Copen-Pest

Surprise, surprise, I'm late with my blog post. So I am combining my last two weekends, which will be interesting because they could not have been more different.

Two weekends ago I spent one and a halfish days in Copenhagen, Denmark. It was a large group of 8 people, which has it's ups and downs. The plus side is I don't have to fear being murdered and robbed everywhere I go, although I usually still do. We arrived in the airport about 5 hours early for our flight so we paid 10 euro for a mediocre cheese sandwich and took turns using the weak airport wifi, scrambling to finish weekend homework.

When we arrived in Copenhagen, we were greeted with the smack of icy Nordic air. It was certainly one of the chillier weekends, which was perfect as it also happened to be the one weekend I didn't pack a hat or a scarf. After the traditional 30-45 minutes struggling to find the key and unlock the apartment we rented, we went looking for a relaxed local bar.

The first place we tried was so overbearingly smoke filled we couldn't see our hands in front of our faces. You sort of have to realize it's a culture thing as much as anything else is. Eventually we settled down at this odd and slightly frightening bar by our apartments.

The next day we got up early and immediately set out for coffee and pastries which, besides tiny coffee cups and expensive public restrooms, is the easiest thing to find in Europe. We drank our coffee as we headed to Trivoli theater which was closed until April. Then we wandered around and stared at the once copper roofs weathered over the years into a gorgeous green-blue which I now am promising to design my future home around.

We got on a boat tour of the canals and sat outside for the better view until the wind chapped our faces so bad we all agreed to sell out and sit inside. We saw the Opera house, Hans Christian Anderson's house, the Little Mermaid statue and a ton of colorful harbors. We walked around a street market and gorged ourselves on fresh fish and baked goods and then wandered around the rest of the day. By the time we made it around to getting dinner, we were so cold and so starving we settled upon slightly overpriced burgers and ate in silence while our hands thawed. Later that evening we hung out in the apartment for awhile and eventually wandered around to find a fun local club. Being the dorks we are, we left way too early and most places were still empty. So we settled on a small Italian bar and had a quieter night than we had hoped for. Probably for the best- as we caught a cab at 6am for our flight home the next morning.

Now, onto Budapest. Well, I actually had a week of school in between there, but no one wants to read a blog about that. So, Budapest. One of my favorite weekends. Do I say that every time? Well it's true here. Budapest was sunny and warm and welcoming and cultured and fun simultaneously. I traveled with a few familiar faces and a few people I haven't had the chance to get to know yet, and it was a perfect group.

Saturday we slept in a bit and then rented bikes to get around. Best decision of the weekend. Besides being ridiculously fun to bike around the city, we also got to see so much more than if we had been walking and saved our legs too. We biked to a park where we climbed tree and swung on a big wooden swing in front of some medieval ruins. After riding around for a few hours we went to yet another market where I loaded up on cheap homemade soap (everyone has their weakness). We went right to a walking tour of the Jewish Quarter which was interesting and chilling.

The main event of the day was to go to The Baths which is a large public hot tub. I assure you it's significantly more appealing than that description would lead you to believe. Picture a few hours of relaxing in a super warm pool, staring at a startlingly clear sky, and hanging out with awesome friends and a few hundred Hungarian strangers. It was awesome, ok?

We didn't get dinner until almost 11:30 when we fell trap to what ended up being a super mutually beneficial tourist trap. A random woman saw us wandering around and asked if we wanted to come to her bar and eat and drink. Turns out, we did! We ate traditional hungarian goulash and sat at a table with our own beer tap. Half the group stayed in to prepare for an early flight but others (myself included) were taking a later train and stayed out.

Turned out to be a terribly weird (but not weirdly terrible) night. We got turned away from the very famous Ruin Bar and ended up at a small karaoke bar full of drunk and costumed locals. We tried to join in the fun and belted out a Kelly Clarkson song but unfortunately Kelly's cure for teen angst doesn't reach quite as far as Hungary, and we were booed off stage. Worth it.

Some of us stayed through Sunday where we had a relaxing day going to the zoo and seeing some more sights. Hungary proved to be full of very friendly people, super accessible night life and rich, interesting history. We ended our trip on a low with a 15 hour train ride through the night to immediately hop off and go to our Monday classes. Not much to say there, it was as brutal as you would picture.

Standard note of how amazed I am at the speed this trip is flying by at. This weekend is Easter break and I'm headed back to Italy... Florence this time. I'm ready for some warm weather and cheap pizza. Italy, I've missed you.

Brugge & Ghent

Most of this blog is going to be setting the scene of this beautiful country I spent the past few days in.

We got to Brugge, Belgium at 10 o'clock on Friday night so when we got off the train and opted to walk the mile distance to our hostel, the streets were abandoned. In uniform with the rest of Europe (except Luxembourg, oddly) the streets and sidewalks blended together in a cobbled mess of grey stone and houses rose just barely over our heads. Gold street lamps cast shadows every couple feet and the occasional biker would ride by to remind us this country is actually inhabited. As we walked on and absorbed the quaint town around us, we heard music up ahead. We walked towards a crowded bar with people in their early twenties pouring out onto the street, drinking and chatting. We noted how fun that place looked, that we had found the popular place to hang on a Friday in Belgium. Turned out, that place was our hostel.

I stayed in a "dorm" style room with four other friends and had one empty bed. We hung out downstairs for a while, met the band that had been playing, an American, an Italian and a Belgian, and then headed up to bed to get some sleep before exploring Saturday.

Saturday morning we got up decently early and immediately began our search for good, cheap coffee. After weaving in and out of a few shops and bakeries, we headed to the square and people watched in the sun for awhile. The square is about the size of San Marco in Venice, but about a quarter less beautiful and half as crowded. Beautiful, nonetheless. All the buildings are bright shades of red and peach and gold. It was just touristy enough that there were things to do and see and reasonably priced food, but not so touristy that it was impossibly crowded and stripped of real culture.

We wandered around a street market, sampled some cheese, bought cheap jewelry that has already left a green ring around my finger, and watched the preparation for what appeared to be a bike race. I loved how many flower boxes were hanging from second stories windows, overflowing with red flowers and how many old dogs with gray faces walked, leash-less, right next to the their owner. I was certainly in no hurry to leave Belgium, I can't imagine these dogs were either.

We got some lunch at a nice place after a mean place lied directly to our phases, telling us they were full as we stood amidst a sea of empty tables. Then we went to the chocolate museum where I learned that chocolate was equivalent to champagne back in the time of Marie Antoinette... and just about nothing else. Thankful for free samples and cheap student ticket prices to make up for an otherwise skippable museum.

We headed back to our hostile and enjoyed to company of each other and our huge sunny window. Right before we were going to leave to head downstairs, our sixth roommate showed up. Another Canadian, we are meeting a ton of Canadians here! We ended up hanging out with him and his friends (students from all over the world studying in The Netherlands) for the majority of the night.

Sunday we woke up and took a train to Ghent. While I was in Ghent, I had the feeling that the walls were going to collapse around me and reveal I had been on a movie set. We thought Brugge was abandoned, that was nothing compared to Ghent. On the route we took from the train station, we didn't see a single person, no lights on, not even any cars driving down the stone streets. We did see plenty of frightening, anarchist street art. On one building, on the second story, there was a small bronze boy sculpted to look like he was being hung from the wall. Chilling, yet incredibly interesting environment.

When we got into the center of town, there were plenty of people milling around and we got lunch and wandered a bit. I am becoming an excellent wanderer. We saw the street famous for it's "graffiti" style art and climbed to the top of a tower for a city view. Then we took the next train home, exhausted.

Belgium wasn't my most active weekend or my most spontaneous, wild weekend, but it was still one of my best so far. It was cool to see where my family had come from (not the exact city, but close enough) and to just lazily meander through the streets. Not to mention we ate some seriously good chocolate.

This weekend I'm flying to Copenhagen! Ideally we will also be able to hop over to visit Sweden, but either way I'm very excited. It's crazy how fast time is going! I have the rest of my weekends planned and I'm visiting great places. I know I'm going to be on the plane back to America before I know it, so I'm going to make sure I'm really absorbing everything I can these next few weeks. I'm really learning a lot about myself, mostly how independent I can be and how capable I am of doing amazing things that are outside my comfort zone.

Interlaken

I've been home from Switzerland for two days and I'm only just now starting to recover from the grief of leaving. If you are ever given the opportunity to travel, put Switzerland on your list.

I traveled with just my roommate, which was a nice change of pace and made for an incredibly easy going weekend. We arrived in Thun, about 30 minutes outside Interlaken, to get to the apartment we were staying in for the weekend. After a somewhat frightening adventure getting the key and getting inside, we decided to just crash and get up early the next morning.

At 8am on Saturday, we packed our backpacks and grabbed a train towards a random mountain we had selected. We knew we wanted to hike, and it turns out, there's a decent amount of mountains to choose from. So we just picked one. We got off the bus and looked around and saw a path that appeared to be leading upwards, so we started climbing. It wasn't lost on us that it could have been a path to someone's house, a path that would end un 500 feet, a path that lead to a scary and dangerous place we shouldn't be, but we just climbed it anyway because it was right there.

Luckily it wasn't any of those things. About ten minutes in, it dawned on us how terribly out of shape we both were. We were pulling to the side, leaning on trees and exploiting the gorgeous view as a reason to stop and catch our breath. Eventually we found our rhythm (it took five tries to spell that) and climbed on without stopping. I could feel my heart slamming in my chest as the air got a little bit harder to breathe and the ground turned from sticky mud, to icy leaves, to a foot of clean, undisturbed snow. It was like walking through every season in a few hours. A few hours later we reached "the top". We stood in awe at the few of sparkling lakes and snow capped mountains every direction your turned.

We sat down and opened our lunch of swiss cheese and crackers and basked in one of those moments where you just stop and think "I'm here, I'm doing this right now." We slipped and slid all the way back down the mountain after lunch which proved to be almost more difficult than climbing up.

That night, we got picked up to go to night sledding. We climb into this van with about 10 of the loudest most obnoxious, alcohol fueled fellow Americans and cringed the entire way until they finally let us out. There we met other, significantly more tolerable college kids, from all over America and other people from all over the world.

In case you are wondering what night sledding consists of, because I was, it's basically a few experienced employees of Interlaken Outdoor taking you up to the top of a pitch black mountain in a cable car and dropping you off. There you pace and panic and stare at the hugeness of this mountain you're expected to sled down and if you can get past the pacing and the panicking, hopefully take a minute to look at the sky and see the most stars you've ever seen in one sky.

It took about an hour to sled all the way down this mountain and it was so incredibly exhilarating. Afterwards, we had a fondue dinner and sat around talking with other students about the differences in our study abroad experiences.

The next morning, we took a 45 minute walk from the train station to see the lakes only to turn around and realize had we gone the other way, it would have taken 5. But it was hard to be bitter staring into this water that was so blue I wasn't convinced they hadn't dyed it. We had to reach down and touch the rocks only to see they were underwater. We sat on the dock and absorbed as much of the view as we could before getting back on the train and heading back to Luxembourg.

Interlaken was by far the most beautiful place we've been and it broke my heart when the train pulled away from the mountains. Hopefully Belgium this upcoming weekend will make me feel better.