A spring break montage III

The final installment! After this we can go back to Paris!

Stockholm, SWEDEN

The lobby of my ferry from Helsinki to Stockholm. Titanic-tastic!

View from deck.

The harbor in Stockholm. I like boats.

Those Swedes have a goofy sense of humor.

This is the humungous museum of Nordic History in Stockholm. They had a lot of really interesting exhibits ranging from Swedish traditions to the evolution of Swedish furniture to costumes spanning hundreds of years. I wasn't supposed to take pictures inside, but I totally did.

Please, please, let this wedding dress come back into style.

In Swedish culture, the oldest girl in the family dresses up as St. Lucia around Christmas time and brings a tray of refreshments to her family. I knew this before visiting the museum because my childhood American Girl Doll of choice had been Kirsten, the Swedish-American immigrant! Nerdfiiighters.

There was a scary collection of death masks at the Nordic Museum. Apparently it was really popular in Sweden to make plaster casts of a famous person's face immediately after s/he died, and the museum has over a dozen of them all lined up in a glass case. Creepy.

C'est moi a Stockholm.

Oslo, NORWAY

In Oslo I went to the Munch musuem, but The Scream was not on display because they're cleaning it or something. Here are two other paintings that I liked, though:

I think I like them cuz they're spooky.

It's me with a Viking ship!

This sign was in the street and I had to take a picture of it--

Made stale for everyone else?

This fast food menu sign is actually from the carnival I went to with my couchsurfer in Gothenburg, but it's the only picture from that city that made it into my upload folder, so I'm not giving it its own category. I had expressed slight revulsion at the idea of a hot dog topped with mashed potatoes and drizzled with ketchup, but Danny just gave me a curious look and said it was a popular meal item in Sweden. Sure enough, the people in line ahead of us ordered one. To me it just looks like a bizarre, savory version of a banana split.

That's all for Eastern Europe and Scandinavia! Hope you enjoyed.

A spring break montage II

I should be writing Paul's paper about churches and kingship and stuff, but as usual I'd rather procrastinate. And I've already exhausted the new Nerdfighters videos, Postcards from Yo Mamma, Overheard in New York, and One Sentence, True Stories, so I guess it's blog time.

What were we up to last time? Lithuania? I guess then it's time for

Riga, LATVIA

According to my couchsurfer, George, who took me on a tour of Old Town, I would be assured a life of immeasurable wealth if I touched this donkey's nose. I hope it's not like that statue at Harvard where they tell the prospective freshman to touch the foot for good luck, but then all the current students secretly pee on it.

Lots of the buildings in Riga's Old Town have these interesting little roof things. They had a practical purpose, many moons ago-- the rope would be used to hoist buckets and packages and stuff up from the ground to the top floor of the buildings.

The tower of St. Peter's in Riga (center) was bombed during WWII. They rebuilt it, and now you can take an elevator to the top for panoramic views of the city.

I saw a building like this in Warsaw, too, and asked George about it. He said it's a typical Soviet skyscraper design from the 50s, and that they were built in every major Soviet city as a landmark of the Union's power and influence.

Check out all this sweet Art Nouveau! ---

Clearly, all building facades need to follow that example.

I love that Riga has a store called "Randoms." They must've thought that was a cool English word. Like the new clothing store that just opened across the street from my apartment in Paris-- it's called "Attractive!"

My couchsurfer hosts George and Lina took me to this place that does "Latvian fast food"-- which apparently means dumplings of all varieties! I couldn't read any of the signs, so I just put some of everything into my bowl. It was delicious and I got sour cream and pickles for free. The drink to the right is some sort of yogurty smoothie. Eastern Europe understands my food preferences so well.

Tallinn, ESTONIA

That might look like a lot of money on my tray, but the exchange rate from Estonian krones to euros is something like 15.6, so it's really something like $30. The food is meat pancakes!

I climbed that tower on the right (refer to vlog entry: Estonia: Prettier than Latvia, but Only By A Little Bit). The tower on the left is called Fat Margaret, and it now houses the maritime museum, which I also went to.

The sign next to this R2D2-looking thing said that it was a diving suit built in the 1920s but never used. I think I can guess why.

A giant honey-banana pancake= lunch.

Helsinki, FINLAND

Stockmann's is a giant famous department store in Finland. I saw one in Riga, too.

This is a church, believe it or not. The green dome is the ceiling.

Entrance to the church.

Inside the church, it was a cave! That's the altar, at center.

Note the little girl trying to climb the church walls next to the votive candles.

I went to the famous Kiasma modern art museum in Helsinki, and this was the only good piece of art in it.

I had heard that Finland is famous for herring, so I ordered some. Things to note in this picture: the herring, deep-fried on the left; that mustard's brand name is Sara; the Helsinki harbor in the background.

That's all, folks. Stay tuned for Sweden and Norway.

A spring break montage

No, I'm not dead. Just really lazy.

I made it back to Paris on Monday, and have sort of been dragging myself around since then. It turns out that a spring break spent visiting seven countries in two weeks is kind of draining. Who'da thunk?

But due to repeated inquiries (ok, dad asked once) as to the lack of updates on the blog, I have finally uploaded the approximately 37 million photos from spring break and will now share the choicest selection with you, fair readers. I'm going to do it in installments, though, because I have way too many pictures for a single post. We will begin with

Krakow, POLAND

On my first night in Krakow, my couchsurfer host Robert took me to this obscure sidewalk stand in the Jewish quarter that is famous for these pizza-type open-face sandwiches. The one I'm holding has cheese, mushrooms, chives, and ketchup. "Polish people really love ketchup," Robert had said. "I don't know why."

This is the main square in Krakow. The central building is the Cloth Hall, so named because they used to sell cloth there. Now it's full of a bunch of booths selling jewelry and handmade wooden stuff to tourists.

Amber jewelry was available for sale all over the Baltic States. I didn't buy any because it was expensive and I don't like orange.

You will notice that the two towers on this church in Krakow are oddly asymmetrical. The story associated with the construction is that there were two brothers, each of whom was responsible for building one tower. The left-hand tower brother finished first, but then got scared that the right-hand tower brother was going to build his half taller and embarrass him. So, like any normal person, he decides the best course of action is to kill his brother before the second tower can be completed-- hence the difference in the heights. Unfortunately, though, he later goes mad with grief over what he's done and hurls himself off the belfry. C'est la vie.

This cave is found under the Wawel Castle in Krakow. According to legend it is the former home of a ferocious dragon who lived in Krakow many centuries ago and became something of a menace after it devoured most of the villagers and livestock. Finally one surviving villager had the grand idea of feeding the dragon a giant chunk of salt, and when it went running down to the river to drink some water it exploded. Dragon problem solved, and now you can visit the cave for like 50 cents.

That's a pretzel thing I bought from a sidewalk stand. To the right is a famous statue of some Polish poet, and according to Robert it's also some sort of military mecca. When soldiers get released from duty, they come to this statue and do push-ups on the ground in front of the poet. No one knows why.

This is where Pope John Paul II used to live. They've put a poster of him up in the window because whenever he was in town, large crowds of people used to flock to his window in front of his house and he would open it and stand there to pray and talk to them all night.

Warsaw, POLAND

This is the Old Town of Warsaw, which is not very old at all because it's been totally reconstructed following the damages of WWII.

Me in front of the Royal Palace.

In Warsaw I saw some pretty sweet breakdancing.

This was a little bit hilarious.

My Warsaw couchsurfers made me borsch! The pink stuff floating in it is sour cream.

Hey I'm going down to Flugger Farby, do you need anything?

Vilnius, LITHUANIA

This tower is mostly all that remains of the 13th-century hilltop castle that once stood atop Vilnius. You can ride a funicular up there and see some lovely views of the city.

Like this one.

In Vilnius there's this artistic, bohemian, neo-hippie kind of community whose symbol is a hand. My couchsurfer Eva took me through the part of the city that this community lays claim to.

I really liked this tradition. Eva told me that in Lithuania, when a couple wants to declare their love, they attach a pair of locks to the bars of a bridge and throw the key into the river. If no one can find the key to unlock the locks, their love will never be undone. There are tons of these locks all over the bridges that we walked by, some of them very rusty and old-fashioned. Much more poetic than carving your names into a tree!

Last stop in Vilnius was the Genocide Museum, which recalls Lithuania's tragic years of oppression during WWII and under the rule of the Soviet Union. Genocide victims' names are engraved on the blocks that make up the outside of the museum.

In the basement of the museum you can visit the KGB prison that was a part of the building until the 1990s. Many unfortunate people were prisoners here, with many people sharing cells as small as this one.

Me in one of the prison cells. It is no laughing matter.

Eeeee scary straightjacket room! Note the padded walls.

Apart from retaining its Soviet charm, the bathroom also seemed to have kept its original odor.

And on that happy note, we will end. More to come when my energy returns.

Scandinavia, continued

Greetings from Gothenburg! Or Gøteborg, as they say in Swedish, which is infinitely cooler.

Just got here via train from Norway, after a lovely day and a half in Oslo. My couchsurfer Matthias met me at the tourist center and led me back to his dorm-style apartment, where we enjoyed a dinner of spaghetti. I haven't really noticed until now how much I have been missing pasta (not a quintessentially French food) but boy, was that spaghetti good. He also had tortilla chips and salsa, which is something else I've never seen in my local Monoprix, so I ate half the bag and it tasted like America. Mmm. Matthias provided interesting company since he is not, in fact, Norweigan-- he's a German post-high school student doing social service work as a kindergarten teacher in Oslo before college.

"Do you speak Norweigan at all?" he asked.

"No, not at all."

"German?"

"Uh, well I took it for two years when I was little, but all I can remember is how to count to eleven, the word for father, and 'I am eight years old.'"

He looked at me dubiously.

"That last part is slightly outdated now," I clarified uselessly.

After dinner, some kid named Robert poked his head through the window (literally) and joined me and Matthias for some TV viewing. Actually it was really me who was joining them, since they apparently get together every night for a religious viewing of Friends.

Yes, Friends, which they watch with German subtitles. "Do you speak German?" asked Robert.

"No," I said apologetically.

"She learned it for two years!" Matthias contributed.

"Then we can all speak German!" exclaimed Robert.

It took considerable effort to explain, again, that the two years of instruction had faded into nothingness, but the boys seemed unwilling to believe me. "Typical American!" said Matthias jocularly. "Knows another language but doesn't want to speak anything but English!"

Eventually we stopped making fun of my language failures and watched our show. Matthias and Robert are up to season 3 and never miss a night.

"Sorry," Matthias apologized to me as he loaded the DVD into his laptop. "We cannot cancel the Friends just because there is a guest."

Fair enough. Robert asked me a few polite questions about the States, but conversation more or less ceased when he admitted that he had no idea where Michigan was. "Near Canada?" I ventured. "Surrounded by lakes? Looks like a mitten?"

"I don't really know my U.S. geography," he said with a shrug. Considering I didn't know where Lithuania, Latvia or Estonia were until I traveled there last week, I guess I can't fault him for it.

So that was the first night. The next morning I set out on a condensed tour of Oslo, since my train to Gothenburg left at 6. I walked to the Munch museum, which was really cool but didn't have The Scream on display, which was pretty much the whole reason I wanted to go. Apparently it's being restored and won't be back up until the end of May. I feel like they should at least charge less of an entrance fee to art musuems when the famous ones are out of commission. But the other paintings were worth the visit, too.

Then it was time to take the little ghetto ferry (I thought we were about to sink the whole time, what with the gnashing sounds of the motor and the creaking of the wood floors) across the bay to the part of Oslo with most of the museums. Lucky for you, I took some more home movies! We will begin with the Open Air Museum:

Then it was time for Viking fun!

Nerdular sightseeing makes me a little sad to be alone on this trip, because I just end up thinking about my friends. Justin and my family would have loved the Viking ships, for instance. Diane and I would have had a good time chuckling over the wife skills exhibit at the museum of Nordic culture. Laura would have been horrified by the Museum of Things in Little Bottles (I'm not even joking, it's real-- they claim to have the biggest collection of things in bottles in the world-- but I didn't have time to go) because she's afraid of all things mini. And I bet a lot of people from the Paris program would've enjoyed the Munch museum, and we even could have laughed together at the big group of students with notebooks and pencils in hand, moving from painting to painting as an instructor lectured in Norweigan. At least I didn't follow them and stare intently at whatever painting they were currently grouped around, as tourists often do to us at the Louvre, thinking the studious attention of our group is an indicator that we have discovered something Truly Great.

This trip is a lot of fun, but I think I'll be happy to come back to Paris.

SaraTV, broadcasting not-so-live from Europe

So I shelled out fifty bucks today for some 17-in-one-function memory card reader that the nice Swedish man at the Sony store assured me was the best product for me to buy to solve my uploading dilemmas, and now I can FINALLY share some visuals with you! Unforunately it was taking like three years to get the pictures up, so I focused on getting my videos uploaded instead.

That's right my friends, I've been making some home movies. They're in chunks because I have no means of editing, and you'll have to excuse the bad lighting and my general scruffy appearance, as well. We travelers become haggard after a week and a half on the road.

This first series of videos is from Tallinn, Estonia. There's a tower in the Old Town there that's part of a church from the Middle Ages, and visitors are still allowed to climb up it the old-fashioned way. Knowing me and my love of spiral staircases, this was obviously a must. Let's take a gander!

Then I undid all that good exercise by meeting up with my couchsurfer Marion and eating giant pancakes in Old Town. Oh well.

Now we move to my adventures onboard the MS Mariella, a charming cruise liner that took me from Helsinki, Finland to Stockholm, Sweden two days ago.

One more thing...

It took like five hours to get all this online... you better have appreciated it. I have to go to bed now because in the morning I'm catching a train to Oslo, Norway, but I'll have details and pictures of Stockholm up soon. Later dudes.

A day in Santa land

No, I didn't get so far off course that I accidentally wound up at the North Pole-- according to Helsinki natives, Santa's true residence is here in Finland. I bought a Santa Christmas tree ornament this morning to commemorate the fact.

So yes, I have now officially sailed the Baltic Sea and disembarked on the northernmost land that I have ever been to. Which I guess isn't saying much, since this whole trip so far has been the farthest east I've ever been. Having said that, though, it really isn't very cold here. It was sunny today and pretty windy near the harbor, but the mittens I packed in expectation of near-arctic conditions have as yet gone unused.

So now I'll tell you about the James Bond stunt I pulled this morning in Tallinn. My ferry left at 7:30 am, meaning I had to wake up at 5:45 to get dressed, packed, and out the door with enough time for the half-hour walk to the port. With dismay I noticed that Terminal D, my destination, was the farthest of Tallinn's four outgoing ferry docks. I guess that's what you get for booking the cheapest passage available. I passed terminals A, B, and C, and saw the giant D looming ahead of me on the side of a far-off building. I shifted my 9,000,000-pound bag to the other shoulder, quickened my pace, and... walked into a fence.

Damnit! They had closed off the obvious path to my terminal. I looked around and realized that I would have to completely backtrack in order to circumnavigate the fence and access the arrival gate. By the time I lurched through the doorway it was 7:11, and the place was completely empty.

"Where are you going to, and when?" said the girl at the check-in desk. For some reason people all over the world speak to me in English before I've even opened my mouth.

"Helsinki," I said, gasping for breath. "Today at 7:30."

"Oh!" said the girl. "But you are too late! Boarding ended one minute ago."

Oh, hellll no.

"Well it's only one minute," I pleaded as an announcement boomed over the PA, saying that my ship was departing.

The girl eyed me dubiously, doubled over with the weight of my suitcase, then printed a boarding pass and handed it to me with a frown. "You will have to run."

"Where is it?" I said, already moving away from the desk.

"Second floor, follow the signs. Quickly, go!"

So I did. With my overstuffed duffel and purse banging against my legs as I ran, I flew down hallways, up elevators, and through twisting, empty passageways. Every time I thought I had gotten closer, another hallway appeared. Finally a window appeared and outside I could see the ship. I turned the final corner and practically knocked over two guys about to close the boarding doors.

"I made it!" I gasped, thrusting my boarding pass at one of them.

"Uh huh," he said, standing aside to let me pass.

Once that near heart attack had passed, the boat ride was quite plesant. The ferry was one of the big ones that you can drive your cars onto, and it was packed with restaurants, stores, and lounges. It was like being on the Titanic, minus the part where it sinks and everyone dies.

After we struck land, I found my way to the central station in Helsinki and loaded up on maps and bus tickets. I only had a few hours until my 5:30 ferry to Stockholm (it is about 4 right now... I'm leaving soon to avoid another action-adventure scene) so I had to keep my list of sightseeing to a minimum. I checked out a really cool Lutheran church that is dug out of the middle of a giant rock, and all the walls on the interior are rock outcroppings. Hard to picture, but I'll post photos. Then I went to a supposedly famous modern art gallery, but it was the pre-kindergarten kind of art that makes Dad angry whenever we visit museums, so it was a disappointment overall. I spent a little while wandering through Stockmann's, the famous Finnish department store, and then headed over to the harbor, where I found an outdoor restaurant selling fish that had been caught that morning. I ordered the Baltic herring because I remember reading somewhere that it's a famous fish variety in Finland, but I'm no fish connisseur so it pretty much tasted like high-quality fish sticks to me. It was fun to eat by the harbor, though, and when I got down to the bony parts of the fish I shared the remainder of my meal with a nearby duck. Very pleasant indeed.

Now I have to go reclaim my suitcase from the bag storage, and find a tram to take me to the port where my ferry to Stockholm leaves from in a little over an hour. Will update again from there, but not for awhile because the ferry goes overnight. My first night on a boat... this should be interesting.

Estonia: Prettier than Latvia, but only by a little bit

There was a shimmering moment of hope just now that I might be able to use my Estonian couchsurfer's memory adapter stick to upload the photos I've taken so far, but the USB gods were against me. Alas, you will have to suffer through another of my wordy descriptions.

This update comes to you from Tallinn, the seaside capital of Estonia. I arrived here late last night at an apparently remote coach station, since my couchsurfer Marion had no idea where it was when I texted to ask where I should go. After about forty minutes of confusion and constant nervous glances at the shady characters prowling the empty parking lot, I bit the bullet and hailed a cab. As we wound our way through the darkened city streets, I smiled a little and appreciated the situation I found myself in. A few months ago when I went to Chicago for my French visa I had never independently used a form of public transportation besides the U of M buses, and I remember being afraid to summon a driver in the comfort of my own country, language, and currency. Now here I was, all alone in the back seat of an Estonian taxi, trying to divide 50 krones by 15-point-something euro to decide if I was being totally gouged for the base rate, and I knew something about me had changed. I am halfway across the world with no sense of direction and approximately three vocabulary words at my disposal, and I am proud to say that I have lost touch with the fear that that should engender. Maybe I'll eat my words when the Scandinavian part of the voyage begins and I find myself stranded in Norway somewhere, but right now I feel like I can handle anything this trip throws at me.

So anyway. I don't think I told you much about Riga, so we'll start there. I was met at the bus station by George, who led me back to his and Lina's apartment and gave me a map of Riga ("You should keep this with you," he advised in slightly Russian accent not unlike that of the animated bat in the movie Anastasia. "Otherwise you might go to Old Town and get lost... forever.") I didn't end up getting lost in Old Town, though, because most of the time I spent there was with them. George wandered around with me for the first night while we waited for Lina to be done with class at the University, and on the second day both of them showed me around and told me the amusing stories of the buildings and monuments. After the Old Town tour we walked around an adjoining area of Riga that boasts some really incredible Art Nouveau style buildings. I took a bunch of pictures, so until I get them up you'll just have to believe me when I say that they weren't quite like any building facade I've seen before, and by this point I think I can safely say that I've seen a lot.

At the end of the second day I packed up my stuff and went off in search of the bus to Tallin, Estonia, accompanied by George, who wanted to make sure I correctly navigated the three straight blocks from the apartment to the station. Like all of the other Eastern European men I've encountered so far on this trip, he insisted on carrying my bag. Little did he know that I've been accumulating trinkets from every sidewalk market in the Baltic States, so he may've regretted that show of chivalry. "Don't talk to anyone in the bus station," he warned as we passed a woman screaming unintelligibly in Latvian. "They are crazy and they want to steal your money."

He bade me farewell and I found the Estonia-bound bus without difficulty. It was a four-hour ride to Tallinn, most of which I spent watching the progressively funnier music videos that were playing on the ceiling-mounted TVs. It started with current music, detoured briefly to 80s selections including Can't Touch This, Jessie's Girl, and Sexual Healing, then seamlessly transitioned to Sexy Back. I shook my head grimly as I realized that even in Estonia I could not escape Justin Timberlake.

After the cab adventure I made it to Marion's apartment in Tallinn, where she welcomed me graciously and made me midnight tea and omelets. This morning she walked with me to Tallinn's Old Town, which is probably one of the oldest and best preserved historical sites in Europe. Much of the city's defensive walls, towers, churches, and other buildings have been meticulously preserved, giving the area a distinctly medieval feel. Marion had to work, so she left me to wander the streets. In Riga, George and Lina had told me that one of their favorite things to do in Tallinn was to climb to the top of the highest church tower in Old Town, which was the tallest building in the world in the 16th century and is still accessible only by its original spiral staircase. I bought my dollar-fifty ticket and bounded gaily up the first few stairs. About forty seconds later I was out of breath and clinging to the rope handrail for support. I did make it to the top though, banging my head on a low beam as I exited onto the narrow viewing platform, and spent a few minutes enjoying the panoramic views of Tallinn and the sea before descending the stairs anew. Once on ground again, I headed to a former cannon artillery tower humorously nicknamed Fat Margaret, and toured the maritime history museum now housed within it. Then Marion met up with me for lunch and we ate some traditional Estonian pancakes- she got one with fish inside, while I opted for a honey and banana concoction. Deeelicious. In the afternoon I did more wandering but then I was kind of tired so I made my way back to Marion's apartment, where I am sitting now. Tomorrow I leave bright and early for Helsinki, which is apparently a short jaunt away by ferry. Probably won't update again until Stockholm, though, since I'm not staying overnight in Finland and won't probably have computer access.

Goodbye, Baltics. Next stop, Scandinavia!