Home at last!

Hello beloved friends and family!

I am ecstatic to report that I am almost back in the USA! Two months is a long time to be travelling abroad. Currently I am on the airplane somewhere between Greenland and Canada, listening to the Limestones sing about Malt-O-Meal on my iPod :D (only two weeks until I’m back in Northfield!). Since my last blog post I have visited Denmark and Iceland, and it has been quite the experience!

Woman biking with a cello on her back in Copenhagen. They can carry a CRAZY amount of stuff on their bikes!

The bikes with buckets for children

In Denmark I unfortunately had to break one of my rules of travelling alone, which is never go out late at night alone. My train arrived around 10:30pm, so not TOO late, but late enough to be really scary! After avoiding some unstable people in the train station and securing a map and some Danish kroners, I was ready to haul my suitcase to my hostel as fast as possible. At one point I wasn’t sure of where I was and so had to pull out the map, heart pounding as the street was fairly deserted except for some sketchy looking old men. Luckily, this nice young couple came up and asked if I needed help, and they had American accents! I’ve never been so glad to hear that flat, unbroken English in my life. They walked me to my hostel as it was clear I was freaked out. Once I got to the hostel, I was relieved and so took a big, deep breath in…at which point I had a coughing fit because I had just breathed in a lung full of second hand pot smoke. Thus began my stay at the most sketchy hostel I have ever been in or can even imagine.  I’ll spare you the details. But anyway, I found Copenhagen much different from the other Scandinavian capitals I’ve visited. As you probably know, most everyone bikes everywhere in Copenhagen, often carrying their children in bucket like contraptions attached to the front of their bikes. Also, I felt that in Copenhagen I was in the midst of people who actually live there. Whereas I felt that in Stockholm I pretty much only saw tourists, in Copenhagen I sometimes felt like the only tourist around!

Sitting by a fountain eating the first of many ice creams

Rather amusingly, “peace” in Danish and Swedish is “Fred”.

On the first day I went to Christiania, the “free town” in the middle of Copenhagen. Christiania declared independence from Copenhagen-it’s actually a pretty interesting story and you can read about it HERE. It was like stepping into a dream world..it’s sort of like what I imagine the 1960s to have looked like. J All I can say is I have never felt more like a sheltered suburban girl! You’re not allowed to take pictures on “pusher street”, so I didn’t for fear of all the people who live in Christiania, who are quite intimidating looking. Here are some pictures of Christiania:

I also climbed to the top of this church-you could see all of Copenhagen laid out before you! I was clinging to the wall the whole time because it was pretty windy up there!  After eating a lot of ice cream and middle-eastern food (omni-present and cheap everywhere in Scandinavia) and sleeping very little in my crappy hostel, I flew to Iceland.

The church I climbed to the top of, as seen from a lovely park nearby.

Iceland is way different from all the other countries I went to. First of all, the landscape is other-worldly, like something you’d see on a different planet. The architecture is decidedly not classical European, but also decidedly not American. It’s a very unique place, and it oddly reminds me most of Japan.

The sign I was greated with when I arrived in Iceland. I thought, what have I gotten myself into?

Street art in Iceland

Apparently the vast majority of the population believes in elves, trolls, fairies, and ghosts. There were even little ghosts all over one of my maps of Iceland…not sure if they were being serious about that or not! I went to a spa called the Blue Lagoon on Friday, and it was an awesome experience! The water really is shockingly blue, set against a backdrop of a volcano and black rocks formed from lava. The water is really warm and springs up naturally from the earth. If you ever go to Iceland you must go to the Blue Lagoon! They even have it set up so that you can go to the lagoon from the airport if you have a long layover.

Famous church in Reykjavik…can’t decide if it’s ugly or awesome.

Inside the church

On the shore by Reykjavik

I wonder what a “cool American” tastes like?

Found this in a random underpass!

And now, three trains, four countries, six planes, four types of kroner, and innumerable memorable experiences later, I am HOME! Looking forward to seeing some of you in mere hours and the rest of you very soon!

Love,

Maria

Somewhere between Stockholm and Copenhagen

Hello everybody! 

I’m now on the train somewhere in southern Sweden, between Stockholm and Copenhagen. Stockholm was a beautiful city to visit! It is a lot different from Oslo in that it is bigger and feels more European. They call it “The Venice of the North” because you can navigate it by water-it is made up of 14 islands and is part of an archipelago of 24,000+ islands!

After struggling to find my way from the train station to my hostel and lugging my suitcase in the wrong direction a few times, I made it to my hostel and collapsed into my bed. The next morning, I sat with a random group of people at breakfast-two German women and one man from Saudi Arabia-and they ended up inviting me to go with them on a boat tour of the city! We sailed around Stockholm all day, hopping on and off the boat to explore the different islands that make up Stockholm.

Me and my new friends in Stockholm, with Tivoli in the background

The hostel I stayed in was really, really nice. They provided pasta for us to eat-all we had to do was supply the sauce. Dinner time was always fun because lots of people were gathered in the kitchen, all making pasta, and all eating together. About half the people there were traveling alone, and it was really nice to sit and have dinner with them. There were a lot of German people in the hostel, randomly, so sometimes I couldn’t join in the conversation because everyone was speaking in German! After dinner one night I sat with a bunch of people from Brazil who would switch between English and Portuguese, sometimes right in the middle of a sentence! I am definitely ashamed that I am only fluent in one language-that definitely puts me in the minority around here (and everywhere besides the US, it seems).

Art (?) in the center of Stockholm

The next day I decided to go off on my own to explore Gamla Stan, the main tourist island, and Sodermalm, the more up-and-coming young area. I went to the Nobel Museum because I had enjoyed the one in Oslo so much. I liked the Stockholm Nobel Museum too-it had interesting movies about the different laureates and some about “inspiring places”, places such as Paris and Oxford that turn out an unusual number of prize winners. I’ve noticed on this trip that I get a lot more out of museums when I pay for them myself. Whenever I’ve gone to museums with my family or as part of a school visit, I’ve always been sort of bored by them and have moved through them quickly. Now that I’m paying for museums myself, I’m taking a lot of time in each one, visiting all the exhibits and reading all the material and making sure to take advantage of the free tours. Today I went to the Vasa museum, which houses a ship that sank in the early 17^th C. It sank on its maiden voyage, after having been afloat for only about 20 minutes. The ship was removed from the bottom of the ocean more than 300 years later and restored for many years. It’s really huge-looks just like the ships from the Pirates of the Caribbean! Because the Baltic sea is not very salty, the ship was really well preserved under the water- it is considered to be the best preserved 17^th C ship in the world. One of the most interesting exhibits in that museum was about how they are able to guess at what some of the passengers looked like based on their skeletons alone. They can even tell what kind of food they ate and what jobs they probably had, just based on their nearly 400 year old bones!

Christmas in August?

Now I’m all done with Stockholm and moving on to Copenhagen! Planning on visiting Christiania tomorrow, which should be fun! (Thanks for the suggestion, Jordan!) Then it will be time for Iceland, then home to CO at long, long last.

Cobblestone cross walk. Cool.

Bye for now!

Maria

The end of Oslo and the beginning of lugging my suitcase around the rest of Scandinavia

Hello family and friends!

I have now finished my program at the International Summer School in Oslo. Now I’m journeying around the rest of the region-currently enroute to Stockholm.

So I ordered hot chocolate and got a rather large bowl....

The last two weeks of the summer school were filled with studying for my government test and writing papers and preparing my project for the peace prize class. We also visited the Nobel Peace Prize museum in downtown Oslo, which is definitely one of my favorite museums of all time. I didn’t expect much, but then it was really interactive and high tech! The first level was an exhibition about the four South African peace prize laureates. There were also works of art from South African artists that were really interesting. On the second floor there was an exhibit about Obama. They had a whole wall of newspaper clippings from all over the world criticizing the peace prize selection committee’s choice of Obama, which were interesting to read. I was surprised that they had the clippings as part of the official exhibit. Then there was a peace prize garden with led lighting and sort of other-worldly music, and each of the laureates were sort of like flowers in the garden. It’s hard to explain.

Here's a picture of it from another person's blog (didn't bring my camera that day)

The coolest thing in the museum was probably this holographic book about Alfred Nobel’s life. Again, it’s sort of difficult to explain, but you could make things move around on the page just by sort of waving your hand in the air. Another museum might have had just a normal book about Alfred Nobel, and so most people wouldn’t have bothered to read it, but this book was so cool that there was a line to look at it! I learned a lot about all the different peace prize winners and what they did to deserve the prize-definitely I would recommend that you visit it if you ever make it to Oslo!

The African Group

Last week we had the international cultural evening, one of my favorite memories from Norway. There were booths set up from many different countries with food. I had so much delicious food it makes me want to visit everywhere in the world just so that I can have all that food again! Some of the other Americans made apple pie, which with Norwegian ingredients and some difficulty with conversions turned into something more like apple soup. It was still delicious-I miss food at home so much! I’ve already drawn up a list of about 8 restaurants that I need to visit when I go back to Colorado for two weeks. (I’m excited for chicken nuggets at your house, Grandma!) After this trip I’m never eating boiled potatoes again if I can help it. But I digress. After eating food at the cultural evening, there was a show. Each act was a group of people from a different country doing a dance or singing a song. One of the most memorable acts was a song from the Balkan students. They got together and performed this song that all of their countries claim as their own in five different languages. These students had been doing a special program at the summer school in addition to classes where they met to build understanding between their countries, so it was very moving when they all sang together. I got to sit in on one of their sessions the next week and it was evident that they had all been very changed by the program and had become almost like one big family. Another memorable act was one from the African students. They all danced together to the World Cup song. There were a couple dances from Indian students and they looked like so much fun that I have now decided to find a way to go to India. It is my next project!

Outside the city hall

After I finished all my work (yay!), I had to say goodbye to Oslo, a city I’ve become very comfortable in. I made my last trip up to Sognsvann lake a few days before the end of the program and hiked around. I ended up coming across lots of wild raspberries and picked them as I walked around the lake. What a lovely way to spend an afternoon! After some very long speeches at the closing ceremony we had a party and all had to say goodbye to each other. I’ll be seeing quite a few people back at St. Olaf and all my peace prize friends at the next Nobel Peace Prize Forum (hopefully before, though!). I was ready to leave though, so I’m excited to be going off on the next part of this adventure! So far I’ve already had to ask four different people for help as it appears the Swedes are not fans of translating things into English…slight problem…I’m also incapable of lifting my luggage onto the overhead luggage rack so I have to ask a random stranger for help every time. Ah, the joys of traveling alone when you can’t speak the language. I expect I’ll be asking for a lot more help in the days to come! If anyone has any suggestions for where I should go in Stockholm, Copenhagen, or Iceland please let me know!

Saying goodbye to my roommate Nini :(

Sweden, as seen from the train. Reminds me a lot of MN!

See most of you soon!

Love,

Maria

Alive and Sore after Hiking and Rafting in the Land of the Giants

Hello everyone! I have just returned from spending the weekend on an excursion to central Norway! The first day we went hiking. We stopped in a beautiful little town to eat our packed lunches. The video below is of the place where we ate lunch.

After lunch, we traveled up to Jotunheimen for a three hour hike. The hike was a bit more challenging than I expected as it was pretty steep and very rocky. However, the views were worth the climb! I felt like a picture didn't capture the 360 degree panorama at the top of the mountain, so I took a video.

The view as I climbed to the top

Me at the top! 

Once done with the hike, we drove up to the rafting camp. We had a DELICIOUS dinner at the rafting camp, and then I spent the night alternating between jumping in the ice-cold river and sweating in the sauna and hot tub before collapsing into my bunk bed. The following morning we set out on our rafting trip. We were all a bit nervous because there was a serious accident on the river the day before involving some people who went rafting on their own. Once we got out on the river it was a lot of fun! The guide on my boat was from Costa Rica and he was a fun guy, but sometimes we had trouble understanding him. Once, we thought he asked us if we wanted to keep going down the river, so we thought that was a dumb question and said of course! Then he had us paddle against the current towards a rock and all of a sudden our raft was flipping over! I remember being perpendicular to the water and thinking that the people on the other side of the boat were going to fall out, and then all of a sudden I was falling out of the boat! After some panicked struggle under the water I came to the surface. I must have been doing something stupid because everyone started yelling at me to "SWIM!". Then those 7 years of swim team kicked in and I swam to another boat where they pulled me out of the water. It was exhilarating and I was shaking for a good ten minutes afterward. Turns out the guide had asked us if we wanted to go "surf" in the river and had told us there was a very good chance off us flipping over. Whoops!

Getting the safety talk before setting out.

One of the rafts mid-rapid.

After a long and rainy bus ride home to Blindern, I was ready to collapse. This morning I am feeling this weekend in every one of my muscles. This week will be full of studying, researching and writing as everything is due next week, the last week of the program. 

Back from my trip to Bergen

Hello friends and family! This past week has been an exciting and challenging one. On Wednesday we peace scholars got to talk to the former Prime Minister of Norway, Kjell Bondevik. It was a pretty surreal and cool experience-it’s so extraordinary to be able to ask political leaders face to face whatever you want, to be able to sit next to them at the table. He talked to us about the organization he established, the Oslo Center for Peace and Human Rights, which works at a pretty high level (rather than grass roots level). For example, through his organization he directly advised the leaders of Kenya on how to run their newly established coalition government. He was very friendly and it was a great experience. 

On my way to meet the Prime Minister 

Amusing bathroom sign in Bergen

 I have just returned from traveling to Bergen. I left early on Thursday morning and navigated the trains to the airport, with only minor setbacks. The airport is rather amusing-imagine IKEA as an airport, and then fill it with all the blond children in the world, and you’ll have a pretty good idea of what the Oslo airport is like. After only a 55 minute flight I arrived in Bergen and made my way to the city center on the bus. I was a little nervous about finding my hostel because it was my first time staying at a hostel and I’ve watched too many scary movies about girls traveling in Europe, but it turned out to be really great! 

My hostel in Bergen

My hostel was located right in the city center, close to everything. I stayed in a room with 13 other women. I am now a huge fan of hostels! They are especially great for traveling alone, because there is a common room where people hang out and where you can meet other travelers. Plenty of people in hostels are traveling by themselves and they are happy to have some company. They always have interesting stories-for example I talked for a while with one guy from Australia who worked in the same job for 8 years, and then just decided to quit and travel for a year. He’s working his way through Europe, North America, and South America before going home. I was surprised that there were older adults and families staying in the hostel as well as young people. The only downside was that I was woken periodically throughout the night by people coming in and out of the room. Other than that, it was great! I felt a bit lonely on Thursday exploring Bergen on my own, but on Friday when I woke up, I discovered that there were two other ISS students staying in the same dorm as me. They kindly invited me to join them and some other ISS students on a fjord tour. So, I went on the fjord tour, and I’m glad I did! I am absolutely in love with the fjords.

Sailing through the fjords

On Saturday I decided to hike up Mt. Floyen, one of the seven mountains surrounding Bergen. For some crazy reason I cannot remember now, I decided not to take my rain jacket with me on my trip to Bergen (where it rains something like ~300 days a year). The weather forecast predicted rain all day Saturday, but I wasn’t going to let my lack of a rain jacket stop me! 5 hours of hiking later, I was soaked through. Norway: 1, Maria: 0. The forest on Mt. Floyen was absolutely magical. Really, a lot of the landscapes in Norway seem unreal-like they should only exist in Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings, not real life. Even though I was soaked, I thoroughly enjoyed traipsing around the trails. Later that night, my friends from the hostel and I had delicious pizza in a Beatles-themed booth (shout out to you Dad J), and then had ice cream at the harbor. I’ve discovered the easiest way to eat reasonably priced food is to find sketchy looking restaurants from far flung countries. Bergen has a surprisingly diverse restaurant scene-I had a falafel type thing from a Lebanese restaurant and a kabab at a restaurant from Kurdistan. Not only is that type of food way cheaper than Norwegian or American food, it is much more tasty!

The view at the top of Mt. Floyen

In the forest

I took the train back to Oslo on Sunday so that I could see all the scenery from west to east. My plan was to get my studying done on the train, but it was really hard to concentrate when the most gorgeous landscapes were going past my window.  The landscape here is so dramatic and varied. We rushed past deep fjords, cliffs, tiny towns nestled between gigantic mountains, Jotunheim (the land of the giants) which I don’t even have words to describe, valleys, rolling hills, rivers, waterfalls…this is the most beautiful train ride I’ve ever had. And I’m excited because I’ve heard the trip from Oslo to Stockholm is even more beautiful (I don’t know how that is even possible), and I get to take that trip in only 3 weeks! 

Pretty house in Bergen

Bergen's harbour

Somewhere between Bergen and Oslo

The pictures and videos don't do justice to the scenery in Norway-you'll just have to come see it for yourself!

Love,

Maria

Learning Norwegian folk dancing and other exploits

Hello lovely friends and family!
Thanks for all the suggestions for where to go on my four day weekend. I have decided to go to Bergen, on the west coast of Norway. I will fly there in a week, stay for a few days, and head back on a train so I can see all the country between Bergen and Oslo! Looking forward to it.

This past weekend I had a fabulous time at a party the ISS threw for all the students. We danced to music from around the world, at times even attempting to jig-not your typical party! The next day several of us made  a trip out to a nearby island. The great thing about Oslo is you can get anywhere using public transportation, so one train, a bus ride, and one ferry later, we were at a beautiful island. We explored and eventually found a rock to jump off of into the water. It was a really fun day! Hopefully we'll go to another island this weekend.

The next day, the 4th of July, all of us Americans put on our red white and blue and went down to the official celebration at Vigeland Park for the day. It was hilarious-there were classic American cars on display, outrageously priced hot dogs and burgers for sale, an "Independence Idol" competition, country and Mo-town music, and lots of free USA gear. Below are a bunch of us in front of the bust of President Lincoln in Vigeland Park.

...

This week has involved a lot of reading for both of my classes, as well as excursions everyday. The Peace Scholars met with Steinar Bryn, the director of the Nansen Dialogue center, which works to promote dialogue in communities torn by conflict. It was really enlightening and interesting, and also something I might look into more in my research. His is a community approach to peace centered on the home and the school as the places where ethnic identity and hatreds are formed. The next day we met with the graduate level peace researchers at a picnic. They all have such interesting stories to tell and so much real life experience. Today we went to the Storting (the Norwegian Parliament) to learn about how government works in Norway. Tomorrow will be a visit to PRIO (Peace Research Institute Oslo)...should be great! 

This is where I get to live!

In non-academic news, I can now do a few Norwegian folk dances! The ISS had an open lesson for anyone who was interested. Where else could I learn to Norwegian folk dance with people from Sudan, Colombia, Armenia, India, and more? Definitely a unique experience!

That's all for now! Miss you! 

Love,

Maria