For my spring break, I went to Edinburgh, Scotland; Dublin, Ireland; and Stockholm, Sweden. It was definitely a trip of a lifetime. Quite a quick tour, we spent two days in Edinburgh, two in Dublin, and three in Stockholm. Here's the story in a nutshell:
We started off on Sunday with a big group of people. Ryan Air was quite an adventure. You kind of feel like a cow herded onto the plane, but you get used to it. After an hour or so of listening to ads for smokeless cigarettes and lottery tickets, we arrived in Edinburgh, the capital of Scotland. It was so different than Germany. First of all, people drive on the left side of the road. This took some getting used to, especially when trying to cross the street. Looking left before right has been so ingrained in my mind that I was quite mixed up. The buildings, rather than your usual red tile roofing and brick or stucco siding, were now gray limestone and chimneys were everywhere. I didn't know much about Edinburgh, let alone Scotland, so some of us went on a walking tour of the city. It was 3 hours, but well worth the price: FREE! I saw all of the interesting sites of the city, including all of the Harry Potter landmarks (the book was written here). One of the funny things was that the graveyard had a cage in the ground. This was for the purpose of letting the bodies decompose before putting them in their rightful places in the ground. The university was giving big money to those who could bring in bodies for anatomy classes. Thus, a booming grave thieving business began. A pair of men by the names of Burke and Hare began simply killing people. These serial killers managed to kill and sell 17 people to the university before being caught. Hare ratted out Burke and was eventually released. He is said to have become a beggar in London. Burke, on the other hand, was hanged. His body was donated to the university, where his skeleton is to this day on display and used as a model for medical students. We went up to the Edinburgh castle and enjoyed the view as well as the numerous historical artifacts. There were prisons for Americans of the Revolutionary War. It was interesting seeing the ancient graffiti that they carved into the doors. The Scottish Crown Jewels also were housed there. Quite a few diamonds, I must say. People sure do like shiny things. We saw some live music in a pub and had some great meals and beers as well. They deep fry everything, by the way. It was a good time. The hostel was in an old church. Kind of smelly, and the mattresses were purely springs, but nothing beats the price when you're a poor student in Europe! And if you were wondering, it's true, you hear the word "Fuck" on the street every other second. After two days it was back on the plane.
Next came Dublin. What a different world it was. While in Scotland I understood less than in Germany even though they were speaking English, the Irish were a bit more understandable (by a little). When I first got in, I couldn't tell the difference between it and Chicago. Hey, there are lots of Irish in Chicago, too! I was back on the North side, complete with little parks and brick row houses. The doors are all painted different colors. According to an Irish taxi driver, this is because during the English rule, they were forced to paint the doors all black. When Ireland gained sovereignty, they of course rebelled by painting the doors red, green, yellow, blue...anything BUT black. I found it kind of funny. We didn't see a lot of the beautiful nature that I would have liked to see in Ireland, but we did explore its urban side. St. Patrick's Cathedral was very nice. It was here where St. Patrick spent the days converting all those pagans. What's interesting is that a lot of the pagan imagery and culture was kind of intermixed rather than totally destroyed. You could say this is good or bad, really. Of course, we had our first Guiness in Ireland at lunch in a pub, ate corned beef and cabbage in a pub, watched soccer in a pub, danced to traditional Irish music in a pub, etc. We made our obligatory visit to the Guiness brewery, too. It was pretty fun. There is a museum there in the shape of a giant Guiness glass, complete with free samples and a great view of the city and the nearby mountains from the top of the tower. The hostel we stayed at felt just like the Irish living facilities that the boxers and prostitutes received in the movie, Far And Away. Luckily, this really didn't bother me. I was busy playing Irish tin-whistle in the street. I bought a copy of James Joyce's Dubliners, so I'm excited to get going on the book to see exactly what Dublin was like at the turn of the century. Any different? I must say that the Gaelic language also seems very interesting and beautiful. It is written on most signs and streets with the English equivalent. Irish children are taught it in school and everyone knows it more or less--to get into certain colleges, one needs to take a Gaelic test. They just don't use it. But according to that same taxi driver, if you go to some smaller coastal towns, they might bash your brains out if they catch you speaking the words of the English. Onwards to Stockholm!
We arrived in Stockholm on a cold midnight. It was a two hour bus ride from the airport to the city (RyanAir gets you there!) and we ended up in the empty center of the city by 2...no English on the signs here! I asked a taxi driver where the ambiguous road our hostel was on was, and he didn't know off the top of his head, but offered to look it up on his GPS. He wrote it down and told us how to use the metro, but we took his taxi instead. Stockholm is made up of different islands, so it would have been quite confusing and difficult to walk the few miles it would have taken at night. He brought us to where we needed to be and even got out to show us exactly how to get there as the road we needed was only for pedestrians. We found our hostel, which is totally unmanned and automated by door codes. A night of rest and we were ready to go. Every morning we went to the store and bought supplies for "hobo sandwiches" which we would eat in the park. Good Swedish flat bread, herring, tomatoes, cucumber, potato salad, and salami were all we ate that trip. It was awesome! We got really lucky with the weather--it was especially sunny and mild the entire time. We walked the whole city back and forth, sliding on ice and taking pictures of the scenic city. A boat that also served as a hostel was docked in the harbor, and I invited my friends to have Swedish Fika, or coffeebreak. It was great inside the ship looking out onto the beautiful harbor. We really enjoyed just talking with the owner and workers there, playing cards, and watching the news. While we did not have the funds to go to museums at this point, walking through the city was a blast. People are so friendly there! We would end up having great conversations with Swedish shop owners. I would tell them about my family in Sweden and they would teach me Swedish phrases I would need to know. When in line at the grocery store, the clerks always thought I was Swedish. People in front of me would be spoken English to, but not me! If I didn't know what they were saying, I would just nod. Tak! Hej då! (Thanks! Bye!) It was great. That evening we met up with some girls we met from America on the plane. We went to this terribly expensive restaurant with black lights everywhere, Jimmy Buffet style jungle theme, little fountains and bamboo everywhere...a real nightmare if you ask me. They ended up splitting off from us. We were scouring the map for something cheaper to do that night when a group of Swedish guys came up and asked us if we needed help. They invited us out with them, and I must have met a dozen different people that night. I learned even more Swedish phrases and taught them German. I ordered in Swedish very successfully and told the true stories of what prom is to Swedish girls. Some of the guys we met even walked us back to our hostel. It was an awesome night. Let me say it again, Swedes are the friendliest people! The next day we relaxed by the city hall and saw the Swedish palace (We also got more coffee) Gift shops all sell memorabilia of the royal wedding of Princess Victoria and Daniel Westling, so I got a few postcards to commemorate the "big day". It was great, and I can't wait to go back.
After break, I was very exhausted. I even managed to pick up a cold which kept me inside for the next weekend. I'm since better and have finished my second German class. Now that we have about 4 weeks left of school, I'm wondering where all the time has gone! In any case, work on the documentary is well underway, and it will be a nice capstone in honor of this great trip. It's not over yet, though, and I can't wait to share with you the rest of my story in Lüneburg and my planned adventure back to Sweden in May.
