Tear Down the House

My last weeks in Germany were quite stressful and all a whirl.  I had a several things to do before the movers arrived.  But, the most important thing was buying my beer and compiling my inventory so it all could be shipped and Maryland could tax me.  My friend Jannine and I headed to Belgium for a beer run.  She's awesome AND she has a van.

 Don't worry, some of that is Jannine's.

But all of this is mine and will hopefully make it over.

 The no parking sign outside my house for the day of my move.

So I bought, I organized, I cleaned, I cleaned, I saw friends, I had dinners, I cleaned, I wrapped, I shipped and I ran on July 1st.  I am gone.  I am home.

What were some of the best three years and some of the worst are over.  When asked if I would order it again, that's a hard decision to make.  But without having ordered it, I wouldn't be where I am now, having seen all the places I saw and having met the good friends I made.  And for that, I am grateful.

Upward Over the Mountain

At the end of May I took my final European vacation--a cruise to northern Europe and to St. Petersburg--with Dad, Mom, and Wayne before I returned home.  I'll never be able to complete my places to see list and that's a good thing, but I did get to see a lot of those places during the cruise.  We departed from Copenhagen and visited Oslo, Norway; Aarhus, Denmark; Warnemuende, Germany; Tallin, Estonia; St. Petersburg, Russia; Helsinki, Finland; and Stockholm, Sweden.

Copenhagen

 

We all arrived in Copenhagen either a day or two before the ship sailed.  It's a neat city, but then all of the cities in Scandinavia are neat.  We did some wandering and Dad found a new love--Carlsberg.

Changing of the guard in Oslo

Beer in Oslo

The beach in Warnemuende, Germany.

A delicious dunkel in Warnemuende.

Oslo wasn't much to me personally, but I did wander some and we saw the changing of the guard.  Warnemuende is about 3 hours is so from Berlin, but since I had been to Berlin several times, Dad and I stayed in this little seaside town.  It's very popular with Germans for the beach and has lots of fresh fish dishes.  So, we found an outside restaurant under cover when it started raining, had some lunch and some delicious Rostocker beer.

A medieval restaurant in Estonia.

An Estonian microbrew.

I don't know about everyone else, but Tallinn was my favorite stop on the cruise.  Mom found a tour company run by college students and we had a great walking tour of the city.  The country's history is fascinating and they seem to be very proud to finally be on their own, under no other country's control.  Our tour guide recommended that we have lunch at this medieval restaurant where everything is a euro, there are no lights, no utensils, and they jokingly serve you without any customer service. 

Catherine's Palace in St. Petersburg

Paying in rubels can't be that much, right?  Lunch in St. Petersburg.

Church of Our Savior on Spilled Blood

St. Petersburg was interesting, perhaps only because we couldn't ever visit there for so long.  I'm glad I went, but I don't think I'll ever go back.  My one goal was to see an onion dome church, with the colorful tops and mosaics.  I got to see that and it was awesome!  Most of the time we were on a bus, though, which I'm not a fan of, but it was probably the better option after seeing how people drive.

 The Vasa in Stockholm

Probably the coolest thing any of us ever have seen in our lives was the war ship the Vasa, in Stockholm.  It sank on it's maiden voyage, just 2km from it's berth and remained at the bottom for almost 350 years.  When found it was almost completely intact.  It was HUGE and breathtaking.

The cruise was a wonderful way to end my tour in Germany, especially with Mom and Dad.

April in Paris

We saw, we ate, we drank....we enjoyed every second.

Old Country Fairytale

You know when you think of Germany, you think of timbered houses, quaint villages with cobblestone roads, and in general just cute?  Well, that's where I took Mom when she visited....to France.  To be fair, it's that portion of France that changed hands so many times between Germany and France that it's a little of both.

We went to the Alsace region of France and drove along the wine route.  It's made up of those quaint villages with cobblestone roads.  The required phrase was "awww, how cute."  We visited Obernai, the Haut-Koenigsbourg Castle, Riquewehr, and others that I can't remember.  But they were cute.

It turns out that the emblem of the Alsace are storks.  There were stork nests on the tops of buildings, at the tops of poles designed for stork nests, and it seemed everywhere.  We got a few good pictures of these storks in their nest. 


 













I took Mom to Heidelberg on Friday so she could see the castle with the views.  There's an American base near by, so there tend to be a lot of Americans there, but it's a nice city and the castle, the grounds, and the view are beautiful.

The trip was relaxing and not the run-around of trying to see a bunch of things all in a week.  The weather couldn't have been in any better.  It was sunny and in the low 60s every day.  I think almost every single one of our lunches were outside in the sun.

Live Your Life

I read a New York Times article about a "trail" of Belgian beer in Belgium.  (Yeah, shocking, I know.)  In it, there was a bit about a bed and breakfast at the brewery of our favorite Belgian beer.  So even though Chris and I are famous for doing nothing, I knew we'd be kicking ourselves if we didn't go while he visited in February.  After all, as part of the price of the room, you have unrestricted access to the B&B fridge, which contains the beer the brewery makes.  We didn't plan to be invited back.

The brewery is in the middle of nowhere and the GPS took us on some roads that didn't seem like roads at all.  It's surrounded by fields and the landscape reminded us both of the landscapes of our childhoods, in Ohio and Tennessee.

The trip was entirely relaxing and we got lucky with sunny and warmish (for winter) weather.  We had a tour of the brewery the first morning, which we both loved.  So many St. Bernadus bottles and labels and kegs! 

 

We walked to the closest town, Watou, afterward.  It's a small town and has quite a lot of things going on....during the summer.  We wanted to eat lunch at this restaurant by this famous Belgian chef who cooks with the local brews, but the woman at the B&B that morning told us that his wife had died the day before.  The only place open was where we ended up and it was very good, as was the Hommelbier (Heaven beer) on tap.

That evening we stayed at the B&B and relaxed in the living rooms.  For dinner we had bread, cheese, pate, apples, and pears, which we picked up at the small grocery store and bakery while in town for lunch.  And don't forget the beer....

Pinch Me

You think that if you've seen one, you've seen them all.  Well, that doesn't 't really hold true for some things.

There are very few places left that I really want to go and very few things that I really want to see before I leave Europe this summer and return to the place I really want to be.  So on Christmas Day, I was looking for places to go over the long weekend in January when I realized that I had yet to see David's butt.

That's right, the main reason I went to Florence was to see David's butt.  And there's no hiding the fact (mainly because he's naked) that it is in fact a nice butt. 

This is a replica on top of a hill at Piazza Michelangelo.

And the one below is outside the Uffzi Museum.

You're not allowed to take pictures inside the Accademia, where he lives.

 So I took my time and admired Michelanelo's work.

I'm not a museum person, but I am an architecture and beautiful scenery person.  Florence has all three.  Florence also has some wonderful food and also happens to in the Chianti region....what a coincidence!  So, I took in the scenery, the wonderful vitamin D that I've needed so desperately, and the fruits of the region, all topped off with some great naps.

Moonlight Midnight

Most probably thought I was crazy, and I frankly had to wonder myself, when I decided that for a vacation over the new year that I would go to the Arctic Circle.  I dislike being cold and I wear sweaters in the heat of summer.  So why would I want to go to Finland, where there's snow, temperatures at a high of zero, and daylight only for about four hours?  Because it involved dog sledding of course!!

A group of 6.5 of us (Jack is still the 0.5) flew way up to northern Finland, well within the confines of the Arctic Circle for some outdoor fun and lots of animal butts. 


View Larger Map

Yep,  way up there.  

We stayed at a place that had only cabins and igloos (both the ice and the glass types).  We stayed in the cabins, which were great and warm.  You couldn't have bribed me to stay in the ice igloos.  We arrived on the 30th and on the 31st, our first outing was a reindeer sleigh ride.  It was very low key and sort of comical, since we were staring at a reindeer's butt during the entire ride.

Yeah, like that.

And when they had to pee (which was amazingly often), like this. 

 

 

After the sleigh ride, we had lunch.  And if staring at a reindeer's butt for a couple hours didn't make you hungry for one, you got to try some anyway.  That's right, reindeer stew was lunch.  Ironic, I know.  But up there, where there is lots of snow, think of them as cows that do more than chew cud all day long.  They pull stupid tourists on a sled. 

New Year's Eve was relaxing in the cabin playing cards, watching episodes of Modern Family and movies on the laptop, and drinking wine.  We're quite the party animals.

Kim, Brian, Maurice, Jen, Mike, and Cynthia

The next day we had the majority of the day to explore the grounds of the place we were staying, because our next adventure wasn't until 8:30 that night.  So after breakfast we geared up and out we went, into the winter wonderland....

...where we saw snow.....

...and igloos....

...and the insides of igloos...

 ...and more igloos....

  ...and hilarity ensued....

....in the snow...

...and then it got dark...

...at 2pm.

That night there was snowmobiling to see the Northern Lights.  However, since it was cloudy and there wasn't a hint of the Northern Lights, it wasn't enjoyable.  Jen and I had never been on snowmobiles, motorcycles, jet skis or anything of the kind, so driving them was stressful.  And Jack hated it because it was past his bedtime and he was being flung around in a cart behind the snowmobile while he was trying to sleep.

At the break for snacks around the fire, Brian hated it more, because Jack was asleep and there was no position comfortable to hold Jack.

The next and last excursion was by far one of the most awesome things I've ever experienced and the very reason I took the trip. 

 I got to "drive" the sled, which just meant slowing the dogs down around turns and from getting too close to the sled in front of us.  Almost every single time I hit the break, the white dog would turn around in stride and look at me as if to ask, "What the hell are you doing?  Don't you realize that it's really boring to go slow?"

 My dogs (above) before we headed out.  They all didn't look like the "typical" husky you're used to--notice the darkest dog in the bunch.  And one of the guides told us that since their husky farm is so big (140 dogs), they don't have the time to train all of the puppies.  So, when they're old enough to pull a sled with a team, they're leashed up and learn by running with the dogs they're running with.

They were all so sweet and loved for you to pet them.

I think these dogs were more excited to go than any of us.  This was after our lunch break, but they did the same thing in the morning before we headed off.  They just wanted to run.  This is one of the videos I took.




I'm going to link Kim's photos here, because she already posted them and that means I don't have to :)  They are a compilation of all of our photos, so enjoy!