Finally caught up...

I realize that I'm three weeks behind here...but damn, I've been doing a lot since I got back. Most things fun, some things involving a little work.

I'm 2 days from moving to DC. that's heavy. I've got a new place all lined up and everything! I'm pretty excited and am ready to start working (with the slight exception that I need some suits cleaned, tailored, or just plain purchased). I need to pack up my kitchen things, but I'm waiting on a load of dishes to finish before I start so I can have everything ready to rock from the start.

Last Weekend in Stockholm

So, like I said, it felt really nice to get back to Stockholm...and it may be no surprise when I tell you, it felt horrible leaving :(

Saturday dawned bright and sunny...instantly putting me in a fantastic mood. Saturday was fun-filled to the max! Our first thoughts were bent towards brunch, which I throughly enjoyed, but Ariel was somewhat sad about because her belgian waffle came with syrup on it already...so she got to eat around the edges. Following that, we made our way to Skansen, the combo historical look at old Sweden and zoo! I had been putting this off my entire time in Stockholm until more things opened as the weather got better...well worth the wait. We didn't spend TOO much time in the historical reflections portion, opting instead for checking out the wolves, lynxes, moose and reindeer...oh, and of course the seals and bears. From here, we were well positioned to hit up the most ridiculously touristy thing in Stockholm, yes, the Vasamuseet again! huzzah! I was really impressed my first time there back in January and hope that Ariel enjoyed it as well...I was rapidly re-impressed by the sheer magnitude of the boat. From here we moved on to dinner, opting for a pasta/pizza place that I had been to once before. Ariel loved it because of her cute bartender, I loved it because their food is just plain good!

The event of the evening was Kasia's birthday party, for which she brought back two bottles of Polish herbed vodka. good stuff! Much fun was had, Kasia got mad at me because I hadn't emailed her on her birthday (no internet in Munich or on the road to Prague, I forget which...). We decided to head out after a couple hours of hanging out, drinking and laughing (and playing with balloons). Unfortunately, places were clamping down on age limits (25 at the Soap Bar, 24 somewhere else), so I just suggested we go over to the Söder and get into one of the many clubs there...I kind of like Debaser, so I led us there...the music wasn't their best, but was still pretty good I thought.

Sunday...Sunday was the first day I regretted Ariel coming along :) She was a relentless taskmistress, forcing me to get up and get moving to take her to the Modern Art Museum (it had an Andy Warhol exhibit...pretty cool). Ok, I had suggested it anyhow...but it was still fun. We then walked around the downtown areas of Stockholm, looking for some souvenirs for both of us...I messed up and should have pulled the trigger on a few things, thinking that "oh, I'll have plenty of time on Monday morning". BRRRRNT, not right. So, no Swedish hockey jersey for me...but I'll work on that, and something for Svea...surprise!

Ariel had to leave really early on Monday morning (7am flight out of Arlanda), so she wanted to stay up all night and take the night bus to T-Centralen so she could catch the first Arlanda express train...it was a looooong night. We played cards, debated playing Monopoly (in Swedish!) but never did...oh, and I made her watch Leon, because she had never seen Natalie Portman's breakout role! Odd for a person who is often told that she bears a striking resemblance to...

My monday was less fun than I had hoped. I became paranoid about sleeping much after staying up til 4am. So I napped a little and then got my ass moving to get back up to my bags at Lappis where Kasia was nice enough to store them since Saturday. After breakfast we hurried down to T-Centralen and saw me off for my flight...(I had mixed up times between my ORIGINAL flight back to Baltimore and my changed flight to Boston, left at 2 instead of 5, so no last lunch with people from Stockholm, sad). Kasia was nice enough to help me and my luggage all the way to the train, which was nice. Almost a tearful goodbye on my part...I had such a good time in Stockholm and Kasia was likely the best friend I made over there.

Leaving sucks.

(oh, and Boston's Logan Airport sucks too. bastards almost cost my dad a bottle of Akvavit because their terminals aren't linked together and you have to exit the international terminal and then go through security again. freakin' inefficient if you ask me)

Berlin!

So after Melnik we kept on heading northwest towards Berlin, only to be rewarded with one of the most hilarious moments of the trip...Prostitute Pagodas! or, Hooker Huts...depending which bit of alliteration you prefer. What are they you ask? little mountainside cabins with hookers...how could I tell? well...mostly because of the one who was standing on her porch in her underwear in the freakin' freezing cold (it was snowing).

Anyhow, Berlin. It was much more a Big City than anywhere I had been recently (Rome is big, but doesn't feel city-ish the way Berlin does, I guess Berlin is a little more american seeming is what I'm trying to say). Berlin does benefit from the fact that so much of it is new or reclaimed/renovated since WWII. The way into the city was an entertaining drive, and we found th hotel without any problems (except that they had my reservation under "Albee Tullberg" instead of Tullberg. wtf mate?
We then got to adventure about to return the car...which sucked, because even though we found the address I had in my reservation, there wasn't a National Car Rental office there any longer. Soooo, we placed a phone call and found the right place quickly enough. We decided from there to head over to the Checkpoint Charlie museum (very fun, informative, and pretty shocking). After this, we were downright starving and walked up to a vegetarian thai place. Fantastic food, decent prices and not too far from a Metro to get back to the hotel and crash in preparation for a huge day to follow.

We started off by taking the metro across town (after ditching our bags at the reception) and going to a one mile stretch of the Berlin wall that is still standing. It was painted a while ago and has since been graffiti-ed quite a bit (predominantly over the crappy paintings!) since then. Impressive. We decided that we would take in some more of the less traveled Berlin by walking back towards the city center, went up the TV tower to take in as much of Berlin as possible from a high vantage point and then proceeded to walk through the historic downtown past Basilicas, museums, a really shocking/touching holocaust monument, and all the way to the Brandenburg Gate. This put us by the new Rathaus (I think...the place with the gigantic glass dome that you can walk up) and left us with a decision, to walk up the glass dome (pretty cool) or walk through the Tiergarten back towards out hotel...thankfully, for scheduling's sake, we chose to walk through the Tiergarten and let Ariel do some shopping at Europe's biggest mall (a couple blocks from our hotel). We picked up some dinner, and good european chocolate to give as gifts, picked up our bags and hopped back on the S-Bahn to get to the airport...

We should have checked how long the train ride to the airport was going to take...because upon arrival we had to speedwalk to the terminal...but made it ok :) The flight to Sweden and bus ride into Stockholm were relatively uneventful, but I got really happy getting back to the city I had left three weeks before. have we covered how much I like Stockholm yet? I really miss it too...sigh. maybe I can move back in a couple years...

Prague

The drive up to Prague was slower than I hoped it would be...sigh. Stupid rental car we had to trade in for was slower than the Peugeot (Opel Astra, 1.2 liters of FURY!)

Regensburg was rather idyllic, fancy old buildings on a nice town square overlooking the Danube. Ariel and I walked out onto an island in the middle of the Danube to find a good place for our packed lunch. I think it was a lot more symbolic for her, for me, it was nice to just hear water moving again. We moved on from Regensburg, Ariel napped in the car again, I caffeinated and we made it to Prague in the early evening. We parked the car close to the hostel we were staying at...only after I broke a lot of usual driving laws from the US, which...well, was required for survival in Prague I feel. drivers are crazy, and you need to match them or get nowhere.

The hostel was pretty nice, but we had to go find a place to park the car for free...so we drove to the outskirts of Prague, trying to find a free parking spot near a metro stop. it worked out eventually, and we got back in to the city and went to dinner at an Afghan place a couple blocks from the hostel. Pretty good, and relatively cheap compared to Stockholm still :)

The next morning, we tried to get up and out as quickly as possible to make it over to the Castle...we walked over, across the Charles Bridge, complete with fancy statues, incomplete without the overabundance of people hawking cheap tourist stuff...not that I lament their absence, definitely made it nicer! Prague Castle was pretty impressive, the cathedral is huge, the tower gives you quite a view over all of Prague (good photo op). St. George's Chapel is much smaller, but pretty cool in its own right. it had one of the coolest crucifixes ever, if they can be described so...some artist carved one out of a straight length of tree (so, arms not out, up instead). alas, no pics allowed.

We saw where Franz Kafka lived for a while, went into the dungeon tower, and then ran down the castle steps...people thought we were a little crazy. We decided to walk around the Mala Strana, taking in the sights and wandering towards a lunch destination. The place had a decent lunch special...quarter chicken, potatoes and some sort of bacon pie w/ drink for $6. sweeeet. and yes, I said bacon pie.

It was threatening rain, so we curtailed the afternoon walk and cruised back towards the hostel, pausing for shopping and such along the way. Heading out, we decided to cruise Wencelas Square to find a place for dinner...I really enjoyed my venison and Ariel was slightly disappointed by the fried cheese that once got an "ooh" out of her while reading the lonely planet guide...oh, the beer was supercheap. yay! $1.50 for a half liter of urquell.

We found a place that was rumored to have a pretty good Wednesday night scene, theoretically a lot of college kids, got there around 11. but it was dead and a half...so we had a drink and moved on. I really wanted to go out and find someplace fun in Prague so I convinced Ariel to go out again, walked to a huge club that was definitely alive. We didn't stay too late...I had to drive to Berlin the following day and Ariel was already tired, I thought it was pretty cool though. We did make one more stop in the Czech Republic though. We went to Melnik and went to the chateau there of some formerly powerful, still ridiculously wealthy, czech family. Very fancy, quite impressive and a perfect "off the beaten path" experience that I love to look for.

The Ariel Invasion

So I met up with Ariel in Munich after a fantastically gorgeous train ride through the Alps. There were a couple mix-ups at the airport (like me waking up early in Venice and forgetting to check what city she was coming in from...I thought she had a connection in germany). I thought I knew what time she was getting in...but got Google-Calendared...she entered 4:50 on the joint schedule...Central time...google adjusted it for me, so I presumed she was getting in at 5:50 and well...yeah. oops. it would have worked out eventually somehow, but we ran into each other at the internet station. Sweeeeet.

We did dinner at a pretty fantastic vegetarian restaurant, wandered around the downtown portion of munich and crashed pretty early to get ready for the morning drive to Neuschwanstein! Neuschwanstein was downright amazing...so fantastic a time, ridiculously picturesque. Mad King Ludwig II was a little extravagant and probably got killed for spending so much money on castles...but they were definitely amazing. Words really don't do it justice...look at my pictures :)

That afternoon we got back into Munich for more walking around and sightseeing, we stuck to downtown for the most part, went into one of the cathedrals, saw Marienplatz and the associated Rathauses and such. Dinner was at the Hofbräuhaus because we're tourists and I wanted beer! Deliciousness.

We woke up nice and early again on Tuesday, off to do one last bit of sightseeing before driving to Regensburg for lunch on the Danube, however, our car had different plans and refused to lock. fucker. It treated me so well on the Autobahn (up to 195 kph, 122mph) but didn't want to lock. Boo! So we had to trade in the car and miss a little bit of sightseeing. Thankfully the airport was in the right direction for the rest of our plans...

Venice

Catching up on my adventures...Venice was a lot of fun. The hostel was relatively expensive compared to others, but the crowd was cool, the price included dinner, and we had one hell of a Friday night out. I walked around with people from the hostel on Friday afternoon after my train arrived from Rome. Saw the Doge's Palace, the Basilica, etc...a few of us took a few turns off the beaten path to just walk around Venice itself for a while. Fun times...I like doing that in every city for a little while.

Thoughts? Venice is like nothing I've ever seen. I could compare other cities I'd been to on this trip with cities I had previously visited...but not Venice. Two sad things: only 60k people live there and it's sinking. So it's a tourist trap and it will eventually disappear. nuts.

On Saturday we did the typical walking around thing (once I got up and recovered with some water). I actually ran into three people from Friday night just walking around a corner...(a guy from the hostel (cool) and two girls who were staying at a hotel nearby (not cool)). Eventually I could tell the girls didn't really want me around so I took a left when they took a right and wandered some more. I went back to the hostel and resisted the urge to take a nap...looked up where the Palazzo Balbi was and walked there. Saturday night was far more tame, a bunch of people had to get out of town early (myself included)...so just hanging out talking and listening to music with a couple new arrivals (Aussie guys).

First Night Out...

yeah, it was pretty much a bust...
that's sad.

I mean, I saw a bunch of people I hadn't in quite a while, which was very cool. the problem was, Lucy's (which is no longer actually Lucy's) was DEAD. there were some people at top of the hill, which...well...sucks.

Anyway, neither place was full, neither place was really conducive to hanging out and catching up. I'll just wait for next week I guess...why not this weekend you ask? because I can't go out becuase I have to play rugby all weekend. duh. get with the program!

I don't want to leave!

So I'm at the airport...of course it went ridiculously fast, because that's how things work here (I left T-Centralen at 12:05 and was through security by 12:45 (and there's a 20 minute train ride in there). Sigh...anyhow, I bought some Akvavit at the duty free shop and debated getting a ridiculously good sandwich (that I will triumphantly make in the US from now on)...but decided that Iceland Air feeds me anyway, so why worry. Oh, and my bags were definitely overweight, by about 5 kilos, but the guy at the desk didn't charge me. yay! I think he figured it was just too much work to do...

I want to come back already, and I haven't left...guess I'll need to start saving vacation time ASAP and see if I can transfer to the Stockholm office in a couple years (which means I'm going to need to practice my Swedish).

tomorrow...

I head back to the states finally...sad. so very sad.

a string of updates will happen soon regarding Venice, Munich, Prague and Berlin...and the last weekend in Stockholm!