From Austria to Italy

Also known as, from snow covered mountains to green covered mountains. Michael and I both slept for the first half of the first leg of our train ride to Florence. We left Innsbruck at 927 am, waved goodbye to innsbruck's beautiful mountains and made our way into gorgeous Italy. I tried to stay awake to see the sights along the way but anyone who knows me knows how bad I am at actually staying awake in a moving vehicle. I didn't get to sit by Michael or by the window so I did a lot of head bobbing, eyes closed, startled waking up, just to go back to sleep again. I'm sure I looked ridiculous. Finally I opened my eyes and saw beautiful green fields with adorable houses and villages nestled onto the sides of mountains and I urged myself to wake up so I could see more. Michael and I went to the food car and ordered a light lunch and drinks mostly so we could sit together and have a good view. We took many pictures, oohed and aahhed (that part was mostly me) at the adorable villages, and met a guy from Texas who said that he "knew we were one of them" (the Americans, we presume). Now we have about half an hour left on the first leg of the trip. We will get off at Verona and take another train to bologna. From there it will be a short ride to Florence.  And then m and I will find the bus that will take us to our countryside olive grove bed and breakfast. It looked wonderful online so I'm very excited. I think they will have a dog.

Last day in Innsbruck

To follow the last post, Tuesday afternoon after we had our adventure in Hungerburg we went to the Tyrolean folk art museum in Innsbruck. I wasn't sure what to expect but it was an impressive museum! We had a cool reading guide machine thingy which we pointed at the barcode tag in front of each exhibit and the laser scanned it and pulled up information. It was a pretty neat way to see the museum and to learn a lot about the cultural history of the area. I honestly didn't know that much about Tyrolean culture so I was grateful we had the chance to learn about it a bit.
We also visited the church that is right beside the museum and we were lucky enough to visit it right in the middle of an organ concert. Every church,every single church, that we've seen in Europe has a fancy organ. Churches differ in their fanciness and ornateness, but the organ is always impressive. So we admired the decorations and listened to the organ music. Not a bad way to see a church.

We wrapped that night up with dinner at the Ottoburg, one of the oldest buildings in the city, which has now been turned into a local cuisine restaurant. It was originally built sometime around the 1300s. It's a beautiful building and our cute little table was next to a window that looked out to the mountains. We ate our Austrian-style ravioli (with spinach and multiple types of delicious cheese) and Wiener schnitzel, which was a little too heavily fried but not bad otherwise.
Gotta try the local specialties ;)


Our last day in Innsbruck was a little chilly but we got up early to walk around Hofgarten, a gorgeous garden in the middle of the city. It basically means the garden for royalty. The Hofburg, right beside the garden, is the royal palace. And the hofkirke was the royal church that we had visited the day before. We walked through it as the sun came up and as business people in suits passed by on their morning commute. We also were passed by a group of school children on what appeared to be their morning laps around the garden. Almost all of the were jogging, even though they were in normal school clothes.  They were working up a sweat and...get this...they even seemed to be enjoying it. Think we could talk American children, and their teachers, in to spending a half an hour running a mile around a city garden before school?

We spent the rest of the day visiting the Swarovski crystal shop/exhibition area (because we decided not to go to the gigantic crystal museum, which I'm a little sad about, but it was too far away to really be worth it), climbing up the Stadturn, a tower that gave us a great view of the city, and visiting other churches. Our other big adventure of that day was renting bikes and exploring the city on wheels. On our way to get the bikes, it started to rain so we went to this museum I had noticed earlier. It was called Audioversum and it was developed and run by a prominent cochlear-implant company (that we, as silly Americans, had never heard of). It was awesome! We got to play sound localizing and 'guess that sound' games. We had a super cool guide who took us through the entire museum and we were the only people in there. We got to watch 3d videos of how sound is transducer which was super fun because we are both huge nerds. I had learned recently n my med neuro class about sound transduction and the cochlea, auditory cranial nerve and other brain areas responsible for sensing sound so it was fun to see how they had put that into interactive exhibits.

We finally got our bikes and it turned out to be a pretty nice day for riding. We rode up to the bergiesel, the famous ski jump of Innsbruck. I have some incredible pictures from the top of that, as it is a fairly high point in the city. In front of the ski jump is the city of Innsbruck and behind it is rugged terrain and mountains. If Innsbruck ever gets to be the site for the Winter Olympics again, I'll be able to say that I've been there :)

We rode to 3 more churches and then spent 10 minutes at a modern art museum right before it closed. Michael is a fan of churches and I'm a huge fan of modern art. So it was a win-win.

That pretty much sums it up for Innsbruck. The pictures will speak to how beautiful the area is. Ill be sure to post some

Innsbruck

Monday

It was a bit of a blessing that our bags didn't end up making it to Innsbruck with us, because then we didn't have to carry them through the city. We didn't get them as soon as we had hoped, but they did finally arrive at our hostel Tuesday evening. Turns out it isn't so hard to manage with just one outfit for two whole days. No makeup, no medicine, one iPhone charger, no socks, one pair of underwear. And yet we managed and actually really enjoyed it. But I was glad when they did come and it was nice to put on a clean shirt.

Monday evening, after we checked in to the hostel, we walked around the city and realized that our hostel really was very very close to all of the main sights. We were able to see the Goldenes Dachl (roof) right away and some churches and important statues that were nearby. In front of a statue called St. Anne's column, Michael said something about how he never asked anyone to take his picture by any landmarks during the rest of his trip when he was by himself.  A nearby local girl heard us (which is not surprising since we Americans tend to be very loud) and said " shall I take your picture?" We were mildly embarrassed but laughed a lot and said yes, thanks! And so now we have a lovely photo :)

After that we walked more and found ourselves at a cool plaza/fountain/skatepark near the triumphforte (the iconic landmark in Innsbruck, which depicts on one side, wedding festivities of a prince, but because his father died during the celebration, the other side of the arch depicts the great sadness).

Having found ourselves in this wide open and beautiful plaza, it only made sense to play hackysack. Basically Michael is the best hacky buddy I've ever had.  When I was in Europe before, I played by myself many many times, and always wanted a friend to join me. Now he and I can hacky all over Europe :)

So far the list of places we've played is the Larsen's house, King's Garden in Copenhagen, and that skate park. Im sure we'll be adding to it soon.


Anyway, after hacky, we went to pick up food but didn't realize it was a holiday on Monday (Whitsunday) so everything closed very early. We just barely made it to a supermarket to buy cheese, peppers and some apples. Back at the hostel, Michael cooked up a nice dinner of pasta with the aforementioned ingredients and some spices he had bought earlier during his trip.

And thus concluded our first day in Innsbruck :)


Tuesday was a beautiful day, but it's a good thing we both wore layers because we  ended up on top of a mountain and, who would've guessed, it was really cold!! It was windy and there was snow, but it was completely worth it. We had an amazing view of Innsbruck and of the river Inn that runs through Innsbruck (can you guess where the city gets its name?) We spent a lot of time hanging out on the mountain, watching sheep, pointing out different mountains, walking around in the snow and of course, taking tons of pictures. Finally our fingers and noses got cold enough that we took the cable car partway down the mountain and explored the village of Hungerburg. We were just planning to look at some houses and take more pictures but we stumbled upon a cute little church so we examined it from the outside and, when we saw that the side door was open, we explored the inside too. We were incredibly lucky to be approached by a man who turned out to be the pastor of the little church. He told us all about the different frescoes on the walls and the history of the church itself. There was a small language barrier but he did pretty well speaking English and we loved hearing all about this church and area that he obviously loves. He even asked if we were hungry and invited us in for cake and coffee. Neither of us actually drinks coffee, but how could we say no to that?? So we accepted and had a wonderful time eating cake from a local restaurant and some bread that a nun at the church baked. We chatted of our trip, his trip to the US (North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia), more history of the church, McDonald's, skiing and the most important things to see in Innsbruck. We must stayed for over an hour but when when finished the cake and bread and coffee and homemade lemon "citron", a refreshing natural lemon juice, Peter walked us all the way down to the cable car station. He pointed out interesting buildings and told us stories on the way.  As I'm sure Michael will mention in his future guest post in my blog, it was all in all an accidentally awesome encounter

Luggageless in Innsbruck

I'll preface this by saying that we do in fact now have our bags and all our belongings are intact. It honestly wasn't too much of an ordeal to not have our luggage for 2 days, but it was a little nerve-wracking, which is why I didn't tell anyone back home that we lost them (sorry mom!).

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 We've made it to our second destination- Innsbruck. Well, we have made it to the airport. But currently, no further. And our bags did not make it with us. We are pretty sure we will get them this evening because there's another flight coming in from Frankfurt. Our layover was quite short in Frankfurt....and our flight in was a bit delayed, meaning Michael and I were those crazy people running through the airport.  And because it was Frankfurt, we were running through the airport, up and down stairs, around many corners, and finally on to a bus for whom we were the only passengers.  A nice Turkish bus driver special-delivered us to the very far away loading site of our tiny turboprop plane.  Along the way he regaled us with stories of when he drove Lady Gaga around the airport (she is short and has very big yellow hair) and Heidi Clune, who was supposedly visiting her husband. . Oh and snoop dogg. He's met snoop dogg. So that was cool. Our nice Turkish bus driver didn't have the best English but we rather enjoyed his tales. He also played some party tunes and told us to come back and find him when we get married (earlier he said to me "this time, friends. next time...married.") He got us to the plane just in time....and then there was another 10 minute delay because of weather, haha.The flight was short and a little bumpy but the scenery was beautiful, as it is here. Outside the airport (where we are waiting for a city bus) we are faced with snowcapped mountains, on top of which are luminescent clouds. The blue sky is peaking through in lots of places though and while it is a bit windy, it is a nice day to be walking around downtown. Which is the plan as soon as we can catch the bus to city central.

Im hoping the bags come tonight or tomorrow morning...otherwise Michael and I will be taking lots of pictures wearing our new Star Alliance tshirts, which were generously given by the lost and found desk here.

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Note

The one previous and other soon to come posts have all been written on my iPad during travel. I haven't had much wifi or time to edit, but I want to post them anyway so you may follow our adventures. With that as my excuse, I'll apologize for the multiple typos/autocorrect errors and the semi-pathetic writing. I'll admit it's not my best. But that's because I'm living it up over here in Europe, so I hope you understand :)

M and I are eating an Italian style dinner at a Spanish-style time right now ( it's almost 11 pm for us over here) and then we will be off to bed so we can get up early and leave this lovely olive grove for our trains to Cinque Terre. Looking forward to a little more sun, hopefully, because it was a bit rainy here in Florence today. Hope all is well back home and elsewhere.

R

Tales of Copenhagen

I don't think my telling of our time at the larsens can do justice to how wonderful it was. Not only was I thrilled to be back with them, but we spent the whole time being hygge, playing games, eating delicious food, partying, laughing.

Friday, upon arriving in dk, m and I made our way on the stog to bagsvaerd, the place that was my home 2 years ago. The larsens were home and I was fortunate enough to get to meet Rosie, the larsens exchange student for the past 4 months. She is a wonderful girl from California and I was so happy she wasn't upset that I was invading her space. Quite the opposite, she seemed very happy to meet me and said it would make her goodbye a tiny bit easier. Friday was actually her last day with the larsens. We all bid her farewell at the train station later in the afternoon and she was on her way to Sweden to visit friends before heading back to the US.

Friday night was meget hyggeligt, with bread and cheese and fruit and salad and wine and candles and good conversation. Couldn't have asked for a better welcome back dinner.

Saturday was one of the most fun and relaxing days I have had in a long time. Around 11 am, Michael and his host parents came to the Larsen's house and we all headed out to Bagsvaerd lake. It was a gorgeously sunny day, but not so hot as to elicit much sweat. We rented canoes and spent the afternoon exploring various channels of the lake. At the end of one we stopped and had a picnic lunch, after which the kids and M and I (that'll be my shorthand for Andreas, Rebecca, Michael and I) played hacky sack for a while and then the kids taught m and I to play "dåsen", a game similar to the American "kick the can". It was fun to be 12 again.

After the wonderful afternoon on the river, the Larsen's hosted one of the best barbecues I have ever been to. There were fun neighbors, good music booming from the stereo system inside the house, all kinds of delicious grilled meat and fancy salads, a plethora of beer, wine & liquor, along with an adorable child that we played with a lot. Later on in the evening, one of the highlights was the Eurovision Song Contest, which Denmark won. So that was incredibly fun.

Oh! And floating fire lanterns. That's right, we had floating fire lanterns. You light this peice of burlap that's on a wire at the bottom of the lantern and then hold the sides and top of it until it inflates enough and starts floating, then you let it go and hope it doesn't catch on the tree. Which a few did. And I thought we were going to burn down the tree and the house. But we didnt.

We let probably 6 float into the sky at the same time and then we all stood back and oohed and ahhed until they faded from sight.
The party raged with music and a bonfire and alcohol and lawn games (lit up with an extension cord and a powerful outdoor light from a neighbor) until 4 in the morning, when Michael and I finally gave in and went to bed

People watching people

It's like in the movies, where everyone on the upcoming flight is lining up and the screen zooms in on certain characters, highlighting the woman in high heels, the older man who looks very sophisticated and is mentally counting something with the help of the hand that rests on his carry-on suitcase, the woman on a work call whose Danish accent is clearly heard through the perfectly English words, the numerous men in suitcoats who obviously have somewhere important to be, the girl my age with the badass headphones (she's obviously cool), the dude in a pearl jam shirt, Starbucks coffee in hand. I could go on and on.  There was a slight delay in boarding so this whole line of people was standing in line right in front of a sitting me, just waiting to be people-watched. I've made eye contact with most of them. Makes me wonder what they think of me. And if any of them think this is almost like the movies, when the shot freezes as the viewers are introduced to each person, interesting in their own way, distraught or ecstatic for their own reasons, all of which will be revealed later in the season.

I wish I could write stories. This is fun.

Let the adventure commence!

Here I am, waiting for a first flight to Chicago, after which I will leave American soil and fly to Toronto. From there I will fly overnight to Copenhagen, which actually translates to a 7 hour flight, but it begins at 9pm and arrives at 10:45. I'm generally pretty good at sleeping on flights (meaning I can't stay awake for the life of me) so I'm looking forward to the 7 uninterrupted hours of sleep. Haha. I can't wait to be back in Denmark. I miss the language, I miss the pastries, I miss the s-tog...and of course I really miss my host family. Tonight we will be having hygge :)

My efficient hiking backpack is suspiciously not totally packed full. Room left for presents I guess! I can't tell yet whether I packed too many clothes, not enough clothes or just the right amount. I almost hope I didn't pack enough so I just have to do a little shopping. I'm traveling with a boy so I'm afraid my shopping opportunities are going to be limited. I might have to charm him into giving up just a few hours in each place so I can get my shopping fix...and find treasures for my friends!

The itinerary for almost every place is museums, beaches (or in the case of Austria, mountains), hiking/exploring and trying not to look like tourists. As I mentioned before, we will be in each place about 3 days. Ill try and take at least a few pictures in each place on the iPad so I can upload them.  All other pics I will take on my brand spanking new camera...which I had to buy because the memory cards I bought for my other camera did not arrive in the mail in time :( granted, I should've ordered them earlier, but amazon did say they would arrive by Tuesday....two days ago. And then didn't come. So now I have a camera that can take panoramic shots, extract only certain colors for a shot, take continuous shots at once and zoom in x8. So I guess I can't complain ;) just means ill be encouraged to take the best pictures I can to show you all later.

------ I just got a phone call from my European trebled buddy Michael. He's currently hanging out on Nyhavn and he told me about all the places he's been today. I can picture it so well- I can't believe I'm going to be there soon!

Nw for the boring stuff...I finished my first year of grad school classes! I've sort of already started my class for summer. I'm taking an online stats course, which I actually am very excited about being I haven't taken stats since Knox and I really miss it! And I also feel like I'm a poor excuse for a scientist with my current lack of statistical knowledge. So when I return from Europe I will be spending a good chunk of each day catching up on the class because I'm technically missing the first two weeks of it. I've never taken a summer course before. Now experiences galore!

As I was saying, I finished my other courses- all 4 of them. This semester was challenging, to say the least. But I can't even really express how much I learned. I simultaneously learnt a ton of material and also learnt how little I actually know. I think a good for does that, it shows you how much more there is to learn about the subject. Medical neuroscience definitely did that. To be honest, all of my classes did that. Oh, I know the basics of the fMRI technique? Great, well now I need to learn how to analyze the results, how to calibrate the machine to account for cardiac and respiration cycles, how to understand the underlying mathematical and mechanical concepts that I am only vaguely familiar with now. The same goes for my cog psych class which introduced us to running statistical analyses in excel and to designing programs and analyzing data in programs called eprime and Matlab. So.....let's just say I'm glad grad school isn't only one year long. Because I would be completely inadequately equipped to be any type of scientist.

Ok I'll end the gibberish. My flight has been delayed about half an hour. Thankfully both of my layovers (Chicago and Toronto) are about 3 hours each so I'm not too concerned about missing a flight. I'm not easily bored so ill just enjoy my down time and daydream about my upcoming adventure.



Thanks for reading! And stay tuned, I have a feeling future posts will be a whole lot more exciting than this one

Putting the passport to use

I'm typing on an iPad at a swanky little cafe in the Toronto airport, so I won't write much. I have another post written but its inaccessible on my own in-wifi-ed iPad so ill post it later. First leg of the trip went swimmingly. I even got to watch Big Bang theory and modern family on the flit. What is this crazy technology!?

If all goes as planned, I'll arrive in Copenhagen tomorrow at 10:45. I heard a Danish woman talking earlier today and it made me even more excited to get back there. It's liked I've missed it a lot of something. Weird.

Ok, i better get to my gate. I'll keep you updated! And hopefully post at least a few photos.

In the spirit of adventure,
Rachel