Tuesday, July 29, 2008

The Netherlands & new pictures

Ive been in the Netherlands since Sunday and it has been awesome. I've been to 3 cities and I am going back to one, Amsterdam, tomorrow. Then I'm going to Germany for my last stop before I head back up to Sweden. The netherlands are incredibly nice. I spent the day in the main part of 's-hertogenbosch and I went on a tour of the canals that go under the city. It was an amazing site to see. I spent all day in Eindhoven yesterday, we went to this really cool swimming place and to the movies. But tomorrow I am going to Amsterdam for a few hours then I'm heading to Mainz.

There is also a lot of new pictures, about 100 more.

Saturday, July 26, 2008

Bremen


So Bremen, the past few days here have been fun. The day I got here I walked around the main part of Bremen and looked at a few sites. The next day I went to some people's houses and hung out there. Today we went to a water park, I guess you could call it. It was a lot of fun. Today though, is my last day in Bremen. Tomorrow I'm taking a train at 10:44 to Amsterdam and from there I am going to Eindhoven. The Netherlands. I'm excited, I only have 11 days left. Its been so much fun traveling.

Wednesday, July 23, 2008

My Hamburg Tour


For the past 2 days I have been touring Hamburg. It is a really big city, every district I went to felt like another city. It was amazing, but today was the best. We went on a harbour tour and went out in a boat and toured the harbour. The ships were those big crate ships that had hundreds of crates on them. It was really amazing. We also went into Michel Church, thats not the real name but its it's nickname. It was big, thats where I got the picture from. We went to the top of the tower and looked at the city for a few minutes. I also went into a tunnel that went under the river. I have been walking around a lot in Europe. I am finally getting use to it, I hope. But today is my last day in Hamburg. Tomorrow morning I'm going to Bremen. I'll try to update from there also.


I uploaded a lot of pictures from Hamburg last night. I forgot to mention that.

Monday, July 21, 2008

New section & Hamburg

There is a link for a list of a few pictures I have taken under the Blog Archives. It has a bit of pictures, check it out.

Also, today in Hamburg has been a cold, rainy and windy one. Its about 50 degrees and raining. I don't think that is typical summer day here, but it is only my first day in Hamburg. Today we walked around Hamburg and Daniel showed the me some of the section of Hamburg he lives in, Altona. Everything I have seen here so far is a bit cheaper than it is in Sweden, especially food. Tomorrow the weather is suppose to be better so tomorrow we might go walk around the main part of Hamburg and the beach.

Sunday, July 20, 2008

My arrival to Hamburg

I left Sweden today around 11AM, I got to Hamburg around 10:20PM. How much fun, right? Actually, I really did enjoy the train ride. I met a girl from Switzerland who was also traveling so I had someone to talk too. Also, on the train ride they drove the train into a HUGE ship and we rode a ship across the sea. It was great! I have some pictures but I will post them later.
So anyways, now I am in Hamburg. It's much different from Sweden already I can tell. But also is still waz different than America. When I got off the train I met up with Daniel and we rode the subway and walked through Reeperbahn. Look it up, it was one of the most bizarre places I have ever been. Ever. But I'd be cautious on googling it. Then we went to a restaurant and had a turkish food wrap. New things every day I suppose.

Friday, July 18, 2008

Bicycles

Today was the first time I have actually used a bicycle as a method of transportation. I mean, I've walked to a store and driven even rode a bike for exercise, but I've never actually ridden a bike to get around. Well today, I did. We rode about 5.5km outside Uppsala to Old Uppsala to visit Viking graves. It was really cool. What the vikings would do when their leader died is, they would burn his body and bury him with his boat and teasures. There were HUGE hills and underneath them were viking ships and viking treasures. I found that to be very interesting. Then we rode back into Uppsala and we once again fika with some of Filippa's friends. I've really enjoyed meeting all these new people, it's really great to meet people who are from the area. It's really wierd too because, I mean, I expected everyone to be speaking Swedish and whatnot, but I don't understand ANY Swedish. For example, in Alabama there's a lot of hispanic people and they all speak Spanish, I understand some Spanish so I was kind of not expecting it to be that bad. But I have no idea what they're saying. It really blows me away sometimes, I feel noneducated because I can only communicate with one language, and they all know 2 if not 3 or 4 other lanuages.

But anyways, earlier this evening Filippa's grandmother came over for dinner. We had moose. I thought this was awesome, moose. I've had deer before, but moose. It's so much bigger than a deer. It tasted delicious.

Stockholm


Yesterday I spent the day in Stockholm, the largest city in Sweden and also the capital of Sweden. It was a great city, we got into the city around 11 and met up with one of Filippa's friends and we walked around for a couple of hours. We went to the National Armory Museum and to this GIANT old ship that sank 300 years ago. It was pretty cool. I also rode on my first train, it was awesome by the way. I also tried some swedish food, ice cream mainly. Which ice cream can never be bad so it was a win/win situation. Also one thing I like to do that's new to me is fika. We went to a really nice coffee shop in Stockholm, it was an insanely nice place and there I tried some Lasagne. But after site seeing and going into a few stores we went to Filippa's uncles house where we ate dinner. Her cousins were metalheads so we got along, I showed some bands I liked and they showed me some Swedish bands that were pretty good. Stockholm was great.

Wednesday, July 16, 2008

At long last...


I'm safely in Sweden after roughly 15 hours of airports and airplanes. I arrived around 7:30am Swedish time which is around 12:30am Alabama time. I got a good 6 hours of sleep in the past two days and I feel great! All day I've been touring Uppsala Sweden with Filippa. I never imagined a place could be this beautiful. It's truly amazing. Today I went to the largest cathedral in scandanavia, seen the silver bible, and seen so many new things. I ate lunch with Filippa and her family. I've never had swedish food and I'm a very picky eater, but it was really good. I enjoyed my meal. I also "fika" today for the first time, fika is basically where you get a coffee, beverage, or food at a coffee shop and talk to your friends while you eat. It was a lot of fun. Tomorrow I'm going to Stockholm for the day, I'm riding on my first city bus and my first train. I'm extremely excited about doing all three things. I'm really looking forward to the rest of my trip, it's going to be an amazing experience.

Friday, July 11, 2008

For now

This will be my last blog post until I am actually in Europe. I'm leaving in 4 days for Europe. My nerves have never been anticipating anything this much, unless you count Christmas when I was young. I'm going to do my best to keep this blog up-to-date with pictures and a summary of what I've done and what it's like while I'm in each country. I really hope people actually check this to see how I am doing, but again, I'll do my best to keep this blog updated. I'm sure I will have a few minutes each day to check it.

Friday, July 4, 2008

Itinerary

After hours of planning, I finally finished my itinerary for my trip. It's different from my original plan. I'm still upset about not going to Slovakia, but I will go there one day. So, as for my itinerary, I shall post the dates and places I'll be. My trip will go something like this:

July 15th Depart from Nashville 9:33AM
July 16th Arrive in Stockholm 7:25AM
July 20th Leave Stockholm around noon and head for Hamburg Germany
July 24th Leave Hamburg sometime in the morning and head to Bremen
July 27th Leave Bremen in the morning and heading to the Netherlands
July 30th Leave the Netherlands and head back into Germany and go to Mainz
August 2nd Take a PM train to Sweden
August 5th head back to the US

This is how my trip is hoping to go. I'll be updating this blog plenty, maybe with a few pictures too.

Tuesday, July 1, 2008

A change in plans

My trip has had a minor tweak to it's previous course. I was suppose to go to Slovakia, but due to my age and my parents still having influence over where I am and my travel assistant, aka my aunt, I'm not going there. I'm quite upset about this, but I understand why they don't want me going there. So now I have 3-4 days that I do not have a stop, so I have 3 choices now: Go to the Netherlands including Amsterdam and Eindhoven. Go to the Alps in Germany. Or go to the Swiss Alps. I might go somewhere else, but these are the prime places as of now. I'm still torn about not going to Slovakia, but this isn't going to be my first and last trip to Europe. There will hopefully be many more.