce. Really good, but about 2/3 of the way through my 1/2 of the pancake I was feeling a little nauseous. It was heavy. Oh yeah, and this meal cost $9 total, but we were splitting it, so yeah - woohoo Prague!
Then it was time for another new friend to leave us as David headed to his bus. After that we began our search for our normal souvenirs. I stopped in a store with lots of kitschy tourist plates and asked the lady if she had any traditional ceramic plates. She said no and I asked her if she knew where I could find some. I really didn't know if she would a) understand or b) help me buy something that was not one of her 40 plates I didn't like. BUT SHE DID! And the shop was only a few meters away (yeah I'm getting sucked into the world of meters). Laura spotted the big sign that said "Keramics" and we had found the jack pot. The woman in the store helped me pick out the "most" traditionally Czech colors and pattern (when I told her I'd been all over central Europe, and no offense, it all kind of looked verrrry similar to me). So I found a plate, and on we went. Then we also found the chocolate shop where there are demonstrations, but we thought the demos and tasting were free but they weren't! Bummer. After that I was on a mission to find this church where there is supposedly a thieves' arm that was cut off hanging from the wall. We FINALLY found the freaking place only to find it was totally locked up with no visible way in. I guess it was closed for the day. Lame.
THEN the real adventure starts.
I had in fact called Miguel from Skype, and we had plans to meet up at 5:30 in the Museum Square. Sure enough, he and Toni were right on time. The four of us now seeing each other all in the daylight for the first time clicked just as well as the night before and it was awesome to have some new insta-friends, especially with Jackie and David gone! We headed to U Fleku, a traditional Czech beer hall that was recommended to me by someone back home. Miguel said that was a great idea (he lives in Prague and Toni is visiting him from Australia...they met at a hostel in London - love these stories!).
The beer hall was great, it's almost like a really pretty, much smaller cafeteria just lined with wooden benches and tables. You pick a seat wherever you can find one and sit under pretty chandeliers. They only serve one type of beer, brewed on the premises, and one type of shot, some kind of plum shot which is supposedly the national shot of Czech? Who knows. They also have live accordion and/or tuba music going at any given time. It was a really, really fun place. Online it said they only took cash, and I had exactly 120 crowns left. That's good for 2 or 3 beers, depending on how expensive they are. We told Miguel this and he was appalled that we were only planning on having a couple of beers even though it was literally the last of our cash and it would mean going without food.
Then, this is where the game changed. Miguel asked the waiter if they took card - and they said yes. I grumbled at Miguel because I KNEW that meant game over. We had literally nothing else to do and we were at a super cute beer hall! Miguel insisted we try Czech's national shot and beers kept landing in front of us and it was all downhill from there. We definitely had beer for dinner and completely forgot to eat. We spent hours just sitting around and laughing with these kids, they were so great. I made a few quality one liners and Miguel decided he liked my humor (don't hear that everyday!) Then we resolved that Laura and Toni were the "hot" ones and Miguel and I were the "personality" ones, the "witty" ones. I'm alright with that. I think I'm funny so it's cool when other people do too. It was a ridiculously fun night, and I have no clue what time we left the beer hall. We went to a grocery store to get snacks (which I didn't eat), and stopped by a friend of Miguel's apartment briefly. Then we went back to Miguel's flat and sat around talking and laughing more. At this point, fatigue came out of nowhere and I was simply exhausted. I ended up crashing on Miguel's roommate's bed (who wasn't home) and sleeping solidly through the night.
TO BE CONTINUED....(in the next blog post).
Quotes:
"You can't go to a beer hall and only have two beers!" - Miguel
"Oh yeah, I used you as bait. Sorry." - Miguel, in regards to using me to try to get his friend Hansa from last night to come hang out with us (turns out Hansa apparently had a little crush on me).
Accomplishments:
Experienced the full force of a Czech beer hall with new friends from Mexico and Australia - sigh, traveling...!!
Travel Tip:
Be ready for anything...even beer for dinner - though I don't think I would recommend that, generally speaking...
Saturday, May 15, 2010
Cesky Pivo
For some reason, the whole kitchen-floor-sleeping-crew was exhausted and nobody really woke up til about 1. We didn't get out of the house until 3. Seriously we have some pathetically lazy mornings.
Anyway, since it was the afternoon, we made our way to a place Leah recommended us for some quality beef goulash. She was not kidding. It was freaking amazing!!! It was served in a crispy bread bowl, filled with beef and goulash delicious sauce, with onions and sausage on the side. Leah even told us which beer to order with it, which is apparently only served at this particular restaurant chain and not bottled or exported. It was one huge, messy, fantastic meal!
Then David, who was at lunch with us, went to go find where his bus station was. Laura and I had other plans...see, on the metros and trams, I kept seeing a poster with the words: "Cesky Pivo Festival" which after my quality time spent in central Europe, I know means "Czech Beer Festival". The dates? The 14th through the 30th of May. Seriously - our timing has been AMAZING. Laura and I headed up to the beer festival then, only to find that after Spring Fest in Munich and Juwenalia x2 in Poland, we are incredibly jaded. There were only three tents, but they were all half full at most. There was live music sometimes, and a few food booths and some carnival rides outside, but nothing too exciting. Nonetheless, we were excited. The Czech Republic is the last country we're going to that is really known for their beer, so we figured the atmosphere might be kind of lame, but that had no effect on the quality of beer! The way this festival worked was there was free entrance to all tents, but you had to buy beer (or food) with tokens (called kolars in Czech). A token is worth 40 crowns, or $2, and you have to buy packs of 5 tokens. We only bought one pack and decided to share it for starters.
After one beer, we headed to this area of town where there supposedly is a 'dancing fountain' - or a fountain that dances to music and lights at night. However, when we finally found the fountain, we could hear the music and see the tip of it and it looked like a total let down! It cost $10, and after spending an iffy $20 on that black light show we thought our money would be better spent at the beer festival. I'm not an alcoholic, I promise. Back at the beer festival, we bought another 5 tokens and had a couple more beers, shared a bowl of delicious garlic soup with toast, and bought some soup for poor David who is sick and can barely talk! Also, the $10 that would have paid for the fountain instead went towards my wardrobe and I bought a pretty shirt that says Czech Beer Festival on it. It's bright yellow :) It definitely could be better, I wish it said "Cesky Pivo Festival" on it, but what can you do?
Soon, it was time to take the last metro home (it was only around 1030 I think). Waiting for the metro, I heard somebody speaking English. Excited - I've had great luck with English speakers in Prague - I asked where he was from. His name was Miguel, and he was from Mexico but was half American. He was with an Aussie chick named Tonielle, and another guy from Prague named Hansa. Then we embarked on the funniest metro ride of my life. See, Miguel and Toni had simply walked out of the beer tents with a beer mug and beer still in hand. Drinking beer on the metro is SUPER illegal and they would have gotten a HUGE fine had they been caught. But, oh, the glorious years of your twenties. There were no ticket checker people, and we spent the whole metro ride getting to know them and laughing at all the ridiculous things they were saying (see: quotes
When we got off the metro, Miguel sloppily wrote his number in my little black travel book moleskine and I told him I would call him tomorrow to see if this rag tag group could hang out again. He went on for like five minutes about how I wouldn't call him, but I told him I would call him from Skype so he should pick up if the number looked weird. Then we parted ways and Laura and David and I all made it back to Leah's flat. Laura told me that BOTH Miguel and Toni had drunkenly given their then-empty Czech beer mugs to her and she had them stowed in her bag. I was/am pretty jealous, but I have my trophy from Munich and she's the one that has to figure out where to safely put them in her bag! So I guess we're even :)
Quotes:
"Upstairs five!" - Miguel, this is the same thing as a high five...now we're just calling it something else.
"I wish the metro would stop moving so much." - Miguel, trying to drink his beer on the metro.
Accomplishments:
Went to a Czech beer festival.
Travel Tip:
Make friends that live in the city! (They don't have to be CouchSurfers.)
Anyway, since it was the afternoon, we made our way to a place Leah recommended us for some quality beef goulash. She was not kidding. It was freaking amazing!!! It was served in a crispy bread bowl, filled with beef and goulash delicious sauce, with onions and sausage on the side. Leah even told us which beer to order with it, which is apparently only served at this particular restaurant chain and not bottled or exported. It was one huge, messy, fantastic meal!
Then David, who was at lunch with us, went to go find where his bus station was. Laura and I had other plans...see, on the metros and trams, I kept seeing a poster with the words: "Cesky Pivo Festival" which after my quality time spent in central Europe, I know means "Czech Beer Festival". The dates? The 14th through the 30th of May. Seriously - our timing has been AMAZING. Laura and I headed up to the beer festival then, only to find that after Spring Fest in Munich and Juwenalia x2 in Poland, we are incredibly jaded. There were only three tents, but they were all half full at most. There was live music sometimes, and a few food booths and some carnival rides outside, but nothing too exciting. Nonetheless, we were excited. The Czech Republic is the last country we're going to that is really known for their beer, so we figured the atmosphere might be kind of lame, but that had no effect on the quality of beer! The way this festival worked was there was free entrance to all tents, but you had to buy beer (or food) with tokens (called kolars in Czech). A token is worth 40 crowns, or $2, and you have to buy packs of 5 tokens. We only bought one pack and decided to share it for starters.
After one beer, we headed to this area of town where there supposedly is a 'dancing fountain' - or a fountain that dances to music and lights at night. However, when we finally found the fountain, we could hear the music and see the tip of it and it looked like a total let down! It cost $10, and after spending an iffy $20 on that black light show we thought our money would be better spent at the beer festival. I'm not an alcoholic, I promise. Back at the beer festival, we bought another 5 tokens and had a couple more beers, shared a bowl of delicious garlic soup with toast, and bought some soup for poor David who is sick and can barely talk! Also, the $10 that would have paid for the fountain instead went towards my wardrobe and I bought a pretty shirt that says Czech Beer Festival on it. It's bright yellow :) It definitely could be better, I wish it said "Cesky Pivo Festival" on it, but what can you do?
Soon, it was time to take the last metro home (it was only around 1030 I think). Waiting for the metro, I heard somebody speaking English. Excited - I've had great luck with English speakers in Prague - I asked where he was from. His name was Miguel, and he was from Mexico but was half American. He was with an Aussie chick named Tonielle, and another guy from Prague named Hansa. Then we embarked on the funniest metro ride of my life. See, Miguel and Toni had simply walked out of the beer tents with a beer mug and beer still in hand. Drinking beer on the metro is SUPER illegal and they would have gotten a HUGE fine had they been caught. But, oh, the glorious years of your twenties. There were no ticket checker people, and we spent the whole metro ride getting to know them and laughing at all the ridiculous things they were saying (see: quotes
When we got off the metro, Miguel sloppily wrote his number in my little black travel book moleskine and I told him I would call him tomorrow to see if this rag tag group could hang out again. He went on for like five minutes about how I wouldn't call him, but I told him I would call him from Skype so he should pick up if the number looked weird. Then we parted ways and Laura and David and I all made it back to Leah's flat. Laura told me that BOTH Miguel and Toni had drunkenly given their then-empty Czech beer mugs to her and she had them stowed in her bag. I was/am pretty jealous, but I have my trophy from Munich and she's the one that has to figure out where to safely put them in her bag! So I guess we're even :)
Quotes:
"Upstairs five!" - Miguel, this is the same thing as a high five...now we're just calling it something else.
"I wish the metro would stop moving so much." - Miguel, trying to drink his beer on the metro.
Accomplishments:
Went to a Czech beer festival.
Travel Tip:
Make friends that live in the city! (They don't have to be CouchSurfers.)
Friday, May 14, 2010
Tours
I woke up around 10 to see Jacquelyn getting ready to leave. She was going to do a free city tour, and after feeling extremely unproductive with our aimless and uneducated walking the last couple of days, I jumped out of bed and said I'd come with. We haven't done any free walking tours this whole trip, but Prague has a lot of interesting history that I know next to nothing about. Laura woke up and originally didn't want to come, but when I asked her how we should meet up later in the day, she said she'd just come along as well. We got ready in a record 15 minutes and were out the door.
There were two city tours, one at 11 and one at 11:45. We were trying to make the 11 AM tour, but Leah had actually recommended the 11:45 tour. Turns out we got a little lost and completely missed the 11 AM tour anyway, but were right on time for the 11:45 tour. The tour guide's name was Keith and he was hilarious. Probably one of the best tour guides I've ever had. The group started off huge, but people dropped off and there was a core group of probably around 20 people. He told us tons of interesting facts, stories, and legends. There were legends for everything!
I'm going to write out what I can remember learning from Keith's city tour so that I don't forget. Feel free to skip down if you don't want to learn about Prague...
ASTRONOMICAL CLOCK TOWER - This was where the tour started. The Astronomical Clock Tower is one of the huge landmarks in the Old Town Square. There are two clocks, and they are both gorgeous. The higher clock on the building has a large navy blue outer ring numbered one thru 24. Inside it's numbered one thru 12 twice in roman numerals. There's a smaller disc on the face of the clock that shows each of the astrological zodiac signs. There are also sun and mood hands that show which phases they are in. So this clock says a ton, if you can figure out how to read it. On either side of the clock are representations of things that people are scared of. The left side has two figures, one for vanity (holding a mirror) and one for greed (holding a bag of money). The right side also has two figures, one for death (a skeleton holding a bell to 'call your time'), and one for Turks (a man in a turban; they were scared of people coming in from the East bringing different cultures, customs, languages, and invading in general). Interesting that the things people were scared of in the 14th century aren't so different from what people are scared of now. Below this whole clock is another circular face which almost looks like a spinning wheel at a fair where you win whatever the hand lands on. However, this clock is a name clock, and it's out ring is divided into 365 slots. Each 'day' has a list of names. In the Czech Republic, you have to pick a name for your kid off of this clock. If you don't want to name it something on the name clock, you have to get special permission from the government! Then, in the Czech Republic, birthdays are a not a big deal. Contrary to the US, it's expected that you get flowers/candy/etc for the people you love on your birthday. So our tour guide was joking that instead of saying, "it's my birthday next week!" people here say, "oh, yeah it was my birthday yesterday; sorry, forgot to tell you." Haha. Anyway, since birthdays aren't such a big deal, name days are what get celebrated. So you could be born on January 5th and have a name in the May 20th name clock slot, and May 20th is what you celebrate, along with everybody else named from that slot (each slot has multiple names to choose from). Crazy! I had no idea something that like existed and was practiced, but it's kind of a neat idea, but very restrictive though...
MUSIC HALL - I totally forget the name of this building, but it's the last standing building that Mozart himself actually conducted in. All the other ones have been either torn down or bombed. So that's a cool claim to fame for Prague!
POWDER GATE - The Powder Gate is the last gate still standing that used to protect the old city. There used to be I think 16 total, but the other 15 were all torn down. Which is really sad, because the towers are so pretty! Prague is called 'Golden Prague' because much of its architecture has gold figurines on the buildings. The tower is right next to the building that Vin Diesel ate at during filming XXX and the main Czech bank is across the street. On the top of the bank is a huge lion statue with a man riding it holding a torch. This is the lion the sniper in XXX was hiding behind. Useless, since I haven't seen the movie, but if I ever do watch it, I'll be able to say I was there! The bank is also cool because vaults in the basement hold the majority of Czech's gold. A little weird to be standing right next to where most of a country's money is...
The tour took a break at a pizza place, and since I didn't quite feel like myself talking with Jacquelyn and Laura I spent most of lunch turned around listening to Keith chat with other tourists from Argentina and Mexico. I also didn't hear an accent with Keith, so I again figured he was from the west coast/Seattle. Guess what? He spent 6 months of the year in California, and the other 6 months of a the year in the Northgate/Ballard area. BINGO! I felt like a genious again! Well, now though he lives in the Czech Republic because he fell in love with a girl. We keep hearing these cross continental love stories! And both times it has been the American moving to Europe :) Haha.
I spent some time chatting with Keith after lunch which was fun, he seemed like a really cool guy; and it's nice to chat with somebody in Prague that's familiar with my university stomping grounds. You say UW and he says, "Oh yeah, the Ave and 45th!" which kind of sounds musical coming from a stranger halfway around the world. Through the first part of the tour, I hadn't really seen Laura and Jacquelyn separate from each others' sides at all, and for some reason having a conversation with both of them at the same time seemed more difficult and less fun than usual. There's no point in staying around that if you don't have to. There were tons of people on the tour our age, so if I was the one not immensely enjoying myself around them, then I realized it was my prerogative to change that by meeting other people. It's not like I was only allowed to talk to them or something, just because I'd come on the tour with them. With this liberating realization, I decided to start doing my own thing and go talk to somebody else. I made the scary leap again and introduced myself to somebody also walking alone close by to me. And, once again, this absolutely turned out for the best! I just so happened to meet a really nice girl named Nicole from California studying abroad in Berlin. I told her we were going to Berlin next and she started bubbling with things to tell me about the city, places to go, etc, and offered to write them all down for me. SCORE!!! People-recommendations are the best! I ended up talking to her in between learning about Prague for the next couple of hours, for a few minutes at a time in between all the tour-guided-destinations. It seems like we had a lot in common and it was really easy to keep a conversation going with her (I love those kind of people). At one point she said she wanted to plan a trip sometime based solely on what activities there were to do outdoors, and....cuisine. And that's when I knew that I had found a very good person to talk to for a couple of hours!! :)
FRANZ KAFKA - We stopped at a statue of Franz Kafka next. I felt like an idiot because I haven't read any of his works and I know he's famous but couldn't tell you why. The statue was of a headless and neck-less man with Kafka sitting on his shoulders. Not sure if I remember this correctly, but I think Kafka had a dream about this character, and in his dream, got on the headless man's shoulder to help guide him around. But the headless man doesn't have ears or eyes obviously so it's a very surrealistic statue. Reminded me of the good ol' magical realism days of high school. Keith also told us about how Kafka was (another) artist who only became famous after he died. He had tuberculosis and knew he was going to die soon, so he gave all of his works to his best friend and told him to never publish them, even after he died. But of course once he died, his friend read everything and decided to publish all of it! Great friend!
JEWISH QUARTER - First we saw the Spanish Synagogue, which was interesting because it is a synagogue but it was built in Moorish architecture. Prague officials used to only let Jewish people live in the Jewish quarter, so I guess the Jewish and Christian people didn't get along that well; but the Moors were being really nice to Jews so they built a synagogue in the Moorish style as a way of saying thanks. Also, a lot of people ask why the Jewish Quarter is even still around (and so beautifully preserved), they don't get how it survived WWII. Turns out that Hitler loved Prague, and thought it was a beautiful city. He thought the Jewish Quarter was a perfect example of how Jews used to live, so he specifically chose to keep it completely intact, with the goal of turning it into a museum after the war to show how an extinct race used to live. Gross. There's also the Old-New synagogue in this quarter. The funny story here is that it's a really old synagogue made with bricks from something famous in Jerusalem (original temple? I don't remember). When the Messiah returns to earth, the synagogue will be destroyed and the bricks will be returned to Jerusalem. So it's name "al-tnieu" I think is Hebrew for "on condition of", because it's only going to be a synagogue on condition of the Messiah not returning to earth...But, in German, "al-tnieu" sounds like "alt-nieu" which means Old-New. So it's called the Old-New Synagogue, but that's not it's real name, that's its lost in translation name! Pretty funny. A legend about this synagogue is that there is a golum (not the LOTR one) that lives in the attic. Legend has it that an SS officer didn't believe this, and went up to the attic to try and prove everybody wrong...and he never returned...Behind the synagogue is a Jewish clock which instead of numbers has the first 12 Jewish characters (aleph, bet, etc) and is read from right to left. Not to be used for timekeeping by the untrained eye! Also close by to this is a super old Jewish cemetery. When it started filling up with people back in the day, the Jewish people asked the Prague officials for more land to bury their dead. Prague officials said, "no way." So the Jews began stacking their dead, separated by a thin layer of dirt. A little gory, for some reason I feel like dead people deserve their space. Anyway, the head stones in the cemetery are all different heights, because of all the stacking. So where a head stone is almost covered, it means a lot more people are buried underneath it. The more of the headstone you can see, the less people are buried there. They would sometimes stack people as much as 12 high, and there are around 100,000 people buried in this tiny, unnaturally hilly cemetery.
MUSIC HALL - I totally forget the name of this building as well, but I think it's the Ruldofinium. It's supposed to be the building with the best acoustics in the world. Lots of philharmonic and other concerts are held there. Annnd the funny story with this one involves all the statues of people that line the roof. There are 12 statues I think. During WWII, Hitler told somebody to go up to the roof and knock down Mendelssohn. The officer didn't know which one Mendelssohn was, and the statues weren't labeled. Somebody told him to go knock down the one with the biggest nose. He did and it smashed to the ground. Turned out it was Richard Wagner that he pushed off the building though, who happened to be Hitler's favorite composer!
With that, the city tour came to a close and it was around 2 PM. I had found out at the lunch break that Keith leads another free tour called the castle tour starting at 3. I really liked Keith, had (obviously) been learning a lot, and was having a great time chatting with Nicole. So I told Laura and Jackie that I was going to hang out until three and then go on Keith's other tour and they were more than welcome to join me if they wanted. They also liked the tour and it's not like we had anything else to do, so they said they'd come along too.
An hour later, everybody rendezvoused at the "meeting point" in the Old Town Square. We were Keith's posse for the day - the three of us and Nicole and her 9 other friends who were all studying in Berlin together. Maybe a few other people came along, but it was pretty much that group of around 15 people.
So, onwards to what I learned on the castle tour!
CHARLES BRIDGE - The Charles Bridge was the first bridge to connect both sides of the river that runs through Prague. It had been built a couple of times before this current bridge, but it has always fallen down. So Prague really needed a bridge, and it decided to use an anagram for good luck or something. So the bridge began construction on 1357, in September (9), on the 7th day, at 5:31 PM. And somehow - this worked! The bridge is still standing. There was an old myth that the construction workers used eggs to help the cement mixture stay together and be strong. A while ago, a sample of the concrete was actually taken in to be analyzed - and they found egg proteins! Eggs are so cool. Their uses never cease to amaze me. The Charles Bridge is lined with Catholic statues, the most famous of which is St. John who was a priest at the St. Vitus Cathedral which is connected to the castle. He got thrown off the bridge for not telling the King what the King's wife had confessed to him. Bummer.
CASTLE GARDENS - There are some gorgeous gardens at the base of the castle that we had looked for yesterday but didn't find. That was our first stop. Within the gardens are fake stalagmite. Why? Because the King wanted some fake stalagmites in his garden! Really weird. They're dark and pretty ugly. There are some faces also built into the wall of fake stalagmites, which is also really weird. Next to this wall is the King's personal aviary...Then there's a covered area filled with paintings in which the King in the hero in every scene. We had been told to keep an eye out for peacocks, and I turned around in this under cover area to find an ALBINO peacock just hanging out on a ledge. Really bizarre! Usually you freaking know it's a peacock because they're so colorful, but this thing was pure white, all over. And he just sat there very nicely while we all gawked and took pictures.
KAPUCIN ABBEY - This was a building used by monks that were known for wearing their cloaks' hoods. In Czech, the word for hooded is something like Kapucin (kap-a-cheen) and somehow the word cappuccino is derived from this. This building was also really interesting because there are little black things in the wall...which we learned are cannon balls! In the walls! What? I think they were put there on purpose, but I'm a little confused about why.
CHANGING OF THE GUARDS - This was way less eventful than in London or somewhere else, but still cool to see. Walking through the gate that the guards stand at, there is a sign inscripted with the dates the castle was built and dedicated to the King or somebody at the time. The builders asked for more money to finish the castle, and the King said no. So on the inscription, they misspelled "year" which in Latin is "anno" but they spelled it "ano" which means "ass." That was their way of getting back at the King for not giving them more money! And nobody noticed this error until fairly recently; what a funny thing to discover!
ST. VITUS CATHEDRAL - When talking to Keith at lunch, I was asking about good rainy-day things to do after the city tour. He asked if I had been to the cathedral yet and I said that the line was so ridiculously long yesterday that no, I hadn't gone in. He said that was a must. So here I was again. Sure enough, due to the weather or some other reason there was absolutely no line. On the outside of the cathedral, Keith showed us where the architects had built themselves into the decor of the cathedral. There are two sets of men in business suits on the face of this amazing cathedral. It was the architects' way of congratulating themselves. I've definitely never seen people in business suits carved on to an ornate religious building before...the first set of men are the architects looking over plans, and the second set are the same architects patting each other on the back and holding a miniature model of the cathedral! Pretty funny. This cathedral is MASSIVE. I've seen so many churches and cathedrals, but this one was really pretty. The stained glass was gorgeous and it was very ornate. They have a whole huge tribute to St. John (the one that got thrown off the bridge), but the only remains they somehow have is his tongue? But it's a huge, silver and gold decorated display. The other unique part of this cathedral is that it has a jewel room. The walls are lined with semi-precious stones, and then there is a door with 7 locks. Seven different people have one lock each. Behind the door are the crown jewels. That room was really cool.
STATUE OF YOUTH - So this is really funny. The statue of youth is a naked boy but his penis is gold from tourists rubbing it. Which is hilarious. Apparently though when the statue was unveiled, it was in communist times and the communists didn't want a naked boy displayed, so they made the artist take off the whole thing. Then the people protested - like really, all out protested - and finally the communist government agreed and had the sculptor reattach the little penis. Rubbing it apparently is supposed to bring good luck to your relationship. This was one of the more funny status I have seen!
Through the second half of the tour, Jackie had come up to talk with Nicole and me which was really fun. She seemed a little bit more open or more interested in conversing at least. I really enjoyed getting a chance to talk with her, she has tons of crazy stories and really loves to tell about her traveling adventures. It's always fun to compare and contrast. I also noticed Laura talking with one of Nicole's friends, so it was nice to see all of us branching out a little bit. At the end of the tour, I got Nicole's contact information and we were hoping to meet up with their group either later in Prague or hanging out with her when we're in Berlin in a few days! So yay for new random friends!
MONK BREWERY - After the tour, we went back to a place Keith told us was where monks brewed beer. You can pretty much only get this beer at the castle, so we sat and drank some monk beer. I also got onion soup with cheese toast in it, which was wonderful on a cold day!
We came down from the castle and Jacquelyn went back to Leah's to get her stuff (she was taking an overnight bus). Laura and I went to a black light theatre show, which is something Prague is supposedly well known for. It was the weirdest show I've ever seen. There were no words, just dancers/actors, random props, and music and the black lights. It was a cool idea, the black lights would be different colors and have weird effects on the props. Other actors were wearing all black so they were on stage but you couldn't really see them, just the props 'floating', and things like that. But I didn't realize it was going to be telling a story - I thought it was just going to be a show. It was really difficult to follow though, it seemed like some kind of dream sequence but honestly I had no freaking clue what was going on. At the end of the show though everybody else clapped and cheered quite a lot so I guess it was good? I left feeling very confused about why I just spend $20 on that...
It had been cold and gloomy all day and I'd seen the street sellers selling not only sausages but mulled wine! On the street! Where else in the world can you buy mulled wine off the street? It was glorious. I sipped on that as we waited for Jackie to meet back up with us. After I was done, I totally caved and got a street sausage for a late dinner. It was amazing, and it was only $2. While we ate, we watched the people who were already drunk at 10 PM hanging out in the main square. The best was this group of middle aged drunk women, one of which started pole dancing on a street pole. Never thought I would see that in this lifetime.
When Jackie met up with us, she only had about an hour to kill before leaving for her bus. We went back to the bar that Leah took us to a couple nights ago (the Ropemaker's Wife) and each ordered a small glass of Pilsner Urquell. That is the famous beer here because a Czech person was the first person to ever filter beer and make a light pilsner. However, I don't like light beers that much but I still felt like I had to try it. Hence, I suffered through that small terrible glass.
When Jackie left, Laura and I decided to head home. That was a great decision; we'd been walking for like 7 or 8 hours in the cold and rain so it had been a really long day. But at least it was productive :)
Quotes:
"It's probably more worth it if you just turn around and take a picture of everybody's face that will all have the same expression of, 'What? Really, that's it?'" - Keith, about how anti-climactic watching the hourly performance at the Astronomical Clock Tower.
Accomplishments:
Learned SO much about Prague.
Made a new friend!
Travel Tip:
Don't be scared to talk to new people.
There were two city tours, one at 11 and one at 11:45. We were trying to make the 11 AM tour, but Leah had actually recommended the 11:45 tour. Turns out we got a little lost and completely missed the 11 AM tour anyway, but were right on time for the 11:45 tour. The tour guide's name was Keith and he was hilarious. Probably one of the best tour guides I've ever had. The group started off huge, but people dropped off and there was a core group of probably around 20 people. He told us tons of interesting facts, stories, and legends. There were legends for everything!
I'm going to write out what I can remember learning from Keith's city tour so that I don't forget. Feel free to skip down if you don't want to learn about Prague...
ASTRONOMICAL CLOCK TOWER - This was where the tour started. The Astronomical Clock Tower is one of the huge landmarks in the Old Town Square. There are two clocks, and they are both gorgeous. The higher clock on the building has a large navy blue outer ring numbered one thru 24. Inside it's numbered one thru 12 twice in roman numerals. There's a smaller disc on the face of the clock that shows each of the astrological zodiac signs. There are also sun and mood hands that show which phases they are in. So this clock says a ton, if you can figure out how to read it. On either side of the clock are representations of things that people are scared of. The left side has two figures, one for vanity (holding a mirror) and one for greed (holding a bag of money). The right side also has two figures, one for death (a skeleton holding a bell to 'call your time'), and one for Turks (a man in a turban; they were scared of people coming in from the East bringing different cultures, customs, languages, and invading in general). Interesting that the things people were scared of in the 14th century aren't so different from what people are scared of now. Below this whole clock is another circular face which almost looks like a spinning wheel at a fair where you win whatever the hand lands on. However, this clock is a name clock, and it's out ring is divided into 365 slots. Each 'day' has a list of names. In the Czech Republic, you have to pick a name for your kid off of this clock. If you don't want to name it something on the name clock, you have to get special permission from the government! Then, in the Czech Republic, birthdays are a not a big deal. Contrary to the US, it's expected that you get flowers/candy/etc for the people you love on your birthday. So our tour guide was joking that instead of saying, "it's my birthday next week!" people here say, "oh, yeah it was my birthday yesterday; sorry, forgot to tell you." Haha. Anyway, since birthdays aren't such a big deal, name days are what get celebrated. So you could be born on January 5th and have a name in the May 20th name clock slot, and May 20th is what you celebrate, along with everybody else named from that slot (each slot has multiple names to choose from). Crazy! I had no idea something that like existed and was practiced, but it's kind of a neat idea, but very restrictive though...
MUSIC HALL - I totally forget the name of this building, but it's the last standing building that Mozart himself actually conducted in. All the other ones have been either torn down or bombed. So that's a cool claim to fame for Prague!
POWDER GATE - The Powder Gate is the last gate still standing that used to protect the old city. There used to be I think 16 total, but the other 15 were all torn down. Which is really sad, because the towers are so pretty! Prague is called 'Golden Prague' because much of its architecture has gold figurines on the buildings. The tower is right next to the building that Vin Diesel ate at during filming XXX and the main Czech bank is across the street. On the top of the bank is a huge lion statue with a man riding it holding a torch. This is the lion the sniper in XXX was hiding behind. Useless, since I haven't seen the movie, but if I ever do watch it, I'll be able to say I was there! The bank is also cool because vaults in the basement hold the majority of Czech's gold. A little weird to be standing right next to where most of a country's money is...
The tour took a break at a pizza place, and since I didn't quite feel like myself talking with Jacquelyn and Laura I spent most of lunch turned around listening to Keith chat with other tourists from Argentina and Mexico. I also didn't hear an accent with Keith, so I again figured he was from the west coast/Seattle. Guess what? He spent 6 months of the year in California, and the other 6 months of a the year in the Northgate/Ballard area. BINGO! I felt like a genious again! Well, now though he lives in the Czech Republic because he fell in love with a girl. We keep hearing these cross continental love stories! And both times it has been the American moving to Europe :) Haha.
I spent some time chatting with Keith after lunch which was fun, he seemed like a really cool guy; and it's nice to chat with somebody in Prague that's familiar with my university stomping grounds. You say UW and he says, "Oh yeah, the Ave and 45th!" which kind of sounds musical coming from a stranger halfway around the world. Through the first part of the tour, I hadn't really seen Laura and Jacquelyn separate from each others' sides at all, and for some reason having a conversation with both of them at the same time seemed more difficult and less fun than usual. There's no point in staying around that if you don't have to. There were tons of people on the tour our age, so if I was the one not immensely enjoying myself around them, then I realized it was my prerogative to change that by meeting other people. It's not like I was only allowed to talk to them or something, just because I'd come on the tour with them. With this liberating realization, I decided to start doing my own thing and go talk to somebody else. I made the scary leap again and introduced myself to somebody also walking alone close by to me. And, once again, this absolutely turned out for the best! I just so happened to meet a really nice girl named Nicole from California studying abroad in Berlin. I told her we were going to Berlin next and she started bubbling with things to tell me about the city, places to go, etc, and offered to write them all down for me. SCORE!!! People-recommendations are the best! I ended up talking to her in between learning about Prague for the next couple of hours, for a few minutes at a time in between all the tour-guided-destinations. It seems like we had a lot in common and it was really easy to keep a conversation going with her (I love those kind of people). At one point she said she wanted to plan a trip sometime based solely on what activities there were to do outdoors, and....cuisine. And that's when I knew that I had found a very good person to talk to for a couple of hours!! :)
FRANZ KAFKA - We stopped at a statue of Franz Kafka next. I felt like an idiot because I haven't read any of his works and I know he's famous but couldn't tell you why. The statue was of a headless and neck-less man with Kafka sitting on his shoulders. Not sure if I remember this correctly, but I think Kafka had a dream about this character, and in his dream, got on the headless man's shoulder to help guide him around. But the headless man doesn't have ears or eyes obviously so it's a very surrealistic statue. Reminded me of the good ol' magical realism days of high school. Keith also told us about how Kafka was (another) artist who only became famous after he died. He had tuberculosis and knew he was going to die soon, so he gave all of his works to his best friend and told him to never publish them, even after he died. But of course once he died, his friend read everything and decided to publish all of it! Great friend!
JEWISH QUARTER - First we saw the Spanish Synagogue, which was interesting because it is a synagogue but it was built in Moorish architecture. Prague officials used to only let Jewish people live in the Jewish quarter, so I guess the Jewish and Christian people didn't get along that well; but the Moors were being really nice to Jews so they built a synagogue in the Moorish style as a way of saying thanks. Also, a lot of people ask why the Jewish Quarter is even still around (and so beautifully preserved), they don't get how it survived WWII. Turns out that Hitler loved Prague, and thought it was a beautiful city. He thought the Jewish Quarter was a perfect example of how Jews used to live, so he specifically chose to keep it completely intact, with the goal of turning it into a museum after the war to show how an extinct race used to live. Gross. There's also the Old-New synagogue in this quarter. The funny story here is that it's a really old synagogue made with bricks from something famous in Jerusalem (original temple? I don't remember). When the Messiah returns to earth, the synagogue will be destroyed and the bricks will be returned to Jerusalem. So it's name "al-tnieu" I think is Hebrew for "on condition of", because it's only going to be a synagogue on condition of the Messiah not returning to earth...But, in German, "al-tnieu" sounds like "alt-nieu" which means Old-New. So it's called the Old-New Synagogue, but that's not it's real name, that's its lost in translation name! Pretty funny. A legend about this synagogue is that there is a golum (not the LOTR one) that lives in the attic. Legend has it that an SS officer didn't believe this, and went up to the attic to try and prove everybody wrong...and he never returned...Behind the synagogue is a Jewish clock which instead of numbers has the first 12 Jewish characters (aleph, bet, etc) and is read from right to left. Not to be used for timekeeping by the untrained eye! Also close by to this is a super old Jewish cemetery. When it started filling up with people back in the day, the Jewish people asked the Prague officials for more land to bury their dead. Prague officials said, "no way." So the Jews began stacking their dead, separated by a thin layer of dirt. A little gory, for some reason I feel like dead people deserve their space. Anyway, the head stones in the cemetery are all different heights, because of all the stacking. So where a head stone is almost covered, it means a lot more people are buried underneath it. The more of the headstone you can see, the less people are buried there. They would sometimes stack people as much as 12 high, and there are around 100,000 people buried in this tiny, unnaturally hilly cemetery.
MUSIC HALL - I totally forget the name of this building as well, but I think it's the Ruldofinium. It's supposed to be the building with the best acoustics in the world. Lots of philharmonic and other concerts are held there. Annnd the funny story with this one involves all the statues of people that line the roof. There are 12 statues I think. During WWII, Hitler told somebody to go up to the roof and knock down Mendelssohn. The officer didn't know which one Mendelssohn was, and the statues weren't labeled. Somebody told him to go knock down the one with the biggest nose. He did and it smashed to the ground. Turned out it was Richard Wagner that he pushed off the building though, who happened to be Hitler's favorite composer!
With that, the city tour came to a close and it was around 2 PM. I had found out at the lunch break that Keith leads another free tour called the castle tour starting at 3. I really liked Keith, had (obviously) been learning a lot, and was having a great time chatting with Nicole. So I told Laura and Jackie that I was going to hang out until three and then go on Keith's other tour and they were more than welcome to join me if they wanted. They also liked the tour and it's not like we had anything else to do, so they said they'd come along too.
An hour later, everybody rendezvoused at the "meeting point" in the Old Town Square. We were Keith's posse for the day - the three of us and Nicole and her 9 other friends who were all studying in Berlin together. Maybe a few other people came along, but it was pretty much that group of around 15 people.
So, onwards to what I learned on the castle tour!
CHARLES BRIDGE - The Charles Bridge was the first bridge to connect both sides of the river that runs through Prague. It had been built a couple of times before this current bridge, but it has always fallen down. So Prague really needed a bridge, and it decided to use an anagram for good luck or something. So the bridge began construction on 1357, in September (9), on the 7th day, at 5:31 PM. And somehow - this worked! The bridge is still standing. There was an old myth that the construction workers used eggs to help the cement mixture stay together and be strong. A while ago, a sample of the concrete was actually taken in to be analyzed - and they found egg proteins! Eggs are so cool. Their uses never cease to amaze me. The Charles Bridge is lined with Catholic statues, the most famous of which is St. John who was a priest at the St. Vitus Cathedral which is connected to the castle. He got thrown off the bridge for not telling the King what the King's wife had confessed to him. Bummer.
CASTLE GARDENS - There are some gorgeous gardens at the base of the castle that we had looked for yesterday but didn't find. That was our first stop. Within the gardens are fake stalagmite. Why? Because the King wanted some fake stalagmites in his garden! Really weird. They're dark and pretty ugly. There are some faces also built into the wall of fake stalagmites, which is also really weird. Next to this wall is the King's personal aviary...Then there's a covered area filled with paintings in which the King in the hero in every scene. We had been told to keep an eye out for peacocks, and I turned around in this under cover area to find an ALBINO peacock just hanging out on a ledge. Really bizarre! Usually you freaking know it's a peacock because they're so colorful, but this thing was pure white, all over. And he just sat there very nicely while we all gawked and took pictures.
KAPUCIN ABBEY - This was a building used by monks that were known for wearing their cloaks' hoods. In Czech, the word for hooded is something like Kapucin (kap-a-cheen) and somehow the word cappuccino is derived from this. This building was also really interesting because there are little black things in the wall...which we learned are cannon balls! In the walls! What? I think they were put there on purpose, but I'm a little confused about why.
CHANGING OF THE GUARDS - This was way less eventful than in London or somewhere else, but still cool to see. Walking through the gate that the guards stand at, there is a sign inscripted with the dates the castle was built and dedicated to the King or somebody at the time. The builders asked for more money to finish the castle, and the King said no. So on the inscription, they misspelled "year" which in Latin is "anno" but they spelled it "ano" which means "ass." That was their way of getting back at the King for not giving them more money! And nobody noticed this error until fairly recently; what a funny thing to discover!
ST. VITUS CATHEDRAL - When talking to Keith at lunch, I was asking about good rainy-day things to do after the city tour. He asked if I had been to the cathedral yet and I said that the line was so ridiculously long yesterday that no, I hadn't gone in. He said that was a must. So here I was again. Sure enough, due to the weather or some other reason there was absolutely no line. On the outside of the cathedral, Keith showed us where the architects had built themselves into the decor of the cathedral. There are two sets of men in business suits on the face of this amazing cathedral. It was the architects' way of congratulating themselves. I've definitely never seen people in business suits carved on to an ornate religious building before...the first set of men are the architects looking over plans, and the second set are the same architects patting each other on the back and holding a miniature model of the cathedral! Pretty funny. This cathedral is MASSIVE. I've seen so many churches and cathedrals, but this one was really pretty. The stained glass was gorgeous and it was very ornate. They have a whole huge tribute to St. John (the one that got thrown off the bridge), but the only remains they somehow have is his tongue? But it's a huge, silver and gold decorated display. The other unique part of this cathedral is that it has a jewel room. The walls are lined with semi-precious stones, and then there is a door with 7 locks. Seven different people have one lock each. Behind the door are the crown jewels. That room was really cool.
STATUE OF YOUTH - So this is really funny. The statue of youth is a naked boy but his penis is gold from tourists rubbing it. Which is hilarious. Apparently though when the statue was unveiled, it was in communist times and the communists didn't want a naked boy displayed, so they made the artist take off the whole thing. Then the people protested - like really, all out protested - and finally the communist government agreed and had the sculptor reattach the little penis. Rubbing it apparently is supposed to bring good luck to your relationship. This was one of the more funny status I have seen!
Through the second half of the tour, Jackie had come up to talk with Nicole and me which was really fun. She seemed a little bit more open or more interested in conversing at least. I really enjoyed getting a chance to talk with her, she has tons of crazy stories and really loves to tell about her traveling adventures. It's always fun to compare and contrast. I also noticed Laura talking with one of Nicole's friends, so it was nice to see all of us branching out a little bit. At the end of the tour, I got Nicole's contact information and we were hoping to meet up with their group either later in Prague or hanging out with her when we're in Berlin in a few days! So yay for new random friends!
MONK BREWERY - After the tour, we went back to a place Keith told us was where monks brewed beer. You can pretty much only get this beer at the castle, so we sat and drank some monk beer. I also got onion soup with cheese toast in it, which was wonderful on a cold day!
We came down from the castle and Jacquelyn went back to Leah's to get her stuff (she was taking an overnight bus). Laura and I went to a black light theatre show, which is something Prague is supposedly well known for. It was the weirdest show I've ever seen. There were no words, just dancers/actors, random props, and music and the black lights. It was a cool idea, the black lights would be different colors and have weird effects on the props. Other actors were wearing all black so they were on stage but you couldn't really see them, just the props 'floating', and things like that. But I didn't realize it was going to be telling a story - I thought it was just going to be a show. It was really difficult to follow though, it seemed like some kind of dream sequence but honestly I had no freaking clue what was going on. At the end of the show though everybody else clapped and cheered quite a lot so I guess it was good? I left feeling very confused about why I just spend $20 on that...
It had been cold and gloomy all day and I'd seen the street sellers selling not only sausages but mulled wine! On the street! Where else in the world can you buy mulled wine off the street? It was glorious. I sipped on that as we waited for Jackie to meet back up with us. After I was done, I totally caved and got a street sausage for a late dinner. It was amazing, and it was only $2. While we ate, we watched the people who were already drunk at 10 PM hanging out in the main square. The best was this group of middle aged drunk women, one of which started pole dancing on a street pole. Never thought I would see that in this lifetime.
When Jackie met up with us, she only had about an hour to kill before leaving for her bus. We went back to the bar that Leah took us to a couple nights ago (the Ropemaker's Wife) and each ordered a small glass of Pilsner Urquell. That is the famous beer here because a Czech person was the first person to ever filter beer and make a light pilsner. However, I don't like light beers that much but I still felt like I had to try it. Hence, I suffered through that small terrible glass.
When Jackie left, Laura and I decided to head home. That was a great decision; we'd been walking for like 7 or 8 hours in the cold and rain so it had been a really long day. But at least it was productive :)
Quotes:
"It's probably more worth it if you just turn around and take a picture of everybody's face that will all have the same expression of, 'What? Really, that's it?'" - Keith, about how anti-climactic watching the hourly performance at the Astronomical Clock Tower.
Accomplishments:
Learned SO much about Prague.
Made a new friend!
Travel Tip:
Don't be scared to talk to new people.
Thursday, May 13, 2010
Leah - CS # 17
No offense to anybody involved, but seriously today felt like we did nothing. We just walked, walked, and walked some more.
We had plans to meet Jacquelyn at the Charles Bridge (the famous bridge here) at 10:00 AM. We were on time, and once we met up with her we crossed the bridge into the castle district area. The bridge is supposed to be an extremely entertaining 50 meters, but without knowing what anything meant it was just "pretty". (There were statues every few feet lining both sides of the bridge.) There were really good views, but the weather was pretty overcast. On the other side of the bridge, there were countless small souvenir shops and cafes that looked delicious. We ended up hiking up a hill to the famous Prague Castle.
Naturally, we had no clue regarding the significance of the Prague Castle, other than that it's the largest/longest castle in Europe. The line into the St. Vitus Cathedral (which is part of the castle) was HUGE so we didn't even bother. We wandered around the castle area though, saw some street musicians which were all dressed up in white shirts and black ties and were quite good, and spent the morning meandering. Jacquelyn had heard of some gardens that were supposed to be really nice. We searched for them but to no avail. Eventually, we walked down the big castle hill and across a bridge. Walking down the river, we made our way to the Dancing Building. I have no clue what this building is actually called or what it is even used for, but to tourists/traveler's, it's called the Dancing Building. This is because of it's crazy architecture that makes it look like the building is swaying.
Jacquelyn had told us of her horrible experience with her dumb CouchSurfing host last night, and we were not thrilled with Karel. But, we had heard from Leah again and so we were planning on moving in with her. We told Jacquelyn this and said she could probably just crash there with us. Then we spent HOURS looking for a place to eat. Everything is fairly reasonably priced, and all I wanted was traditional Czech cuisine, but for some reason we didn't end up actually picking a place and sitting. We had plans to meet up with Leah at 3 PM, and eventually I realized that we were going to run out of time to find a place to sit and eat before we had to meet up with her so I just told my stomach to be quiet.
It's hard to have three people walk side by side on the sidewalk, there's just too many other people. What ended up happening is that Laura and Jacquelyn walked side by side in front of me the whole day, and I was pretty much just in the back by myself. It's also hard to hear any of the conversation going on in the front. So aside from feeling like we weren't doing anything, I also felt a little bit like a third wheel which was a little bit lonely and very quiet. But I tried to enjoy the (practically) alone time and eventually just put in my iPod since it was pretty clear that I wasn't easily going to be a part of conversations for the afternoon. There wasn't really anything to "do" about this situation, AND I was in Prague, so really - things weren't bad at all. I kept quiet and focused on enjoying that wonderful fact. We kept walking, and accidentally found a really cool fountain with four statues of musicians placed in a circle around the top of the fountain. Then we got a text from Leah telling us where to meet up, and I was more than ready to be around more than just two other people so that the awkwardness of having three people would disappear and I would have somebody there to talk to.
Once we met up with Leah, she asked what we wanted to do and I immediately said, "FOOD." She took us to a small bar not far away called the Ropemaker's Wife. There I got roast pork with sauerkraut, bread dumplings, and potato dumplings. The pork was alright, but I think I am getting really worn down with all this sauerkraut business. It's everywhere, and on everything. I like it, I can eat it, but it's just a little bit too much. Also, I was really excited for the dumplings but the bread dumplings especially just didn't do it for me. They were thick and heavy and had very little taste. The potato dumplings were a little better especially when dipped in the gravy from the meat. Oh, Czech dumplings aren't cute little things filled with other delicious things like meat or cheese, these dumplings look just like thick, circular slices of bread/potatoes. So, apparently dumplings vary country to country quite a bit! The restaurant was called the Ropemaker's Wife because there's a legend that the Ropemaker was so good at making ropes that he was often away, so his wife opened up a bar so she could be around lots of men and have company. There's a bust of the wife near the entrance and if you touch it you're supposed to have good relationship luck. There's also a comic book of the Ropemaker's Wife story, and a new page gets added every day or something. Such a clever little way to keep bringing customers back...
After our late lunch, David (who was also there at lunch, he is from Israel and will also be CouchSurfing with Leah these next few days) and Leah parted ways with us to go drop David's stuff off at Leah's place. Jacquelyn, Laura and I kept walking. It feels like a maze, there are so many alley ways. All the streets look the same but you know they're not. You keep twisting and turning and all of a sudden it feels like you have no clue where you are. Then, a couple turns and alleys later, you're back to something recognizable. It's weird! We found a whole row of more souvenir booths set up in the middle of a street, and wasted time looking at all that stuff. Eventually, Laura and I needed to head back to Karel's to both pack and break the news that we were leaving.
We were really nervous that Karel was going to be at the pub and we would have to tell him that we're switching hosts really awkwardly, but thank goodness he was home when we got there. Telling him actually wasn't a big deal; I didn't really think it would be. It was obvious that we weren't going to have the super fun, 'let me show you around', talkative stay with him. And there REALLY wasn't enough space. Last night I slept AWFULLY, maybe the worst of the trip so far. And it seemed like his schedule was pretty much: work from home on his computer, play with his band, hang out at the pub 3 minutes away. We had invited him to hang out with us a couple of times and he didn't really seem to into it. Anyway, we just told him that Leah was closer and that there was space for both of us, but if he still wanted to hang out while we were in town that would be great! As expected, he definitely seemed like he didn't really care - so that's good that it wasn't so awkward and didn't come off as mean.
We packed up our stuff, said our goodbyes (he thanked us for staying with him, which was cute), and headed out. We made it to Leah's at 8:35 which was really good since we were shooting for 8:30. Leah had said that she would pop her head out the window every few minutes starting at 8:30 to look for us down below, so we just stood there with all of our bags looking up. Finally, I started calling, "Leahhhhh!" a few times. Then a window opened and I got really excited and was like, "Helloooooo!" BUT it wasn't Leah! It was some older woman with died red hair who was popping her head out to smoke. She looked down at us awkward travelers and goes, "Who are you looking for?" And really embarrassed, I told her Leah. She said to hold on a minute (apparently they're neighbors). While she was gone knocking on Leah's door, Leah walked up the hill. So, Leah let us inside and her roommate, who was on his way down the stairs to let us in, met us halfway. Finally, we had arrived.
Leah's place is so much cleaner that Karel's. You can definitely tell a girl lives here. There is natural light, space for us, and she has a really nice roommate named Rubin who is also on CouchSurfing. Rubin is from Portugal, and Leah is from Russia by the way, so once again - I am amazed by the variety and nationalities of awesome people I've been meeting through CouchSurfing.
Leah is super talkative which is lots of fun and very entertaining! She has hosted a ton and is really laid back with her surfers. For example, taking 4 in at once, all pretty last minute. She gave David a set of extra keys, had another set of keys MADE for Laura and I, and is just super chill. We chatted with her while we waited for David to get back from being out and about. She loaded us up with Ukrainian and Russian candies and tea. There was a CouchSurfing meeting going on tonight at a bar somewhere in town, and I really wanted to go. I'd also told Karel that if he wanted to come, we could hang out and we'd buy him a beer. So I was really antsy to get out of the house, but we didn't have a phone and Jacquelyn and David did, so Jacquelyn was supposed to text David and we were supposed to wait for David. As soon as he came in, he checked his texts and saw that Jacquelyn was already at the CS meeting. Laura seemed a little iffy on whether she wanted to go, but I told her we really had to go in case Karel was there, and now Jacquelyn was there, and it just seemed like it would be fun.
So off we went. We had the intersection that the bar was on and we arrived to find bars on pretty much every corner. The big CS meeting was not in the first or second bar. But at the second bar, they asked me what I was looking for, and I was like, "Um...a big group of people. CouchSurfers. Do you know what or where they are?" She did (I guess we weren't the only lost CSers that night) and pointed us in the right direction, across the street. There we walked into a loud side room filled with CSers!
It's always a little awkward at first, not knowing anybody, but it quickly gets better. Jacquelyn jumped up and ran over to Laura and started talking, but there wasn't enough space to include David and I in the conversation so we just stood there awkwardly for about 5 minutes. When it seemed pretty clear that I needed to go do my own thing and was again not going to easily fit into their conversation, I just left and started finding new people. I didn't have my back pack with me because all I needed was my money and my journal with directions to the bar in it. But, walking around with my journal tucked under my arm, I got stopped by a drunk UK boy named Jordan who insisted I interview him. The interview was going decently when along came Petr, Jordan's drunk Russian roommate. Petr tried explaining to me how to order a beer in the Czech Republic, but I really couldn't pronounce it, so he ordered for me. Then we went back and sat down and he told me all kinds of crazy life stories that were more entertaining than anything. Petr got up at some point and I'd long ago lost track of Laura and Jacquelyn, so I turned to my right and introduced myself to the people sitting next to me. Meeting people seems so scary, and it's always a little nerve wracking making the first move, but usually people end up being so nice! One of the girls to my left was named Jeanette. She was born and raised in Denmark (Copenhagen) and I told her we'd be there in a couple of weeks. We talked about traveling and speaking French, and it turns out she is not actually on CS but was here with a friend who does do CS, so I told her about what CS was. By the end of our conversation, she had given me her contact information and told me that if Laura and I got stuck in Copenhagen with no place to stay to call her up. How amazing!? I told her that we would try to find CouchSurfers, but it was always great to have an emergency contact. Then I also said if she wanted to just meet up and hang out, that would be awesome, and she said she'd be totally fine with that. So YAY for making connections in other parts of the world!!!! Very exciting!!
Later I ended up talking to Petr and another guy named Dan (from Brazil) for a little bit. I told Dan that I hadn't been to Brazil yet and he said, "Oh, that's ok, there's nothing to do there. Seriously what would you do in Brazil?" To which I replied..."Uh, watch soccer!?" And then he goes, "Oh. I don't like soccer." Then I gave him the most dumbfounded look ever. We've found a Belgian boy who doesn't like beer, a Swiss boy who doesn't like cheese, but a Brazilian boy that doesn't like soccer? Are you serious?!?!! I was shocked!!
Then, I went to go find Laura and Jacquelyn and Jacquelyn was freaking out because her host hadn't picked up his phone all day and she wanted to get her bag so she could come stay at Leah's. So we left the CS 'meeting' to go bash down her stupid host's door. On the tram, we heard English speakers and I didn't hear an accent - which to me means they're from the west coast, with a good chance of it actually being Seattle. When we got off the tram, I asked one of them where he was from. Turns out he was from Mercer Island. I felt like a genius!!! He invited us to go to a famous club called the Radish where Rihanna filmed the music video for "Please Don't Stop the Music" but we told him we were on an errand and then were going home. Plus I'm not a big fan of clubs filled with Americans, clubs in general, or Rihanna for that matter.
Oh yeah - major bummer of the night: I had put around $4 in coins in my pocket to pay for tram tickets, and somehow it disappeared. I think it must have fallen out, but the coins were in the same pocket as the keys to Leah's place. Somehow, the keys were still there and every single coin was gone. Losing money is incredibly frustrating, especially because here, $4 is either 4 tram rides, 2 beers, or 1 beer and 1 street sausage. $4 goes a long way, but now my $4 is going to go a long way for somebody else :( Super sad about that, but it's a cheap lesson learned. And I don't always pay for the tram...
Turns out Jacquelyn's host was actually home, which was a little surprising, and Jacquelyn got her bag and we were back on the street about two minutes later. We caught the tram home and opened the door to see the kitchen floor covered in blown up air mattresses! It was a pretty funny sight. After feeling incredibly unproductive and slightly excluded for most of the day, but genuinely pleased at my ability to talk to strangers at the CS meeting, I was ready to be done with this day and try to make tomorrow better.
Quotes:
"Yeah - I woke up next to a Mongolian teddy bear!" - Petr (the end of one of his more entertaining stories)
Accomplishments:
Talked to new people and met awesome people from the UK, Russia, Denmark, and Brazil, all in one night!
Spotted a west coast/Seattle accent in the middle of Prague.
Travel Tip:
Make the best of things.
Do NOT put change in your pocket. Put it somewhere zippered and safe.
We had plans to meet Jacquelyn at the Charles Bridge (the famous bridge here) at 10:00 AM. We were on time, and once we met up with her we crossed the bridge into the castle district area. The bridge is supposed to be an extremely entertaining 50 meters, but without knowing what anything meant it was just "pretty". (There were statues every few feet lining both sides of the bridge.) There were really good views, but the weather was pretty overcast. On the other side of the bridge, there were countless small souvenir shops and cafes that looked delicious. We ended up hiking up a hill to the famous Prague Castle.
Naturally, we had no clue regarding the significance of the Prague Castle, other than that it's the largest/longest castle in Europe. The line into the St. Vitus Cathedral (which is part of the castle) was HUGE so we didn't even bother. We wandered around the castle area though, saw some street musicians which were all dressed up in white shirts and black ties and were quite good, and spent the morning meandering. Jacquelyn had heard of some gardens that were supposed to be really nice. We searched for them but to no avail. Eventually, we walked down the big castle hill and across a bridge. Walking down the river, we made our way to the Dancing Building. I have no clue what this building is actually called or what it is even used for, but to tourists/traveler's, it's called the Dancing Building. This is because of it's crazy architecture that makes it look like the building is swaying.
Jacquelyn had told us of her horrible experience with her dumb CouchSurfing host last night, and we were not thrilled with Karel. But, we had heard from Leah again and so we were planning on moving in with her. We told Jacquelyn this and said she could probably just crash there with us. Then we spent HOURS looking for a place to eat. Everything is fairly reasonably priced, and all I wanted was traditional Czech cuisine, but for some reason we didn't end up actually picking a place and sitting. We had plans to meet up with Leah at 3 PM, and eventually I realized that we were going to run out of time to find a place to sit and eat before we had to meet up with her so I just told my stomach to be quiet.
It's hard to have three people walk side by side on the sidewalk, there's just too many other people. What ended up happening is that Laura and Jacquelyn walked side by side in front of me the whole day, and I was pretty much just in the back by myself. It's also hard to hear any of the conversation going on in the front. So aside from feeling like we weren't doing anything, I also felt a little bit like a third wheel which was a little bit lonely and very quiet. But I tried to enjoy the (practically) alone time and eventually just put in my iPod since it was pretty clear that I wasn't easily going to be a part of conversations for the afternoon. There wasn't really anything to "do" about this situation, AND I was in Prague, so really - things weren't bad at all. I kept quiet and focused on enjoying that wonderful fact. We kept walking, and accidentally found a really cool fountain with four statues of musicians placed in a circle around the top of the fountain. Then we got a text from Leah telling us where to meet up, and I was more than ready to be around more than just two other people so that the awkwardness of having three people would disappear and I would have somebody there to talk to.
Once we met up with Leah, she asked what we wanted to do and I immediately said, "FOOD." She took us to a small bar not far away called the Ropemaker's Wife. There I got roast pork with sauerkraut, bread dumplings, and potato dumplings. The pork was alright, but I think I am getting really worn down with all this sauerkraut business. It's everywhere, and on everything. I like it, I can eat it, but it's just a little bit too much. Also, I was really excited for the dumplings but the bread dumplings especially just didn't do it for me. They were thick and heavy and had very little taste. The potato dumplings were a little better especially when dipped in the gravy from the meat. Oh, Czech dumplings aren't cute little things filled with other delicious things like meat or cheese, these dumplings look just like thick, circular slices of bread/potatoes. So, apparently dumplings vary country to country quite a bit! The restaurant was called the Ropemaker's Wife because there's a legend that the Ropemaker was so good at making ropes that he was often away, so his wife opened up a bar so she could be around lots of men and have company. There's a bust of the wife near the entrance and if you touch it you're supposed to have good relationship luck. There's also a comic book of the Ropemaker's Wife story, and a new page gets added every day or something. Such a clever little way to keep bringing customers back...
After our late lunch, David (who was also there at lunch, he is from Israel and will also be CouchSurfing with Leah these next few days) and Leah parted ways with us to go drop David's stuff off at Leah's place. Jacquelyn, Laura and I kept walking. It feels like a maze, there are so many alley ways. All the streets look the same but you know they're not. You keep twisting and turning and all of a sudden it feels like you have no clue where you are. Then, a couple turns and alleys later, you're back to something recognizable. It's weird! We found a whole row of more souvenir booths set up in the middle of a street, and wasted time looking at all that stuff. Eventually, Laura and I needed to head back to Karel's to both pack and break the news that we were leaving.
We were really nervous that Karel was going to be at the pub and we would have to tell him that we're switching hosts really awkwardly, but thank goodness he was home when we got there. Telling him actually wasn't a big deal; I didn't really think it would be. It was obvious that we weren't going to have the super fun, 'let me show you around', talkative stay with him. And there REALLY wasn't enough space. Last night I slept AWFULLY, maybe the worst of the trip so far. And it seemed like his schedule was pretty much: work from home on his computer, play with his band, hang out at the pub 3 minutes away. We had invited him to hang out with us a couple of times and he didn't really seem to into it. Anyway, we just told him that Leah was closer and that there was space for both of us, but if he still wanted to hang out while we were in town that would be great! As expected, he definitely seemed like he didn't really care - so that's good that it wasn't so awkward and didn't come off as mean.
We packed up our stuff, said our goodbyes (he thanked us for staying with him, which was cute), and headed out. We made it to Leah's at 8:35 which was really good since we were shooting for 8:30. Leah had said that she would pop her head out the window every few minutes starting at 8:30 to look for us down below, so we just stood there with all of our bags looking up. Finally, I started calling, "Leahhhhh!" a few times. Then a window opened and I got really excited and was like, "Helloooooo!" BUT it wasn't Leah! It was some older woman with died red hair who was popping her head out to smoke. She looked down at us awkward travelers and goes, "Who are you looking for?" And really embarrassed, I told her Leah. She said to hold on a minute (apparently they're neighbors). While she was gone knocking on Leah's door, Leah walked up the hill. So, Leah let us inside and her roommate, who was on his way down the stairs to let us in, met us halfway. Finally, we had arrived.
Leah's place is so much cleaner that Karel's. You can definitely tell a girl lives here. There is natural light, space for us, and she has a really nice roommate named Rubin who is also on CouchSurfing. Rubin is from Portugal, and Leah is from Russia by the way, so once again - I am amazed by the variety and nationalities of awesome people I've been meeting through CouchSurfing.
Leah is super talkative which is lots of fun and very entertaining! She has hosted a ton and is really laid back with her surfers. For example, taking 4 in at once, all pretty last minute. She gave David a set of extra keys, had another set of keys MADE for Laura and I, and is just super chill. We chatted with her while we waited for David to get back from being out and about. She loaded us up with Ukrainian and Russian candies and tea. There was a CouchSurfing meeting going on tonight at a bar somewhere in town, and I really wanted to go. I'd also told Karel that if he wanted to come, we could hang out and we'd buy him a beer. So I was really antsy to get out of the house, but we didn't have a phone and Jacquelyn and David did, so Jacquelyn was supposed to text David and we were supposed to wait for David. As soon as he came in, he checked his texts and saw that Jacquelyn was already at the CS meeting. Laura seemed a little iffy on whether she wanted to go, but I told her we really had to go in case Karel was there, and now Jacquelyn was there, and it just seemed like it would be fun.
So off we went. We had the intersection that the bar was on and we arrived to find bars on pretty much every corner. The big CS meeting was not in the first or second bar. But at the second bar, they asked me what I was looking for, and I was like, "Um...a big group of people. CouchSurfers. Do you know what or where they are?" She did (I guess we weren't the only lost CSers that night) and pointed us in the right direction, across the street. There we walked into a loud side room filled with CSers!
It's always a little awkward at first, not knowing anybody, but it quickly gets better. Jacquelyn jumped up and ran over to Laura and started talking, but there wasn't enough space to include David and I in the conversation so we just stood there awkwardly for about 5 minutes. When it seemed pretty clear that I needed to go do my own thing and was again not going to easily fit into their conversation, I just left and started finding new people. I didn't have my back pack with me because all I needed was my money and my journal with directions to the bar in it. But, walking around with my journal tucked under my arm, I got stopped by a drunk UK boy named Jordan who insisted I interview him. The interview was going decently when along came Petr, Jordan's drunk Russian roommate. Petr tried explaining to me how to order a beer in the Czech Republic, but I really couldn't pronounce it, so he ordered for me. Then we went back and sat down and he told me all kinds of crazy life stories that were more entertaining than anything. Petr got up at some point and I'd long ago lost track of Laura and Jacquelyn, so I turned to my right and introduced myself to the people sitting next to me. Meeting people seems so scary, and it's always a little nerve wracking making the first move, but usually people end up being so nice! One of the girls to my left was named Jeanette. She was born and raised in Denmark (Copenhagen) and I told her we'd be there in a couple of weeks. We talked about traveling and speaking French, and it turns out she is not actually on CS but was here with a friend who does do CS, so I told her about what CS was. By the end of our conversation, she had given me her contact information and told me that if Laura and I got stuck in Copenhagen with no place to stay to call her up. How amazing!? I told her that we would try to find CouchSurfers, but it was always great to have an emergency contact. Then I also said if she wanted to just meet up and hang out, that would be awesome, and she said she'd be totally fine with that. So YAY for making connections in other parts of the world!!!! Very exciting!!
Later I ended up talking to Petr and another guy named Dan (from Brazil) for a little bit. I told Dan that I hadn't been to Brazil yet and he said, "Oh, that's ok, there's nothing to do there. Seriously what would you do in Brazil?" To which I replied..."Uh, watch soccer!?" And then he goes, "Oh. I don't like soccer." Then I gave him the most dumbfounded look ever. We've found a Belgian boy who doesn't like beer, a Swiss boy who doesn't like cheese, but a Brazilian boy that doesn't like soccer? Are you serious?!?!! I was shocked!!
Then, I went to go find Laura and Jacquelyn and Jacquelyn was freaking out because her host hadn't picked up his phone all day and she wanted to get her bag so she could come stay at Leah's. So we left the CS 'meeting' to go bash down her stupid host's door. On the tram, we heard English speakers and I didn't hear an accent - which to me means they're from the west coast, with a good chance of it actually being Seattle. When we got off the tram, I asked one of them where he was from. Turns out he was from Mercer Island. I felt like a genius!!! He invited us to go to a famous club called the Radish where Rihanna filmed the music video for "Please Don't Stop the Music" but we told him we were on an errand and then were going home. Plus I'm not a big fan of clubs filled with Americans, clubs in general, or Rihanna for that matter.
Oh yeah - major bummer of the night: I had put around $4 in coins in my pocket to pay for tram tickets, and somehow it disappeared. I think it must have fallen out, but the coins were in the same pocket as the keys to Leah's place. Somehow, the keys were still there and every single coin was gone. Losing money is incredibly frustrating, especially because here, $4 is either 4 tram rides, 2 beers, or 1 beer and 1 street sausage. $4 goes a long way, but now my $4 is going to go a long way for somebody else :( Super sad about that, but it's a cheap lesson learned. And I don't always pay for the tram...
Turns out Jacquelyn's host was actually home, which was a little surprising, and Jacquelyn got her bag and we were back on the street about two minutes later. We caught the tram home and opened the door to see the kitchen floor covered in blown up air mattresses! It was a pretty funny sight. After feeling incredibly unproductive and slightly excluded for most of the day, but genuinely pleased at my ability to talk to strangers at the CS meeting, I was ready to be done with this day and try to make tomorrow better.
Quotes:
"Yeah - I woke up next to a Mongolian teddy bear!" - Petr (the end of one of his more entertaining stories)
Accomplishments:
Talked to new people and met awesome people from the UK, Russia, Denmark, and Brazil, all in one night!
Spotted a west coast/Seattle accent in the middle of Prague.
Travel Tip:
Make the best of things.
Do NOT put change in your pocket. Put it somewhere zippered and safe.
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