Woke up eeeearly and went somewhere for breakfast and watched a movie since Julia couldn’t meet up until 2pm.
Once Julia came back home one of her friends stopped by just to say hi, so we talked for a bit. Brussels the second time was great though not much happened that I can write about! Sorry about that. I just spent my time meeting more really cool people and learning some new interesting things and trying some new interesting (and delicious) food :) Yum.
So my circle of Europe if officially over today. Just going to a few places I’ve already been to visit some wonderful people :)
From Hamburg I took the earliest train possible to get to Brussels, and stayed with a friend (Julia) who I had met thanks to my first CS host in Brussels a few months ago. She had gotten a new apartment which has a really nice view, and she lived with some pretty cool roommates.
One of her roommates’ parents were over so I spent the first night at Julia’s friends’ apartment, but her parents made some really tasty Russian borscht for lunch, and some kind of pizza pop with meat and onion for dinner. Typically Russian apparently.
When the evening came Julia and I went out with her two friends that I’d be staying with…just got some fries and some beer, and then went back to the apartment where I was staying at :)
HAPPY OCTOBER!
So I really didn’t sleep last night at all. I left around 8am to catch my 9am train to Hamburg. Well, to Gottenburg. Then to Copenhagen. And then to Hamburg. The first train was four hours long and not too bad, though I still wasn’t able to sleep :(
In between the first and second train I got a sandwich from Subway and then was on my way to Copenhagen.
Once I got to Copenhagen I had to hurry to catch my next train, but I did so with more time to spare than I thought I’d have :) I sat with this couple from a smaller city in Denmark, and they offered me some grapes! Apparently Oliver’s (the guy) girlfriend wanted them and then decided she wanted a smoothie, so they had quite a bit, haha. We talked for half an hour or so and then the food/drink cart came by, and I tried to buy a beer but the guy’s conversion machine thing wasn’t working, so Oliver offered to buy me one since I had a discount card :) So sweet!
When going from Copenhagen to mainland Europe the train goes on a ferry, and Oliver and his girlfriend left at the stop before the ferry, which was kinda too bad. The ferry was amazing. It was night by the time I was on the ferry, and, yeah, I’ll just copy and paste this:
Last night I witnessed possibly the most beautiful natural event I’ve ever seen, and I want to share it with you good folks :)
Yesterday I spent 13.5 hours taking a silly combination of trains to get from Oslo to Hamburg. Of course I went back through Sweden and Denmark on my way, and in the middle of Denmark the train actually gets on a ferry to get from one island to another. It’s forbidden to stay on the train so everyone gets out and spends some time on the ferry.
It was about 8:30pm and I got myself a big bowl of soup before going outside. Once I get outside I’m able to catch the last half hour of the sunset on the ocean’s horizon. Even with the sunset, though, thousands of stars are visible, and the huge crescent moon is a bright orange. Very quickly - surprisingly quickly - the sunset fades and gives way to the engulfing night sky. Which, in turn, gives way to a flurry of shooting stars - like tadpoles in a pond, against a backdrop of a hundred times more stars, and the pale - but nevertheless very real - cloudy, milky cluster that is our galaxy. The moon now, to the extreme left of my field of vision, is a dark red. I’ve seen a harvest moon a couple times before, but nothing ever like this. I could have cut myself and the moon would have been more red than my blood.
Whatever the cause of this wonderful evening was, it doesn’t matter. I stayed outside as long as I could, sitting in a chair with my head constantly tilted up to the celestial abode above, immensely humbled by the vast amount of space I could see in a single moment. Hundreds of thousands of light years within eyesight (one light year, by the way, equals ten trillion kilometers…I didn’t know that!).
Simply stunning.
I arrived in Hamburg at 10:45pm and found a bar across the street that had wifi, so I went there :) I couldn’t find a cs host in Hamburg so I decided to just come back to Brussels and visit a friend! Unfortunately I had to spend the night in the train station though, since I couldn’t go to Brussels until the next morning. It was impossible to sleep though, sooooo two consecutive nights of no sleep. Three full days. Joyous!
Today was a great day! I left the apartment with Federico (my host) around 10am after he cooked a delicious breakfast. He had a bike and we walked to the train station to get his other bike so I could use it, and we biked all over the city.
We went through the financial centre and political centre, down to the beach, through a bunch of big public squares, and ended up at this amazing, huge park. There was a huge field with a big fountain at the front, and as you walk farther along you come to a stone area with tons of statues. It really was beautiful. Apparently it’s really popular in the summer and always full of people. It was still 25 degrees though! I thought it was surprisingly empty for how warm it was, but maybe everyone was just at work or school.
After this park we biked back to a main metro station where my host had to go, but he told me how to take a train to get to the top of this mountain where there are some cool biking trails, so I went up there and explored that :)
It started out really tame…just some gravel roads, but there were many paths that differed a lot. Some were just mud, some were just rocks, some were just planks of wood lying across the forest floor. It was beautiful though. So many incredible views, and a ton of lakes just in the middle of the mountain :) I biked around for maybe two and a half hours and found my way back super easily, thankfully.
When I got back home nobody was home, so I just made a late dinner and played some music and went online. Federico came back though, not sure what time it was, but he was hammered. So gone. He passed out on his bed for an hour or so before puking his guts out everywhere. Lovely. I ended up not sleeping that night because it smelled so bad (even after being cleaned up), but luckily there was a pretty awesome girl online who kept me company all night :)
Woke up way early this morning to catch my train to Oslo :) Everyone’s telling me how expensive it is so I’m spending a day less in Oslo than I originally planned, but I think it’ll be alright.
I met up with my host and a friend of his around 6pm and walked back to his place from the train station. About an hour after arriving we had some rice with a really good spinach kind of sauce, and then a couple pizzas he made from scratch (he’s from Venice btw!). So good :)
After that we just spent the evening talking and playing music and drinking beer! Not a super exciting day but it was great nonetheless.
ps. Oslo really is that expensive. A small beer (200mL) is around $8. So brutal.
Today was definitely a really chill day, probably because I didn’t have much Swedish money left and I didn’t want to convert more of my euros, but it was a good day nonetheless.
Left the apartment around 1pm and walked around Stockholm’s city center and went back down to South Island (can’t remember the Swedish name) because there’s apparently a large concentration of thrift stores there :) so I walked around and checked stuff out, though I didn’t buy anything since I went to the hockey game last night. That’s alright though!
The area was really nice so I walked along a street and through a cemetery and ended up at the water, so I just sat there for an hour or so and read :)
After that I started to walk back to the metro but noticed a big sign for the Stockholm City Museum saying that entrance is free, so I spent a couple hours in there. Most of the stuff was in English as well as Swedish, and it was incredibly fascinating. There were tons of things from the medieval times since Stockholm is around 850 years old or so.
After the museum I ended up going back home and having some dinner before relaxing for the rest of the night.
What a great day today. I left the apartment around noon and went to Gamla Stan, which is Stockholm’s historical centre…very cool! Walked around there for several hours checking out shops and stores and enjoying the view of the other islands :) I didn’t buy anything other than a little food because I wasn’t sure if I was going to a hockey game that night, so I wanted to save most of my money just in case, and then I figure if I don’t go to the game I’ll spend a bit tomorrow :) not like I had a whole lot to spend (about 300 krunas or 30ish euros), but it was enough to get by :)
Went back to the apartment for 5pm so that Olov (my host) and I could leave to the hockey stadium with enough time to see if we can get tickets and to try and get some from scalpers in case it was sold out. It wasn’t sold out though :) unfortunately what was sold out was the cheap student tickets (14 euros for a professional hockey game!), so we paid closer to 20. Still crazy cheap when compared to NHL games.
So we go in and find our seats. Fifth row diagonally behind the away goalie (where the good guys shoot twice), pretty solid! It was a bizarre game though. Djurgården (my host’s team) scored in the first minute, and then scored maybe ten minutes later right off a faceoff. But the away team (can’t remember their name) scored three unanswered goals, and got a fourth goal when one of their players had a breakaway heading towards an empty net and a Djurgården defender dove to knock the puck off his stick without tripping the guy and did just that. Seemed kinda weird :S But anywyas, Djurgården lost 4-2. I think Swedish hockey fans might just rival English football fans though. There wasn’t 30 seconds of silence throughout the whole game. Nevermind silence, actually. There wasn’t 30 seconds where no chanting, jumping, and screaming was going on.
We took the bus back home afterward since the metro was too crowded, and Olov showed me a few things in the city along the way :)
Woke up this morning earlier than usual (at least for while in Copenhagen since MM likes to sleep in, so I end up doing that too), and started packing my things.
Lumrbi and I said our goodbyes yesterday since he was going to be at school until after my train left, but one of his teachers was sick so he was able to come home early :) So we talked some more while I packed and then he told me his mom was at a coffee shop nearby, so we went there for close to an hour.
After the coffee shop MM had to go to a meeting so she left, and Lumrbi and I started walking towards the train station. Got there about an hour and a half early, but we got some food and hung out waiting for the train :)
The train felt so long for some reason, but it wasn’t too bad. Met this guy named Simon and talked to him for at least an hour and a half about hockey which was great! Then he said he’s a Mormon and that’s why he’s all shaved and wearing a nice suit (apparently not his thing at all), so I asked him if he thought Jesus would like him any less if he had a beard and wore more comfortable clothes. He said probably not, but people wouldn’t take him as seriously. I didn’t say anything about it after that but maybe I shoulda.
Anyways, got into Stockholm and passed some time in the station using the wifi until my host got home, since it was already pretty late as is. Got there around 10:30pm and just talked and played some music until going to bed :)
Today Lumbri and MM both had to work so I was left on my own, but I survived :) I biked to a street called Nyhavn, which I knew was popular, but I didn’t realize was such a tourist spot. It was beautiful nonetheless though. It’s situated on a canal and all of the buildings are in bright and different colours :)
After walking around there for thirty or forty minutes I went to a big square nearby and noticed there was an outdoor photography exhibition going on about wilderness and wildlife in Europe, so I spent quite a bit of time looking at that. The photographs were breathtaking.
After spending the majority of the afternoon there I slowly made my way home walking through the pedestrian-only streets. Most of the shops were closed (I think because it was Sunday), but it was still really cool to see :) not as many people were there too. And then I got to Tivoli, the big amusement park in the middle of the city, and started biking home from there.
Lumbri got off work at 8pm that night and we didn’t go out, but we spent quite a bit of time talking and just getting to know each other :)
Lumbri and MM have an extra bicycle (Copenhagen is just like Amsterdam when it comes to bicycles!), so I rode that everywhere, and while Lumrbi was at work MM spent some time showing me around :)
We first went to the Carlsberg brewery, which is basically in their backyard, and showed me some of the buildings which was really interesting. After that we went to a cafe (which is in a building from the 1500s!) where her boyfriend Roger was playing music for a couple hours :) he was insanely good, and even played some Neil Young and Leonard Cohen :D
After the cafe MM and I went to the train station so I figured out how much my reservation to Stockholm will cost and I got some Danish money, finally. And then we went to Christiania, which is a wonderful, beautiful place. It’s on quite a big piece of land (around 85 acres), and is a “self-proclaimed autonomous community.” Basically, in 1971 (their 40th birthday is on Sept 26!), some people started squatting in this area that the Danish military owned but completely abandoned, and it has turned into a big open commune. There are delicious vegan restaurants, bars, concert venues, and street vendors selling everything from sweaters and hats to bongs and pipes to bricks of hash and bags of weed. Right on the street. It’s all placed on an open bag so they can grab it quickly and run if the police come (it was tolerated up until 2004), but it’s still very open.
I walked around there for a few hours though, eating a couple falafels, enjoying the lakeside view (they have their own lake!), and the incredibly fascinating architecture (people build their own houses out of whatever materials they can find), and then biked back home to meet up with Lumbri.
Lumrbi and I ended up going out to a few different bars. First bar failed because the 3 kroner beer from the supermarket cost 20 kroners in the bar. The second bar failed because two 30+ year old women tried to pick us up, and the one that did most of the talking only talked about how pigeons and birds are hideous and just rats with wings. The third bar was a success though! We went to Pegasus so Lumbri knew the bartender there, and we worked a bit for some beers :) Didn’t really do much, just cleared tables and brought tables and chairs from outside in, but they’ve got some interesting beers. The first one we had was 11%, definitely the strongest beer I’ve had, and it was really good. The second beer was a stout that put Guinness to shame. And we also got a free bowl of peanuts :)
After this we ended up going home and talking in the kitchen, eating some pastries he brought home from his work (which is where I learned that Danish people call danishes Vienna bread!), and then went to bed.
Woke up at 9am or so, caught my things together, and headed out to the train station to catch my train to Copenhagen today :) Staying with my youngest host yet there! He’s 18 but seems like a super cool guy. I’ll be staying with him and his mom :)
I arrived in Copenhagen around 6:30pm and Lumbri (my host) was working, but his mom (MM) met me at the train station and we walked home together. On the way home she pointed out some interesting things along the way, like this huge wall that looks like part of a castle but was really built so people back at a shooting range in the 1800s didn’t accidentally shoot people having a picnic along the river! Kinda strange, but I guess pretty smart!
Lumbri got off work at 9pm so the three of us went out to a bar for some drinks. We were going to go to Pegasus, the bar which MM works at, but it’s kinda pricey, so we went to a place called Berlin Bar. Fancy that. It was really cool though, chill atmosphere and good (albeit somewhat expensive) beer. MM’s boyfriend joined us partway through the night too, who is a school teacher (teaches Spanish and German) and a musician (he also speaks seven languages - English, Danish, Spanish, Portuguese, German, Italian, and another one I forget…crazy!).
We went back at midnight since Lumbri had to wake up early for work but I was kinda tired too and had a pretty good sleep :)
Started the day off again in a usual way. Went to a hamburger place around 1pm for breakfast :) and got some Fritz-Cola! Which is made in Hamburg and is Germany’s version of Coca-Cola. 25% of it is caffeine. Literally. 25mg of caffeine per 100ml of drink.
After we were fed Matthias showed me some of the lesser known places in Berlin, since we did a bunch of really famous stuff the day before, which was really cool. We saw tons of graffiti and street art, met a girl working in a little shop whose father owns a theatre that regularly has an improv group from Winnipeg over, and had good food and cheap beers along the way :)
Matthias had to go back home quicker than he thought to get some work done but I wanted to check out this really cool sounding thrift store, so he showed me where it was since it was on our way home, and then I went there and met up with him later :)
The thrift store was like a warehouse. It was five floors and had a ton of seriously ugly clothing that was just funny to look at, and a bit of good stuff. I ended up getting a couple sweaters.
Once I got back to the apartment we napped again for a bit and then went to the supermarket to get some stuff for dinner. It was a combination of pasta and chili, which was pretty good, and while we were eating we watched a couple episodes of How I Met Your Mother. I can’t believe I’ve seen that show so few times.
After dinner we decided to go back out. We weren’t originally going to drink a lot, since nether of us had too much cash, but we figured we’d see what we could find. Well, we found a huge crowd of people. And we decided to wait around to see what was going on. That resulted in us going into a club called Suicide Circus for a free show featuring the DJ group Aka Aka, dancing (and drinking) for two hours, and having a pretty good time. We met a couple girls from a small city near Berlin after the show and spent some time with them before they had to catch their train back home, and then grabbed another beer for the walk/tram ride home.
Mattias is an incredible host. He showed me a postcard of Berlin with nine or ten pictures on it, and said “Dylan, today, this is what we will do.” So we did everything on that postcard.
We started in Alexanderplatz and got a sausage in a bun, which is, for Matthias at least, a pretty usual breakfast. After that I’m not even sure of all the places we went, but it was phenomenal. We went to Potsdamerplatz, Checkpoint Charlie, and saw this part of the Berlin Wall which was by a Museum of Terrorism, focusing of course on the tactics used by Nazi Germany. That museum was insane. There were tons of original photographs and documents…lots of documents keeping records of executions. “Today we executed 167,282 Jews. Good day today.” Obviously not written like that, but it was insane to see those numbers outside of a textbook, written in a way that made it seem like just another normal day.
After this we walked to this big square with a huge monument where the Nazis always gathered…I can’t remember the name of it but I’ll figure it out later. And then we went to another place by part of the Berlin Wall where this student organization set up a thing so you can get all the original passport stamps required when crossing over the Berlin border. So cool. So now in my passport I have the original stamps needed to get into the American sector, British sector, French sector, Soviet sector, a stamp with the date, and some other German stamp. After that we went to the Holocaust Stones, which are a collection of over a thousand sculpted rectangles pretty much, that make a bit of a maze (albeit a very organized maze). Some are pretty small though and others are over three metres tall, which is really cool when you’re in the middle of it.
After the cool passport stamps and sightseeing we went back to the apartment and had a nap :) and theeen after that we went to the bar next door, grabbed some beers to go, and drank and drank and drank. We went to a couchsurfing meeting and on our way there met a couple girls from Norway who really really really wanted to play foosball! (Is that how you spell it?) So after an hour or so with hanging out with them Matthias and I went to the meeting and they tried to find a foosball table.
The couchsurfing meeting was pretty cool :) at a really cool bar and there were a ton of people. I spent most of my time talking with a couple girls from France and a girl from Israel who were all really cool, and then Matthias introduced me to this girl from London who’s working at an art gallery in Berlin where the cheapest things they sell are around €15,000! And that’s for a tiny painting a few inches by a few inches. They have many paintings and sculptures upwards of €350,000.
After the meeting though we got more beer and made our way back home when we bumped into the Norweigan girls again! So we hung out and went back home shortly after :) Beer is way too cheap though. I think I drank about one and a half milk jugs worth of beer. Sheesh. Six litres. And I spent less than €8.
Woke up today at 8am :) got all my things packed, made some breakfast, and walked down to the train station to head to Berlin!
I left this time with plenty of time to catch my train, and by 10:36am I was on my way to Berlin!
I arrived in Berlin around 5pm and met up with my host (Matthias) at 6pm at a tram station near his place. Landsberger Allee! We went back to his place so I could drop my stuff off, and went back out shortly after. Grabbed a couple beers from the bar next door (beers to go, of course) and then hopped on the tram to this restaurant that has legitimately good and fresh food for stupidly cheap prices. I got a big plate of four-cheese tortellini with a mushroom and ham alfredo sauce for three euros :)
While we were eating a friend of my host’s came by and joined us, but he left pretty soon, and we slowly made our way back home.
Full day in Prague and it was a very good day - albeit also a very wet one. I woke up, showered, had some coffee and a sandwich for breakfast, and then went out!
On the street parallel to Emelie’s I noticed four second-hand shops so I went to check those out, but they had almost exclusively female clothing :( which was pretty disappointing. I did laundry last night and my hoodie was still really wet so I just had a t-shirt and would’ve liked to buy a sweater, but I survived :)
After these failed sweater buying attempts I took the metro to Old New Prague, explored that briefly, and then walked across a bridge to Old Old Prague, and explored that a lot :) My umbrella broke in half there, so I probably looked very silly holding an umbrella with such a tiny handle, but it kept me dry so I don’t care :)
I walked up this crazy hill and found my way eventually to this massive castle and a big cathedral. To walk around the whole cathedral you need a ticket and I wasn’t interested in spending money on it, but I got to go inside and look at it at least for free.
After the cathedral I slowly made my way back down the hill, stopping periodically in gift shops and art galleries. Got to the metro after some confusion, and then went home :) I did a little bit of grocery shopping too…sorta. Got a couple bowls of instant soups, half a loaf of bread, and some cold cuts. I think it was around €1,50 for all of it…pretty cheap!
After that we just ate and drank and talked until going to bed :)
Unstructured ramblings, musings, and observations in the forms of journal entries and pictures by a couchsurfin' solo traveler throughout Europe. While this is a travel blog, in essence, this blog will be about what makes me tick, as it can all be encapsulated by traveling: people and their inherent goodness, foreign lands and cultures, genuine compassion & kindness, the beauty of this planet being fully recognized every waking moment, and the ability to prolong a split-second piece of time long enough for its place in the (possibly) infinite timeline of world history and events to be deemed worthwhile by at least one person.
