100 days of Travel (so far)

100 days! How is that? Not too bad in my opinion! Only 80+ days until we are back home. I’m already thinking about life back home. Currently not extremely keen on having to go home after living like this. It feels normal now to move every couple of days, hotels are now just home and I get to spend all day every day with Ri! The only thing I’m getting sick of is having to eat every single day! Although my fat rolls suggest I’m still managing. I’m a little tired of the minimal selection of vegetarian options. I can only eat so many buns with no meat.

In 6 more nights we will be in Scotland and I’m keen to head back to countries where we will be able to understand everyone. The Vegie selection was good in England, maybe it's good in Scotland too?

Anyway since the last blog we have covered a vast distance. And not really seen a lot. Five nights ago we were in Tromso, which was a life-long dream of mine ever since I found out it existed 6 months ago. Tromso was awesome. Tromso is in the Arctic circle so we had two nights without any darkness. And a crazy beautiful sunset/rise on the first night. We kept expecting the darkness to come after we saw the sunset (because we’re silly) and were treated to seeing the sunset for about 2-3 hours only to change its mind at the last minute and at about quarter past midnight it started getting visibly lighter, time for sunrise! This all happened before the last blog.

We got on a flight from Tromso to Oslo at about 8:30am and then drove from Oslo to Copenhagen where we slept, did our laundry (people never say this about travelling but the need for clean clothes is almost as annoying as the need to eat every day), grabbed a hotdog (on our own!), grabbed some ice-cream and then we made our way to legoland.

Ah LEGOLAND. The photos at the start are from Legoland. This is one thing I am sure Aussies could do better than Scandinavians. Maybe they have better hotdogs, ice-cream, ways of selling cheap furniture BUT Aussies could make a better Legoland. Although I’m also convinced anyone can make a better Legoland.

There are many reasons why I'm not a fan of Legoland DK, but here is the big one that made Legoland a disappointment for Ri.

The park builds Lego structures that are really ugly and about their sponsors. So one sponsor is Dong energy, so we were treated to a Lego energy plant, a Lego solar plant and the ever so colourful Lego off-shore oil rig. And a Lego airport. And a Lego space station (ok Ri liked that one). There was no COLOUR, no personality. No interesting use of Lego. Like Lego a fork at the burger shop. Nowhere to interact with Lego either, which is what Ri was hanging out for.

So we left Legoland after only a couple of hours disappointed. And made our way to Bremen, Germany. Which wasn’t the most beautiful city we’ve ever seen. We gave up on this city three times, making our way back to the car, but we kept going back out because Lonely Planet had said it was pretty. In the end we did find a nice street and a couple of pretty little churches. If we had found it sooner we probably would have left thinking Bremen was amazingly pretty. But we were just over it and had a big drive down to Luxembourg to do that day.

And that is where I am now. Luxembourg. Eating pineapple. Watching CNN. We plan to see the city tomorrow before heading on to Bruges.

One awesome thing that did happen at Legoland is that we ended up (entirely by accident) at the Bob the Builder 4D movie. Which was in Danish. So we sat watching Bob the Builder with 3D glasses on for about 30 minutes having NO IDEA what was happening. It was hilarious. We really did have a good time. But the kids HATED it. The 4D effects were scary at some points and come to think of it, it was probably about why Dong energy is awesome. So maybe the poor things were bored.

Midnight in Tromso

The photo is of us in Tromso at midnight a couple of nights ago. Shortly after this shot the sun started rising.

Currently we are back in Denmark, heading to legoland. I'm so tired! It's 10:30pm, we were up at 6am for a flight from Tromso to Oslo and from Oslo we have driven to Denmark. Just wanted to do a quick blog and post up one of my favourite pic's so far!

Location - Oslo

We were in Melbourne New Years Eve 2009 and we got lost, or sent our friend to the wrong suburb or something along those lines, so he sent me this message "I'd like to see the two of you on the amazing race." He was mocking us! And our travel abilities in Melbourne with a year and a bit until we were going around the world. So when this friend set us a challenge in Copenhagen, the mission was to find a hotdog with 'yellow sauce.' I thought that this would be our roadblock our chance to show our friend that we aren't completely hopeless. So inbetween museums and the other sites we saw, we LOOKED for hotdogs with yellow sauce. And. We. Failed. We only found French hotdogs and an organic hotdog stand. I could hear Phil telling us we were the last team to arrive.

Luckily our friends mother had hooked us up with his cousin, who showed us all around beautiful Copenhagen the next day. She was kind enough to point out all these hotdog stands that had come up over night (they had either just opened that day or we had walked straight by them). We had a great day with her and her friend and her half pug whose name our English tongues couldn't pronounce. She took us to the Crowned Prince's house, where we could line up and file through the big rooms to admire the renovations (there was a massive map of Tasmania in one room - and really what can you do but laugh?).

We could get so close to the Royal houses! You could go and knock on the Queens door if that's what you felt like doing. So different to the fort that is Buckingham palace.

After admiring the future home of Fred and Mary, we went to Christiania. Which is like Nimbin, except in Copenhagen.

After our guided tour of Copenhagen, which had lasted 8-9 hours, we drove to Sweden.

Stolkholm is apparently made up of 13 islands and a heap of 'bloody tunnels.' On our first day in Stolkholm Ri decided we had to see the hippy island and the old town island.

We arrived on the hippy island at about midday and noticed yellow and blue tap was going up and that they were getting ready for a parade. Then a rainbow flag walked by and I said to Ri "I think that a Gay Pride Parade is about to start!!!!" So we grabbed a park and he gave me a choice....
"We can go left and go to the park or go right and go to a gay pride parade"

I'm like ARE YOU KIDDING ME? YOU THINK WE HAVE A CHOICE?!?! HOW OFTEN CAN ONE SAY THEY SAW A GAY PRIDE PARADE? LET ALONE A SCANDINAVIAN GAY PRIDE PARADE! WE MUST GO."
I still can't believe he would let this opportunity pass by.
So we found a space in the crowd and watched the Scandinavian Gay Pride Parade 2010, oh the colours and the music and the gimps. SO MUCH FUN. I was singing along and Ri was watching, some what silently. But even he couldn't resist singing along to "I come from a land down under".... ummm I didn't know that song was 'Gay.'

Now I'm not remotely political. But I think that Gays and Lesbians should have every right to get married. No one can present me with an arguement as to why it's not their right, or why they have the right to stop them. I think laws against gay marriage are very short sighted/small minded. But that's just my opinion I guess.

From the Gay Pride Parade to a local vegetarian cafe (YUM) to Old Town on another island. I'm finding that lately I'm a self-loathing tourist. I can no longer walk around with maps out and camera shooting everything in site. I want to upgrade to traveller. I once read that the difference is that a Tourist goes to another country and tries to make it feel like home and a Traveller goes to another country and tries to experience it like a local. I'm somewhere in the middle. Still won't eat meat. But I can't stand being in an obvious tourist trap for more than the time it takes to grab a few gifts with the local flag on them.
That is what old town is by the way, a massive tourist trap. So.Sick.Of.Tourists.

We had another two days in Stockholm, but I can only be bothered writing about 2 more things that happened in Sweden.

We went into a local video store and asked the guy at the checkout if he spoke English.
Yes he did.
Sweet, then we needed a Swedish movie with English subtitles for my brother who I know owns one Swedish movie about Vampires called something like "Let the right one in."
Movie man had heard of this movie. He looked up the director of the vampire movie on his computer and found a similiar movie, and after going through an entire non-alphabetized shelf he decided it wasn't in stock... Back to the computer and suggested another one. Turns out no English subtitles. At this point he begged "Does it HAVE to be Swedish?!" Yes, we are in Sweden, why would I buy Big Mama's House in Swedish? Makes no sense. Eventually we found the only Swedish movie in the store with English subtitles. Love you Mr Movie Man.

At the Zoo in Stockholm (yes we went to the zoo, but it was the only thing open late on a Sunday afternoon). Ri needed to go the bathroom and I watched this happen.
Ri walked into a bathroom marked "Herr" walked out again 5 seconds later, looked next door at the bathroom marked "Dame" he then hesitated, then confidently walked back into the one marked "Herr". He really does make me laugh every single day.

Now we are in Oslo, Norway, with beautiful weather and free Coke. In Berlin I made Ri buy a book on travel in Europe and now he quotes it ALL the time. He was reading it at lunch in Oslo and looking worried.
"We need to dress up" he says
"What, why?"
"In Italy, the locals expect everyone to dress up... as the locals are snappy dressers and one of the tips is to take some good clothes"
"Do you want to go shopping? Do you want some good clothes?"
"Yes, for Italy"

So we went for H&M and found him a snappy shirt.
Oh he makes me laugh. Every day.

Until next time.

Location - Copenhagen

Well I didn't really write anything about Berlin yet, where we had four days of trying to take in Germany history and have fun. Which I don't think can happen at the same time in Berlin. We found visiting the museums quite draining. At least now I feel like I know a little more about the wars and the wall. All of which I could have learnt about in history if I paid attention I guess, but there is something more powerful about learning in settings like the DDR museum which is a hands on museum that is about life in Eastern Germany.

On our first day in Berlin Ri asked me what I wanted to do and I said that I wanted to leave having a better understanding of Germanys history.

Alright, Ri says, where would you like to go first?

The zoo, I say.

This is the thing about Europe with me at the moment. I want to learn and understand. But I want to have some fun too. So on our first day we went to the zoo and played with the otters and then the next day started systematically going to all those museums (checkpoint charlie, DDR, history) and an aptly named memorial known as the 'memorial to the murdered jews of europe.'

From Germany we have driven up to Denmark, on our first night we stayed in Assens for no other reason than one of our favourite peoples was born there and we wanted to see it. It was a small sea-side town, the high light for us was a toy store called Bambi where Ri bought some lego. Which he had since assembled and now it's taken pride of place next to the TV in our hotel room in Copenhagen. The photos above are from Assens, well the first one is Ri with his lego which the shop owner kindly wrapped for him. He greatly enjoyed unwrapping it the next day. The second shot is from an island near-ish to Assens.

I LOVE COPENHAGEN! We spent today in the shopping area and bought some shoes, 2 headbands, a skirt and a dress, which is the most stuff I have bought in 3 months. It is just so beautiful, and I love the people. And the icecream.