Germany......Hooray!

The photos are sorted and the panoramas are now panoramic. The following is a blurb about the trip but check out the photos to see what I'm talking about.

We started our epic journey of train delays early on the 21st Dec in the freezing cold. Nearly all trains north of Lund were delayed or canceled and there was not a bus to be seen. Here starteth the joy of traveling in winter!

Eventually we made it to Copenhagen airport where we waited for our diverted plane to recover from a "problem on board"! However, they made it up to us with free tea and chocolate on board.

There are three parts to our trip Bonn/Köln (Cologne), Finnentrop & Würzburg.

Bonn/Köln
We arrived safely in Bonn with no further plane troubles to hang out with Eva and Wilma (Eva's cute Dalmatian dog). It was here that I learned the very important phrase of "Was sagt der Hund?" - What does the dog say? This is a key phrase in Wilma's life and also Jochen's. Unbeknownst to me Jochen turns into a dog when he sees one! So after Jochen and Wilma got reacquainted with lots of tail wagging and sniffing we hit the Weihnachtsmarkt - Christmas markets and indulged in some Gluehkirsch - cherry mulled wine, with extra rum! The Weihnachtsmarkt usually occurs from the end of November until just before Christmas. It's full of lights, food and shiny things you don't need but really want!

Next is the educational section of the trip as we wandered into the Beethoven Museum where Beethoven was born. This experience might have been boring for non-musos but Jochen was exceptional at pretending to be interested and translating for me. He earned many brownie points that day! We spent the afternoon walking from Schloss (The Kurfürstliches Schloss) to Schloss (Poppelsdorf Palace of the Archbishop of Köln) both of which are now part of the University of Bonn.

The next adventure was in Köln where the weather was terrible. Freezing cold rain and snow at once. However, outside the train station is the biggest Gothic Cathedral you've ever seen in your life, gargoyles and flying buttresses galore! We escaped the weather and explored the inside which was just as cold as the outside but had some pretty amazing lead light windows, nice arches and cool patterns in the tiled floor. These are the main reasons I like going into all these churches, the architecture is amazing and I like to see how big their organ is :-) The Chocolate Museum was next, it was educational but we were hanging out for the tastings and shop. Yummm!

Finnentrop
After a couple of nights drinking with Eva in what felt like all of Bonn's bars, we needed some recovery time, so next stop Finnentrop! We arrived on Christmas Eve (despite more train delays) to a happy family, piles of prezzies and bucket loads of chocolate and food. Jochen was once more employed as my translator between Mum, Dad and myself and big brother Carsten filled in the gaps. Like any proper Christmas, this one was spent eating lots of yummy food and then filling up on sweets in between. We spent most of our time playing with our new toys and enjoying family time and yummy things.


Würzberg
One early morning four days later we rolled ourselves back to the train station a few kilos heavier in bag and tummies and headed to Würzburg! We stayed with Mario and Ilka who showed us around town and fed us lots more yummy food. If you haven't noticed already this trip was mainly about food.

While poor Ilka had to work, Mario took us up the mountain to find a pub while drinking brandy tea on the way. The next day we went to see the baroque Residenz of the Würzburg Prince Bishops which was built from 1720 - 1780. We took a tour of the interior but we only got a couple of photos of the fresco's of Giovanni Battista Tiepolo. A few weeks before WWII ended, Würzburg was hit with an air raid which left not only the town devastated but most of the Residenz as well. Therefore much of the building has been restored impeccably and the craftsmanship is amazing.

We walked up to the Marienberg Fortress which overlooks Würzburg and is where the previously mentioned Prince Bishops of Würzburg lived. It's a steep climb surrounded by grape vines but definitely worth the amazing view of the city below. Unfortunately the museum section wasn't open but on the way back down I took my first attempt at tobogganing on half a plastic bag. Heaps of fun and I was rewarded for my effort with lots of snow down my pants!
We ended our evening with a wine tasting of the surrounding region while watching the entertainment of a slightly drunk waitress drop a few glasses, a bottle of wine and then eventually she ended up on the floor herself.

We spent New Years Eve drinking and eating with friends at Mario and Ilka's, then we headed down to the river to watch and set off fireworks. We brought in the new year with champas and a surprising lack of firework injuries.

After recovering from our hangovers we made it back to Sweden safe and sound.

Cara's German Food Firsts
1. Bonn - Wild Boar Goulash with Spätzle
2. Bonn - Bratkartoffeln (fried potato with onion)
3. Bonn - Räuberfleisch (fried meat)
4. Köln - Berliner (jam donut)
5. Köln - Currywurst (take away pork sausage in curry sauce)
6. Finnentrop - Meat Fondue
7. Würzberg - Franconian Breakfast (giant bakery pretzel, white sausage, mustard and wheat beer - has to be eaten before midday)
8. Everywhere - Jägermeister (thank you to the Bavarian restaurant fulfilling the stereotype of a buxom serving wench...it made my day!)

I'm sure there are more but either I can't remember them or I can't pronounce them, but overall it was fantastically yummy!

So a big thank you to all those who housed us, fed us and entertained us, we had a fantastic time.

Sunbathing and Turpentine

Jochen has left me once more for South Africa to enjoy warm stormy weather, poo, beetles, giraffes, a swimming pool and most importantly....gin!

Well I can also have mini adventures of my own!
Last weekend we (Sam, Cinzia and myself) went on a girly road trip to Helsingborg which is about 40 minutes north of Lund by the coast and only 4 km across the water to Denmark. One of the main attractions of the town is the Kärnen (tower) which overlooks Helsingborg and the Baltic Sea. It is part of the remains from a Danish fortress (from when Skåne-the southern region, was part of Denmark) and was built in the 1310's. The view from the top of the tower is apparently amazing (we'd spent too much time eating to make it there before closing) but the view from the second level of the town or the bottom of the tower is also quite stunning. We happened to be up there at sunset which was pretty spectacular.


As you all know the Swedish winter is long, cold and in the south it is also windy. This leads to depression, alcoholism, hermitism, lack of fun-ism, and general complaining about how long and cold the winter is, followed by complaining of only one week of warm summer then back to winter. Therefore it is important to enjoy every ray of sunshine when it appears. The Swedes are professional sunbathers. There are usually benches in sunny spots along the bike paths and benches attached to the sides of buildings which when weather permits they are filled with Swedes basking in the sun and warming their backs upon the warm bricks. So when we saw sun bathing chairs in Helsingborg by the water we had to try them out. It's pretty funny to be sitting in the sun wrapped up in all the layers of woolies you can find and the temperature is definitely below zero. The rest of our adventure was spent wandering around the town, buying yummy chocolates, eating yummy food and being silly. Overall a lovely girly adventure was had.

Hopefully we will have more adventures like this as the weather gets warmer. Spring seems like it's just around the corner as it hasn't snowed for weeks and there are buds on the trees. One can only hope!

As for life in general I am still pondering the purpose of my life but I'm a happy little vegemite since I have found an art shop in Lund. Paint brushes and kanelbulle (cinnamon buns) what more could a girl want? Turpentine! That's right, good ol' turps. It appears that you cannot buy this harmful toxin in your normal supermarket but you can by acetone, what the? There is a double standards for your favourite poison. Acetone can be bought in supermarkets because you can remove your nail polish with it, but only real men buy turps! So after searching every supermarket I was given a tip (thanks Cinzia) that there was some kind of paint shop in Lund. This was a delightful surprise of it being an art supplies shop, now I really need a job to fund my habit. I mean my art habit not my turps habit, although this craving was also satiated.

So I leave you to reflect on how easy it is to obtain poisons in Australia. Please don't ingest!

(Click on photos in left side bar to see the album as usual)

January.....and it's still cold!

February already, and it seems my January news didn't even make it onto the blog. This was supposed to be the Germany post, however I am having some technical difficulties with the photos but hopefully I can post them soon.

January started off with recovering from New Year's and sleeping for a week after returning from Germany. Since then, we have been back to school/work and trying to think of new year's resolutions. For the last few years I have tried to pick resolutions that are actually achievable such as:

2008 - Learn to bake bread!
I achieved this, however I was stuck eating very dense bread for a year.

2009 - Eat more fish!
I achieved this also, but it meant I had to get over my fear of fish shops. So I found a fish shop where all the fish with pleading dead eyes were at one end and all the nice properly dead fillets of fish were at the other end. All I had to do was not turn left!

2010 - Get off your arse and move overseas!
Big tick for me. This was one of those resolutions that is like that yummy plate of left overs in the fridge. It tasted yummy the first time and you can't wait to go back and eat the rest but then it starts to go off. You think you'll eventually get around to eating it but you forget about it and slowly it grows legs and the giant furry greeny-browny-white fuzzy thing takes over your entire fridge and decides "Fuck this, if you're not going, I will!" So it packs you in it's sandwich bag and takes you to see the big wide world.

So after such a big change, traveling around with a fuzzy smelly green thing (although luckily not the original Green Thing), I decided to go back to something achievable........

2011 - Floss teeth more!
I'll let you know if I achieve this next year. Ummm, maybe I should have started with restocking my floss supplies.

We had a small science excursion to Borås which is about 60km east of Göteborg to test some fancy lights on bumblebees. The experiments were a success and we had some very happy biologists in the car. If you check out the photos you will see the frozen sea near Varberg (I think). It was another first for me, actually standing on the sea instead of in it and holding chunks of sea in my hands, weird and awesome!

My beloved Sambo (which is the Swedish way of saying "partner") has recently had a birthday. It is with lots of love I wish him a happy birthday and hope he has a wonderful year. We had a party with the coolest of cool friends, there was cake, there was dancing, there was beer, there was a Darth Vader Piñata, what more could a boy want? Lego! There was also lego.

We also spent part of January making and then waiting eagerly for home brew beer! All we need now is for the bubbles to appear inside the bottle.

Check out the photos, they are mostly silly party photos, comment if you feel like it and stay warm!

Winter.....Brrrr!

Snow, snow, snow! I am now experiencing my first real winter with all this white wet stuff falling out of the sky. Having been a neglected child, living only an hour and a half from the snow all her life but never actually getting to see it, touch it or throw it (not including when it snowed in Yack for the first time in 20 or 30 something years....doesn't count M & D!), this is very exciting stuff!

The first few pictures I've posted are of the first day of snow we had a few weeks ago. In my naive un-snowed state, I thought this was real snow. However, I was soon to learn that this slushy, half-rain stuff was a half arsed attempt and it would only make things wet and slippery. This did not deter my excitement which I am happy to say, a few snowy weeks later, I still love it.

The rest of the photos are from around where we live and I hope you enjoy them....my fingers nearly froze off in the making of them.

The milestones of this snowy adventure have been obviously the snow itself, my first snowball fight, getting pushed over in the snow a lot (thanks Jochen!), my first snow angel, frozen ears, walking to school in the snow everyday and realising why everyone wears fury hoods instead of just beanies and also, taking 10 minutes extra to layer up before leaving the house.

Other than snow, I have started Swedish language classes which is keeping me busy and maybe one day I'll understand what the crazy people on the bus are actually saying.

A big thank you to everyone for my birthday wishes, I had a great time and I will post some photos of it and Thanksgiving soon.

Next week we are off to Germany to enjoy Christmas and New Years with family and friends so I wish you all a God Jul och Gott Nytt År! Happy Holidays!

An Autumn in Sweden

"Out of the window. Down the tree. Over the wall. Under the bridge. Around the lake. Between the rocks. Through the woods. Up Spook Hill. Whoooo!"*

Like Bears in the Night we went for an adventure!

One fine day my friend Sam and I set out to go for a picnic in the forest. Unfortunately our hair is not golden and we didn't find any porridge. But we did find a lot of mushrooms. Mushroom picking is a great Swedish tradition along with 'Allemansrätten' the Swedish Right of Public Access. This means that you have the right to wander through the woods and forests (even if it is private land) as long as you do not disturb or destroy anything. But it also means that you can pick wild mushrooms and berries to your hearts content. Now the problem with this is that unless you are Swedish, or know your mushrooms very well, you could accidentally pick some deadly varieties e.g. death cap (safe to say it's usually good to avoid anything with 'death' in the title, not that they have a flashing neon sign above them telling you what they are). Anyway, due to the numerous varieties of mushrooms out there (more than just the button mushrooms in Aussie supermarkets), we two who are not Swedish, and do not know much about mushrooms, just took lots of photos instead.

Our destination was Skryllegården near Södra Sandby (just up the road), which is a nature reserve with walking tracks through it. The forests are full of poplar trees, oaks and pines which are beautiful in the autumn as all the leaves turn. Luckily it was a sunny day for us and we had our picnic of Vietnamese fresh spring rolls and Sam's garden salad (all yummy things from Sam's garden, except the turkey). We walked and walked and took many many pictures of mushrooms, moss and trees. Then we got slightly lost. I guess we weren't on the loop track that we thought we were on. Oops. But we made it back in the end, it seems that nothing ate our trail of breadcrumbs after all. Overall it was a lovely day and I thought you might appreciate seeing some of the 'bush'!

The second part to the set of photos (starting with the playground) are of near my house and of the walk to the shops. After every Canberra autumn I had always regretted not taking any photos, especially around Ainslie. So yesterday I put on my tourist attitude and walked to the shops which are about 15 minutes away (with little legs) and took photos on the way. This suburb is full of bike paths and can get very confusing as one way looks much like all the others.

When the good camera comes back from South Africa (with the man attached to it :-)) I shall try to take some photos of the city as well.

And don't forget, it is only 9 more (Swedish) sleeps until my Birthday!!!! Hooray! As most of you know, I love birthdays and get very excited, let the countdown begin! Not that I haven't been counting down for the last 365 days anyway:-)

* Bears in the Night - Stan & Jan Berenstain.

On the road again!

Back to Spain.

From Segovia we drove to El Burgo de Osma which is a couple of hours north of Madrid in Castilla y Leon province. The Lonely Planet describes El Bugro de Osma as a small town of about 5000 people "infused with an air of decaying elegance", obviously we had to see this.

We stayed in a small hotel called Posada del Canonigo just down from the town's 12th century Catedral which is a bit higgledypiggledy in architectural design. It started out as a Romanesque building, was then continued in the Gothic style and has a big baroque tower on top. Odd but pretty.

We spent the evening in Plaza Mayor, drinking, people watching and eating a not quite cooked burger. The Plaza is where the action happens, dinner is consumed late into the evening and all the kids play games in the centre of the square. The charming thing about this town was how relaxed everyone was. In the plaza there is a line of benches under two rows of trees and all the oldies sit with their canes (an oldie isn't complete without their cane) and they people watch all evening. What a wonderful life.

The next day we made our way to the Canyon del Rio Lobos just north of El Burgo. We were determined to see some birds of prey that the Canyon is known for. After getting some instructions from the park officer, we wandered off still unsure of where to go. The great thing about Spanish people who don't speak English is that they will explain whatever it is in Spanish anyway, and gesticulate, point and mime a lot. Most of the time you still don't know what's going on but you agree to whatever it is anyway. This park officers mime of driving and walking were very similar so we were lucky to make it into the Canyon at all.

The walk was beautiful! We walked up to the edge of the Canyon and tried to spot some vultures, then we wandered down into the Canyon itself and along the Rio Lobos. Right at the end is a small hermitage the Ermita de San Bartolome. This particular building was built in the 13th century which is marked by the architectural transition from Romanesque to Gothic. Legend says that this Ermita's location is because when the apostle Santiago (James) was riding along the top of the canyon, he jumped off one of the cliffs and where his sword struck was the site where the present church of San Bartolo was to be made. Just across the river from the Ermita is a huge limestone cave. We aren't sure how far back it goes as there were a lot of people scrambling about in the dark up there.

We then walked back along the river and came across a miracle! It was a sign, a sign that all our catedral visits (mostly to admire the architecture) and attempts not to run over pilgrims on their way to Santiago de Compostella was paying off. There was a restaurant about 1km from the end of our walk at the bottom of the canyon. We were ushered in by the middle aged little Spanish lady who explained the Spanish menu to us in Spanish and tried to teach me how to count. She then fed us the best roasted pork ribs in the world, roast chicken, salad and potatoes. I think Jochen had a religious experience eating the pork ribs and has not been the same since. After stuffing ourselves to the brim we were asked by a male waiter if we would like dessert. We poked out our bellies and politely refused. Apparently in this particular restaurant 'no' is not an option. We were then set upon by the middle aged little Spanish lady again, who with a sparkle in her eye, convinced Jochen that we must eat more. She then brought us a caramel wobbly slice dessert. After many thank you's and Jochen professing his love for the middle aged Spanish lady (who he is still intent on marrying), we rolled out the door to slowly waddle the last kilometre of the walk (needless to say we didn't eat dinner that night). And after the entire trip that meal was still rated as the best!

On the way back to El Burgo from the Canyon we managed to get lost trying to get to Castillo de Osma (I think). Basically it was the first castle ruins I've seen and it was exciting. If it was Castillo de Osma it was built in the 10th century, it's fairly overgrown but the inner and outer walls still stand along with the tower. What also amazes me is that the finer stone work of the architraves around the windows is still intact, especially since the castle is on such a windy hill. Anyway I can now check castle ruins off my list! It even had an outback dunny!

Monday saw us heading to San Sebastian, I've put a couple of car photos of this drive in but it doesn't do it justice. This was one of the most beautiful legs of driving that we did. The landscape transformed from dry, brown countryside to green luscious mountains and small villages set in the hills. The gradual change from dry to wet ended in great beaches and the coastal city of San Sebastian. The city is full of one way streets where the incline was a "hope your handbrake works" deal and no parking to be found unless it was on a street you couldn't turn into. Apart from that, I wish we had more time in this place as there was lots of shopping to be done in the old part of the city and lots of crowded beach time to be had. We spent the rest of our day shopping, drinking beer and wishing we (I mean I) were closer to the handsome guitarist (along with the rest of the female population already staring at him) and enjoying beautiful sunsets eating huge ice creams with my dairy intolerant boyfriend. A lovely way to finish our 'couples only' part of the trip. Party times were ahead when we stopped in Santander to pick up a couple of wayward Aussies......

A Munchkin's New House

Hej hej everyone,

The epic ordeal of moving house has now been completed, hooray! The mental trauma was kept to a minimum and no nuclear weapons were used when deciding on where the couch should go. The ridiculousness of trying to find a place to live in July is like trying to find half a needle in a haystack the size of Canada. It is very similar to Canberra in January. Uni students arrive, they have a hard day at O-week (although it seemed to be O-3 weeks) and then have to look respectable to claim any and all the housing available. They run around town in bright yellow overalls and funny hats and there are an extreme amount of males in tight pink tights, some in dresses, some trying to look like superman. You know it's bad when websites advertise for apartments, villas, rooms and .................couches. We even investigated the possibility of hiring a cardboard box or two. Then there is the saga of 1st, 2nd and 3rd hand renting which is confusing and dodgy (but I won't bore you with the details).

So the new apartment is in a new suburb, down a new street, in a new town, with a yellow door! It's kinda like an estate type area with lots of apartment/duplex buildings and cool playgrounds. It reminds Jochen and I of a cross between holiday park by the coast and a retirement village.
So you would think that when you move into a new house you might get a light or two, perhaps a curtain. Well you don't! For some reason white goods like a dishwasher, dryer, washingmachine, and fridge are included but light fittings, bulbs, curtains and curtain rails are not. I am amazed! Mostly about the lightbulbs. So when we next move we will be well supplied, as we have now spent all our monies on this stuff and we can move our custom fit curtains and rods to a new house where they will be the wrong size.

In other non-house news, more like "Adventure News", I have been to the beach. And what a beach it is! It's about 15-20 minutes drive from town and it is beautiful in a grey kinda way. There is not much sand but it's made up for by the large amounts of seaweed lining the shores. The water is shallow for a very long way out (I am told, as it's way to freezing to go swimming) and it's also suprisingly un-salty. Near Bjärred there is a long pier, 574metres long with a restuarant and sauna at the end of it. We didn't go in for the sauna this time around but we almost became Mary Poppins being swept away by the wind. Even with all the wind it was still a great place to view the edge of the world from. You can see Malmö and Copenhagen joined by the Oresund (imagine that O has a strike through it) Bridge and you can watch the incoming storm where there is no distinction between rain clouds and water anymore and the cities disappear. That was therefore our cue to leave, sorry there is no picture, the Munchkin forgot her camera.

Now for a new section of my blog called "You know you're not in Yackandandah anymore when..." (thanks goes to Tommo for the title inspiration)

a) Eggs come in cartons of 10 instead of a dozen. Although funnily enough they do have half dozen cartons, hence why it's taken me 3 months to discover this :-).
b) You know how great the health system is when the Sjukhus (hospital, or word4word translation - sick house) is sporting a lovely view of the the cemetry across the road.
c) Speaking of cemetries, they are really pretty and green, almost as pretty as the botanical gardens. No brown dead grass and pattersons curse here.
d) Speaking of pattersons curse, I keep getting in trouble for calling native european wild flowers "weeds"!
e)They sell diaries that go from July 2010 to June 2011, who would have thunk it!
Last but not least....
f)The word for 'exit' contains the word 'fart' in it "utfart", rather appropriate I think.

That's it for now, it's actually sunny today so I am off to soak it up before another week of rain.
I hope you are all well and I hope to post some more Spain pictures soon.

Keep in touch.

Hej do.