My Apologies

Hey everyone, sorry its been so long since my last post.  I was on vacation for fall break all of last week.  Me and my friend Emily went to Poland, Finland and Sweden.  Yes, all in a week.  While country hopping is not the most thorough form of transportation, you can definitely see a lot of old shit in a short amount of time (pardon my French). 

My journey started in Sweden, then we took a plane to Gdansk.  This means that I was in three countries in one day, which I can now say as an accomplishment.  Gdansk is a very old small town on the northern coast of Poland as part of the Danzig region. 

We stayed in an abandoned train station

And yes Alissa, I had some butter.  Poland is amazingly beautiful, and cheap, which is a huge relief from absurd scandinavian prices.  The town however is tiny, and we walked completely around it in the first day.  We saw a lot of old churches and the largest church that is completely made out of brick is there as well, but you had to pay to go in, which is lame, its a church.  I also had pizza for the first time since being in europe, which was amazing!!  You really forget the little things, when you’re cut off from them.  And yes, the danes do have pizza, but for the price you pay, it better be made out of gold.

After Poland, we flew to Turku.  Turku, mind you is in the middle of NOWHERE.  So we get to the airport and its raining, and in order to get to the main terminal, we have to walk all the way around this fence on this gravel path in the woods and go to the front door.  Poland is on the Zlotych, while Finland is on the Euro, so we didn’t have any euros on us to pay for the bus.  We went inside to see if there was a money exchange place or an ATM, and evidentlly there is no such thing in Turku.  It was ridiculous, so we had to take a taxi to the main train station.  From there we went to Helsinki. 

This was an exhibition in the Kiasma

Ive heard a lot of bad things about Helsinki, but from my personal opinion, I really liked it.  Also, the days that we were there, it was design week.  So we got into all the museums for free because we were under 25.  Also, the hostel we stayed in was awesome.  In the 1950s, the summer olypmics were held in Helsinki.  They built a brand new stadium for the occasion.  When the olympics were over, they needed to do something with the stadium and instead of using it as a stadium which would be the obvious choice, they decided to turn it into a hostel.  So we stayed in an olympic stadium. 

We then took a ferry from Helsinki to Stockholm.  This was not your typical small ferry, it was a gigantic cruise ship full of casinos, booze and tax free shopping.  There were a couple of bands playing band covers from the 50s and 60s, which was really silly.  The view however was spectacular, but the wind was unbelievable.  My eyes were watering uncontrollably.  Also the boat ride was 16 hours long, so we arrived in Stockholm in the morning. 

Small islands off the coast of Helsinki

Going back there again just made me fall in love with Stockholm all over again, it is just such an amazing and gorgeous city.  The morning we arrived there, we dropped our stuff off at the hostel and we to go walk around.  We saw the Max Ernst exhibit at the Moderna Museet.  We were then walking along the street where the Grand Hotel is and we turned a corner and saw our friends Roslyn and Cookie from our building which was totally bizarre because we had no idea they were even going to be in Stockholm.  We went to the city library, behold the wonder:

GLORIOUS

 Afterward, we went to this anti-fascist cafe for a benefit concert. We met some people there who were activists.  And they were telling us about this friend of theirs who two weeks ago, went to this rally in Russia and one day when he stepped out of his building, these nazis killed him with a machete.  Really brutal stuff.  So the concert was for his funeral costs.  After the concert they took us to a bar where there was another concert going on and they played a bunch of covers including squirrel nut zippers and other bands of that calibur. 

This is the lead singer, he was wearing a black shirt with white stripes, black pants with two white stripes close together and a red ascot. I dont even know how to begin to start making fun of that.

Unfotunately we had to leave the next day.  After traveling to four different airports on this trip, I came to the realization that Copenhagen airport is the easiest one to get to and from.  All the other ones were hard and ardous journeys.  Well once more apologies for taking so long to write this, its been a long week.

Worst transportation weekend, EVER

The internet in my room keeps going out, so it’s been hard for me to post.  And there has been lots going on as well.  Last weekend on Friday night, me and a couple of people went to this housewarming party in Vanløse.  The house is a collective, meaning that there are 11 people living in a gigantic house together and they all take turns cooking for each other on a different night.  It sounds like fun, but thats a lot of people to live with.  It was a really fun party, and when I went into the bathroom, I noticed something odd about their bathtub:

Yes, that is Kaitlin standing in a bathtub full of buttons

The buttons say ATOMKRAFT? NAJ TACK.  Which means, nuclear power?  No thanks!  Except thats Swedish, not Danish.  So there, now all of you know how to say something in Swedish.

After a couple of hours, we decided that we wanted to go home, so we left at around 2.30.  We took a metro to the Norrepørt station and once we got there, we realized our connector train to København H wasn’t coming until 3.55, so we had to sit there hang out for almost an hour.  In my hour of boredom, I decided that I wanted to be a pirate peasant:

If you didn't believe the Russian heritage before, BELIEVE IT NOW

Once we got to København H, we went to platforms 7 and 8, which are the only trains that go to Trekroner and saw that the next train wasn’t coming until 4.45.  So I laid down on Mili and fell asleep.  I was suddenly awoken by everyone yelling that we were on the wrong platform and we were about to miss our train.  So after running down the platform in high heels, almost slipping in someone’s vomit, and running below the very very smelly train tunnel, we ran onto the correct platform only to find out that we had indeed missed our train and the next one wasn’t coming until 5.34.  We then went outside to the buses to see if we could find the one that went to Roskilde, and we were terribly shot down.  I went back into the train station to look at the schedule to find that there was an S-Tog we could take (not quite a train, and not quite a metro, just an inbetween).  We got off at Valby station and then finally took a train to Roskilde, where we had to take a cab to Trekroner from there.  It was the most complicated amount of transportation that I had ever used to try to get home.  And yes, we finally got home at what time you ask?  Six AM.  I didn’t even know there was a six AM.  Here is what a train station looks like at 6 AM:

Deliriousness Ensues

The next night, I had promised my friend Sanne that I would go to this concert with her the next night.  Beforehand, we went to Copenhagen to go to this karaoke bar.  We met these Norweigians who grabbed me as I walked past the stage and threw the mic in my face and demanded that I sing this song in Norweigian.  Now, if any of you have ever heard or seen Norweigian, you will know, that it is not a real language.  I just ended up laughing the entire time.  Sanne and I then sung Revolution by the Beatles and Bohemian Rhapsody.  Also, if you didn’t know, I can’t sing, so yeah, that was really fun for the whole bar.

Then we went to the concert in Valby.  It turns out the concert was at a biker bar and the band playing was a 70s rock cover band.  All they played were the Rolling Stones and Led Zeppelin and other various nostalgic musicians for all of you who were alive during that era.  The band was really rockin, but their lead singer had a curly mullet and their bassist was the oldest badass I have ever seen.

Also, this is their groupie:  RAOWR

After the concert, we got on a train to go to Trekroner which is 3 stops away (about 20 minutes).  And somehow in that time, both Sanne and I fell asleep and I finally woke up in Slagslen which is four stop after we were supposed to get off (at least half an hour away).  We get off and see that another train isn’t coming until 3.15 (it was 1.50) and the train isn’t even going towards Roskilde.  I ask the train conductor if there were anymore trains coming by that could take us to Roskilde and he was like, “uhh hold on one sec,” goes and talks to the driver, comes back and tells us to get back on the train.  The train then turns around and drops us off in Roskilde (mind you this is at least an hour detour).  Luckily I dont think there was anyone else on the train, otherwise that would’ve really sucked, but I was almost hugging the conductor and thanking him.  So never underestimate people, they might come through for you.