Posts Tagged ‘food’

We landed in Berlin’s TXL Airport without a hitch after passing through Latvia’s hugely expensive Riga airport. The first sign that we had that life is different in Berlin is the convenient Contact Lens Dispenser, right on the way out of the airport! Neither Hazel nor I had ever seen such a thing so of course we were required to buy some contacts for me right there on the spot. Hopefully they will be usable during snorkel and scuba dives later in the trip!

Contacts!

After some currywurst in the airport, we were refreshed enough to try to find our new hostel: Main Station Hostel. You would think that this hostel would be right next to the main station in Berlin (known as Hauptbanhof) but in fact it is a small distance away from a rather secondary train stop on one of the city lines. Oh well. We found it after about 30 minutes and were pleasantly surprised at the quality of the hostel. The bunk beds were solid – no shaking – and the lockers were more like little closets. But the best part was that our 8-bunk dorm room was divided into 3 sections: a bit by the door with 6 beds, a bathroom, and an intermediate room with a table, some lockers, and only 2 beds! So we were able to have a a semi-private room there. We were both still exhausted; running around Helsinki with friends is a great way to visit, but it does take up a lot of your energy to do so much cool stuff, and we still hadn’t had a chance to do absolutely nothing for a while after Herrang. So we more or less went to bed straight away.
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We pulled in to Helsinki in the morning and were met from the boat by my friend Tania. She even managed to spot us as we were walking down the long hallway into the terminal. Apparently she first noticed our backpacks and then was sure it was us because Justin was wearing his “pirate hat.”  (click the link and scroll down if you want to see the hat.)  And this is what she would expect from someone who married me! I was still so excited to see her and to introduce Justin and we had a wonderful three days hanging out and getting to know her awesome boyfriend Lauri.

Lauri, Tania, and Justin

We spent a lot of time walking around the city and just chatting and catching up. Tania knows a lot about Finland and knows all of the good places to go, so she was a wonderful tour guide.

Fountain in downtown Helsinki

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Herräng Sign

Each summer, the tiny town of Herräng becomes the swing dancing capital of the world. Hazel and I had both wanted to attend the camp for several years before but actually getting to Sweden for weeks on end in the summer was always too difficult. This year, we made sure to go by setting up our Europe itinerary such that we’d end up there at the right time! (more…)

After lounging around in the Copenhagen first class lounge it was finally time to go to Sweden. The train ride was uneventful, but we could notice a change already – there was no free chocolate on the Swedish trains! I suppose this was offset, though, by the free internet access provided to first class customers.

We arrived in Stockholm and tried to find our hostel, called Interhostel. A few things got in our way, though; first thing was that we weren’t able to find the street we needed when we left the station! It turned out that we got off at the wrong level of the station. This taught us our first lesson about Stockholm: the bridges are very important! Eventually we found our way to the side of the station and looked down on a cross street 100 feet below, which turned out to be the one we wanted. Anyway, we took this road for a while (in fact until it changed names) but the next turn was nowhere to be found! We were beginning to get a little weary at this point, but we pressed on along the new road and found our turn after two more blocks. We were relieved at this point because the hostel was less than a block away.

Interhostel was a pretty nice place. The beds were comfortable and spacious, the hostel was cheap, and our room was nearly empty the whole time we were there. Of course in Scandinavia the norm is to charge travelers for bed linens (we used our sleep sacks), which was a little unusual to us, but on the whole we approved.

Our Bunk At Interhostel

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Castle in the park

After a very full day of seeing Denmark we made it back to Copenhagen and headed to our hostel. We didn’t have any trouble finding it and quickly got settled in. The place was called Generator Hostel and I have to say that I had some mixed feelings about it. On the one hand, it was very clean, very new, had wonderful comfortable beds, only 4 people per room, a bathroom for each dorm room, some of the beds were not bunk beds, and it was decorated really nicely. Those are some pretty big positives. But there was a strange vibe to it. They didn’t allow you to bring in any outside food and there was no kitchen facility. In a country where a sandwich routinely costs about $10, it was very annoying to not be able to stock up at a cheaper grocery store and eat in. The hostel of course had a bar that sold food ($11 for breakfast!), and they were doing their very best to get you to spend money there. The other thing was that they advertised wi-fi, but in reality, the only place you could access it was in this same bar area. It made me feel as though they were quite desperate for me to spend money there. But all in all, the comfy bed made up for a lot.

Hostel in Copenhagen (my bed!)

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This was a really exciting time for us, as we were about to embark on a type of journey that neither of us had experienced before: a sleeper train. With our Eurail ticket, the train fare was included but unfortunately not the bed reservation, which can be very expensive! Our ticket, being first class, allowed us to get 1st class beds – one bunk each in a 2 bunk room – but there were two reasons we decided not to get that. First, those beds cost over 100 euros EACH! Of course we were not going to purchase those tickets at that price. Second, we could not have reserved beds in the same room! They were single-sex only. These two things completely convinced us to downgrade to a 2nd class sleeper car which cost 26 euros each and was 2 bunks in the same room with 6 bunks total. That’s right, we were able to book bunks together in 2nd class. How strange!

Sleeper Car

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We left Luxembourg in the morning and had a rather slow train ride to Strasbourg, in France.  I’m not sure if there was something wrong with the train, but about every 20 minutes we would stop for five or ten minutes before continuing on.  And not at a station either, just in the middle of nowhere.  Still, it was pretty countryside and we were not in too much of a hurry.

Once we got to Strasbourg it about noon and we headed straight to the information desk in the train station.  They were very helpful and explained how to get the tram to the hotel we had booked, and what the best transportation options are.  Strasbourg has a really good tram system that runs at most hours of the day and it is possible to get a ticket (for about 5 Euros) that lets up to three people travel on the trams as much as they want for 24 hours.  This was so, so good.  We were able to see so much of the city and had no problems at all getting around.

Our hotel was called Cerise Hotel and was a big success.  Inexpensive, really clean, internet in the rooms (important because we still had a lot of planning we needed to do) and even had a fridge and microwave in the room so that you could eat in a bit.  We took pretty full advantage of that!

Our plan was to do a few hours of planning and work on updating the (very out of date) blog and then to get out and see something of the city in the evening.  Despite having a small setback with our internet not working, the hotel sent someone up immediately to fix it, and we were able to get a few days of plans finalized.  This calmed us down substantially and as we set out to see the city we were feeling so happy and positive!

We took the tram to the central area and then walked around taking it in.

Canal and "Petite France"

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Because of the stress we encountered upon entering Europe, we decided to remedy our poor planning as soon as possible and reserve 1 week or more of our upcoming accomodation and transportation.  Of course, nothing is that simple – our hotel, being the cheapest in Luxembourg, did not have internet available (but, interestingly, it did have an ashtray in the shared bathroom), so we went on a quest to find some cheap or free wifi in town.  This also afforded us a chance to sightsee along the way into town!

Valley and Bridge

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I just have to start this post by saying that I completely neglected my camera for this part of the trip. I think it was because we were staying with friends and family and were so busy enjoying their company that I didn’t even think to get it out! So this post will be light on the photos. I’ll try to make the writing extra descriptive, but I’m not sure that will make up for it!

We had an easy bus trip from Durham to Oxford and even though it was raining when we arrived we had no trouble finding another bus to my aunt’s house. She has always been very encouraging to me and on several occasions has had chats with me that have very much helped me figure things out or see things more clearly, so I was really, really happy to see her.

She took us to a high table dinner at Brasenose College (Oxford University) and we had a wonderful time! Before she mentioned it to us, I did not even know what this event was, or even that it existed, so I’ll try to explain and people can chime in on the comments if I have it wrong. The colleges at the university serve dinners for the students and staff and it is an opportunity for everyone to meet up and share a meal. The high table is at the end of the hall and is where the professors and lecturers and their guests get to sit. There is a formal seating arrangement and they serve you amazing food and wine and you get to meet all kinds of people who you might not otherwise meet.

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The next stop on our family tour of the UK was Durham, where my brother is working on his PhD. He recently bought a house, so we were excited to see him and to check out his new place. He gave us a wonderful tour of castle and abbey ruins and I had a blast taking tons of photos.

We started out with a bit of a walking tour of the town, cathedral, and the castle which is part of the university.

It was a beautiful walk along the river. The cathedral is in the background.

Walking along the river into town

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