Day 81: Copenhagen

It was a pretty lazy day. I went out and bought breakfast at the supermarket and then we ate it before going out. Does it get any better than living near a yummy bakery? Yes, it does! That yummy bakery sells yummy custard danishes! It's the first time we've ever had a custard danish. Actually, the "danish" is called wienerbrod here, literally "Vienna bread" ^-^

As usual, we explored most of the city on foot today, ending at the Nyhavn docks for a canal tour.

Copenhagen feels like a laid-back city. Maybe it was seeing all the locals out and about. Today *is* a Tuesday, isn't it? We're pretty sure they were locals, not tourists, since we saw many just hanging out on the Nyhavn dock drinking beer and chatting. (The tourists are all sitting in the restaurants thinking that's the way to fit in with the locals, but the locals are all outside!) This atmosphere of not rushing anywhere, just enjoying the warm, sunny day wasn't just at Nyhavn; it was all around different areas of the city.

And yes, it was *warm and sunny*. We're feeling ever so slightly disappointed that he the Scandinavian weather's not living up to our expectations. (Our days in Oslo and Bergen were sunny, too.)

Day 80: Bergen

Our "early" day today started at 10:30 at the Fish Market. The market sort of confused me. I felt like they catered to the tourists as well, rather than just the locals. And then sometimes I wondered whether it was a market *for* tourists, but that didn't make sense at all because what tourist would buy lots of fresh fish?

We got to try a little bit of whale at the market! It was interesting, but I don't think I'm a fan of whale. We tried samples at two different stalls. The one from the first stall tasted "bloodier" whereas the second one was slightly milder.

Historical walking tour of the small preserved part of Bergen near the harbor. The area called Bryggen has rebuilt buildings from the 14th to 16th centuries, from when Bergen was part of the powerful Hanseatic trading empire. Hanseatic? I only had a slight feeling of "I think I've heard that word somewhere" before arriving in Bergen (not very strong with the history thing =/). It was basically a very wealthy trade monopoly along the coast of Northern Europe all the way to the Baltics.

The buildings are "rebuilt" ones because most of the area had already burned down many times over! I think it was something like six or seven times (maybe more?). There was this cool soil cross-section in the Bryggens Museum where you could see that people just kept on building right over the remains of the previous fire, and with wood each time, again!

Our last stop of the day was the Floibanen viewpoint over the city...


I then went to the supermarket to spend our last NOK (minus bus fare). It's always a bit of a headache when I do it, trying to use every last coin to buy things that I would buy anyways sometime. This time around we messed up somewhere along the way, because when we got to the bus, we realized we were 5 NOK short of the fare. Though the driver wouldn't accept our 1 EUR coin (which was a brilliant exchange rate being that 1 EUR > 8 NOK), someone on the bus traded with us so we could pay our fare and use up all our krone. Otherwise, we would have had to use our credit card for one of the fares and then have leftover krone.

The Bergen to Copenhagen flight had a really cute CGI video giving all the usual safety procedures. Airline: SAS.

We arrived in Copenhagen a little after 7:30pm. It was the first time we've ever had the screen in the baggage area alert us that our luggage would be late -- it would be 15 minutes before the luggage from the flight was to start appearing.

After finally grabbing our luggage, we got on the subway, stopped at a supermarket to pick up some food, and showed up at our new "home". We're staying in a room in this nice lady's apartment/house. The entrance goes to four doors: our room, the shared bathroom (us and her), and two doors to her side of the apartment.

Day 79: Oslo => Flam => Sognefjord => Bergen

The morning started out a bit stressful. We had an early early 6:38am train to catch, but after waiting at the tram stop for a while, we looked at the schedule to discover that the tram just doesn't run that early on a Sunday morning. Eek, we should have checked out the tram schedule last night! Thankfully, eventually a taxi passed by, and we managed to wiggle our way to a slightly lower taxi fare from the super-nice driver ^-^;; After that, we made our train and everything was happy ^o^

Oslo to Bergen is one of the most scenic train routes in Europe (though we only did half of it by train). Right as it got colder, we started seeing more snow, water, falling water, and also some cute towns. We got off the train at Flam and got some food as we waited for a boat to take us the rest of the way.



Fjord: a word that entered my vocabulary during scrabble in college, played by the ever-so-knowledgeable E. Even after that, I never really *knew* what it meant until last year. Explained in the context of something I already knew, it's like Yosemite Valley, except filled with water (both were carved by glaciers).

Here I was, seeing a fjord in person. I can't believe I'm saying it... actually, I was a little underwhelmed. I think it's one of those meeting-of-expectations times. Like our train ride earlier in the day, there was snow, water, falling water, and cute towns, but this time, we were seeing it from water instead of land. Waterfalls falling into water one after another... it was incredible! But there was something missing. We've been to amazingly gorgeous places set on water (e.g. Halong Bay) and my expectations were high. After the exhilarating train ride in the morning, I had even higher expectations >_< Perhaps if we were hiking next to the fjord it would have been different?

Having said all that, I did have a good time. It was cold and super-windy outside the boat. K says this is a really weird-looking picture of me. Of course it is! My face is all distorted by the wind!

I was standing at the very front of the boat at the time and took the picture with one hand while holding on to the railing with the other. I would have been blown back otherwise! I had a tough time keeping my eyes open, too. Once most people actually got to the front of the boat, they started heading back pretty quickly. I stayed there longer than most ^-^ K went out for only a couple of minutes and promptly returned back inside where he could enjoy the scenery from the comfort of his seat. I absolutely loved the wind, but it eventually just became too cold to stay out there!

Typical fjord scenery...



Entering into Bergen harbor was a definite highlight; it all looked so cute from the water! It was 9pm and as expected, there was still plenty of light out.


A few more twitter recaps from Oslo:
- Midnight. Looks like darkness might finally be starting to settle in. Maybe in another hour? (Or two?)
- False friend... applesin = orange!
- Actually, it never really gets fully dark! Nearly there and then haha, just kidding.

Day 78: Oslo

We walked around some of the main streets of the city today. On Karl Johans Gate, *the* pedestrian street, we passed by the erotic shop Kondomeriet. From the outside, it fit right in with all the other usual high-end shopping stores next to it and inside, there were lots of people browsing the shop. It sort of gives you a feel for the openness here. They have a pretty cool commercial, too.

As expected for a Saturday, a lot of people were out and about. There were probably even more people out today because we noticed a lot of people staking out spots on the side of the street. It turns out there's a gay pride parade today! I haven't been to any gay pride parades before, so I have nothing to compare against, but it seemed everyone, from kids to adults, were very supportive of the gay community. Some people in the parade were indeed quite dressed up, but there were many who were just wearing normal clothes and waving rainbow flags.


A bunch of rainbow flags were blowing in the wind right across from the city hall, too.

K wanted to visit the National Gallery (free) to see one picture, Munch's famous "The Scream", so we detoured from the gay pride parade (well, actually, the gay pride parade was the detour, but anyways...). Strangely, walking through the gallery felt refreshing! Have we visited any other art galleries this trip? Hmmmm. After visiting more than enough art museums during our Europe 2007 travels, I pretty much cut them out this trip ^-^;; I especially liked seeing the landscape painters here.

Frogner Park, aka Vigeland Park. A lot of people were out in the park, hanging about and grilling stuff on inexpensive grills. Vigeland is a well-known Norwegian sculptor (maybe the most well-known?) and Frogner Park is filled with his later work. His huge 46-foot monolith sits in the center of the park...



There was a huge maze on the ground around his fountain!

Getting off the tram and walking back to our flat/B&B today, K remarked that it 'feels just like the U.S.', complete with plenty of SUVs parked on the road.

We heard/read Norway is expensive, and it's true. On basic foods, there's a 14% tax. 14%! In Cali, we pay 0% tax on these same foods. It's the same 14% if you take away from an eatery, but 25% percent to eat there. And I was surprised at Czech Republic's 19% tax on eating out only a month ago! It's all a trade-off. For the high taxes, Norwegians get free university education and health care.

We're hardly eating out here; everything is about twice as expensive as we'd normally pay back home. But the supermarkets are great... plenty of yummy smoked salmon, meatballs, fish cakes, etc. I bought some meatballs for dinner today and managed to set off the smoke detector again! I think it's sensitive to heat. When I open the mini oven door, the intense rush of heat into the room inevitably sets it off >_<

Day 77: Oslo

We decided to get the Oslo Card yesterday. It gives you admission to a decent number of sights and we calculated that we would save a tiny bit with that over paying admission separately for each place we were already planning to see.

The Bygdoy Museums...
- Viking Ship - huge, cool, awesome-looking ships from way way long ago!


- Fram - another big ship, not nearly as old, but they used it to explore the Arctic!
- Kon-Tiki - huge raft they used in the mid-1900's to sail from South America to Polynesia to show that it was indeed possible!
- Norwegian Folk - I could hang out here for a loooong time.

When we were at the folk museum, we first walked around together and then K found some shaded tables and chairs outside one of the general stores while I ran around because I really do *take my time*. It takes me even more time when I'm by myself though because I tend to get a bit "lost" >_< Well, not entirely lost. Just lost in the way of 'I wanted to take that route but somehow I ended up here instead, so I guess I'll try this way?' At least I had a map.

I got stuck at the stave church for a while. There was a wedding ceremony there and everyone was waiting for the bride to arrive. The cute flower girls distracted me >_< The church itself was cool, too, especially when I thought about how the church supposedly doesn't have nails, just wood "fitting together"!

The city hall is where they hold the Nobel Peace Prize ceremonies. (Why is there a separate ceremony for the peace prize from all the other Nobel prizes? K says it's probably because the invitees are slightly different.) RS says that in Scandinavia, rather than churches or cathedrals, city halls are the dominant buildings. It seems he may be right.


Nobel Peace Museum. We didn't originally intend to go here, but since we had the Oslo Card, we thought we'd give it a quick walk through. The exhibits made pretty good use of technology.

Small city tour. Something else we just tacked on because it came free with the card ^-^;; I liked this statue we passed while on the tour...

The guide told us about a certain exhibit to check out after the tour. Apparently Oslo is undergoing a massive (really massive) project to revitalize the harbor area. The white in the picture is all new development (knocking down current stuff and building new stuff)! It's crazy. So, whenever we do make it back here, all that we've seen this trip will likely be entirely changed!


I thought it curious that there were no pots or pans nor cooking utensils in the flat. When I contacted the landlady about it, she replied that such items are not included and that we're only provided with the things we need to make breakfast. Still, there was a little toaster oven, so I used it to make dinner. I set off the smoke detector even though there was no smoke! >_< K acted quickly to kill the detector and we waited a bit to put it back in.

Day 76: Dubrovnik => Oslo

We were awarded with some nice views of the old town during our bus ride to the airport...


Originally, the Northern Europe portion was going to start in Helsinki and move back west, but after extensive airfare and train-fare searches, it turns out the least expensive route is actually
Dubrovnik
=> non-stop flight to Oslo
=> train + boat to Bergen (mode of transport on this leg was non-negotiable)
=> non-stop flight to Copenhagen
=> train to Stockholm
=> overnight boat to Helsinki (non-negotiable mode of transport)
=> day-trip to Tallinn
=> non-stop flight back to Zurich

It's super-nice that all our flights turned out to be non-stop! ^o^

I actually managed to book reasonably-priced accommodations in Scandinavia, "reasonable" meaning 600 NOK (70 EUR) a night in Oslo, which was a lot better than I'd hoped. We're staying in a three-bedroom apartment and it turns out the other two rooms are going to be empty during our stay, so we get the whole flat to ourselves ^o^

The flat is a bit out of center, 15-20 minutes by tram, but it's not too bad. And K speculates that we might be one of the first tenants in the seemingly-recently-renovated flat. We paid the landlady and she told us where to leave the keys when we leave on the last day and how to contact her if we need anything. Otherwise, we probably won't see each other again.

Aside from settling in and walking around a bit, we didn't do much else today.

While we were in Dubrovnik, K commented that he feels we've been in our comfort zone too much during this trip. When we were planning, I wanted to visit Sarajevo and travel further into Eastern Europe, but he wasn't interested. There really was just too much to see.

There's sort of two perspectives to it. In one respect, we are already entirely out of our comfort zone -- moving every week and sleeping in new beds, dealing with each new environment, the changing language "barrier", thinking about the next meal, talking to strangers all the time. But, in our long travels, these discomforts have become part of daily life, and we've gotten "used" to them so much that we feel the need for even more "raw" experiences.

Neither of us would have changed this trip though (we don't think). Each place and experience has left their impression on us. But we did start talking about our *next* trip. The K that previously said he had many more places in the world he wanted to travel to before checking out South America is now saying he might want his next trip to be South America.

Here we are, the final part of our short-of-four-months travels starts in Oslo!

I did manage to somewhat keep up our twitter. One post a day? It's probably not how twitter is intended to be used but oh well.

Twitter post for today:
10pm and it's still bright out. Sunset today is supposedly 10:45pm! O_o

Day 75: Dubrovnik, Mostar day-trip

It was an early morning day. We had to be outside the old town gate by 7:30am! It was cool to see the Stradun (main street) devoid of tourists though...


A little minivan picked up us and another group of four and shuttled us to the actual day bus, a full-size coach filled up with 50 tourists =/ We were hoping we'd get lucky and have less people for the day (we'd heard stories about only half-full buses and such) but no such luck for us. Apparently they were also running a French tour that day, which seemed slightly less crowded, but we were on the English one. Despite being bused with forty-eight other tourists, it turned out to be a pretty good day.

There were three stops on the way to Mostar.
1. For people to buy a snack and stretch their legs,
2. At the Bosnia and Herzegovina border so our passports could be examined by the border guards, and
3. At the small cute town of Pocitelj, where there were a few women (and one kid) holding baskets filled with cones of fresh [good-quality] fruits, dried fruits, and nuts.

We had two guides, one for the bus and another who took us around Mostar. Actually, we really appreciated the information; it's nice to have additional context to what you're seeing, and both guides were local residents, the bus guide being Croatian and the town guide being from an area near Mostar. On our way in, the Croatian bus guide told us many stories and a bit of Croatian history, but she said she would leave the story of the war for our way back.

Supposedly, of all the clashes during the split of Yugoslavia, the Bosnian War was the deadliest/bloodiest, and these traditionally-divided ethnicities are trying to co-exist peacefully in Mostar. Many buildings still had their unpatched bullet holes from the war. The strangest contrast was seeing these and other ruined buildings standing right across from (or next to) shiny, newly built ones.

Some older buildings...


The town itself is still relatively poor and the many beggars are a fact of life here. Our tour guide frequently greeted them and sometimes chatted with them as she passed them. This exchange was then followed by the rest of us passing them and them switching roles from friendly chatty local to beggar asking for money. It sometimes felt sort of odd.

After the few hours walking tour with our guide, we had an hour and a half to ourselves. K and I ate a really yummy cevapi (meatball-like things inside a pita-shaped fluffy bread) and explored a bit more. Aside from the ruined buildings, the next saddest sight was probably the cemetery. Everywhere we looked, we saw tombs with pictures of youths with a date of death in the early-to-mid 1990's, during the war.

Our bus tour guide told us her Croatian-biased story of the war, emphasizing the empire tendencies and wrongdoings of "big Serbia"/"bad Serbia". For someone so young (I think around our age), I was surprised by her statement that, "Of course we do business with Serbians but it will be at least twenty years or more before we can try to be friends." Regardless of how it looks on the surface, there are still many deep-rooted feelings resulting from the war.

After the big bus, we got picked up by our minivan driver from the morning to bring us back to the Old Town. The other group of four also got picked up. We were surprised because it was evident that only one of the group spoke some English, but they all attended the English tour. We ended up chatting with them for a bit after getting back to the old town. It turns out they were on the English tour because they're leaving tomorrow and weren't able to hit a day when a Spanish tour would be available (they're from Barcelona). They got a kick out of me trying to revive my Spanish. The happy medium was them speaking Spanish to me (and me translating to K) and us speaking English to them -- both parties got the most complete thoughts across this way.

The old port at night...

Day 74: Dubrovnik

One of the side streets. Apartments all the way up. Many with AC units. Clothes hanging out to dry. Lots of steps.

The skies didn't look friendly, but still, it's looked the same way the last couple of days. So, we thought we could beat the rain today since it seems to usually start in the afternoon. But you can never predict the weather. Not even a quarter of the way into our wall walk, it started!

As the downpour picked up, we took shelter in various places. First, it was under a kind girl's shop umbrella. The second was in one of these little pods (the round-topped thing in the picture... I think we managed to squeeze about ten people in there!). The third was this little overhang portion of the wall. The lightning, thunder, and downpour certainly made for a very unique wall walk experience ^-^ Even though we'd only gotten through maybe half of the wall, we eventually decided to return to our room and see how the rest of the day's weather would turn out. The rain couldn't hold out for the *whole* day!

I think I generally believe in the good in people, which K says contributes to me being gullible. (Makes me wonder if I should ever go to China, but that's a another story.) One of the problems with traveling so much within a short period of time is that all the human evils of the world compound themselves. It's not the biggies that are the problem -- war, poverty, etc. -- which you may see, but have a different kind of affect. It's the small every day slips in character, people purposefully taking advantage of each other, sometimes for seemingly no personal benefit! And, being a non-local, people *will* try to take advantage of you. I know that, but every time, it still hurts me to see or experience it first hand.

As I was filing away the receipts from yesterday, I noticed that I was charged twice for the tomato sauce I bought at the grocery store, which coincidentally was also the most expensive thing I bought. Intentional or not, I don't know. K thinks it was probably intentional. Either way, as a matter of principle, I had to see if I could get my money back. We went back to the grocery store, but then were told we had to go back when the particular clerk who checked us out yesterday would be there. So, we went back again later. She was there, and after a long time of checking inventory and this and that, she did eventually give us our money back. I'm sure in China, I wouldn't have gotten my money back, but that's another story, right? Anyways, I felt better afterward. But should I have even felt so hurt by it in the first place?

The rains did go away and we were able to go back out. First, before continuing our wall walk, we wanted to go up to the highest point near the old town. There was supposed to be a local bus that goes up, but we waited at the bus stop for quite a while and, no bus. The schedule indicated there would be one, but we waited through multiple "ones". And it seems we weren't the only ones either! Ah, silly tourists. Oh well. >_<


Yes, this sunny, blue skies picture of the old port really is from the same day as the gray rain picture above. Of course, we did complete the rest of our wall walk ^o^

Day 73: Dubrovnik

Today was an exploring-the-city walking day. Despite the main old town center being full of tourists and the city's economy probably heavily relying on tourism, the side streets are surprising quiet (where are all the tourists?) and they still have their own local charm and character. I loved all the side streets!

We came across some cute cats during our walk. In the first pic, the kitten's just a black ball of fur all curled up against one of the other cats, but it came out for the second pic ^o^


We stopped by one of the main Croatian travel agencies to look into a day trip to Mostar for tomorrow. It turns out they don't do the trip every day, but we're lucky because even though they don't have one for tomorrow, they do have one for the day after, which happens to be our last full day here. Actually, we wanted to go to Mostar on our own, but there was absolutely no schedule of buses that would work for a single day trip; we'd have to at least spend one night there >_< Most independent travelers apparently stop by Mostar on their way to Sarajevo. Well, I did want to visit Sarajevo, too... but that never made it on our itinerary. As much as we try to avoid tours like this (50-person bus!), we decided we'd rather visit Mostar than not, so we signed up for Wednesday's day trip.

We also wanted to walk the wall, but shortly after getting up to the wall, the rains started again! Isn't there supposed to be something like only ten days of rain in the whole *year* here? Why do we seem to be hitting all those days >_<

Day 72: Split => Dubrovnik

Yay, the rains gave way to a morning of mostly blue skies =D Since our bus wasn't until early afternoon, we spent the morning walking along the harbor and promenade, which we didn't really get to do yesterday because of the rains. We also walked up a not-too-far-away hill (Marjan Hill) for a gorgeous view of the harbor and city. I rarely post pictures of us here...


When we asked about places to eat, the receptionist at the hostel pointed us to this place near the hill. She said she usually ate at home but whenever she does eat out, that's where she goes. It was a bit too far for out of our way yesterday, but we passed by it today walking back from the hill. Too bad we weren't hungry yet. I still wanted to stop by though.

What I really wanted to eat was fish stew, but they were out of it =/ So, I got the fish soup instead. After the soup arrived, I realized why our server seemed to have an odd look on his face when we said that was all we wanted. It turns out it's basically just broth with a bit of rice! Still, yummy! And if just their broth was this yummy, it really makes me wonder what their fish stew would have been like.

We took the 1-something bus from Split to Dubrovnik, taking about 4.5 hours. The coast was beautiful, even with all the gray clouds (and then rain).


Arriving at the bus terminal in Dubrovnik, we had to take another bus, a local one, to the old town. Lots of locals at the terminal had pictures of accommodations and tried to offer us rooms, but as usual, we already had arrangements. Stepping into the main drag of the old town, the difference between Split and Dubrovnik is immediately evident. Tourists everywhere! I suppose it's expected though. But even the many tourists can't take away from the pretty, white marble covering the street.

The place we were staying at was actually a very convenient side street right off the main street. We got to the door, rang the doorbell, and, no answer. Then, one of the waitresses at the nearby restaurant came over and asked if we were looking for Ana. Yep. She said she would phone her for us and then came back to say she was coming right away. We waited for quite a while, but the wait was an interesting experience. Various neighbors poked their heads out from their apartment windows and started chatting across the street or chatting with the waitress person or chatting with a person passing by. One of the people passing by as well as the waitress assured us that Ana was indeed on her way. It was kind of funny. When Ana finally arrived, they all seemed to tease her about taking so long ^-^

Ana was one of our most helpful hosts on this trip so far. She told us basically everything we would want to know, where to eat (and not eat), which tourist info office to go (and not go to, apparently one's fake), what to do, where to buy groceries, etc, etc. She even told us that if we got stuck on a nearby island (if we were to visit it) to just call her and she would have her husband come by in a boat to get us.


Dinner was a really yummy seafood risotto, right next to the old port.

Walking through the streets at night was absolutely beautiful. Everything was really well lit!

Day 71: Split

The day started with a trip to the market, and this was certainly one of the most 're4nao4' markets we've ever been to! (Vibrant? Lively? Not quite the same image in our minds, but they're probably the closest English words to 're4nao4'.) The market happens every day of the week. After all, Split is a living city. Incidentally, the market is called the "Green Market". When you look at it from above, all you see is just greenery from all the trees ^-^



Just like we'd already seen in Zagreb, there were plenty of old-style scales.


I love 3-D models! You can make out the palace walls and then from there, the city continues to sprawl out.


The cellars beneath the palace were pretty cool, too. Was this really all built in the 4th century??? Those Romans really knew what they were doing!

The girls saw us while we were listening to some a-cappella guys in the entry vestibule (great acoustics!) ^o^ It's been fun continuously crossing paths this past week, but sadly, this will be our last meeting. They're going to the islands while we're going to Dubrovnik, and they'll be arriving in Dubrovnik after we'll have already left it.

The St. Dominus Cathedral bell tower is one of the most frightening tower climbs we've encountered, and definitely not for people scared of heights. Yes, there are bars here and there, but still... Oh, and the wind doesn't help either.



Looking into the various shops within the palace walls, it seems all the palace floors are kept as it. Very cool.


There's a lot of cleaning every day after the market closes.

We had wanted to go back to the hostel for a bit and then head back out at night to see the palace lit up, but it started pouring! It seems we had managed to finish our walk just in time. So we only rushed back out to get food. Maybe I should have braved the rain even more? =/

I made a soup for dinner to eat with the cold cuts we bought. This Asian girl came up to me towards the end of my cooking and asked me how to make it, remarking that it looked and smelled "just like something her mom makes"! It was a simple tomato and egg soup to which I also added noodles. I felt kind of awkward telling her how to make it because I've never had anyone make that sort of comment before. The compliment was kind of nice though ^-^