On my "way" home...

July 20, 2009-
OK so I fail as a blogger. If I had kept this blog up to date it would have been such a great account of this really great period abroad. And it would have kept my friends/family up on where I am and what I am doing. But as testimony to my terrible communication, does anyone have any idea where I am now? I'm on a short side trip. I'll give you a clue..

I've made it to Africa!! I'm in Lusaka, Zambia with Aunt Nancy! For as long as I can remember, my aunt has been the far away, though much loved 'Aunt in Africa.' Tonight I am sitting on her couch, still in shock as I've been the last few days, that I am here with her. FINALLY! And tomorrow Nicole comes. We have been real busy here getting ready for a big trip the end of the week when we'll go out to a village and build a church. Its so incredible getting to be here while a team is working so I can take part. I am sooo happy and I cannot say enough good things about Africa (already I am hooked!) but that I'll save for another post. The next few weeks I'd like to capture some of the missing memories from this trip and post them to my blog. I have done so much traveling that it has just been real hard to keep things updated. But its more for myself then anyone else that I keep the blog going and I think the recap will be fun. So in the next few weeks I will hope to update you on:

April- Italy
May- Iceland and Fyn/Jutland
June- Ven Island and Berlin
July- Norway

and of course Africa:D
If I haven't caught you up yet though, my trip to Denmark is (almost) officially over. I have moved out of my third and final apartment the end of June and then went on a 2 week backpacking trip to Norway with Kelly. My coworkers said goodbye and I closed up shop in Horsholm at the end of June :( Then the weekend that followed I went with some new found friends to Berlin. When I leave Africa, after my cousin Nicole comes and we go on a "luxury" safari with Nancy (and build a church and sight see and map a farm..) I go back to CPH for one more night, collect my things and I will be back to Seattle on August 6th. My friend Amy went back to Canada via 'Tea with the Queen of England' in June, Scott left in May, Angela heads to the states for a visit before I get back to Denmark and Alison had her going away party when Kelly and I were in Oslo. Time just moves too fast and its sad when all the comfort, friendships and introspection of a new experience has to also come to an end. I will really miss all of my friends and the incredible experiences that have made this trip so memorable.

Me, Basia and Turid
With Amy, Scott and Justin
Berlin with Sara and Oliver
At Klaus' parents house for a garden bbq with Alison, Angela and KlausBasia and I at "The Ball"With Angela at CarnivalHappy Birthday to AmyFamily portrait with Jeff and Ingimar on FynAnd it doesn't want to turn over but Oliver says, in the same wrinkly, sad, and thoughtful smiley face of all of my friends, a final farewell message..

:( So long Denmark

Can the Danes bring that to Africa?

June 6.2009-
I forgot I uploaded a video. Here are some Danes celebrating the big Denmark Victory.. and got a couple of disgruntled Swedish women yikes. Mild for European football crowds.. but this is pretty rowdy for the usually quiet and calm danish people!

Of course the star is Copenhagen in the pan around. We're in the city hall square and you can see all the nice buildings and the amusement park Tivoli right behind the TV.. This is the center of the city!

Routing for Red & White

June 6. 2009-
Sweden vs. Denmark 2008. As far as I understand, late in the game last year, after Denmark came back from a 3-0 deficit, a man ran out onto the field and attacked a referee. The referee got to call the match by regulation, since he was threatened, and the score reverted back to 3-0. Sweden won and Denmark was outraged!

That brings us to this year. This year's football match was being played in Sweden but that didn't cool any energy. They set up big screens all over Copenhagen and we watched the game at Rådhuspladsen.

Pretty soon it got interesting. 1-0 Denmark!!There was something with the shoes..
Near the end of the game, still 1-0!Amy and the pretty skyAnd a big win for Denmark!!! Take that Sweden! (Sorry Blake and Courtney:)
"Vi er på vej til Afrika!" ("On our way to..World Cup, South Africa 2010")

Oh and our shot from earlier.. we tried to show off our 'Jul' beer. A bit of Christmas beer in June? That takes dedication. Me, Angela and Amy :->

Huntin' slugs!

June 6.2009-
I crashed Amy's small town life this weekend and joined her in her Au pair duties Saturday morning. The kids, boys I should mention, were desperate to go outside and show me their snail collection. Sure enough they had a tank full of escargot in their play area. After a few minutes Amy got them excited about going on a slug hunt! A what? I had to chase after the three of them going full sprint into the front yard.

"Sneglen, hvor er du?"
Amy said one time she walked through the woods (the forest as its always called here) promising the boys slugs and they couldn't find any. She said it was because they hadn't called for them yet. They yelled out, snails where are you, and all of a sudden found one. Now they can't go anywhere near the woods without Daniel screaming at the top of his lungs to get the snail's attention.

Here they go on a mission..Oliver spots one!Daniel pokes at a fat one.
"Sød Kelly.." Amy taught them to address her kindly.
Sweet Daniel picked me a flower.. aww!Oh Amy, the ever happy Nanny!!
Oliver, 3, and Daniel, 4.. Too cute for words! Danish only speaking too mind you, its amazing what you can communicate without ever talking! After I was handed a bug, a flower and a "sword" , while with the help of Amy got to tell them I hated snakes, eww slanger, I was in!

KuBB

May 1.2009-

One very busy work day in early May (actually it was May 1st, international Labor day except for in U.S. most people were in the park drinking, but we 'dedicated folk' were at still at work) we decided to learn an important Swedish game. Its called Kubb. Kubb is played like every other BBQ game where you underhand lob an object at a marker and hope to get your object in/closest/or past the target (cornhole/horseshoes/wiffleball respectively). Kubb however is a rudimentary game with an old conquering the kingdom feel. Here Basia explains the rules:

The game pieces are blocks of wood. The stick you throw is a dowel. The only fancy piece is the King in the center (presumably the center of his Kingdom).

You have to throw like this or Basia WILL yell at you. (Apparently I was trying to softball pitch the stick which was not acceptable. I did have some accurate throws though!)

Then the playing field is setup like this:

Your 5 soldiers (handsome blocks of wood) are set up in army formation at the back line. The opposing team stands at their nearest soldier (at the start the back line) and throws the stick (riffle?) at your men. If they succeed in knocking down one of your soldiers they get to keep it. In order to find a position for it however, the team that just lost a soldier has to "set" it in the other teams territory. At the center of it all, watching, is the King.

To set the soldier on the other side YOu get to throw it. Same throwing rules apply (Barbara would be proud.) The goal is the throw your man as close to the center line as possible because on your next turn (which happens right after you set your soldier fortunately) you have to kill that soldier first. If there is just one man down, its not too hard to get it. If the other team hits 3 or 4, its very difficult. Here are men being tossed around:

The King has the pretty crown here you see.

Well what happens if you toss a soldier and then can't kill him to win him back to your side? The other team gets to move up to the position you tossed him at and throw from there. It is very fun and the game goes back and forth very quickly.

In fact at the end, which my team unfortunately learned the hard way, once you have conquered the entire Army and are now going for the King the other team can declare a mutiny and go for the King as well. Ah, alas, we had all our men fighting for us but could not save our King.. which is also the King we were going for? Hm, quite confusing. Point is we lost. But we had a lot of fun trying!

Occassionally I got picture hungry also~

From the desk of Kelly Buddysdottir

Aye! So I left you over a month and a half ago and haven't even dreamed of updating since. It's been incredibly busy (although not all fun, my advisers are cracking down on me hard to finish this thesis) but enjoyable with lots of trips and beautiful weather to go out and celebrate the Danish spring. So I haven't been too eager to spend EXTRA time on the computer. But my dear friend Jackie spelled it out for me: "When you have a blog," she said, "I'm sorry but it's a responsibility." So to Jackie and everyone else I cut off (myself mostly, this blog was meant to document my adventures) I will try to get myself caught back up!!

Oh but where to start...

I took an incredible trip to Italy over Easter break. I went with Matt Ellis and we had really nice time exploring some of northern Italy together. The picture are on Picasa (links to the right) but I will get a proper post up soon. Easter at the Vatican was pretty amazing.. we even got to see the Pope multiple times. Close enough to call Mario a friend, right Matt? (Oh boy.. I didn't:)

After I got home from Italy (with Matt for a weekend in Copenhagen) I got back into the swing of things at work. About 2 weeks later I packed up again for a trip to Iceland. This time I was meeting my roommate Jeff, from Seattle, and my friend Ingimar, from UW, for a short stay in Reykjavik before a much longer stay in Denmark. The guys joined me for a week in early May. We had a great time... actually the whole trip was pretty ridiculous. We had a lot of fun and it made me miss all of my friends back home real badly!

In between I've been doing more exploring, exercising, meeting friends.. I've joined some teams that led to a lot of fun new people. I went to a ball with royalty, I've been to the tallest "peak" in Denmark, I watched the champions league match outside last night with about 500 Barcelona fans.. its actually quite fun to just see what's happening in Denmark.

Over the last couple months I have gotten really comfortable. I love traveling but the time spent in the country now has a lot more meaning. My friends are incredibly warm and friendly and that helps make Copenhagen home. Every time I leave I look forward to returning, it's crazy that pretty soon Ill have to go for good. When Matt left I complained that I had to return to 'normal life'.. even tonight I am working on my thesis which usually makes me miserable.. but I guess with the weeks flying by and my deadlines/departure getting closer it doesn't feel normal anymore. There's something to be said for springtime in Denmark: 17 hours of daylight, beautiful sunshine, free bikes, open drinking, beach parks, outdoor concerts.. but its also Denmark itself. It's growing on me and I'm beginning to not want to leave- uh oh!

Rounding out the week

April 7. 2009-
One quick post before I head off to... ITaly!! (First you should know that I booked all these trips my first month out here so I wasn't thinking too much about how much time I would have in between. But also these trip blogs take forever to post, so I didn't just get home from Austria, it was about 3 weeks ago:)

Two weekends ago I meet my friend Basia from work. We went sightseeing to Fredensborg Palace after I showed up an hour late to the mass she invited me too. Guess I didn't get the memo (or danish news broadcasts or computer updates or even glance at a clock) to find out it was the end of daylight savings time. We sprung forward and I stayed back. Anyhow, after that we took a trip out to the countryside to do some sightseeing. This is Barbara in front of the palace that the Crown Prince and his family actually live in:
There are gardens all around and the park sits next to the largest lake in Denmark so it was really nice to just walk around. We went back to her house afterward and cooked up a great meal!
Obviously I know how to cook if I am wearing such a cool getup! Its all about the look. No pictures of the dinner but here is the yummy pastry apple we made for dessert:
This past week at work we had a fuseball tournament. On the last day before vacation we all gathered for the final four of SBi fuseballing. They served beer and snacks and we all teamed up to cheer for our department. Unfortunately, the construction and health professionals were not up to par with the rest of the building groups. We think it is because all of the winning teams had students on them, and I, being the only student in my department, was not nearly as experienced. Anyhow this is the championship game.. played by one danish Stephanie Brown and her colleagues. (She sort of reminds me of her, doesn't she?!)
Afterward Barbara handed me some pom-poms and said, "You are American, you know how to cheer." What is that supposed to mean? I broke out into perfect form.

At least I made her try!

One other group of photos I had on my camera were from a run I took sometime last week. This was when I left with my camera to see how running with it would be. It will be my last time taking my camera out for jogs with me!

The path through Christiana

And around the Opera House

Was I close with the other post? When the sun comes out

Have a Happy and Safe Easter everyone!! Let's keep the friends, families and victims of the Italian earthquake devastation in our prayers

Krakow

I started my mainland Europe traveling two weeks ago with an amazing trip to Central Europe. I was only gone a week but the experiences and the adventure alone made it seem like I was gone a month. This was my first trip to both eastern and western Europe and to do them in the same week was really incredible. I skied in the Austrian alps, drank beer in a Munich beer hall and met a holocaust survivor in Krakow. When I returned home too I realized how happy I was to be heading back and how this really was my "home." And what's best, its still a city in Europe!

March 14. 2009
Our great central Europe adventure started with a pop over to Sweden to catch our super cheap flight to Poland out of Malmo. I went on this part of the trip with Amy and we decided we HAD to go to Poland after seeing a WIZZ air flight for only 100 crowns ($15 inc. tax). Well what we didn't think about was that it was $15 out of Malmo (but the train to Malmo is $10, shuttle bus to airport $15...) and that we had booked a discount airline (huge competition in Europe for cheap airfare = more flights packed into one day= more delays = a big mistake to book our flight in the late afternoon). We showed up at the airport 2 hours early to find out our plane was 3 hours delayed from the get-go, then considering we have a 2 hour shuttle from the airport in Poland still ahead of us it was going to be a long afternoon. So we did as best we could in an airport that made Albany look big and wasted all our money on beer, snacks and a new deck of cards.
When we finally got to Poland we were met with a waiting shuttle. Our hassles were over and it was worth it. We decided to couch surf in Krakow and our host couple was waiting for us with wine, friends and still took us out for a night on the town. In the shuttle I asked Amy how many hours of travel she was going on. She didn't have enough fingers for her 12..

I meanwhile was knitting.

Krakow! This is an incredibly beautiful city.. I loved the central Market Square.

There is a great cathedral that dominates the square. Amy is in front of it with our best find, the Polish pretzel.

This little round guy was the first form of the pretzel.. at least Poles claim to have started it. They are sold all over the city in little street stands. (Although this picture was taken from the airport on my way out, we wised up a bit and stocked up on the $0.10 pretzels for our trips home. Nourishment reserve.)

Krakow has some of the most gut-wrentching history but it also a beautiful city with a lot to offer outside its past. The mountains are close by and make a great side trip but unfortunately we didn't have time to visit. Its a university city so there is a lot of great night life and music and many tourists and foreigners. The old Jewish quarter is a reinvented part of town, with some of the most incredible pubs and cafes in these dark and eery old businesses of the main streets and squares. The city is one of the most well preserved Polish cities because it was never destroyed and rebuilt by the communists after WWII, like Warsaw and many others. The history I suppose is hard to avoid.
The food however is very unique. Around the city they have milk bars which are cheap lunch halls left over from Communist times. The soups we tried were incredible! Mine is in the foreground, a clear beet-root soup with dumplings. (Who ever heard of beet-root before coming here, the Danes love it too. This one was so good)

The King's castle is perched on a hill overlooking the river, the Wisla, a major river in Poland. I instead opted to take pictures of all the walls.

Inside Wawel Castle. (Its fun to say too because W's are V's in Polish)

Few more shots around the central square. The yellow building with the arcade is called Sukiennice and its a market place like Pikes place or Quincy markets. The square was so big though it needed something like this to break it up a bit.

There were two churches on the main square, both were skewed but aligned with each other. The white one is called St. Adalbert's Church and it is an 11th century church, one of the oldest stone churches in Poland. The cathedral is called Saint Mary's Basillica and it had some of the most beautiful decorations on the inside. I actually went in as a patron after everything I saw on this trip. I needed a moment of reflection.
Finally we took another look at Kazimierz, the old Jewish district, on our last day after having seen Auschwitz. We went into a book store and had a great converstation with the shop owner, who personally knew all of the surviving jews from Kazimierz during the holocaust. Many of them had written memoirs. One of these women happened to walk into the shop while we were talking to him. He introduced us and immediately she grabbed my and Amy's hands and squeezed them tight. She looked us back and forth and said "Be safe, such beautiful girls." She couldn't stop picking up our hands while she showed us the photographs in her memoir. "And that was my mother and my grandmother.. and this was my brother." The shop owner had been telling us about her before she came in actually. He was writing the title of our book for us on a slip of paper, since he was out of it in the shop. He wrote slowly since it was hard for him to remember the English title. "Have.. You.. Seen.. My.. Little..." God my heart was dropping, "Sister." Here is her book. She was nine when everything started and she was separated from her family. Her brother rescued her by taking her down into the sewers and hiding her. Her name is Janina Fischler-Martinho a holocaust survivor from Krakow. She's just one story. Its too scarey how real it all is.