Euro Adventures

Sit down and hang on….this is a long one!

Because I keep receiving the same inquiries about my adventures, I thought that I would address them all at once:

Yes, I am having a great time. Yes, I do miss home. The food does suck. I like my roommate (a lot). I have made friends, they are nice. Norwegians speak Norwegian. I still cannot speak Norwegian, but that is not a problem. I call home using Skype. It doesn’t matter that things are so expensive because I am already broke. My address is: Alexandra Clark, Gunnar Schjelderups vei 13a Rom:320, 0485 Oslo, Norway.

I believe that the most common inquiry can be best addressed using a direct quote from my Scandinavian Work Life class:

“According to social scientists, when scored on their gender traits, Australian women are actually more masculine than Norwegian men.”

Seeing as how my taste in men tends to endorse the “rugged, manly” type, the general lack of Vikings has ruined my pursuit of a Norwegian “Lovah.” Not to worry, the exchange program has provided an ample amount of Canadians to get me in enough trouble for one semester.

Maybe it is the fall weather, my friends we lovingly refer to as Mom and Dad, or maybe it is the blues play list on my iTunes, but my white cube of an apartment in Nydalen is starting to feel like home. The grocery store is no longer a daunting experience and I have grown accustomed to utilizing public transportation. I have even began making some soul-food to feed the starving homesick North Americans. Tired of cheese in tubes and FirstPrice pizzas they come to our room to enjoy chicken pot pie, banana pancakes, and oatmeal chocolate chip cookies. 

School in a brand new building, in a brand new city in a whole different country has become just as lackluster as good-ol’ East Lansing, and we needed to get out. With a “go big or go home” mentality, we decided to take a plane into Copenhagen and then rent RVs to go to Oktoberfest, Prague, and Berlin (yeah, babe).


COPENHAGEN, DENMARK
Weather: Wet, Gloomy, 55ºF
Favorite Landmark: The Hotel Alexandra
Favorite Food: Danishes and/or Italian Sandwiches from Al Taglio
Beverage of Choice: Carlsburg
The Chocolate: Superior Extra Dark with 76% cocoa and cocoa nibs

The twelve of us started our day at 5:00am to catch a subway, to catch a train, to catch our plane to Copenhagen. Having decided to stay up the night before, it was miraculous all arrived, and when we did we were strictly business: Food, Nap. In our attempt to be “good little tourists” a few of us woke up, wrapped up and stumbled down the street in the rain to see the thinker behind the Ny Carlsburg Glyptotek art museum. Perhaps it was the lack of sleep, or the six months I have been away from home but I couldn’t help but to wonder, “If he has been sitting there thinking so long, why hasn’t he thought to stand up and move?” It was at that very moment when I said that awful, awful joke I realized just how much I missed my father. 

We began scouring the town for hours reading “meny” after “meny” so in awe of the variety of restaurants that would not have been affordable in Oslo we forgot how hungry we were until returning to retrieve the rest of our group. Now wet, freezing, and famished we abandoned our investigation and resorted to the closest restaurant to the hostel; a mom-and-pop Danish place with bad wine and sub-par food. Nothing was particularly great but there’s something about knowing that your waitresses husband is in the back making your food that makes you leave happy anyways.

Some friends-of-friends studying at University of Copenhagen took us to a club that evening where we drank shots that tasted like cough drops and got to dance on podiums. Needless to say, it was a good time, but the highlight was not until the trip home. Sick of breaking in my (brand new, knee-high, black) cowboy boots, my friend Nick (who, I think, was sick of hearing me complain about breaking in my cowboy boots) and I decided to catch a bicycle taxi back to the hostel. I have yet to top that experience during my stay in Europe, it was one of those times when everything just hits you “This is really, truly exceptional.” 

Bicycles on the mind, the next day following some light shopping, Katherine and I jumped on some CityBikes (pay 20 Kroner to unlock a bicycle, ride it around, and then when you lock it back to a CityBike station, get your 20 Kroner back) and enjoyed a ride across the bridge to Christiana where we effectively saw nothing exciting and thus headed back to the “sentrum”. Hungry, and walking through the college district we stopped at the closest sandwich shop to pick up a quick meal. By twist of fate, it was the best sandwich in the entire world. I was enjoying each bite of warm bread and drop of sour basil so completely that I barely remember the walk to the train station. Upon our return to Copenhagen at the end of our trip Katherine and I loyaly ate every meal there. 

When the RVs arrived I watched our group of 12 twenty-something year olds transform into what best resembled my 5th grade class when we boarded the plane to Space Camp. We jumped in and started driving to The Motherland…

MUNICH, GERMANY
Weather: 70ºF and Sunny, Perfect.
Favorite Landmark: “The Hill”
Favorite Food: Pretzels and Brats
Beverage of Choice: Oktoberfest Bier
The Chocolate: Wrapped in Pastry 

Stir-crazy and lost, our arrival to Munich was nothing less than a stimulating experience. We very quickly learned our first German phrase, “dieses ist eine Einwegstraße” (this is a one-way road) but never the less managed to snag the last two camping spots in the city.

The year-round population of the city of Munich is approximately 1 million people, and on that day, opening day of Oktoberfest, the equivalent amount of people find themselves gathered in the 103.72 acres that are the Oktoberfest grounds to begin drinking the over 2,000 gallons of bier consumed every year at the festival. Arriving around noon, we were much too late to get a table and thus a stein, so we grabbed a brat, did a lap, and then headed to a sunny hill. Little did we know, we had front row seats to the consequential shit show that occurs as a result of the Oktoberfest celebrations. We became captivated observes of the bloody faces from the Aussies throwing punches (and steins), men ripping off their lederhosen being escorted by police (we know what they wear under them, and it is not much), and fallen soldiers being carried to the hill to recover in the sun. 

College-aged boys being especially motivated by the opportunity to overindulge themselves with good beer all day long, the next day had an exceptionally early start. After a long, meditative run around the lake across the campground, a pretzel for breakfast, and pictures in our team t-shirts, we picked our tent, found a table and got some steins. Using the table as home-base people could come and go as they pleased until more had gone than came and a proud few of us closed the festival at 11:00pm. 

We started the next day with a coffee and streusel and headed to Dachau, a concentration camp 10 miles north of the city. Closed because it was Monday, we decided to walk the historical path from the station to the camp, the same journey that Nazi prisoners took 70 years earlier. The large trees seemed portentous, holding the path together at their roots and allowing but a few speckled bits of glistening light to show through their canopies of fall leaves. We paid our respects and then headed into the city to hit the town like true tourists. After a quick lunch we walked the main drag, past the fountain and to the glockenspiel (which was broken). Indecisive as a group, Katherine and I found an hour to ourselves, and thus also found the cheap-o jewelry store. Enjoying the contrast from our life in a camper, we grabbed cookies and wandered the cosmetics section of the department store until we met up with the rest of our group. In bright red lipstick and fake pearls, we journeyed to Oktoberfest for one last stein (which turned into a few steins) to say goodbye. 

PRAGUE, CZECH REPUBLIC
Weather: 60ºF and patches of rain
Favorite Landmark: The Cathedral
Favorite Food: Spinach Stuffed Pork
Beverage of Choice: Absinth and Red Bull
The Chocolate: Essentially Freia Dark, disguised and packaged under a different name

The twenty-five minute taxi ride from our campsite to the city center in the Czech Republic costs less than the five minute ride from our apartment in Nydalen to Oslo’s city center. That being said, we all loved Prague.

One night-time walk through Prague is enough to make any person a God-fearing individual. The streets are mosaics that intermingle at crossings where gold-leafed religious icons cast stares from the perches where they have stood for hundreds of years. Crowds of tourists seem tiny compared to such a stalwart bridge and great cathedral. The biggest tourist attraction is The Prague Astronomical Clock (Prague Orloj), a medieval clock located in the town square attracting crowds of tourists every 15 minutes when it rings. Watching it, you see two doors open displaying statues of the apostles which “walk” in a circle and then the doors close and it is over. Watching the opposite direction provides greater entertainment in that you get to see maybe hundred disappointed faces of tourists that came to Prague just to see that. 

Our night-time adventures brought us to a bar with live music and 15cent Stella Artois’ followed by our conquest of the techno dance floor at the largest club in Europe. No bicycle taxi home, but a cheap taxi was sufficient.

With the exception of the occasional castle or prostitute, driving the autobahn is remarkably similar to driving the U.S. Interstate system (which was modeled after it). Even more like home, our RV was based off of a Ford Econoline van. On the road again…


BERLIN, GERMANY
Weather: 65ºF and patches of rain
Favorite Landmark: The blown out church (I am sure there is a better name for this)
Favorite Food: Soup (it was cheap)
Beverage of Choice: Pepsi Max
The Chocolate: Ritter Sport


There is something about driving in an RV through the center of a large city such as Berlin that makes people want to wave at you. That can be a good thing when it is school children that cheer as you drive by, and a bad thing when the prison transport truck is stuck at a standstill next to you. 

Arriving late to the campground on the outskirts of the city, we jumped out of the RVs and on to the subway to make it to Checkpoint Charlie. Having not been paying attention, we made it all the way to the end of the track, notified of what we had done when the driver of the train walked back to pay our car a visit. After an hour and a half, we made it and my hungry stomach made the already disorganized museum an even more random display of soviet remnants and escape artifacts. Unable to take it any longer, we cut early and headed across the street to get some food at a cafeteria. I chose an Italian restaurant where the man behind the counter told me I was beautiful and proposed to me. I told him our love would never work, but he did make a damn good omelet. Without much time, and feeling as if we missed out on much of the Berlin experience, we jumped on the double-decker tourist bus to see the Berlin gate, The Embassy’s and some Nazi history. My favorite landmark was a church at the end of the tour in the town square. Bombed severely, it miraculously was the only thing left standing and remains as the memory of a long and twisted history. We scurried back and jumped in the RV to take the ferry voyaging the rolling Baltic Sea set on our way back to Copenhagen. 

All of this traveling to Kobenhavn, Praha, Munchen, Danmark, and Deuchstland left me wondering why there can’t be an international agreement to call countries by their native names. Sadly that point aside, whether you tell someone you are from Amerikas Forende Stater, Spojené štáty americké, or Vereinigte Staata fa Amerika they still are not too excited. As much as Europeans dislike The States, they do love Detroit thanks to a popular Fedde Le Grand techno song, “Put your hands up for Detroit (I love that city).” Although après telling someone you are from Detroit and having them tell you, “they love that city” the next question is generally “do you have a gun?” Or “are you afraid to go outside?” If you could all learn your basic geography and lose some weight, Europeans would like us a lot better. I met a man last week that was sincerely sad when Katherine and I told him that we indeed were not Canadian, but in fact from Detroit.

After having a weekend in Oslo to recover, and feeling restless, I grew envious of a weekend trip to Sweden. And so, with 20 minutes notice I jumped on an overnight bus headed to Stockholm...

I didn’t realize how little planning had gone into the trip until we arrived and were fully relying on the strategy, “find the big important-looking pointy building and go see what it is.” Our implementation worked remarkably well as we managed to see a medieval church, the castle and homes of the nobles, and the national museum. We advanced as far as the Stockholm Visitor’s Center where we booked a hostel in Gamla Stan (Old Town) located on the original small islands of the city’s earliest settlements. Having not planned on the trip it finally occurred to me that I was, indeed, in Stockholm and the question soon arose, “who invited you?” We never seemed to figure out and answer, but I am sure glad I went. Our strategy was modified to “Anything that’s free, and in between, bad coffee” which also worked remarkably well seeing a spectacular view of the city and visiting the Stockholm museum. The remainder of the trip was motivated completely by chocolate and hockey sticks. Lucky for me, the International Chocolate Festival just happened to be taking place at the Nordiska Museum, also lucky for us we managed to get in free because it was seriously lacking samples. After some quality cheap (compared to Oslo) sushi and a couple of hockey stick purchases, we boarded the bus back to Oslo and drove through the night. 

My time in Oslo seems to be dwindling, and there are so many adventures to fill the little time I have left. I am looking forward to spending more time in Norway, visiting my friend Henrik, doing Amsterdam with friends, and traveling to Dublin to visit my mom. With so much going on I will try to write these more often to save all of us some time!

I hope all is well at home, wherever home may be.

Much Love,

Alexandra