I've decided that I love the destination part of traveling, but not so much the traveling itself. After spending an amazing week in Levanger with the Berg family, Kelly and I took a train back to Trondheim around noon on Dec. 26th, unpacked, packed again, and met up with Brett and Cortney to catch a night bus down to Oslo at 11 pm that same evening. We made it to Oslo just before 7am where we met up with Fredrik, a student in Trondheim who went to the conference with us. We waited about three hours for our flight from Oslo to Munich.
Here is a picture of us when we got to Munich.
Downtown Munich viewing a proud display of sausages.
We were playing 'hide and go seek' in the square in Munich.
Remember this is 15 hours into traveling and on very little sleep.
A night shot of downtown Nuremberg on our way in.
This is me realizing how 'back-packing Europe' is not nearly as cool as people make it out to be. Those packs are heavy and walking on cobblestone streets up hill is tricky on the ankles.
21 hours into travel. We were at the castle we were staying at but couldn't find the door.
This was our neighbor castle.
After getting settled in, we went to the "Bratwurst House" for a great meal of brats, sauerkraut, and real German potato salad. The food was great, the waitress was terrifying. We were just happy to be there.
A daytime shot of where we stayed for the week.
Downtown Nuremberg.
Overlooking Nuremberg from up by the castle.
This sign for a barber shop made me laugh.
Strolling downtown with people from the conference.
Inside a church.
Emma and me inside that same church.
Emma is working with Students for Christ in The Netherlands.
We stopped at a bakery on one of our days out in Nuremberg and enjoyed some reasonably priced pastries for the first time since moving to Norway.
Me, Anne, Kelly, Cortney, Brett, and Fredrik.
Me and Kelly pondering what this sign was saying to us.
Outside the castle.
It's a German tradition to eat one of these jelly-filled doughnuts at the stroke of midnight on New Years.
Outside on the balcony enjoying New Year's fireworks. They were amazing. They were being shot off from all over throughout the city.
Still outside shouting our "ooh's and ahh's" at the fireworks.
The trip home was longer than the trip there. After a very short two hours of sleep on New Year's eve, we were on the road by 6:15am. We walked about a mile to the trainstation, took a 2 hours train ride into Munich, where we caught another train to bring us to the Munich airport. We killed a couple of hours there before flying back to Oslo. Kelly and Cortney stayed in Germany an extra couple of days to visit a friend of theirs, so it was just Fredrik, Brett, and me at this point. Fredrik then took a plane from Oslo to Trondheim, so the gang was down to Brett and I. We had to wait 9 hours in the Oslo airport for our night train (much nicer than the night bus). This was a banner that was hanging over the seats we were waiting in. I could have asked for a nicer banner to stare at for that long.
It's hard to see in this picture, but each of those tiles have a bunch of tiny holes in them. Brett and I were debating how many wholes we thought were in them. Unfortunately, after a long discussion and some serious attempts at counting them, we realized he was talking about the square tiles on the left, whereas I was looking at the longer rectangular tiles to the right.
After awhile, Brett pulled out his camera, zoomed in on the tiles, took a picture, and proceeded to count the holes on the picture. I was pretty close. I guess 50x125 and it was actually 62x134. Disclaimer, once again this is 16 hours into travel.
I was really cold so I broke out the sleeping bag and warmed up while waiting. We caught our night train around midnight and made it back to Trondheim at about 7 in the morning. I made it back up to my place, slept for about 2 hours (the first time I had slept 2 consecutive hours in the last 2 days) before I had to go and pick up my cousin Leah from the airport. By the time I got back from the airport with Leah, I had been traveling for about 34 hours on essentially no sleep. Between Leah's jet-lag and my exhaustion, we both slept VERY well that night.
The conference in Nuremberg was really an amazing time. We had different morning sessions where we would all gather together and in the afternoons we would have electives you could sign up for on different topics. We had a speaker from England for the night sessions. It was a great time to gather together with students and leaders in SFC from all across Europe. It is tradition that the last evening of the conference there is a talent show, "Bunte Abend". This year, Brett put together a special 'Scandinavian Hand Dance', for those of us who are just a bit too reserved to really dance. He has a video of it posted on his and Cortney's blog,
http://cortneyandbrett.blogspot.com/ at the bottom of their post 'European Student Conference, Nuremberg Germany' if you want to view it.
I hope you all had a great Christmas and a happy New Year.
Leah and me at Lade.
Helena, Leah, and me on the boat on the way to Helena's place for the weekend. There is a video on the bottom of this page of our boat ride there. It was a bit bumpy at times but overall a good time.
Downtown Trondheim.
Leah and I are expressing different levels of joy of being caught outside in the snow.
SNACK PACK LEFSE!!!
Angellica, Leah, Helena, and me having some fun with facials.
Sorry, the picture is kind of blurry but this is Leah and me on the back of the boat on the way to Helena's place.
Leah was my personal Santa and brought over gifts from the United States. We had our own little Christmas together. It was amazing.
