A spectacular and exhausting tour of Europe

I had a great time traveling around Europe with Anna and Ryan!

We decided to get a Eurorail pass rather than booking cheap flights the whole way. I suggested getting the pass, but after we bought it I thought we might have made a mistake. Looking back on our whole trip, I’d say I am glad we took the train everywhere. Some of our trips were pretty long – like 14 hours or so – but it is a lot more comfortable in a train and you get to meet some really interesting people and get to know them really well from a few hours of talking.

We started our European adventure on the night August 14^th, taking an overnight train from Malmo to Berlin, then from Berlin to Wroclaw (pronounced vort-swave), where Anna’s cousin lives. We stayed in his small apartment with him and his girlfriend, sleeping in their living room. They showed us around Wroclaw and took us on a great hike a few hours away in the Czech Republic.

Our next stop was supposed to be in Prague, but we took a minor, unintentional detour. As we were getting off of the train in Dresden, Berlin to transfer, I took my luggage off of the train and then went back on to help Anna and Ryan with their luggage. The doors closed, leaving my luggage outside on the platform and Ryan, Anna and I and their luggage inside the train. Luckily the next stop was only 15 minutes away. We caught a train going back to the other Dresden station and to my surprise and immense happiness my bag was still on the platform.

We missed our connecting train, so we spent the day walking around Dresden and had a pretty good time.

Finally, we arrived late that night in Prauge. Our hostel was in Prague’s epicenter of tourism, so things didn’t start to quiet down until 4:00 in the morning. We stayed in Prague for a few nights, usually spending our days walking around and exploring the city. My favorite thing in Prauge was a jazz concert that we went to one night, kind of by accident. I saw a flyer for “free music.” Being the cheap college students that we are, we take advantage of any free opportunity that presents itself. When we got to the jazz bar and the bouncer asked us to pay the cover charge we showed him the flyer that we had picked up. He explained that “free music” is a style and has nothing to do with the price. We felt like dumb Americans.

We decided to pay the cover charge (it was cheap, only about $6) and the music was great!

Our next stop was in Bern, Switzerland. It was my favorite stop of the trip and by far the most beautiful. It was a nice change of pace from Prague. Our hostel was located right on the Aare river, a freezing cold river of snow melt from the alps that is the most beautiful shade of turquoise and has a super fast current. Ryan and I went swimming down it one evening (rather, we were flushed downstream in the current). It was freezing, but really awesome to move that fast in the water.

From Bern, we took a day trip to Spiez, a city in the Bernese Oberlands. The city is situated around a huge lake that is the same beautiful shade of turquoise as the Aare river. The Alps are all around the lake. We set off that morning to hike in the Alps. Instead, we ended up walking along the banks of the lake and taking a three-hour nap on a rock that juts into the lake.

Our last stop was in Barcelona. We saw several Gaudi projects. My personal favorite was the Parc Guell. We also ran into several other Cincinnatians. We took a day trip to a beach just south of Barcelona with about 6 other UC students that we ran into. The water was the perfect temperature, and the beach wasn’t too crowded. At the end of the day some people started playing pick-up sand soccer and Dave (another UC student) and I joined in. Sand soccer is so much more physically demanding than normal soccer. Its hard to walk, let alone run in the sand. Nevertheless, it was fun and a great workout. I’d missed playing soccer since I left Copenhagen.

By the time the end of the trip rolled around I was ready to go home. Traveling was really fun, but really exhausting. Its really nice to be home and sleep in my own bed!

Yum

The restaurant we went to in Christiania last night was REALLY good (also really expensive, but in Copenhagen I wouldn’t expect it any different.)

Today is the Fam’s last full day in Copenhagen. Next, they are going to London for a couple of days – my Aunt Judy lives there, so they are going to stay at her house. I am going to send my computer back with them so that I don’t have to carry it around while I am traveling around Europe on the trains with Anna and Ryan, so this will probably be my last entry for a while. I will write a final one once I get home about my 2 weeks of traveling through Europe.

The open house for our projects is tonight. After that, we have a DIS dinner. I think my dad and sister are planning on going to the Denmark vs. Chile soccer game. I’d like to go to a soccer game while I am in Europe – maybe I’ll be able to while we are traveling around Europe for 2 weeks.

Critiques

My critique went well. I am back in my room at the Kollegium and am ready for a nap after getting just a few hours of sleep last night. My dad, sister, and aunt should be returning to Copenhagen from Struer tonight. It will be nice to have the time to show them around Copenhagen tonight and tomorrow without worrying about my studio project. I am thinking that I will take them to a restaurant that I saw last time I was in Christiania. Its on the top floor of one of the buildings on the perimeter – its pretty cute and looks really good. The stairwell up to the restaurant reeks of pot – we’ll see if that scares my aunt at all.

Back to Copenhagen

I had a great time today seeing the area that my family came from. Our first stop this morning was at Paul Eric’s (pronounced Polly-eg) house. According to him and Jahn, my great grandmother lived with her family on the farm next door until she was sold to a wealthier family at the age of 12 to take care of the kids and the house. Paul Eric didn’t speak English, but he was one of the most interesting people to listen to. He speaks Danish like he is singing a song – the tone of his voice is constantly changing.

After Paul Eric’s house we went to see some Viking burial mound, and then to the church where my great grandmother and grandfather were married before they moved to America. Jahn told us the legend of the beautiful church. Apparently, a young couple – a prince and his lover- were made to dance to death as a punishment for their forbidden love.

We drove towards the coast and stopped to see fishermen unloading the day’s catch. We walked up the steps of a lighthouse for a spectacular view of the Danish coastline, and then we headed back for another delicious dinner.

I am on the train back to Copenhagen. I should get in around 3:00 am, and I have critiques at 8:00. Woof.

Visiting the Fam

So we are up in Struer, Denmark right now. I’m at my great grandmother’s cousin’s grandson’s house (or something like that) and it is absolutely beautiful. The house is a “sail house” by the Danish architecture firm, KPF. It’s one of several black, modern row houses along the banks of a beautiful fjord. A large, retractable sail on the rear of each of the homes gives them their name – it also shades the house from the bright sun.

Struer is the home of Bang and Olufsen, the upscale electronics and technology company, so the house came fully wired and outfitted with all of the new B&O products. My distant relatives just moved into their new home a couple of week ago, but they’ve already got the place filled with furniture, a lot of which I recognize from our Scandinavian Furniture Deign lecture.

When we arrived, Jahn (my super-distant uncle) and his wife Abigail had a delicious dinner waiting for us on their designer dining room table. We started with some smoked salmon and greens served with the best white wine I’ve had. For the main course we had fillet mignon and new potatoes with sauce. For desert we had fresh fruit and ice cream. Mmmmmmm.

Tomorrow we are going to go on a road trip around Struer to see where our family came from – I’m looking forward to it.

More Visitors

My family is arriving in Copenhagen later on today. My aunt, dad, and sister Alice are visiting me for about a week. I’m hoping to show them around, but it will be tough to find time since our final project is due in a couple days. On Sunday, once my project is done (hopefully), we are planning to go up to Struer, Denmark to visit some very distant relative. My Aunt Judy is very interested in our family history and genealogy and has managed to find and contact some of my grandmother’s (her mother’s) cousin’s children and grandchildren. It should be interesting to meet them.

In the mean time, I am busy at work on this my studio project, a sports complex. We had desk crits with another professor the other day – mine did not go so well, so I’ve scrapped a lot of things. I’m hoping it will all come together in the end.

Study Tour: part deux

The Western Denmark tour was great! Our last stop was the Trapholt art museum, the museum that I built a model of for my first project. It was strange visiting a building for the first time but knowing so much about it. It was less monumental than I had imagined. The building has a strange geometry on one side, but you hardly even see that side of the building when you visit the site.

After we visited Trapholt, on our way back to Copenhagen, the bus driver pulled off of the main road into a residential neighborhood. The bus stopped and the group leader announced that the bus was broken. It could not go above the kilometer equivalent of 30 mph, so we would all have to leave the bus and join the other study tour group on their already full, but supposedly bigger bus. Our luggage, the said, would meet up with us later in Copenhagen. Everybody grumbled, but got off of the bus and began walking towards where we thought the other bus was waiting. On our way we walked through a churchyard during a wedding. They led us to the cemetery in the rear, and then surprised us with shots to celebrate the end of a great last study tour.