The Great Adventure (Part 3)

As a quick detour, I just passed my Norwegian exam. Which is a joke, because I still am at best very unfamiliar with the language. Anyway, back to the task at hand. The next chapter in this imaginatively titled expedition continues where we left off: on the way to Switzerland. The night train was somewhat miserable, in no small part due to the fact that besides us 4 there was one other guy who tried to lay out across 2 seats and was generally a source of mild discomfort. Couple this with a train that seemed to turn more than normal trains and seats that didn't recline more than an inch or so and you have about 2 hours of scattered sleep. Nonetheless, we arrived in Bern tired but excited so we tried to find our hostel. This proved difficult because of the most hilariously imprecise directions I have ever had to follow. The directions told us, among other things, to turn left when we reached the clock tower with the McDonald's on the left. So we did this, but quickly realized we were not in the right place. So we wandered about for a bit longer and eventually found another clock tower with a McDonald's on the left. When we turned left there, we found our hostel! So, I guess all the directions were lacking was a clarification that we should actually turn left at the second clock tower with a McDonald's on the left, but it's certainly not the type of situation where you would expect to need that clarification. We did find our hostel, though, and after a quick crisis where we thought the door was locked but actually Kelley just needed to push the door we managed to store our luggage and go about the business of seeing the town. There were quite a great many fountains in Bern, so that was one thing. There was also a bear pit, which was a second thing. By bear pit, I mean there was a pit with a bear in it in case that needed some explanation. We watched this guy walk around for a while, which was thrilling. The rest of the day was occupied with the same type of sightseeing that has filled the virtual pages of this travelogue to this point. The next day, also known as Day 6, was filled with great excitement though as we sweated our way through the Alps. The previous day we had tried to arrange it so we could leave for Brussels that evening and stay that night, but because of various problems we were forced to take the night train to Brussels on Day 6. The good part of this was that we got to spend the whole day hiking in the mountains. We were a bit concerned because we thought we would have to pay money on top of what we had already paid for our Eurail passes to make it to Lauterbrunnen, but everything turned out OK. The train director person didn't even check our passes or tickets or anything so we saved a great deal of money. I'm a bit conflicted ethically about that, but I am very much in favor of it economically so I'll live with myself. The train ride to Lauterbrunnen was quite beautiful, very Swiss, and not all that long. Then we walked a bit about town and enjoyed the view. Also of note were the cows and goats who all had bells on, of course. At times I thought I was inside a windchime. We went inside one mountain to see a waterfall from inside, and then we went inside another mountain and saw several waterfalls. You would think it would be a lot colder inside mountains with glacial waterfalls, but it really wasn't. In fact, it was downright hot our entire day in the Alps, which was annoying because I brought my fleece and my jacket and had to carry those around the entire day. The next portion of my story takes a slight turn for the worse. We wanted to hike up in the mountains more, instead of just through the valley like we had been doing. So I found a trail. It's important to say I found a trail for reasons that will be explained later. There was a sign at the beginning of the trail that said "experienced hikers only" but we all considered ourselves experienced hikers. This may have been a mistake. The trail was entirely uphill except for about 15 minutes. And uphill in this case meant practically rock climbing or mountaineering or something. I guess mountaineering would be most accurate since we were climbing up a mountain. Anyway, the level of discontent grew in the group as we grew more tired and, because I had in some way chosen the trail, I bore the brunt of the discontent. Sometimes you just have to take blame when blame is due, so I did. It probably wouldn't have been such a problem, but we were completely unprepared. Mentally, physically, and especially waterandfoodally. The water became a special problem the longer that we hiked, but luckily there were troughs on the side of the trail at one point. Sure these were for cattle, but we were dying of thirst so we did what we had to do. It's probably the second time in the last few months that I've risked getting some sort of bacteria, but that's another story. We turned back after about 2 hours of straight uphill and after we realized there was no sign of it stopping. By the time we had reached the apex of our journey, we had risen to the level of a town on the mountain opposite us that we couldn't even see from down in the valley and which required a rather substantial gondola ride to reach. So at least we got a good workout. I had a bar of chocolate back at the train station, which was truly the right item of food at the right time, and then we headed back to Bern to catch our night train to Brussels. And thus our enjoyable time in Switzerland came to an end. And so too will Part 3 of The Great Adventure of the Norway Glenn Travelogue.

The Great Adventure (Part 2)

So we left for Salzburg, Austria on a regional train from Munich. It was quite a beautiful train ride, what with trees and mountains everywhere. I like that stuff. Getting in relatively early in the evening was nice, and it allowed us a bit of time to decompress from the craziness of Germany. Salzburg is very much a mellow kind of place, and that was just what we needed after Berlin/Munich. That night when we got in we ate at the hostel, sat around watching about half an hour of The Sound of Music, and kind of just getting everything together (including our minds) so we could have a productive next day. This mostly meant going to bed really early. Day 4, then, began somewhat early in the morning and we set upon Salzburg. We started by visiting the Mirabell Gardens which, like so much of Salzburg, was made famous by The Sound of Music. I'm not exactly sure how I feel about sightseeing spots from movies as such, but these gardens and the other places were interesting and nice in their own right. It didn't hurt that the city was untouched by drunk Germans and busy streets. There were pretty much only older people, so I felt a little more distinguished than I did being an American at Oktoberfest. Distinction by association, I suppose. We visited about half a million churches in the Old Town, of which one (St. Peter's) was truly outstanding. The others were decent, but St. Peter's Church was a cathedral with great artwork, a huge organ, and graves. Everything I look for in a church, in other words. A large portion of the morning and early afternoon was dedicated to the fortress that overlooks Salzburg. We walked the 750 meters straight up, and took the funicular down, but while we were there we visited a couple different museums that they have inside the museum. These were by and large a good use of time. I always think it's kind of cool to learn about a certain segment of history in a place where it actually happened. I haven't visited that many places like that in the U.S.A., which is probably just because I grew up in Arizona where besides cowboys nothing old has ever happened, but it makes me appreciate those types of museums anyway. The one lame thing about that fortress was that it was attacked several times over the course of its history and was never taken, but they surrendered it to Napoleon without a fight. Seeing it, I definitely thought they could have held Napoleon off, but what do I know. All of this sightseeing and such was nice, but the problem was we had to burn time until midnight because that's when we would be taking the night train to Bern. To this end, we started just walking everywhere and ended up walking up a mountain that happened to have a monastery on it. This was a good place to spend an hour or two, so that's exactly what we did. We were able to see out on the Old Town and the river and the mountains around the city, so it was a pretty cool place to just sit. At the end of this sitting extravaganza we were hungry, so we went back to the hostel and ate. Then we sat there for a few hours, the last couple of which we spent watching the Sound of Music. They really loved the Sound of Music at this hostel. I can tell this because it was in the DVD player the entire time we were there. Finally, midnight came around and we headed to the train station to go to Switzerland. And in this transitional way, Day 4 sort of came to an end and turned into Day 5. Day 5, however, will have to be another post. Switzerland awaits.

The Great Adventure (Part 1)

It has now been about 4 days since we miraculously made it back to Hamar, and I think I've now been here long enough now to write about Europe. Which is not to say that everything resides in a perfect state of memory in my mind or anything, but I will try to relate the highlights and the minutiae and the train travel as best as I can. I'll start by rating the trip though: it definitely gets two thumbs up. I will continue by saying that I don't want these entries to reach epic lengths, so the one big trip will be divided into several shorter travelogues. This only matters because I may write one section every hour or one section every day or something but it won't be long before I detail the entire great adventure. Without any further rambling, I'm going to talk about Germany. As a little background, we knew we would be traveling into Bremen from the very beginning because that is where the illustrious Ryan Air flies to out of Norway. This being the case, we had planned to stay in Bremen for a night and then take the train down to Munich for Oktoberfest. The only problem with this plan was that we only had one night booked at a hostel in Munich and we woud have to find somewhere to stay between our night in Bremen and our night in Munich. Berlin, Dusseldorf, and even the forest were floated as possible ideas. Thankfully we ended up booking two nights in Berlin, cancelling the hostel in Bremen, and setting ourselves up for 3 more hours of travel on Day 1. So taking a few steps back, we took the train to (Oslo) Torp, as Ryan Air calls it, which is seemingly about as close to Oslo as L.A. is to Phoenix. This train ride was followed by a bus ride followed by a plane ride followed by a tram ride followed by another train ride. It was somewhat excessive. But we made it, even with 5 crazy guys next to us knocking back a fifth of vodka and a 30 pack of beer over the course of the flight. This reminds me, if you have not heard of Ryan Air or are hazy on the details you should check out their website: www.ryanair.com. It is truly a classy organization all around. I mean, if you ignore their strict alcohol policy of allowing anyone to drink anything from anywhere while on their plane. And if you ignore their flight plan of ascending to cruising altitude as quickly as possible without stalling the plane. Lest it seem I am becoming sarcastic here, I will say truthfully that it wasn't that bad and that the flight was very very very cheap. So thank you Ryan Air. Snapping back to the end of our travels, then, we arrived in Berlin in the late evening and decided on Chinese food at the place directly adjacent to our hostel. Its convenience was matched only by the quality of the food, which admittedly might have had something to do with the fact that we were all extremely hungry and extremely sick of being on trains/trams/planes. Thus ended Day 1. Day 2 began with a wonderfully cheap breakfast where a Hungarian employee humorously offered his thoughts on the U.S. vice presidential debate, intermittently accompanied by youtube videos of Matt Damon making fun of Sarah Palin. That cereal was good. Given the time that we had (1 day) and the budget that we had (pretty much none), we decided on a free tour. Ours was guided by an Irishman who got degrees in history and theater at Kentucky and used both of these degrees extensively during his tour. Over 3+ hours, we saw and learned about the Brandenburg Gate, the Reichstag, Hitler's bunker, the Holocaust Memorial, the Berlin Wall, various old Soviet buildings, and many many more. The overarching theme of the tour was Berlin's incredibly long and sometimes checkered past, which some members of our party found more interesting than others. Despite the length of the tour, it was still easy to feel as if you hadn't seen 1/4 of the city and hadn't heard a tenth of the history. So what did we do after our interest was piqued and we felt as if we had only seen a small fraction of the city? We went back to the Brandenburg Gate and partied, of course. The day that we were there just happened to be Reunification Day, the anniversary of East and West Berlin's...reunification. The Germans apparently celebrate this event with beer and music, which makes it different from the Fourth of July only due to the conspicuous lack of fireworks. Our experience of this festival was somewhat short-lived, but it was full of bratwursts and pretzels and a Ton of people. Then a little bit more sightseeing on the way to the nearest underground station and it was back to the hostel where we reflected on how happy we were not to be in Bremen. Day 3 upped the ante in terms of beer, bratwursts, and Tons of people because Day 3 was the day when we arrived in Munich for Oktoberfest. We left early in the morning, arrived mid-afternoon, and met a few of Breanne's friends in the middle of Munich. Already I was beginning to sense the sheer population that was residing in Munich, and I was starting to feel a bit claustrophobic. But when we all decided to visit Oktoberfest that evening (as was not exactly in the original plan), I learned the true meaning of "a lot of people". Stepping onto the fairgrounds was somewhat akin to the first time you attend a rock concert or the first day at kindergarten. By this I mean primarily that there were more people in one place than I had ever seen to that point. Major fire hazard, to be sure. Somehow, we made it into a beer garden that first evening and in the interest of portraying PLU as an upstanding and mature institution (since I've been informed that my blog reflects on them somehow. I'm sorry, PLU) I will refrain from any more narrative regarding that evening/night. The next morning was an Oktoberfest morning, and we managed to get into one of the major tents for the last day of the festival. Between the people, the band, the decorations, the lederhosen, the pretzels, the food, the liters of beer and the songs I must admit that this place was like nowhere I've ever been. Oktoberfest really is all it's cracked up to be, and we all felt strangely privileged to take part in it. The food was fantastic: I had half a roast chicken with the most delicious seasoning ever and a great soup. The people were friendly: the Austrians in lederhosen behind us taught us the lyrics to the songs the band played. The glasses of beer were big: 1 liter for 8 euros. I could continue, but I will instead just say that it is an experience that really is for everyone and if you ever happen to be in Germany at the right time don't hesitate to go. I don't mean to say "you had to be there", but unfortunately I just don't have the skills or the frame of reference or whatever to accurately describe it. And this was all before 1 PM. I don't even want to think about what it's like at night in one of those tents. We left for Austria that afternoon, and I'm going to end this portion of the travelogue on that cliffhanging note because I have laundry to do.