UPDATE: May 10th, 2006

So the last week I traveled to Sweden to visit my mothers family in Veddige which is a small farming town outside of Varberg (south of Göteborg). The area was absolutely beautiful and it was really nice to meet relatives I have never met before. Strangely enough, one of my cousins looks exactly how my grandmother looked when she was younger, that was pretty cool. I stayed with my family of course and traveled with my friend Kjersti who is also from Elon and attended DIS this semester. Varberg was a very nice coastal town I highly recommend going here if you are looking for a coastal retreat that is not very touristy… mind the cold however.

Thursday morning of that week, Kjersti and I were on a train towards Oslo, Norway to visit her family for a couple of days. Oslo was a beautiful city, very clean and nice people. The city is situated in a Fjord and the harbor which is beautiful. After a couple of days in Oslo, we were back on the train towards Bergen. Our trip to Bergen by train was definitely the most memorable experience I had all 3 weeks. The scenery was unreal! The train traveling in and out of tunnels and would be exposed to all different types of climate change, from sun to snow to rain, it was awesome. We also saw a train that was knocked off the tracks by an avalanche one week before. No one was killed or seriously hurt, so that made it an awesome site. As for Bergen, beautiful place, beautiful people and great nightlife! I guess the town has to make up for the fact the next larger city is about 7 hours drive south to Stavanger (which I have also heard is beautiful).

SIDE NOTE: Sweden and Norway (especially Norway) were very expensive. Ex: 1 beer in the convenient store will cost you about $7.
SIDE NOTE 2: eat Salmon in Sweden or Norway, it is awesome there! And try the brown cheese in Norway that is made from goat and cow milk. It’s awesome!

Then we were back to DIS for classes and I decided that that weekend I should recoup from all the traveling. The following weekend I went to Stockholm with my cousin. It was a bit pricy even aside from my cheap ticket because he booked a hotel and the food we ate was kind of expensive… but it was worth it. See the Vasa museum when you are there, that was awesome! The city is absolutely gorgeous situated on islands and a large archipelago. They say it is so clean in the waters of Stockholm that you can safely eat the fish from the harbor in the city.

I returned to DIS late Sunday (by the way I brought work to study a little on the way back, that was a smart move). The following weekend I wanted to use my last pass, so I decided to go to Skagen, the tip of Denmark. This is where the Baltic Sea and the North Sea collide. It was truly an amazing site! The town was picturesque as well as the beach and I finished off the experience with a dish in one of the harbor restaurants with salmon, and tiny lobsters, native to the area. Mind you, this was my last ticket so I had to make the 14 hour trip (from Copenhagen to Skagen and back) in one day. How did I do it? I left at 2am in the morning and had a 1 hour lay over in Federicia a small town that luckily had a pastry shop open at the crack of dawn, so I bought a nice coffee and brown sugar Wienerbrød to keep me company. I also met some really nice people on the small train. The attitude in Jutland is much friendlier in general then in Copenhagen, in my opinion, but the Copenhageners are nice as well.

Then I finally had a little break from my travels, caught up on my studies and set the following Friday as a day for visiting places in Copenhagen I have not seen yet. I guess when you live there you get used to seeing everything and it becomes home, so your interest in the surroundings fades quickly especially when you have a schedule to adhere to. But I decided to pass up the round tower, I was a little stingy on money that day, but I visited Kristian IV’s park which is nice in the spring with a lot of people hanging out there. Then I went to Christiania, the legendary free city of Copenhagen. That was ‘interesting’. Very hippy like place that I imagined and yes there were drugs about… visible in public (not sold in public) which was also strange to me as well. Aside from that the place had its own character and personality that is difficult to describe unless you are really there. Visitors to Copenhagen should try to get around to seeing this.

Finally I went to Møn which is where the white sand cliffs are located on the small island of Møn south of Sjælland (where Copenhagen is). It was awesome! Chalk like sand with flint, and towering cliffs… it was amazing! Definitely try to visit this place. To top off my Møn experience, my host family and I had a nice dinner in the town of Stege which is on Møn Island.

Well that is all for now… I probably should have been studying instead of writing this, but I am not sure when I will get around to it until after finals (which are next week, ahhh!!!!). Basically I won’t have a life until May 17th, after my last exam.