Interlude

I have come to realize many, many things about myself and about my life while I have been in Europe. I have been looking forward to being here, but there were a few things that I did not really anticipate.

1) How much I really, really miss my mother. She is always there for me, even when I just need a hug and a kiss on the forehead. She isn't here for me, but I still have to be a big girl, anyway.

2) I really can do all sorts of adult things without the help of anyone else... Like I can ask for directions, check into an airport, and go to an entirely different country all by me onesy. That's crazy. I've been relying on other people for that kind of stuff for my whole life... and I can do it myself. Doesn't sound very big... but there you go.

3) Getting There isn't nearly as good as Going There.

4) I'm really good company to myself, when I need to be.

5) Even when you don't understand a word someone is saying to you, their voice and their gestures and expressions tell you all you need to know about what they are saying.

6) When people are having a conversation around you in a conversation you don't know, they don't expect you to participate or understand. This leaves you free to do all sorts of stuff like check out the cute boy on the other side of the table, examine your cuticles, or hum quietly to yourself. It's great!

7) When I have been talking to people whose first language is not English, I start to dumb down my own English to something that bears no real resemblence to English. I probably break all sorts of grammatical rules just to get my point across.

8) I spend so much time on the internet reading blogs and surfing youtube, it's probably really unhealthy. Not having constant wifi helps this disease. And it helps me not read every email that comes into my inbox.

9) I don't have to call people when I am bored. This costs a lot of money.

10) Knitting is really boring when you're bored... because it occupies your hands and not your brain.

Solid

Right now, I am solid with the internet connection. We're tight. There for each other... ya know.

(Translation: Finally, I have an internet connection.)

And I am uploading pictures to photobucket right now (so you should expect to see that in your inbox as well as a Blog With Pictures.

While I'm waiting for that to download, I'm going to tell you a few things.

While I've been here, I've read four books, knitted three pairs of socks (SSS on the fourth pair, sad to say), taken over 500 pictures, spent approximately 45 hours on trains, and visited five countries. I have watched the 9 dvds that I brought with me twice (at least), and the movie I have on my ipod, 27 dresses, I have watched five times. I have called my mother 4 times, Brandlyn twice, Duncan once, and sent about a bajillion emails (approximately.) I have listened to the Robin Williams standup routine on my ipod about eight times, and the Ellen Degeneres one about 4. I have eaten more chocolate than I probably should, and have drank a LOT of Coke Zero and tea. (I feel like tea runs through my veins instead of blood. Thus is the English life.)

And thus, I have whiled away enough time to upload all of my photos. Here, I will show you Denmark!

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The first day that I was in Copenhagen, Heidi took me on a boat tour around the canals. It was an interesting way to tour Copenhagen, but a good one. It lasted about an hour.

This is Molly. She is the sweetest little Labrador that I have ever met! She made me miss my own three doggies something terrible!! She never barked, and was very good at snuggling and looking hungry. We drove to Hurup, this tiny little village in northern Denmark on the second day I was there. This is their house.

These are the Steps From Hell. Walking up and down them sober was a challange, but after schnaps and wine, it was worse. I didn't ever fall down them though (Triumph!!) but I felt like it most of the time. These steps are actually worse than the ones at Grandad's house. ;)
The first day that I was in Hurup, Heidi, Tomas, and Tina took me to see many of the burial mounds that are everywhere in Northern Denmark. The landscape is just riddled with them. In this picture, there are three of them.

There was one that was really close to us, and we were able to actually go in it! This particular mound was about 5000 years old. It was incredible in there. It was picth black, and even the air smelled old.

This is Heidi's sister, Tina. The flash illuminated the cave, but without the candle we couldn't see anything.
This is Tomas (or one of them!), Tina's husband. He teaches history at a high school, and was full of all sorts of information all the time. He was better than a tour guide.

Heidi's father turned 59 while we were in Hurup, and we had a big party with schnaps and beer and a LOT of food. I am still surprised that I can fit food in me. ;)

(This is the aftermath of dinner one day. It wasn't even the big party. ;) Lots and lots of beer. And the schnaps were on the other side of the table. Three years ago when I was in Germany, I didn't like schnaps. This time I discovered that do. Hrhm...) A pretty village church.

We went to the beach one night. These pictures were taken around 10:30pm... just to give you an idea of how light it is so late at night. What shocked me most about the shore of the North Sea on this end was how windy and violent it was. On the other side (in England/Scotland, it's quite calm, so to see people surfing the waves was a real experience. (This is Heidi!)(We all got ice cream, and then we gave Molly some too... because she was giving us the Hungry Look.)

We went to a castle (Honestly, I'm not sure which one it was... I should have written that down...) And on the way there (and back) the bridge was up. So I took a picture.

This is the castle. What I thought was most interesting about this castle was that it wasn't built was a summerhome for some rich nobleman or king, it was really built for defense in the medieval times.

See? A moat.This is inside the castle. And this is the view from the castle. Look how pretty it is!! Apparently this is what a real Danish summer day looks like. I only saw one of these, because it rained for most of the rest of the trip! And this was one of the coolest things about the castle. It had a medieval fair next to it! There were about 100 actors pretending to live the medieval life here. There was even a sword fight! And people were selling their wares... and I think you could actually buy some of it.

Aaaaand this is Heidi and I at the train station this morning. Goodbye Heidi!

Brother Day

Dear Brother,

Today at 8:24 (or something around that rather specific time) in the morning, in the year 1991, you shoved me away from center stage. Up until that moment in time, I was the only threat to Bentley the dog in regards to how much attention and love she got, and after that time I am sure that she must have gotten no love at all, because having two children under the age of 2 is probably hard work (Thanks, Mom and Dad!) I don't remember you as a baby. In fact, all photographic evidence points that you were a really ugly baby, and I was much prettier than you, and was loved more, because there are more pictures of me in the photo albums. (Mom would, of course, disagree. She would also point out that she loves us equally, but we all know that's a lie. She loves Topher and Lila her convertible much more than she loves either of us.) And despite the abandoment problems we both suffered in your infancy (See: Photographs of the two of us alone on the couch while the adults have a drink in the next room), we grew up to be rather normal people. But for the last seventeen years, we've been pretty solid. We love each other most of the time, are at each other's necks for the rest of the time, and steal from each other's hidden chocolate and soda stashes (Or is that just me? Oops), but it's been cool. We're tight. But this day is all about you. So here, have an imaginary box of Maltesers on me. And you know what? Have a beer, too. I'm legal over here, so I'll even buy it for you. And you know what? Have the best day of your life. It's the only day of the year we pay any attention to you, so milk it for what it's worth. I love you, Munks. You're the best brother in the world, and every other brother ain't got nuthin on you.

Love, Steffi

P.S. Ah hatechu!

Train station numero 10

Okay. So this blog is coming from my phone! I am sitting in a train station for the tenth time (twice at Haslemere, twice at Waterloo, twice at King's Cross, twice at Waverly, once at Krakow, and now once at Berlin.) I took an overnight train to Berlin from Krakow. Just to give yall a good idea of how long I was in that train, I was in that cabin for two *more* hours than I sat on the transatlantic plane flight. That's a 10 hour train ride, fellas! I am not complaining, though. The train had cots to lay down on. I was very comfy, and slept a good 6 hours. (that's more than I expected, to tell the truth!) So I am waiting to catch my next train to Hamburg, and then a connecting one to Copenhagen! Can't wait to hear what gibberish Danish sounds like. ;)

To wrap up the rest of my trip to Poland (which you will be seeing pictures of soon, I promise), yesterday Niki, her mother, and I went to Auschwitz.

It was somehow not what I expected. I guess I was expecting to feel the ghosts of the hundreds of thousands of people who died there or something... but I didn't feel there what I had felt while reading books of what happened there. I guess that I am moved more by the stories than I am the numbers. Don't get me wrong: I was moved by what I saw... But I think that I shut myself down. I don't think that I wanted to feel anything.

One of the things that did get me were the piles and piles of shoes that the Nazis had taken away from them. Thousands of shoes, just piled 8 feet high and 12 feet deep in this long hallway on both sides of you. If you have ever been to the Holocaust museum in Washington DC and seen that exhibit with the shoes, that was nothing compared to this.

Well, I still have 20 minutes until the train gets here. Will try and blog again soon. :)

A short introduction to Poland

Alright, because I'm exhausted, I'm going to leave a "real" post (i.e. with pictures and stories and stuff) for later today or tomorrow... but never fear. I will entertain you with something right now. 

Being in Poland is oodles of fun. 

Niki and her mom treat me like part of the family. We have good Polish food and we spend hours and hours of the day chatting over tea and biscuits. Niki took me into Krakow yesterday (via the tram) with her cousin and her cousin's friend and showed me a lot of the sights... a castle, a lot of cathedrals and churches, and the largest medieval square in Europe, which now houses a lot of restaurants and stalls where people sell their crafts. The views here are so incredibly different from what I am used to seeing in England. Eastern Europe, I have come to realize, is more different than I thought. 

On Sunday, Niki and her mom took me to a Catholic mass. It was an interesting experience, because I knew what was going on, from the gazillion Catholic masses I attended (and sang at) at school over the last eight years. I knew what people were saying, and I even recognized a song or two... but everything was in Polish. I knew what was going on, but understood nothing. 

Today, I believe that I will be going back into Krakow with Niki to actually visit the castle. Museums are closed on Mondays, and so I am looking forward to going into the castle that I saw yesterday. I believe that Niki's cousin, Carolina, also wanted to go see Prince Caspian in the movies today... so we might go catch that as well. Carolina said that she wanted to see the movie in English (Hallelujah!!) with subtitles in Polish. An excellent decision, in my opinion.

Well, I am going to go and get ready for the day now. Will post with pictures later when I am not so tired! 

I'm in Poland!!

Hello everyone!

This will be a short blog (with no pictures) but I want to let everyone know that I arrived safely in Poland. I had quite an experience this afternoon in the Airport, just because it wasn't really clear where I should go and what lines to stand in... so I made it to my flight with less time than I would have wanted (not enough to stand in line at the WH Smith and buy maltesers and a dr pepper. I suppose that was for the better.) and everything went smoothly from there. The flight from England to Poland only lasted two hours, so I happily read a book for the entire two hours and barely noticed the time passing. 

I made it through passport control (with my British passport and my American accent) without any problems, collected my things at baggage claim and then I met Niki and her mother outside the terminal. It was really cool to see someone I know from Texas in another country! 

I will blog about my daily experiences here... so you all will have no shortage of photobucket pictures or blogs to peruse in the coming weeks. Things will go by pretty quickly for the rest of the month. Hold on to your hats!

(...As an aside, I logged onto the Blogger website and it recognized that I am in Poland and everything popped up in Polish. I stared at it for a good minute before I recognized that I couldn't read it.)

Over the bridge and through the woods

I was doing damage control on my email (34 emails... come on, I haven't even been gone 24 hours yet!!) and realized that I haven't blogged in several days and you guys might be filing your missing persons reports...

Don't worry guys. I haven't gone anywhere.

Well actually, I just lied. (Sorry.) I did go somewhere. I went to Canterbury to visit my grandfather. And I took pictures!!

So to recap the last few days that I haven't blogged, here's a short list of what you would have seen:

-Lots of good cooking

-Lots of pubs

-Lots of shandy (Yummy fizzy lemonade/beer combination)

-Lots of playing cricket/football with my cousins

-Lots of knitting

There you go. Dad arrived on Monday morning and Neil went to fetch him from the airport. I cooked Tuesday evening and would like to proudly point out that there were no leftovers and then yesterday it rained solidly from about 5 in the morning until about 8 at night. No breaks. I've never seen such persistent weather in my life.

Dad and I left Uncle Neil's house at about 10:30 to pick up Pippa from the airport, where she'd been visiting her daughter in Ibiza (which I just learned how to spell properly yesterday...) and then we all carried onto drive to see my Grandad.

We all survived the trip in one piece... and without having been poisoned due to lack of sanitary conditions. My grandad will be 88 in November. He still lives alone and I don't think he even realizes he has a dishwasher... Or he doesn't know how to use it. (Whenever he offered any of us anything, we offered to get it instead... if only just to give it a good wash first.)

(That's his kitchen)

Here are a few pictures around his house. (This house has looked the same since I was born!)

(And this is the bedroom that I have slept in every time I go. It's really common to have a sink in every bedroom of a house in England. A least, the houses that were built ages ago.)

(This is the staircase that should, and likely, does not meet any building codes... when it was built or now. I cannot believe my 87 year old grandfather manages to get up these steps. Ever. I can barely make it up them without thinking that I'm going to fall back down. )

Yesterday before we went to Grandad's house, we stopped off in Canterbury, because I wanted to go into Canterbury Pottery.

This place is seriously the coolest place ever. The pottery there is amazing. Worth every cent you spend, really. It's right across the square from the entrance to the Cathedral. One of the coolest things about the store is that the man who creates everything (it's a family owned thing. Dad says he remembers when the man's mother ran the store!) remembers us every time.

I walked in there three years ago when I was there, and said nothing but "Hello" when he said "Oh, you're one of those Texans! Welcome back." It's so cool to go back there and chat with him every time.

So I bought a mug and a teapot for college. I can't wait to use them. They are gorgeous. (As an aside, I have drank so much tea here, that I think that I will come back made of tea. If I come back with a faint brown tinge to my blood, I would not be surprised.)

So, back to Grandad's. We went out to this wonderful fish place for dinner. It's right on the shore. Dad and Pippa devoured their food within minutes... it was quite funny. I tasted the battered cod. I was doing well, but then I saw the scales and was completely turned off. I stuffed myself on chips (that's french fries, my American friends) and baguettes (French bread).

Later on that evening, I walked the short distance to the shore and enjoyed the breeze.

(This is the little corner shop that Duncan and I would walk to when we were little to get our chocolate fix.)

And another panorama picture!

It had finally stopped raining and I love the shore at Tankerton. It's one of those places that no matter how many times you go to it, you feel connected with yourself. I've been there countless times before at all different ages and parts of my life so far... and it is the same every time.

I love that place.