Europe Begins

Here is an explanation:
On July 30, I flew out to Stuttgart, Germany to meet up with my friend Ina. I met Ina back in 2001 after she had stayed with my family for 6 weeks to learn English (they screened us well) after I'd spent 3 months living in Lausanne, Switzerland on exchange with Sarah. In 2003, I went back to Europe and Ina and I spent 3 weeks traveling mostly through Italy, we also visited Sarah and her family. In 2005, somehow I managed to find myself in Germany yet again, this time for only 10 days and Ina and I headed up to Copenhagen and Hamburg, after which Ina dubbed us Chaos Tours for being ridiculous.

Back to the present, July 31, around noon, I got off the plane in Stuttgart and spoke to Ina through the sound-proof glass while I waited for my bag. Then we took the train to Ulm, her home town, as well as Einstein's.

This is what I was greeted with when I got to 'my' room:


Their Nagalene bottles, a travel journal, a copy of Emil und die drei Zwillinge (Emil and the three twins, one from a series from which I'd read one for a lit class!) that was found in her grandma's attic and travel sized Prinzenrollen - the best cookies ever.


My room/computer room.


SpongeBob SpongeHead.

August 1, 2007
We hop onto a train heading west to Augsburg in Bavaria to catch the train to Berlin.


That's us in Augsburg. Ina goes to school here.

Turns out the train Ina picked actually goes through Ulm...

Here's us passing back through Ulm.


Berlin! We had three hours in Berlin til the night train, so we wandered around.


I dig.




The fancy schmanze train station. Bye, bye reasonable prices.

Having never been on a night train before, I didn't know what to expect.

It was hell scary. We got the top two bunks, top of three! That's Ina and that's a net to catch us so we don't plummet to our death. We had to carry our bags up there since there was no room up top.

August 2: Stockholm!!!


So fashionable.

We walked to the hostel and dropped our stuff off, freshened up and met our 3 lesbian roommates and then headed out to Gamla Stan, the old city.




This is our walk over there.


The mediocre Royal Palace.


The Royal Church


The Royal Guards and the Royal Adjustment.


The Royal Court Yard Thinger.


Random street.


People sitting in front of the Nobel Peace Prize Center. They're just sitting there for no reason.


The other side of the Royal Church. Amazing. This woman must walk around just for photos such as this one. Ina took this.


Art.


Artier.


Making friends.


City scapes.


Art. Art. Art.


Ina takes some amazing pics.




Taking pictures.

Friday, August 3
In the morning, we woke up to find that our seemingly all girls dorm had a dude and one of the three girls had brought home a chick! Oh my Stockholm! The plan was to walk to the Vasamuseet which was a good walk away and walk along the water in order to get a better feel for the city.


The city is ridiculously clean, just ridiculously clean and empty. This is the water.


What was this? We took so many pics of it.


Radhus - Cityhall.


Main shopping street.


The islands of Stockholm were really cute.


Bicycles are sad.


That's the Vasamuseet, it looks like a ship on purpose as the Vasa was a ship.


We stumbled onto a photography exhibit of some relatives.




This is what we were up against.


Downtown is to the left and the Vasamuseet is on that Island there.

After a brief movie in Swedish about how and where and when they found the ship. They found it near the museum and it had toppled over due it being a bit too top heavy on its first run back in 1623. It took them nearly 30 years to restore it and they injected it with a polymer/plastic in order to slow down the decay process.

Ladies and gentlemen, the Vasa:





What they think it looked like.


You could climb up the floors to get better views of the ship. Each floor had information about Sweden in general or ships or the Vasa. It was pretty cool. When we walked in we thought we'd be in there for maybe an hour, instead it was a good 3.


The top dot is where the museum is, the bottom is where they found it.


Creepiest thing EVER. They naturally found skeletons on and near the Vasa and for some reason decided it'd be cool to decide what they looked like in a ridiculous lifelike fashion. Meet Gustav




Creepiest one of them all. There were about 20 of these heads.


There was a reconstruction of the hull, however there were so many people you couldn't get a picture. And I have no shame.

More ship highlights.




It was crap weather so we couldn't go to Skansen some park thing with old houses...instead, we went to the Moderna Museet which was all right but we couldn't take pictures. They had a lot of Andy Warhol stuff. After that, it got serious, we

Went shopping.


Ina ended up buying all of that.


We picked up groceries. I really wanted to steal one of those, it's a basket with wheels and a handle. Ina was so embarrassed that she insisted we go to the back room of the grocery store to take this photo.

When we left the grocery store, it was the third time that we came out here:

Even though we'd gone in somewhere a few blocks away. Damn you Stockholm!

In the evening we were pooped, so we stayed at the hostel.

Saturday, August 4, 2007
First thing in the morning we headed over to the hipster side of town, Södermalm and like the rest of Stockholm, it was vacant. We went up the Katarina Tower, Ina was happy about that.


It gave quite the view.


Some more of Stockholm's Escher qualities.


Stockholm isn't that bad..


OK OK It's a pretty nice city, just there's no people.


We walked around for a while near the tower and found some neat graffiti.




We got some lunch at a cafeteria and it was relatively cheap about $12 or so. It was a nice relief.

We knew in advance that it was Pride Week in Stockholm, but we didn't know anything about the parade and we managed to stumble upon it.





Amazing. It was pretty hilarious and excessive. Great.

In the late afternoon we headed over to the port to catch our FREE ferry ride to Helsinki.

We even got a 4 person room that we had to share with a girl from China living in France and a very scary Russian woman.


The room was nice though.


Ina's headache medicine. Ina, what does Ass taste like?


After dropping our bags, we ran out to say good-bye to Stockholm.


Later 'holmes.


The name of our ship. It was a crazy, crazy ship. There was a movie theatre, a casino, loads of restaurants and a few stores.


Forbidden photo of the deck.


We hung out outside for a while.


Taking insane amounts of pics. It kind of looks like Canada, huh?


This was funny for some reason




We got some delicious dinner... oof it was gross.


And found out what we were getting ourselves into with Finnish. Then it's Swedish, then English.


Cool Kids.


The aim was to catch the sunset, but alas to no avail. It just wouldn't go down...so we went inside and walked around the stores. We met our good friend the duty-free liquor store.




Delicious Nordic Berry Vodka.


By then it was already dark out and we were being creepy, drinking straight vodka in the dark.


Half way there. It was about 15 hours by ferry and we got to Helsinki, Finland at about 11:00 AM.