Last entry. Wow. Let's see how my memory serves.
Dinner Easter night was absolutely delicious. Chicken wings and potato wedges, not to mention Denny, David and Sigrid giving us massive amounts of chocolate, or the sweet rolls shaped like a rabbit the hotel provided. HUGE rolls. HUGE. And then there was more chocolate too... it was great.
Haiko, whose name I'm probably misspelling horribly, wanted to check out the Reeperbahn with Denny. This is an area that some of our people went to the first or second night and Hamburg, and the consistent opinion was “... interesting.”
Yeah, that's about right. Cool statue of Otto von Bismarck, though.
Eventually Haiko wanted to grab a drink, so we found an actual bar and had a round of Astras. The place was alright, trying a little hard to be glossy – fairly well lit, clean counters and coasters for your beer, American flags and pictures of dollar bills along the bottom of the bar, a saxophone in a glass case over the bar. It did have really good prices though, you could get 12 shots for only 15 euro if you wanted. Obviously, there weren't enough of us for that. We sat and talked for a while, Haiko and I had a second beer, and we headed back.
Came back, chilled in the room, whatever, bed.
Monday, decided to skip breakfast, I honestly don't remember lunch all that well. Class was long, and hilarious. David called Jake “Jason” and Kanako “Zypy.” He called Allen the expert on penises, thanks to Matt's prank on Allen's essay where he replaced a word with Penis and David's comment was something like “You've lost me here. I'm not sure of the logic behin your examples.” That had us rolling. There was a bit where we were discussing whether or not Frankenstein's monster was sterile or not, and David was saying the monster may have been mixed male and female, and I was trying to explain somatic cells vs. sex cells, and said “what's going on in your hand has nothing to do with the cells in your reproductive system” and David said “I don't know what you do with your hand, Tim” and we all just straight up died. Class was probably 4-5 hours long in all, we discussed a lot of broad, big picture stuff about the trip, no surprise. At the end David got choked up, then Zypy cried a little bit, then Nate got a little choked up. I was worried all of us would have to cry at least once before they'd let us leave.
Dinner was good, and the night was a whole lot of finishing up essays and chilling in the bar under the hotel. So we all hung out there, as people not leaving with the main group filtered off to bed there were hugs and goodbyes, that sort of thing. I was the only one who stayed up all night. I almost forgot to wake up Swaffie and had to RUN to get him like, 8 minutes before we left. They only sent one six-person taxi, rather than the three four-person or two six-person we were promised, so meh. Some quick farewells when it came back for the second wave with Swaffie, Zypy, David and Sigrid, and then it was off to the train station.
On the train we chatted, ate our lunch bags, whatever. At one point I ended up “talking” with a guy who I think was deaf, or at least mostly mute. It was a lot of hand signals and me trying to figure out hard-to-understand German. Yeah, it's even worse when it's a foreign language. I got across to him that we were flying, he said he was a photographer, I think he had SCUBAed and done photography too. He wasn't flying today, but he did other times. Then he got out a pad and marker and we talked that way, and wow. He asked if we had been to Africa, I said Tanzania. Turns out this guy was a crazy awesome world traveler. Kenya, Venezuela, Sri Lanka, I don't remember half the countries he wrote down. Markko, would that be Morocco? So I gave him the full itinerary, at least, I wrote “3 Monaten zusammen” and the list of places. He was suitably impressed. We went back and forth that way a bit, me appreciating his lengthy list of places he'd visited, and then it was time for him to go. Gave him a handshake on the way out, and he grinned and waved at the whole group as he walked past the window. I think he was really happy to have that short “talk,” and man, what a cool guy, you know?
So, airport, needing to pee horribly because of downing my orange pop, Allen's orange pop, and my water, getting tickets, security was surprisingly easy. I had to get patted down because of my shoes though, then I was selected for a random check where they took a sample from outside my backpack and ran it through a device. For gunpowder and explosive powder, maybe?
Plane to London Heathrow, as hard as I've slept in my entire life, no surprise there. I had been up for something like 20 hours after all. Barely made it off the plane, then London Heathrow. Normally a miserable airport, but we actually had a pretty easy time of it. I got selected for a random check again. It's happened to me a lot this trip. Never travel with a beard, eh? Denny's bag had to be fully examined, real fun there. We went on, got our passes, I took a nap for 20 minutes or so until the gate was listed and Vince woke me up by tugging on my lizard. At the gate, we got asked about if we had had our bags or if anyone had given us anything. I haven't been asked those questions by a real live human being this entire trip, I think. It reminded me of flying as a little kid. Yeah, I know, to some of you I'm still a little kid. I mean littler.
So then about half of the people entering the gate had to be patted down, pockets emptied, shoes checked, soles of feet checked, and bags examined. I'm glad they didn't make me TOTALLY do my backpack, the guy commented on me not having a stein like Jake and I said “you can see, I don't have any room left.” He was pretty friendly, in fairness. So we went through that, and here I am now. Slept a little bit, ate some pretty good pasta, watched “Fantastic Mr. Fox” which I actually really liked, and worked on my prompt a bit. Denny told me last night that most people tell him too much, I'm “parsimonious” with my thoughts and play it close to the chest. Amused me.
Man. Next time I get off a plane I'll be in the United States for the first time since middle of January. The next time I leave an airport I'll be in Cleveland for the first time in three months. It's truly bizarre. The trip has felt like so much more than three months, I'd practically believe I was gone for a year. At first I was just super excited to get home, but the last three or so days it started to catch up with me. I'm still looking forward to seeing everyone, but it's just hard to believe the trip was over. We were talking about how we felt like we were just going on to the next destination, the Amazon must come next, right? Airports mean another new biome, not where we live and grew up. It's gonna be a huge change of pace getting OUT of the biomes routine, though I hope a few of the good habits stick with me. At least, that's the goal. I'm glad I'm traveling a bit right when I get home, Greyhounding to visit a friend and then to a PeaceJam. It'll help stave off the culture shock. May though... three weeks in one place, with a dresser, and classes in a classroom and stuff? It's going to be very odd.
Anyway, that's enough of my thoughts. I'm sure most of you stopped reading this thing some time back in Tanzania when you realized my writing wasn't getting any shorter. I hope you all enjoyed, regardless. This is me signing off. I've on-and-off considered continuing this thing in some other format, but no, if I maintain any sort of blog when I get home (even if it's about the after-effects of the trip), it'll be a separate blog under the same profile. This place should serve as a document of the experience, and the experience alone. Yeah, of course, the experience doesn't exactly “stop” here, it's going to keep coming up again and again for years, probably the rest of my life. But... call it the end of a chapter so that another may begin.
As the French say, and as David said to us yesterday afternoon: bon voyage.
Tuesday, April 6th, roughly 3:20-3:45 PM local time
Monday, April 12, 2010
Hamburg in a nutshell:
Found an awesome local pub with an extremely welcoming crowd. They were surprised we were ABLE to find it, this place was literally about as big as a large dorm room. You could fit maybe ten people inside... uncomfortably. I spent a lot of time there and had some great conversations.
The Easter Fires were pretty awesome. Not quite as large as we had heard in terms of the fires themselves, but definitely a huge event for the city. Met a couple cool guys, Marco and Frank, talked to them for a while, tried to find the group for a while, didn't have any luck on the beach, eventually found them back up away from the river and had a fun night. Ended up not going to the Fish Market, but that's okay, I had a great time.
Found an awesome local pub with an extremely welcoming crowd. They were surprised we were ABLE to find it, this place was literally about as big as a large dorm room. You could fit maybe ten people inside... uncomfortably. I spent a lot of time there and had some great conversations.
The Easter Fires were pretty awesome. Not quite as large as we had heard in terms of the fires themselves, but definitely a huge event for the city. Met a couple cool guys, Marco and Frank, talked to them for a while, tried to find the group for a while, didn't have any luck on the beach, eventually found them back up away from the river and had a fun night. Ended up not going to the Fish Market, but that's okay, I had a great time.
Forgot to mention. In Berlin-Tegel Airport, while we were waiting at the baggage carousel, I got talking to a guy from Syria who worked in Norway, but was visiting Germany for a couple days. We first got started talking when I was laughing at how the bus took us a distance we could have walked more quickly and he said “it's very German.” I told him a bit about our trip, where we had been, he said he was a computer engineer working in the south of Norway and that it was sort of boring, he'd had enough of nature. The most interesting thing to me was when he asked if we had been to the Middle East and I said we had been around the edges of it, Egypt, Turkey. He agreed that Turkey was sort of an in-between, but Egypt was definitely the Middle East to him. Interesting to hear a perspective from someone from a very different country. Nice guy, too.
Tuesday, March 30th, roughly 5:45 PM local time
Rooming with Swaffie here at the Elsa Brandstrom house, only mit more umlauts. It's a nice place, really good meals, a pretty view. Yesterday we had class and then went into Hamburg, saw a lot of the sights. We went into a St. Michael's Church with a tower that was a lot more stairs than we thought it was, but it had a great view. Kind of the Empire State Building of Hamburg, but a lot shorter because Hamburg is a lot shorter, obviously. They have a single room on the way up with four or five bells, which is pretty cool. We also saw a St. Jacob's Church, which apparently is part of an ancient pilgramage from way up in the north down to Spain. If you do the pilgramage, you can stay one night in each of these St. Jacob's churches for free, which is sort of neat. Came back to the house and chilled all night, nothing else really exciting. Tried a jever, a local beer, pretty good.
Today we left at 9 AM for Belsen-Bergen, a concentration camp about two hours from where we're staying. It was a work camp, but that's not to say thousands of people didn't die here, a lot from disease and exposure, and a whoooole lot of Soviet POWs, for whom the official policy of the Reich was that the Geneva Convention didn't apply. It was a long walk to the Soviet cemetery, since they were housed in a slightly different facility, and it was interesting because the area is still used as a military training ground. Don't go off the path. Cool to see, though I didn't stay long because I wanted to spend time in the museum. The whole place is sort of incongruous, it's a beautiful natural area that would make an absolutely stupendous park if it weren't for the history. I don't usually believe in Evil with a capital E, but 1933-1945, visiting Dachau in '06 and visiting Belsen-Bergen today might change my mind. If you ever want to see the purest face of evil (Evil), you could do worse than visiting any one of these camps.
After that another bus ride and on to Luneburg, a town still retained from medieval times. It wasn't damaged at all in the war, so there's still a lot of original architecture. Very cool to see, certainly more uplifting than the morning. I had a kebab for lunch, it was just okay sadly, and some gelato as well. Pretty churches, walking around, seeing the architecture and some great street art that was extremely incongruous, but really good. I found a little store called Mythos that was mostly toys and books, in addition to childrens' stuff and LEGOs it had a lot of fantasy stuff, board games, that sort of thing. If it wasn't all in German I definitely would have bought some, as it is I picked up a puzzle for 3 euro just for fun. Almost bought some dice, but I already got some in Turkey and they were just eh, okay. Walked a bit more, met in front of the town hall, that was cool, tried to find steins with people, no such luck, headed out. John and Clay peed on the side of the road, back to Elsa Brandstrom, dinner was downstairs at the bar, had a good beer, soup, bread, meat, cheese, and some sort of chicken salad, and then we met for a class/meeting. This weekend should be absolutely fantastic, the plan is to see the Easter Fires and then stay up all night and go to the fish market (which is really a flea market) that starts at 4 AM Sunday.
Thursday, April 1st, roughly 9:20-9:30 PM local time
Tuesday, March 30th, roughly 5:45 PM local time
Rooming with Swaffie here at the Elsa Brandstrom house, only mit more umlauts. It's a nice place, really good meals, a pretty view. Yesterday we had class and then went into Hamburg, saw a lot of the sights. We went into a St. Michael's Church with a tower that was a lot more stairs than we thought it was, but it had a great view. Kind of the Empire State Building of Hamburg, but a lot shorter because Hamburg is a lot shorter, obviously. They have a single room on the way up with four or five bells, which is pretty cool. We also saw a St. Jacob's Church, which apparently is part of an ancient pilgramage from way up in the north down to Spain. If you do the pilgramage, you can stay one night in each of these St. Jacob's churches for free, which is sort of neat. Came back to the house and chilled all night, nothing else really exciting. Tried a jever, a local beer, pretty good.
Today we left at 9 AM for Belsen-Bergen, a concentration camp about two hours from where we're staying. It was a work camp, but that's not to say thousands of people didn't die here, a lot from disease and exposure, and a whoooole lot of Soviet POWs, for whom the official policy of the Reich was that the Geneva Convention didn't apply. It was a long walk to the Soviet cemetery, since they were housed in a slightly different facility, and it was interesting because the area is still used as a military training ground. Don't go off the path. Cool to see, though I didn't stay long because I wanted to spend time in the museum. The whole place is sort of incongruous, it's a beautiful natural area that would make an absolutely stupendous park if it weren't for the history. I don't usually believe in Evil with a capital E, but 1933-1945, visiting Dachau in '06 and visiting Belsen-Bergen today might change my mind. If you ever want to see the purest face of evil (Evil), you could do worse than visiting any one of these camps.
After that another bus ride and on to Luneburg, a town still retained from medieval times. It wasn't damaged at all in the war, so there's still a lot of original architecture. Very cool to see, certainly more uplifting than the morning. I had a kebab for lunch, it was just okay sadly, and some gelato as well. Pretty churches, walking around, seeing the architecture and some great street art that was extremely incongruous, but really good. I found a little store called Mythos that was mostly toys and books, in addition to childrens' stuff and LEGOs it had a lot of fantasy stuff, board games, that sort of thing. If it wasn't all in German I definitely would have bought some, as it is I picked up a puzzle for 3 euro just for fun. Almost bought some dice, but I already got some in Turkey and they were just eh, okay. Walked a bit more, met in front of the town hall, that was cool, tried to find steins with people, no such luck, headed out. John and Clay peed on the side of the road, back to Elsa Brandstrom, dinner was downstairs at the bar, had a good beer, soup, bread, meat, cheese, and some sort of chicken salad, and then we met for a class/meeting. This weekend should be absolutely fantastic, the plan is to see the Easter Fires and then stay up all night and go to the fish market (which is really a flea market) that starts at 4 AM Sunday.
Thursday, April 1st, roughly 9:20-9:30 PM local time
Last night was a total SNAFU. The trains weren't running so we had to take buses, the buses were few and far between and we got split up, then when we finally got there Swaffie had gone looking for us, Anh and Caitlin went looking for him, Swaffie came back, they were still gone, we finally got to the hotel and... it was actually pretty nice. Free wi-fi, good TV, bathroom a little small but functional. I was on the bottom bunk, Swaffie up top, and John and Nate shared a queen. We had dinner at this little place that was clearly closed but we had reservations (we got in late, what with all the bus shenanigans), had delicious beef with pretty good potatoes and vegetables. By the time I was done finishing off other peoples' plates I had SO MUCH BEEF. It was GOOD.
Back to the hotel, watched Numb3rs, fooled around online, slept. Woke up, breakfast of a meat and cheese sammich, pack all the extra layer clothes, and get ready to head out. We caught a train (they were running now) to the airport, it was pretty empty, easy to get through security. I got called out for a random check, but the guy doing it was pretty friendly, and hey, whatever. I've gotten a few of those actually, blame the beard. Waited a bit there, got some munchies, onto the plane, listen to an alternation of music and baby crying. Seriously, people. Children. Planes. Ugh.
Land, get onto a bus, and we're at the Berlin Hauptbahnhof now waiting for our train to take us to Hamburg. Dinner will be probably either fish and chips or doner kebab. We'll see.
Tuesday, March 30th, roughly 4:10-4:20 PM local time
Back to the hotel, watched Numb3rs, fooled around online, slept. Woke up, breakfast of a meat and cheese sammich, pack all the extra layer clothes, and get ready to head out. We caught a train (they were running now) to the airport, it was pretty empty, easy to get through security. I got called out for a random check, but the guy doing it was pretty friendly, and hey, whatever. I've gotten a few of those actually, blame the beard. Waited a bit there, got some munchies, onto the plane, listen to an alternation of music and baby crying. Seriously, people. Children. Planes. Ugh.
Land, get onto a bus, and we're at the Berlin Hauptbahnhof now waiting for our train to take us to Hamburg. Dinner will be probably either fish and chips or doner kebab. We'll see.
Tuesday, March 30th, roughly 4:10-4:20 PM local time
Today was an absolutely fantastic day.
Breakfast was bread with meat and cheese, bread with cheese, bread with margarine and bread with nutella. After that I got ready to go dog-sledding, which meant putting on everything I had. Nikki, Kanako, Allen and I met the guy and headed off to put on MORE gear – coveralls, their boots, their mittens, a ski mask, hat, and goggles. We were extremely toasty. We drove out to the kennel, got shown the basics of the sleds and started to harness the dogs. Allen and I's team, starting at the front, was Venus and Cartman, Tequila and Fry, and Kauto and Embla. I hooked up Venus and Fry. Fry was eager to get in that harness, it was funny, he almost helped me along with it. Once we got him hooked up though, he was actually a pretty whiny dog, at least at first. Allen drove first and off we went... and our dogs immediately became a pile of fighting. Our sled actually ended up ON Kauto's head, and I was horrified we were going to kill him, but the dogs were all fine once we got them separated, amazingly. We hadn't gotten too much further before Tequila got her leg over the line, and I had to get out and fix that. From there it was pretty good going for a while, sitting in that sled is surprisingly relaxing. I almost could have taken a nap. I got lots of good pictures, though my fingers felt frozen and I ended up having to make the trade-off of the warmth of their mittens (my gloves didn't fit under) for the lack of coordination. Still figured out how to take pictures with the mittens on though, even if I did get a lot of lens errors. I even have a few videos.
The dogs got fighting again, and this time one of our two guides (Ruben, only with more accents, who was from Stockholm, and Richard, I dunno where he was from), it was Richard, came back and switched Cartman and Fry. It was a lot smoother going after that, Cartman had been the troublemaker. We didn't really see anything else alive other than another team of dog-sleds at one point, but the landscape was just beautiful. Textbook glacial valleys covered in snow. Eventually we turned around, they did a good job making sure we'd catch our plane, and I switched to driver. It was surprisingly easy, the dogs know the route, all you have to do is brake occasionally. The girls ahead of us had a better lead this time than the way out, so I didn't even have to brake half as often as Allen had.
We got back in and unharnessed the dogs, I put away Embla, Tequila and Venus. (I just noticed now Allen put away all three boys and I put away all three girls). Then we fed the dogs, which was interesting. One dog, Frigg, caught my attention. The rest of the dogs would jump and yelp and try to get your attention, but not Frigg. No, she just watched me and waited. She knew it was coming. She actually hadn't eaten much of it by the time we left either, which I thought was interesting. (For those who know Norse mythology, there was also a Loke, a Balder, and a Froya, only the o has a slash through it).
Then it was time to head back, strip our gear, thank Ruben with many accents (who told us a great story about doing a sauna in Northern Sweden, going outside to cool down, and getting his hand stuck to the door on the way back in), struggle to find my lunch (I never did, but a few people had extra stuff so I got a full meal), get our bags, onto the bus, to the airport. In Tromso we had to go through customs and check-in and security all over again, I was afraid we wouldn't make our plane, but we did, and that's where I am now.
Monday, March 29th, roughly 5:30 PM local time
Breakfast was bread with meat and cheese, bread with cheese, bread with margarine and bread with nutella. After that I got ready to go dog-sledding, which meant putting on everything I had. Nikki, Kanako, Allen and I met the guy and headed off to put on MORE gear – coveralls, their boots, their mittens, a ski mask, hat, and goggles. We were extremely toasty. We drove out to the kennel, got shown the basics of the sleds and started to harness the dogs. Allen and I's team, starting at the front, was Venus and Cartman, Tequila and Fry, and Kauto and Embla. I hooked up Venus and Fry. Fry was eager to get in that harness, it was funny, he almost helped me along with it. Once we got him hooked up though, he was actually a pretty whiny dog, at least at first. Allen drove first and off we went... and our dogs immediately became a pile of fighting. Our sled actually ended up ON Kauto's head, and I was horrified we were going to kill him, but the dogs were all fine once we got them separated, amazingly. We hadn't gotten too much further before Tequila got her leg over the line, and I had to get out and fix that. From there it was pretty good going for a while, sitting in that sled is surprisingly relaxing. I almost could have taken a nap. I got lots of good pictures, though my fingers felt frozen and I ended up having to make the trade-off of the warmth of their mittens (my gloves didn't fit under) for the lack of coordination. Still figured out how to take pictures with the mittens on though, even if I did get a lot of lens errors. I even have a few videos.
The dogs got fighting again, and this time one of our two guides (Ruben, only with more accents, who was from Stockholm, and Richard, I dunno where he was from), it was Richard, came back and switched Cartman and Fry. It was a lot smoother going after that, Cartman had been the troublemaker. We didn't really see anything else alive other than another team of dog-sleds at one point, but the landscape was just beautiful. Textbook glacial valleys covered in snow. Eventually we turned around, they did a good job making sure we'd catch our plane, and I switched to driver. It was surprisingly easy, the dogs know the route, all you have to do is brake occasionally. The girls ahead of us had a better lead this time than the way out, so I didn't even have to brake half as often as Allen had.
We got back in and unharnessed the dogs, I put away Embla, Tequila and Venus. (I just noticed now Allen put away all three boys and I put away all three girls). Then we fed the dogs, which was interesting. One dog, Frigg, caught my attention. The rest of the dogs would jump and yelp and try to get your attention, but not Frigg. No, she just watched me and waited. She knew it was coming. She actually hadn't eaten much of it by the time we left either, which I thought was interesting. (For those who know Norse mythology, there was also a Loke, a Balder, and a Froya, only the o has a slash through it).
Then it was time to head back, strip our gear, thank Ruben with many accents (who told us a great story about doing a sauna in Northern Sweden, going outside to cool down, and getting his hand stuck to the door on the way back in), struggle to find my lunch (I never did, but a few people had extra stuff so I got a full meal), get our bags, onto the bus, to the airport. In Tromso we had to go through customs and check-in and security all over again, I was afraid we wouldn't make our plane, but we did, and that's where I am now.
Monday, March 29th, roughly 5:30 PM local time
Yesterday I worked, relaxed, slept some. Lunch was meat and cheese sandwich followed by peanut butter sandwich. Around 5, 5:30 or so, Swaffie, John, Allen, Kanako, Brenna and I went up to check out this abandoned mine not far from our hotel. The hike was... less than pleasant. A lot of two steps forward, one step back (maybe more like one to one) because of the snow and ice. I followed others' footsteps where I could, where the snow was icier they made good holds. I did a fair bit of it on all fours too, punching holds in and then using them for my feet as I ascended. Felt like a yeti or a polar bear. So I finally got up there and more or less rolled onto the wooden walkway, lost track of the other guys and followed their footprints up onto the roofs of the buildings and around. We found a door in and most everyone was there and went to explore the inside of this mine.
It was pretty awesome, people left chalk up there and there were names everywhere. I signed as “Tim “The Yeti” Luttermoser,” next to John's with “Hiram College Baby!” and “Biomes '10”. Someone apparently had a birthday party up there (we later found out from our host that someone hosted a movie up there in December once, which to me is absurd). Lots of old machinery and stuff. I did slip and fall on an ice slick going into one room, but otherwise we were alright. There were these two rooms that were completely dark, pretty creepy to go in. The orange light from my camera didn't help much, and according to Allen people doing camera flashes behind him was even creepier. We hung out in there for a while, exploring and all that. Lost track of John and Swaffie, eventually the rest of us were ready to go, I had to track them down and get the group photo done real quick and then we left. We all slid a fair bit of the way back down, it was faster than walking.
We got back in the middle of dinner, had pasta, sauce with bacon, and some vegetables. Dessert was absolutely delicious berries and what little ice cream was left over. John and Swaffie showed up late, but people saved them plates. I fooled around with a puzzle Nate had while Nate told Becky and someone else about kissing another guy, which of course they were inordinately fascinated with. Chilled in my room, had trouble falling asleep (it was still twilight well after 11 PM) finally fell asleep, woke up, showered, forgot my towel, fetched a towel, and here I am. Breakfast starts soon, dog-sledding today!
Monday, March 29th, roughly 7:40-7:50 AM local time
It was pretty awesome, people left chalk up there and there were names everywhere. I signed as “Tim “The Yeti” Luttermoser,” next to John's with “Hiram College Baby!” and “Biomes '10”. Someone apparently had a birthday party up there (we later found out from our host that someone hosted a movie up there in December once, which to me is absurd). Lots of old machinery and stuff. I did slip and fall on an ice slick going into one room, but otherwise we were alright. There were these two rooms that were completely dark, pretty creepy to go in. The orange light from my camera didn't help much, and according to Allen people doing camera flashes behind him was even creepier. We hung out in there for a while, exploring and all that. Lost track of John and Swaffie, eventually the rest of us were ready to go, I had to track them down and get the group photo done real quick and then we left. We all slid a fair bit of the way back down, it was faster than walking.
We got back in the middle of dinner, had pasta, sauce with bacon, and some vegetables. Dessert was absolutely delicious berries and what little ice cream was left over. John and Swaffie showed up late, but people saved them plates. I fooled around with a puzzle Nate had while Nate told Becky and someone else about kissing another guy, which of course they were inordinately fascinated with. Chilled in my room, had trouble falling asleep (it was still twilight well after 11 PM) finally fell asleep, woke up, showered, forgot my towel, fetched a towel, and here I am. Breakfast starts soon, dog-sledding today!
Monday, March 29th, roughly 7:40-7:50 AM local time
Woke up yesterday, showered, ate, all that jazz. Breakfast was bread and butter, bread with meat and cheese, and bread with nutella. Om nom nom. We had class, then headed down to the University Museum.
It had a lot of history of Spitzbergen, a little bit of natural history but mostly human stuff. Pretty interesting. Most of the stuff was Norwegian and English, but some (especially the animals) was only Norwegian, which was unfortunate.
After that we went out onto the ice near the ocean. You could tell when you were on the frozen ocean because it was a lot smoother. It was AWESOME. Lots of fun purposely falling and sliding around, I joked that the ice made anyone a good breakdancer. We also found a patch that was still liquid for some reason and took pictures of us putting our hands in it. Yeah, it was pretty cold.
Went to the grocery store, got some food, walked back up. Cold, cold walk. Cold. Got back in and basically chilled the rest of the day, dinner was swedish meatballs, rice and broccoli (I missed it due to Dramarama) and dessert was absolutely delicious fudge pudding and ice cream. Then we had a long talk about whether or not we should go dog-sledding based on budget and what we'd be giving up in Hamburg, we voted in Denny's room individually (a good call of Swaffie's), I ran my “Sand and Snow” entry by Denny and that's about it. Breakfast today was the same, and today's a work day, more or less.
Sunday, March 28th, roughly 10 AM local time
It had a lot of history of Spitzbergen, a little bit of natural history but mostly human stuff. Pretty interesting. Most of the stuff was Norwegian and English, but some (especially the animals) was only Norwegian, which was unfortunate.
After that we went out onto the ice near the ocean. You could tell when you were on the frozen ocean because it was a lot smoother. It was AWESOME. Lots of fun purposely falling and sliding around, I joked that the ice made anyone a good breakdancer. We also found a patch that was still liquid for some reason and took pictures of us putting our hands in it. Yeah, it was pretty cold.
Went to the grocery store, got some food, walked back up. Cold, cold walk. Cold. Got back in and basically chilled the rest of the day, dinner was swedish meatballs, rice and broccoli (I missed it due to Dramarama) and dessert was absolutely delicious fudge pudding and ice cream. Then we had a long talk about whether or not we should go dog-sledding based on budget and what we'd be giving up in Hamburg, we voted in Denny's room individually (a good call of Swaffie's), I ran my “Sand and Snow” entry by Denny and that's about it. Breakfast today was the same, and today's a work day, more or less.
Sunday, March 28th, roughly 10 AM local time
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