The Beginning: Copenhagen - Vienna

I hope the "back in time" exercise worked for everyone, because we're doing it again.  Luckily we're still skipping back to October, so if you got the visualization down for the last one, just put yourself if the same place, only about a week later.  

I had a whirlwind of papers and exams in the few days between my parents leaving and setting out for my travels, but as soon as I put my pencil down after completing the last test of the week I knew I was free.  I rushed out of my classroom, took the train home, grabbed my suitcase, took the train back, and met Lena at the Nørreport metro station, where it all began...

In fact, it turned out Lena and I didn't even need to leave Copenhagen for the adventures to begin. When I finally made it to the metro it took at least another ten minutes for us to find each other.  We were walking way underground where our cell signal didn't always go through.  Finally, we found each other.  I'll spare all the adventures, or this could take forever, but believe me, they never stop.  Lena and I usually say we can't do anything normally, and we always prove ourselves right.  Some might say it has something to do with our lack of planning, our ability to become distracted by the wonderfullness always surrounding us, our chatty behavior, or "whatever goes..." attitude.  They might be right, but we wouldn't change anyway.

In fact, so many adventures surround us, we could hardly believe how smooth our trip went from entering the airport to finding the hostel.  Did we really get through security, make it to the plane, get on the right bus, navigate through the right streets, and flawlessly happen upon the front door to our hostel?  Yes, we did!  But we congratulated each other too early.  By this point is was about 11pm.  After finding the door to our hostel it was probably another hour and a half before we found our beds.  We opened the door to the hostel to find a dark room with staircases going up and a hallway that looked nothing like a hostel.  I walked down the dark hallway a little to find a very small, old, and shaky looking elevator and a sign that said "My MojoVie" with an arrow pointing up.  My MojoVie is the name of the hostel.  We proceeded to drag our suitcases up 3 flights of stairs (we said nej tak to the elevator) with the motion censored lights flickering off every now and then.  Finally we made it to the top and came to a door with an envelope taped on that read "Hillary and friend."  We weren't sure what to make of all of this, so before taking down the envelope we paused and looked at each other.  In the time of that momentary pause 3 people walked out of a door to the left and another 3 out the door we were staring at.  Those 3 looked at us and looked at the envelope.

"Are you Hillary?"

"Yes,"

They open the envelope like they own the place and say, "Ok, follow me."

We thought they did own the place.  We follow them into the hostel which looks like a super decked out dorm room.  It was decorated with fun colors, egg chairs, and round lamps dangling from the ceiling at different levels. They lead us into a a big, spacey, but cozy 10 bed dorm.

"Ok, here are your beds," they say, gesturing to two bunks with shapes taped on, labeling them.

"Thanks!"

"We just got here tonight and are looking for a pub or something, wanna join?" Turns out they didn't own the place...

"Uh...no."  I realized that these weren't actually our beds.  Lena and I had ordered a single room for the night, not a dorm.  

We read the letter and turns out these Italian travelers probably weren't trying to fool us, this letter was just next to impossible to decipher any meaning from.  We take our time, reading line by line, noting what has been scribbled out, written over, arrows drawn to new notes, and finally conclude our room is in another building.  Finally, a few doors down, across the street, up more stairs with temperamental lights, and a key that takes more minutes than it should to work, we find our room.  Clean, comfy, and cute.  

the confusing letter kindly left for me and Lena

As it turned out, it was too bad we didn't stay in the original beds we considered, because if we had Lena's friend from Dennison, who had no idea she was in Vienna, would have found a friend from the States sleeping in his bed when he returned from his night out!  Those beds weren't only not ours, they were taken. We went to the front desk area the next morning to pay and such, which is also right by the room we almost stayed in, and Lena say her friend Ryan getting ready for the day.  Neither of them knew the other was in Vienna, let alone the same hostel.  Too make the world seem even smaller, one of the four guys he was traveling with was from IU!  

We went with this group of super planners to the Royal Palace, their first stop of the day.  We split with them here, choosing different tours.  Lena and I took a great tour of the beautiful palace and explored the garden they are famous for.

 After that we headed to the Saturday Market, something we actually did plan for.  It was a huge, colorful, and multi cultural market full of different things to buy and foods to eat.  We ended up buying some dried fruit that came in very handy over the next few days for breakfast, lunch, snacks, and dinner!  We bought it from some Italians who maybe knew only enough english to gather we were from the US and exclaim "AMERICA! We LOVE America!!! Obama Barack! Barack Obama! We don't know..." They were very funny and very enthusiastic.  It is nice to travel and have people love your country.  I often find myself thinking non-Americans love our country more than a lot of us do, or they at least are not so critical.  After discussing this with Julie I am pretty sure this is new, and it is due to Obama being in office and Bush being out. 

I brief pause to mention other reaction I get when I say I'm American:

"I love Will Ferrell!"

"Have you met Obama?"

"Do you like football...why?"

"All the Americans come here and want to go on the Sound of Music tour" (more on that later...)

them: "Where in the US?" me: "Ohio" them: "Where....?????" them alternative answer "Oh, yeah..." my thoughts: they have no clue.

After the market Lena and I did what we do best: stroll.  We put the map away, found some yummy gelato, and went in whatever direction our hearts wished.  We did this until we were totally lost, and then we went some more.  We find with this strategy we enjoy ourselves to the max, still manage to stumble upon all of the important things, and even stumble upon those not so important but beautiful and unique things.  When the sun finally disappeared we pulled out our maps and made some real plans for the evening.  

The next day we visited the Leopold museum and saw one of the best collections of art I have ever seen!  We ended with some yummy coffee, tea, and marble cake.  

Before leaving Vienna we got some friendly alerts cautioning us away from Paris because of the riots.  After some discussion we decided it would be best not to risk it.  Lena, Eleanor, our friend we were supposed to meet there, and myself all had plans to meet family coming from the states following Paris and thought it would be best to not tell them we were trapped in Paris and unable to travel.  We made some desperate attempts to contact Eleanor, decided to extend our stay in Salzburg and Prague in the absence of Paris, and were on our was to Salzburg!  

ps - eventually dragging our bags up and down the stairs was too much to bare! especially since the room we were in the second night was on the top floor of this building!!! we chanced the sketchy elevator, after being informed it actually was fine, yet we had our doubts.  we had a fun time cramming ourselves and our bags into the tiny space.  

Guest Blogger: Rick Combs

OK, time for a little catch up.  What better way to start than with my first guest blogger? Meet Rick Combs, my dad!  I asked him to write a guest piece for my blog on his and my mom's visit here and he kindly obliged.  Before reading place yourself back in time to Oct. 15...before winter hit, before Thanksgiving, and before Halloween. Nice October when the leaves were turning colors, you were still wearing t-shirts, I just returned from Scotland, and my parents arrived in Copenhagen.

Copenhagen Guest Blog:  Rick Combs (AKA Hillary’s Dad)

            

The redeye from Washington Dulles took us through Paris, where Claire and I sat in a nearly deserted section of De Gaulle Airport eating French pastries and drinking coffee and watching the sun rise as we awaited our flight to meet Hillary in Copenhagen. Never having been north or east of Switzerland, I was excited to see Denmark and the other locations on our itinerary. The last leg of our flight was very comfortable. The pilot circled to approach from the sea, and we looked down on the huge wind turbines that sit out in the bay near the city. After navigating the sprawling Copenhagen airport, we made our way to the train station. Copenhagen has great public transportation, and is probably the most bicycle-friendly place I’ve seen. Trains and busses offer designated areas for bicycles, so locals carry their bikes aboard. The railway system is large and complex enough to be a little intimidating to non-natives, but with a little help we soon made our way to downtown Copenhagen.

Our first night in Copenhagen was the perfect start to our European visit. Hillary’s host family, Verner and Anne Christmann, and their ten-year-old son Anders, had us over for dinner. They are wonderful hosts, and made us feel very comfortable right away. I am not a wine snob, but I aspire to be one. Verner uncorked two excellent wines—one in particular really impressed me. Dinner was outstanding as well. Later we had dessert and coffee. It was great fun to meet the Christmanns, and to see where Hillary was living. They’re very close to the shore, and as we had approached their home I had a strange feeling of déjà vu. Out of curiosity I had Google-Earthed their residence and had been able to look around the main roads and intersections nearby, and was able to get within a couple of blocks of their home, so the neighborhood seemed familiar. They live a few blocks from a train station in suburban Copenhagen; after dinner we walked the short distance to the station and caught a train that took us within a short walk of our downtown hotel.

Copenhagen is a great city—large enough to offer all the advantages of a big city, but small enough that it can be navigated with relative ease. It’s a modern city with Old World charm, full of tiny restaurants and cozy cafes contrasting with the huge public squares, block-long government buildings, and palaces. Copenhagen is on the shore, but instead of the bustle of an industrial port city, the marinas are filled with sailboats and the canal tours carry visitors past condos and museums and galleries.

Copenhagen Canal

Verner and Anne took us up the coast by car one day to visit Elsinore Castle, the inspiration for the setting of Hamlet. It was the kind of outing we enjoy, since it gave us the opportunity to see the local countryside. The shore-side homes and shops and the rocky coastline reminded me a little of parts of New England. The castle was impressive---bigger than anything I’d have imagined, and complete with the requisite dungeon below ground. By chance, Hillary ran into several of her classmates as we left the castle.

At Elsinore Castle

Eventually Hillary had to return to classes and studies, and Claire and I flew off to Vienna for a few days. We stayed in the type of place Frommer’s recommends--a small but very comfortable hotel near the museum district, frequented by Europeans.  The weather was rainy, but that just made Vienna’s restaurants and cafes more welcoming. We found navigating a bit of a challenge. The street and place names in Romance languages are a little easier for speakers of English to distinguish and recall than is the case in German. We were lost half the time. We didn’t care. Vienna is another beautiful city, and we enjoyed the museums as well as the cafes. One night we went to dinner followed by a symphony of Mozart music. The food wasn’t great, but the wine was drinkable and the company was interesting. We sat with a retired Australian couple on a three-month tour of Europe, an Asian mother-and-daughter (their limited English made it impossible to determine their exact origin), and an American forensic psychiatrist and his wife. After a long career in forensics, the psychiatrist thought Hillary was making an excellent choice to concentrate on positive psychology.

Lost in Vienna

Back to Copenhagen for a few days, then off with Hillary to Berlin. Europeans say Berlin is emerging as the new unofficial capital of Europe, displacing Paris. That is hard for me to imagine. I enjoyed Berlin mostly because of the history. We visited the Checkpoint Charlie Museum and drove by the remains of the Berlin Wall.  So much of Berlin was destroyed by Allied bombing in WWII that most of the city is very modern. As an American visitor, I found that a little disappointing. At times I felt that if it weren’t for the signs in German everywhere, I could have been looking at a city in the U.S.  No need for an American to travel to Europe to see a city that looks very American. We did have a great time, though. Our hotel was first class, with a beautiful view overlooking suburban Berlin and the Danube Canal. The café in the hotel boasted that it had recently been presented with the “Ernest Hemingway Best Bar in the World” award. They did know how to mix a martini, a skill perfected (as far as I have yet been able to determine), only by my late Father-in-Law Raoul and myself. Hillary asked for a wine, and since we were after all in Germany I suggested a Riesling. I am not a huge fan of Rieslings, but this one was pretty good. She had several others over the course of a few days, and all were good, prompting me to wonder if they ship only the bad ones to the U.S. and keep the good ones in Germany. Food is not, generally speaking, a reason to go to Germany. Still, Berlin is a very cosmopolitan city and good food can be found, if you look for it. Or if you ask the concierge at a good hotel where it can be found, which is what I did. We hopped in a cab and raced off to our last dinner in Germany, and it was fantastic. The Maître d recommended a wonderful, juicy cabernet.

Back in Copenhagen, we shopped. Copenhagen claims the world’s longest pedestrian-only street, and it appears to be lined with clothing and jewelry boutiques of the kind frequented by people like my wife and two daughters. That was OK; while they ducked into every other shop on the street, I stayed outside and people watched. Scandinavia, as I had long suspected, turned out to be a pretty good place for people watching.

Coffee and (what else) Danish

For our last night in Copenhagen, Verner and Anne took us out to dinner. It was actually our intention to take them out to dinner, but they were very insistent on picking up the check. We can only hope they will someday give us an opportunity to return their hospitality. It was another great dinner. I had red deer, shaved thin like roast beef, served rare in what tasted to me like a plum sauce, with a wine that complemented it perfectly. I have no idea what everyone else had, but they assured me it was excellent. (Did this turn into a food blog? That wasn’t my plan.)

Dinner in Copenhagen

We have been home for several weeks now. Recently while skyping with Hillary, I asked her if she was looking forward to getting back to her familiar haunts in Bloomington. Turns out not. Somehow Indiana appears to have lost its luster. She is already thinking about how she is going to get back to Europe. That is something we had been thinking about for a long time, and we’re very glad Hillary gave us the excuse to make it happen.