and excited, exausted, smelly from traveling, and so on...
Since it would take me about 10 days to write about all 5 days, (and because my dad has informed me that all anyone cares about are the pictures anyway...*eh-hem*) I'm going to try to stick to the basic highlights of the trip:
6:00 Sunday morning, my travel buddy, Bryanna ( *above* also my roommate here in Hamar) and I took the train from Hamar to the Gardermoen airport, where we passed through check-in and security quite smoothly and by 8:30 were flying off to Berlin.
Upon arrival in Berlin we navigated our way with our internet directions to the hostel that I found online...we were students on a budget and it sounded like a good deal. This is where we ended up:
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Despite its questionable name, it was really quite nice--friendly enough and clean. We were in a room with two other girls, one from France, another from Poland. The girl from France was busy looking for an apartment in Berlin, staying at the SleepCheap until she found one. I wouldn't have wanted to be in that situation. The best/worst part about this hostel was that the mattresses on the bed were on these metal springy things that were REALLY loud. You couldn't even shift your body a centimeter without it making a sound similar to that of a dying rhinoceros. It was actually quite scary waking up in the middle of the night thinking a teradactyl is coming after me and really, the girl across the room was just rolling over.
We've all been there right?
Besides the beds, our Berlin experience was really great...we covered almost all of the tourist attractions in 2 days! ( It helped that I have been there already 3 times.)
After checking into the hostel and dumping our packs, we headed out for some food...aka Döner! Of all the things in Germany that I love, Döner is definitely up there at the top (no offense to all my German friends and family that I love--Döner just has something special ;-) )
What is Döner? Well, according to the Wikipedia definition:
"Döner Kebab, which literally means "turning roast", is the name given to a Turkish dish made with lamb (or mutton), beef, chicken or falafel. It is the origin of other similar Mediterranean and Middle Eastern dishes such as shawarma and gyros. A version developed to suit German tastes by Turkish immigrants in Berlin has become one of the world's most popular fast food dishes."
According to the Chelsea Linsley definition:
"Döner is the best thing that ever happend to Berlin." (You know, next to the tearing down of the wall, reunification, the end of the Cold War, the establishment of the Bundestag, things like that...)
In any case, I was incredibly excited to have Döner again, and after having one we were ready to start the touring process. Sunday afternoon we went to the Reichstag (Capital Building), Alexander Platz: the location of the TV tower, Berliner Cathedral, and some main shopping and tourist districts down town.
Some pictures from Sunday in Berlin:
Sunday night we sat in a little Dunken Donuts café and had hot drinks and muffins. It was really lovely.
From there we went to the national Jewish Monument; a large park with uneven ground and large stone columns to make you feel a bit lost. It's a neat monument, and was even cooler at night.
Monday Morning, we set out early to get breakfast at a local grocery store, then headed down the street to see Charlottenburg Castle, built in the early 1700s.From there we set out to the Jewish Museum. I have been there three times now, but every time I go there, I learn something new, and find something really inspiring. It is very interestingly built--even the architecture has specific meaning.
One room was supposed to be a memorial room and it has a floor with all these big metal faces and the artist intended for people to walk on them, and when you do that they make these really loud clangy noises that echo throughout the whole open space. It's pretty powerful.
Its got to be one of my all time favorite museuems.
After the Museum we set out to find a new synagogue that was supposedly recently restored. We didnt find the one we were looking for exactly, but we did find one that had been fully restored in the 1980s after having been completely obliterated in Kristallnacht. It is a huge beautiful building located right in the middle of a more urban district next to other really tall plain buildings. Its very interesting looking, and probably says something about the crowded urban situation in Berlin.
After that we checked out Check point Charlie, a famous crossing point from East to West Berlin. We searched out a piece of the wall that is near there, but didnt find it; so we went to the East Side Gallery instead. The East Side Gallery is a large extended piece of the wall near the East Main Train Station, that has been painted by artists and graffiti and has all kinds of messages, pictures, etc.
A little bit from the Gallery:
Tuesday Morning we departed from Berlin, and headed down the Freiburg--A completely different German setting.
Freiburg is locatd in the Southwest corner of Germany, on the border of France and Switzerland. (Located not far from Basel, the city on the corner, from where we flew back to Scandinavia).
Some pictures of Freiburg:
My friend Matt Palmquist is studying in Freiburg this semester, and we were intending on meeting him. Unfortunately we had cell phone issues (darn technology! *shakes fist*) so we didnt actually get ahold of him until Thursday morning. We had a good time anyway.
Tuesday night when we arrived, we checked in at our camp site. Yes, camp site. It was located on the edge of Freiburg, right on the edge of the Black forest/mountains. I brought my tent and we intended to have some good outdoors experiences in the black forest. Well...we certainly did.
We had my tent, but we didnt actually have sleeping bags...so we brought all of our warm clothes and some fleece blankets and froze our arsches off in the 40˚F nights. It was HORRIBLE. The worst nights of sleep I've had in my life, as I'm sure you can imagine. We scurried into the bathrooms at about 6 AM just to get the heat. At least now it makes for a good story. We survived two nights, but I can definitely say, I couldnt have done it a third.
Here we are bundled up and frozen..you can't tell but I was wearing a long underwear shirt, 2 t-shirts, 2 undershirts, a sweater, a sweatshirt, 5 pairs of socks, 4 pairs of pants, a hat, 2 hoods and gloves:
Wednesday morning, [after having slept about 3 hours total, in between shivering and rolling over to find a more "comfortable" position] we decided to spend the day hiking. So we asked at the reception for a good hike. Apparantly, the Schauinsland hike is pretty popular in Freiburg, and you could start right at the bottom of the mountain where we were. It was supposed to be 10km, about 4 hours. Sounded good to us, so off we went.
It was a really beautiful hike, very rewarding and a lot of fun. However, it ended up taking us about 5 hours, and I'm pretty sure it was about 15 km, not 10, due to us getting a little bit lost on the trail. (15km=9.3mi) The last stretch of the hike took us STRAIGHT up, we had to stop about every 3 minutes to catch our breath. And once we got to the top, being the insane people that we are, we climbed to the top of the observation tower to catch a glimpse of the black forest and alps. The view was breathtaking, but I still think we were insane.
Here we are at the top of the Mountain:
Here's the observation tower:
Here we are at the top of the tower:
At the top of the Schauinsland there is a cable car--the longest one in Germany, in fact--that takes you up and down the mountain. So pretty much everyone else who was up on top of this mountain had gotten there via cable car, and were planning on hiking DOWN. We did it backwards...of course.
I must say, though, it was very rewarding to climb the mountain, and then have the luxury of sailing down slowly on the cable car.
When we reached the bottom of the mountain, we were supposed to take a bus back into the city where we would catch a tram that could take us back to our camping site. Unfortunately, due to bad directions, we took the bus the wrong way and ended up in a little village in the wrong direction, and had to wait an hour for the next bus to take us back. But it was worth it because the village was really cute and there was organ music playing outside the church by where we were waiting.
We eventually made it back, changed out of our more stinky clothes into some less stinky clothes, and were then determined to find my friend Matt. We found an internet café (inside a dirty casino..) and looked up his address in Freiburg via Facebook. Then we searched out his apartment, and after a long journey of ringing lots of the wrong doorbells, we woke up one of his housemates and found out he wasn't home. (He was out looking for us, believe it or not..)
It was quite discouraging, but we left him a note, and luckily were able to meet him the next morning for a few hours before we took our shuttle to the airport in Basel.
He took us to one of his favorite little cafés, where we had "chococinnos" to wake us up, since we had hardly slept due to the hard, cold, ground. (I'm not even going to elaborate, it was just too dreadful.)
Then he took us to the Freiburg Markt, which I SO wish we had in Hamar. It had all kinds of fresh local vegetables, wine, flowers, nuts, rolls, everything for really inexpensive prices. It was a lot of fun. He gave us a tour of some of the older buildings in Freiburg--apparently Freiburg used to be a gated city, but now all that is left is the large gate entrace. There's some really nice old medieval buildings and such, which he told us about.
Then we parted ways, sadly, and Bryanna and I got on our shuttle to the airport where we had the most random experience ever...
We checked into our flight easily enough, searched out our gate, and when we got there, found a large buffet with free wine and hors d'oeuvres. We were apparantly going to be on the very first Ryan Air flight from Basel to Stockholm, and there was a large celebration giong on. It was craziness! It turned out the flight was about an hour and a half late, but I guess the free food made up for that...
So we arrived at our hostel Stockholm around 9:00. This hostel was interesting as well...we shared a room with 16 other people. It was worth the cheap price we paid for it, I'll put it that way. We were only there one night, and left early so we could tour Stockholm before our train left for Oslo at 2pm.
I have decided that Stockholm is my new true love. It's beautiful. Even when it was rainy and grey, it was beautiful! It definitely blew modest Oslo out of the water, and I would even dare to say that I liked it more than Trondheim. Bryanna and I also agreed that the guards at the palace definitely added a certain attractiveness to the city. ;-)
We walked around in the Gamla Stan (or Old city) where the palace and parliament were located, and then went to a little hole in the wall café, where I had a white hot chocolate. It was soooooo delicious.
After relaxing and enjoying the Swedish culture in our little café, we walked down the main shopping street...always a treat.
I bought a really beautiful scarf, and some post cards from the TWELFTH country I've been in! I couldn't believe it. A dozen countries already...
At about 2 o'clock our train to Oslo arrived and we spent a good 6.5 hours travelling across the swedish country side back to Oslo.
The train ride was interesting. I sat accross from an extremely attractive (Bryanna and I have determined he was Moroccan) man who I am going to guess was about 25. That definitely made the trip more bearable, since I was constantly being
hounded and climbed all over by a little girl who wanted to play with my ipod and eat my food. At first I kind of felt sorry for her parents, that they had to take a small child on a 6-hour-long train ride, but then I kind of wanted to kill her parents for bringing a small child on a 6- hour-long train ride. When we got to Oslo, we had about 20 minutes of layover to our train back to Hamar, and we arrived back safe and sound and $500 poorer than when we left.
It was a successful journey.
Our refrigerator was looking pretty empty yetserday, after having been gone a week, so I went to the grocery store and--this is for Aunt Deb--a little boy was walking through the vegetable aisle, and he biffed it and went face first into the ground. One of the clerks who was handing out samples saw him and said, "Uff-da! Går det bra?"
So it is true...I am a back in Norway, and they definitely do say Uff-da!
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