I heart Belgium

What's not to like? Great beer and chocolate, and free wi-fi at the campground!! That's a first, and as you can tell, very, very exciting! Too bad we're only here one night...

From Sweden, we drove back through Denmark (expensive bridges) through Germany to the Netherlands, where we watched the Dutch lose to Portugal in the World Cup in a cute town called Groningen.

Then, on to Amsterdam for a few days, a quick boat tour of Rotterdam, and now, we're back in the land of beer and plentiful internet!

The photo is from Antwerp.

-SK

a Bruges, Belgium

The longest day of the year...

We spent the longest day of the year, as hoped, in Stockholm. As I mentioned before, it was a bit of a let-down, since we barely saw the sun! But no worries, because according to our guidebook* the big midsummer celebration in Sweden happens the Saturday after the solstice. So, in search of better weather, we headed south to Malmo to take in the Big Event. The drive from Stockholm to Malmo is about 6 hours, and really boring. It rivals driving across Iowa. To keep ourselves occupied, and awake, we wrote a song in GarageBand. You can hear it (assuming I did this right). It's not finished, but if you try to imagine the same thing going on for oh, another five hours or so, you'll get the idea!

We arrived at the campground in Malmo around 6:30 on Friday. It was full of folks celebrating the midsummer. The celebration seemed to include a pole similar to a Christian cross but with rings around the two horizontal pieces and decked out in foliage and Swedish colors, and for many people a game we call "Stick and Castle", where teams try to knock over each other's wooden castles by tossing sticks at them.

Wandering away from the campground and towards the beach, we found the "Tivoli" - a basic carnival, but with something very intriguing called the William Arne Motorcirkus, with the "Wall of Death". We were intrigued, but had missed the last show for the evening...

So the next morning, we went in search of the big Midsummer Festival... We rode into downtown Malmo, which was completely dead. Asking around, we found that the celebration was actually on Friday night, and that it consisted mainly of the carnival. Darn, we thought there would be fireworks and free concerts! It makes us realize that Seattle has a pretty darn good summer festival(s), between FolkLife, Seafair and Bumbershoot!

Anyway, Malmo is a pleasant place, with nice parks and some interesting redevelopment in the old port, including a 45 story building (the tallest in Sweden, I'm betting). We found their version of the "soundgarden" - a circular earthworks near the port redevelopment with speakers in its berm. And on our way back to the campground we stopped at the tivoli for the William Arne Motorcirkus!

You may have seen this type of thing on the Discovery Channel as some sort of historic novelty. It's a wooden cylinder held together by cables and rope. The spectators stand around the top (I don't think there are any spectators in the Discovery Channel version), and crazy people (oops, I mean trained professionals) ride motorcycles around the cylinder, held up by centripetal force. As they drive around, the entire arena bends and flexes, which makes it even more fun!

Anyway, I THINK we experienced Midsummer in Sweden... Unfortunately, it was dampened by the Swedes' loss to the Germans in the World Cup game Saturday.

-SK
a Amsterdam


*Lonely Planet's Europe on a Shoestring, aka "the Bible"

Impressions of Scandinavia

22 June

So far, Scandinavia (or Denmark and Sweden, at least!) has looked a lot (and a little disappointingly) like the United States. There are big cars, wide streets, 7-11s and suburbs. Of course, the cities are older. And surprisingly, smoking is tolerated everywhere (including on the subway cars!) in Denmark.

We made it to Stockholm for the solstice, and have not been disappointed by the length of the days. In fact, it's a little bit annoying to wake up at 3:30 am because it's already light. What we are missing for this solstice party, however, is the sun! It has been mostly overcast with rain off and on. Typical Seattle weather.

The landscape here is a lot like northern Minnesota. It's relatively flat and forested, with granite bedrock outcrops and a lot of lakes and islands. We took a boat out to Finnhamn island, in the Stockholm archipelago, which was a nice break from city sightseeing. We're a bit "citied out" after Berlin, Kopenhagen and Stockholm!

One of the things I'm enjoying about Sweden is the fact that they seem to have no qualms about importing food. The grocery store near the campground (whose primary function is that of a hockey arena in the winter) was well stocked with French cheese, Italian pastas, Indian rice, Vietnamese sauces, and something I've been craving for a while... MEXICAN FOOD! Yes, real tortillas, salsa (ok, in a jar, but still not bad) and refried beans! And at (sort of) reasonable prices, meaning only about double what you'd pay in the US. I guess importing food is kind of a must when local traditions leave a little something to be desired. You can only eat so much Wasa with pickled herring...

-SK
a Stockholm, Sweden

Impressions of Yermany

19 June

We arrived in Germany at the beginning of the World Cup, and shared campgrounds with groups supporting Argentina, Mexico, Switzerland, Italy, Germany (of course!) and Sweden. Lots of Swedes!, which are easy to spot because of their yellow and blue outfits. They also pronounce "Germany" starting with a Y sound, which is why we now call it Yermany.

After visiting the castle at Schwangau built by crazy King Ludwig, we spent two days in Munchen (Munich), which has one of the best transit systems we've encountered yet ("smart" escalators change direction when a train comes in), and huge streets by European standards. We shopped for, and finally found used bikes! (It's been hard to find anything that fits Craig in Italy and France.) And, of course, joined the crowds in the biergarten in the English Garden, where we watched the US lose to the Czech Republic. Badly.

Then, for a bit of a respite from the city, we spent a night in small-town Bamburg, famous for its smoked beer (imagine drinking a good hefeweisen around a campfire... without the campfire), before heading to Berlin.

Berlin is fascinating, with its mix of east and west and old and new, and is not afraid to tear down old neighborhoods for new monumental projects. It has some of the most interesting public art and architecture that we've seen in Europe. And an urban hipster scene that rivals that of Seattle. Only it seems that everyone is trying just a bit too hard to achieve the "look".

We spent longer than anticipated at the Judisches Museum, one of the best examples I've ever seen of integrated museum architecture, with excellent and interactive exhibit design.

Like Munchen, Berlin has an excellent public-transport system, though we only used it to get in and out of town, since we now have our bikes! The ticket-buying system at the main (and brand-new) transit center was extremely confusing... It required going to one machine to choose your route and ticket, and taking the barcoded paper it printed out to another machine to pay, and pick up the 'real' tickets. On our way back to the campground in Potsdam, lightning strikes delayed the regional trains for almost an hour!

If you wake up one day magically transported into a foreign city, you will know you're in Germany if:
a) there is a steel and glass structure next to the cathedral
b) there is a huge park behind the steel and glass structure
c) there is a designated bike lane with its own traffic signals running from the park to the city center and beyond
d) the first person you encounter on the bike lane is drinking a beer (and if they also have visible tattoos, then you're in Berlin)

-SK
a Ljusfors, Sweden

The photos here are from Bamberg and Berlin

Back "home"

May 31 - June 2

Yay! We have new tenants for our condo back home. Welcome Ben and Johanna!

We are back in France now, headed "home" to Les Brevieres to make sure everything is in order before heading out again.

Our Italian adventures after Rome took us to Tuscany (mainly Florence) with Berdie and Bronwen, and then to Pisa, which is pretty darn cool. The square with the famous tower is HUGE by Italian standards, and also grassy with sections that you are actually allowed to walk and picnic on. Craig did one of his "toss it in the air" photo projects there which ought to have some nice views of the hoards of people touring the site. From there, we went to Portofino (spectacular) and Genoa. We only spent half a day in Genoa, most of it at an Internet Point, and we feel we really need to go back! We are dubbing Genoa the new "scooter mania", since it seems to have tailed off a bit in Florence.

We hope to stay in Les Brevieres as little as possible and then head north, trying to make it to Stockholm for the solstice! Not to mention, when we got here, it was snowing. Not exactly impetus to stay. But we had a great lunch today with our landlords, Henry et Odile Favre, chez eux. It's very good for our French!

(The photos are from Genoa and Les Brevieres. You can probably figure out which is which.)

-SK
a Albertville, et Bourg St. Maurice

PS. There are new photos posted, check them out!