Well, after waiting a long time to get my visa, tickets back home were too expensive.  Luckily, one of my Danish friends invited me to join her family for their Christmas celebrations! She also invited another Intern from Canada, Adele, who is working in Kolding but lives in Odense (the same city were Kristine is studying).

 

This is how Kristine described her summer house:

 

"Where do we live? In the Danish outback!!! Seriously, you can’t go much further south than this! We have a great summerhouse in a tiny town called Marielyst, which is about 20 km south of Nykøbing, the largest “city” on the island of Falster. Falster is the island south of Sjælland (Zealand, where Copenhagen is). It takes about 1½ hours to get here by train from Copenhagen."

And it was fantastic, because it was a great chance to get away from everything! The countryside is really beautiful and we took walks along the beach and the water is really really calm... so flat that it looks more like a giant lake then the sea. The food was mouthwatering, from turkey to roast duck, to scrambled eggs with smoked salmon to the really good wine it was three days of really good food.  I think that I will need to take long walks and eat salads for a month!

 

Kristine's parents were really a lot of fun to be with and we had some quite good conversations, especially hearing their stories of the time they lived in Tanzania, Israel, Malta and Bahrain. It really inspired me to travel some more, especially to really different places but at the same time helped me move further along on making my decisions for the future (refer to previous posts).  On one side, travelling is fantastic and you develop soooo much from seeing all parts of the world.  But on the other side, you never really develop any deep roots and when you return home your friends haven't experienced what you have so things are different.  I knew this before travelling but it sort of hints that maybe I can go back and work for a bit, maybe do a masters and then travel again?  But then I am still young enough that I can sort of do what I want these days.  So should I go home and re-connect with friends and family, start a network I can use in business life... or should I keep going? Or go somewhere different? More to ponder over the next week.

 

But going back to the Christmas thing... Thanks to Kristine and her parents for letting Adele and I join their Christmas.  It was a really cosy and fun atmosphere, something I won't ever forget.... especially the food mmmmmmmm