"Water, water everywhere/ and all the boards did shrink..."~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge

What do you think of when you think of visiting Europe? Do you think of visiting Paris? or Spain? What about London? That one seems to be very popular. Have you ever thought about Sweden or Norway? No, me neither. That's what makes this past weekend so Amazing!

While the Baylor in Maastricht program gives up three Month Eurail passes, sometimes there isn't enough time in a weekend to go someplace further away and sightseeing. In that case let me introduce you to this little gem, it's called Ryan Airlines. Ryan Air is a discount airline that services Europe, and when I say discount, I mean discount. My flight to Sweden cost me a whopping 7.00 Euro, that's a little less than $14.00 for you American currency fans, and the flight home from Oslo cost a little less than that.

So Friday morning me and four of my Maastricht buddies boarded a plane bound for Stockholm, Sweden for a bit of Scandinavian bliss. Here's what I saw: lots and lots of boats, ranging in age from new to old, to holy cow that thing still exists?

Stockholm was my favorite for some reason I can't explain in rational terms. I think perhaps we had a very relaxed day. All that was really scheduled was a trip to the Vasa Museum so we got to take out time wandering through souvenir shops and little markets along the way. Oh, and don't forget strolling by the harbor.














I've spent the past three summers working the USS Cairo Museum at Vicksburg National Military Park, and I have heard the Vasa referenced at least once a month by some well travelled retired couple, usually the wife as the husband has already disappeared somewhere into the depths of the museum leaving her to entertain herself i. e. talk to the Park Ranger. "Have you ever heard of the Vasa." "Oh, you should definitely take a trip to see the Vasa" (said as if this trip would take only a couple of hours from Vicksburg). "The Vasa is the best preserved ship I've ever seen!" Really, I've heard just about everything in connection to the Vasa. I knew most of the story, I just hadn't seen it yet. Now I have, and I can say that everything everyone ever mentioned about it.... it's all true.

(These pictures turned out really dark, so I messed with the brightness so you can see them better. This, however makes them look slightly strange I think.)

The Vasa was commissioned by the King of Sweden in 1628, (so think... Spanish Armada, end of Elizabeth's reign, around that time period). It must have been absolutely beautiful for its time with all the decorations and painted sculptures that adorned her facade. Unfortunately this wasn't going to last too long because the ship had not longer been afloat more than 30 minutes before it sank. Why you ask? Well, the Vasa was one of the first ships that was built with not one, but two gun decks, this meant she weighed more and this fact was coupled with the problem that she was disporportionately tall compared to her width. She was top heavy and stared to lag to once side. Since the gun portals were so close to the water line, in goes the water and down goes the ship. She was recovered in 1961 (around the same time as the Cairo, interestingly enough) and now it the central sight to see in Stockholm.


Friday night our Swedish adventures ended, I am sad to say and we all boarded a train for an eleven hour trip to Oslo, but this time we had a sleeper compartment with I thought was really cool. I spent several hours hanging off the edge of my bunk taking pictures at the scenery as it wizzed by at 200+ miles an hour.

Saturday morning brought us to the Norwegian Folk Museum that was primarily about the cultural traditions of Norway. I'm ashamed to admit it, but it took me back to my American Girl doll days and my love for all things Kirsten. She was really supposed to be Swedish but the clothes and furniture all looked the same! There were a couple of permanent museums and then the village which is basically made up of buildings from the 1600s and later that were taken down and moved to the museum. It was a nice little stroll.



Then we high tailed it over to the Viking Museum to see move boats that had sunk and then dug up. Except this time they were older. I know what you're thinking, Lindsay how much older can you get than the Vasa? Uh, alot older actually, and since I haven't seen any Roman stuff yet, I think these ships are the oldest that I've seen since I've been over here. There was one ship in particular, the Gokstad Ship, that was amazingly preserved and it was built in 810 AD!



Can you imagine, the people settled Iceland and Greenland and made it all the way to Canada from Norway in little boats like these...

That was about it for my Scandinavian adventure. Oh, and my interesting food find of the trip was a grilled Moose Hotdog. Yea, instead of ketchup or mustard they put potato salad on top. Yummy.

Rock me Amadeus...

Once upon a time, Salzburg Austrian was invaded by nine girls. They arrived early Friday morning after traveling all night in crowded train compartments struggling to find a comfortable sleeping position on- or under- the mound of limbs and other extraneous body parts. Half of them that morning had changed clothes in the bathroom of the intercity train without benefit of running water. Without showers or brushed teeth (mentos, please) they descended on the city, lead by their fearless navigators, Amy and Lindsay, with one purpose: to find the Sound of Music tour.



It was the top destination for many of the girls that I traveled with this past week to see this tour. I on the other hand hadn't thought much about it. Yes, I've seen (and enjoyed) the movie, and adore the music, but I don't have the fanatical love for the Sound of Music the way the others did (though I may now...). Perhaps I'll blame this on the fact that my introduction to the musical came from when the Vicksburg Theater Guild did "SoM" as a main stage several years ago and not the movie itself. But of course, it's one of those things you can only see in Austria--- and it just happened to be in the same city that Mozart was born in--- so I was certainly game to go. My only regret is that I didn't get to see the movie right before I went, so I' was struggling to remember everything.

We saw the back and front (2 different places) of the Von Trapp Villa, the gazebo, the church where they married, the path with all the trees lining it, and much more. The highlight of the tour perhaps was up in the mountains at the town of Mounsee (where the church is located). Appel Strudel, anyone? The vanilla ice cream is legit homemade and the hot vanilla cream is utterly amazing (and unique to Mounsee, so I'm told). The best meal of the weekend, however was at Brauerei Gaststatte in Vienna. There were the boiled parsley potatoes (absolutely drenched in butter) and Viennese Schnitzel (veal) with a cranberry sauce. The sauce is by far what made the Schnitzel to fabulous. It wasn't sweet at all, but very tart and made the breading of the veal fantastic. So I went to Austria and had "crisp apple strudel" and "schnitzel with(out) noodles."

After the Sound of Music tour, and our walk through the gardens where we recreated nearly dance imaginable from the Do Re Mi song, we had lunch (ok side note here, I had a seafood salad that had octopus in it. Fulfilled that need, no need to do it again) I finally got to see my attraction, Mozart's birthplace! How utterly amazing is it to stand in the house where Mozart grew up and to see so much of his things including, get this, his concert Violin, the clavichord that he composed The Magic Flute on, and his fortepiano. I still can't get over this. I saw Mozart's fortepiano.

As sometimes happens, though my favorite part of the trip wasn't something I ever intended on seeing. It just happened to be mentioned by Meredith
the night we arrived in Vienna. Hofburg Palace was home of the Hapsburg family for quite a time, until the deconstruction of the Austrian Empire after WWI, and is still used for governmental things today. I've never really payed attention to the Hapsburgs, though I knew vaguely that Marie Antoinette was one, but at the palace I was introduced to a fascinating individual, Empress Elisabeth. Have you ever heard of her? The first time I heard her mentioned (though I didn't realize it at the time) was at the hotel desk where we asked for directions, "you mean where Sissi lived?" the concierge asked. "um, I guess." Elizabeth was married to Franz Joseph and was Empress from 1856 until her assassination in Geneva in 1898. She's a bit of a tragic figure, a shy girl who married an emperor at 15 and inherited a role which she struggled to fill. She was frequented by bouts of depression and dealt with life by writing poetry (mostly about death and loneliness and lack of freedom) and obsessing over her beauty and physical health. After he son's suicide, she apparently dove into a depression that she never emerged from. She traveled constantly, often neglecting her children from the impression I got and estranging herself from her husband. Yet her daughter spoke lovingly of her many times and her husband did everything he could to make her happy. His only words upon hearing her assassination in Switzerland were, "you have no idea how much I loved this woman." It's breathtaking, or at least I, the romantic and historian, think so. One of these days I must get a biography on her. Museums have a tough job trying to tell you all about a person in an hour or less, sometimes I think they skip characteristics that can soften the harsh edges of a person's personality, and this may be one of those cases.

On another note, I finished another book this weekend, Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl, which now makes Amsterdam available to me as a travel destination. I'm 2 for 2 on reading during the weekends and am kind of curious to know if I can keep reading one book per weekend. Maybe I'll try it and find out. In any case, I'm off to study for now. As always my pictures are here, I'm having difficulties and will continue to work on them for the rest of the day.

Tot Ziens!