Land of the Midnight Sun

I certainly had a nice and relaxing trip to Sweden this week. I visited Sandra, my “host cousin,” for a few days in Stockholm. Although I hadn’t seen Sandra for 10 years, it didn’t take long to feel like I knew her well. And, like 10 years ago, I found myself wanting to adopt her as the older sister I always wanted. She just seems to fit well into the family. Just enough “crazy” to have some Rinkenberger blood! She claims that it is okay to be a bit crazy if you live in Sweden because they only see the sun for a few months of the year. Excuses, excuses! lol. Oh, and we pretty much wear the exact same size in everything! Meaning… double the wardrobe?!? Haha.

Sandra’s has a cute, well-decorated apartment not to far from Stockholm. Apparently, the Swedish are really into home décor; which explains all of the home décor shops I came across. Hmm, I could get used to that. We seemed to stop at most of them, but that was fine by me as I enjoy decorating and shopping.

As my trip wore on, I discovered more and more Swedish words that were similar to German. I kept guessing what things said and freaking Sandra out because I was often correct. After accidentally using an ATM in Swedish, Sandra said, “Whatever. I’m not even impressed anymore. I’m just getting used to you being really intelligent.” I tried to explain that a lot of things were fairly easy to guess because of my knowledge of German. “Yeah, but still.” So, yeah, I enjoyed the language aspect of being in Sweden. It was like a game trying to guess the meaning of various signs.

Another thing that made my stay in Sweden so nice was that it felt a little more like being at home in some ways. Part of this is due to the fact that Sandra sort of feels like family, partly having real home cooked meals, and then just relaxing in the evenings watching movies and TV in ENGLISH again. (The Swedish only have subtitles rather than dubbed television) Sandra was shocked to find out that I had never seen “Walk the Line,” so we watched that one night. During commercial breaks, I would either get more to drink/ snack on or tease Sandra’s cat, Foxy, with the laser. Endless entertainment, eh?

This may come as a shock to some, but I have gotten quite good about trying new foods. I tried some new dishes with Sandra including this stuff called Kroppkaka. It was…interesting. It is a traditional Swedish dish which consists of potato dumplings with a filling of onions, pork or bacon. Common ingredients are potatoes, wheat flour, onion, salt and minced pork. It is served with butter and lingonberry jam. Don’t ask me where the idea for THAT recipe came from. Seems about as random as it gets. And…well, I don’t think I’ll be missing that dish anytime soon. But hey, at least I tried the local cuisine. I also tried Wayne’s Coffee (ok, not quite as adventurous), which is the Swedish version of Starbucks. Would you believe that Sweden does not have a SINGLE Starbucks?!? I didn’t think there were any developed countries left in the World without a single Starbucks! So yeah, Wayne’s Coffee was alright, but I still prefer Starbucks, Panera, Kaldi’s, and other American coffee companies. Of course, I tried the Swedish chocolate without hesitation. No complaints there!

While in Sweden for a few days, I was able to see a nice variety of things at a very relaxing pace. I saw everything from the city of Stockholm itself, castles, and Sigtuna to a little Viking village near Sandra’s town.

I'm Coming Home (Soon) If You're Ready Or Not.

I will be home in just under 20 days! As my departure date approaches, I've been thinking about all of the things I'm looking forward to about being home. It's a list that keeps growing:

• Seeing my parents
• Hanging out with my best friends
• Mom’s wonderful cooking
• Hugs
• FREE water in restaurants and water fountains in public buidings
• FREE bathrooms
• Having my very own scanner and printer again
• Stores are open later and on Sundays
• Scrapbooking
• Skating and coaching. Who doesn’t love the start of the skating season??
• Random retail therapy trips with my mom
• Getting a regular dose of Dad’s lame jokes
• Printing pictures from my trips (It’s going to take FOREVER to choose which ones I want printed…)
• Seeing Jefferson City again
• Coffee experiments with Mom
• REAL American BBQs (The Germans think they have American style BBQs, but they are so wrong)
• Ice cubes
• Seeing the new Harry Potter movie
• A greater selection of coffee and coffee products
• Sleeping in a real bed
• The sounds of a Missouri summer night (who’d of thought??)
• Eating fast food and at restaurants that aren’t available in Europe
• Panera Bread (so amazing it deserves it’s own slot)
• Moving into my new apartment
• Mizzou’s Rec Center
• Volunteering at the Language Pre-school
• Mizzou football season! There’s something about driving along the highway and seeing tiger tails flapping in the wind that can never be replaced.
• Simply walking around Mizzou’s campus
• Watching football games with Dad and annoying him with my questions/ commentary even though I know he secretly enjoys it.
• Missouri Autumn
• Driving my own car
• Occasional mudslides with the fam
• Getting involved with MU’s exchange students and hopefully meeting a few from Germany!
• Talking everyone’s ear off about Germany
• Family dinner
• Being surrounded by MU pride on a daily basis
• Eavesdropping on Mom’s half of her weekly conversations with Grandma R.
• The fact that I will still get a ton of e-mails from Dad every week even though I will only a half hour away. Funny.
• Washers and Dryers that WORK and work well
• Having a dishwasher
• Disposals (AKA: No more Bio Müll!)
• Having an income again
• FREE condiments at restaurants
• Chilling in Memorial Union
• Things will be cheaper and more affordable
• I’ll have a microwave in my kitchen again!
• Catching up on The Office. Hopefully having an Office marathon with Holly…
• Taking classes that serve a purpose and are interesting
• The structure of Mizzou’s courses
• Using the Mizzou library
• Re-reading Harry Potter (if I have time)
• Random drives/ shopping/ Sonic runs with Simpson
• Keeping it classy with Becky Billings. (Which probably entails making laps around Hy-vee for free samples…)
• Having a larger selection of outfits and shoes at my fingertips every morning
• Schutz, Jess-Jess, and Wilson
• Lazy Sunday afternoons
• No deposits on shopping carts or bottled beverages (Germany’s way of getting people to recycle).
• Simply being home. There’s no place like home.
• Did I mention my family? I love my family!!!

“It's Berlin. We go to bed at 4 am.”

My trip to Berlin last week was all kinds of interesting. First of all, I was sightseeing with Mark and TJ. If you knew them, you could imagine how that would make for a unique (and at times extremely frustrating) travel experience. Then there’s the fact that we stayed with one of my Mizzou German Professors. Olaf is probably the craziest professor in the department, as a matter of fact. He still lives the “college lifestyle” which just makes guys like Mark and TJ idolize him even more. Finally, it’s Berlin. Berlin is just interesting by definition.

The trip to Berlin was slightly chaotic before even leaving Tübingen. My internet decided to stop working the day before, so I didn’t have Olaf’s contact information, access to the train schedules, or any clue when Mark was going to get to Berlin. I still had packing to do that morning, had to find a way to get internet access, and I had a couple classes to attend. Monday was my second encounter with Tübingen Universitaet’s library. The more I learn about that library, the more I miss Mizzou’s library. It took me at least an hour to finally get online at the library. I had to go up to various help desks and explain in broken German that I wasn’t able to get online/ I didn’t understand what to do and where to go to fix the problem. TJ suggested we just go to an internet café, but I wasn’t going to pay for something that I knew I could get for free… even if it WAS a major headache.

Once we got on the train in Tübingen, everything went smoothly for several hours. However, when we reached Hannover, things went wrong. We had a couple minutes to transfer trains in Hannover, but the first train arrived a few minutes too late. We sprinted to the platform only to find that the train had left. Then we noticed the sign said that the train we “missed” was running 10 minutes late. Sweet! 10 minutes came and went; still there was no sign of our train. I was getting confused by everything, so I decided to check out the main departure/arrival board. That’s when I realized something was very off. ALL of the trains were running late. ALL of them. In GERMANY. The board was entirely screwed up and most of the trains were running late by an hour or more. An hour or MORE. I was kind of freaking out at that point because we were already supposed to arrive in Berlin after 11:00pm, now I had no idea how late it would be.

TJ and I got some Chinese food while waiting for a train to Berlin. We weren’t the only people confused. It seemed as if everyone in the station was wandering around with the same dumbfounded expressions. After waiting over an hour, we finally found a high speed train to Berlin. We quickly boarded the train only to wait another 20 minutes for the train to actually move. TJ called Olaf to let him know we would be getting in much later than expected. (When he called, Mark and Olaf were on their way to pick us up at the train station, but since we would be late they changed there route to a bar instead.) Luckily a guy sitting nearby overheard our conversation about the trains being late and explained what had happened. Apparently, someone had committed suicide on the tracks and all trains going through Hannover’s main station were suffering long delays. Once the train finally started moving, the staff apologized for the delays and offered free drinks, chocolates, and a voucher for a free train pass.
We got to Berlin around 1:30 Tuesday morning. Olaf and Mark had gone to a bar/ beach dance club right next to the train station. When they picked us up, I apologized again for getting in so late; and Olaf replied, “Oh well. It's Berlin. We go to bed at 4 am.” (I kind of laughed; but by the end of the trip, I realized he hadn’t been joking) To my surprise, we went back to the bar that Mark and Olaf had been at for an hour or so. When Olaf took us back to his apartment, I was more than ready for bed; but then they put a movie in! So much for getting up early the next morning…

Sure enough, we got a late start the next day. I woke up at 9:00 but had to wait around for my lazy friends to get up. I was starving and dying to see Berlin, but noooo. They had to sleep! We didn’t leave the apartment until noon. NOON. Ridiculous.

Luckily everything was within walking distance from Olaf’s apartment. Seriously. The Brandenburger Tor, the Berliner Dom, the Reichstag, parts of the Berlin Wall, everything. The only problem is that there was so much to see that we needed another day or 5. The next day we went to Potsdam (just outside of Berlin). We didn’t get an early start that day either. Slightly earlier… 11:00. I will blame this on Mark. I’ve found that most things can be blamed on Mark in one way or another. That night they insisted we go clubbing because “Courtney, how many times are you going to be in BERLIN?” I finally gave in and accepted that we would be getting to be late yet again.

My last day in Berlin was crammed packed. I still had to get souvenirs and there were a number of things that I still wanted to see. It became apparent that morning that Mark wasn’t going to wake up until noon or so, so TJ and I left early to get souvenirs without him. Around 1:00, we got a call from Olaf asking where we had gone. Apparently we had to get our stuff out of his apartment ASAP because he had a friend coming at 4:00. (Things were obviously not clearly communicated earlier…). I still hadn’t finished my shopping, but we immediately sped walked back to Olaf’s. Olaf then took us to a youth hostel where Mark and TJ booked a room because they planned to stay one more day. While they were checking in, I was getting antsy about getting my souvenirs and getting to the train station. It was a little after 4:00 when we finally got to the Berlin Hbf. I grabbed a quick bite to eat and found the next train headed in the direction of Tübingen. I still didn’t have all of the souvenirs I had planned on getting, but TJ promised to pick them up for me on their way back to the hostel that evening.

The train ride was rather uneventful. I mostly sat there looking through my photos and wishing I hadn’t gotten such a late start home. The schedule put me home around 2:00am. Looking at the ticket, I decided the route seemed strange. Why would I go all the way to Karlsruhe rather than switching trains in Frankfurt? There are constantly trains going from Frankfurt to Stuttgart. That would save me time and get me home earlier than the schedule I had printed off… Hmm. So, like an idiot, I decided to change my route without knowing the train schedules for certain. As soon as I reached Frankfurt, I rushed over to look at the timetable to find the quickest route to Tübingen. The screen showed only one possible route to Tübingen for that evening. Hmm… I would have to go via Karlsruhe…wait…WHAT?? I immediately dashed back to the train I had previously gotten off of just in time to see it pulling away. I just stood there starring for a few minutes before walking over to the Starbucks where I sipped my Mocha tearfully for an hour before the next train to Stuttgart arrived.

As luck would have it, I got to Stuttgart at 00:55. 8 minutes after the departure of the last train to Tübingen… I printed off the schedule for the very first train to Tübingen the next morning (5:15) and searched for a bench to “sleep” on for the night. I found a small waiting room with hard wooden benches that I decided would have to do. Not long after I got settled (or as settled as you can get on a wooden bench), a couple security guys came in to check for tickets. If you don’t have a ticket, you have to leave the train station. There was and old homeless looking lady on the bench next to me that kept arguing with the security men. They told her she couldn’t stay there without a ticket and if she didn’t leave immediately, the police would be called. She finally got up grumbling and pleading saying that she wasn’t foreign. She had lived in Germany for 39 years and they “can’t do this.” It was an interesting scene to watch take place. Although I was dead tired and upset about having to sleep in a train station, I was able to understand everything being said.

It was quiet an experience…I’ve never felt so homeless and alone. I got back to my apartment at 6:30 the next morning, showered, and went straight to bed. I slept until 6:30 pm when I received a call from Alyssa asking if I wanted to go to Zurich the next day. I agreed even though I was completely worn out from Berlin.

Zurich was absolutely beautiful of course, and I got to use up all but 40 cents of my Swiss Francs. Not bad. I finally heard a good deal of Swiss German, and I must say it is the hardest dialect to understand. It sounds pretty awesome, but I don’t know what they are saying 70% of the time… I picked up a free magazine about different parts of Switzerland, and I look forward to my next trip in the incredible Alpen region. It won’t be this semester, unfortunately; but someday. I really do love Switzerland. :)