Norway/Sweden/Denmark (Eurotrip_2012)

Oslo:

      Upon stepping onto the ferry in Copenhagen Margot and I sought out our little sleeping compartment and lay down to relax. As Margot put it, “You don’t have to turn off the lights because I’m not going to bed, I’m just going to cocoon for a little while.”

     Well, approximately fifteen hours later we both groggily woke up to hear the boat’s speakers announce that breakfast was about to be served and that we would be docking in Oslo in just over an hour. Shocked that we had somehow slept for such a long period, we made our way up to the beautiful breakfast buffet under the bow of the ship, which was surrounded with windows that allowed us to gaze out at the Oslo Fjord as we passed it by. At this point I was about 3 ½ weeks into my trip and I could still count the number of hours that I’d had to endure rain on one hand. Oslo was no exception to this glorious rule as the sun came pouring down on us when we stepped off the boat and started to aimlessly wander around Oslo in search of a map. When we finally found one, we discovered that we were about 50 yards away from the hostel I was going to be staying at that night. I went and dropped my bag off there, we put Margot’s in a locker at central station, and then we went out to see the sights.

On our way to central station, we came across Parliament and the Oslo Cathedral, both of which were closed on Tuesdays so we couldn’t go inside. So after losing the backpacks, we decided to make the long journey out to the Vigeland Sculptures Park. Forty-five minutes later, we started to wander through this beautiful park in Oslo, Norway only to discover a statue of none other than Abraham Lincoln, given to Oslo by the state of North Dakota. Wondering why we just saw Abraham Lincoln in Oslo and where all the nude sculptures were we finally stumbled upon this gorgeous bridge lined with them. The entire Vigeland Park holds 212 sculptures that took twenty years to be made by only one artist, Gustav Vigeland. The opening bridge has about thirty bronze sculptures on each side, depicting everything from a child throwing a temper tantrum to a man and women embracing triumphantly. At the end of the bridge and on the other side of a flower garden is a bronze fountain that is surrounded by about thirty sculptures of various humans under a tree, possibly the tree of life. In the middle of the fountain were five men holding up a huge dish full of water that was spilling over them. After this was a huge staircase that led to the Monolith, which was a huge granite pole with over one hundred sculptures carved into it. The one hundred sculptures were all carved out of one piece of granite and depict a mass of nude bodies struggling to reach the top of the sculpture. It was surrounded by about fifty granite sculptures depicting everything from an old couple starring into each other’s eyes to a woman being ridden by her children with her ponytail being used as reigns. I could tell that the whole park was trying to tell me some kind of story but the best thing I could come up with was the story of Life. First you’re a child so the sculptures are from a child’s perspective, then they get progressively older until it ended with some very old people on the brink of death.  The men were always very stern and serious and didn’t care to be involved with their children in any way. The women were either getting trampled by their children and dominated by their husband or running around wild and free. There were also two statues at each end of the bridge, females on the south side and males on the north. These two sculptures depicted a man/woman getting attacked by a dragon, the eastern most statues always showing them limp and accepting of their impending doom while the western most statues showed them fighting violently to escape the dragon’s grasp. I wasn’t sure what all of the sculptures meant, but there was a definite theme of family and the park was a really enjoyable experience.

 

        After Vigeland Park we made our way back into the city and over to the Oslo Resistance Museum, which was located inside the Akerhus Fortress. I had never realized how involved Norway was during WWII until I went through this museum, very different from their neutral Swedish neighbors. Afraid that Norway would be invaded by Britain and the North Atlantic sea ports used against them, as well as the need to control and use the iron ore coming out of Sweden, the Nazis engaged in a full invasion of the entire country in April of 1940. They attacked by sea and by air first, finally dropping parachute soldiers and occupying Oslo in just one day. While most of the resistance efforts against the Germans failed during this initial invasion, they did slow the forces down enough for the Norwegian government and the Royal family to escape to Britain, where they would remain for the course of the war. The head of the Norwegian Nazi party, a man named Quisling, immediately nominated himself to become Prime Minister of Norway and thus made his name synonymous with “traitor” to all Norwegians. His rule was brief and tumultuous and Hitler finally forced him to step down as Prime Minister and Head of State as an attempt to win over the Norwegian congress. The Norwegians never accepted the Nazi regime or its government during the course of the war and resistance efforts towards them were frequent and large. They had several newspapers circulating the country and when all radios were confiscated by the Nazis, they used household items like telephones and even dentures to hide their secret radios. The Norwegians also participated in something called an ice front in which they refused to talk, sit next to, or even acknowledge the Germans during daily life. This irritated the Germans so much that at one point they actually made it illegal to stand on a bus if there were seats available. While most armed resistance efforts were a failure, the Norwegians retained their national pride and anti-Nazi ideals throughout the war. The Resistance Museum was also the site where three Norwegian Freedom Fighters were shot by the Nazis during the war. The whole museum was incredibly informative and I enjoyed it a lot, mostly because I had never studied or researched the Norwegians’ involvement in WWII.

After the Resistance Museum, we walked around Akerhus Fortress, which sits above the Oslo harbor and watched the sun slowly make its way over the water and the surrounding forest. It was an incredible view of a gorgeous place and made me think for the umpteenth time how incredibly lucky I was to be here in this moment half way across the world exploring Europe.

After exploring and admiring the fortress we decided it was time to find some dinner, which meant that we were in for a rude awakening. Walking down the streets of Oslo, I felt like I was in the Twilight Zone as every restaurant we looked at the menu for had absolutely nothing on their menus that was cheaper than $20. Finally we found this restaurant that was doing a happy hour deal where we could get a real sized food portion for only $23 each. We scarfed down the food and then went back to my hostel so I could grab some stuff to keep us entertained while we hung out at central station waiting for Margot’s train to the airport. I got destroyed at another game of Bananagrams, updated some trip stuff on my computer and finally said good-bye before starting my lonely walk back to the hostel. My short ten minute walk back wasn’t as lonely as I had anticipated though, when I was propositioned by about seven Norwegian prostitutes, saying no to several of them ;) They did have some very creative and informative pick-up lines though. Back at the hostel, I met one of my five roommates named Royal who grew up in New York, has a Culinary degree and recently went back to school for a degree in Business Sustainability. We talked about our separate travels for a while and then I decided to get some sleep.

        The next morning I ran into Royal at breakfast and we discussed what each of us had planned to see in Oslo. After discovering that we both had an interest in the Viking Ship Museum, we decided to go ahead and go there together. On our way out of the building we ran into a girl named Lauren who is from Sydney, Australia, has a Finance degree, and quit her job to take a year and travel the world. She decided to join us on our venture to the Viking Museum and just like that, I had two new friends to see Oslo with. We took the ferry over to the Viking Museum, which was on a peninsula that contained several of Oslo’s more popular museums. At the Viking Ship Museum, we found three ships that were all eventually used for Norse ship burials. All of the ships had since been looted of a lot of their most precious gifts, but some of the grave goods were still with the ships when they were discovered and pulled out of the water over 1,000 years after they sank. The Norse Vikings often gave grave gifts such as animals, wagons and jewelry, and one of the three ships even contained a peacock. The first ship you met when entering the museum was the Oseberg ship. It contained two female skeletons and was from between 800 and 900 A.D. It had fifteen oar holes on each side but its low sides and design suggest that it was more of a pleasure ship instead of a sea bearing ship used during raids. The Gokstad ship was the next one that I came upon and it contained the remains of one male and was from around 900 A.D. This ship had sixteen oar holes that each had covers to keep the water out when they were not being used and was used for wartime efforts and to transport cargo and trade. The last ship was the Tune ship which was built around 900 A.D. but only half of the original boat still remained. All three boats were constructed out of oak, and during this time there was no measuring system in place so all measurements had to be done by eye. Makes you wonder how they could have constructed such a perfect and incredible ship without any precise measurements. The last section of the museum was all of the grave goods that were found on board the ships. This included four beautiful wagons that were hand carved out of oak and had incredibly intricate and beautiful designs carved everywhere. It was a pretty remarkable museum.

After the Viking Ship Museum, we walked over to the Flam museum which contained a ship named the Flam that had sailed to both the North and South poles, but is most popularly known for transporting the Norwegian explorers that would become the first men to ever reach the South Pole. After several unsuccessful attempts by American and British explorers it was concluded that a ship could not survive the ice that existed there and when American explorers Frederick Cook and Robert Peary claimed to have reached the North Pole, the Norwegians set their sights on the South Pole. Fridtjof Nansen built the Fram stating that he wanted to build a ship that could hold provisions for fifteen men for six years and successfully sail to the Poles. With the help of the Fram, Roald Amundsen and four other Norwegian explorers and scientists reached the South Pole in 1911, just five weeks before the British. The entire British exploration crew would eventually die on their way back to camp, while the Norwegians survived the trip and returned safely home onboard the Fram. The museum was built around the very ship and we could get on board and explore the deck and cabins ourselves. This was a really interesting museum that I would have otherwise missed if Lauren hadn’t suggested that we check it out.

After the Fram museum, we took the ferry back over to the city and set out to find some food. Our initial goal was to ask some locals if they knew where we could get some cheap Norwegian food. But as they looked at each other puzzled and informed us that such a thing did not exist, we were interrupted by a homeless man that didn’t speak English or Norwegian and started casting a spell on us. Or at least that’s what we joked he was doing as we walked away and Lauren proceeded to trip over nothing, blaming it on the spell. Then Royal ate it and also blamed it on the spell, joking that I was next in line. I’m pretty sure we left before he completed my spell though because nothing bad has happened to me on this trip yet; in fact, it’s been quite the opposite. Anyways, we found some Indian food that was moderately priced for Norway and discussed cultural differences like biscuits/cookies before we lost all maturity and started making fun of each other’s accents. After dinner we ran into a couple from Arizona that recognized us from the Viking Ship Museum and went with them up to a “hipster” part of town where we walked around for a while and had a drink together. Afterwards, we went back to the hostel to get cleaned up and went out to grab another $15 beer before we decided to grab some sleep. The next morning Royal discovered that he now had bed bugs and spent the morning getting that figured out before the three of us went to see the Opera house. This was an incredible building that was really just one big piece of art. After walking all over the marble and glass Opera House, I said good-bye to my friends and went to the train station to catch my train to Gothenburg, Sweden.

 

Gothenburg:

I got into Gothenburg in the late afternoon and thinking that I knew how to get to my hostel I set out in search of it. An hour later I found myself exactly where I had started from after I got lost searching for the hostel and then remembered that I needed to buy my train ticket down to Copenhagen for a couple days later. The only information that I gained from my venture into the city was that Gothenburg is not a very tourist friendly town. There was no information desk or even a ticket desk at Central Station and trying to find a map of the city is like panning for gold in your kitchen sink. So I borrowed some internet with a fifteen minute time limit and uploaded a map onto my computer, copying the directions of Swedish/gibberish onto some paper. I bought a ticket from a machine on my way out of the station and set out for Round 2 of ‘Find my Hostel.’ Fifteen minutes later I found my hostel which was only two blocks away from my turn around point earlier. Unfortunately for me, my hostel was locked and through the glass door I could see that the reception area was dark and closed. Eventually another guest came out and I grabbed the door to get inside where they had a free computer in the lobby. With the power of the internet in my hands, I decided to check my emails and found a message that they’d sent earlier in the day which stated that their reception hours were from 3-5 PM and strictly enforced. A little worried, I sent them an email asking what the hell I should do to get into my room. After sending the email and freaking out a little bit, I started checking the rest of my emails figuring I had nothing better to do at this point. This was when I found another email that told me the door code to the hostel, what my room # was and that my room key was on my bed. Finally starting to relax I discovered that I was the only person sleeping in a twelve bed room for the night. Pleased with the way things had turned out I decided to treat myself to a nice dinner of Swedish Meatballs and some Swedish beer at a restaurant called Smaka. The food was amazing and I got a great night’s sleep that night.

The following morning I walked to the Gothenburg Botanical Gardens which was an incredible 430 acres (the one in Denver is like 20). It was gorgeous and even though there were like twenty school buses of children at the park I could still get to parts where I was all alone. They had flowers and plants from all over the world, a huge waterfall, and a forest area that made you feel like you were in the real Swedish forest. It was also kind of nice being incapable of reading all of the descriptions for once since it forced me to relax and just enjoy the nature a bit more. After the Botanical Gardens I walked across the street to the Slottsskogen, which means Forest Fortress and is literally just a huge forest with asphalt paths leading you through it. There was also a free Zoo in the middle, but it was obvious why it was free since they only had Deer, Ducks, Wolfs, Horses and Ponies. After strolling through the park I made my way to Skansen Kronan, which is a fort that was constructed in the 17^th century to defend the city against any attack from their neighborly rivals the Danes. However, the fort was never attacked and thus the 23 canons inside have never been fired. It was still a pretty cool little fort and since it was placed on top of a huge hill it had an amazing view of the entire city.

After Skansen Kronan, I went to a korv (sausage) shop for lunch. As some of you my know I’m Swedish and so every year around Christmas time for as long as I can remember my dad, my grandpa Clarence and I have been making our own Swedish Korv, Spritz which is a Swedish Cookie, and Swedish Pancakes are made year around. All of these recipes have been passed down through my family so besides a few minor tweaks they are the original recipes that my ancestors used while living in Sweden. And since I was in Sweden, I had to compare some Swedish Korv with the stuff that we make back home. But since this was a local shop in town, they didn’t really know English very well and after a confusing conversation, I ended up with some korv that just wasn’t the same type as the potato korv that I’ve been making all my life. A bit disappointed, I decided to do some more research and try and get some potato korv in Stockholm a week later.

After lunch I walked to the Gothenburg Cathedral which was very similar to the church that I’d seen in Amsterdam, very clean and bright with white and gold everywhere.  After the Cathedral, I walked over to the National Museum, which is right on the bank of one of the major canals and used to be the Swedish East India House. This museum was really cool as it gave me a ton of well needed Swedish history. It was very much oriented towards children and kept giving me little pieces of information followed by asking me what I thought of that or what I thought that meant for the people involved, but as my Swedish knowledge is at level with a kindergartener, I didn’t mind it all that much. When the museum finally closed, I had spent three hours studying Swedish history, which apparently is rare since both the lady that had given me information earlier and the security guard kept telling me how amazed and impressed they were that I was still there. After walking out of there feeling really proud of myself, I finally realized that they were probably so impressed because they were used to ten year olds on field trips whose attention spans last about twenty minutes. Nonetheless, I’d had a long day and deserved some rest and some food. As it started to rain outside, I researched somewhere to get some great Swedish food near my hostel and then stormed the weather to go get it. But when I showed up the bartender informed me that they were all booked up for the entire night. With no contingency plan, I just started to wander the streets in search of a decent restaurant and stumbled upon this place called Oscar’s, which served Swedish food with a Danish flare. I had some really good fish that was moderately priced and I was pretty pleased with my find.

Copenhagen:

The next day I went to the Oscar Frederik Church and then meandered up the canals enjoying the weather and scenery until I reached Central Station where I waited for a train to take me to Copenhagen for the weekend. When I was in Copenhagen previously, I made friends with some of Margot’s relatives, so when Katrine and Malene inquired about me coming back for the weekend I couldn’t refuse having some more fun, getting to know them better, and making sure I’d seen all of Copenhagen. I arrived at Copenhagen Central on Friday afternoon and was greeted by Katrine and Kristoffer, who took me back to Kristoffer’s place where I was to stay for the weekend. After dropping my stuff off, we went grocery shopping nearby to get some food for dinner and of course some beer. Katrine cooked us up a delicious meal of pasta as we started to pop open some beers and Kristoffer began to explain how to play this Pirate drinking game that he had purchased in the Netherlands a couple of years earlier. Malene and Mikael (another cousin) showed up a little while later and after we were all fed and full we decided to go ahead and start playing the Pirate game which sums up as this: getting f****d in the ass by parrots, losing all your hard earned treasure to the person next to you, and a bunch of unimportant shit that meant you had to drink a lot of beer.  Needless to say, it was a lot of fun. So after everyone got well acquainted with the parrots and Kristoffer’s roommate Emil got home we all decided to go out to the bars. On the way there, Mikael said good-bye and went home while the rest of us ended up at Sam’s, which is coincidentally the karaoke bar right next to Jan’s apartment where I had stayed the previous week and whose noise had kept us up for several nights during our stay. Fortunately for us, we were the obnoxious ones making all the noise this time when I ended up singing Landslide with Kristoffer and Emil as my backup dancers.

The next morning Kristoffer and I met up with Malene to get some brunch and then we walked along the five huge lakes on the west side of the city. We ended our walk at the beginning of a canal tour that took us all over the city. We saw the Opera House, Amelienborg Square, The Little Mermaid, Noma (Rated the best restaurant in the world), The Savior’s Church, The Black Diamond, Christiansborg Palace, the old Danish Stock Exchange building, and also got to make fun of our tour guide since whenever a microphone was put in front of his face he decided to elongate every single word he said. After the canal tour, we got some much needed coffee and then randomly found Kristoffer’s bike just sitting on the street. Kristoffer had to go home to do some homework so I borrowed his bike and Malene took me to see the King’s Garden and also the H C Ørstedsparken park. After strolling through the parks and attempting to crack a riddle we’d found posted on one of the trees, we got some groceries and then went back to Malene’s place to make some dinner. She made some great Chicken Curry and then we decided to have a nice relaxing night and just watch a movie.

The following day, Sunday the 9^th was my last day in Copenhagen. I met up with Malene at this huge graveyard where H.C. Anderson is buried. Surprisingly, the graveyard is apparently a really cool place to hang out in during the summer, even with all of the gravestones. After chasing squirrels around the graveyard I met a real Danish celebrity. Amalie is the lead singer of Panamah and also happens to be one of Malene’s friends. She was very friendly and also incredibly attractive: look up the music video for DJ Blues. After meeting Amalie, we got some breakfast at the Meatpacking District in Vesterbro, which has been transformed from meat factories into art galleries and hipster clubs. Here we met up with Katrine before heading over to Christiania, an autonomous piece of land in Christianshavn on the outskirts of Copenhagen that I understand as an old military base that a bunch of hippies occupied back in the day. The area is known for selling marijuana and hash, and since the sale of these products are illegal everywhere else in the country, there has been an everlasting disagreement between Christiania and the state and city governments over the legality of these practices. The area was shut down last year but I guess Christiania ended up buying the piece of land from the government and it is now up and running again. It sounds like a really complicated situation and a lot of the questions that I asked about it didn’t seem to have any clear cut answers. So Malene and Katrine showed me the whole area, from the five liter jars full of marijuana to the shacks/homes on the banks of the lakes to the Nemo stage where concerts occur. After briefly partaking in the local traditions I said good bye to Katrine and then Malene and I made the short walk over to the Savior’s Church, a beautiful church with a huge gold spiral rolling up the spire. I of course demanded that we go to the top of the Church, which Malene agreed to do despite her fear of heights. Running short for time we sprinted to the top, enjoyed the view and then took the steps two at a time on the way down. We ran for the bus and I got to the train station with just enough time to say good bye to Malene and thank her for everything before hopping on the train to Linkoping, Sweden.

 

Linkoping:

I got into Linkoping late that night and although I found my hostel easily enough, just like my hostel in Gothenburg, the door was locked and the reception area was closed. Now I’m not stupid enough to put myself in the same situation twice and therefore had checked several times how late their reception was supposed to be open till, yet here I was and here they were not. So I ended up asking a nice young couple on the street if I could borrow their phone and call the hostel, who informed me that my room was unlocked with the key on my bed and what the combo to the building was. Another tid bit of information about Linkoping is that it’s a small town that doesn’t have a huge tourism industry, so the cheapest place I could stay was actually in a room with two beds. So after I tucked my backpack into the bed next to mine I went straight to sleep so that I could get up early for a big day which turned out to be the most stressful and gratifying days of my trip.

I got up at seven in order to get some breakfast before catching a bus to Bjorsater where my great-great grandpa Johan Werner Johansson was born before he immigrated to the U.S. However, the bus schedule I had looked up online was wrong so I ended up missing the morning bus and was forced to wait till 12:30 to catch the next one. While I was waiting, I decided to make the most of my time and go check out the Linkoping Cathedral and the Linkoping Castle, the former being much more impressive than the latter. The Cathedral was really impressive and I ended up getting a bit of a history lesson of the town. Linkoping was only the second diocese in all of Sweden, becoming so in 1104. And it became a city in 1287 when the first Cathedral was built at the same location that the current one stands. The city was also the location of the final battle between King Sigismund Vasa the 3^rd and his Uncle Duke Charles in 1598. By the way, in Sweden you don’t become King Sigismund the 3^rd because two of your family members already occupied the name Sigismund, instead this means that two Kings before you used the name Sigismund and thus you are the third King to be named Sigismund. Sigismund inherited the Swedish throne from his father in 1592 even though he was already King of Poland and had a Catholic background. Protestant Sweden was immediately uncomfortable with the King’s faith, but nothing dramatic was done, mostly because Sigismund spent most of his time away in Poland. However, his distance from the throne also made it possible for the Privy Council to elect Sigismund’s Uncle, Duke Charles as regent of Sweden even while Sigismund opposed it. In 1598, tired of aggression from Sigismund’s loyal followers, Charles initiated military action in Sweden, finally catching the attention of Sigismund who took his army north in order to take his Swedish throne back from Charles. However, Charles defeated his nephew in Linkoping at the Battle of Stangebro, taking him captive but eventually releasing him to the commonwealth. The outcome of this battle is actually a major reason why my family today is Lutheran. It was also the main reason that relations between Sweden and Poland fell apart, ending a brief period of good relations between the countries and leading to the Seven Year War against Sigismund.

After the Battle of Stangebro, a court was appointed to judge those that had fought on the side of Sigismund and eight of them were sentenced to execution, which was carried out in the main square of Linkoping and is called the Linkoping Bloodbath. So naturally after visiting the Cathedral I went to the main square of Linkoping to grab some lunch. After visiting a buffet and eating as much food as possible, I went back to the bus station for my bus to Bjorsater. I got to the station a bit early and while I was waiting decided to copy down the email my Aunt Judy and Uncle Jim had sent me with information on my family. Ten minutes before my bus was to arrive while transferring this information, I found a huge mistake on my part. I had read the email incorrectly, my great-great grandpas MOTHER was born in Bjorsater while her son Johan was actually born in Gistad (pronounced ye-sta). I spent the next twenty minutes doing my best impression of a chicken with its head cut off. Frantically I ran to the ticket machine to see if any trains actually went to Gistad and discovered that they do; in fact, there was one leaving in fifteen minutes. I had already purchased a ticket from Linkoping to Stockholm for later that night though, so I wanted to know if I could just catch my train to Stockholm from the Gistad train station. So I left my ticket machine and ran to the ticket desk to talk to a real person, who informed that indeed I could catch the train to Stockholm from a train station that was just a stop away from Gistad. After getting this information, I proudly went back to the ticket machine to buy my tickets and finally go see the land of my ancestors. But in order to keep my stress levels as high as possible, I suddenly realized that this entire plan was pointless without my bag that was at my hostel across the street. So I left my ticket machine once again and flew out the front door of the train station glancing at my watch as I flew down a flight of stairs in one big leap before I suddenly stopped. My train was coming in three minutes; my efforts to grab my bag and return in time would surely be futile. So I made an instant decision: I’ll just get a roundtrip ticket to Gistad, coming back to Linkoping to grab my bag and catch my train to Stockholm from here. So I ran up to my ticket machine once again as the surrounding Swedish train patrons looked at each other, wondering if they were having déjà vu or if this kid was just an energetic idiot. So I flew through the ticket process glancing at my watch, the train station’s clock, and any other time telling device in a 10 yard radius. Then I made a Swedish woman’s day when she got to witness me sprint out of the train tunnel just as my train’s wheels started moving. I seriously considered putting on my cowboy pants and jumping on the back of the moving train before I stopped running and just started mumbling cuss words as the Swedish woman tried to hide her laughter. Now I was really screwed; the next train to Gistad wasn’t until 3 PM. Disheartened and irritated, I found a seat in the train station and waited impatiently for my train to come pick me up. I went and talked to my friend at the ticket desk and luckily she told me that I could just use my same ticket to Gistad on the three o’clock train. Of course the connecting stations for the one o’clock and three o’clock trains to Gistad were completely different, so I had to copy down the correct times and stations onto the back of my ticket. I successfully caught my train at three o’clock and three minutes later found myself at what I thought was the connecting train station. But this was no train station.  It was just an open air train stop on one rail of tracks. After unsuccessfully matching my departure time with the track’s departure times, I decided it was time to ask for help. There were only two people to choose from, and one of them was on the other side of the tracks, so I asked this black Swedish girl if she could help me and discovered that she barely knew any English. The fact that my physical ticket was for two hours earlier and a completely different station didn’t help but we finally figured out that my connection was not for a train but for a bus. After thanking her and hoping she understood what I was saying, I made my way to the bus station just in time to catch my bus to Gistad. My bus consisted of a cute girl about my age, an old man, a young girl about age ten and two young boys that were about eight. The cute girl got off at one of the first couple stops while the rest of us took the bus through farm country until we finally arrived at a small dirt parking lot with an automotive shop on one side and an endless field of cows and hay on the other. Surprisingly, the old man had nothing to do with the children and left in one direction while the ten year old girl who suddenly appeared to be the baby sitter took the two boys over to a small residential area. As the bus pulled away, I just there starring around trying to get a grasp on where the fuck I was.

The problem was that there was really no common area in the city where people gathered. There was no grocery store, no gas station, no library, definitely no city hall, no park, no stores whatsoever, and as I walked in the direction of the residential area there appeared to be no people either. I walked from the North outskirts of town to the South in about five minutes and discovered the only government building in the entire town, a small school. The town population couldn’t have been more than 300 people and given its secluded location everyone in the town could be put into one of three groups. 1. Retired, 2. A commuter that enjoyed living in a quiet town out in the boondocks, or 3. Employed as a local teacher, auto mechanic or farmer. As I walked past the southern city limits and started admiring the vast fields of farmland, I finally found what I was looking for, a town sign. But since I hadn’t seen a soul since arriving I spent the next thirty minutes running back and forth between the camera and the sign setting up the timer on the camera. I’m sure by the end of the day word had gotten around town that some weird kid had wandered through town and was so fascinated by their small farm town that he’d ran back and forth taking pictures of himself for an hour. Then when the Gistad townsfolk go into Linkoping to do their grocery shopping, they’ll share their story with the locals who will come to the accurate conclusion that that must have been the same energetic idiot that they saw at the train station the other week. And if fate actually does exist, then the story will make it to the oldest man in Gistad who’ll laugh and say, “boy that sure reminds of the stories my grandpa used to tell me about his neighbors the Johanssons.” 

After my personal photo shoot, I just spent a couple hours on cloud nine wandering around the town that my family came from. After covering the entire town a couple times, I found the Gistad Trail, which was this trail through the woods just outside of town that’s used for cross-country skiing during the winter and hiking during the summer.  It was so cool to come back to my family’s roots and everything that I did there was ten times cooler just because of where I was. After getting my fill, I happily skipped over to the bus stop and found the bus waiting to take me back to Linkoping. The bus driver discovered that I was American when I got on the bus and since I was his only passenger I sat up front and we chatted for the thirty minute ride into town. He was from Armenia, spent ten years living in Britain and now has a Swedish wife who he lives with in Linkoping. As seems to be the instant talking point among Americans and foreigners we talked and compared our different forms of government, giving criticism and support of each other’s countries. After this we moved onto traveling and he told me about the places he’d been to in Europe and which places he liked best. Finally we said good-bye as he dropped me off in Linkoping. I grabbed my stuff from the hostel, got some food in town and then caught my train to Sweden without any crazy mishaps.

Stockholm:

I got into Stockholm late that night and made my way through the busy light up streets to my hostel and checked in. When I got up to my room, I met one of my roommates, a Polish girl at the end of her week-long trip to Stockholm. She was incredibly nice and we stayed up talking for hours, discussing politics, education, the benefits and difficulties of visiting each other’s countries, her previous travels and my current ones, and the outrageous Scandinavian prices. She was a really nice girl and was also the only person that I’d met so far that had no desire or intention to ever visit America.

The next day I got up early in order to see as much of Stockholm as humanly possible. I first visited the Vasa Museum, which was a really cool experience. The ship itself was a magnificent sight and the story behind it is just as incredible. It was built between 1626 and 1628 during the Thirty Years’ War against Poland under the command of the Swedish King Gustavus Adolphus. The ship was structurally unsound, built top heavy because the King wanted an uncommonly high superstructure so that the soldiers on board would be able to shoot down on their foes from a higher and more advantageous height. The ship was built during a time of dramatic transformation for Sweden, as it was becoming a strong and dominant power in the Baltic region for the first time in the country’s existence. Gustavus Adolphus is accredited as being one of the most successful Swedish kings ever in terms of success in warfare. With this glory and power also came a lot of riches for the Swedish kingdom. This abundance of riches mixed with the fact that Sweden was using almost all of its resources for waging war meant that the Vasa ship would be constructed not only to defeat its foes but also to display Sweden’s power and wealth. Vasa was one of the most decorated, largest, and most heavily armed warships of its time, which become stunningly apparent while I walked around and admired the outer woodwork and gold attachments on the ship. The only problem was that Gustavus, strained for a larger naval presence due to several storms that had destroyed dozens of his warships, ignored the obvious faults with the top heavy Vasa war ship and demanded its immediate presence with the Baltic fleet. During its maiden voyage on August 10^th, 1628 the ship foundered and sank less than a nautical mile out of port when it first encountered a wind stronger than a breeze. 

After admiring the ship and reading three floors worth of information on the incredible ship I set out to see the Royal Palace. First, I went inside the Stockholm Cathedral and admired the incredible wood carvings and gold pulpit. I don’t think I’ll ever get tired of admiring the insides of European cathedral;, they’re all just so incredible! After stumbling around the Cathedral for a while since I had my head tilted up gazing over the amazing ceiling paintings, I walked next door to get a door of the Armory. Luckily, I showed up five minutes after an English tour had started so I just caught up to them and joined the group for the rest of the tour, which turned out to be really beneficial. I learned a ton of Swedish history and got in depth knowledge about all of the crowns and jewels that were on display there. If you showed me a picture of a random Swedish crown right now, I could tell you if it belongs to a man or a woman, whether it’s for a King, Queen, or Prince, about when it was constructed and for whom it was constructed for. After this knowledge fulfilling tour I made my way upstairs to catch another free tour through the Palace’s State Rooms. The first room was the Hall of State which used to be used for Coronation Ceremonies and for meetings of the state which the King would lead. Since 1974, the Swedish King’s duties have been simply for representative and ceremonial purposes, meaning that he has no real power and therefore that the Hall of State gets little use anymore.  The room contained a really cool throne made completely of silver that was a gift to Queen Kristina in 1650 though. Other notable rooms in the Palace was a Hall of Mirrors built with the one in the Palace of Versailles as its inspiration, the ball room (which is also referred to as the White Sea), and Gustav III’s State Bedchamber. This bedchamber has a cool story behind it because it was the very room that Gustav III died in 1792, two weeks after an assassination attempt. Gustav III was a strong willed and demanding king, restoring an autocracy that had previously been rid of. Every morning he would wake up from his actual bed chamber only to go to his state bedchamber where a small number of special individuals would get the honored opportunity to watch him get dressed. Apparently this event, which is usually an honor, was feared by many of Stockholm’s citizens since Gustav would yell and demand the approval of those in audience. Anyways, in 1792, there was to be a huge masked ball at the Royal Opera House in Stockholm which Gustav would attend after having a private dinner party. Well during the dinner party he was warned that an assassination attempt would be made on his life at the ball, but being the stubborn man that he was, he ignored the warning and went anyways. It was there that he was shot once in the back before being taken back to the State Bedchamber in the Stockholm Palace. Why he was taken to this more formal and public room instead of his actual bedchamber nobody knows, but it was from this room that he ordered the execution of his assassins as well as where he took his last breath.

After the Royal palace I walked over to see the Riddarholmen Church which had this really cool metal spire before I continued on to see the City Hall building. This was a beautiful building on the northern bank of the Riddarfjarden, which is a major lake in Stockholm. The building also is the location for the gold plated tomb of Birger Jarl, the man who founded Stockholm in 1250. I then moved on to see the Santa Clara Church, which was also marvelously decorated inside with gold, silver, and wood sculptors and engravings. After the Santa Clara Church I finally made my way back to the hostel to reunite with Margot. We went out to dinner together and the banter and jokes picked up right where they left off in Oslo. It was really nice to have my travel buddy back after being alone for a week and I made her promise not to leave me alone in Europe ever again, especially not during the next leg of our trip where I would really need her assistance: Russia. The next morning we got up early, took the bus to the airport, and caught a plane to St. Petersburg on a Russian airline.

 

 

 

Denmark (Eurotrip_2012)

             The relatively cheap fifteen hour overnight train ride from Amsterdam to Copenhagen was anything but luxurious. The cabin we were in was simply six seats facing each other and while my fellow passengers had no problem sleeping I couldn’t get more than a couple hours of rest under my belt.

            The train also broke down in Odense, which is about a two hour train ride directly west of Copenhagen, so after sitting on the platform for an hour waiting for them to fix the train they announced that this train would no longer be continuing on to any of its remaining stops. Instead, we were transferred/crammed into a smaller train full of business people on their way to work and forced to stand for another two hours while the train made its way to Copenhagen airport where we were to meet up with Margot’s father, Mikael, her grandparents, Kirstin and Harry, and her uncle Paul. Welcomed by Mikael at the airport we were asked if we desired any coffee, which I greedily accepted. I can honestly say that before I came to Denmark I’d had less than 10 cups of coffee in my entire life, well this cup at the airport was the beginning of a coffee marathon that’s left me leaving Denmark with the ability to say that I’ve honestly had more than 70 cups of coffee in my entire life.

Margot’s grandmother Kirstin had just turned 90 a couple of weeks earlier and a birthday celebration in Copenhagen was why so many of Margot’s relatives were coming into the city and also why she was so excited to be going there. We separated from Paul and Margot’s grandparents at the airport and took the metro to Jan’s apartment to meet up with Nina, Margot’s sister, and Thomas, Margot’s second cousin. Jan had graciously allowed several of us to use the apartment for a week and also to use it for a huge party following the much more formal birthday dinner. Thomas knew that we were coming into town and thus had planned a bunch of awesome things for us to do in Denmark. However, we didn’t know about these plans ahead of time and were a bit unprepared when we arrived in Copenhagen, so things got moving a little slower than Thomas probably anticipated. Eventually we made our way to the car which was parked out in Roskilde at Thomas’ Uncle Borge’s apartment, had some coffee and pastries with him and then got in the car for a four hour drive up to Hobro where Thomas’ grandma Ingor and Margot’s aunt Helen and Uncle Jens live. The car however, had different plans for us when it decided to break down right before we were to cross the huge Great Belt Bridge that connects the island of Zealand which is where Copenhagen is to an island called Funen which is just the island between Zealand and the huge main Danish island of Jutland. Thomas and I spent the next hour pushing the car up and down the side of the road while Mikael unsuccessfully tried to push start the car in second gear. Miraculously, after we had called Danish Triple A and were waiting impatiently on the side of the road Mikael somehow got the car to start. So once again we were off but quickly found ourselves in a huge traffic jam while crossing the bridge passing right next to Aarhus. When we finally made it to Helen’s house it was well past midnight but this didn’t stop us from staying up until two drinking wine, learning about the families inside jokes, and receiving a well needed van Loon family tree for future reference.

The next day we made our way to east coast of Denmark and enjoyed a nice day at the beach. We got our feet wet in the Atlantic Ocean and drove up and down the beach searching for an old war bunker while Thomas complained about, “all the damn German’s going to the Danish beach.” We were originally planning on visiting Skagen on this day, which is the northern tip of the country where two parts of the North Sea, the Kattegat and the Skagerrak meet, but due to the unanticipated length of the previous nights’ voyage we decided to take the much shorter trip to the beach and it turned out to be a great day.

The Danish weather was cooperative, which I would soon learn was a rarity, and it was great to see the old musty bunker that six Danish soldiers were once stationed in. After the beach we drove past Thomas’ old school, which is most similarly compared to an American boarding school and then regrouped at Helens place before heading up to Aalborg for a night out. We meet two of Thomas’ old school friends there, Jacob and Oscar, and enjoyed a free outdoor concert while drinking the infamous Danish beer Tuborg. After hanging at the concert for a while we grabbed some dinner and then went bowling. By popular decision we decided to have a bowling competition, pinning the three Americans against the three Danes while Mikael observed. Unfortunately, Margot, Nina and I disgraced us all when we got annihilated three games in a row. Plus the Danish guys got a couple strikes when the red pin was at the top of the triangle, which meant that they got free shots from the bar. It was a sad day for America and I couldn’t feel more ashamed of my performance, nor could I forget how ashamed I ought to feel since Thomas continued to remind me throughout the rest of my stay in Denmark. He also became quite infatuated with Yo Mama jokes during my stay, which Margot suggests is my fault for joking around too much, but in the end it simply lead to a lot of laughs and good times at the expense of my mama. Sorry mom.

                After going to a hipster bar and learning how to lose consistently at a game called Liar’s Dice we made the drive back to Hobro and hit the hay. The following day we took a short two minute drive over to Thomas’ grandma Ingor’s house for some breakfast and coffee. Ingor seemed to me a very happy woman and I really enjoyed her company, promising to come back up with Thomas the following week and see her again. Her house was also positioned next to the Fish Farm that Helens husband Jens works on. He had just constructed a huge brand new fish farm and I thought the whole process was really interesting. Thomas grew up here and constantly helps Jens out with the farm and all of its construction so he gave me a thorough tour of the farm. It all seemed so simple the way that everything was laid out and the way they described how the process worked but you could tell that it took a whole lot of hard man hours to build and maintain the farm. It sounds stupid because it was just a fish farm but I really enjoyed learning how the farm worked.

             After this we got in the car for the long car ride back to Copenhagen and then scrambled to get ready for the big Birthday dinner in time. After changing my dress three times and spending thirty minutes doing my hair I realized that I was in fact a man and therefore it only took me five minutes to get ready while the ladies participated in these bewildering preparation habits. We took to the streets of Copenhagen in a hurry with the Danish amusement park Tivoli as our destination.

                Upon arriving at Tivoli, which by the way acted as Walt Disney’s inspiration when building Disney World, we were confronted with a new dilemma, which one of these restaurants holds 52 members of the van Loon family? We spent the next twenty minutes walking around and asking hostesses whether Kirstin van Loon was having a birthday dinner at their restaurant. We finally found the correct restaurant but we were the very last people to show up. As I sat down I found Nina sitting across from me, hiding behind a wall of wine glasses that would soon be filled one by one with expensive wine and a bunch of Margot’s relatives to my left. I quickly made friends with Martin, Peter and Mikael as we acted cultured in order to match the sophistication of our food dishes and then whispered to each other how exactly we were supposed to eat this certain dish. And thus we ate our delicious food and drank our delicious wine and I couldn’t have felt more honored that Margot’s family actually allowed me to be here. During the party Paul, Margot’s Uncle who had organized the party, kept urging family members to come up and give speeches in Kirstin’s honor which they all happily agreed to do. Margot gave a wonderful speech about her Farmour and Nina eventually gave a really nice speech about fudge and how much Kirstin loves it.

            After the main courses Paul crowned Kristoffer with the best speech of the night by awarding him a bolo tie and then everyone started to mingle. I went over and started talking to Thomas and his older brother Rasmus, who Margot and I will be seeing again in Florence, when the waitress decided to just give us a bottle of red wine. This would’ve been fine except the same waitress had just left a bottle of wine with Mikael, Peter, Martin and I at the other table half an hour ago. Needless to say, when Thomas and I made our way to the exit trading swigs of Whiskey with Helen and some family member who I can’t quite remember I was feeling pretty good, not as good as Nina but still pretty good. I don’t want this to turn into a story of debauchery and whiskey shots so I’ll try and keep the story short. We all went to a karaoke bar at the theme park where I sung My Way by Frank Sinatra with Martin and Bohemian Rhapsody with Thomas. Nobody clapped when we were finished except the group of drunk van Loons in the corner. Then we all walked back to the apartment where the “Youth Party” was supposed to occur. Kristoffer and I got lost in the city and after being told by a bouncer that his buildings wall was not a fucking toilet we finally made it back to the apartment. Shortly after we arrived all of the grown-ups decided to crash the youth party which I thought was great but the other youths agreed was just downright rude. I met Jan (the owner of the apartment), re-met Malene who is Kristoffer’s sister and Margot’s awesome cousin that I met last October when Nina brought her over to my apartment, Malene’s sister Katrine who is equally as awesome and has two kids with Peter, and the list goes on. We mingled and drank and woke up with hangovers at noon the following day.

                We said goodbye to Margot as she left with Mikael to see the Danish island of Bornholm where Margot’s grandparents met and then Thomas and I ventured out to begin our recovery from the previous night, finding an all you can eat buffet breakfast which we thoroughly enjoyed. After making it back to the apartment and cleaning ourselves as well as the apartment up we finally went out to see the city at half past four. Somehow we managed to see the Royal Theatre, the National Sandcastle Convention, Amalienborg Palace, The Little Mermaid, Frederik’s Church, Holmen Naval Base, the Gefion Fountain, Rosenborg Castle, and I experienced Danish weather at its finest, which means that I was randomly caught in monsoon-like rains for ten minutes and then it instantly got sunny again. The Gefion Fountain has a really cool story behind it though, according to legend the Swedish king Gylfi promised the Norse goddess Gefjun that she could have all of the land that she could plow in one night. She turned her four giant sons into Ox and proceeded to plow the entire island of Zealand off from Sweden which is how the island was created. Later that night when we set out to find Christiana but failed we continued our sight-seeing efforts instead and I saw Parliament, Christiansborg Castle, and the building which housed the old Danish stock exchange.

                The following day Thomas and I set out for Hobro in Jutland to stay with Ingor for a couple days. We successfully made the drive out there without any problems and decided to go mountain biking in the Danish Rold Forest which was really awesome and a ton of fun. Completely worn out we gobbled up Ingor’s Danish dinner, thanked her, watched The Gods Must Be Crazy and then went to bed for a whopping eleven hours. After waking up at noon with the day completely shot we just relaxed and I got caught up with all of my expenses and journal entries. The next day I said good-bye to Thomas as he put me on a train bound for Copenhagen so that he could prepare for classes which started the following week.

                I met up with Dane and Caitlyn in Copenhagen for some dinner and we witnessed a really odd and confusing outdoor play involving a doctor, a donkey, a guitar, and a shitload of chopped wood. By the way Dane is Paul’s son and lives in Boulder as an EMT, as does his wife Caitlyn. The following day I explored Copenhagen again except this time I was the tour guide for Dane and Caitlyn whereas the previous time Thomas was guiding me. I did, however witness the changing of the guards which was completely new to me and really awesome. After exploring the city we went to Helsingor, where Jan has his summer home and where he was letting everybody who had gone to Bornholm stay. I had dinner there with Margot, Mikael, Paul, Jackie, Kirstin, Harry, Dane and Caitlyn. I also tried Herring for the first time which I honestly thought was delicious and didn’t quite understand why people make such a big deal about it.

       After dinner Margot, Dane, Caitlyn and I took a train back to the apartment in Copenhagen. The following day Dane and Caitlyn flew back to Denver while Mikael discovered that the German airport workers were on strike and thus he couldn’t leave and instead came back to meet Margot and I at the apartment. We went to the Rosenborg Castle and this time I got to go inside and see the crown jewels and all of the different rooms. The castle was a lot smaller than those I had seen in England and although it was completely different I thought it was really interesting in different ways. For instance, the ceilings weren’t as decorated or incredible as those that we saw at Windsor Castle or the Royal Palace but the rooms were smaller and thus the ceilings were a lot closer to you as you walked below them. This made it possible to really see the detail and the carvings and engravings that were impossible to see in the huge rooms in England. The castle had lot of really cool rooms including a room covered completely mirrors and an amazing grand hall on the top floor. The entire ceiling was decorated in carvings, the two coronation chairs at the end were made out of narwhale tusks and the walls were covered by twelve tapestries that depicted the Scanian war. It was a really cool castle and I’m glad I got to see it.

                That night Mikael went to eat dinner with Klaus and Margot and I met up with Malene and Katrine to have some wine with some of Malene’s co-workers on the canal in front of her workplace. Everyone was really friendly and we had a great time drinking and listening to music with them. Afterword, the four of us came back to the apartment to cook a simple dinner of pasta that turned out to not be so simple. The stove suddenly stopped working after about ten minutes and we were left with half cooked pasta in lukewarm water. We were forced to bowl water in the coffee machine and then pour it on the pasta several times before it was finally done and we could eat. While we were struggling to cook dinner Katrine announced that she couldn’t wait any longer for dinner and had to get back home to watch her children. Just before dinner was ready Malene’s friend Nikolina came over to the apartment to have some dinner with us and thus made us four again.

                After dinner Mikael arrived back from his dinner with Klaus and the girls encouraged him come out to the bars with us. We were at the first bar until about two when we came back to the apartment where Margot proceeded to pass out and where the rest of us decided to go back out to a place called Hong Kong bar. Malene had to explain to me that in Copenhagen there are some bars, like Hong Kong bar, that never close and don’t really get busy until about 4:30 AM. Well true to her word, we beat the rush arriving at three and the bar was still packed when we finally left out the front door and the discovered the sun beating down on us.

          I didn’t realize just how big of a mistake this was until Margot woke me up a couple hours later and reminded me that we had plans to go out near Koge to play volleyball and have dinner with Margot’s relatives Kirstin and her husband Kenneth. Kirstin is part of a volleyball club so she had some of the other guys in the club come and play volleyball with us on the Danish beach which was a ton of fun. However, after colliding with my 200 lb teammate, getting a mouthful of sand, and getting hit in the face with the ball, which coincidentally went over the net and scored us a point, I have to admit I was hurting just a little bit. After volleyball we went back to their house where we chatted, learned about all the hip Danish music like Nick & Jay and Panamah, and had the most amazing dinner I’ve had during the trip so far. It was sirloin wrapped in bacon, some amazing scalloped potatoes, vegetables, and some Danish ice cream for dessert. By the way the three Danish foods that I was the most impressed with were Ice Cream, Hot Dogs and Rye Bread. My mouth is starting to water just thinking about them. After dinner we said goodbye and then took the train back in to Copenhagen. We stayed up watching a movie with Malene and then took to the sack.

                The following morning Margot and I went out to Mager Strand to have brunch with Nanna who is the daughter of Jan, and her husband Rasmus.

           They were incredibly kind and it was great spending the morning with them. After brunch Nanna dropped us off at the metro and then Margot exclaimed that her phone was gone and that she’d left in Nanna’s car. Well Nanna didn’t live too far away, like 1 ½ kilometers, so I said I would run back to the house. I spent the next twenty minutes running around Denmark desperately searching for this house that I could vaguely remember driving to, but just as I was about to freak out and try and find my way back to the metro I saw Nanna waiting for me outside her house. Turns out that Margot never lost her phone at all, it was just in a different pocket of her purse. I had to laugh at the situation but I informed Margot when Nanna brought me back to the station that I was no longer going to believe her when she said that she had lost something. I don't know if any of you are familiar with the Boy that Cried Wolf, well Margot is the Girl that Cried, "I lost my ticket/phone/money/keys." And if that was the name of her first book then the sequel would be called the Girl that Cried, "Oh wait nevermind, it's right here." The most amusing part is that she constantly thinks that she's lost something but 99% of the time it turns out to not be lost at all. Luckily so far it's just resulted in some laughs and the release of all the stress that was just created, so I have no complaints.

                When we got back into Copenhagen we did some last minute cleaning up at the apartment and then went to grab coffee with Malene and Katrine before we had to catch the ferry to Oslo. We went to this hipster coffee shop that played a ton of Johnny Cash and talked about how great the past couple weeks were and how we hoped we could see each other again soon. They walked us to the ferry dock, said goodbye and just like that Denmark was behind us and we were sailing for Norway.