The Da Vinchi Code

‘We’ll always have Paris.’ – Howard Koch, Casablanca

This past weekend I finally was able to break my streak of stagnation and headed off to Paris for a few days! On Thursday night I left with two girls, Abbie and Meg, also from the States for a quick weekend getaway. We did not have any class on Friday, so we caught an early flight out and then headed back late on Sunday. Since neither Abbie or Meg have traveled very often they were relying on me to show them the ropes, so I felt a little more pressure this trip for things to go right and thankfully, it was my first trip where nothing major happened! Well, at least for me (Abbie almost lost her passport and wallet at a souvenir shop and Meg printed out the wrong boarding pass for her flight so was charged an extra 550 NOK). But for me, it was my first completely successful trip!

Thursday night we caught the late train into Rygge and arrived at midnight. Normally they provide a free shuttle bus from the train station to the airport, but unfortunately it had stopped running by the time we got there. I had planned ahead and had printed off some walking directions from Google Maps. It was about a 2 mile walk to the airport, not too cold out, and we only got lost once or twice, so it was not all that bad. We made it to the airport around 1/1.30 and then set up camp to sleep for at least a few hours. 5 a.m. came all too quickly though and it was time to check in and head through security. It was a 2 hour flight in and then a 1 ½ bus ride into the center of Paris- all used for sleeping.

Once we hopped off of the bus, we headed to the metro and navigated our way to the hostel. While riding the metro at one of the stops a guy got on and started playing a beautiful piece of French music on the accordion. At that moment in the window behind me, I saw the Eiffel Tower for the first time. I seriously felt like I was in a movie.

We dropped our things off at the hostel and then headed towards the Eiffel Tower. It was raining on and off all day, but it was pretty warm outside, so it didn’t bother us too much. That was until we got to the top of the tower. For only 12 EUR we were able to go all the way to the top of the tower and see all around. It really was an incredible experience. I was surprised because to me the Eiffel Tower always seemed bigger, not saying it was small, but I always thought it was huge.

After the Tower we wandered over to a café and had a very nice lunch/dinner. I even tried some escargot, which is a lot better than I thought it’d be. It has the texture of clams, but tastes so buttery and garlicky. Dinner was followed by meandering through the streets towards the Arc de Triumph and the Champs Eylsees. We wandered into Luis Viton and that was absolutely ridiculous...I saw a keychain for 275 EUR! I simply cannot believe some people have that amount of money to spend on a keychain!

We stopped back at the hostel for about an hour or so and then met up with one of Abbie’s friends, Jon, who was couch surfing in Paris for the weekend.  Couch surfing is an organization in which people can open up their houses for different tourists to stay in. So if they have extra room in their home and invite people, different travelers can get into contact with them and ask to stay for free. Jon and the person’s house he was staying at, Sam, and another girl from South Korea who was also staying with Sam, June, all met us at a café for a late night drink. Soon though it was late and we were exhausted so we headed back to the hostel.

Saturday morning we were up and headed to the Louvre. Fortunately our hostel was located pretty close to everything so we could walk, it often took a while, but it still saved on transportation costs! Plus, we could then really enjoy all of the flower shops, bakeries and pet shops! It was quite wonderful because we are students we got into the Louvre for free. We spent a couple hours wandering around that. Surprisingly the Mona Lisa was bigger than I expected. Everyone had always warned me it was a lot smaller, but I think that caused me to greatly lower my expectations. I was thinking it’d be a little bigger than a normal sheet of paper, but it was actually a lot bigger. My favorite though was Venus de Milo. I hadn’t realized that statue was at the Louvre so it was a pleasant surprise to see it.

Afterwards we walked over the lock bridge to the Latin Square. We walked the streets a bit, enjoyed the brief periods of sunshine and then stopped to have a nice lunch. We then headed to the Notre Dame. We waited outside to climb the towers to the top, unfortunately the inside of the cathedral was closed.  The view from the top was worth the hour wait in the rain and cold. By the time we got to the top the sky was blue and it was my favorite view of Paris of all.

Next we headed to the Opera house, but it too was closed. We then checked out the Lafayette shopping center which was completely overwhelming. It was filled with so many people and stores and overpriced things- I felt like I could barely move. We got out of there very quickly and found a nice café for some hot chocolate and snacks. Shortly afterwards we braved the cold again to head back to the Latin Square for a really nice dinner of crepes, cheese fondue, and frog legs! All of which were delicious.

On our walk back we headed past the Eiffel Tower to see it all lite up at night. We were lucky to be there right as the clock stroke 11 o’clock and got to see the tower sparkle. At the top of every hour, there are lights that go off and make the tower dance.

We headed back to the hostel and crashed. Slept like a little baby, well… until the fire alarm went off at 5 a.m. Soundly asleep, I awoke to the noise of what I thought was an alarm clock, but then once Abbie sat up and said ‘ I think that’s the fire alarm’ all I could do was roll over and put the pillow over my head. When she check out the door and said people were running was the moment when I finally realized that I was not in my old dorm or in my old house where the fire alarm went off every other night so we just ignored it, and that this fire alarm was real. So I shot up in my bed, grabbed my shoes, yelled at Meg and Abbie to grab their passports and then flew down the stairs with the rest of the hostel. Once arriving at the front door, and saw everyone gathered in the front entrance, I realized that it was not real. We heard mumblings that someone had either pulled it or that someone was smoking in the bathrooms and set it off. For the five minutes we were stuck down there, it was quite a sight to look around and see what everyone else was wearing or what they had grabbed. Various articles of clothing were on, blankets wrapped around, backpacks and suitcases with things falling out. Soon enough the alarm stopped and we slowly headed back up to bed. I crawled in, glad for another couple of hours of sleep. I was just beginning to dream when I was rudely awoken again by the fire alarm! This time I really did just put the pillow over my head and ignored it. Abbie checked out of the door again and other guests told her it was nothing, so we all just forgot about it and fell asleep.

Sunday morning came too early after that eventful night, but soon we had eaten breakfast, checked out and headed out for our last day in Paris. Our first stop was back at the Opera house for a tour of the inside. It was really quite ornate and the ceiling of the main room was beautiful. After the tour we headed towards the Artists’ Square, which was by far my favorite spot in all of Paris. Up on a hill, a little outside of the city, there is a little square filled with various artists painting various scenes of Paris. It was so quaint and the paintings were so stunning. I bought myself a little one, unfortunately they were pretty expensive (especially for a poor college student) so I couldn't buy all of my favorites.

We then headed to the Basilique du Sacre-Coeur- a beautiful cathedral on a hill overlooking all of Paris. So beautiful, but also full of people trying to sell you all different things, so that kind of took away from the scene, but incredible nonetheless.

Shortly afterwards we wandered back down past the Moulin Rouge, got some crepes and chocolate éclairs (those were so good- I got two!), past the Arc de Triumph and made our way slowly towards the buses back to the airport. In the evening caught our flight back, spent one last night in the airport and got back into Bø early Monday morning.

Overall, the trip was very successful. Exhausting, but wonderful. The view from Notre Dame, the Artists’ Square the chocolate éclairs were my favorites. Now I’ve got to study up for a midterm in Norwegian on Thursday and then it’s off to Italy on Monday for a few days!

Lots of love back to you all! It’s hard to believe it’s already February- only 4 short months till I’m back home- Ahh! 

Round Two

‘You don't learn to walk by following rules. You learn by doing, and by falling over.’ -Richard Branson

Well, I’ve been back in Bø for about a week and a half now and I am already feeling restless and ready to take another trip, but have to wait for all of my class schedules before I can make any definite plans. So here I sit and wait for at least another weekend. And what to do in the meantime, well why not ski?

I am taking only four classes this semester- Norwegian (still trying to learn some Norwegian language), Telemark Regional Identity II (more about the culture in this part of Norway), Tourism and the Environment (pretty self-explanatory by the title), and  Friluftsliv: Individuals, Environs and Society (SKIING!) For my Individuals class, we are focusing this semester on the popular Norwegian pastime- cross country skiing. I get my own set of skis for the entire semester and I plan on getting all the out of them I can. There are a few tracks right outside of the school, so about a 5 minute walk from my door. Eventually they will even light up a couple of the trails so we can go skiing later in the afternoon/evening. In the past five days- I’ve gone skiing four times, and although I still fall- I’m getting better. Anyways my professor says you are not learning anything new unless you are falling and getting out of your comfort zone. There is a 4k loop I’ve done the past couple of days, and a new friend and I are working our way up to do a 20k hopefully on a weekend pretty soon. For our skis, we did have to purchase some wax and cork. The wax is used on the bottom of the ski to help you get up mountains/hills and the cork is just used to spread it in. I was surprised at how carefully and particularly my professor described the type of wax we needed to get, until I actually got to Intersport- the sports store. There seriously were shelves full of different kinds of wax. In fact my professor joked with us that it is through the different ski waxes that Norwegian children learn their colors. But I’m really looking forward to learning how to ski better and pursuing this new hobby.

Quick note about the new international students here in Bø. We have around 30 new international students here with about 10 or so staying from last semester, so compared to the 70 international students we had last semester, it feels very empty here. There are 6 new students from the States (N. Dakota, Oregon, Washington, Minnesota) and 2 from Canada, and then a few from the Czech, Latvia, Lithuania and a few other places. But I am very happy because lots of the new students from North America want to travel- so looks like I’ve found some new travel partners! Now, it’s just time to start planning! And another plus- the sun is rising at 9.04 tomorrow and not setting until 16.03- we are so close to 7 full hours of sunlight!! I have waited so long for this :)

Sending my love back home to you all! 

Night at the Museum

'I went to the museum where they had all the heads and arms from the statues that are in all the other museums.'  -Steven Wright

Day 1- Jan. 2^nd: Well, the second day of 2013 did not start off entirely the greatest. It was a very early morning- the alarm clock was ringing at 3.30 and then it was time to finish up packing and head off to the airport. Aimee was not feeling very well at all this morning so we took it a little slower when walking to the bus station to pick up a bus to the airport. The bus station is connected to both the metro and the train station as well and we got there rather quickly…or so we thought. We arrived at the bottom train station, but we needed to get above to the bus station. So we found some signs pointing us in the right direction, but they were locked. So we decided just to follow the exit signs to get back out on top and come in a different direction, expect the signs did not lead us anywhere and all of the doors we did find were also locked. We were completely trapped in the bottom of the train station with nowhere to go. So what do all smart college students do? Of course you run across multiple sets of train tracks. And if anyone was to ask us, of course neither of us saw the multiple signs listing how severe the danger and fine would be if we were to get caught. So now on the other side of the tracks our luck should have picked up, but it didn't. We followed the exit signs that lead us downstairs, but every door we tried again was locked. Luckily, we found a maintenance man cleaning up part of the area we were near and thankfully he spoke English. After asking him for help, he lead us back to all the same doors we tried and was equally as confused as to why they wouldn’t open. Finally he lead us back to a door and used his key to let us through and we literally ran from there to the desk in the bus station and quickly bought our tickets and hopped on the bus. We got the airport and through security with no problem, but Aimee was still not feeling well. We got on the plane and I was instantly asleep. About half through the flight I woke up to Aimee shaking my shoulder asking if she could go to the bathroom, and as I was letting her pass she informed me that she had puked and was taking her little white puke bag to the bathroom. Thankfully after that she felt much better. We landed all too quickly and hopped on a bus to the hostel. Our hostel is incredible. It’s a little farther away, but we get to stay in the old Olympic Stadium from the summer Olympics of 1952. It was originally built for the 1938 Olympics, but because of World War II, it was never held. We’re surrounded by all of the old fields and right outside our window is the soccer stadium. Also, our room is absolutely huge, especially compared to our hostel in Stockholm. We arrived at the hostel around 10.00 and instantly crashed until 2 o’clock. Then we slowly awoke and found a grocery store and stocked up for the rest of our time. We then made a nice stew, well really I should say Aimee made a nice stew and I helped cut up veggies. The evening was spent planning our few days we have here, as well as a ferry day trip down to Tallinn, Estonia on Saturday! So it’s an early night tonight and a busy day tomorrow!

Day 2- Jan. 3^rd: Today we got up and after a quick breakfast headed down towards the center of the city. We first stopped in the central train station to buy tickets to Tallinn and sign up for a bus tour in the afternoon. We bought a ‘Helsinki Card’ which gave us free/discounted entrance to a lot of museums and free public transportation. Due to the absolutely freezing weather and some more rain, we really got our money’s worth out of the free museum part. We spent the rest of our morning walking around the Museum of Cultures and another free art museum right by it. In the art museum, it was pretty funny because the whole upper floor was dedicated to a sci-fi movie called “Iron Sky”, which is all about how the Nazi’s have a military base on the dark side of the moon and are planning on taking over the Earth. The best part was messing around with the green screen there. After a quick lunch we headed back for a free audio bus tour. We were driven all around the city for about two hours and saw lots of monuments/ buildings- the Grand Cathedral, the house of Parliament, the President’s Palace, the Rock Church, Sibelius Monument, etc.

Next we headed off to the Finland Photography Museum, but unfortunately they were moving the exhibit, so at the time it was quite small. But connected to that was the Theater Museum, which was actually quite fun because it was quite interactive and lots of costumes to dress up in!

We then headed back to the hostel for some pasta to warm us up and a quick break before we headed back to the Contemporary Arts Museum, which was closing so we did a very quick run through. The night was concluded with a stop at Molly’s- an Irish pub with some good live music and then it was off to bed.

Day 3- Jan. 4^th: Today we spent the morning at Suomenlinna- one of the largest sea fortresses in the world and it’s on UNESCO’s list of World Heritage Sites. It was built in the 1700’s when Finland was a part of Sweden and today is home to about 800 permanent residents. We hopped on a ferry in the morning and spent the day there going through the museum and walking around the small island. It was really quite peaceful and beautiful.

We headed back into Helsinki in the early afternoon and went to the Kumbukumbu or the Finnish Evangelical Lutheran Mission Museum, which was basically a museum about some of the culture of China and a tribe in Ghana. We then headed back to the central train station for a quick break, some donuts and to warm up. After that we wandered to the Geological museum and Finland’s National Museum for some more cultural stuff. Trust me, by this time, everything starts to look the same. Luckily we switched things up that night and tried to take a tour of the Lux Helsinki. Lux Helsinki is a festival going on from January 4^th until the 8^th, where the city had hired artists to decorate certain parts of the city’s buildings or parks with the theme of ‘light’. Total there is about 12 displays. It is all to add a little bit of light during this very dark time of the season. We started at the Grand Cathedral and met up with our tour group and watched this wonderful display on the Cathedral. We then proceeded down through the city towards the Contemporary Art Museum. Here we saw a few more light decorations, both of which were not very impressive. But then we were able to see one which consisted of a fire show. My camera died, but I was able to capture this short video of it. It was so impressive. Unfortunately after that we decided to head back homeà it was way too cold and our tour guide was not very knowledgeable about any of the displays. We warmed up with some food and then planned our day tomorrow in Tallinn!

Day 4- Jan. 5^th: Whoop whoop! Spent this very cold day in Estonia today!  We had to get up super early to catch our 8.30 ferry into Tallinn. Since being here in Europe, I’ve taken plenty of ferries, but never one this big! It was huge, but unfortunately, I was way too tired to go exploring and spent the two hour ride napping. Soon we arrived in Tallinn and, after seeing the size of the city, realized all of our planning and timing was pretty unnecessary. It is quite small and in fact, we got everything we wanted to do done by 2 o’clock in the afternoon. We walked around all of the Old Town and saw St. Olav’s church, the Town Hall Square, the Christmas Market, Freedom Square, St. Catherine’s Passage, the Great Coastal Gate, parts of the Town Wall, lookouts over the city, the Cathedral of Saint Mary the Virgin, and the Palace. And of course, our day wouldn’t be complete without at least one museum to warm us up, so we headed to the Museum of Occupations, and learned all about Estonia’s occupation by the Nazi’s and the Soviet Union> Our afternoon was spent satisfying our consumer side as we wandered through the more modern side of the city and spent a few hours in a mall. After a really satisfying and cheap meal at a restaurant in the more modern city, we headed back into the Old Town to have a look of it at night. To be honest, I felt like I was entering an amusement park. The tower gates’ were lite up, there were people in costumes and souvenirs booths all over. We meandered through the market once more and headed up for a nice night look out over the city. We then slowly made our way back to catch our 9 o’clock ferry back to Helsinki. Now, it’s off to bed.

Day 5- Jan. 6^th: Last day in Helsinki and now I’m in the airport waiting to leave for Norway. This morning was pretty slow. We packed up and ate some breakfast. We then headed off to the Grand Cathedral to attend a Lutheran service in Finnish. We were given a bulletin in English so we could follow along, which was nice, because Finnish is a very strange language. We then made our way down to the market right on the harbor. We spent some time looking over all of the different booths, but the cold air and wind from the sea soon lead us back to the tram stop and some nice warm food at the hostel. Soon enough it was time to head to the airport. Aimee was hopping a plane to Denmark and left an hour or so earlier than I did, but I was way too cold to even think about exploring the city more, so I headed to the airport with her. After my flight gets in, I’ll get on a train and be back in Bø at 12.30 tonight!

Here's some pictures from Helsinki

And here are a few from Tallinn-

Sweden and Finland were very wonderful, but I’ve come to two conclusions about the cities. 1.) They want your hands to suffer from the cold as they love to eat your mittens/ gloves. I lost one of my mittens the first day in Sweden and Aimee lost one the first day in Finland. All over the ground too we were finding single gloves/mittens lying around. Often we were tempted to pick them up to make a full pair, just to keep our hands warm. 2.) I am going to start a charity to collect shovels to donate to the city. NO ONE KNOWS HOW TO SHOVEL THEIR SIDEWALKS HERE!! It is so ridiculous! I have never walked through so much slush in my life! Good thing I brought my boots :) 

Tomorrow I start up classes again and also meet all of the new international students coming in for the spring semester. Time to be on my best behavior as I have to make some new friends- going to be hard as I’m so stinken tired. Anyways, I hope you all had/ are having a wonderful Christmas break! Love and miss you all so much!!

-Marissa