Berlin (September 27-29)

After starting my trip in small, Scandinavian cities where almost everyone is a fluent English speaker, Berlin was the first place I felt some tiny moments of culture shock, or something like it. Not that Western Europe is drastically different from the US, but it was the combination of the train station being so confusing, and the city being so big, and the ticket-counter lady muttering things in German under her breath when I forgot what day I needed a ticket for, and I had the scary realization that I might not understand everything people were saying to me and they might not understand me. I've already been doing a lot of extra smiling, as it's the only way I have of expressing "I know I'm an idiot, but I promise I'm nice and I mean well," and I have a feeling I'm going to be doing a lot more of it.

I decided to let myself relax and settle into the hostel and finish my book in the morning, then I spent the afternoon on a free walking tour. That's definitely something I'd suggest when traveling, especially if you're like me and a) you're bad at directions and like that a tour teaches you a few landmarks and helps you orient yourself as to where things are situated, and b) you like looking at historical things, especially when there's someone there to point out the hard-to-find ones and tell you cool stories about them. (Plus, sometimes you get a Liverpudlian guide!)

After that I doubled back over a couple of the sites on my own. I wanted to see the Reichstag up close and I wanted to spend more time at the Holocaust memorial (the real name of which is long and German and I don't think anybody actually calls it that), which is seriously cool.

When you look at it from the edge, you can't tell that it's not built on flat ground, or that the stone blocks are all in straight rows, but when you start walking between them, the ground dips and suddenly you're in the middle of this maze of giant stone blocks.

It feels a little like walking down a city street, with the buildings encroaching impossibly close on both sides, and even though there were plenty of other people in there, when you turn a corner it can feel like there's no one else there at all. It was definitely an evocative experience.

I was getting pretty tired by this point, so I headed back to my hostel and stopped along the way for some currywurst (sausage with ketchup and curry powder on it), which I was told I must try. It was pretty good, and after that I called it a night.

The next day, I had been planning to wander and then go on another (alas not free) walking tour, but I stumbled on a bike tour place that was doing Cold War/Berlin Wall tours, and I took that instead. My knee had been bothering me a bit, twingy from all the walking, but I wrapped it up (in gauze, for alas there were no Ace bandages to be found), and maybe it was psychosomatic healing or something, but it felt much better. After the tour, which took us all over the city but felt much less strenuous than walking, I went out for my first proper German beer, which I obviously took a picture of.

I ended up in this tiny little French-themed bar full of smoke (you can smoke inside here!) and cheap beer. We shared a table with some locals and tried some shot they had, which tasted sweet and strangely (and strongly) like flowers and herbs, and seemed to me like the kind of thing they give you in Faerie so you won't be able to leave, and it felt like an authentic experience, whatever that  means.

The next day, Sunday, I let myself sleep in, which I desperately needed, even though it meant I missed a huge flea market I'd been planning to go to. In the afternoon I visited the Pergamon Museum, which has a bunch of famous antiquities (like the Ishtar Gate, which is apparently a thing) that some German archaeologists brought back in the early 1900s. Unfortunately, the exhibit with the Pergamon Altar was closed for renovations, but I had fun looking at everything else. I love old things, and imagining the stories that go with them.

My favorite thing was probably the Wall of Mshatta, an ancient city (or palace?) in Jordan. Check out the detail on that stone carving! On a huge wall! Human beings are so impressive.

After the Pergamon, I braved the subways system and wandered around Berlin's baby version of Oktoberfest and ate more street food, and then it was just about time to pack up and head to bed.

Copenhagen and Train Travel (September 25-26)

I took a train from Bergen to Copenhagen, and, after panicking that my Kindle was stolen only to find that it had dropped out of my bag in the bathroom, the trip went off without any complications. I was delighted by the way the Norwegian Railway Service gives you little inflatable pillows (What? Genius!) for night journeys, and that no one sat next to me, so I was able to stretch out and get a solid few hours' sleep. On Wednesday (September 25), I rode through Sweden, which, not to belabor the points made in my last post, but I might as well have been looking at Iowa, after Norway.

I arrived in Copenhagen at 3:30 pm, with just enough time to check into my hostel, go exploring, get promptly--though briefly--lost, and be back in time for the communal hostel dinner (free food, hooray!), which had the added bonus of leading me to meet an Italian girl, a French girl, and an Australian guy, who I then embarked to find waffles with, which seems like a good ending to any day.

On my second day in Copenhagen, I went on a free walking tour and saw all the major sights (except not the Little Mermaid statue, I realized belatedly. Maybe my guide was just tired of looking at it?). My guide was actually from Arvada, only about an hour away from my hometown, and it was then I realized that, though undoubtedly there have been Americans staying at my hostels, this was the first time in almost a week that I'd actually spoken to another American face-to-face. Which is pretty cool.

A status of Christian the Somethingth, seen on the walking tour

In the afternoon, I went with a girl I met on the walking tour to Christiania, the commune/intentional community/sort of independent nation (?) that's been (as I understand it) continually functioning since 1962a. And it was awesome, all graffitied buildings and dogs wandering around everywhere (not strays, exactly, but free dogs!), and a whole street where you can buy pot from open-air tents, and a Portuguese man with dreadlocks made me a clip-on wire earring as a present for Christiania's birthday. Amazing place.

 

I liked Copenhagen. Still, only being there for one day, I feel like it's hard to really connect to/experience any place--or thing--in just that time. I'm glad I'm going to have about three days in most other places. 

Next I did the obligatory getting-lost-on-the-way-back-to-the-hostel, and then it was time to catch my night train to Germany. I had reserved my seat on a German website, so I wasn't really sure what I'd be getting, but I was thrilled by the Harry Potter-esque compartments with benches that then folded up into bunks. My very first sleeper car! I unfortunately forgot to take a picture, but I slept on the top of three bunks, and actually slept really well, despite police asking for our passports in the middle of the night, and I woke up for the first time since my hike in Bergen not feeling like my legs were about to fall off. Then I probably annoyed all my compartmentmates by repeatedly asking (at 6 am) how I would know when my stop was, and then I was in Berlin. 

Here are some more pictures of Copenhagen! 

Norway (September 20-24)

You guys, Norway is so pretty.

I arrived in Oslo on Saturday morning after thirteen hours of flying, and was met at the airport by a friend of the family (my grandparents' ex-exchange student), who I haven't seen since I was about three years old. It was only as I was carrying my stuff out to the car that I realized he could be somebody else and I would never know. Judging by how much he knew about my family history, this seems doubtful,  it you never know. (Don't worry, Mom, I'm taking my safety very seriously).

That first day, we took a walk around downtown and drank Norwegian beer at a TGI Friday's, and I pretty much fell asleep at the table because of all the not-sleep I'd been getting for the last few days. On Sunday, I did the museum thing, and saw the Viking ship museum and the Edvard Munch museum. I don't think I'd really seen any of his work before this, other than The Scream, and I really enjoyed the way all his plants look like people and all his people look like they might be monsters.

Yesterday I took the train west across Norway to Bergen, which is the point at which I started whispering to the scenery about how pretty it is. That continued today when I took the funicular (funiculi, funicula!), a cable car, up to the top of one of the seven hills that surrounds Bergen, and hiked to another of those seven hills.

Seriously, it's like magically beautiful. I know I live in a beautiful place, too, and maybe this is just the wonder of new things, but the colors seem deeper here, everything seems a little wild, both the forests that seem to be encroaching on all sides and the winding, spiraling cobblestone streets, and most shops are closed on Sundays. I don't mean to say anything about how it's a "simpler time" or unnecessarily quaint-ify it, because it's not that. But, especially out away from the city today-sometimes feeling like the only person in the world-it just felt like the setting of every medieval-esque fantasy story I've ever read.

Which obviously led to me pretending to be Frodo Baggins crossing the Emyn Muil for about an hour. I mean, come on.

Tonight I take a night train to Copenhagen. In the meantime, here are some more pictures of the prettiest country at the party.