Off to see the country

Well hello! Long time no blog. Welcome back. I hope that as you all are reading this you are well and good. :)

Quick! The name of the game is, "What’s Your Favorite Item from Patty Mraz’s Care Package to Katie?" (everyone’s a winner!) In a bright green package covered in poker chips, my mother sent me a few days ago:
-Two chapsticks (considered one item)
-A Sports Illustrated magazine dedicated entirely to Michael Phelps (whom she appropriately refers to as "Katie’s Michael")
-A Barnes and Noble tote bag for groceries and whatnot
-A single American Dollar
-A Jayson Schmelzer Coe College postcard advertisement addressed to Matthew Mraz
-A love note
-A 5-pack of Bic mechanical pencils
So what’s it gonna be?? Currently there’s a strong pull for the postcard and the dollar, but the competition is still hot.

Isn’t that an awesome package to get from home??! Haha everyone should be so lucky.

So. Since I’ve written last, I have been to another country, taken a test, and arrived at the train station from where I will be embarking on a two-week Europefest. Just another week abroad!

Alright first things first. Norway. Sweden is located right next-door to Norway and so it’s really just a hop, skip, and a jump away from Östersund. So on Saturday morning, I hopped out of bed, skipped a shower (I took one the night before, I promise), and jumped on a train with Ellen to meet three of our other friends in Trondheim. Four hours later we found ourselves in the third largest city in Norway, complete with canals, tiny streets, colorful houses, and lots of hills. Oh and of course, fjords. (Really, I know it may be getting old but just say fjord out loud once and you’ll never want to stop either!) We hiked up the longest hill in the world (or probably what just seemed like the longest hill in the world after going on three hours of sleep the night before, but hey you weren’t there so you don’t know) to our hostel where we met Candace, Anna, and Eva, who had arrived the day before. After getting settled in, Candace wasn’t feeling well so she stayed back at the hostel while the rest of us set out on an exploration of the fjords. We walked through town to the edge of the ocean and just went at it. Great trails accompanied by awesome views and a tantalizing rock face here and there that I just couldn’t pass without climbing caused my camera batteries to die disappointingly early. I didn’t get the chance, then, to capture how cool the bunkers and cave that we found were. We learned that when the Germans invaded Norway during WWII, they built a whole sleiu (someone please tell me how to spell this) of structures for the purposes of hiding out, storage, whatever people need when they’re at war. It was eerie to walk through them. I felt engulfed in history in a way I hadn’t been for a while.

After a few hours we basically called it a day. All day it had gotten progressively rainier, and by the time we headed back to the hostel we were legitimately freezing. (It’s going to snow up here soon….) Exhausted, the five of us just sat around drinking tea in the living room all night before heading to bed.

The next day we were greeted with a fantastic free breakfast to start the day off right. What started off as an inquisitive comment about my Minnesota Twins Territory t-shirt turned into an hour-long question/answer session about baseball. We cleared up pitcher vs. batter confusion, outs, strikes, home runs, balls, grand slams, fouls, you know, basically the extent of what I know about the game. It was so pleasantly peculiar to try to describe this game to two German girls and a Swede. Being a purely American sport they had absolutely no groundwork laid to begin to understand the game, and so describing the basics of a concept that is so common to me (and to you other Americans) to a captive and intrigued audience gave baseball a sparkle I had never seen before. It was really quite endearing. Despite my insistence that I really know nothing about the game, I was promoted to Baseball Expert by the end of the conversation. I’ll savor that status for all of eternity.

After breakfast, Ellen and I went out to explore the fortress that the other girls had checked out the day before. It was quaint but interesting nonetheless. I couldn’t help but chuckle when I discovered that the tiny little fortress I was running around in was all it took to ward off the Swedes 200 years ago. Another moment for me to think, "Oh bless Sweden’s little heart." Love it. The rest of the day was then spent exploring the town until our train left to take us back to Östersund that evening. I actually saw two really interesting little art galleries in my wanderings, along with a cathedral that I swear was the topic of one of my lectures last semester in Medieval Art History class. If not, it definitely could compete with the churches I learned about. It was a perfect example of Gothic architecture with its hundreds of arches and long nave and side aisles. And I couldn’t stop my need to feel everything in it: the details chiseled into the walls and arches looked like they could have been fake if I didn’t touch them to validate their intricacies. It turns out it’s the northernmost Gothic church in Europe, too, so that’s pretty cool to see.

A full day of wandering helped me sleep pretty well on the train, which ended up being detrimental to my test preparedness. While I should have studied on the train and gotten to bed early, I slept on the train and thus couldn’t sleep when I got back, contributing to my 2:30am bedtime before my 8am Swedish Language test today. (I also talked to Patty and Mark for a while…we have a Sunday Skype call every week that I’ve grown to need. I’m lucky. ;)) Kind of hurting right now, but I’m also about ready to hop on the train for my next adventure so nap time is only a few minutes away….

…my train will be taking me to the south of Sweden, from where I’ll fly to Paris tomorrow to meet Stacey. Then I’m off to make Europe my you-know-what again.
Here’s my itinerary:
October 7-9: Paris
October 10-12: Amsterdam
October 12-15: Vienna
October 15-18: Berlin
October 18-20: Copenhagen
Then a train back to Östersund so I don’t have to fly. I proclaim my undying love, yet again, to Charlie the sassy Eurail Pass. :)
Alright well I’ll be in touch throughout the trip! Thinking of you all!
kt