Norway: First Backpacking Day

A little late, we wake up and have a Norwegian breakfast of bread, meat, cheese, and spreads. Kristine bought this fresh strawberry honey at the Viking festival which was really good as a jam replacement. Oh! And I finally had some good milk in Europe! Finally. After months of wishing I could buy some good, cold milk which is pretty impossible in Spain, my wishes were fulfilled.

We all made sure we were packed and ready for the mountains. Well, as ready as one can be for what we were about to embark on. We hopped into the car and headed off eastward, into the mountainous region of Norway.

The ride was gorgeous. Seriously, the country is something unlike I had ever seen. I never imagined myself winding through the mountains on roads that hugged the fjords, but here I was, taking it all in.

Soon enough we met up with Cecilie and Trygve, some Norwegian friends of Kristine’s, loaded our packs with food after a stop at a supermarket, and made our way into the mountains.

First, a little bit on Cecilie and Trygve. Cecilie is one of the most energetic and happy people I have ever met. For example, after our 14 hour, 15+ mile trek and climb through the mountains, she ran around 4 miles back to the campsite to set up for the night. Trygve is super outdoorsy. He planned the entire trip for us, and new all the best sites. He also lent us most of the gear we used. He was equally as excited as Cecilie, and since he was the most experienced with this type of lifestyle, he also had to do the running when necessary.

Well, like I said, we made our way into the mountains. A short drive and a few sheep filled roads later (I feel like I can qualify as an experienced sheep herder based on the amount of sheep that fled our vehicle) we were at the base of a mountain, near a waterfall that ran into the fjord, surrounded by sheep. This was the least picturesque it would get for the rest of the trip. Seriously, what a terrible country.

Okay, right, so we started on our way up the mountain, crossing over the waterfall at various moments, passing through expansive hillside fields and over giant boulders. Only a few hours in we made it to the first set of cabins. Trygve asked if we were interested in going a few hours more to the next cabin, but our large, out of shape, American asses were quite content on staying at these.

Wow, were these cabins nice. They were equipped with food, cooking utensils, a stove top, some had leather couches, beds, books, games, fire places. Everything you could want for a cozy cabin in the mountains, it was there. Hint: Stansted was the roughing it of the trip. Well, we settled into the cabin, prepared a fire and made tacos for dinner. Afterwards we enjoyed each other’s company over the Norwegians’ first smores and some rounds of Dutch Blitz.

Since it was still light out (Norway, by the way, never gets dark during the summer, even in the south), we took the row boat out for a spin. Oh, did I mention that these cabins were overlooking a mountain top lake and were equipped with row boats? We soon realized that we were terrible at rowing boats as we could only go in circles or lines approximated by arcs. It was still really enjoyable though. Eventually it got somewhat dark so we retired to the cabins and went to bed. What a day.

Hasta Luego Santander

All the posters are off the walls. Each shirt is out of the dresser and packed away. Nothing still hangs on the hangers. I have just about packed up my room. It is my last day in Santander. 295 days have passed since I first arrived, bewildered, confused, foreign. Today I leave, still bewildered, confused and foreign.

I head off to Bilbao today for my internship. And although it is only an hour away, it feels like I am leaving a huge part of my life. Everything that I have known and grown accustomed to in the past ten months is staying here, and I have to venture into the unknown again. Scary, huh?

One of the scariest parts is that I still don’t exactly have a place to live. I mean, I have been in contact with this guy since… yesterday. I think the place will work out. But that apartment isn’t free for another week, so before that I am supposed to live in an alternative apartment. And that isn’t free until tomorrow. So tonight… I stay with David, a kid from my classes who lives near Bilbao. And thank God, because I really don’t want to start off in a hostel. Hopefully he can show me around a bit.

Anyways, I am procrastinating. Everything may have been emptied and cleared away, but now it just sits on the floor or on the table tops. I am putting off packing and writing about Norway. They just seem like daunting tasks. Instead I am writing about packing, kind of like two in one. I think that counts at least.

Well, I guess this is good bye Santander. It has been great. Don’t worry, I will come back to visit very soon.

Viking Pictures

Roughing it in Stansted and a Viking Day in Norway

Probably around eight months ago, Kristine, a friend from Norway told us we had to visit her in the summer. Being so far away and never turning down a reason to travel, we told her we would. Never did I actually think that we would follow through with this. There have been many other trips we said we were going to make but never did. This one felt no different.

Then one day Kristine started to badger me about coming. “So when are you coming? Have you booked your tickets? Look at this link of the beautiful fjords. And this one. And this one. I live in an incredible place, come visit me.”

Well, this must have worked, because within the following week the class was setting our exam schedule and I decided, well, if we can, let’s give ourselves a week in Norway. So as I tried to coordinate schedules with the Spanish, Hillary and Caitlyn were frantically booking tickets to London and Haugesund, Norway on Ryanair. Our promise was coming to fruition.

Immediately after, excited, Kristine invited all of her Norwegian friends on the backpacking trip through the mountains and fjords she was planning for us. The excitement was building, mounting. She even made a Facebook Event Page for our trip and kept posting videos and pictures of the things we would do and see.

Well, all the excitement and planning paid off. You will be able to see in my pictures the fruits of our labor. But first, the trip.

Our trip started Wednesday, June 8^th with a flight to London Stansted Airport where we had a short layover. Excuse me, I guess I mean short when I compare it to Hillary’s future layover in Iceland of two and a half days. No, our layover was about 18 hours, and we spent every minute of it in the airport. Ever see the movie Terminal? Well I haven’t, but I imagine the movie sums up what living in an airport is like. We ate prepackaged food we bought at the convenience store, laid uncomfortably on the airport benches, and slept more uncomfortably on the floor in front of some closed check in desks. Luckily I had a sleeping bag and sleeping pad packed for the trip so we weren’t lying directly on the floor. Unluckily, at 3:30 am, after about three hours of half restful sleep, staff went around waking people up to clear the way for check ins. Who checks in at 3:30? Nobody. All in all, the stay probably still rated better than the hostel I stayed at in Paris. Seriously, say no to Jules Ferry International Youth Hostel. Worst place ever.

After a rousing night at the airport, admittedly less exciting than a night at the museum, we boarded the plane to Norway where I finally got some decent shut eye. Another “on time flight” later and we were landing at Haugesund’s airport where “Home of the Kings of the Vikings” was proudly displayed on the building along with some tribal drawings of a Viking and what I think were some birds.

After a little liquor shopping at the duty free (Norway is notoriously expensive for alcohol), Kristine was waiting for us outside of the airport. It feels so good to know somebody when you show up in a foreign country, and having them pick you up at the airport is even better. Having food waiting for you when you get to their house can’t be beat. It’s almost like home. Almost. (Hint: Mom and Dad, it might not be so terrible to have dinner waiting for me upon my homecoming after 13 months.)

After a hearty lunch of mom-made potato salad, sandwiches and refreshing Norwegian water, we headed off to pick up some hiking shoes, got our things together, and then went to a Viking festival. That’s right! We happened to be visiting Haugesund during their annual Viking Festival, complete with Viking fighting, Viking food, Viking crafts, Viking buildings, Viking ships, and everything else Viking that you could want. Even the Viking horns to drink from! All of this was on sacred Viking ground where they previously found artifacts from past Viking colonies! Disappointing fact: Vikings did not wear horns on their helmets.

Well, after some delicious burgers and a little CSI, we hit the sack for some actually very satisfying sleep.

Hiking and backpacking to come.

Another Overdue Update

I have my last final tomorrow. My last final in Spain. My academic responsibilities in Santander are coming to an end. I don't know if I should be overjoyed or saddened or a little bit of both. I can't dwell on that now, though. I still have one test remaining: Foundation Engineering.

I read through all the chapters in the book. I went through all of our old homeworks. I looked over all the powerpoint slides. I reviewed my own notes. I feel like I have exhausted what I can do now. All I have left is to watch movies and write my blog.

Yes, long time no see, blogging world. I have been on hiatus, for no reason at all. I guess I should quickly recap my life from where I left off before I write my next blog about my adventures in Norway.

So I left you in Porto. Well, after Porto I visited Erica and Iona in Madrid where they both have been studying for the past semester. Finally, a little CCC love, I missed it, although have not been to any concerts still.

We explored Madrid, ate some long craved for (by Hillary) southern food at a restaurant called Gumbo, clubbed a little, went to a quiz night in an American haven and retired into the sun in Retiro. While I really enjoyed seeing my Cornell friends, I just wanted to be back in Santander. I wanted my own room with my own bed. I had been travelling for 3 weeks now and was just tired. I always seem to need a vacation from my vacations.

Back in Santander I had work to catch up on. More prelims and problem sets than I really wanted, but put my nose to the grind so we could host a Chili Fest of our own later that week for our Italian friends. I have gotten pretty good at corn bread and we have experimented a little with some chilis. We had our good old original beef recipe accompanied by a pork and beer chili and my personal favorite, a white bean chicken chili.

More Italian food and problem sets followed in the weeks to come. I eventually met with Ferrovial, my summer employer. The interview was really just a “What are you looking for?” type of deal, nothing to be too worried about. I will be working on the Historical Archive of Euskadi building in Bilbao for six weeks, although I still haven’t heard anything from them and am supposed to begin next Monday.

I then had finals. I took four tests in the week and a half leading up to my trip to Norway, notably two of them being for Coastal Engineering. Yes, I had my second prelim two days before my final. How are you supposed to know what you are doing incorrectly when you have barely just been tested. Oh well, turns out I passed that class.

What was really great was that before two of my afternoon finals I got to go see prehistoric art in the Cantabrian countryside for several hours in the morning. While my peers were studying, I was in a Land Rover sick to my stomach navigating steep hills and cow pies to see a few rock carvings. This happened two Fridays in a row. Great. Sad thing is, these carvings will be around longer than anything I will ever design. Ugh.

Probably one of the most interesting things I have done between Porto and Norway was that I tried surfing. A few of my Italian friends knew this place we could rent boards and suits for 10 euros for the day over at Somo Beach so the Sunday before I headed off to the fjords I caught the ferry and a few waves. While I wasn’t outstanding, I was pleased that I got up a few times, especially since the Italians gave me a five minute lesson before I entered the water. I was sore and felt like I ate a pound of salt afterwards, but it was amazing to think that I would start the week off hanging ten in the Atlantic and end it at the edge of Trolltunga jutting into the Norwegian fjords. But more on that later.

Porto Day 2: Wine Caves

Prepare yourselves for the classiest trip I have taken yet.

As you already know, I was in Porto. The first day, if you read the last post, was spent just wandering around, getting to know the town. You know, the usual. Well, the second day was a very different pace.

Hillary and I struck out right away. We knew that MGMT was playing a concert for the Burning of the Ribbons Festival, and the lady at the desk told us we might be able to get tickets if we went to some random café and asked around, maybe a random student could help us. Problems abound, one being we didn’t speak Portuguese and another being we couldn’t find said café, we were unsuccessful in the procurement of tickets.

Well, it was 5 o’clock somewhere so it was time for a drink.

Really though, around 11 am we headed off to our first wine “cave” or cellar for our first tour and tasting. We scoped out the lot of options we had and picked out the cheapest ones (read: free). Our first tour and tasting was at Croft. They served us a nice white port which was very smooth and sweet. We then set off for the tour. After the tour we got a ruby vintage port which we enjoyed on the terrace. (Are you getting the sense of classiness yet?)

I learned a little bit about ports on this and my other tours.

1. Port is sweet because they stop the fermentation process early, locking in the natural sugars.

2. Port is a strong wine, usually 18% to 22% alcohol.

After number 1, you may wonder how number 2 is true. You clever ones might be thinking, I thought the fermentation was stopped early. Well, that brings me to number 3.

3. The fermentation process is stopped by adding alcohol. From what I gather, it is brandy.

4. There are a few different types of port. The most common being Ruby, White and Tawny. They each pair with different courses, but usually as a dessert or aperitif.

So that is about all I know about port, or maybe just the interesting things I picked up that would fit in a blog about travel.

Hill and I thought that drinking too much before lunch was just alcoholic, so we got some lunch at a small Portuguese diner and then came back to Taylor’s for more tastings (after a siesta in the park of course). Taylor’s is situated up on the hill and has a great view of the city from their gardens. They also have this awesome tasting area which has a ceiling reminiscent of a circus tent with colored fabric draping across and a really nice library with books the size of my torso and the age of my great great great great… you get the idea. The books were old.

Oh, and every place we went had stools and tables made out of barrels. Neat!

After another tasting and tour we passed out on the river bank. Finally, we headed back to the hostel with a tawny in tow and made dinner, taking it easy on our last night.

The last day we picked up some post cards, wandered a little, and were sent off with a complimentary glass of tawny from our hostel and the promise that if we ever found ourselves in Porto again, we would have a home. I think this lady was the owner, and she was one of the sweetest Portuguese ladies I have met (although I haven’t met too many Portuguese ladies).

On to Madrid!

Oh, you may have noticed the blue and white painted buildings. These were everywhere and were actually made out of painted tiles. I guess Portugal is kind of a big deal when it comes to decorative tiles.

Porto Pics

Porto 1

So my parents went home and you might expect that means my travelling was over. Well that would make you wrong, because I still had another country to visit and the entire weekend back in Madrid. First Porto, Portugal.

I was getting worried at first. A full year in Spain and I wasn’t even going to make it to Portugal? What was I doing with my time? Well, now I can proudly say that I have made it to every one of Spain’s neighboring countries. Yep! Even Andorra and Morocco. It just so happens that Portugal was the last one marked off the list, even though it is so close!

Waking up early yet again for a flight, I say my farewells to my family and fly to Porto, Portugal. If you are pretty clever and have a slight knowledge of varieties of wine, you might be thinking, “Zach, is Porto where port wine comes from?” Why, yes, yes it is. Porto and the surround Duoro River Valley is the only place in the European Union that can claim to produce port, while other countries get away with it if they aren’t in the EU.

So as you can guess, I drank a lot of port. But that really isn’t the only thing I did.

The first day Hill and I formed our own little DIY tour of Porto with the help of Hill’s iPad, Wikipedia and Lonely Planet’s Porto Guide. We followed the itinerary across the city, seeing all the amazing sites.

Porto isn’t very well known I would guess. Yeah, it is Portugal’s second largest city, but how many of you knew that? It is pretty small as cities go, only 250,000 or so for a population (the metro is larger at 1.35 million) and there aren’t any Eiffel towers or the likes to see here. Just a lot of beautiful, old buildings lining the banks of the Duoro, charming streets winding up steep hills flanking the river, and of course wineries.

Okay, well I guess there may be one famous must see site in Porto, Livraria Lello. Look it up. It is gorgeous. I couldn’t take many pictures because they said it was too busy. I don’t know. Anyways, it has probably one of the most interesting stair cases I have ever seen and is filled with an eclectic mix of old and new books in Portuguese and English. It also has really beautiful stained glass sky lights combined with really old intricate crown molding to make such a perfect bookstore atmosphere. It is up by the university.

Speaking about the university, I have another thing for you to look up. Burning of the Ribbons. When we checked in, the woman working at the hostel (I believe she was the owner) told us that we would notice a lot of people dressed up in their school colors or black jackets in the city because it was a very special week for the students. Some sort of graduation celebration similar to Cornell’s Senior Week. I was not prepared for what it actually was.

There were students dressed up in black capes, with colored top hats and canes and groups of students all dressed up like bob the builder or with other costumes running around chanting. It was incredible to see so much school spirit and true elation. It made me nostalgic for high school graduation where there was just this huge sense of cohesion and accomplishment hanging in the air.

Oh, and the black capes looked like Harry Potter, and for a very good reason. Apparently JK Rowling wrote a lot of her first Harry Potter book in Porto and the capes served as an inspiration for the uniforms in the book. How great is that!?

After the tour, we picked up some cheese and our first bottle of port and brought it back to the hostel for lunch. Hill and I just enjoyed our white port and goat’s cheese while chatting with the girl working at the hostel.

We headed out again and stopped at this hipster mall that served a huge piece of chocolate cake for just a euro that the girl in the hostel suggested. Then we went to the park to pass out and relax. Apparently it was supposed to have spectacular views of the river because it was situated on some bluffs. Well, it did have some nice views, but we couldn’t relax too much. We heard this really loud music in the distance. It was constant, and we couldn’t figure out where it was coming from, but kept on getting closer and closer to the source because it kept getting louder and louder as we walked through the park.

Finally, down below, we spotted a huge gathering of students lined up along the street, ready to parade through the city. We made our way down to the parade to find all the students that were dressed up standing on and around large trucks blasting all types of music into the streets. The ones wearing capes and top hats were going around hitting each other on the head with their canes while whispering questions or phrases of good luck or congratulations or something between each whack. Like I said, it was spectacular and I was so happy just from their happiness.

A quick dinner finished our first day in Porto. We were ready for a long night of well deserved sleep. We needed rest for our port wine winery tour the next day.

Madrid with the Family

As I said in the previous post, we had an early flight. I mean early. We left our place in Vienna at 4 or so in the morning to get to the airport on time. Well, that afforded us a full day in Madrid!

One thing before I talk a little about Madrid. We were sitting in the Vienna airport at our gate and found out they had wireless. For free. Awesome! That actually isn’t the important part. Due to the free wireless Hill was able to access the internet with her iPad and the first piece of news we read that morning was OSAMA WAS KILLED!!!

Thrilled, I told my mom, “Hey Mom! Guess what! They Osama is dead.”

Shocked, she pauses for a second. She then turns to my dad and says solemnly, “Gary, the president is dead.”

It is unfortunate how close their names are.

Our three goals for Madrid:

1. Meghan wants sangria.

2. Dad wants paella.

3. Mom wants tapas.

We get into Madrid at around 8 or 9 in the morning and head to the place we are staying, Hostal Pez Azul. It is in this really eclectic and interesting part of Madrid, right next to Gumbo, a Cajun food restaurant. I am not sure if I mentioned that Hillary’s family is from New Orleans in my post about her, but she was really excited about this fact. Too bad it was closed that day. Next time.

Okay, so we check into the room and then head out. For what? Another Sandeman’s free tour! Yes, that makes my Sandeman’s Free Tours count up to five: Dublin, Berlin, Munich, Prague, & Madrid! You might actually think that I enjoy these tours.

Well, I do. But after already having been on another Madrid free tour, having a flight at 6 in the morning and just being overall exhausted from so much travelling, by the end of the tour I just wanted to pass out. And after accomplishing goals one and two at dinner, I get that opportunity, as my family wants a siesta. Instead I stay up though, planning out Porto details with Hill.

After a few hours siesta (not the way actual Spanish do it by the way), we knock off number three on the list on Cava Baja, this street lined with great tapas restaurants. We end the night with some churros.

I would say, all in all, a good end to a good family vacation.

Vienna Pics