Papers and Curry

Hey, there. Our last week is flying by. So have the last two months apparently. Mandy finished Starbucks on friday. Hurray. No more cleaning up dishes and desperately trying to decipher all the tourists' orders. It has been a pretty good place to work, though. Aaron is feverishly writing papers that haven't gotten done in the last couple months. How does that happen...? Anyway, tonight we're going out for curry. We don't fancy it much, but England has a love affair with it, and everyone else in the house is going out, so we'll give it the old college try at least one more time. We're equal-opportunity eaters. Alright time to go clean and pack a bit. We'll be back in the States June 19. Wahoo!

April 22, 2008

April 22, the day we have been waiting for has finally come. If you did not know, April 22^nd is the day of Vicarage Placements at Concordia Seminary. This is the day when I and the rest of my classmates find out where we will be spending our Vicarages (like a church internship) for the upcoming year. Well, the 22^nd has come and we can spread the good news. Mandy and I will be spending our next year at Trinity Lutheran Church of Baton Rouge, Louisiana. You read it right…down in the South. Mandy and I are really excited for this opportunity and experience and we pray that God will bless us as we make this next big step in our lives.

Here’s a little info about the church if you want to know. It is in the Southern District of the Lutheran Church – Missouri Synod. My supervising pastor for the year is Rev. Scott Schmieding. The church has 1250 members with an average weekly attendance of 525. Attached to the church is a grade school with 3 yr old Preschool to 8^th grade and has 196 students. The church has many ministries including a growing ESL (English as Second Language) ministry. Trinity purchased a 25 acre tract of land in 2005 for future expansion. They are currently developing a master plan for the possible relocation of the church and school in phases.

My vicarage will include teaching a variety of Christian education classes, interacting with the students, staff and families of Baton Rouge Lutheran School, assisting with the youth program, participating in and leading outreach opportunities, helping plan and lead worship weekly and preaching at least once a month. Mandy and I will be living in a house that is on the 25 acres of land that the church has bought for expansion, which is about 5 miles from the church.

The vicarage will probably start on the 4^th of August depending on a few variables. If you would like to get an idea of what our vicarage will be like you can check out the church's website at www.tlcbr.org. Please pray for Mandy and I as we prepare to make a transition from England to Michigan to Louisiana.

P.S. - There are still travel posts to come. Sooner or later they will be posted too.

Sound of Music in Salzburg (a.k.a. Alligator in Austria)

The first time that anyone checked our passports on this trip (apart from the airport) was on our train from Hungry to Austria. And when they did, we didn’t even get a stamp or anything. Because of this, our passports are pretty empty for such an extensive trip. Disappointing, but at least there are no long passport control lines. When we arrived in Salzburg we did not fully know how to get to our Bed and Breakfast. But usually all you have to do is find someone in charge and they’ll help you out, which is what happened with us, and we got on the right train to take us 1 stop out of town. The next challenge was a steep hill that we had to hike up to find our stay. It was worth it though because, being up on a hill, our bed and breakfast had a great view of the mountains. That evening we found an old monastery/brewery where we had schnitzel for dinner and a couple of good brews. It was like the Hofbrauhaus, but a little less boisterous.

The next morning was the 27^th of March, which is Mandy’s birthday. For her birthday she wanted to go on the Sound of Music tour, so that’s what we did. It was a 5 hour tour where they took you around the parts of Salzburg where the scenes were filmed and also out to the country to see some lakes and to the church where the wedding scene was filmed. Along this bus tour they also played the soundtrack. We saw the gazebo (of course) but it was not next to the house it was shown next to anymore. People were coming and making noise there late at night and the neighbors complained so they moved it out of the city more. Also, they usually keep it locked because a 90 yr. old woman fell off of a bench and broke her leg a while back, so you can’t dance around it anymore. But you can look at it at least. They told us that the house in the movie is actually 3 separate houses. The front is one house, the back is another, and the inside was filmed on a set based on the house the filmed the back of. We got to see the front of the one, and the back of the other, but we didn’t get to go up to them. Something about them being privately owned made them keep us away. I’m sure we saw some other movie things too, but I can’t remember. Ask Mandy, she’ll know.

That afternoon we did some sightseeing touristy stuff. Much of the shopping in Salzburg is on one street which we actually stumbled upon. Each store has its own hanging sign and you can even buy traditional Austrian garb there. Mandy’s favorite store was the Salzburg Christmas Store. They had about five hundred million Christmas eggs. They also had tons of other Christmas stuff, and dare I say, maybe even a larger selection from Bronner’s in some categories. Call me a heretic, but it’s true. In the evening we wanted to go hear some type of live performance since it didn’t work out in Budapest. The Festival Halls had the Mozart Orchestra playing. We thought we’d give it a try hoping it wouldn’t be too expensive. Turns out they had student tickets for 10 Euros a piece. What a deal, because the concert was excellent. A visiting cellist played a piece with orchestra accompaniment for about 30 minutes and it was memorized. Brilliant. We felt a little underdressed for the concert, since in the morning we hadn’t planned on this opportunity. We had jeans on and every one else was in a suit and tie or a dress. We sat low in the seats to not attract attention. After the concert we had to catch the train back towards our bed and breakfast. We figured we would have to wait a long time because our train left only ever hour. But, as we were walking back, we realized we could maybe make the earlier train. We got even closer and realized we then might not make it…so we started to run. We ran 3 blocks and then through the train station…And…we made it. With about 4 seconds to spare. It was a good day.

The following morning we visited the Natural History museum in Salzburg. Yeah, not the normal thing to visit there, but what the heck, we gave it a try. We were pleasantly surprised at how good it was, or at least that it was well worth the 3 Euros we each paid to get in. They had 60,000 gallons worth of aquarium with some really interesting creatures. On another floor they had a really good reptile exhibit. Who would have thought we would see Alligators in Austria? Those were the highlights. They also had a bunch of different rocks and some dead ants (the insect exhibit wasn’t doing too well). Later we returned to the touristy area, and of course, back to the Christmas store for another look. This time we found Halloween and St. Patrick’s Day eggs too. This store was big. Everything else we thought of doing was going to cost money, so instead we just sat on a bench by the river and soaked in the Austrian sun for a while, looking at the mountains. I think the mountains were our favorite part of Austria once again. Just beautiful.

Pictures coming soon.

Quick update

Thanks for reading! The pictures for a few posts are not yet up on Picasa so be patient and check back in a bit. Also, we have new polls that you can vote on to the side of the blog. Check those out if you want. Thanks!
-Aaron and Mandy

Bowling in Budapest

The night train included beds this trip, and it was better than trying to sleep in the coach section, but it still was not extremely restful. The conclusion is that no good sleep can come on a train. So don’t try it. But the train arrived as scheduled, early in the morning in Budapest. We walked the 15 minutes to our hostel, but we got there at about 8:00 a.m. It was a little too early to check in. However, we could use the free Wi-Fi in the lobby, so we used that time to check e-mails, update the blog, plan what we were going to do in Budapest, and most importantly, check Fantasy sports teams (just Aaron, Mandy hasn’t gotten into that…yet). For the day we decided to head up to some caves which were under the castle in Buda. Side note: If you didn’t know (as I didn’t), Budapest is made up of 2 cities, “Buda” and “Pest”. Buda is the old city on one side of the river and Pest is the new city on the other side of the river. So we headed over to Buda by metro (this system was easier to figure out). We entered the Labyrinth Caves and…well…it was one of the weirdest things we have done in Europe. The caves wound around, it was very dark and damp, and there were strange themes to every cave area. The first had drawings on the walls from “caveman times”. Another had some strange statues and stone carvings. The weirdest was an exhibition on an ancient race of people who used to live long ago, a race we didn’t even know about, and they left traces of themselves in the clay found there, such as shoe prints (it gets better), cell phones, a laptop (weird huh?) and a giant Coca-Cola bottle (bigger than us). We didn’t get it for a long time. Then we decided they were trying, in each cave, to represent the culture of the people who had been in those caves. It IS a Unesco site, so they must have thought it was pretty good…we just thought it was kinda odd.

We were up on a large hill after seeing the caves where we could get great views over both sides of the city. From there we walked down the large hill the palace is set on and walked across the bridge to Pest. From this bridge we could see a suspension bridge that used to be the largest in the world back in 1903. In our searches for Budapest events for the two days we would be there we found a couple of concerts that were going on. We tried to buy tickets at one place, but the hall was closed, so we moved on. The metro took us near another hall that had a string quartet playing that evening. We walked for a while and tried to find it, but the area was really REALLY shady (as in I’m scared of someone hurting us shady). About halfway to our destination we turned around and decided this wasn’t for us, since we would be taking this same route to the concert, but only at night…in the dark…without the sun. At this point we gave up seeing any concerts that evening.

We had read that there was a wine festival going on in Pest, so we headed over there to check it out. They had a lot of booths with a ton of wines, but each person had to buy a glass, and then you had to buy tickets for each glass of wine, and the wine could cost between 1 and 6 tickets. We were hungry so we looked to get something to eat before tasting. The first thing we found was Pizza Hut. Yeah, we know, we’re in Budapest and we chose Pizza Hut? Well at this point we just wanted something easy and simple and pretty cheap (although we felt like we had lots of money with Hungarian currency). Not too bad, but the onion soup we got with our meal tasted a lot like butter soup. They may have had a mix up in the kitchen. We were thinking of heading back to the wine festival, but we both felt really whipped. Seeing sights every day and not sleeping much will do that to you. Instead of seeing more sights we headed back to the hostel and crashed for the evening. We’re pretty sure we slept for about 13 hours. I guess we needed it.

We went to bed so early, that it was still early when we woke up. The breakfast at the hostel was pretty good and then we thought we would do a walking tour of the city. The first sight we saw (and our true reason for coming to Budapest) was the world’s largest hour glass. Actually it isn’t an hour glass, it measures an entire year, and they flip it on December 31^st at midnight every year. Our walking trail took us through an area with a square with statues of famous Hungarian war heroes, museums, a spa, a scary looking amusement park, a zoo and a circus. They’re all right next to one another in the same area. We walked down a large boulevard down to the center of town near where we had eaten at Pizza Hut. Again we tried to find some concert to hear for the evening. There was a piano recital that looked really nice, so we tried to find where that was. The directions we had gotten didn’t quite get us there, but after asking 2 people (one conversation in English, one in German) we made it to the place of the concert. Then we found out that there weren’t any tickets left for the evening. At this point we gave up all hope of finding any concerts and decided to move on to other things. We set out to finish our walking tour when we stumbled upon Luther’s seal hanging over a doorway. A closer look showed it to be a Hungarian Lutheran museum, telling the history of Lutheranism in Hungary. Our friends Jon and Julie Rusnak had told us about their visit to it in December, but we had forgotten all about it. We couldn’t pass up a find like this, so we headed in and found that it was really well done. A nice happenstance find.

Since we were not seeing a concert that evening as we had planned, we weren’t quite sure what to do. And when you don’t know what to do, there is only one thing left to do…go bowling (and remember, “The Dude abides”). For this we headed back to Buda and found a bowling alley in a mall there. We only bowled one game (it was surprisingly pricey) but we had a lot of fun. And I think we’re the only people we know who have been bowling in Budapest. A rare life accomplishment. A cheap dinner was used to get rid of the rest of our Hungarian currency and we headed back to our hostel, looking back to a fun stay in Budapest, and looking forward to more adventures ahead, but probably without the bowling.

Pizza in Prague (Praha, Czech Republic)

We arrived in Prague, but then had a bit of trouble getting out of the train station. To get to our hotel we needed to take the metro out of town. But to do so, we needed to, of course, buy metro tickets. When we found the ticket machines, we were pleased to find that they had English instructions. We were not pleased to find that they only took coins, and the Czech Republic isn’t on the Euro. We then took some money out of the cash machine, but of course, as all cash machines work, we got bills. So we went to a shop in the station and kept buying snacks until we had enough change to buy our metro tickets. Our hotel was a bit of a hike from the metro stop, but checking in was really easy and we found out that they sold metro tickets at the front desk. And they took bills. They also sold Coca-Cola in glass bottles at the desk, and everyone knows that the best way to drink Coke is from a glass bottle.

Since it was Saturday we were hoping that things would still be open, or at least available for us to see. The castle atop the highest hill in Prague was our first destination. There we saw Prague’s cathedral, the royal palace, and a small row of shops selling mostly artsy trinkets or marionettes. After taking in a beautiful view of the city we headed back down the hill and walked across Prague’s famous bridge. It is lined with religious statues and is also filled with artisans selling caricatures and photographs. Tourist shops then line the streets leading up to Prague’s famous clock. It tells not only the time but also the month and your Zodiac position or something like that.. In this square they had an Easter market as well. We looked for eggs to buy, but nothing in the thousands of eggs they were selling really caught our eye. At this point we were getting hungry so it was time to try some Prague pizza. My grandparents told me before we left that while in Prague we had to try the “best pizza they had ever had.” Being pizza lovers, we couldn’t resist. My grandma directed me to one specific restaurant to get pizza. However, she didn’t know the name, just some general directions. She told me as she remembered, “Go to the famous clock/bell thing. When looking at it, go back behind you to your right. Walk ½ a block and turn right and it is set back in some alley.” We were slightly skeptical whether we would ever find this place since there are about 12 roads leading off of this square, but we followed the directions the best we could. Well, I can tell you that my grandma has a pretty good memory, because we found it just as her directions said, “set back in some alley.” We can also attest that it is some really good pizza. However, like good Americans we are still partial to Papa John’s.

The next morning was a great morning…because it was Easter Sunday. We did look to see if there was a Lutheran church in Prague, but to no avail. So instead we chose to go to church at the Cathedral, St. Vitus, up by the castle. We also chose the 9:30 service because we heard that there would be a Cardinal there officiating the service. The service was pretty interesting. It was mostly in Czech and some of it was in Latin. Then at some points the cardinal would say the same thing in Czech, German, Italian, French then English. I think everyone there at least understood one of those. The one thing we found lacking, at least according to our usual Easter practices, was the music of the service. There were a pair of songs sung by a quartet, and one short piece in Latin that everyone sang, but that was about it. No resounding “Alleluias” like we’re used to, but it was still Easter without that of course. From the summary the Cardinal gave of his sermon in English, it sounded like he had a Christ-centered message, which is always good to hear. We tried to get a picture of the recessional, but it didn’t turn out too well. The highlight, however, was that he splashed holy water at us. What more could you want? After the service we looked around and found the tomb where King Wenceslas is buried. He is a poignant figure in the city of Prague.

Our next stop was actually King Wenceslas square where there was another Easter market. At this one we did find some eggs that we liked and purchased a couple. We also stumbled across a place that called itself “Hard rock café” near the square, but it was a total rip off. Not the real thing, because there is no Hard Rock in Prague. Someone should check on the copyright issues with that one. At the market we also tried a desert that they had at pretty much every other stand. It was made of dough, cooked and then rolled in cinnamon and sugar. It looked like a tasty toilet paper tube when it was all ready, and it was tasty at least. Don’t ask me what it was called. We’ll just call it the toilet paper tube treat. We had some time to kill the rest of the day, and nothing planned to do, so we stopped in a couple of stores. In a sports store we found some outrageous clothes and sporting goods at outrageous prices. Name brand clothing was between $50 and $90 per item. We even found one pair of Asics shoes that cost over $400. Seriously, who pays that much for shoes? Especially Asics. Shopping in other stores in a mall was just as crazy expensive. We weren’t sure who shopped at these places.

We wanted to buy some sandwiches to eat on our night train that evening so we found a Tesco (a grocery store chain that’s in the UK as well). We got a couple sandwiches, but also inside the store was a Little Caesar’s. We were really tempted to get pizza, but after having it the night before we passed and just got Crazy Bread instead. I insisted that we at least buy something to send some more money to Mike Illich, thus supporting the Detroit Tigers. I think Cabrera received the $1.20 that we spent on the Crazy Bread in his recent contract deal. That’s fine with me. Go Tigers.

Back to Prague…we stopped for dinner and got 2 Czech Budweiser’s as well with dinner (which is better than regular Budweiser just to let you know). After eating we went to St. Nicholas Church and listened to a choir and orchestra concert. They sang the Alleluia Chorus from Handel’s Messiah, so we did get our Alleluias for the day. They also sang a Bach mass, a Vivaldi piece, and a Mozart piece. The music was great…the choir was sub-par. The sopranos just drowned everyone out, but it was still fun to go to an Easter concert in Prague. Our short Prague trip had ended and we headed to the train station to pick up our night train to Budapest. Prague was an okay city. Some good history and some interesting sights but we just wished they had nicer train stations. We enjoyed our Coke in glass bottles as we left for Budapest.

Pictures of Prague: click here!

Brats in Berlin (a.k.a. Berlin Take 2)

(Note: Read about our 1st trip to Berlin below (posted 03.01.2008) before reading this post.)

The beds in Berlin at the Generator hostel were as comfortable as we remembered them being. And the breakfast was just as full of meat and cheese as we remembered as well. We now had more time in Berlin than we had initially planned, so we decided to take the opportunity and go on another NewEurope tour. However, This one wasn’t free, it was 12 Euros per person, but we thought it was important to go on this tour. We went to Sachsenhausen which is the former concentration camp outside of Berlin. It is actually the model camp, which all of the other camps are based off of. The tour was very heavy and sobering. We saw what happened there, how the people were treated, how they were worked, and how they were tortured. It baffles the mind how people were able to treat other people this way, but it is important to remember as well, so that it isn’t allowed to happen again. We learned a lot from this tour, and recommend this one as well if anyone ever travels to Berlin.

This day also happened to be Maunday Thursday. After the tour we picked up our bags from the hostel we stayed at and headed to the Lutheran church in Berlin. It was a bit of a train ride and then a good walk, but we made it just in time for the service. Of course, the service was all in German, so Mandy understood about 1% of it, but I understood about 10% so I gave Mandy a rundown of the service afterwards. It was a really great service with a good sermon (at least the parts I understood were good). After the service the Pastor, Pastor Martens, showed us to our room. The church also has a “Youth Center” where guests can stay for a couple of evenings. It’s cheaper than a hostel, too, which is nice. That evening we found a nice Italian restaurant (we couldn’t wait for Italy) where we had a good meal of pizza and calzone.

The Good Friday service was at 10 the next morning, so we took the opportunity to sleep in and then we headed downstairs for church. This was also a very nice service with some great hymns, and singing them in German made it extra fun. We had a lot of fun in Berlin’s Christmas markets in December, so we decided to hit up the Easter market as well. The market was not as great or grand as what the Christmas markets were like, but they still had brats with German mustard so we were happy. Our next stop was the Ampelmann store. The Ampelmann is the man on their crosswalk signs. They are unique in the city of Berlin, and have become a bit of a cult classic to residents and visitors. Apparently he’s very marketable (even to us) since you can buy just about anything from clothing to candy in the shape of or with the logo of the Ampelmann. We decided to pick up Ampelmann ice cube trays and a set of Ampelmann cookie cutters. We’re suckers for some good tourist trinkets I guess.

Next on our list was Potsdamer Platz, which at one time was the largest construction project in the world. Most of the shops were closed, but the architecture of the buildings there was really neat-o. At one point you feel like you are in an outdoor courtyard when you are actually covered by a giant clear canopy. Not as fun in the winter though, so I guess we’ll just have to go back in the summer sometime. One more thing we wanted to do before leaving Berlin was to go up in the dome of the Reichstag (Berlin’s parliament building). We were going to do this last time we were in Berlin, but the morning we wanted to do it was cloudy and rainy. We weren’t going to miss it again, so we got in line. It’s free to enter, but they only let people in a little at a time, so where we entered the line it said it was an hour and a half wait. The line moved well for just a little bit and then stood still for a while. We almost decided to get out of line and forget the whole thing, when we started up a conversation with the couple behind us. They were from Australia and were really nice. Both of them had recently retired so they were going on a 5 week journey through Europe. Then we found out that both of them had lived in Cambridge and the husband actually received his undergraduate degree and his Doctorate there. What a small world. We stuck with them and chatted throughout our Reichstag visit, which gave us a great view of the city. We left them as we picked up our S-Bahn out of the city back to the Lutheran church. For dinner we found a good kebab joint where we picked up chicken kebabs and some Beck’s (what else?). We took it back to the room where we watched the most recent episode of Lost (yes we’re still addicted) and then hit the hay before traveling out to Prague the next morning. Berlin was once again a wonderful time, and still remains one of our favourite European cities.

Carlsberg in Copenhagen (a.k.a. Danish in Denmark)

We arrived in Copenhagen bright and early at 7:00 a.m. The only problem was that nothing was open at 7:00, nothing really opened until 9:00 and most stuff at 10:00. Plus, we were not really sure what we wanted to do in Copenhagen, it just sounded like a fun place to go and stay. And on top of that, we never found a room to stay in for that evening, so we needed to do that as well. So we had lots to do, but nothing was open to do it yet. So we walked around the cold train station for about half an hour getting our bearings and reading our travel books. I decided to search for an internet connection so that we could maybe get some information on anything going on in the city. Luckily McDonalds had free wireless for an hour, so we sat outside on a bench and borrowed their Wi-Fi for a little while. One of the highest priorities on our list was the Carlsberg brewery. Let me give a few reasons why. 1) The Tivoli (famous Copenhagen amusement park) was still closed for the winter so we couldn’t do that). 2) There was slushy snow all over the ground and it was about 35 degrees outside. We wanted something indoors. 3) We’re kind of tired of museums at the moment. 4) Scandinavia is really expensive, so doing anything costs a bunch-o-cash. 5) The most obvious, beer samples at the end of the tour. So we found when it was open, but the hard part was getting there. It was outside of the city and we had no idea how their metro/subway system worked. The ticket machine was only in Danish, and we, being self-centered English speakers, didn’t like that much. After asking 5-6 people how to work the machine and buy what we wanted we went back to the contraption. We then tried to pay by credit card, but would only accept a card that had a pin number associated with it (as we found throughout the city). Very odd. So we whipped out the debit card, bought our tickets and headed the direction of the brewery.

The brewery was really great. They send you on a self-guided tour around the brewery and the historic aspects of it as well. The first thing they send you to is their beer bottle collection, which is the largest in the world according to Guinness book of world records. The rest of the tour told about how Carlsberg came about and what it’s like today. They also showed you their trademark animal the Jutland Horse. The end of the tour was the tasting portion where we each tried two excellent beers. We agreed the Tuborg was better than the Carlsberg. We then headed back to the main city to do a little sightseeing. And little is the correct word because we soon headed back to the train station. However, we couldn’t leave Denmark without partaking in a “Danish.” It was the right touristy thing to do.

We hadn’t found a good room for the evening, so we thought, “Heck, we might as well just go to Berlin a night early.” So we went to Berlin a night early. A train left for Hamburg at about 3:45 and we switched there to go to Berlin, getting in around 10:30. On our train to Hamburg, we suddenly got quite confused. The train slowed down and stopped, and the attendant told everyone to get off of the train. It seemed like we were on some kind of boat, but that didn’t seem right. A train on a boat? Well sure enough, we boated across some body of water for about 40 minutes, got back on the train, and continued to Hamburg. I’ve been on a lot of car ferries, but I’ve never heard of a train ferry before. We’re having new experiences all across Europe.

We didn’t have a place to stay in Berlin either, but we did know of one place, the hostel we stayed at in December. We were pleased to find vacancy, and by a fluke, they gave us a private room at a cheaper rate than listed. A swift afternoon in Copenhagen that day, but we saw what we could and we moved on.

Stockholm, Sweden

We arrived in Stockholm at about 7:30 a.m. so not much was open yet. We also had not quite planned on where to go or what to do first. Our normal first stop in a city is the Information desk. We searched for that for a while until we found Information computers set up. These were just as good as any person at a desk because it gave us ideas of what to do, times things were open and prices as well. A free map of the city was also right there, so we definitely found the right spot to plan our day. We wanted to sight-see, but it was not going to be easy with our large backpacks with us. Another helpful point of the train station was the lockers. We shoved all of our stuff into one locker (to save cash) and made our way out into the wild Swedish megalopolis. Our first goal was to find the Hard Rock café (to get a pin for Aunt Sarah) but we didn’t find it. Panic struck our hearts. We decided to turn around and search to see if it moved to another location in the busier part of the city. There we did not find the Hard Rock, but we did find four H&M stores within shouting distance of one another. All were in close proximity of either a 7-11 or a McDonalds. We also found there a used/old bookshop. They had books both in English and Swedish. We mostly looked at the English books. They had a few interesting older books, like old Lutheran Catechisms, Kierkegaard works and C.S. Lewis books (okay, interesting to me at least), but all we bought was the DaVinci Code for Mandy. Crazy thing is that she has never read it, it was only $3 and she forgot to bring along a book to read, so it worked out pretty well.

Our Stockholm stay would be another couchsurfing experience, so we walked to the T.G.I. Friday’s at noon to meet our hostess for the evening, Amy Lindgren. She took us to a coffee shop where we bought a pastry known there as Lent Buns. They were amazing and chocked full of calories I’m sure. A good bit of Swedish culture. Amy headed home while we hit up a few more Stockholm sights like Skansen. Skansen is out on an island and is kind of like Greenfield Village with a small zoo attached. They had actual old Swedish buildings from the north and the south areas where people were sitting and would tell us about what life was like back when the buildings were contemporary. Most sights revolved around the farming culture of southern Sweden. All of the people spoke English there too, which made it really easy for us. After the historical bits we ventured to the animal areas where they hold some animals native to Sweden. We saw a wolverine (which looked like it would be ferocious, but any Spartan would kick it’s butt), some wolves, a lynx, seals, otters, elk and an owl that was super close to us (objects in the picture are closer than they appear here). We also found an old Swedish Horse (made of wood and painted) known as a Dala Horse, which Mandy climbed on (after a couple of tries) and got her picture taken with. It started to rain so we left there and headed back to the city center. As we were walking, the rain turned to sleet and the sleet to wet snow. It was about a 2km walk to this island, so we were not having the best time walking in the slush, which started to seep into my shoes as well. Dinner and warmth were in order by this point, so we found a fast food joint called “Max” which we thoroughly enjoyed. It was about the cheapest meal we could get in the city, and all for the low price of about $17. They had excellent burgers, free coffee/tea with the meals, and free bathrooms though, so it was worth it to us at that point. We then purchased a 24hr. metro ticket which would last us until we left Stockholm and headed out to our “couch” for the evening.

We met Amy and Jonathan at their house south of the city. Amy is originally from Alton, IL and Jonathan studied for a year at St. Louis, University, so we had good times chatting about Sweden, the States and the St. Louis area. We got along with them really well so it was another wonderful couchsurfing experience. The next morning we slept in which we needed after sleeping on the train the night before, and we set out to see what we could for the rest of our Stockholm stay. Once again we lockered up our bags at the train station and set out on our tourist duties. Several convenient souvenir shops in the Old Town section of the city proved to be helpful in Mandy’s quest for a Dala Horse of her own (smaller than the one at Skansen). Our next stop was to the Swedish Parliament building. Jonathan, whom we stayed with, is a political secretary for the Kristdemokraterna (Christian Democrat) party. It is the smallest majority party in the Swedish parliament. A party needs at least 4% of the vote every 4 years to hold this, and keep their offices in parliament. There are 7 majority parties, and his party is the most conservative of these parties. They even have a communist party in their parliament, but of course they don’t call themselves communists. Jonathan had us meet him after lunch at the building and gave us a personal tour of the place. That was a very fun and one-of-a-kind experience. Following this we walked back to the island where Skansen was and we visited the Vasa Museum. The Vasa which sailed it’s maiden voyage in 1628, for about 25 minutes, sank, and sat underwater for 300 years. In 1959 it was found and raised back up above water, so that you can see it in the museum today. 90% of the ship we saw is original which is amazing after 300 years. It is one of the most popular attractions in Europe, and well worth the visit with an entire museum dedicated to this one ship. The Hard Rock Café was elusive, but we finally found it to pick up the coolest pin we have found yet. We needed dinner before we went back to the train station to catch our next night train, so we stopped where we knew the food was good, “Max” again. We tried different burgers which were equally good and we took advantage of their free Wi-Fi to send a few e-mails and check up on some travel details. The free coffee/tea was good once again, and we went back to the train station to collect our luggage to get ready for our next train. We arrived about an hour early, seeing everything we needed to see in Stockholm. We passed the time by playing cards. We then boarded our night train to Copenhagen for another semi-sleepless trip in our coach train seats.

On Our Way in Oslo

Our Second break is to be filled with a month long backpacking trip across the European continent, starting in Olso, Norway and heading all the way to Athens, Greece. All of the travel is to be done by train with our Eurail passes. This is about the same distance as a trip from Hemlock, Michigan to Los Angeles, CA would be. So, we’ve got a good long exciting trip ahead of us.

Our trip truly started in Cambridge where we walked the 40 mins. to the train station which took us to Stansted Airport. After getting through to our gate, we found out that our flight was delayed 2 hours. We passed the time by playing cards. (Twill be a theme of this trip me thinks). The plane trip was as cozy as a Ryanair flight can be. The first Oslo experience we had was that after we got through customs everyone who got off of the plane (except for us) headed straight to the duty-free shop, which was more like a grocery store. Apparently alcohol is extremely expensive in Norway so everyone stocks up before going home. Because our plane was delayed, we missed our bus to Oslo (because in good Ryanair fashion our “Oslo” airport was 2 hours outside of Oslo.) The young guy who sat next to us on the flight helped us find a train to Oslo which ended up being free because of our rail passes. After arriving, our next task was to make train reservations for our train to Stockholm the following evening. This was trickier than we anticipated. We walked around for about 45 mins. trying to find the main desk, but after getting directions twice we found it. Our next gauntlet was purchasing a pass on the T-Bahn. The ticket machine was only in Norwegian and only took cash, no cards. So we took out 400 Krones (about $64) from the ATM and then asked a girl standing in our line to help us. Luckily most Norwegians (at least the younger ones) speak some, if not good, English. We then took the train/subway/metro to where we would be sleeping for the evening.
We found out while planning this trip that Scandinavia is VERY expensive, even when purchasing “cheap” things. Norway in fact sells the most expensive Big Mac in the world. Because of this, we found out that sleeping in Norway was also going to be a very costly stay. Instead, we decided to try something new on our big adventure. Earlier in the term we had signed up for Couchsurfing.com Maybe you have heard of it. It’s where people all over the world offer up their places for others to crash at for free. This is in turn from when they had crashed somewhere in the past, or will crash in the future. It is also a great way to meet people from all over the world. So this is what we did in Norway. On this site you can look at people’s profiles and decide if they would be a good fit for you to spend an evening or two with them on their “couch”. Mandy researched long and hard to find just the right people for us. We stayed with Silje and Hans Oyvind Lied. We had previously e-mailed them and asked them if they were able to house us for that evening and they affirmed they were. So we took the train/subway/metro to their house and just rang the doorbell. Sort of strange with people you have only met through a few e-mails, but it turned out to be an excellent experience. They had some dinner for us and some soda-pop which included one that tasted like bubblegum. (Not available in the U.S.) Then we sat and talked and got to know each other and we also got to know their pets. They had 2 cats and a dog, Atlas, who was the friendliest Rotweiler we had ever met. We chatted for a few hours before we crashed on their futon. “It’s a sofa, it’s a bed, it’s a FUTON.” It was a pleasant sleep and a great first day of our trip.
After waking, we had a wonderful Norwegian breakfast with Silje and Hans. Cereal, warm rolls, soft boiled eggs, hot chocolate and tea. They both had the morning off of work, so they offered to show us around the city. We graciously accepted. We first stopped at a market where I was tempted to buy some old ELO, Phil Collins and Don Johnson albums. Then I realized there was no way to get them home, so we moved on. They then took us to Aker Brygge. This is one of the fjords where we sat and had coffee outside. It was a nice sunny day so it was fun for us to just walk around, and Atlas the dog enjoyed it too. At one point he had 3 children and 1 old lady “pawing” over him. We moved from there to the Royal Palace. Norway has a royal family where the King actually does have some say over the parliament. We didn’t go inside, but we did get the obligatory picture with palace guard. After swinging by the American Embassy (just in case of an emergency), we went to a sculpture garden which was filled with statues of people…all naked. Sort of strange, but I guess this IS Europe. Atlas also had a fun time there where bunches of people brought their dogs to just run around and play with other dogs. More loose dogs than we had ever seen in one place.
Following the sculpture park visit we made our way back to Silje and Hans’s apartment where we had left our backpacks for the day. We still had about 6 hours before our train left for Stockholm so Silje invited us to paint Easter eggs with her. That turned out to be its own experience. Mandy had never made eggs by blowing out the insides before (she had just hard-boiled them) so it was fun teaching and watching her blow out the eggs. Okay, I’m no expert either, but I have had at least one egg blowing experience. We then painted them with…um…paint and made Easter ducks and flowers. Silje then used the eggs to make waffles which tasted like crepes and were really good with Norwegian brown cheese. That evening we played board games where Silje beat both of us soundly. We think she agreed to house us just because we looked like we would be easy board game prey. But in some way she would have been right…we love board games, win or lose.
Soon it was time to say our goodbyes and we headed back to the Oslo train station. On our train we had a 5 seat compartment which we shared with one Swede and 2 Australians living in England. The Australians were kinda crazy guys and one of them even tried to sleep under the seats of the compartment to get comfortable. He claimed he couldn’t breathe well though so he ended up just sitting. Sleeping on a train overnight isn’t something that is very relaxing, especially when you just have seats and no beds, but we made the most of it and got into Stockholm safe and sound…just maybe a little tired…and it was only day 3!

Check out Oslo Trip Pictures! Viewing as a slideshow is always best.

Blog Note

Note: Because of brash negligence on the part of the authors of this blog, many of the following posts have been written earlier, but have occurred later than previous events. To read up on these former happenings and travels please refer back to the posts from 03.01.2008 This will hopefully appease critics and redeem our slackness of posting.

Germany, Austria and an Alp

A bald man met us at the train station in Lindau near Lake Constance. Here we stayed with Peter (who assured us he held no ties with the Skinheads) and Marian Meinhardt and their dog, Paulie. Peter, when he was in high school, was an exchange student and lived for a year with my grandparents in Hemlock. They have remained in contact after all of these years. Peter and Marian greeted us as family. In Weissensberg we stayed at a cute bed and breakfast right next door to Peter and Marian’s house. They then served us a dinner with traditional German meats and chesses. It was wonderful to say the least. We sat and chatted about former Roggow memories and the current Roggow clan. The next day Peter took us on an excursion to Austria. He and Marian live in Germany, but he works just a little ways across the border in Austria. First he showed us around his workplace, which was the nicest working environment I had ever seen. It was full of high tech gadgets, ergonomic workspaces, comfortable break areas, and a free hot chocolate/espresso machine! The roof is equipped with a climbing wall and a nice footpath. There is also a large courtyard where they have movie nights once in a while on a BIG screen. It was definitely a place that I would like to work if I had an office building job. After seeing his workplace, Peter drove us up into the mountains so that we could see the Alps. This was really the first time that Mandy and I had seen snow this winter so we were really excited. And we were on top of an Alp so that was equally as exciting. We played up in the snow, viewed stunning mountains, and even made the obligatory snowman. I think Peter and Paulie had a lot of fun as well.

Back down in Lindau we met Marian for lunch and we had some more good German food. Later on we took Paulie for a walk down at Lake Constance. Usually you can see Austria and Switzerland across the lake, but all we could see was deep white fog. We still had fun skipping stones across the water and I skipped one rock 17 skips. I think it’s a Lake Constance record. Our walk continued through the city where we walked out onto a pier where they have a city monument and where we could also view the city at night. It was a very calm and relaxing evening. We returned to the Meinhardt’s place and exchanged family pictures of family and friends. We even got to view their house in Nova Scotia in real time with the web cam that Peter has set up there. It was another night of fantastic food and frivolity. The next morning we bid them farewell as we boarded our next train to Switzerland. We hope to visit our new friends Peter and Marian (and Paulie) again sometime soon.

Wittenberg (Our Lutheran Pilgrimage)

Sadly, we realized that we would not be able to visit the town of ‘Roggow’ in Germany (actually there are two of them) as we originally intended. If we had rented a car maybe we could have done it, but we didn’t have those kinds of funds. That will have to wait for another trip another time I guess.

Instead we took a day trip to Wittenberg. I know not everyone is as excited about Martin Luther as I may be, but we thought it was definitely worth the trip and hopefully we’ll get to take a trip back someday. Our first accomplishment was making sure we went to Wittenberg instead of Wittenberge. Not quite the same. The town isn’t too big and the first thing we stumbled upon was the Wittenberg Christmas market. It was quaint and cute, and was in the center square of the city. We had lunch here, Gluwein once again, and , to get the awesome Wittenberg mugs which we took home as sweet souvenirs. Then we headed down to the Castle Church in Wittenberg where Luther nailed the 95 thesis (supposedly). While walking there I thought I saw someone I knew ahead. But wait, who would I know in Wittenberg? Well, we found our friends Jon and Julie Rusnak there (fellow Westfield Housers). They just happened to be visiting Wittenberg the same day as we were. We hung around with them for a while and visited the church. This is also where Martin Luther and Philip Melanchthon (the guy who wrote much of the Book of Concord [which contains the confessions of the Lutheran Church]) were buried. It was a pretty cool church. Outside they also have the 95 theses written on the door in Bronze. After visiting the gift shop across the street from the church (actually pretty classy) we walked back to the city center. We passed through the Christmas market again and got some cheap cotton candy. It was huge and really good. At that point I loved Wittenberg even more.

Our next Lutheran hotspot to visit was Luther’s former house, which has now been turned into a museum. Before he owned it the place was a convent, so it was pretty good sized. At any time there would be 30-40 people living there with his family. The museum was 4 large floors of historical items, information, artwork and other things. We spent about 3 hours there (and I think I could have spent 3 more but Mandy and Natalie pushed me through). It got dark by this time so we went back to the Christmas market again and met up with Jon and Julie again for some gluwein and Brats before catching the train back to Berlin. Our Lutheran pilgrimage was great and we hope to make one again (maybe October 31, 2017 – the 500^th anniversary of the Reformation).

"Ich bin ein Berliner"

After acquiring Natalie from Heathrow Airport, we all flew out of Stansted Airport to Berlin. Arriving in Berlin was great because the line for immigration was really short for people with non EU passports. Then it got tricky as we couldn't figure out how to buy S-Bahn (subway) tickets to our Hostel. After struggling and conferring with other english speakers we finally made it on a train with a valid ticket. As we departed our train the next challenge was to find our hostel. Then, like a beacon on a hill, Mandy looked up and saw in big blue letters "GENERATOR." Our hostel just happened to be about 100m from the S-Bahn stop. After checking in we crammed into a 3 person elevator with our luggage and found our way to our room. We had the room all to ourselves and the major perk was that the beds were heavenly. We slept very well in Berlin.
Our first day was spent as our museum day in Berlin. Their best museums are all in one place called "Museum Island." We first visited the Pergamon museum where we saw the Pergamon Altar from 2nd century Greece. They also have the Istar Gate which is the eighth gate to the inner city of Babylon. It was constructed in about 575 BC by order of King Nebuchadnezzar II. It is possible that the Israelites entered through this gate when they were in Exile, and it used to be one of the 7 wonders of the world. It was crazy being there and standing next to it. The next museum we visited was the Altes Museum (Old Museum) where many Greek and Egyptian artifacts are held. The most famous piece there is the head of Nephrititi, which is really really old. According to us, that was enough museums for the day, so we stepped outside and started to explore some of Berlin’s many Christmas markets. The first one we went to was across from Museum Island and was more like a carnival than a Christmas market. They had a Ferris wheel, carnival games, a drop tower and many spinning rides. We decided to skip the fair aspects and we drank some Gluwein and had a couple Brats. A pretty good dinner. The cool thing about Gluwein is that they come in special mugs and each market has its own mug. You pay a deposit for the mug, but they were fun so we decided to keep them as Berlin mementos. We then started to head out to find more Christmas markets, when we stumbled upon the Opera house. Being the Christmas season, Der Nussknacker (The Nutcracker) was showing the following evening. What better place to see The Nutcracker than in Germany where Nutcrackers are from (I think)? So we bought the cheap obstructed view tickets and moved on to more Christmas markets while eating more German foods and treats. The next morning we set out to take a tour of the city. Our hostel offered a free walking tour of Berlin along with the stay so we thought it would be a great opportunity to learn the history behind the city of Berlin. The tour was actually run by NewEurope tours. We had a wonderful tour guide, Annabelle, who told us pretty much the entire history of Berlin (apparently never a dull moment in Berlin’s history) and then took us to all of the major sights of the city, many of them pertaining to WWII. We saw the Brandenburg Gate, the Reichstag, Berlin’s Holocaust Memorial, the site of Hitler’s bunker, the Berlin Wall, Checkpoint Charlie, the square where the book burning took place, and where the royal palaces used to be. She told stories and history behind all of the places along the way which made the sights much more meaningful and memorable. At the end she told us the story of how the Berlin wall came down in 1989 (a fluke and accident if you didn’t know). It was a terrific tour and if anyone ever goes to Berlin you should take the time to walk on this free tour. Of course, free means no charge, but the guides work solely on tips, so we tipped her well for a wonderfully informative and fun tour of the city. For dinner we went back to a Christmas market and had some more brats for dinner. Better than any American brat with any American mustard that’s for sure. That evening we went to see The Nussknacker. It was really odd. Take most of what you know about the Nutcracker and forget it. We were confused from the beginning, when a girl was kidnapped by Arabian knights. Then she grew up and danced with different men, but we couldn’t figure out who they were. There was some ice queen/princess in there too who danced around. We didn’t really understand where the Nutcracker fit in either. It didn’t really help either that we couldn’t see a third of the stage because of our obstructed view seats. Then it ended like she was having some kind of dream, and the ice princess floated away into the sky. Very strange. But the music was the same, so in the midst of the craziness we would just close our eyes and listen. So apparently the German story of the Nutcracker is much different than the American story that we know. The next day we took a day trip to Wittenberg (story and pictures in a separate post) and came back to Berlin for one more night of Christmas market hopping. The next morning we left our comfortable hostel beds behind and headed towards Lake Constance where we would spend the next few days with some family friends. Berlin however remained in our minds and has probably been our favourite city to visit in Europe.

Lost in Southern France (Segment Two)

France, Day 4: This day was pretty low key. We bummed around town and eventually made our way into Toulon, a pretty big port city about 30 minutes to the west. We did find a Christmas market, though, with booths filled with assorted merchandise and food. We had our first crepe experience, and that was lovely. I think my favorite part was the fake snow covered pine trees that tried to distract from the surrounding palm trees. Very clever. Other than that we walked along the dock in the harbor, found a shopping mall, which included the largest grocery store I’ve every seen, and visited the creepiest photography museum one could imagine. It seemed to specialize in bloody teeth and fingernail art. Weird. You never know what you’ll find in France.

France, Day 5: Definitely the most eventful day of the trip and one of the longest days of my life; this was good and bad. We woke up at 5:45 so we could catch the first of a line of trains to take us to Chataeuneuf du Pape: renowned wine country in France. We caught the first one just fine, but our next was delayed, which caused us to miss a connection. We finally got to the city of Orange (a springboard into the Chateauneuf region) but a few hours later than we had hoped. But that was okay. This was an adventure. We saw a huge Roman amphitheater from circa 50 A.D., and that was quite cool. From there we had hoped to cycle around the vineyards and hit up a number of wineries (or “domaines” as they’re called in France). Unfortunately it was incredibly windy, so bikes would be no good, but the lady at the tourist info. office assured us there were some great domaines within walking distance. So we headed along the D68 out of town and into the vineyards! After maybe 45 minutes of walking in the crazy wind (in dress clothes, mind you – we wanted to be classy for our winery day) we finally passed the first domaine. Mandy was elated. Aaron wasn’t ready to stop, though. The highest goal for him was to taste wine at Mount Redon, a domaine producing some of the choicest wines in the world. Mandy was a little annoyed, but they continued on. After passing a number of perfectly good domaines and walking up a good-sized hill (there’s a reason it’s called Mount Redon) in quasi-gale-force wind for nearly two hours, we had reached the pinnacle. The winery and tasting were amazing, and even Mandy, with her limited knowledge of wine was very impressed. We were also able to purchase a couple bottles at phenomenally inexpensive prices. So that was very cool. After this, we trekked back into the town of Orange just as we lost daylight and caught the first of our trains back. It had been a bit stressful, but we had made it. Or had we? The first two connections went perfectly. The third didn’t. Our train was nowhere to be found – something about a transportation strike. We could catch a later train, but that would put us in Toulon (where we had visited yesterday) after the buses had stopped running to Heyeres, where we had a nice comfortable hotel room that was already paid for. So after we struggled to make it to Chateauneuf, walked for kilometers and kilometers in the cold wind, and had nothing to eat all day except half a baguette with peanut butter and some grapes we stole off a vine, we found ourselves stranded in Toulon, which for all its niceties during the day, is a little bit seedy at night. (Are you feeling sorry for us yet?) We walked around for about two hours past the prostitutes and sex shops before finally finding a hotel we could afford – you know the kind with the vertical neon sign where one of the letters is blinking out. The front desk actually looked promising, but we started to get nervous when the attendant made us look at the room before agreeing to pay for it. So we did: the building was quite old and the hallways were pretty dark and smelled like urine. We saw a glimpse of a fellow tenant, who basically looked like a homeless guy who scraped up enough money to stay there for a couple nights and was trying to tell us something albeit incoherently. The room had a dingy neon light and a stained bedspread and holey blanket, but thankfully it was odor free, and the sheets looked clean. The bathroom even had a “Touch of Charm” complimentary soap bar. Classy. Luckily we were only there for a few hours before catching the first bus back to Hyeres in the morning. What a day! Southern France proved to be beautiful as well as…memorable.

Pictures are same from Segment One