So, we're back from the first of our three summer vacations.
There's really too many pictures and too many thoughts/memories to do it justice, but here's a bit of an overview.
We first flew to Maryland and stayed with Dave and Elaine and Ben. In spite of the weather being pretty rainy, we had a great time hanging out. Ben is such a fun little guy. He's very interactive, and just fun to watch him run around and do stuff. Memorable parts of the trip were when the basement flooded, and we ran around in a lightning storm trying to get pumps working to clear the water out. Fooling around with electricity while standing in 6 inches of water didn't seem like the safest thing, but we soon got it all squared away. Diana and I also took a little day trip to Gettysburg, and drove around the battleground while listening to a CD-tour. That was really interesting.
We then jumped on a plane to Gothenberg, Sweden by way of Copenhagen. I was pretty giddy to be in Europe (Adam: "I can't believe how many SWEDES there are around here!" Diana: "Ok, that's enough..."). We'd rented a car, so I got to drive around a foreign city in a stick shift after a sleepless night. That was pretty crazy. Anyways, we made it to Alicia and David's apartment, and it was great to meet up with them.
That first day is a total haze. We stayed up as late as we cool, walking around and seeing the sights of Gothenberg, and ended up going to bed at around 6pm, and sleeping for about 12-14 hours. Nice.
The next day, we drove up to David's mom and step-dad's farm in the countryside, and had a very nice evening up there. They live on some estate that was established in the 15- or 1600's. The house has obviously been updated and so forth, but it was still pretty impressive. We spent the evening with their family, eating and playing a game that was kind of like horseshoes.
The next morning, Diana and I parted ways with everyone, and drove north to Olso. I was a bit nervous to head out on our own (Alicia now speaks pretty fluent Swedish, which was obviously handy, and a lot of fun to watch), but we made it through without any problems.
We got to Norway, and got on a train which headed across the country to Bergen, which is on the west coast of the country. The train ride was pretty incredible, going up over the mountains and showing us some really nice sights.
Bergen was a beautiful little city. Our train arrived at around 11pm (but since it was full dusk out, it felt like 6pm), and we were able to find our hotel and get settled.
The next day was the big "Taste of Norway" tour. I thought it was going to be some big organized tour, but it was actually a series of tickets that took us on trains, a boat, and busses around the area. The boat trip through the fjords was pretty cool. It reminded me a bit of Glacier National Park. Just beautiful. That tour lasted all day, and then it was back to the hotel for the night. The next day was hiking around Bergen (especially the cool twistly little streets), exploring the fish market (I tasted a free sample of whale meat. It was pretty good. I hate myself), and then back on the train to Oslo.
Oslo, by the way, was a mess. We had a hell of a time finding our way around, getting lost, etc. We finally pulled off the main road to look at our map, and found we'd pulled right up to our hotel. Sweet. Similiarly, we couldn't find our parking garage until we basically stumbled right into it. We didn't have much time to explore, just spent the night and drove back to Gothenberg the next morning.
Back in Gothenberg, we returned the rental car, and spent the next 5 days hanging out with Alicia and David, staying at our hotel at nights, and cruising around the city in the day. Alicia, as I said, is basically fluent in Swedish, which I found really impressive. The days were all very active. We went to various museums and parks, as well as a mini Magic-Mountain type fun-park. We took a boat tour along the canals of the city. We went to an "ice bar" in the fun-park, which was pretty neat.
David and Alicia had just moved into a new apartment when we first arrived, so by the time we got back from Norway, they were mostly moved in. They have a nice little setup. Their apartment is up on the top of a hill, which made for tiring walks to get there, but beautiful views when we took our dinners outside to eat.
Alicia hosted a Fourth of July party for about 10 peeps, and that was a lot of fun. People from multiple countries were there (Sweden, France, South Africa, Austria, US). Everyone spoke English, and it was really a lot of fun to talk to people about various cultural differences between countries. I tried to rationalize why American's didn't embrace soccer as much as the rest of the world, yet can watch baseball (arguably "boring") or football (commercials every 30 seconds seemed like a pretty big deal to the guy I spoke with). Another girl said that she understood that talking about money (like, someone salary) was kind of an uncomfortable or rude topic, and how it's totally not in Europe. All very interesting.
For the party, Alicia asked people to bring something "American". People brought Budweisers and Cokes, and someone busted out an American football. I showed some of the guys how to throw it, as well as the basic rules of two-on-two street football (though we didn't actually play). We played a game of "water balloon toss", where you throw the balloons back and forth, getting further and further apart each time. It was all very nice.
It was sad to leave, but we said our goodbyes and made it back home without much problem. All in all, a great trip. Gothenberg, to be honest, isn't really a hot tourist destination in and of itself, but seeing Alicia and David was great, and we had a lot of fun every day. For my part, just going to the grocery store, or sitting in a park watching people, and just being in a foreign country was cool.
I have a little subset of pictures to put online, as well as a host of other memories and experiences which are too intricate to try to type out here.
Now, a few days rest, and then a brief trip to Tahiti. We leave in the middle of the night on Wednesday, and are gone for a week or so. Woot!
