Reaching 20 countries!!

Denmark is in green, Sweden in orange

I spent this weekend in Denmark and Sweden.  Denmark was country #19 and Sweden was country #20!!  I have now spent time in twenty countries on four continents!!  Only 174 more to go....

This was one last trip before heading back to the States.  Zeba and I left for Denmark on Wednesday afternoon, and we stayed with my uncles friend in Copenhagen.

Here is our story:

Wednesday:
We left Bremen on Wednesday afternoon.  We were planning to take a train to Hamburg, and catch our bus there.  We heard that the train drivers were striking, so out of concern of getting there on time, we left as early as we could.  Since I had class at 8 am, the earliest we could leave was 11:30.  We got to Hamburg no problem, with about two hours before our bus!

In Copenhagen, Denmark

The bus was great!  We had business class seats(which for some reason cost less then regular seats...) so we had wifi and a free snack!  In order to get to Copenhagen, we had to cross the Baltic Sea.  By ferry.  This was a 45 minute ride on a huge ferry, which had a mall inside.  It was a lot of fun getting to see the Baltic.  We got back on land and continued our journey.

When we arrived in Copenhagen, Denmark, our host had a wonderful dinner prepared for us!  We ate pork sausage like things, delicious (not-American) potato salad and tomatoes!  After dinner we went on a walk around Copenhagen, and our host took us to Tivoli Gardens.  Tivoli is a beautiful place, that kind of reminded me of Disneyland, but I think I like it better then Disney!

Thursday:

In the Cannon Museum!

Thursday morning our host left for her parents house.  We had the apartment to our self until late Friday night!  On Thursday we explored Copenhagen, went to two museums and on a boat tour!  We also ate delicious sandwiches and Belgium waffles! (mine had ice cream on it!)

The first museum we went to was the Denmark National Museum.  It had artifacts and information from Denmark and European history.  It was very interesting, and apparently Pokemon is a part of history...
The second museum was a cannon museum.  I liked this museum, it had cannons from all throughout history!

In Christiana.  I was scared because
there were signs everywhere saying not
to take pictures...due to the drugs
being sold in the area

Friday:
On Friday we were going to go to Sweden, but we woke up too late...so we relaxed till mid afternoon and then we decided to walk around the city again.  We went to a part of the city called Christiana.  Christiana used to be a military place, for defending Copenhagen.  But in the 70's hippies took over it and built interesting buildings.  Today it is a place with art, interesting buildings, music, and a flea market.  It also is a place where you can find marijuana....lots and lots of marijuana...

Saturday:

Me, in country #20!!

On Saturday we finally went to Sweden!  Sweden is the 20th country I have spent time in!  We left in the early afternoon, and got on a train to Malmo, Sweden.  We weren't sure what to do there, we didn't even have any of the Swedish Currency.  So the first thing we did was exchange money.  Then we wondered around the city, and found a boat tour.  We went on the tour and learned a bit about Sweden!  Then we sat in a coffee shop and ate delicious cheesecake.  At around 6 pm we headed back to Denmark.

Denmark Storm

Going back to Denmark was quite chaotic.  The storm started in Sweden, but while we were there it was just a lot of thunder and lightning.  By the time we reached Denmark, it was crazy rain.  They say that in those two hours Denmark got as much rain as they usually get in two months.  155 mm, or 6 inches.  The trams were not running on time, so we were stuck at the tram station for a while.  But eventually we made it to our final stop.  Problem was that the stop was about a 15 minute walk from our house.  The water on the roads was about 5 inches deep.  And it was raining very hard.  We were soaked within seconds.  Lightning was going every couple of seconds, and the thunder was very very loud.  Zeba, who is from India, described it as a monsoon.  We eventually made it home, and showed up at our hosts apartment soaked!  But she graciously let us in, and helped us get dried off.  And she had even made us dinner :)

Sunday:

Under the castle!

Sunday morning Zeba and I went to an art museum.  It had really beautiful paintings and statues.  We started realizing the affects of the night before's storm when I received a text from our host, telling us that her basement had flooded and she had to save what she could.  We got home to find everything mostly okay, and then we headed off to a castle.  As we drove to and from the castle, which was north of Copenhagen, we saw more of the storms effects.  People all through town were draining water from their stores and basements, and their ruined items laid on the sidewalk.  The power was out in some places, and many of the highways and roads were flooded.  Getting there and back took about a half an hour longer then it should have.  But the drive was along the Baltic Sea, and was quite beautiful.

The castle was beautiful.  It was near Sweden, and we could see Sweden's coast across the Baltic.  (The castle even had cannons pointed towards Sweden :D)  We explored below the castle, where the soldiers lived.  There were winding, dark halls.  It was really cool, but kind of creepy!  We also explored the ballrooms and royal apartments.

Traveling home:
That night we left for Germany at 11:45 pm.  Somehow, amazingly, on a bus full of people from Africa, India, Europe and other places, I managed to sit next to a guy from California...he was taking his last, and first, trip before heading off to medical school.  We talked for a couple of hours, and got to know each other quite well.  Funny thing is neither of us thought to introduce ourselves till an hour into our conversation!

At the Baltic! Not at 1 am though...
this was the first time we crossed!

At around 2 am our bus had to cross the Baltic Sea, by ferry.  This meant that we had to get off of the bus. Luckily the ferry is huge, and has stores and restaurants.  So I got a bite to eat and sat down with Zeba and two other young traveler's we had met, one who was on our bus and one on the bus in front of us.  It was a lot of fun getting to know other young travelers!

After the ferry, at 3 am, I fell asleep...kind of...I fell as asleep as you can when you are squished in a tiny space on a bus and there is lightning going off every few seconds....we arrived in Hamburg at 5 am, and had an hour to wait for a train to Bremen.  The best part of the story?  I had class at 8...I arrived in Bremen at 7:30 am and went straight to class, I was the first person there!

Prayer requests:
-Pray for my landlady's and I's relationship.  I will post more later about what happened, but to sum it up: She tried to kick me out yesterday.  I have been praying that God will use me to show her Jesus through my attitude and lack of cussing or yelling at her even when she is frustrating me and causing a lot of stress in my life.  Please join me in praying about this.
-Pray for me as I finish up homework and get ready to travel back to America in one week!!
-Pray for me to have patience as I am very excited for Blue Slide Camp and almost cannot stand waiting three more weeks for it!
-Pray for me and the other camp staff as we prepare for camp!  Also pray for the campers, that they will grow in their relationship with God!

Praises:
-Praise God that I was able to reach 20 countries!! There were times in the last 4.5 months that It thought I wouldn't reach my goal, but I would pray about it, and now I have!
-Praise God that the e. coli outbreak is mostly over!

Easter Experience

The castle in the village I visited

Experience.  Thats the only way I can describe how I spent Easter Weekend.  Having known that I would be in Germany for Easter Sunday and that my 21st birthday was going to be on Easter Sunday, I spent the last couple months thinking about what the coolest way I could spend that weekend would be.  I thought about Paris or Prague, Berlin or my home church in Bremen.  But, I think I found the best way I could have possibly spent it.  I spent Easter/my birthday weekend staying with a German family in a tiny village (population 250) in East Germany!

To some people Paris or Prague may sound more exciting then that...but, not only do I love to travel, I love to experience culture.  I don't like going somewhere just as a tourist and just going to the tourist sites.  I like to see how the people live, even spend time living that life with them for a few days if I can.  I like going to the places that the locals go, doing things that the locals do.  And to add to that, Easter is usually a family time for me, and I always thought my 21st birthday would be a family time too.  So having a family to spend the weekend with helped ease the homesickness :).

Walking through the village

Here's how my weekend went:

Thursday:

Thursday after noon I jumped on a train and headed to the village, with a 30 minute stopover in Hamburg.  The village I was going to is called Charlottenthal.  The family I was going to stay with picked me up from a train station about a half an hour from the village.  When I arrived in Charlottenthal, I went on a tour of the house and village.  Afterwards we sat outside in the sun and drank coffee and ate cake.

Friday:

A look out on our bike ride

Friday was "Good Friday" or "Karfreitag" as they call it in Germany.  Karfreitag does not mean "Good Friday".  There isn't really a set definition for it, but it means something along the lines of "crying" or "caring".  We rode bikes to the next village for church. The service was in German, but I did my best to sing along with the songs and pay attention.  We did communion in a way I never had before.  We all stood around the stage and were each handed a cracker and we drank the juice out of the same cup.  After church we continued to ride our bikes along the lake and stopped at a sea food restaurant for lunch.  The fish there were mostly ones that were taken out of the lake we were biking around.  After lunch half of the family went back to the village for Fire Brigade sports(which  I will tell you more about later) and the other half and I continued onto a 7.5 mile bike ride around the rest of the lake.  We rode threw fields and villages as well as along the lake.  We stopped at a lookout and an old church.  It was a beautiful bike ride.  At the end we stopped for some delicious ice cream.  That night we sang songs around a campfire in the back yard.

Saturday:

In front of a castle in Gustrow

Saturday morning the family I was staying with took me to the "big city" (population 25,000) a few miles away from the village I was staying in.  That city has a castle, and some really neat buildings.  We explored the castle and walked around the city.  That afternoon, three more people arrived, including a very cute two year old.  We spent the afternoon painting Easter Eggs.  We painted 60 Easter Eggs.  Now I've painted Easter  Eggs before, but this was a little different for one reason: drinking was a big part of this.  Each person got a small shot of whatever they wanted(I had Bailey's) and drank it.  This was the first time in my life I had really drinking alcohal(other then a couple sips of warm wine my first 

day in Germany) and happened to be the day before my 21st birthday....

Fire brigade sports practice

Saturday afternoon half of the family again had Fire Brigade sports practice.  I went with them and watched for about a half an hour.  It was very interesting.  One of the two sports I watched is a relay race.  The two people who start have to race and stick a large hose into a large bucket of water then hook it into a machine that will suck the water up.  The next couple of people run, stretching out a very long hose.  The last person kneels in front of a tall metal structure that has a small hole at the top leading to a bucket.  They have to spray the water into the hole and fill the bucket up.  The other sport I watched involved using a ladder to climb up a tower.  The person starts by holding the ladder and runs to the tower and climbs up to the first window as fast as they can.  Then they pull the ladder up and climb up to the next window.  These sports are very common in German and some other European villages.  They even have national and international championships.

Painting Easter Eggss

Saturday evening we had a barbecue.  We ate delicious chicken and bratwurst.  After the barbecue we went to the village Easter Fire.  This again is very common among German villages, where either on the day or a couple days before or after Easter, they burn all of the branches the villagers have cut down from their trees.  The whole village was out drinking, cooking sweet bread and hanging out around the fire.  After an hour or so of being there we went back to the house and sat around talking for a few hours.  Some people knew that my birthday was coming, and so planned to sing happy birthday and drink a shot with me at midnight(it was my 21st, after all).  It was nice to be with people to celebrate my birthday at midnight.  A couple of friends from Bremen also called to wish me a happy birthday, which was very nice.
  

Sunday:

Sunday, of course, was Easter and my 21st birthday.  When I woke up the whole family was sitting in the living room waiting to sing me their family birthday song.  It was in German so I don't know the exact words, but it was something along the lines of "Its your birthday, there are flowers on the table, if you have a cake the size of a mill invite us."  There were flowers on the table, and the family gave me two presents.  The presents were really nice books about 

the area of Germany I was in!  

Easter Egg hunt!

After celebrating my birthday, we went out to have an Easter Egg hunt!  In the family, this is a big competitive event.  There were 60 eggs hidden, and we found 54 of them.  I found 5 :D (with some help from the family...).  After the egg hunt we ate breakfast.  With the eggs they found they make a really delicious breakfast treat involving vinegar, oil and mustard.  After breakfast we went to have the next family competition: the ping pong contest!  We spent the rest of the afternoon relaxing, everyone took naps(we were up pretty late the night before) We tried to go to the animal park in the next town over to watch the bears eat Easter eggs, but we decided not to because there were so many people.  We ended the day by playing board games(of which I lost, terribly...).

Monday:

Me in front of the ruins of a castle
destroyed by the Communists

Monday was my last day in East Germany.  I bought a train ticket for 5:30 pm that night.  In the morning we went to the animal park.  It was amazing!  I felt like I was walking through the forest and simply running into these animals.  When you get to the animal park, you walk through a gate that looks like its meant to keep animals from getting out(which it is).  The first thing you see is a giant herd of deer, which you can pet.  The park has only native to Germany animals.  They have owls, bears, wolves, and a few other animals.  The dangerous animals are caged, of course.  (Although I was a little concerned that they might not be).  There are bridges going over the cages, and some of the bridges also have obstacle courses.  We spent a couple of hours exploring the park.

Monday afternoon we went to an old water mill to look at where one of the family members and his fiancée were going to get married.  The water mill was left from when lords ruled over the lands.  It was beautiful.  We also went on a walk to the ruins of a castle.  The castle was destroyed by the Communists during the 1950's. 

My time in East Germany was a great experience. The people I stayed with were all either born under or grew up under communism.  They told me about the DDR (Deutsche Demokratische Republik, or German Democratic Republic, which is what East Germany was called before the fall of Communism in 1989).  They also told me about the first time they went to America, and how crazy it was to be able to go to the USA after years of not being able to leave the communist run countries.  

Me with members of the family I stayed with

It was great to be able to experience this families culture.  Every day at 4 pm we sat in the sun and ate cake and drank coffee.  I also got to learn about German culture.  One thing that stood out to me was the meals.  I have found that this seems to be common in at least some parts of Europe.  For breakfast every day we ate rolls with cheese, meat, butter and other condiments.  For lunch we would eat a big meal.  Dinner would be pretty much the same as breakfast, but usually with different bread.  It was all great food, although it took some time to get used to lunch being big and dinner being small.

Prayer requests:

~Pray for me as I readjust to being in school again, and not traveling constantly.

~Pray for me as I have a lot of work to do in the next 2.5 months before I get back to the states.

~The Euro to Dollar exchange rate continues to get worse...please pray that it will improve, at least long enough for me to get money out before it goes back up.

~Things seem to be improving with my landlady, but please pray for continued improvement in our relationship.

Praises:

~Praise God that my road trip to Amsterdam and Belgium went great!  I was the driver, and God gave me wisdom while driving and kept us safe.

~Praise God that My relationship with my landlady has been improving, the last few times I talked to her she had nothing bad to say :)

~Praise God that I was able to travel a lot over Spring break!