Cruising Norway and the Fjords

The boat we took is an actual working ferry ship with cruise aspects. The boat weaves in and out of islands, fjords and open ocean to get to various secluded cities. They put people, cars, mail, soda pop and anything else that these small towns require. In addition they hold about 500 people that are just there for the ride such as us.



We are heading into Garinger Fjord.



Inside the Fjord, the water is as still as glass. I was amazed.

Here is our ship.



It looks like a cruise ship, but its a bit smaller in order to maneuver through some of the narrow inlets and fjords.

We really enjoyed the cruise and seeing bits of Norway that are very hard to get to. We passed many beautiful waterfalls and I wished I could jump off, swim ashore and hike. The water would have been a bit cold.

Back from the Top of the World

A week ago we boarded a cruise bound to the very top of Norway. Internet was non existent with only enough patience to check my email due to the slow connection.

After 7 days of rest, relaxation, excursions and eating, eating, eating, Mom, Joe and I are back in civilization. Carlene has moved on to Iceland. Lucky her.

We are in London for four days and it is good to be back in an english speaking country. I guess now is as good of time as ever to update my blog. I apologize now to the mailing list people who may get slammed with email as I post 10+ entries in the next few days.

Joe......eating

I called my father a few days ago. He told me that his favorite pictures are of Joe eating.

Here you go dad. This is Joe eating whale.

Made it to Oslo

I always told everyone before my trip that I would randomly show up in Oslo on 7th of July. WE rolled into Oslo on time and found Carlene, my mother's friend at the hotel. Mom was in London Heathrow after arriving there four hours earlier from LAX. I jumped on the internet to check my mother's flight status.

Dang...delayed 2 hours. I got comfortable and started to straiten up and then checked the internet again. Dang... delayed 3 hours now!!!! My poor mother. She almost was not able to make it due to a stomach flu she had the week before.

Mom's delay did not stop us from having a good time.



We went upstairs and had some drinks.

I came back to the hotel room and saw my mother's flight was canceled. Luckily, after a while, mom called. Her cell phone was broken and they put her in a hotel. The poor thing was exhausted. I pushed the train to leave at 4pm the next day instead of 10:30 to allow my mother ample time to get to Oslo.

The next morning, I got a call and Mom's flight was canceled AGAIN!!!! Now, our train at 4pm was affected and our hotel reservation in Bergen was as good as gone. So we stayed over the next day and I sat in my hotel room completely stressed out while I watched my mother's flight slowly get delayed 15 minutes at a time to another 2 hour delay.

Finally mom arrived and she was not happy about the whole situation but very relievd to get there. We surprised her at the airport.

Here we are. The foursome is complete and we took the train the next morning to Bergen:



Norway is pretty:



We were so happy to be all together that we splurged big time at a seafood restaurant.

Sweden with a Family

We stayed in Odense in a hostel next to the train station. I thought it was a marvelous idea until I heard announcements of train departures over and over plus the screaching of trains as the stopped.

The next morning we departed to Sweden to meet our host family in Uddevalla.



How wonderful would it be to have a house near here!!!!

and....

we found a cat.



There he is:



Our host family was wonderful and took us around the area for the day. Unfortanatly, the heavens opened and a cold rain came down all day.

We still had a good time.

Here is Joe on the car ferry:



......and the cozy little coastal villages



....and finally US

Denmark...we are in Denmark

We are flying through countries so fast that it is hard to enjoy them. I am looking forward to seeing my mother and spending longer than a few days in the countries we see.

We stayed with Hanne in Denmark outside of a city called Odense. Odense lives in the shadow of Copenhagen. So as a result, this is a great little city without the crowds. On top of that, they have great shopping. Everything is on sale.

Hanna took us around on bikes and showed us her town.


Cow with a comb over

An after dinner fire and good conversation.. thanks Hanne.



And of course.. a kittie in Denmark (not really)



and just to make this post interesting:
a pretty denmark neighborhood:

Kittie in Holland

We found that Czech and Poland are more dog countries. We did see Kitties in Poland and Czech but it was just impossible to snap a photo of them.

Here you go: a nice Kittie in Holland:

Holland = windmill

You need a windmill in every blog about Holland. It would not be right without it. Our hosts Margo and Frenk rolled their eyes when we mentioned the windmills. I think they get that alot from their guests.

Amsterdam... sightseeing...ugh

We loved Amsterdam. They had tons of things to do, but Joe and I were very citied out and we were rather bored of the same old sights.

While looking through our guide book we thought about my sister Devon, Vanessa and baby riley.

In Amsterdam, they have a monument dedicated to gay rights. It is called the homomonument. We were thinking it would be a beautiful sculpture. No...it was three triangles. We didnt realize we were even standing on the monument. We were so disappointed.

Joe's face when he realized that we found the monument tells the story:



To Devon, Vanessa and Riley and any other readers out there that are either gay or supportive of the gay community, I give you the Homomonument in Amsterdam:


(Joe is standing on it)

Netherland's answer to high gas prices

I have never seen so many bikes in my entire life and of course we did our best to blend in:

Rummel's...everywhere

Servas, our homestay organization allowed us to stay with another Rummel family outside of Berlin.



In true Rummel spirit, Lothar and his wonderful fiance Maran were the best of hosts.

We really felt like we were living at home.

Joe spent some quality time with the Rummel cat:



He even mowed the lawn:




In the evenings we went to Maran's family's house and visited with her mother and uncle. Uncle Gunther and the rest of the group just loved Joe. We all didnt speak each other's language, but we still loved just sitting outside and drinking beer after a good day.

During the day, the Rummel's were out and about and let us roam around their neighborhood.

You just cant beat this neighborhood.



and...Yes...those are cherry trees. We ate until we pratically threw up.

New video from Matt harding

Lex, my sister, can contest that I am a huge internet geek. I look at everything. About a year and a half ago I came across a video on you tube from Matt Harding and my motivation to travel set in.

Now granted, I dont plan to travel nearly as much as Matt does, BUT I hope one day I can visit the places he has seen.

He has a new video out.




One thing Matt is famous for is picking very interesting spots to dance. I thought this memorial to the holocaust victims in Berlin made an interesting picture.

to Jim Price

To my dear friend Jim Price who is a regularly comments on the blog.



Its not every day you see a giant beer walking around with a "free beer" sign.

To Bobbi: another dragon

As promised to Bobbi I got another dragon pic. This one has an interesting myth. This dragon hid in a cave in krakow and then drank himself. Sounds like a twisted dream to me.

A day to remember

Krakow was sooo hot and muggy and (did I say Hot?)

Our trip was enjoyable, but the weather at the same time made us borderline miserable. We managed a day trip to Auschwitz and Berkanau which was very sad, but extremely hard to grasp.

Here I am waiting for our tour to start.



Most of the exhibits we could not photograph. I think those pictures would be too sad to put on the web anyways.

We walked through bin after bin of shoes, eye glasses, suitcases and clothes. These items were found one the camps were liberated.

Here in the entrance to Auschwitz:



The sign means "Work will set you free". This is complete irony since most of the workers were killed by gas, starvation, disease, gunshot, or experimentation.

The entrance of Birkanau:



Most people brought here saw this last before being sent to the chambers and put to death. Our tour guide described the process in detail which was hard to swallow.

The rail cars would roll up on these tracks and the passengers would unload and then get into one of two lines: women and children; and men.

Each person was evaluated by a german doctor and the were told to go left or right. Right was for working and left was to extermination. However, no one knew this. Most women and almost all children were sent to the gas chamber. The only exception were twins who were used for medical experiments. The poor souls were sent to a room where they were told to undress for a shower. After being filed into a room with fake shower heads, they were locked in (a thousand at a time) and they died within 20 minutes. there is some recollection that the germans had a band play to prevent others hear their screams.

The whole visit was very heart sickening, but it was hard for us to grasp this at the same time. How could 1.5 million people be murdered. It was unreal.

Happy Birthday to Me!!

I turned 29 on July 1. This is the first time I've been out of the country for my birthday. We spent the day in northern Holland with a couple named Frenk and Margo. They let us use their bikes (they own 4 of them) while they were at work, so Mauri and I biked all over. There are many bike trails in Holland and even very old people bike. As a result, most Hollanders are very fit. Frenk and Margo were no exception. Also, Hollanders save mucho dinero by biking. Gas is about $10/gallon in Holland, after converting from liters to gallons and euros to dollars, so they pay a lot more than we do and cry a lot less about it because they've already come up with a solution that works. Our country should look to Europe to find ways to conserve energy, because the Europeans are pretty good at it. Both Frenk and Margo live over an hour away from where they work. She drives to work in her small, fuel efficient, stick shift car (stick gets better gas mileage than automatic) and he bikes to the train station and takes the train to work.

They are also members of a canoe club, so when they came home from work, they took us canoeing and we had a picnic for dinner on an island in the lake. All in all, a great birthday for me!!

A special stay in Germany

I just wanted to put up a quick post about a SERVAS stay we did in Germany. We stayed with a family about 70 km (~40 miles) from Berlin. The man's name was Lothar Rummel!! That is right, we found a Rummel in Germany, though they pronounce it differently (ROOM ol). I know my Grandpap Rummel's grandfather Charles (I think he went by his middle name because the Allegheny County census has his name as John C) was born in Berlin in about 1862 and immigrated to the US in the 1880s. (Thank you Uncle Mark for that info) So, Lothar showed me his family tree and there was a Johann (German for "John") Christophe Rummel on it, but that could not have been him because their Johann was born in 1805. So, to my knowledge, we are not related. On a funny note, Lothar said he recently had a fender bender with another Rummel that he has never met.

Lothar and his fiancee Maran are getting married this month after living together for 11 years. Apparently in Germany, very long courtships before marriage are quite common. They are both teachers and they enjoy teaching English to the Germans. Lothar started a program called "English Weekends" which he is very proud of. It is a workshop where he spends an entire weekend with German people who are learning English and they speak only English the entire weekend. He includes different exercises to help them learn. Lothar and Maran also enjoy dancing and they included Mauri and I in one of their dance sessions with their friends in their back yard. All in all it was a wonderful stay and I was excited to let everyone know that we found Rummels in Germany. Mauri will post pictures later. We also have pictures from Auschwitz and Holland that we need to post. We are in Denmark right now.

More Posts... Tomorrow!!!

Hello everyone. We have finally found a place to stay and some free time to blog. We will be staying in Odense at a hostel with wireless internet tomorrow. I cant wait to show you my pictures.

After a wonderful stay with a couple in Holland, we took a night train to Denmark.

Joe had a wonderful birthday biking and canoeing in Holland thanks to Frenk and Margo.

I am catching a train to another town to meet a new host. Bye for now and I will see you tomorrow. :)

Falling way behind in Posts

So much has happened to us since our last post. We have left Krakow and had a wonderful day trip to Berlin and a nice family stay outside of Berlin. We are now in Amsterdam. We have tons and tons of good pics and posts to add to our blog, but we do not have any estimate on when this will happen.

We will do what we can. :)

Another Pittsburgish Post

Pierogies are special in Poland. They are stuffed with Meat, Meat and Cheese, Meat and Cabbage, Meat, Cheese and Cabbage, etc, etc.



We ate Pierogies our first night in Krakow until we dropped.

Heinz really has 57 varieties (at least in the Czech Republic)

Heinz is everywhere.

See for yourself:



(Note: If you are bewildered that I would take a picture of Heinz ketchup then I am guessing you are not from Pittsburgh) :)

Beer and Grub: A Day with a Local

We contacted a friend of ours that we met in Spain in December. Marian works in Prague for a software company. When he is not working, he is a world traveler for months at a time. I envy his free spirit "just do it" nature.

Marian graciously showed us around and took us to a few local haunts for greaaattt Pivo (beer). On top of that, we did the tourist stuff and also saw an open air concert with a great flamenco band.


Here we are with one kilo of Meat



The Czechs go a bit crazy with the mass quantity of Meat. In fact, Marian had to request that they tone it down for us or else we may have gotten two kilos of meat.

Here is Joe contemplating how much meat he ate:



3 (1/2 Liter beers), 1 Kilo of Meat, 2 baskets of breads and an awesome Czech Cheese appetizer = 25 USA Dollars.

I am not sure you can beat that.

We love Prague

Dont forget, Czech was Communist at one point

We have learned quite a bit about communism. Some of it was good and much of it was very troubling. Prague is for the Velvet Revolution (uprising at the main square) in the late 80's.

The people who protested communism put their lives on the line because the secret police were not too kind to them.

Here are some funny pics at the communism museum.



Boy.... did they hate us during the cold war. This makes sense since we were not too fond of Communist either.



I think Joe would portray a good Stalin in a major motion picture. Dont you think?

We are in Beer Country now

Arrived in Prague and went strait to the bar to try the famous Czech Beer.

Over the course of the next few days, we explored many types of Beer and many different pubs thanks to our friend Marian. Beer is cheap too at a euro a glass.

I feel like I only get pictures of us eating or seeing sites. I never get any pictures of us doing the daily grind while on travels.

Here is one in the U-Bahn (Vienna's Subway) trying to get to the train station.



Sorry, its another picture of Joe and not me. I have been listening to your comments that there are not enough pics of me. The problem is that I seem to be the one snapping all the pictures at the right time. :)

Vienna - EuroCup Madness

Every shape and size has descended into Vienna for EuroCup madness. Unfortunately the day we were there, the games were not too exciting (3 games in 1st round) and there was no match in Vienna.

However, like the Olympics, the city dresses itself up to welcome fans from all over europe.

Budapest - Architecture

Just a pic.

Kitty in Hungary

While our Kittie (as reported by our wonderful pet sitter) does not miss us at all, we continue to visit the Kitty's of Europe.

Thank you to Tomas and Panna.

Budapest- what a suprise

As I mentioned in my ealier postings, we just loved Budapest.

Look how happy we are:



A funny ongoing joke that Joe and I have been sharing since Ljubljana is that every city looks a tad like Pittsburgh. We mention the river, how green everything is, hilly (sometimes), etc.

You can imagine that our joke got a new level when we saw this in Budapest:



Yes... that is an incline to the left.