Six Countries, Six Days

Hostlov (fall recess)= 6 days+6 countries+ 4 capital cities+2 ferry rides+2900 km by car (1800 miles for you Americans)+1150 photos. What a trip! Now the question is how to capture the experience in a blog without writing a novel.

We left home after school and work Friday evening to catch the red eye ferry from Trelleborg, Sweden to Rostock, Germany.  I'd found that adding a sleeping cabin on to the ferry cost was no more than a hotel room would, and it sounded great to arrive in Germany early in the morning, ready to go.  Being paranoid like I usually am, I had us leave too early which meant we spent a lot of time sitting in the car and wandering around the dock waiting to load the ferry.  Not a lot of fun at 10 PM.  Oh well, I couldn't bear the thought of missing the boat-- there wouldn't be another until morning and then our whole itinerary would be shot.

This is not the ferry we rode but a similar one that was also docked.  Ours, the MS Skane, was not in a good spot for pictures.  We couldn't really see it until we were driving into it.

We had ridden a car ferry once before, the SS Badger that runs between Michigan and Wisconsin.  But here ferries are a normal part of life while in the US they are a novelty item, so the procedure is very different.  Also, in Sweden suing is unusual so liability isn't such a big concern.  Anyway, it was interesting for us because we were given very few instructions.  We went through the toll booth, showed them our reservation and were given two tickets-- one for the ferry in general and one for our cabin-- and told to get in lane 10.  OK.  When cars finally started moving, we followed.  You drive your own car up the ramp and into the boat and park it close behind the one in front of you.  Then what?  Leave the keys, take the keys, lock the car, don't lock the car?  Who knew? (For you Swedes who say, "Of course you lock the car!" the one ferry we had ridden on, the crew drove all the vehicles off of the boat.  :-)) People around us were getting their stuff out of their cars and heading out of the car deck so we just locked the car and followed along.

Our car parked in the ferry

 Inside, we saw a lot of people at a reception desk, so we tried that to.  They gave us keys to our cabin.  The cabin was what you'd expect for a boat-- very small with 4 bunks (top two folded against the fall so you could walk around the room a little).  We were actually pleasantly surprised to find we also had our own little bathroom.  Even had a shower. We walked around on deck just a little but it was pitch dark and foggy so there wasn't much to see and it was already late.  Soon we were all asleep.  The kids slept great.  Thaniel and I tossed and turned a little wondering, "How will we know what we are supposed to do when we get there?" and "What if we don't wake up before we land at 6 am?" We needn't have worried about that.  Around 5 am there was a nice message over the PA system (in 3 languages-- happily one was English) basically telling us to get up.  That message was repeated at increasingly frequent intervals until the final, "we have landed.  Get your car off of our boat." (Said much more politely of course). Once again, we played follow the leader and drove our car off the boat.  Overall, we were pleased with the ferry journey. Our only complaint was that it didn't last a few hours more so we could have gotten a little more sleep.

So once off the boat, we went to put our next destination into the car's GPS and...

found the car's GPS only had data for Sweden, Denmark and Norway.  No Germany! Huh?  We had assumed it would have all of Europe.  It's a Renault.  We thought it would be happy to go back home to France. :-)  It is bad to make assumptions.  Especially when you didn't bring any paper maps.

 Luckily, we had thrown in the little TomTom we'd bought before leaving the US that did have all of Europe on it.  We'd thrown it in thinking it might come in handy when walking around.  Whew! Major disaster averted. So if you rent a car in Europe with GPS, make sure you know what the GPS covers.

Friday and Saturday's travel

From Rostock, we drove a few hours to Berlin, stopping at a rest area along the way to buy some yummy German pastries for our breakfast.  Why don't they sell chocolate-filled crescents like that in the US? And T loves driving on the Autobahn-- even with our kind of wimpy rental car, the unlimited speed sections are fun. Our first stop in Berlin was the Berlin Wall.  There isn't a lot of the wall left, but one of the largest remaining sections is at the East Side Gallery.  Here a long stretch of wall has been preserved as a monument and artists were commissioned to paint murals on it. Pretty cool.

Without trying to, we wound up parking right next to this painting with an American flag.

Arriving first thing in the morning, it was pretty calm.  There were a few tour buses, but the area is large.  We were able to park on the street right along the wall (and free parking even).  It was very interesting to see this cold war icon and to think about how different Berlin is today than when we were growing up.

We could see a cool bridge down the road a bit, so of course we had to walk down and check it out.  It is called Oberbaumbrucke-- a neat bridge from the 1800s with two layers-- one for train and one for cars, bikes and pedestrians.  Apparently during the cold war, it was one of the possible border crossings between East and West Berlin but was only open for foot traffic.

 



Farther up the river we could see this interesting statue.  It must be huge!



Next, we did some driving around Berlin to see some of the well-known sites.  We drove right up to the Brandenburg Gate-- not really sure if we were supposed to be there or not but there were lots of pedestrians to dodge.  :-)  There were also people in US and Russians army uniforms and people in Minnie and Mickey Mouse costumes.  Don't know why the latter were there.

Brandenburg Gate

I believe this is the monument to Soviet soldiers.  It looked kind of like one of the war memorials in DC.

More monuments seen from the car.  It would have been fun to spend more time in Berlin, but it was not the ultimate goal.

Through the whole of Germany, we enjoyed a gorgeous fall color display.  It was a really enjoyable time of year for a road trip.  This picture is of Berlin's Tiergarten.

Since we have an 11-year-old boy in our family, we wanted to include stops that would particularly interest him.  To accomplish that, we spent Saturday afternoon at the Deutsches Technikmuseum and Science Center. They had trains, planes, boats and other cool boy-friendly exhibits. 

 

 We've found German museums are interesting because they don't restore items to pristine condition like US museums do.  They generally exhibit them as they were found-- whether that is crashed, marked with bullet holes, etc.  We love this! It is so much more real.





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G came away with pictures of lots of vehicles he plans to build with Legos.

We let our GPS take us where it would, but best we can remember, this was our route through the heart of Paris that night.

We are amazed we got our poor rental car through the experience without any dings.

We thought this bus was going to scrape down our side when we found ourselves wedged between it and a concrete wall.  If you look in the mirror you can see how close it was.

Our recommendation-- DON'T drive in Paris.  :-) Fly in and use the trains.

We did find Notre Dame and even found an underground parking garage right there.  The square in front of the cathedral was full of people but since basic admission is free, the crowd moved fairly smoothly into the cathedral. 

They were conducting mass so there were two entrances-- one for if you wanted to attend mass and one for people just wanting to see the building.  The visitors filed around the outside edges of the cathedral.  It was interesting being there during mass-- to see what the building was designed for, to hear the organ and singing and see the incense burning.  But it was also very strange to have these masses of tourists walking  through someone's religious service.  We tried to be very quiet and were glad that we were still dressed in our clothes from church earlier in the day.  I wouldn't want that sort of distraction during my worship service!

Once we'd been thorugh the inside of the cathedral, we decided to walk around the outside as well.  That led us to the Seine River and probably our favorite moments of the entire trip.  It was just so Paris to walk along the bridges and the shore line, watching the boats, listening to street musicians play, with these beautiful buildings all around.  Loved it!

There were several bridges that were covered with locks like these.  It seems that couples write their initials on a lock, lock it to the railing and throw the key into the river.  Kind of cute.

As the travel planner for this whole trip, I was pretty nervous picking out the hotels.  Hotels in Europe are a lot more varied in the US.  For example, you don't always get your own bathroom and in hostel type places you could get put in a room with complete strangers.  I read countless travel reviews and used all kinds of sights trying to find good prices.  Paris was particularly challenging.  You can't stay in a chain type hotel there without either 1) spending a fortune or 2)being way out in the suburbs (and Paris Disneyland is not the Paris we were interested in).  Hotels in the heart of Paris tend to be small, family-owned properties in ancient buildings and it was a little scary picking one out.  So anyway, after our lovely time along the water, we braved the traffic one more time and found our hotel.  At first glance the family was pretty wary. 

It took several times around the block to find the tiny entrance to the public parking garage across the street.  Then we braved the hotel.  The lobby was small and very dated but we were happy to find that the desk clerk was very nice and even spoke English.  They had our reservation right and told us they had given us a room with a "nice view of the church."  We crammed into the truly microscopic lift (happily it had one-- many don't).  We didn't notice until part way up that it said "Maximum load 3 people." Oops.  :-)  The website for the hotel had drummed up the fact that it was really close to the Sacre Couer but was doubting that since we hadn't actually managed to see it yet.  We got to our quadruple room on the 5th floor (6th by US numbering) and the kids perked up.  One double bed and two twins-- they love it when they have twin beds.  Everything looked clean. Then we opened up the curtain and "wow!" We had a balcony with this beautiful view with the Sacre Couer just glowing and the typical street view down below.  And bonus, the window was really good quality!  Shut it blocked out most of the considerable street noise from down below when we were tired of ambience and ready to sleep.

The view from our hotel window/balcony

Sunday night had ben enough Paris driving to last us a lifetime, so the car stayed in the parking garage for the rest of our stay.  Monday morning we bought breakfast from bakeries and fruit stands in our neighborhood and ate yummy french pastries on our lovely balcony.  Then we walked the 3 km to the Louvre--enjoying the sights and sounds of Paris as we walked.  Paris is much calmer in the morning than in the evening by the way.

When we arrived at the Louvre right around opening time, we were alarmed to find a line that stretched all around the very large courtyard.  I stood in the line while T and the kids went to make sure it was really the line we wanted.

This picture is late in the afternoon when the line had diminshed considerably.  When we arrived in the morning it was at least three times that long.

We'd talked about buying a Paris Museum Pass and Thaniel was soon back with the excellent idea-- "What other museums nearby use that same pass.  Let's go buy one there." He'd found that the huge line was to buy tickets.  People who already had tickets could pretty much walk right in. So we went for a nice walk through the Tuileries Garden in hopes that the Musee de l'Orangerie wasn't nearly as popular as the Louvre.

It was a great time to see the gardens.  They were the least crowded we saw them all day-- probably because everyone was busy standing in line.

It was an excellent call.  The Musee de l'Orangerie had a very reasonable line and we soon were the proud owners of two 2-day Paris Museum Passes.  Why only two?  Because Paris is very good about children under 18 being free at most of the museums and monuments.  If you are going to Paris, buy the pass.  You can buy it in advance and have it shipped to you-- I didn't plan far enough in advance for that.  For 35 Euros you can get a 2 day pass that will get you into most of the attractions in Paris and the surrounding area, and best of all, you skip the lines. 

The museum itself was also nice.  All impressionist artists-- which I love.  I was especially excited to see Monet's Water Lilies.  Beautiful art in a beautiful setting.

Then it was back across the park to the Louvre where we got to make all those poor people in line jealous as we walked right past them.  Makes you feel like you won the golden ticket in the Wonka Bar.

I knew before we went that the Louvre was big, but I had not really comprehended how big.  Just the building itself is an amazing castle.  The kids enjoyed checking out all the beautiful ceilings and staircases and looking out the windows at all the statues and carvings on the outside. 

We, and the rest of the world, had to see the Mona Lisa.  You just have to, right?  But it was not the most enjoyable part of the museum.

Certain areas of the museum were just swamped with people (like above) but it is a huge place and if you roamed off the beaten paths a little there was so much to see and even calmness to see it in. In the basement there is the foundation of a medieval castle that stood on this site.  The kids loved that.  There is Egyptian papryus so old it is amazing it hasn't crumbled, statues from ancient Mesopotania, so many paintings and sculptures.  If you are as ignorant as I was before I planned this trip, you may want to know that the Louvre houses art from dating from ancient times up to the Impressionists.  Impressionists are in the Orangerie and then everything more modern than that is in the Musee d'Orsay.  Unfortunately, we weren't able to visit that one because it wasn't open on Mondays.

There is simple no way I can do the Louvre justice in this blog.  It is amazing and overwhelming and too big to capture.  Maybe eventually I'll come back and just make a Louvre blog, or you can come by and get a private viewing.  :-)

After lunch, the men moved on to men things.  They went to the Invalides where they saw the Tomb of Napoleon (accidentally walked in there first.  Didn't even care enough to figure out which of the tombs was Napoleons) and the Musee de l'armee (their planned destination).  Our 11-year-old really enjoyed this museum with all its huge collections of armor and weapons from throughout history. 

The walk to the Invalides was also interesting because it took us past the French National Assembly building and many foreign embassies.

Meanwhile, the women stayed on at the Louvre.  Well, we came up for air in the gardens for a bit and then got up our courage and dove back in.  The entry area is a bit overwhelming-- all the wings meet at the pyramid and the crowds there are insane.  But we were glad we'd muscled through them again because we found many more interesting things to see before we met up with the men outside the Invalides.

Dinner was chocolate crepes from a roadside stand.  We loved eating in France.  The food really is good and is so accessible. Then another walk over to the Eifel tower.  We'd decided to do that in the evening because most of the museums were closed then.  I'd bought us tickets in advance because we'd heard the lines were insanely long.  The Eifel tower is not included in the Museum Pass and it is one of the few sites where kids are not free.  We got over there too early and had a bit of wait time. It was cool to walk around underneath it.  It is quite an impressive structure.

Looking straight up the center

When it was finally our turn to go up, we found our reserved time put us in a shorter line, but it still was at least half an hour packed into small spaces with lots of people before we made it up the elevator to the 2nd floor observation deck.  Then on that second floor, all the lines (there are elevators going up 3 of the four corners to the second floor) combined into one really long line for the one elevator to the top.  We stood in that line for a while, while looking out over Paris, and started figuring in our heads how many more lines were still ahead of us.  Once we got to the top, there would be just as long a line to come back down to the second floor and then another line to take an elevator to the bottom.  We are a family of introverts and we'd already far exceeeded our saturation point for crowds. We unanimously decided that we didn't want to go all the way to the top and put ourselves in the line for the elevator back to the bottom.  If I had to do it again, I think I'd have either only paid for the ride to the 2nd floor or not gone up at all but we certainly weren't going to torture ourselves just because we'd paid to do so.  :-) Non-introverts might not have minded the experience so much, but for us, Eifel was our least favorite part of Paris.

We all breathed a sigh of relief as we escaped the Eifel tower.  At this point it was about 8:30 pm and we'd already walked about 10 km between museums and who knows how much in museums.  It was 7 km back to our hotel (and largely uphill) and time to figure out the Paris metro.  Since we hadn't been able to spot the metro spot near the Eifel tower-- and that stop would have required us to make a transfer anyway-- we decided to walk to the Arc de Triumph and then catch a train from there that went directly to our hotel.  That meant another 2.4 km walking but we enjoyed being back out of crowds and moving.  The Arc was very cool looking at night but everyone was too touristed out to go up on top of it (though we could have with our Museum passes). 

Happily, the metro was very straightforward.  We easily bought tickets from the machine, found the right train and could tell right when we should get off-- right across the street from our hotel so that was very convenient.

Tuesday morning we had another relaxing French breakfast and then took a short walk up the hill to the Sacre Couer.  There were many tourist shops in the area and we let the kids pick out a few things.  They had better prices then the shops in town by the Eifel tower. There is a funnicula that you can pay to ride up, but really the steps were not bad at all-- and that was with us all tired from our walking the previous day.  From the Sacre Couer you have a beautiful view out over Paris.  We enjoyed that much more than the Eifel Tower.  The cathedral itself was also beautiful but they asked that no pictures be taken inside. 

Walking up to the Sacre Couer

The view of Paris

There was also an older church next door that we enjoyed-- St. Pierre. It was small and very light and pretty inside.  It felt like someplace you could actually worship in rather than something to just gawk at.



Walking back down to the hotel. We saw our first rain of the trip as we got close to the hotel.

That finished off the Paris portion of our trip.  We checked out of the hotel and paid for our car's "room" (2 nights for the car parking cost almost as much as a hotel room for one night).  Then we started driving through heavy rain to Versailles.

Versailles had been on our "really want to see" list but when we got there and it was cold and raining and there was another big long line facing us (unfortunately this time the line was for those who did have tickets so our magic pass didn't speed us up) we almost bailed.  But the line was moving quickly at least so we decided to give it a try.  

Umbrellas at Versailles


 Versailles is amazingly ornate.  So much so that within a few minutes you go into overload and stop marveling at the beautifully painted ceilings, huge chandeliers, etc.  You wind your way through the castle on your own--well with a million other people but without guided tours.  You can get an audio guide but we couldn't face yet another line to pick one up.  We worked hard to avoid the evil tour groups that clog up the works-- in the Louvre, too, you learned that if someone was holding an umbrella in the air you wanted to stay away from them (that's how the tour guides get their group to follow them). 

We did all really like the Hall of Mirrors.  It was beautiful.

My favorite part of Versailles was looking out the windows at the gardens.  Apparently the rest of the family didn't feel the same because none of the garden pictures were posted on facebook. 

The gardens, even late in the fall, were amazing.  All the plants and bushes were just so immaculately shaped and trimmed. It must take so much time to maintain.  Luckily it stopped raining by the time we finished with the inside so we were able to look around a little in the gardens, but the paths were too muddy to encourage us to roam far.

We had planned to visit another air museum before leaving Paris, but decided we'd been overambitious.

Our journey home

 We climbed in the car and headed for Amsterdam, arriving at our hotel fairly early in the evening.  We passed through Belgium again, stopping for some pizza at a rest stop.  I feel bad we didn't see more of Belgium but there simply wasn't enough time or energy. We enjoyed lying around a being lazy that evening.  That hotel was funny.  On first glance it looked great-- two attached bedrooms with nice fresh paint and very spacious after our Paris room-- but throughout our stay we found some annoyances.  The windows were awful-- you could hear anything anyone said outside, there was no door between the two bedrooms and there were no towel racks (at all) in the bathroom.  We think they forgot to put them back up after they painted.  We found that hilarious since there was the typical sign about how you could save the planet by reusing your towels and to hang them up if you are willing to reuse them.  Kind of hard with no towel racks.  :-)
Wednesday in Amsterdam was cool and overcast but at least the rain had stopped.  We skipped on the super overpriced hotel breakfast (13 Euros per person) and hit a local grocery store where we bought breakfast and snacks for the rest of the trip-- all for 16 Euros.  We kind of wandered if we shouldn't have bought more since food prices were cheaper than what we have in Sweden.

We'd talked about buying water bus passes to explore Amsterdam but we were frankly worn out and with the weather boats did not look fun.  Instead we drove in to town, found a place to park and wandered around on foot for a few hours.  It was an interesting city to see.  Amsterdam is known for its canals and there were many of those, but what we noticed most were the bikes.  People bike a lot in Sweden but we were still stunned by Amsterdam.  I have never seen so many bikes.  Every building, every fence was simply lined with parked bikes and everywhere we walked or drove there were so many bikes whizzing by.

This is what you saw literally everywhere.

And we thought Swedish bikes were utilitarian with their baskets and package racks and baby seats.  We hadn't seen anything yet.

A baby seat in front and back like this was common.  We even saw one with one front seat and two side by side in back.

The windshields were also common.  Notice how this mom has her stroller strapped on the back.

We dubbed this the shovel bike or Amsterdam minivan.  You can see two variations side by side.  We saw many people transporting 2-3 kids in these sort of contraptions. I think they'd be great for hauling groceries as well.

We found ourselves wondering whether people in Amsterdam have an above average sense of balance after riding in these sort of things through their childhoods. We also wonder if these poor people were freaked out by us taking pictures of them.

After our short visit to Amsterdam, we drove on to Hamburg.  We arrived early enough that we decided to treat ourselves to a real dinner at the hotel restaraunt.  That took a long time and we were reminded why we typically like to eat at little bakeries and cafes while traveling.

My dad is from Hamburg.  His family immigrated to the US a few years after World War II when he was a small child.  I grew up close to my German grandmother and had grown up with stories about the Allied bombing of Hamburg and their struggles to survive in post-war Germany.  I was raised being told to eat every speck of food on my plate.  You didn't waste any food at my grandmothers house because my grandmother had known what it was to not have any food for herself and for her children. I knew that I couldn't see where they had actually lived-- their apartment was destroyed in the bombings that devastated so much of Hamburg. Nor could I see the tiny garden plot that they'd lived on after the war.  My dad had searched it out 40 years ago and found the area had been developed into other uses.  But I at least wanted to get some sense of the city that my family had come from.  My dad has a cousin who still lives in Hamburg.  I'd met her once as a child.  She was kind enough to meet us and show us around downtown Hamburg.  In addition to playing tour guide, she shared some of her memories of World War II with us-- she was 6-12 years old during the war.

St. Micaelis -- we rode the lift up to the bell tower for a view over the city

Hamburg is a major harbor-- the reason it was a huge target during the war

Most of Hamburg is modern because so much was destroyed during the war, but a few older areas survived.

Inside St. Michaelis-- a baroque church it had a very different feel from most we have seen.  It was very white and light.

A local artist has been researching residents of Hamburg who were killed in the Holocaust and marking the homes where they lived by a plaque like this in the sidewalk in front of their former home.

I think the most moving part of our visit to Hamburg was seeing St. Nikolai.  It is a church that was mostly destroyed by the bombings in World War II and it has been maintained in its broken and burned state as a war memorial.

You can see the blackened shell of the spire from thorughout the city but you don't get a real sense of the destruction until you go "inside." You walk through the arch way and into this void and destruction.

 Portions of all four walls remain, so you can feel the size the building once was and realize how much is gone, how tragic and horrible war is.  They've added a carrillion to the bell tower and we sat and ate our lunch here and listened to the bells play.

We noticed, especially in Germany but also in France, a different attitude towards the world wars than we have experienced growing up in the US.  Sometimes in the US the wars are discussed with a sort of cocky attitude, we came and we beat them, and we don't really focus much on the human toll-- all the lives lost.  In Europe, where it was here on their soil and they lost so much, that pain is much more palpable.  Whether "winner" or "loser" in the conflict, their war memorials and museums say loudly and clearly, "We all lost. War is terrible.  We don't want to ever experience this again."

So even though we were tired and ready to be home, I'm glad we stopped in Hamburg.  It meant a lot to me.  I doubt the experience meant as much to my kids.  I've read them their great grandparents' personal histories and told them the stories I know, but it is much more distant for them.  To them the stories are names on a page not people they had a chance to actually know.  But I hope this visit at least gave them a little more understanding of where their family came from.

From Hamburg, it was another 5+ hour drive home and another car ferry ride-- this one was just 45 minutes long.  You just can't get to or from Scandanavia without crossing some water.  We made it through Copenhagen and Malmo without any traffic headaches were thrilled to arrive safetly back in Kristianstad-- which really does feel like home. Spending time in these big, crazy cities, made us very thankful for comfortable, friendly Kristianstad.

 So that was our big fall break trip.  What's next?  Supposedly we're going to Italy for Christmas.  (Though T is asking, "wouldn't you rather just fly to the Caribbean and sit on the beach instead?")  That's really soon.  I couldn't even think about it until I got this trip done but I guess I'll be back on the travel sites before I know it.

(And to all you super bloggers-- I know the formatting and such on this post are terrible but it took too long to write for me to care. :-) Maybe tomorrow I'll go back and fix it.)