Europe – Page 5 – a lizard abroad

February 19, 2019 – Floating through Florence

February 22, 2019July 2, 2023Posted in Europe, ItalyLeave a comment

Hmmmm… Where to start with Florence? I’ve been wanting to visit this city for a very long time. I think it was just a bit jarring to go to such a tourist-heavy city right after cozy, student-filled Bologna. I think I was expecting more of the same, but it was really quite different. My little train took me there in about an hour and a half.

(Also, let me just apologize in advance for all the different formatting in the pictures in this post. I can’t easily fix it right now, so I’m going to worry about it when I’m home with a real computer to work from!)

So. The first thing I did when I arrived was check into my Airbnb, called The Strange Uncle BnB. They had drawings of this strange man all over the house. It was a cute little place, and I had the Jungle Room, which they thankfully renamed from the Lonely Trip room after having a local artist convert it to a jungle paradise. They still hadn’t changed the sign on the door, though, so I was reminded every time I came home of my growing desire for some cuddles.

The location of my stay was amazing. We were right on an alley next to a large piazza and cathedral, and just around the corner was a street crowded with leather markets. I was tickled to see that the Italian leather purse I bought in Spain two years ago was actually made here, and I saw it hanging in different colors on several stalls. You have no idea how hard it was to not buy a second one in a different color. Ugh.

I think that’s another reason Florence wasn’t quite as nice and relaxing as Bologna – instead of being enticed to eat constantly, I was being enticed to shop. Dangerous, especially considering there really is not a lot of extra space in my little backpack!

Since I arrived in the afternoon, my first day was spent mostly wandering the markets and trying to convince myself not to buy anything. I did stop off for some dinner, starving from my lack of lunch. It was a little strange. I was pulled in by the pastas in the window, and I figured it would be sort of like pasta salad, but to my surprise, the man behind the counter piled a plate high with tortellini before popping it in the microwave right in front of me. It must have been a very low powered microwave, too, because after two minutes, it was still a bit cold. Haha. Oh well. The wine was nice, though.

I eventually and reluctantly pulled myself away from my book to do a little more exploring.

And then it was time for sleep. Well, first I took like… The best shower ever. Let’s see…. I’m trying to think back… The shower in my hostel in Rovaniemi was pretty nice – big, in a very boutique-style bathroom, and the shower in the hotel I had to stay in in Levi was a standard hotel shower, but that was only a few days into my trip, so I didn’t fully appreciate it. Since then, I’ve been jumping from shower to shower, and they all seemed to have little problems – water wouldn’t get very warm, water temperature would change constantly throughout the shower, nothing to attach the shower head to, etc. But this shower was newly renovated, came stocked with goji berry scented shower gels and shampoos, and was oh, so very warm. I sang in the shower for the first time in a long time. It was amazing.

Now, my only complaint with this apartment was that the whole thing had a sort of potpourri scent, and my room was so filled with this smell that it was very nearly suffocating. I actually couldn’t sleep because of my allergies. Every time I would start to doze off, I would wake up in a fit of coughs. With no other options, I swung open the windows (shutter-style!) wide as they would go and tucked back into bed. I told myself I would get up to close them in about ten minutes, seeing as it was about 35 degrees outside, but I fell asleep before I could do anything of the sort. My window faced into a little courtyard, so it was completely blocked by all of the street sounds, and church bells do not ring aloud until nine in the morning, so I was woken pleasantly after eleven hours of sleep by the cheerful sound of bells and the cool kiss of the morning breeze on my cheeks. There were so many layers of blankets and pillows on my bed that I didn’t even notice the chill. It really was a heavenly way to wake up.

I started my morning with yogurt, apples, and tea, and then I was off to explore Florence.

My first big stop was the Duomo, and gosh was this building awe-inspiring. It was very centrally located and only a few minutes from my stay, so I ran across it several times a day and had to stop in my tracks each time to gaze up at the beautiful marble colors.

I wasted no time in buying some art from a man in the middle of creating his next masterpiece. I loved his style and the colors he used.

Next, I happened upon a little church that had been converted into a museum, and it had a great view of the Duomo from the top floor.

Then more churches…

And a stop for lunch: tiramisu, a macchiato, and a panini.
This café was right next to Piazza del Signoria, the second most famous landmark of the city, right behind the Duomo. There are several famous sculptures and the second replica of Michelangelo’s David lining the square.

Then I made my way along toward the water, where there is one particularly famous bridge lined with buildings brimming with jewelry shops. I decided I would walk down the bridge itself later and get a pretty view of the outside for now.

I was so enchanted by the view that I propped myself up on the ledge and read for a bit.

If you look closely, you’ll see that there is a little man playing the arrow like a guitar on the street sign. This little sit only lasted about ten minutes before my fear of falling over the side got the better of me, though.

Across the water, I found some intriguing street art and the museum Palazzo Pitti. There was a gently sloping slab of asphalt in front of the palace where dozens of people lay enjoying the warmth of the sunset, and I decided to join them.

I carried on eventually in search of dinner, and I found it in the form of gnocchi rosé and a glass of very sweet sparkling wine. Definitely my favorite meal since that meat and cheese platter in Bologna.

The walk back the way I had come was just as pretty in the dark.

When I reached my little piazza, I sat on the church steps for a while to listen to a band performing American songs such as “Yankee Doodle Dandy” and “This Land is Your Land,” while a funny little man danced enthusiastically in front of them. I’m really not sure what was going on, because the men were clearly Italian. Trying to cater to the American tourists, perhaps?

Because I’d had so much luck with the open-air sleeping the night before, and because my room had re-stuffed during the day, I repeated my ritual of a warm shower and wide-open windows. It was another resounding success.

With my apples and yogurt breakfast this morning, I added a cup of rich Lindt hot chocolate that I made using packets I bought in Bologna. Gosh it was tasty, and for some reason the milk from the grocery store was also extra delicious. I couldn’t tell if it was just that I hadn’t had any milk to drink in a while or if this Italian milk was extra rich. 10/10, either way.

When I’d visited the Duomo the day before, the line to enter the cathedral had been wrapped around the side of the building, so my first stop today was to try and enter. I figured getting an earlier start would mean the line would be shorter, but it was actually longer, wrapping around two sides of the building! I resigned to stand in the line anyway, but luckily, it moved quickly, and I was inside within about ten minutes.

The interior of the building was not nearly as spectacular as the outside, and I told myself I didn’t need to climb the towers because I was planning to hike up to a view point later in the day.

I wandered to the northern part of the city and got lost in the pretty colors of the streets.

I was searching for the museum housing Michelangelo’s original David statue, but first, I came upon the art academy. Opportunity to pretend I’m an art student in Italy? Challenge accepted!

The main courtyard was lined with many marble and plaster statues. Several were missing arms, and most were missing penises. Ouch.

I walked in on what I assume was a classroom getting ready for lecture, found a very art-school-esque bathroom, and discovered a hallway covered in moody paintings. I was enjoying myself, to say the least.

I plopped down in the courtyard to read for a while as I sipped on another rocking vending machine cappuccino. I was wishing this one was a little sweeter, but then I got to the bottom and found a thin layer of sugar granules sludged in the cup. Ha. I guess I’ll stir before drinking next time.

Then I begrudgingly gave up the façade and headed over to the museum next door which housed the glorious David.

I admit he was pretty glorious.

There was also a room down the hall which housed a lot of plaster casts used to to make the marble sculptures, and there were videos lining the perimeter explaining the process. I liked this room.

Then I did some more walk, walk, walkin,’ all the way back past home and beyond. I stopped to grab some lasagna and wine to go, because I had plans for a picnic.

Here’s me trying to be cute while also forgetting I’m holding a garbage bag full of lasagna and a plastic cup full of wine. Ha. I scream ‘sophistication.’

My picnic location would be the Boboli Gardens behind the Palazzo Pitti. I discovered them after closing the day before and marked my calendar for a return trip. It was vast and very pretty, and I found a little spot by a fountain to enjoy my early dinner.

Then some exploration!

Time was running out, as the gardens closed at 4:30, so I hiked with a purpose up the long dirt path to the top of the hill, checking behind me every so often to see how far down the fountain was.

It was a long walk, but I made it to the top!

The views were, in fact, lovely, if a little bit obscured by the trees and the palace.

I was just making my way to try and find a better view around the trees when a very loud recording blasted from all directions on unseen speakers. First in Italian, and then in English, it announced that the gardens were closing and “we kindly ask all visitors to proceed to the near exit.” Ugh. I made a run for it down and up another hill, but as I crested the top, where I’m pretty sure I would have gotten a lovely view, I was blocked by a surly Italian man who gave one swift shake of his head and pointed me back the way I had come. Sad life, dude. I did manage to sneak around a teeny bit more to find some more pretty things before exiting. And this whole time, the same closing announcement blared around me. They were not messing around.

Defeated, though I was, I reminded myself that gelato is a great therapist, so I indulged in some chocolate and orange. Delightful. (Also, you can probably tell how tired I am by my deranged attempt at a smile.)

Back to the water, I wandered, with yet another view point on my list. Hey, I hadn’t paid to climb any towers, remember? I deserved this. And the hills trick my body into forgetting about all the gelato.

Then up, up, up, and wow. The view really was breathtaking.

It seemed half the city was up here, and the wide staircase leading from the upper viewpoint to the lower one was so packed with young picnickers that I had to practically jump over a few heads to get to the bottom.

Okay, soooo… It’s going to seem like I’m posting a lot of very similarly gorgeous pictures here, but just know that I took about a hundred, so you are really only getting a very small sample.

I found a little spot to sit, and I camped out there to watch the sunset.

For some reason, as I was watching the sunset up there with this gorgeous view and reflecting on the fact that I was leaving tomorrow and didn’t fall in love with Florence the way I imagined I would, I was stricken with a bout of homesickness. And then someone on that packed set of steps proposed to his girlfriend, to an uproar of cheers and applause, and I started crying. Ha! Public crying is the best. I miss my boyfriend more than that soup. I admit it.

The sunset really was gorgeous though, and I eventually got a grip on my emotions long enough to appreciate it before the chill set in from the lack of sun.

Even in the dark, the terrace displayed an abnormal amount of beauty. I realized I had yet to check out the bronze David statue, glued to the horizon as I had been for the past hour or more. The moon was doing a cool werewolf-calling thing behind him.

Then I jumped on a bus to take me down the hill and across the water before I did a last walk through Firenze.

Oh, and I wrote on the wall in my Airbnb. I’m not sure why I chose so many different fonts, but what’s done is done! In permanent ink!

That night, I had a spark of stupidity and decided to try sleeping with my windows closed. This caused me to overheat in the middle of the night and to be woken up by another tenant showering at 7am. I think the reason this hadn’t bothered me on previous mornings was because of the constant tiny trickle of noise from outside, whereas with the windows closed, everything in the house echoed through my tiny, silent room. Oh, well. Live and learn. For example, I learned I like sleeping with the windows open and I really really really want swing-open shutters and windows in my house some day. I kind of already knew about the latter, though. (;

Ciao/ best wishes,
-Lizzy-wa

February 16, 2019 – Brazilians in Bologna

February 21, 2019June 30, 2023Posted in Europe, Italy2 Comments

Bologna, Bologna, Bologna. Oh, how you’ve taken my heart and reminded me what this trip is all about.

And for those who are ignorant like myself, just a heads up: it is not pronounced ‘bo-log-na.’ It is also not pronounced ‘baloney’ like the Oscar Meyer lunch meat. It’s some sultry combination of the two: ‘ba-lone-ya.’ My messy pronunciation got me laughed at, so I’m saving you from the same mistake.

—

Lol. I am currently sitting in a piazza while a little band plays and there is a man dancing in front of them very enthusiastically. I can’t tell if he’s with them or if he’s just having fun.

—

So, I had a lovely flight over to Bologna, with lots of snow-capped Austrian and Italian mountains in between.

But this did not compare to the beauty of this Italian city. Bologna is known as the city of arcades, which seem to be the name for the endless stretches of covered sidewalks aired-out by thousands of archways.

Bologna is a university city, and the story goes that when the city needed to build more apartments for the growing number of students, they didn’t want to build the city outward, sprawling into the surrounding hills. So instead, they built inward, thrusting the apartments out into the city streets and leaving covered sidewalks underneath this city of homes that starts one floor up.

There are also dozens and dozens of churches and cathedrals, seemingly on every block, and soooooo much food. Bologna is a food city if ever there was one. Wine, pasta, pizza, meats and cheeses and olive oil. Ugh. Drooling.

I started the morning with some wanderings while I waited for my turn to climb the taller of the two towers. (That’s actually their name, by the way: Le Due Torri.)

And then it was time! And it was a long way up. I remember my naiivity as I ascended the first set of winding spiral stairs and thought to myself, “I’ve climbed tighter staircases.” Ha! What was I even doing? Bragging to myself? Either way, this brag came back to bite me, even though it went unspoken. The short stretch of spiral soon turned into a boxy roundabout of uneven and heavily worn steps. The width, depth, and height of the steps seemed to vary with each turn. Sometimes it was fine, and other times, I felt dizzy clinging onto the railing with all my might, trying to ignore the fact that my surroundings were eerily similar to that scene in National Treasure where all the staircases spontaneously spring from the walls and fall to their doom.

And every time we came to what appeared to be a final landing, another spiral of stairs lay ahead. It was like an elaborate workout prank, but the glimpses of the view to come kept me eagerly climbing.

The top came finally, and the views did not disappoint! I really don’t think I’ll ever get tired of tower views.

**Unrelated update: the dancing man has stopped dancing, but he still sits nearby. He must be tired.**

Now back to the views:

I was wearing my heavy duty winter jacket because the weather was supposedly in the forties, but I was cursing it the whole walk up. I was grateful for the breeze at the top.

But all too soon, my time was up. Because of the treacherous steps, you have to buy tickets to the tower in advance for a 45 minute time slot. Then everybody goes up, everybody looks, and everybody goes back down again so as not to mingle with the other directioners.

Some more wanderings brought me to a Lindt chocolateria. A familiar chocolate, but this place had unfamiliar and exciting drinks. I chose to indulge, because that’s what I do. They gave me two spoons, and one was made of chocolate.

Then I wandered over to the fountain of Neptune and spent many minutes wondering why the fountain designer had decided to show the double-tailed mermaids in a constant state of lactation. A bold choice.

Next to the fountain was a library, and I took the opportunity to have a look around. This was a fun little library with a cute children’s section, funhouse mirrors, and lots of artwork (including depictions of Taiwan!)

I was searching for a comfy place to read, and I found it in the form of a giant baseball glove. A welcome surprise.

I later found the main welcome hall and yet more fun chairs, including the famous Arne Jacobsen egg chairs. My respect for an institution instantaneously doubles when I find that they provide these Danish chairs for their patrons.

My stomach had been nagging me for some time though, and everybody knows a library is one of the worst (and noisiest) places to be hungry, so I made my way back toward an enticing outdoor restaurant I had passed that morning. Their specialty seemed to be meat and cheese boards, and I chose one that included Parma ham, salamella, ‘bacon,’ squacquerone cheese, carmelised figs, ricotta cheese, and two types of fresh local bread (tigelle and piadina). Uh…. Does this sound like a lot of food? Does it sound too good to be true and too plentiful to be included on one plate? Well, for one, they served it on a wooden platter, not a plate, and for two, it was too much food but just good enough to be true.

I paired it with a glass of the local sparkling red wine, Lambrusco. I don’t normally care for red wine, but I figured the bubbles would help smooth the boldness, and I was correct! It was positively lovely with the meats and cheeses, which were themselves mouthwateringly rich. They were so rich, in fact, that an hour later, my glass was empty, but my board looked untouched. I debated between grabbing it all to-go or hanging out a bit longer. My book was pulling me in, and I had yet to plan out the rest of my stay in Italy. I resolved to book another night at my hostel to give myself the rest of tomorrow to explore, and I ordered another glass of wine to help settle in for more meat and reading. This time, I ordered the local sparkling white wine, Pignoletto. This was also delightful. I made a note to pair sparkling wines with meats and cheeses from now on. (And yes, even then, I was already beginning to plan a romantic picnic upon my return to The Boy.)

The Parma ham ended up being my clear favorite. Salty, rich, with multiple levels of flavor, this stiff, thinly sliced cured meat was oh so yummy. The salamella was a sort of salami, with a similar flavor but a more familiar salami texture. The ‘bacon’ was kind of funny. It’s appearance was like that of very thinly sliced, uncooked American bacon, but it’s flavor was more similar to the Parma ham, and its texture was like mushy butter. It really did smush and slime in my fingers.

A resounding success of a late lunch that lead into an early dinner, and by the end of it, I was content to wander a bit more before heading back to the hostel for an early-ish bedtime.

One of the main reasons I chose this hostel was because of the included breakfast. Meats, cheeses, yogurt and granola, fresh fruit, bread and Nutella, fresh juice… I was eating like a queen. There were some girls at the breakfast table speaking English, so I chatted them up. They sounded Australian, but they were actually from around London, and we chatted about our lives and our travels. On the far end of the table was another girl, and at first I could not tell if she was with the British girls or not. After breakfast, I went to pack up my things (my bunk was already booked for the second night, so I had to change to the room next door). Then the girl from the end of the table came to the foot of my bunk and we chatted a bit. She asked if I wanted to exchange contact info and maybe meet up for a bit, and this somehow transformed into us spending the entire day together, right from the get-go.

She was a sweet nineteen year old Brazilian girl named Teodora, Teo for short. The conversation was slow to warm up, but after an hour or so, it was like spending the day with an old friend.

We had similar exploring priorities, and we spent much of our time wandering to our hearts’ content and slipping into every church we came across.

I’d seen a lot of these crunchy looking pastries in street side cafes and pastry shops, and finally I gave in and bought one. After one bite, I noticed Teo’s smile was covered in a light dusting of powdered sugar, and upon further examination of myself, I found that the same was true of my entire upper body. It’s hard to make out in the picture below, but believe me when I say I felt like a walking sugar plum fairy. Teo took it upon herself to dust me off between bites.

In need of a restroom, we stopped for coffee at a little cafe, and I ordered two delectable pastries with a chocolate espresso, all for less than $4. Vienna seriously needs to take a page out of Italy’s coffee pricing book.

We went ended up back at the Fountain of Neptune and took some pictures – finally, a willing photographer!

And then Teo eagerly pulled me into an old university building that has two ancient classrooms open to the public. The hallways were adorned with frescos and crests.

The first classroom was once an anatomy demonstration hall. The entire room, and I mean, the ENTIRE room, was made of wood: the benches, the stairs, the ceiling, the walls, the carvings of notable physicians and anatomical researchers. The whole thing, with the exception of a grand marble table in the center of the room. This table was where dissections took place.

Highly sanitary, surely. And as I’m sure you can imagine, this classroom is no longer used for such purposes. Probably for the best, though it is one of the most beautiful classrooms I have ever seen.

The other open classroom seemed to be a normal looking lecture hall with modern chairs in rows facing a projector, but upon closer examination of the bookshelves surrounding the room, we found ourselves lost in a sea of famous texts.

We exclaimed and beckoned to each other each time we found an author we recognized. Euler, Laplace, Galileo, Avagadro. (“Agh. I hate him! I hate Avagadro!” Teo exclaimed as she snapped a picture of his book spines. “I want to send this to my teachers.” She’s an engineer, too.)

One of the hallways outside also contained plans for many famous buildings around the world, and I instantly spotted one I recognized from Vienna just a few days before! Small world.

A very pretty building, but the light finally called us back outdoors.

Then we embarked on a bit of an urban hike, or a bit of a pilgrimage, if you’d like. The story goes that one year, in the 15th century Bologna was having such a rainy spring the crops were suffering. In an effort to stop the rain, the people of Bologna planned to bring the Virgin Mary’s icon from San Luca to the city centre to be worshipped, and once they reach the city centre, the rain immediately stopped. This procession has been repeated every year since. However, because this procession often happens during the rainy season of spring, in the 17th and 18th centuries, this kilometres-long covered pathway was constructed. I don’t think such a feat could have been completed in any place other than the city of arcades. Teo and I decided to walk the entire length of the arcade up to the sanctuary. (Ok, so technically we started around archway number 300 on the way up because we only had so much daylight left ahead of us.)

It was a long uphill walk, but it was oh, so pretty, and we took this opportunity to test out our modelling and photography skills, respectively. (Don’t worry. Teo did a lot of modelling too; those pictures are just mostly on her phone.)

It was honestly dizzying and breathtaking to see the beautiful colors that were created as the sunset played on the yellows and oranges of the arcade.

And finally, just after archway number 650, we reached the sanctuary. We were hoping for a cafe or even a restaurant at the top, but we were greeted instead with an ornately decorated cathedral, a sunny, grassy field, and stunning views.

We did manage to find some vending machines tucked underneath the sanctuary, and I tried my first Italian vending machine espresso. This chocolate-infused cappuccino cost me about 75 cents. Delicious! Where can I get me one of these magic machines?

We probably spent very near an hour sitting up in the sun, chatting the afternoon away, but when the sun did decide to go down, the chill set in quickly, and we made our way hastily back down the hill. More modelling ensued.

This time, we really did walk all 650+ arches, and we rejoiced when we finally reached number one. It was a lot quicker on the way down than it had been on the way up.

We were starving at this point, but we were a little way from the city centre, so it was hard to find any decent looking restaurants. To tame the hunger in the meantime, we settled for a spot of gelato. Raspberry and lemon were devine, and I couldn’t complain about the price (less than €3).

I’ll admit that I was being fairly picky when we were trying to choose a restaurant, seeing as it was my last night in Bologna, a city known for its food. I really, really, really wanted some tortellini because I had seen it everywhere and had yet to try any myself. Unfortunately, it seemed that all of the restaurants offering tortellini were slightly out of my price range. We finally stepped inside a restaurant on a familiar street because our stomachs just could not handle it anymore. Teo ordered a pumpkin filled tortellini that was ridiculously delicious (I’m planning on trying to replicate this recipe upon my return to Seattle), and I ordered what I assume is a bit of a comfort food, that is, tortellini in a meat broth. I was honestly pretty doubtful because what I was really craving was some sort of saucy sauce, but I was pleasantly surprised with the tasty dish.

When we returned to our hostel, the British girls were shocked. “Did you just now return from when you left this morning?” they asked. “Yeah!” was our excited response. Their next question was, “What did you DO?” Tehehe.

That night after most of the hostel has gone to bed, an American boy came in, and we chatted for a while. We were actually heading to the same place the next day (more on that later!), and we chatted all about travelling, working, and studying abroad. He was studying in a city near Normandy for the semester and was taking a little trip to visit friends studying in Italy. Very nice boy. As a goodnight, he said, “See you tomorrow!” Unfortunately, he had a morning bus and I just missed his departure.

I started my last morning in Bologna with yet another delicious breakfast from my hostel. Today’s juice was kiwi, and today’s meat was ham instead of salami. The thing about these large and varied breakfasts is that it would be hard to recreate this on my own because of the sheer quantity of foods. I mean, if I only had two slices of ham every morning, it would take me a while to finish a package. The same goes for single slices of fresh fruit, or what have you. Basically, I’m saying I should just start frequenting hostels for the breakfasts.

I started with some solo wanderings through this pretty city. I kind of felt like I had seen all I really needed to see, so I was just taking it easy and wandering to my heart’s content.

Teo and I met up again just for old time’s sake and continued our wanderings together.

We found some more churches and some more side streets, and we happened upon a canal I did not know existed.

Sadly though, the time was fast approaching for me to catch my train, and nothing says “goodbye and nice to meet you” like a proper cone of gelato.

I’ll definitely miss my sweet little travel buddy! I admit it. I’m getting a bit lonely out here, and even though I was not planning for a partner, Teo made my stay in Bologna about twice as memorable and much more special. Now it’s back out on my own. It is seriously blowing my mind that it hasn’t even been a month yet. It seems like it was years ago that I was hanging out with those sled dogs in Finland. This trip is messing with my mind, haha.

Until next time…

Ciao/ best wishes,
-Lizzy-wa

February 14, 2019 – My Vienna Valentine

February 17, 2019June 30, 2023Posted in Austria, EuropeLeave a comment

If we’re keeping the record straight, I guess my valentine this February 14 was a strange combination between Gustav Klimt, a library, some Austrian guy named Piet who has a girlfriend, and my actual valentine (who I celebrated with on January 14 – aka: actual Valentine’s Day from here on out). And yes, I spent the day in Vienna.

To sum up my feelings on Vienna: a lovely city, but not one I fell madly in love with. It certainly served as a nice, relaxing break after Taiwan, though. Vienna is a city I’ve been wanting to pay a visit for a long time, and when I found round-trip flight from Copenhagen to Taipei that conveniently had a layover in this Austrian city, I jumped on it. And then I planned out four whole nights here. Crazy, I know. If you know anything about my travel style, you know that one to two nights is usually more my speed, but I wanted to prepare myself for jetlag and actual sleep after a week of the unexpected in Taiwan, so I planned four nights in a room all my own in a quiet neighborhood. Very smart.

Besides helping out in the sleep department, this plan allowed me to take it verrrrry easy in this city of music. I landed around 11am on Monday, the eleventh, and I greedily took this opportunity to laze in my room for a minute before heading out.

My first activity was a walking tour – a great way to get to know a city I knew nothing about. Our tour guide was an enthusiastic Austrian woman named Anita. She was only the third tour guide I’d ever had who wasn’t English (dude, tour companies really like hiring English tour guides, regardless of the city or country), and she had a thick accent that helped to punctuate her determined history lessons.

She brought us all around the city, giving me great ideas on how to spend my next three days. (Library, horses, and cafes.) She also reminded me that a lot of artists and radical thinkers called Vienna home at one point or another throughout history.

After this walking tour, which only lasted about two hours, I was pretty pooped. Time for dinner to rest my feet and fill my stomach. I found a little Italian restaurant, and I had the whole non-smoking section to myself for the first half hour of my meal. Spaghetti Bolognese and some warm, alcoholic punsch!

It was nice to get back that night. And though this seems like a very low-key day, remember that I had woken up about forty hours before, and had technically started this day with ten hours running around Taipei! Airplanes are crazy, dude.

My host was a young Chinese man, and he had decorated his apartment a bit for the New Year. This was a fun and familiar sight.

This day also marked the day I ran out of clean underwear, and in fact, I ran out of all clean clothes with the exception of this sweater:

So, in just this sweater, I did my best to cover my butt and do my laundry without causing my host any alarm. Ha! The thing is, the washing machine didn’t have any sort of display or timer, so I had no idea how long it would take, and European washing machines can often take two to four hours to wash a load of clothes. I was not going to be able to stay up that long, even if I tried. I lay down at nine, set an alarm for ten so that I could wake up to check on the laundry and brush my teeth, and I was out like a light. When my alarm went off an hour later, I slowly peeled my eyes open to the bright lights in my room (I hadn’t even had the energy to get up and turn those off before my heavy eyelids had failed me). I honestly don’t remember if I could hear the washing machine running or not, because I was awake and barely lucid for about ten seconds before sleep overcame me again.

I shifted awake once more and checked the time — 1:43am. With the lights still on, I grabbed my toothbrush and did a zombie shuffle out of the room in the slippers my adorable host had provided. But when I rounded the corner into the bathroom, I saw that the washing machine was wide open, empty. And after backtracking, I saw this:

My host had hung up all my clothes for me to dry. Gosh, guys. I had one Airbnb host do this for me in Barcelona, and I had thought it was weird at the time that he had handled my undies, but I was so stinking greatful to see this beautiful, beautiful sight of drying laundry. I silently rejoiced and brushed my teeth with my eyes closed. (I can’t even begin to explain how tired my eyes were.) Then it was back to bed.

I had a pleasant walk the next morning — okay, it wasn’t morning. By the time I got moving, it was almost two in the afternoon. Taking it easy, for the win.

But this walk had a purpose, and that purpose was lunch in Cafe Central, a cafe that once served the likes of young Hitler, Trotsky, Freud, and Stalin. Craziness. Now it’s just a pretty cafe stuffed with tourists and beautiful pastries.

I ordered a potato-bacon soup, a glass of wine, and a chocolate hazelnut magic crisp-mousse-bar-something. Ugh. So good.

It was all fun and games until my waitor took five-ever to bring me my check. A very strange thing about some places in Europe – it’s like they don’t want me to pay, or something! I had another easy day planned, but I had two more stops left before bed, and I was running out of time for the second. He finally brought the check when I snagged his boss aside to innocently mention I hadn’t yet received my requested bill. Boom.

But, alas, this effort was not enough, and I did actually run out of time for my second out of third activity. You see that cathedral in the second and third to last photos above? I was supposed to climb the tower inside, but I decided to put that off for another day because my third activity was time-sensitive.

Operaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa.

Shout out to Timmy to giving me the major tip-off. Of course, I knew the Vienna Opera was like, the absolute opera company to rule all opera companies. And yes, I had sort of thought about looking into tickets, but Timmy told me that if you stand in line an hour or two before the show starts, you can buy standing-room tickets for less than five euros!!! And that is exactly what I did.

I did not manage to get the most amazing ‘seats.’ I had blindly followed an older Viennese woman who seemed like she knew what she was doing, and what she did was lead me to the sidelines where I could only see half the stage. If I leaned forward, I could make out about two-thirds, but there were plenty of scenes where I just could not see the singer, no matter how hard I tried. Still, it was a nice experience. The music was lovely to listen to, and the singers didn’t move around much anyway, so there really was not too much to see. I guess there was actually quite a ruckus when the show first played a few weeks ago because people hated the set – it was very, very, very plain. I wouldn’t even call it minimalist, because it looked like it was purposefully trying to just be boring rather than simple. But I digress.

The first time I saw an opera was in Copenhagen, and it was very confusing because it was performed in Italian, and Danish subtitles ran smoothly on an LCD board below the stage. Seeing as it was my first month in Demark and I had never been to Italy, I understood absolutely nothing. The Vienna opera had a personalized subtitle system, so that each seat had its own little screen with different language options. Hallelujah! It was a little weird to constantly switch my line of site between the stage in front of me and the screen at my hip, but at least I could follow the story.

That is, until the second to last scene, when I sat on the floor because the singer was standing in my blind spot. It was very dramatic. Questioning whether life was worth living without his love, putting his heart and soul and vibrato into it.

And I fell asleep.

Just for a second, though!

But long enough that when the song ended and the audience erupted in applause, I leapt into the air to join them, thinking the show had ended. Hahahaha. It wasn’t even ten o’clock, but I was definitely ready for bed.

The experience as a whole was still a pleasant one though, and I made a mental note of how much earlier to arrive and which spots to scope out if I should ever return.

Day three started with a visit to the Spanish horse riding school. We weren’t allowed to take pictures unfortunately, probably so people wouldn’t try to film and steal all of the school’s equestrian secrets. The school has a grand performance every Sunday, but each morning, they hold a practice session that is open to viewers, so I got to see horses dancing around and trotting regally while a woman narrated in German and English. The training lasted from ten until noon, but I left halfway through because they kept doing an exercise where they had a horse prance around while a second trainer whipped its heels. It wasn’t very fun to watch. I was secretly hoping one of the horses would get wise and kick back!

They did have a lovely cafe, though.

Goulash soup (ugh, I can still taste its salty deliciousness), chocolate apricot cake, and a cafe melange, which my walking tour guide had told me was the number one espresso drink to order — espresso with lots of milk foam on top.

Then I went off to finally climb that tower in St. Stephens’s Cathedral! I found out there are actually two towers in this cathedral. One required climbing, and the other was elevator-equipped and boasted a less-obstructed view. I went with the view, of course! Though I admit that I did miss the climb.

The roof is famous for its pretty colored tiles that you can see behind my wind-swept smile in the above picture.

As you can see by the number of smiling pictures I took, I liked it up here. I liked it a lot. But, I had more exploring to do closer to the ground, so after nearly half an hour above the city, I descended once more.

I ended up finding another pretty cathedral that was elevator-eqipped, but this elevator stayed inside the building. It was gorgeous from the outside, but I had no idea that the interior would contain a pair of giant celestial mirror balls.

Why were these balls there, you ask? Dude, I have no idea. But they were otherworldly and beautiful, and the reflected back the interior of the church to make it seem ten times bigger and more glorious.

As I wandered the city, I came across a university library and tried to sneak inside. I love checking out local libraries, and I have a secret obsession with pretending to be a student at universities that are not my own (go dawgs!), so sneaking around university libraries and finding a cozy spot to read is basically my favorite pastime.

This library was a little weird though. First of all, it was one of those libraries that is hyper-sensitive to book thievery, so they require you to check all coats, backpacks, etc., and you can only carry your things around in a vinyl see-through bag. Also, there were no cozy places to read. All study desks and studying students. Gross.

Sad and holding my momentarily-useless kindle, I headed back to retrieve my things not five minutes after sticking them in a locker. They did have a few cool books laying around, though.

Next stop was Naschmarkt, an open-air street market filled with bowls of tea leaves, restaurants, and cafes. I settled for a pierogi stuffed with ham and cheese and delicious spices. It hit the spot.

I also stopped into a chocolatieria for a glass of hot chocolate, but instead of a cup of cocoa, I was given a tall glass of steamed milk, a chocolate bar, and a whisk. Do-it-yourself! Super fun (and very tasty).

Aaaaaaand, you’ll never guess where my day’s big finale brought me.

The Opera again! Or at least, the opera house. Ballet is also performed here, and when I found out they were in the middle of Swan Lake, I couldn’t resist. My favorite ballet! I was looking forward to comparing this performance to that of PNB’s in Seattle and the Royal Danish Ballet in Copenhagen. I also remembered my notes from the night before and got in line about fifteen minutes earlier.

AND IT PAID OFF.

Yes, that was my view! Front and center. (Okay, back and center, but still about as centered as you can get.) I was so nervous and doubtful as I was standing in line, because I knew it would make a great deal of difference in my viewing experience if I had an obstructed view. I just couldn’t tell if I had gotten there early enough, and I cursed myself for not getting in line even earlier. But as I ran up the stairs, eye on the center door of the gallery, I was shocked to find that several spots were still left unclaimed. You see, standing spots are unreserved and first-come first-serve. The rule is that you have to bring a scarf (or some substitute) and tie it on the railing in front of you to claim your spot. Then you can roam freely to check your coat, grab a drink, or use the toilet, and you just have to trust that all other artlovers will respect your mangey scarf as law.

I was so excited and relieved to grab my amazing, unobstructed sightline, that I almost immediately began wandering, not being able to sit still.

When I finally returned to my seat five minutes before curtain, the friendly middle aged woman who stood behind me and had taken my picture before tapped my shoulder. She informed me that the gentleman to my right had tried to take my spot, but she reported him to one of the ushers. “I did not stand outside for two hours so someone can come to try to change the rules,” she said. The poor guy (and he was a big guy) spent the whole performance standing behind a giant pillar, craning his neck around the right side away from me to try to see the stage. Thanks, kind lady! We actually ended up chatting quite a lot before the show and during the two intermissions, exchanging travel stories and life stories. It’s always nice to watch the ballet with a friend, after all.

Oh, and the ballet was devine, by the way. I was honestly really worried about staying awake the whole time, because there is nothing worse than falling asleep during the ballet, but I was so fascinated and entranced the whole performance that I forgot I was tired. During the second intermission, I read the synopsis on Wikipedia, and I read that there were many different endings commonly performed for Swan Lake. Almost all were tragic in their own special ways. Sometimes the swan dies, sometimes the prince dies, sometimes the bad guy dies, and sometimes everybody dies! I was wracking my brain, trying to remember which ending I had seen before. (I say ending, singular, because the Royal Danish Ballet had only performed the first act before switching to a very strange modern piece and leaving us Swan Lake lovers stranded.) I won’t spoil the Viennese ending for you, but it was, in fact, one of the tragic ones. Nothing happy at all. ):

Except me, of course! Love, love, love.

Okay, the big day. V-day. And also my last day in Vienna. I started with a visit to the Belvedere Museum.

My European History teacher in high school once told a story about seeing Michelangelo’s David statue in person. She complained that everyone only cared about the front, but since she was a runner, she was into the backside of the sculpture. All. The. Muscles.

Ever since then, I’ve made it a point to check out the backside of these marble sculptures. Never disappointed. Always great butts.

And the back muscles ain’t bad, either.

At one point, as I was photographing a particularly interesting painting, a museum guard came up to me and said something in a thick, rolling accent. I gave her a bit of a blank stare, and she repeated herself.

“Ah… English?” I asked, giving up on trying to understand what she was saying.

“Yes, yes, English,” she said before spouting a phrase that may or may not have been the same as the ones she’d already spoken. This time, though, I forced my brain to work extra hard to parse her sentence. Then I realized that she had asked, “Are you Rapunzel?” She had a devious smile on her face, too, like she was being clever.

“Aaaah… Rapunzel….” I laughed. “I think she was blonde,” I said.

“No,” the woman said, her smile turning to a flat line, adding a quick shake of the head. “In the original story, we do not have a hair color. There is no hair color for her.”

“Ah, okay, maybe then,” I said with a smile, before slowly continuing my gazing.

Just before I stepped away, though, she said, “Ask your mother if she is your real mother.” Then she added with a knowing nod: “You never know.” That dubious smile was back.

A couple minutes later, she found me in another room and told me she could take my picture if I wanted. I hadn’t actually been thinking of taking a picture in this fairly unspectacular room, but I shrugged and handed her my phone.

“Make the face like them,” she said, and I turned to check the expressions on the sculptures surrounding me.

Hahaha. Quite the lady.

The main attaction of the Belvedere, howerver, is the assortment of works by Gustav Klimt, or as I like to refer to him in my head, The Gold Guy!

It’s all about The Kiss!!! One of the most famous, if not THE most famous, works by Klimt. So much gold and love and love and gold. Made me a bit jealous, honestly. But that didn’t stop me from staring in awe for a good twenty minutes.

If you’ve seen the movie Woman in Gold with Helen Mirren, you’ll know that the beautiful painting Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I used to be here as well, but its position here was a product of World War II and the Holocaust, and it was essentially stolen from the owners by the Austrian/ German government at the time. In 2006, it was reclaimed by descendents of the painting’s rightful owner after years of legal battles. And while I support the decision overall, I can’t help but feel the painting would have been more valued here than in its current museum in New York. Hard to say. I guess I’ll have to visit the museum in New York and test out the vibe there!

Lots of pretty things and works by famous artists were on display here, including Monet, Manet, Kandinsky, Rodin, and even Jacques-Louis David! I was a bit confused, though. Isn’t this like, a very famous painting a Napoleon???

It was just in a random room with a bunch of other random paintings! I feel like this one should be getting more attention, and I definitely feel it would be better appreciated in France. But I digress.

Next stop was to meet that Austrian guy, Piet. A friend of some friends and an interesting fellow, for sure. We met to visit Schonbrunn Palace.

When trying to meet up, I asked how I would know it was him when we met, and he replied that he with, “Tall. Palm tree.” As you can see by the height difference, he really wasn’t exaggerating.

We sat up near the Gloriette with a lovely view of the palace, loitering on some fenced-off grass to discuss life, language, and the way I pronounce the word “fat.” Apparently it’s funny.

Then off to dinner!

We passed through the Underground, and Piet translated that this is a counter for how many books have been loaned in Vienna since January 1st. Cute!

Piet ordered the viel schnitzel so that I could try the good stuff, and I ordered some spatzl, which he described as Austrian mac-n-cheese. For dessert, Kaiserschmarren, a shredded pancake with plum jam. When the waitress first came out with the Kaiserschmarren, the two exchanged several sentences in concerned German before the waitress walked away. I asked what was wrong, and Piet said, “We don’t want it, right? You’re not hungry.” He took this opportunity to gesture toward my mostly-full plate of spatzl.

“No! We want it! I was saving room!” I protested. At this, Piet lept up, chased down the waitress, and returned with the sugary goodness. Hahahaha. Close one.

My last stop with Piet was to a grocery store where he showed me all the secret goodies that can only be found in Austria. One of them is this interesting drink that is made using juice and whey. It was quite tangy.

Then he was off to hang out with his real valentine, and I was off to hang out with one of mine.

This is the National Library of Austria. And you know, it was interesting. You see how smiley I am in that picture up there? That was how I felt when I first entered this gorgeous library. It was a little weird that I had to pay six euros to get in (What happened to libraries always being free???), but I was quickly overcome with awe when I looked up and around me at the stacks of gorgeous, ancient books.

But then I realized I couldn’t touch any of them.

And there was nowhere to sit except a couple wooden chairs out in the open.

And the only books within reach were hidden behind glass cases, and even THESE were actually just copies of the originals.

That’s when I realized: this wasn’t really a library. It was more like a sad, dimly-lit museum. Beautiful, yes, but not much of a library, in my book. (Ha. Get it?)

Don’t worry, though. There are plenty more libraries in my future, and I’ma touch aaaaalllll the booooookssss….

So, this was Vienna. A grand city and a charming one. But one of my favorite countries lies ahead, and you’ll have to check back next time (or check the calendar I sent you) to find out what it is.

Herzlichen glückwunsch/ best wishes,

-Lizzy-wa

February 1, 2019 – Copenhagen Means Cozy Time and Home-Cooked Meals

February 5, 2019June 30, 2023Posted in Denmark, EuropeLeave a comment

Hej! God morgen! God aften! Not sure what time you’ll be reading this, but *insert appropriate Danish salutation here*!

I’m currently writing from about 35,000 feet, to a secret destination. And I am very sleepy because this is a very long flight (my longest ever, in fact), but I have yet to sleep a wink. I’ve instead watched two movies and read a good chunk of my current book, The Joy Luck Club. (Mid-book review: a great read, but I’m struggling to keep up with the eight central characters. Thank goodness it’s a paperback, so I can flip around for reference when needed.) On another note, I really have to pee.

But instead of sleeping, I am blogging, because if not now, I’m not sure when. And instead of peeing, I am wishing I could levitate over the boy on the aisle seat so I don’t have to ask him if I can exit for a fourth time. Curse my tiny bladder.

Anywayyyysss…

If you hadn’t gathered from the greetings, my last visit was to Copenhagen! My third home. (Home one is home, obviously. Home two is Seattle. Home three, Birkerød, and home four is Vancouver with my HPeeps. Tehehe. So hard to keep them sorted.)

When booking this big flight I’m on, I found a perfect combo that left from Copenhagen and landed back in another city I wanted to visit in Europe. (No spoilers!) And it was pretty reasonably priced for being only a month out, especially since I’m visiting a city a lot of other people are visiting this time of year! But more on that later. This is suppose to be all about Denmark, and I keep getting sidetracked.

Landing in the Copenhagen airport was homey enough. By faaaaar my favorite airport, and my second-most frequented! Everything is so clean, easy to navigate, and cozy. Love it. And security has never taken me more than fifteen minutes.

Host sister Sara met me at the airport, and I was surprised to see nobody was waving Danish flags at the arrival gate! These Danes are getting lazy, I see. Haha. It was a fun surprise for her to meet me though. We went straight to her apartment, and I was tickled to learn that she is now living in a DIS kollegium. DIS is the school I studied at in Copenhagen in 2015, and its host family program is the reason I met the Jensens! A kollegium is a student apartment, and since this one is DIS owned, its residence are half Danes and half American DIS students. So fun that she’s doing that, and so weird to see the DIS logo on everything here! The apartment was super hyggeligt. Impressive.

It was a pretty late flight and another late night to sleep after showering and catching up. One of these days, I’ll get back to my Finnish early-bed-early-rise schedule. I miss it already.

Soon enough, we hit the town. I honestly can’t remember what our original goal was, but we did a lot of lovely wandering along the water.

We hit up the Black Diamond (national library). This was nice because 1) gotta keep up with my library trend, and 2) last time I visited with Mama and The Boy, it was closed for the new year.

While wandering the library, I was shocked to learn that one of my favorite hidden Copenhagen gems is located right behind the library! I’d never known because the library is split between an old, vine-covered brick building and the new, monolithic glass structure that gives the library its name. I’d never connected the two dots, so I thought this fountain was basically on the other side of town this whole time.

Then we hit up our first tower of the day: Christiansborg. I like this one because it’s free. Muahahahaha.

And then some more water and canal-side trampliiiiiines. I think the world needs more trampolines.

Next up was Nyhavn. We really covered a lot of ground that day. Quite the sight-seers and thing-doers we are.

We meant to just walk along the harbor, but when Sara casually mentioned the waffle and ice cream shop, I had to go in for one of my favorite Danish treats – nougat ice cream with whipped cream and jam on top. Yum! Sara called me crazy for wanting ice cream when it was so cold outside. I call myself weather-blind.

There was a cute little Nyhavn sign that had rock climbing handholds on it, so I tried my best to pose with them. This spurred Jonathan to ask if I was somehow standing on something or if I was just “the most stable jumper ever.” Take your pick.

We also did a little shopping and gallery viewing.

And some walk, walk, walking.

We even walked all the way through the King’s Garden surrounding Rosenborg Castle.

Oh! I remember now! Our original goal was to visit Statens Museum for Kunst – the Danish National Gallery. This is my favorite museum in all of Zealand (the island of Denmark where the greater Copenhagen area is located). When I studied here, it was free, and I would come in all the time just to read or eat or work on my blog because it was so pretty and had such a lovely atmosphere. But by 2017, something changed, so now its entrance fee is about $15. I have yet to convince myself to visit since, but Sara and I were determined, and she wanted to check out the new cafe.

We were a bit (a lot) disappointed to see that the cafe was rather expensive and fairly lackluster. It just wasn’t what we were looking for in terms of food. We decided to head out for food and come back for the museum, but we never did make it in. Oh well. One of these days I’ll get over my cheapness! (Highly unlikely, though.)

We quenched our hunger with hotdogs and special pastries only offered this time of year (fastelavnsboller).

The cashier tried to deny us eating-in-restaurant rights because we had 7-11 hot chocolates, but we convinced her otherwise.

And then the danger began: we visited Søstrene Grøne, by second favorite store in Denmark, and the place I wish I could purchase all of my home goods.

At one point, looking at the goods in my hands, Sara asked, “Why do you need so many spoons?” Silly question, Sara. Silly question.
And then my favorite place in the whole world (lots of favorites today): Rundetårn!

I just can’t ever get tired of this place. And it’s cheap, and every time I visit, I feel like I’m seeing the city in a different light. The small museum exhibits have also been different every time I’ve visited. This one featured pieces from a local fashion school.

Pretty pretty pretty pretty.

Sara was trying to be studious, so that meant I got to visit my favorite library in the city, Hovedsbibliotek. You may recognize the views from several older blog posts.

As the sun started to set, we walked around a bit more and made the mistake of stopping by yet another, larger Søstrene Grøne so Sara could grab some larger items she’d wanted to avoid carrying around all day. This would have been fine if not for my weakness for cute things and spoons. I even bought a (second) cutting board. I have a problem.

Then a quick nap, some more walking, and a trip home to Birkerød for the night! Yay!

It was so lovely to see Maria and Jesper, as always. Dinner was a deeeeelicious salmon, salad, and potatoes with a dill-yogurt dip. Too good. I also purchased a bunch of Somersby flavors I’d never tried, but I only managed to drink two of them, and I forgot the rest in the fridge.

I also did some laundry (Maria’s and my own – ha!), and Sara and I watched the new documentary RBG about Ruth Bader Ginsberg. Highly recommend.

I made the unfortunate mistake of staying up past 2:30 fighting with the WordPress app, and then I found out I’m almost out of picture storage, but I persevered. (Thanks, Jonathan). This is what I do for your readership, Daddio. Sleep came with such a sigh of relief, but of course it didn’t last long enough.

Sara and I had plans to visit the Louisiana Museum, after all! And first, we hit up the cafe. I was personally offended to find that they were not serving their lunch buffet all week because their dishwasher was broken, and I settled for three desserts in its place.

There was a really cool exhibit all about an architecture firm named Elemental. One section focused on their work with government-assisted or low-income housing, and it detailed the conditions and prices of standard low-income housing in the area versus the homes they created. One thing I really liked about their designs was that they allowed the owners to easily customize and expand the original buildings.

The focal point of the exhibit was a five-sided box, where the bottom side was missing and the whole box was floating about two feet off the ground. Viewers were meant to crawl under this space and lie under the box to view a video that was projected onto the ceiling. It was pretty neat to see all of these adult Danes crawling around and laying on the floor together.

The other exhibits were largely familiar.

As was the beautiful outside.

Sara decided to show me the children’s area, where kids could play with Legos, clay, and paints. And since the whole painting area was empty, we decided to try out our artistry.

That was fun. The rest of the museum walk was nice and casual.

We did a little shopping in the museum store to wrap up the visit, and then it was back to the city to check out the Copenhagen Light Festival.

The old stock exchange building has been used by a private company as an office building for many years, and since they took over, it has only been opened to the public once. This night was the second occasion, and we took advantage of our luck.

Very pretty. We spent the next hour or so just wandering the city and shopping around.

We found a secret way to get a great view of Tivoli, and it basically felt like we were inside. Saved $15!

I really wanted some of these desserts we found, but we were supposed to go get free boas at a new bar called “Hidden Dim Sum by Night.”

It was the grand opening of the restaurant, and at 8pm, they were hanging out a free bun and a free beer to the first 100 customers in line. We got there around 7:45 and… It was pretty obvious we weren’t going to make the cut. They did have some lion dancers from the Chinese-Danish Association of Copenhagen performing to celebrate Chinese New Year, so that was fun. (Sorry for the blurry picture.)

I’ll save you the long story, but basically, we stood in line for about an hour and a half, Sara managed to get a free beer, and I managed to get a free bao. Yay! It was tasty. Sara ordered some extra food because she was hungry by that point, and that was good, too. It was also just a cute little spot. We met one of the owners, the architect for the restaurant design, and a bunch of DIS girls who were waiting in line. Overall not a horrible experience. Just cold!

We marched back to Sara’s place to get some sleep, but first Sara somehow whipped up this fancy chicken meal in no time at all, and we feasted on that a bit. Then sleep time for an early flight in the morning.

Sara was a lovely host, the Jensens were just as wonderful, and I love that I get to see them so often! Copenhagen and Birkerød will always be my home away from home, and it’s thanks to them!

Next stop is a bit more exotic. Until then…

Venlig hilsen/ best regards,

Lizzy-wa

January 30, 2019 – Bringing the Snow to Cambridge

February 1, 2019June 30, 2023Posted in Europe, UK + IrelandLeave a comment

The evening of the 28th was my latest night yet, especially since I was two hours behind Finland time. We didn’t go to sleep until nearly 2am because I arrived after midnight, and then we had some catching up to do.

Now, when I say “we,” I’m talking about myself and my surprise guest: Timmy! You might remember him from Zurich in 2017. I visited him there while he was doing a summer research stint at a Zurich university, and now he’s doing a Master’s stint at Cambridge. What a cool cat. A chemistry wiz and a biking fanatic. With long hair. That about sums him up! Pictures of Timmy to come later.

I stayed with Timmy in his dorm in Churchill College, which he quickly informed me was once the residence of Queen Margrethe II of Denmark! Crazy world.

What was even crazier was the toilet’s disdain for flushing, the bathroom light’s disdain for turning on easily, and the bedroom heater’s disdain for heating the room. Turns out that even dorm rooms in the world renowned Cambridge University are still just dorm rooms.

Timmy had to jet off to his lab in the morning, and I took the opportunity to stay in bed much later than I had any other day up until this point. But I finally made my way up and at ’em.

Ooooohhh… Ahhhhhhh…

I decided to start my day with a free walking tour of Cambridge. I’d been here once before for a day trip, so I had checked a lot of the main boxes that time around. I thought a tour would be a great way to get some insider knowledge, stories, and history on the University, and I was right!

For example, there was this clock that moved when a little grasshopper-like time monster walked on the top of it, pulling the seconds under him and eating away our past:

And we visited many colleges, churches, and bars with plenty of stories to tell.

Unfortunately, I can’t remember most of the stories well enough to feel confident writing them down on the internet to be fact-checked, so I’ll just show you some more pretty buildings:

I do remember a fun story that is unlikely to be fact-checkable. Apparently formal dinners are a very common thing at the university, and each college hosts one as often as once a week, so with 31 colleges in the university, there are likely several formal dinners occuring every night. Jackets are required for men, but dress codes do differ from college to college. Apparently some require black tie or white tie for men and floor-length gowns for women.

So our tour guide, Will, who happened to be a student at Cambridge some years ago (in Kings’ College, I believe), vividly remembers attempting to attend his first formal dinner. Supposedly, the doorman/entry guard, upon learning of Will’s intentions to enter the dinner, asked, “Are you a Mancusian?” Will had to ask what this meant. “Are you from Manchester?” the guard clarified. Will answered no.

“Are you from New York?” Again, no.

“Then why are you attempting to wear brown shoes to a formal dinner?” the man asked. He then asked to see Will’s cufflinks, which were novelty cufflinks in the shape of little pig faces that he had borrowed from his father.

The guard then told Will to come back after he had acquired proper attire, and his entrance was denied. Will then spent the remnants of his first term’s student loan on his first tailored suit and a new pair of shoes. Poor guy.

I’m sure it’s no secret that this kind of dinner sounds AMAZING to me, but I didn’t pack any fancy attire into my HP wonder backpack for this trip. If I manage to visit Timmy again, though, I’m bringing my prom dress.

Will also told us about the May Balls, which are the largest formal dinner parties of the year, hosted my several colleges. There’s a tradition that if party goers manage to keep up the party until sunrise, they get a gigantic group picture taken and are labeled as the “survivors.”

Here’s the famous Mathematical Bridge:

And some shots from The Backs:

And another “I came across a bridge in Cambridge” moment:

As with all ‘free’ walking tours, people are strongly encouraged to tip pretty well, but I looked in my wallet and saw that I only had US dollars, some large-bill euros, and some Danish Kroner. I thought about offering to buy Will a coffee, but I decided I was too awkward for such nonsense and instead slinked off to the market behind St. Mary’s Church.

Hungry and craving Italian food and hot chocolate, I managed to find the perfect spot!

I mistakenly ordered what the waiter called “thick chocolate” instead of standard hot chocolate, so I was expecting to be given a sort of drinking chocolate. I was surprised to see how large the glass was then, and I was also surprised to find that the ‘drink’ was actually more like hot chocolate pudding. Eh. Still hit the spot! As did the prosciutto.

Then Timmy and I met up to go to service at Kings’ Chapel and to see the Kings’ College Choir perform. I was expecting the choir to be made up entirely of college students, so I was surprised when a bunch of little guys walked in. I’d say about half the choir was college students, but the other half were much younger, some looking to be as young as seven or eight.

And they had LITTLE ANGEL VOICES. Ugh. I cannot explain. I knew this choir was a big deal, but my, my, my. The two soloist boys, both of the younger bunch, were…. I honestly am not even going to try to put words to it.

And we were in THE Kings’ College Chapel.

Quite insane. I talked to Jonathan about it later that night because he used to sing in a boychoir, and he said, “They’re the choir that every American boychoir is trying to be.” I don’t doubt it. I guess Jonathan’s choir was actually conducted by the Kings’ Choir director at one point, and that same director is retiring later this year, so I caught one of his last performances with them. Such a treat!

As we exited the chapel, it began to rain.

We walked a bit and settled on an Indian street food restaurant for dinner, but since I’d just eaten that giant flat bread, I just got a mango lassi and a green tea. The waiter was a bit confused. “Lassi, cold. Tea, hot?” I just laughed and agreed. No regrets! Both were delicious. I haven’t had a mango lassi in white a while, and this one was top notch.

As we ate and caught up, the rain turned to snow, so that by the time we walked back to Churchill, it was sticking to grass and cars.

Oh, and my eyelashes.

We stopped by the store on the way, and I freaked out over the tiny milk jugs. I want all of them.

Then some more snow walking…

I attempted to make a tiny snowman, but Timmy said it didn’t really count without a face. Oh well!

Then we went over to have hot chocolate with his friend Julie. She’s lived in this same room for five years, and it was adorable! And she had a giant window seat! She also had a very impressive collection of hot chocolate to choose from. I chose mint.

Julie was a lovely lady, but she eventually had to kick us out so she could return to work. It was past eleven by this time, and we agreed it was time to turn in. We walked through the college, though, so I could see some more of the spaces. And we accidentally came across a friend of a friend from back home!

This is Chen Chen. Timmy met her and found out she was friends with Venk, a friend of mine from UW. Timmy doesn’t know Venk super well, but he knew of him through me, and he therefore felt the need to introduce us. This short introduction quickly turned into about an hour’s worth of card playing.

I didn’t play because the game was unfamiliar. Timmy had only played once before, but as we stood there, he was asking questions and studying the moves, so that by the time the round was up, he wanted to test out his skills. Twice. Hahahaha. They also did something I’ve never seen before, which is that instead of one person dealing the cards out to the rest, they just stacked all the cards in the middle and took turns around the circle, taking one card at a time, until all the cards were in the players’ hands.

The game was called Tractor, and it was a trick-based game involving multiple decks of cards. For whatever reason, at the end of a session, certain people would have gained a number of overall points, and these points were them tallied up and added to a massive college-wide spreadsheet. The boy to my left had 500-something points, the most points in the college. The boy to my right, who showed up just after we had and was dressed in the remnants of his formal dinner wear, was in the 400-something range. When I asked Timmy later about the spreadsheet and why it existed, he shook his head with a chuckle and said, “It’s Cambridge.”

So that was day one in Cambridge. It ended up being past 1am again when we went to sleep, but that didn’t stop Timmy from getting up early to go to the gym. I took it a bit slower, haha. Oh, and here’s his cute little room and its view:

And then it was off into sunny Cambridge for one last morning adventure!

There was a street nearby called The Crescent, and it was shaped like… a crescent. The funny thing, though, was that all of the buildings on the inside of the shape were rounded to match the curve of the street.

There was also this snow-covered marsh grass that for some reason felt so English to me.

The ice was doing a fun thing where it had crystalized into large prisms wherever there had been a puddle.

I call this one “Whimsy:”

The Backs were beautiful with the sun and the snow, and there were even a couple snowmen.

I eventually made my way into the city.

A trip to the market meant I had to exercise self restraint to not purchase all of the scarves on display… So cheap! And so pretty! And so soft! But I really didn’t budget for shopping space in my backpack, and I don’t exactly need any more scarves. Ugh. There were some that were 100% wool, sooo soft, and only £5!!! Maybe I should go back, now that I think about it…

I settled on lunch instead, a delicious and cheap bibimbap.

I had some pretty views while I ate, too.

And then I decided to climb the tower in Great St. Mary’s Church. I’d done the climb when I visited a couple years ago, but my motto when it comes to climbing towers is, “You’ve yet to regret a single climb!” And that’s counting repeats!

Did I regret my adventure? Of course not! And I took about thirty pictures in my excitement.

Half the ground space on top of the tower was still covered in snow and ice, frozen solid into a thick, trecherous layer covering the wooden floor planks. There was a volunteer up there working hard to scrape each plank with a tool not unlike a giant car windshield scraper. I caught his eye at one point and commented on his hard work. He took this opportunity to saunter over and begin a thirty minute chat, tour, and history lesson on Cambridge from some number of feet up. (Dude, I just tried to Google the height of the tower, to no avail. Any insider information would be appreciated.)

But yes, the little old man had so much to tell me. We walked around all four corners of the tower so he could point out different buildings, give me tips about the city, and tell me stories about the university’s past. He was clearly proud of his town and of the university, and I don’t think he stopped smiling once during the whole conversation. We started the talk with about eight other people up there with us, but by the time we said our goodbyes, we had been alone for about ten minutes. P cute. P cute.

After my tower visit, I walked down the main road, and every time I saw an open church, I ventured inside.

I managed to come across two different organ players practicing in their respective churches! That was a treat.

I also took a gander around Pembroke College. This was one of the few main colleges that was open (and free) to the public, so I took my opportunity to stroll around.

Quite pretty. Quite pretty.

I found another, very old, church along the way and wandered through its garden and graveyard.

And then I finally made my way to the Fitzwilliam Museum. Believe it or not, this was my original destination all along. I’d even plugged it into Google Maps before leaving the dorm that morning, and I was planning on walking straight there. As you can see, I got side tracked. But I made it nonetheless, and I only had about twenty minutes to explore what I could before meeting Timmy for a last-minute walk and hang-out sesh, just in time for my bus to the airport.

The entranceway alone was worth the visit.

The museum admission was free, so I was not too stressed about my quick look around. And I was not disappointed, either! Seurat! Rodin! Renoir! Quite the impressive collection in this university museum.

And some more, less name-droppy favorites…

But all too quickly, the time had come to move along. I met Timmy out front and we walked back through the heart of the city. When we passed Corpus Christi College, and I saw that it was only open to students and alumni, I asked if we could take a peek in. Timmy wasn’t sure if he would be allowed since he was a member of a different college, but I encouraged him to ask! The porter ended up being pretty chatty and very welcoming once Timmy flashed his Cambridge ID card. He told us all about the college, recent renovations, and the split between undergrad and graduates. And then he let us on through! Woohoo!

The sun hadn’t made its way to the courtyard yet, leaving a bunch of pretty snow on the grass, and we found another organ player practicing in the college chapel.

Then we were off again! And this time, to the bus!

As we said goodbye, the cheeky bus driver commented, “Ooooohhh… Goodbyes! Very emotional!” And when Timmy said he might join me for a weekend later on in my trip, the driver said to me, “Oh, might! Might! It’s not a definite!” Haha. Not sure what he was trying to go for.

I wrapped up my day with a long sit on the bus, a longer sit at the airport, and another good sit on the plane.

Denmark’s next on the list, but until then…

Cheers!
-Lizzy-wa

January 28, 2019 – Stuck in Finland + Some London Adventures

January 29, 2019June 30, 2023Posted in Europe, Finland, UK + IrelandLeave a comment

Okay. So following the adventures of Santa Land, I had a day that went not at all according to plan. Like… Literally none of it went the way I thought it would. Except maybe the bus to the airport.

My flight to London was scheduled for 12:45, and the airport is so tiny that busses from the city center run to the airport precisely timed for every flight. So my bus was scheduled to pick me up at 11:45. Cutting it a little close, but if the city of Rovaniemi thought that was enough time to get me to where I was going, I wasn’t about to argue.

That meant I had the whole morning to myself! Before bed on the previous night, I researched some breakfast places. There was a Finnish pastry I’d come across many times and had yet to try, so my mission for the day was to try that dang pastry. (Spoiler: it didn’t happen.)

I had it all planned to hit up one cafe for breakfast at 8:00 (opens at 7:30) and then to visit another at 11 for lunch. So imagine my surprise when I wake up, get quickly dressed, and am about to head out the door when I plug the first restaurant into Google Maps only to be notified that it is closed on Sundays.

The restaurant opens at 7:30 every day, but on Sundays? Closed.

Okay, that sucked. But I could just go to the other restaurant, right? That was also opens at 7:30!

Also closed. In fact, it turns out half the city is closed on Sundays. Ugh. One of those silly cities that values rest and family time! The worst! (Kind of joking.)

So I resigned to eating more free oatmeal in the kitchen while reading, like I had the previous morning. Here’s where misstep two comes in: I was reading on my silly Kindle. (I’m a physical book kind of gal, but I couldn’t bring ten physical books on the trip with me!) I’m one of those readers who starts to get anxious as the end of the book nears, especially if it’s a really good book, and ESPECIALLY if it’s the last book in a really good series. This book was both of those things. But I was not anxious yet, because silly Kindle told me I was only 88% of the way through the book.

Five minutes into my breakfast, I come to the Acknowledgements page of the book.

As in, the book was finished. As in, the other 12% of the book was actually just a sneak peek at a different book by the same author, and I had been tricked into thinking otherwise!

So there I was, finished without even realizing it, and having nothing to read for the next sad hour of oatmeal eating while I waited for the first cafe to open in Rovaniemi.

Eventually. I made my way outside, still in fine spirits, and trying to pretend I was used to the cold by now by wearing my hair in a bun instead of down in a neck-blanket fashion.

To make a long story short, the cafe that opened at ten did not have the pastries I was looking for. And the one down the street that opened at eleven didn’t actually open until noon, which I didn’t realize until I tried to pull the door open at eleven. I then ran across town to the swimming hall because I knew for sure they opened at eleven, and I knew for sure they had the pastries because I had seen them there the other day.

But of course, they didn’t have the pastries out yet, or else the little families of Finns had beat me to it.

Very sad and very cold, with another wasted morning, I quickly shuffled back to my hostel, grabbed my things, and ran out to the bus.

Upon arriving at the airport, I saw that the reader board estimated my flight to leave at 2:00 instead of 12:45. Eh. I guess this was fine. I probably wasn’t going to arrive in London earlier enough to visit any museums, anyway. This just sealed the deal.

At 12:30, though, a perky Finnish woman announced on the loudspeaker that our easyJet plane could not land due to runway conditions, and it would instead land in Kittila airport which was a two hour drive north from where we sat. We would all be bussed to Kittala and flown out from there. More information on the busses to come later.

Yaaaaay………..

A bit later, I overheard someone talking about how this happened on Wednesday when they were trying to fly in from London, and they ended up having to spend the night in Kittila.

Sure enough, about an hour later, the perky woman returned to announce that we would be spending the night in Kittila because the flight crew would be over hours if they flew us back that night.

Yaaaaay……

I spent the next bit of time canceling my plans for a day trip in Oxford and being thankful that I had only booked half my planned activities and trains in the London area.

In compensation, the woman said we would all be getting food vouchers for the airport cafe “for fifty euros.”

“Fifty euros!” some passengers exclaimed. “Yeah, they better! We’ll be feasting like kings in the airport!”

Other passengers heard “fifteen,” which made a lot more sense. I, too, had heard “fifty,” but I joined the Fifteen Camp. Passengers then began discussing that this sum would barely cover the cost of the €10 sandwiches the cafe offered.

Well, two hours later, after having stood in the line to receive these vouchers for over an hour, I learned from another couple of passengers that the voucher was actually “FOUR FIFTY EUROS.” As in, €4.50. Four euros, fifty cents.

Coffee at this airport costed €4.90.

Yayyyyyy….

Anyway, I gave up at this point, and when they told us our flight would not be leaving in the morning, but at 12:15, almost a full 24 hours from when our original was supposed to take off, I was not surprised.

I was surprised, however, when I finally entered my €200 hotel room, looked out the window, and saw that I was literally staying on a ski mountain.

The largest ski resort in Finland, in fact.

What a strange world. Oh, and here’s some pictures from the bus ride, on which a loud and friendly English boy (seen peeking over my shoulder) decided to open a pack of gingerbread cookies he’d bought for his co-workers so he could share with the entire bus.

But yeah. The hotel was nice. I made myself some hot chocolate and eventually made my way to the buffet dinner we were provided.

Quite yummy. Very Scandinavian. And paired with several glasses of blueberry juice, which is apparently another (delicious) Finnish thing. I kicked myself in the morning for forgetting about dessert, but I was in a rush to visit the ski village before the gondola stopped running!

Shortly after disembarking gondola, I found a sled, and I decided to use this sled to go sledding at the base of the mountain.

I don’t think I’ve been sledding since I was ten. Maybe younger. I was never much of a sledder. But dude, this was fun, and I had the whole mountain to myself because everybody else was being sensible and eating or sleeping or sauna-ing.

Then I walked around the village a little bit. Cute place.

But it was cold.

Like, very very cold.

Like, somehow even colder than it had been in Rovaniemi. And after only half an hour outside, my toes and fingers were starting to burn, so I ran to the gondola and let it carry me back up the mountain to my princess castle.

This is how I felt when I finally got to lay down that evening:

Flattering, I know.

I ended up staying up kind of late, watching Netflix, fighting with some stranger over the control of my TV’s Chromecast every few minutes, and hoping to catch a glimpse of the Northern lights. No luck, though. Only clouds.

I started the morning with a beautiful, sparkling sunrise, a visit to the hotel’s sauna, and a hardy Finnish breakfast.

Then it was off to the airport much too early (the buses picked us up at 9:30 for our 12:15 flight), but at least the quick bus ride was gorgeous in the morning light.

Passengers continued sharing info during our wait in the airport, such as the fact that our plane had actually flown back to London the previous night, empty, and was not in the airport currently. It would have to fly in, empty, to pick us up. This sent several passengers into a tizzy, because obviously it was confusing and upsetting to know that we could have all been on that empty flight the previous night, and obviously it was easy to worry that the ridiculous plane would not be able to land again. Oh, and I forgot to mention that while we were waiting in the Rovaniemi airport the previous day, three other flights landed and took off. It was just easyJet that was incapable for some reason. Sigh…… Never easyJet! Never!

The plane did, eventually, land. (Below is a picture showing you how high the sun gets in the sky in January when you are this far north of the Arctic Circle. At noon, even!)

And it took off, too.

And it landed again in London, which I was unsettled to find had no snow on the ground. White had become my new norm as far as ground colors went.

I managed to zoom through border control and race across town to do the one thing I really wanted to do in London: visit the Victoria & Albert Museum.

I was not disappointed. Just check out this Chihuly chandelier in the lobby. Chihuly is a Seattle-based glass-blowing artist!

And they had a whole hallway of Rodin!!! My favorite sculptor!!

I stayed in that hallway for a long time, but I did, eventually, move on.

In one hall, I learned that some crazy rich people from the twentieth century had become obsessed with gold and silver, and they’d collected one of the largest personal collections in the world. They had then donated their collection, and it ended up here.

So many riches. Kind of eerie, honestly.

There was also a library, with some books that were two feet tall, but it was closed on Mondays! Drat!

Some last minute wanderings before I was kindly ushered toward the exit…

And then it was double-decker time.

I had dinner, tea, and a dessert in a cafe nearly 150 years old.

And then I watched Aladdin!

You can’t tell, but my hand is on the lamp, haha. Overall, a cute little show. I loved the sets and the costumes, and I still have no idea how they made the magic carpet fly. The boy playing Aladdin was adorable, and he couldn’t decide if he wanted to use an American or a British accent. The genie was great and hilarious. Lots of shirtless dancer boys with six packs. The woman who played Jasmine was kind of awful, unfortunately. Her acting was terrible, and her singing voice actually ruined A Whole New World for me. I’m really not sure what was going on…. She was so nasally and was saying the words in such a strained way… It was like a horrible impression of 2001 Brittney Spears, except that Brittney would have sounded better and had better dance moves.

Yikes. Sorry for the critique, but they seriously should replace her.

I then did a little more walking around and a little bit of Underground travel.

And then to Cambridge to visit a surprise guest! Well, actually, I’m his guest, but he’s a guest on the blog, and some of you might remember him from Zurich….

Stay tuned for more.

Cheers,
-Lizzy-wa

January 26, 2019 – Rovaniemi: Santa, Huskies, and Reindeer, Oh My!

January 29, 2019June 30, 2023Posted in Europe, FinlandLeave a comment

Well, the 26th was quite the adventure-packed day. My first night in a hostel in over a year and a half certainly brought back old memories, and it reminded me of how I’ve become a bit of a light sleeper since I’ve had a room to myself for a while now. It didn’t feel like a super restful sleep, but I did fall asleep with all the lights on, before any of my roommates even came to bed, and by the time I woke up, I was surprised to see that most of them had snuck out without my noticing. So maybe I was sleeping a bit harder than I realized!

When I woke up, I dinked around on my phone for a little while before checking the busses around 8:45. Well, turns out not a lot happens in Rovaniemi, and there aren’t a lot of people there, so the busses do not run very often, especially on a Saturday. In fact, the bus to the zoo ran only once on Saturdays, and I had just missed it. The bus to Santa Claus Village ran only a few times a day and I had just missed the first. The next didn’t leave until noon!

I was a bit peeved, as I’m sure you can imagine. I felt (rightly) stranded at the hostel with nothing to do for the next three hours. It turned out fine in the end, but it was still not the best way to start the day.

I spent my morning in the kitchen, reading, eating free oatmeal and tea, and chatting with a Slovakian boy named Mario. He told me that he was originally planning to rent a car to drive up even father north, but the rental company wouldn’t accept his foreign credit card or bank account, so his next best option was to head to Rovaniemi by train. On his schedule for the day was to rent a snow bike and ride around the nearby mountains. Uhhhh… No thanks…

Haha. He said it was fun when I asked that evening, but he also said it felt like he was going to freeze to death. He mimed himself on the bike, bumping along the road and shivering uncontrollably. Sounds about right.

We made tentative plans to hunt for the auroras that night, and I headed out for Santa!

I arrived by bus to a lovely picnic area outside the main park. Ha! A bit chilly for my tastes.

I stepped inside the welcome center and was surprised with the opportunity to cross the Arctic Circle!!! Officially as far north as I’ve ever been. (This record of mine is being broken every second as I write, but more on that later.)

Another fun side effect of starting in the welcome center was that I was able to pack my day with unexpected adventures! When I originally planned my visit to Rovaniemi back in December, I was hoping to partake in dog sledding, reindeer sleigh rides, snowmobiling, or snowshoeing. You know, crazy winter things! But upon arrival, I found that all of these activities were ridiculously expensive. I’m talking over $100 for most activities, the exception being an $80 snowshoeing tour. Ugh. I decided these little adventures weren’t worth the cost, and I would be glad to even see a reindeer from a distance.

But when I got to Santa’s Village, I found that they provided reindeer sleigh rides and dog sledding for less than half the prices I’d seen before! It didn’t take long for me to decide that I should do both! I had the choice of 1km, 2km, or 5km dogsledding, and I went with the €40 middle ground of 2km. For the reindeer sleigh, I had 0.5km and 1km options, so I went with the longer for €29. Not a bad deal! I was originally expecting to spend that much on the dogsledding alone, and was disheartened to see that other packages were as expensive as €150!

So, tickets in hand and a smile on my face, I set off to meet Santa!

But I was intercepted by all of the souvenir shops. If you’ve ever had the unfortunate opportunity to shop with me, or even worse, to go souvenir shopping with me, you know how time-consuming this practice can get. But I love it! And all of these souvenirs were Christmas themed, so that made it even worse.

I wanted those sweaters and socks so badly! But I resisted. Because I am strong! And because I have no more space in my backpack! And so, finally, I donned my gloves and headband and braced myself for the cold once more.

It was a pretty cute little village, but I soon found myself inside again when I came across Santa’s official post office. Of course I had to write some letters! The mailboxes here all have two sides: one for normal mail and one for Christmastime delivery.

Also, I guess it’s a thing in Finland to leave your binky for the baby reindeer??? Seems like a hoax to get your kid off the binky, if you ask me!

There were some people here who seemed to be witting out all of their Christmas cards or something, giant stacks of letters in front of them and big mailbags on the table for when they were done. I stuck to two little postcards.

Also, I am so sorry I am such a mess here. I was only able to half-wash my hair the night before, and I didn’t have my brush with me, so Santa did not see me on a good hair day!

But anyway. If the post office served hot chocolate and cake, I probably could have cozied up in a corner for the rest of the afternoon writing letters to people. As it was though, I had a date with some puppies!

I could hear the puppies whining and crying with excitement long before I reached the husky park. I arrived just as the two sleds tore away into the forest, and a chatty, smiley young woman with pink, round cheeks greeted me excitedly as I approached.

“It’s free entrance!” she declared. “Come on in and warm up! And of course you can pet the dogs as much as you like!”

She introduced me and another girl to some of the dogs who were off-duty. The white one’s name was Musky, and she was desperate for attention. A puppy, the lady explained. Musky and I became fast friends!

I made sure to say hi to the other puppies, too, but Musky was just so excited to see me whenever I turned toward her. She would spring up and jump into the air on her hind legs as I approached, and once, she even jumped on top of her dog house to try to reach over the fence. Too cute.

Eventually, the sleds came back, and it was my turn to ride! The sled drivers were two heavily-bundled men with glasses. One was short and stocky and kind of reminded me of a friendly dwarf from The Lord of the Rings. The other was his tall, skinny, reserved counterpart, and this was my driver.

I was pretty excited to get going, and my hair was doing this strange thing where my breath would fog onto it and then the hairs would individually freeze, creating an effect that made my hair look white.

Nobody was quite as excited as the dogs, though! They jumped and squealed once the driver got in place. They could feel that we were going somewhere, and they wanted to go NOW. When the driver finally gave the call, they bounded off in delight.

I squealed and giggled around every turn and over every bump. We were going so fast, and the dogs were clearly in their element. I however, was not! I was getting so cold, and the white hairs around my face grew more and more plentiful. My toes and fingers were losing feeling, and at one point, my phone even shut off from the cold!

I tucked it under my thin blanket for safe keeping and resorted to breathing heavily into my hands to warm both my fingers and my face. I couldn’t figure out why my gloves smelled so funny, but I realized later it was the smell of dog from all that petting.

We zoomed through fields and forests, along paths marked only by previous sled tracks. The dog directly in front of me and to the right was cracking me up. She kept veering unconsciously to the right before being pulled back into line by the others, and her tongue hung out to the side the whole run.

It was honestly one of the most silly and fun activities I’ve ever experienced. I couldn’t believe it was happening, even while I was on the sled! At one point, the dogs turned a corner too sharply, and the driver hollered out a command. The dogs slowed a bit, and I had to duck under a tree, but the driver wasn’t so lucky! I heard a loud whack, and a huge piece of branch fell into my lap. I hope the driver’s head was okay! I thought about asking, but I wasn’t sure if talking would confuse the dogs with their commands.

With every passing minute, the cold was biting into my soul. At one point, I considered casually telling the driver that he could cut the run short if he’d like, money forgotten! I didn’t think I could last much longer with the icy wind blowing in my face. But it was also so fun, so I tucked in and focused on the joyful puppies and our beautiful, magical surroundings instead of on my weak self.

When we finally came around the corner and the kennels and warming hut came in sight, the driver called another command and put on the breaks. The dogs slowed, and one of them instantly rolled onto their side to rest as soon as we came to a stop.

“So, I guess you were meant to gave the two kilometer ride?” my driver asked me.

“Yes!” I responded.

“And instead, you got the five kilometer ride.”

I had thought the ride seemed a bit long! Just then, the other driver called out, “Five kilometers???” I suppose he could tell based on how long we’d been gone.

“Sometimes I cannot stop them!” my driver hollered back with a chuckle. I asked how long they could run before they got tired, and he said, “All day. Sometimes, I feed them, you know. But besides that, they run all day.”

I gave them a quick pat, but when the smiling woman ran out and told me to warm up inside and to help myself to as much warm juice and as many cookies as I wanted, I all but sprinted into the little hut. I was greeted with a roaring stove and benches covered in reindeer furs. The kettle of juice sat directly on top of the stove, and it rattled and jiggled with the boiling liquid inside.

I spent about half an hour in the little hut, holding my juice to my socked feet to try to warm my toes faster and sitting on my phone to try to bring heat and life back into it.

At one point, my driver came in to warm up. I asked about the injured puppy in the small dog kennel, whose front paw was wrapped up, and he let her out to stretch. She almost immediately jumped into his lap, wriggling with joy. He could hardly pet her (or even move, for that matter) because of all his layers, but she didn’t care. He ended up bringing her outside and hooking her up to the sled. The woman explained that she hadn’t run in two weeks, so they were going to let her do a run or two, just to test out the foot and to help her not feel so restless. Good luck to the little pup!

When I felt I could properly feel all of my appendages again, I put on my winter face and set out! One last goodbye to the puppies, first, though. Musky would barely let me go. She kept pawing at me whenever I tried to leave. It was heartbreaking!

But alas, I had a date with a reindeer!

The reindeer sleigh ride was, uh… Interesting, haha. Not quite as fast as the puppy sledding, that’s for sure. Honestly, I’m not sure how these guys manage to pull Santa’s sleigh, unless they are a lot more energetic in the air compared to when they’re on the ground! Everything about their walk and their countenance reminded me of a donkey. So… Not super fast, and not super happy. I was also using reindeer pelts as blankets during the ride, so that seemed a bit awkward. I enjoyed myself, nonetheless!

The reindeer behind me only had one antler, and the lady driving the sleigh had only one facial expression: “I’m cold.”

It took about as long to do the short one kilometer route with the reindeer as it had for the puppies to run five. We looped around the park, and as we came back towards the starting point, the sun peeked through the trees, glowing a brilliant orange just before it tucked behind the horizon. The sleigh driver even gasped and tapped my shoulder to point it out.

As we came to a stop, I noticed I could no longer feel my toes. They were still mobile, though! I commented on my amazement at the driver’s ability to be outside all day, and she laughed and said, “Oh, I have so many underwears on right now!” And she made a big sweeping motion to her body as though to show me where exactly the underwears were.

My next stop was Santa!

I was pretty excited. And a little nervous. It wasn’t until I was almost next in line that I realized I didn’t know what I wanted for Christmas! How was I to know what I would want eleven months from now?? I finally settled on this: a nice place to read. Like a stylish, comfy arm chair similar to that leather one in the National Library of Finland, or a lovely little window seat, or a big pillow corner. You know, something normal like that!

It reminded me of my favorite Christmas present that I’ve ever received from Santa. In fifth grade, the white, plastic, two-shelf bookcase in my room was filled to the brim and double-stacked. Reasonable as I was, I knew that this meant I needed a book case with four shelves, and that is exactly what I asked for. Imagine my surprise Christmas morning when I came downstairs to see a towering, beautiful, wooden (okay, it’s probably ply-board or something, but it looked wooden and definitely not plastic) bookcase in the corner of the living room, with not four, but FIVE SHELVES. I ran upstairs to wake my parents with a crazed jumping dance and the exclamation, “HE BROUGHT ME AN EXTRA SHELF. HE BROUGHT ME AN EXTRA SHELF!”

God, I was such a little nerd. And of course at the time, I didn’t know that most common bookshelves come with either two or five shelves. Four is rather uncommon, much like the things that excite me most in life.

But anyway. I had it all rehearsed, but as I entered the room with Santa, he sent a beaming smile my way, and I forgot all my lines. He greeted me with a hardy handshake, and we chatted about the winters in Seattle. I wanted to touch his beard, but I resisted. I was honestly super nervous. It felt like the first time I met my favorite author, Scott Westerfeld, in seventh grade and could hardly handle the fangirl, dizzy-making emotions inside of me. (Again, nerd.)

And it was over all too quickly. We shook hands again and I took a mental picture of his kind, smiling eyes, and then an elf ushered me out the other door. He never asked what I wanted for Christmas, which was at once relieving and confusing. Maybe it’s just an American tradition? In the end, I had to secretly snap a photo of the computer screen to avoid paying $40-60 for prints or digital copies. I barely succeeded, but I count this smiley photo as a win.

After Santa, I had just enough time for a sit-down dinner at a salmon teepee recommended by the hostel owner. “It is the best thing, I have ever tasted. If you like fish.” (Her punctuation, not mine.) I made it just in time for the attractive Finnish boy to put a piece of salmon on the fire for me. In fact, salmon was the only thing they served, and the oven doubled as the heater for the ‘restaurant.’

It was really quite delightful, and I paired it with a cup of hot glögg and some more of those heartshaped gingerbread cookies that had been in the husky hut. They are quite popular in the area, it seems.

And for the record, it was fluffing delicious.

Delayed flight adventures to come.

Parhain terveisin/ best regards,
-Lizzy-wa

January 25, 2019 – Reading, Trains, and Naked Sauna (ooh la laaa!)

January 27, 2019June 30, 2023Posted in Europe, Finland4 Comments

Hey, Mom. And Shaun.

I’ll pick up where I left off to Finnish (never gets old) my Helsinki adventures since WordPress really didn’t want me to do so in the last post.

To refresh your memory, I was just talking about my walk back from King’s Gate to the ferry terminal.

I was able to visit the Suomenlinna Cathedral which hadn’t been open yet on my first pass.

I also stopped by a little grocery mart while I waited for the ferry, and I could help but stare a little when a group of uniformed men (and one woman) came into the shop. I was unsuccessful at sneaking a picture, but they were all in little felt hats and pea coats with gleaming buttons. I did a little last minute exploring on the other side of a bridge to determine that they’d come from the naval academy stationed on a tiny island adjacent to Suomenlinna.

Then another pass over the icy waters, followed by some shopping.

I have no idea what these tiny bowls could possibly be used for, but I want them all!!! (Don’t worry, I didn’t get any. They were all priced at €12-15!)

Then I hit up yet another library, this one being the National Library of Finland.

So prettyyyyyyy.

I was fairly content to camp out in this delicious leather armchair (I want one) for the next hour to read a bit. It didn’t bother me that it was positioned on the end of a stack of books, open to the elements, because there were few other people roaming the staircases in front of me and the stacks around me. In fact, I had to stand up every fifteen minutes or so to reactivate the motion-sensing lights. Ha!

I then snuck across the street and into the Helsinki Cathedral. I say ‘sneak’ because it is technically closed to visitors right now. I know this because I explored the crypts the other day through a side entrance with a sign explaining the renovations being performed on the organ. I also know this because I tried to enter just before visiting the library and was shooed away by an attractive young military man who was part of a team loading something inside.

The military man was not present when I exited the library, however, and the front door was left ajar. I slipped inside, admired the view, and made my exit just before a man appeared from nowhere to berate the other few guests who had wandered inside. If that’s not perfect timing, I don’t know what is.

I also tried my luck at infiltrating an interesting-looking government building, but I decided against it because everyone else entering seemed too official.

I opted instead for ramen and some more reading. (I’m not actually reading that ‘Betrayal’ book. My Kindle just gives me ads when not in use. Tehehe.)

I walked downtown to check out the ice skating rink and this creepy cardboard cutout in the window of a theater.

The ice skating wasn’t in the cards because I had no railing or hand to hold me up, and the theater wasn’t in the cards because a Finnish stand-up comedian was performing that night and I didn’t have time to learn Finnish before the show started.

Satisfied and sleepy, I made my way back to my cute little apartment for the last time.

I wanted to sauna, but I screwed up in my scheduling for the seemingly best one in town, and the one close to me was pretty expensive. Also, I could barely keep my eyes open by 7:30. I did a little research and resigned to suana-ing in Rovaniemi.

Sleep took over quickly, and just in time for me to wake early in the morning for my long train ride up north.

So here’s where I made a couple mistakes. When I went to sleep, I suggested to myself that it might be a good idea to check my train ticket, just to be sure the train was leaving at 6am. But no, I thought, it was definitely leaving then and there is no way I would have purchased an earlier ticket. I was safe.

Well, I managed to wake up before my five o’clock alarm, at 4:45am, to be precise. I was unnervingly well rested, and I made a mental note that I should really try this whole ‘going to bed early’ thing when I get home. It certainly has its perks.

I quickly cut up an apple, packed my food, packed my bags, and said goodbye to my cute little shower-less apartment. The sky was the same color as the ground, somehow: a soft, fluffy pale grey, bright as can be even though the sun wasn’t set to rise for several more hours.

I made my way through the empty streets, reveling in the silence. Traveling in the early hours of the day can be exhausting, but waking before the rest of the city has always tickled me a bit.

I got to the train station and did not immediately see my train on the platform postings, so I brought out my ticket to see if it said anything about my platform. What the ticket lacked in platform info, it made up for in departure time: 6:24am. A glance at the giant station clock told me it was precisely 5:30.

Oh, Lizzy. Why do you do this to yourself. I could have eaten in my apartment! I could have explored a bit more! Yada yada yada. I reminded myself that I woke up on my own anyway, and I could just as easily eat and read in the station. So that’s what I did.

When the train finally rolled onto the platform at 6:15, I booked it for the coveted window seats the ticketing agent had told me about on my first day in the city. I’d been assigned aisle seats, but there were a couple seats on the train that are not allowed for booking, I suppose in case something gets overbooked or employees need special rides?? Anyway, I had my sights set on an unclaimed two-seater row, and victory was mine. Woohoo!

I checked my email that evening to see that, after nearly three weeks of waiting, the train company had finally gotten back to me to say they had switched my seats to windows, but by the time I saw the email, I was already cozied up in my next hostel. Ha! Weird timing.

I spent my 6.5 hour train ride (and that’s just the first leg!) reading feverishly through the third installation of a trilogy I started back in high school. It’s always interesting trying to piece together the distant memories of characters and events, but I fell back in love quickly enough and couldn’t put the book (or rather, the Kindle) down.

I was also astonished to see that even the train bathrooms come with the little hose-bidets. So strange, dude. But I kinda like them. Tehehe.

Here’s me noticing how light my hair has gotten and proving to all the haters that it is definitely not black!!!

And here’s me wanting to be in the picture but also not wanting to block the winter wonderland outside my window:

I was amazed every time we passed another tiny town suffocated in snow and dozens of people got on and off the train. How do these crazy Finns live like this?!

That was the third or fourth boy I noticed entering or leaving the train holding a hockey stick. Where were they going with their sticks? This I cannot answer. I also made a trip to the dining car to snag a salmon-pretzel-bun sandwich for lunch.

I was getting antsy as our train inched closer to Oulu, where I was meant to transfer to another train. The transfer was only ten minutes, and we arrive about half an hour late. Thankfully, though, this was a common enough route, and they held the second train for us. Two Finns, a kind middle-aged gentleman and an attractive boy (eh… sadly, he was probably in high school if I’m gonna be honest) translated for me and had my follow them to the next train. Strangers for the win!

Then it was another two and half hours of watching the sun start to set before we touched down in Rovaniemi, home of Santa.

Dude, if I thought Helsinki was cold (and I did), Rovaniemi was… I don’t even know. Colder.

My nose hairs froze almost instantly as I stepped off the train. (I tried to capture this phenomenon in the above picture, but I don’t think I was succsssful.) The air sparkled with frost. And all of my pictures came out blue because everything was the same shade of greyish-white: the sky, the ground, the buildings.

By the time I made it to my hostel, the front of my thighs were burning with cold. I got to the front door and realized I had no way of getting inside. I had forgotten to check the check-in details. I had a moment panic – I didn’t want to walk back to the train station to get WiFi because it was just so stinking cold, but I also had no way of getting inside. I wandered the block a little bit to see if there were any cafes nearby – no luck, and finally resorted to knocking desperately on the windows.

Thankfully, another tenant let me inside, and I immediately warmed up. Turns out the host had sent me check-in details about five minutes after I began my walk from the train station. Not the best timing, there. But the adorable ’boutique’ decorations and the friendly suggestions from the host made up for everything.

For some reason there were two toilets in the bathroom, so I made a point of using them alternately. Hahaha.

Feeling as though I’d wasted the better part of the day (and all of the sunlight) on the train, I quickly regrouped, grabbed my swimsuit, added another layer to my existing outfit, and made off for the public swimming pool across town. I had a mission to sauna, and if there was a bit of swimming involved, I didn’t mind.

Honestly, though, the swimming ended up being the best part! The pool was part of a community workout facility, like a YMCA. I was probably the only person in the whole building who wasn’t a local, and I was definitely the only non-Finn. A reviewer online had said she’d gotten weird looks and felt like she maybe wasn’t welcome or was feeling out of place in a bikini, but my one-piece and confused smiles seemed to get me through the day, and people were quick to offer help when I needed it.

The pool room consisted of a standard lap pool, a kids’ pool (with a giant water slide), a smaller heated kids’ pool, and a heated multi-use pool. I spent most of my time in the strange multi-use pool. It wasn’t crazy warm, but felt like it was maybe 70-80 degrees. Nice and comfortable. And all around the perimeter of the pool were buttons. Each button set off a nearby set of jets that served different purposed. The first I tried just slammed water directly at me, and I realized I was supposed to hold on to the bar on the wall and run against the current. Another set off a large fountain/ curtain of water that was highly pressurized. This served as a lovely neck and back massager! Another was a foot massager, and I spent about ten minutes playing with this one and allowing it to rocket me above the surface of the water as I tried to balance on its jetstream.

The strangest button of all set off a little 8×8 foot square of space that was elevated up and covered with netting. The whole thing bubbled like a shallow pan of water, and you were supposed to just lay in it. Kind of strange, but I finally got the hang of it by watching others, and when I found a nice place to rest my head, I ended up laying there for a full twenty minutes. Kind of a like a lukewarm bubble bath filled with strangers. Hahaha.

I also went down the water slide once, just to make my sister proud.

And then it was time.

For the naked sauna.

No swimsuits allowed. This rule was posted in Finnish and English and was depicted by a smiling little naked cartoon girl with her hair covering her boobs. I reminded myself that I knew nobody here (all girls, anyway, as the sauna was located in the locker room), and I threw caution and my swimsuit to the wind!

Review: strange. Liberating. Sweaty. Also strange. But all in all, a lovely experience!!! Big fan. I think it really helped that I couldn’t understand what anybody was saying. Eavesdropping while naked or holding a conversation while naked is an adventure I will save until I have absolutely no shame or sanity left in my head!

—

Side note: I’m writing from the Rovaniemi airport, and my flight is scheduled to leave in seven minutes. Unfortunately, about ten minutes ago, a woman on the loudspeaker announced that runway conditions would not allow our plane to land, so we will be bussed two hours away to a different airport in Northern Finland, and we will maybe be able to fly out from there. For compensation, we will each be given a €15 voucher to spend in the airport cafe.

There is also no wifi in the airport, and they have yet to give us any other details or to tell us when, exactly, we will be getting on this mystery bus.

So far, this day has not gone according to plan.

I’m reminding myself of Jonathan’s travel motto, though, which is that even when things don’t go according to plan, it’s really never that bad. An event like this can be viewed as trip-ruining or day-ruining, but Jonathan would choose to look at it as a minor inconvenience and another story for the books, so I will do my best to do the same!

—

Okay. So I did the naked sauna. It was great. I also took my first shower in three days, and that was also great! I then tried and failed to dry my hair using the little hotel-style, wall-mounted hairdryer. I eventually cut my losses, bundled up as best I could, and set off in search of dinner.

On my way to dinner, I explored the downtown area a bit. I found Santa and his mailbox (excuse my weird tired face):

And an outdoor ice bar:

When I made it to dinner and reached out to open the door, all of my hair followed my arm in one rigid, frozen chunk. It was seriously frozen solid! I could even snap it in half! (Don’t worry – it snapped the ice, not the hair.) Very very strange feeling. I tried to take some pictures, but it really doesn’t look like anything, so I’ll spare you the tangles.

Dinner was meant to be a highly-reviewed ramen burger, buns made out of crunchy ramen and a burger made of reindeer meat, but they were fresh out. I settled for the pork noodles and was served something yummy with meat that didn’t really feel or taste like pork.

Oh well. As I said, it was yummy. I indulged in some more of my book and packed my leftovers up to bring back to the hostel.

I essentially collapsed immediately and was sound asleep by nine or so. Stay tuned for exciting adventures to come, and to find out how I finally escaped the Rovaniemi airport.

Parhain terveisin/ best regards,
-Lizzy-wa

January 24, 2019 – Cold, White, and Sleepy

January 25, 2019June 30, 2023Posted in Europe, FinlandLeave a comment

First impressions of Helsinki: everything is adorable. Everything is white. Everything is cold.

Okay, disclaimer on the whiteness of it all — I’m technically referring to the fact that everything is covered in snow. I mean, I expected the cold. And I was hoping to see a bit of snowfall, but I didn’t expect to land on a runway covered in three inches of fluffy powder. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever landed in snow before. It was honestly a little scary!

That being said, I’ve only taken note of one non-white local so far. Other than that, I’ve come across a few Asian tourists. We’ll see how the count progresses.

The flight from New York was long (about eight hours) but pleasant.

The plane was only about half full, so I had a full two-seater row to myself.

I somehow managed to sleep for several hours across the seats, indulge in an unsightly but surprisingly delicious dinner meal (free wine!!), and finish an entire book. The book was called The Marvelous Misadventures of Ingred Winter, a fiction novel revolving around some unlucky events in a Norwegian woman’s life. Got me in the Europe mood.

I got a little frightened when I found these ‘fun facts’ about Finland in the back of the in-flight magazine. I’m not the only one who sees those average temperatures, right??? And that’s just in Helsinki! When I check the weather in Rovaniemi the other day (my next stop), the temperature was reading -7 Fahrenheit, with the note, “feels like -18.” What the heck does that even feel like?!

When we landed in the snow, I began to question the sanity of the entire trip. I couldn’t possibly be expected to explore in the snow, in below zero temperatures. Why do I keep planning trips to northern Europe in the middle of winter?! And it will be so dark all the time!

So yeah. That was my inner monologue. But then I got to wander around the deserted Helsinki airport (I love empty airports), and I forgot my stress while I admired the Finnish design and decor. It was honestly a bit ridiculous. They were piping in fake birdsong in the bathrooms.

The train into Helsinki was like a train through a winter wonderland. It reminded me of our trip to the Fjords around Bergen last year.

And by the time I stepped out of the train station, I felt the full weight of the travel bug sink its teeth in deep. I don’t understand myself sometimes. I’ve been worrying so much about this trip, but I’d forgotten that I basically live for this stuff. The buildings. The food. The language. And the healthy layering of snow on it all just added to the magic.

Plus, I found a Tiger right across the street from the train station (my favorite store in the entire world!) It took me a hot minute to find my tiny apartment, but I indulged in the sights along the way.

I did a quick crash course in Finnish while I was in the apartment, but I think it’s going to take some practice. It’s just so different from Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, and Icelandic. I can kind of get by with Danish in all of the other countries, but there are very few similarities between Danish and Finnish. So I have to start from scratch. In the Tiger store, I managed to get by with silence and mumbled grunt-responses. I was able to follow her conversation, and I responded appropriately so that she never switched to English, but it also kind of made me a feel like a crazy person to not even be able to say thank you or goodbye. Just a weird twitchy head nod before I turned and ran out the door. So yeah. I’m practicing.

It took yet another minute to convince myself not to fall asleep right then and there. Only so many daylight hours, after all. I told myself I would try to be back for bed by 8 or 9 so I could wake up with the sun the next day. Then it was off in search of food.

I found a little coffee shop and ordered some overnight chia pudding and a croissant.

Check out my lovely view of the frozen waters!

I actually wrote the first chunk of this blog while I sat there eating. And now I continue writing as I eat dinner. But more on that later.

After breakfast, I explored the area a bit.

Those locks were so pretty covered in snow. As was everything else. Especially enchanting was the Uspenski Cathedral, one of the largest Orthodox churches in Western Europe.

I ended up playing around with my amateur photography skills on the stairs because there were so many cool things happening. Check out my chipped nail polish and this perfectly chipped snowflake up in the top right corner:

And the frozen rock wall lining the stairs:

And the rusty gates that separate the cathedral grounds from the rest of the city block:

Gorgeous. All of it.

Next, I took a little jaunt through Esplanade Park.

And I eventually wound up on a shopping street. I peeked into a few trinket shops, but most of my time was spent in a bookstore. What I couldn’t get over was how thick so many of these books were. I didn’t recognize most of the giant ones, but their gargantuousness was so unnatural that it couldn’t have been a fluke. My theory is that Finnish words are either so long or so much more specific than those of other languages that the novels just balloon during translation. Several titles were over three inches thick!!!

But I digress. And I move on to my trip to the Ateneum, Helsinki’s largest art museum.

In a hall filled with self portraits, I was instructed by a wall placard to take a mirror selfie.

And some more of my favorites…

I also discovered this strange attachment to the sink when I visited the powder room.

Turns out it’s the Finnish version of a bidet. I tried to test it out in the sink and ended up drenching half the bathroom stall. Whoops. I actually have one back in my apartment, and that is the only instrument I have in the way of a shower, so my hygiene could be in a questionable state come Friday. (Update: yup haven’t showered!)

By the time I left the museum, I had to brave the snow to reach the library.

But I was rewarded with Scandinavian architecture and Scandinavian cuisine!

Ho. Ly. Crap. I’m tired.

…

And we’re back! I wrote that last line just as I settled into an egg-shaped chair facing out the window on the second floor of the new Helsinki Central Library. I spent the next hour or so falling into a deep sleep, rousing myself so that I could close my mouth and avoid embarrassment, trying and failing to convince myself to get up and go home, and repeating in a seemingly endless cycle of exhaustion. And this was all happening at only 6pm. Ha! First day on the road will do that to you. And I’d had a long, action-packed day, in my defense.

Even the library alone had enough excitement to fill my tired little head with endless wonder. It just opened in December and seems to have fallen quickly into the hands and hearts of the locals. I think this library achieves exactly what all strive to be: a place for community members, young and old, to explore, learn, engage, and feel warm and welcome.

What this library lacks in books, it makes up for in meeting spaces, equipment and technology free for use, and a calming sense of wholesomeness that both invigorated me and lulled me softly to sleep.

It seemed not a space went unused. Few chairs were left empty. Nobody tried to be silent, but the soothing lights and warm architecture brought a curtain of serenity over all and the resulting sound was that of hushed and peaceful life.

Gosh. Gross. Excuse me while I just go ahead and marry this library. At least then I’ll get a European passport, right? Win, win, win!

I’ll end my library love letter with this image of me suppressing the feeling of vertigo long enough to snap a picture while I stood at the tip of a sloping floor encased by glass that hung over the edge of a vast, snow-covered courtyard.

Oh, and this hilarious book cover. I think it’s a childrens book?!

I walked back through the snow, careful to keep my eyes open though they wanted so badly to close, and I was asleep before nine. I woke up at 4, then 8, and got out of bed by 9, patting myself on the back for going to bed early enough that I didn’t have to waste all of my daylight hours snoozing.

First on my agenda was the market square. I found some ADORABLE spoons I wanted so badly, but I also didn’t want to pack them around for the next two months. I tried and failed to determine whether the shopkeepers would still be around in March, when I stop back at the end of my trip. When we both finally realized they were never going to understand what “March” meant, the couple just smiled and avoided eye contact as though they found something to be particularly interesting just behind my right shoulder. I took that as my cue to leave and just hope for March. (Also note that March is ‘maaliskuu’ in Finnish for next time.)

Then off to Suomenlinna, the Swedish island fortress of old, just a quick ferry trip away. This boat didn’t slice through the ice-covered water quite as gracefully as that ship in the Norwegian fjords, but it still did the job and brought back fun memories.

As I disembarked the ship, I laughed as I remembered all the people who complained of how dark it would be on my trip. I had to blink away the sun and the cold simultaneously, and I spent long enough playing around on the shore and in the tourist information center that by the time I began my explorations, I was all alone. The rest of the hundred-plus ferry passengers had already dispersed, and I was left to the bright quiet that only snow can provide.

I also noticed how long and giant my hair was when I decided to take it out in the bathroom, but it was keeping me warm, so I wasn’t about to change it!

Then I found some swings, which, must like libraries, are one of my greatest weaknesses. Poor Jonathan missed a bus once because of this most childish vice of mine.

I think they were meant for two small children to ride simultaneously while facing each other? I made due with what I had and paid no mind to the passing yellow-jumpsuited construction workers.

Oh, and then I found another library, tucked into a residential area. I peeked inside and snagged a super-lightweight paperback copy of The Joy Luck Club off a ‘free’ shelf in the mud room. Why are these Finnish libraries so clean and pretty??

A little way down the main path, I found the city museum and resisted all urges to buy these wonderful(ly expensive) and totally (un)necessary tools.

I also told myself I didn’t need to buy any glögg since my museum ticket came with free coffee.

Then I watched a little historical film and explored a bit, taking notes of things I’d like to visit on the island should I ever return in the summer, namely, a fine dining restaurant built into an old bunker.

And off again! I’m noticing the nose freckles are appearing in full-force, and my hair seems to be getting lighter and redder. The Finnish winter sun may be fleeting, but it does the job well.

I also tried my hand at timed selfies. I realized I could make a little bed on the snow using my bag. Sometimes it worked. Sometimes it didn’t. Haha.

In short, I’m obsessed with Suommenolina!!! I can’t even count how many times I jumped into the snow banks lining the road, just to see how deep it was. Eight times? Ten? Too many. Too fun.

I finally made it to King’s Gate, a quay built for a visiting king that also marks the other end of the island from which I started.

My walk back was quicker, but just as peaceful and smiley.

Ugh. Okay, WordPress is being not-my-friend right now and has been behaving as such since about seven hours ago. I simply can’t upload more pictures to this post and therefore will have to leave you on a cliffhanger. I’ll wrap up my Helsinki adventures when I unravel those of Rovaniemi. Sorry, Mom!

Parhain terveisin (oh, also, my Finnish is getting better!!),
-Lizzy-wa

January 22, 2019 – That Time I Missed a Flight

January 22, 2019June 30, 2023Posted in Europe, FinlandLeave a comment

I write to you from JFK. The sun was rising when I took off in Seattle this morning, and as I wait for my connecting flight to Helsinki, the sun sets slowly on the edge of my view.

When I mentioned last night that I’d have extra time to waste in the airport this morning if I arrived early, Jonathan joked that I could do some ‘pre-blogging.’ I responded that he acted as though he didn’t know I’d already taken part in this silly activity many times, and he came back with, “Oh no, I say it because I know for sure that you have.”

If you’ve spent much time with me or are privy to my story telling, you know I’ve got a bit of the procrastinator bug in me. I just don’t like the idea of wasting time by being early, and of course, this means that I run a bit late on average. So my standard airport procedure is to arrive approximately an hour before take off, maybe 1.5 hours if I’m flying from Seattle to Europe, and to assume everything will be peachy. Sometimes it’s not, and I’ve gotten my fair share of sweaty spells, cardio workouts, and bruises from running to the gate and tripping over escalators. But I’ve never missed a flight.

Until I did.

I was meant to fly out for a little adventure in Finland and Estonia during the first week of December, 2018. I was going to party it up at the Christmas markets, dance in the snow, hang out with my buddy John Jeng, and meet Santa.

I spent a good deal of time sharing my travel plans with anyone who would listen, and I spent the whole week leading into the trip gearing up in preparation. I was so diligent. Did my laundry, ate all the food in my fridge, packed carefully, planned fully. But in an unwise and deal-breaking last moment, I set only one alarm to help me wake up for a 7:38am flight on a Saturday morning. I didn’t even hear it ring. Jonathan had to shake me awake, and in response, I quickly turned it off and set another alarm for seven minutes in the future. A sort of manual snooze. I knocked out immediately. The whole ordeal probably lasted fifteen seconds.

The catch here is that the second alarm never went off because my phone auto-set it for the next morning instead of just a few minutes in the future. I woke up to check my phone, assuming it had been about five or six minutes of napping, to see that the alarm read 6:45am.

My stomach sank with the knowledge that I was going to miss my flight, but I felt the need to at least make a try for the airport. I managed to arrive at 7:17, and they were sending passengers through on TSA-pre status because of sniffer dogs, but the line was just too long. I rose up from the escalator at 7:50, and I turned to see that the plane was already gone from the gate. Four gate agents in skirt suits and heels walked towards me, and the one in front slowed ever so slightly when she caught sight of me. She turned back to look at the others before turning back to me.

“Are you Miss. Lee?” she asked in a sad, knowing tone.

“Yes,” I responded in the same.

She turned again to her colleagues, and, continuing in the same sad, wise manner, said, “This is Miss. Lee.”

The other three ladies exchanged a look that reflected the tone of the first, mouths all slightly open in a soft ‘O’ shape. I followed one to the D terminal and she tried to see what she could do for me, but my basic, basic, basic fare did not allow for any modifications, so I would need to buy a new ticket if I wanted to get to Finland. No modifications were allowed on the ticket I had purchased.

And then I found out that missing this first flight did not only cancel the first leg of the trip. It canceled the entire flight.

If I wanted to get to Finland and back in one piece, I would need to purchase a brand new round-trip ticket. On the day I wanted to leave.

My best option was about $1000 for two days of flying in each direction. Seattle to JFK to Lisbon to Stockholm to Helsinki. Four days in Europe. Then the same thing in the other direction.

Not ideal, I know. So I reasoned that I would just go into work that week and push the whole trip back. I could refabricate the entire adventure for less than the cost of that ticket, and I’d have less flying and more Europing in the mix. It was the best plan I could devise.

But it didn’t quite align with work.

So after a lot of thinking and a lot of courage, I decided to quit.

Instead of recreating the one week trip, I’d be embarking on a six and a half week adventure around the globe. (Okay, so it’s mostly Europe, but there’s a stint in Taiwan thrown in the middle for Chinese New Year. More to come on that later.)

So I got to the airport early this morning because I ended up booking the exact same flights as last time, with some extra days thrown in the middle. 7:38am. I set three alarms this time. Jonathan set two. I commissioned my early-rising Auntie Mel to text me at 4:15 and to call if I did not respond immediately. I got two hours of sleep. I cried a bit. But I made it to the airport with plenty of time to spare, and so far, I think the only thing I’m missing is a phone charger. Ha. I’ll snag one in Helsinki. These airports aren’t about to get $30 out of me for a cord.

Oh, and the flight over was beautiful.

Canada, maybe?

Anyway, the past few weeks have been pretty hectic. I moved out of the boarding house I’ve been running for the past two and a half years (kind of a joke, kind of not – I’ve had about 15 different roommates in and out in that time, myself being the only constant), I wrapped up a bunch of work at my first job (I mean, who needs income stability, right?!), and I tried to Finnish planning this trip (ha. ha. ha.). I only made it most of the way on the last guy. I still don’t know where I’m sleeping for about 15 of my 43 nights, but that will come later.

Soooooo…. Yeah. Helsinki is my first stop, and there are about 11 after that. Maybe more. I’m kind of winging some of this. But I am resilient! And I am experienced! And I am admittedly a little unhinged at the moment! So everything will be fine!

Actually, no. Everything will be great. I’ve been wracked with anxiety and a healthy dose of terror for the last two weeks about all this unknown lying ahead of me, but that’s finally, slowly, giving way to excitement. I mean, I’m gonna meet Santa in three days!!!

Until next time.

Parhain terveisin/ best regards. (Oh gosh, I forgot to learn Finnish….)
-Lizzy-wa