Confessions of a Cheeky Mind

Ever had a 1L mug of beer? If you have, chances are that you've been to Munich. The bravians are renowned for their beer and beer drinking habits, especially their Oktoberfest. So it wasn't much of a surprise when one of the first things I did upon arriving in Germany's third largest city was drink a beer. Mind you, that it was around 10am at the time!

 

Sebastian had to defend his thesis in Munich. So Juan Jose, Rasa and myself thought we would celebrate him finishing univeristy with a couple of litres . JJ and I arrived Monday morning to meet up with Seb and Rasa at one of Seb's friends' apartments. We ate white sausage with sweet mustard and pretzels washed down with some beer (traditionally eaten before 12) before heading out to see most of the sites of Munich. I'll upload pictures tomorrow instead of explaining where i went now.. but i will remove the 100+ pictures of Seb and Rasa kissing  Though really sweet, it was a bit toooo much for JJ and I.

 

We also went on two day trips. The first was to the fairytale Neuschwanstein castle, which was used by Disney for both the inspiration behind Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty castles. The castle was built by Ludwig II, King of Bavaria, as a retreat and as an homage to Richard Wagner, the King's inspiring muse. The castle is ok, its a bit too perfect looking and not that interesting on the inside. But otherwise it was fun playing "I spy with my little eye" on the train to pass the time and the walk up to the castle was a lot of fun plus the views of the countryside and the lake was really really picturesque.

 

The second day trip was to Salzburg, where Rasa and I got to meet up with our former flatmate Richard! He drove us around Salzburg and showed us the sights. Salzburg is the fourth largest city in Austria and is the birth place of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and the setting for parts of the musical and film The Sound of Music. JJ has never seen the movie, so the rest of us were kinda mean and forced him to watch it, despite him complaining about how cheesy the movie is and how he hates them singing so much. But it was quite good to recognise parts of the movie that was filmed in Salzburg. For me, it was the first time that I saw real mountains as it sits right next to the Alps. So it was great that Richard drove us up one of the nearby mountains. Which is a huge difference from flat Denmark. I really liked Salzburg, walking around the old part of town you could imagine the classical era with horse drawn carriages and people with top hats.

 

Basically, that was my trip to Munich, Neuschwanstein and Salzburg. I had an amazing time, not because of the beer, but because of the friends i was with and the beautiful countryside. But..... i do have to say, being in a beer garden with your friends isn't such a bad way to spend a lazy afternoon.

 

By the way... around August 19th or 21st i celebrated two years living it up in Denmark!!!

Summer in Denmark so far has been marred by overcast skies and rain. So it was a relief to Torsten, Trine and I to escape to the 40 degree cloudless skies of Florence (Italien: Firenze). Torsten's family has an apartment on the "other side" of the Arno River where Florence is situated. The capital city of the region of Tuscany, it has a population of around 400,000 people and was a center of European trade and finance during medieval times. The city is often considered the birthplace of the Italian Renaissance and was long ruled by the Medici family and thus is also famous for its magnificent art and architecture. It is said that, of the 1,000 most important European artists of the second millennium, 350 lived or worked in Florence.

 

Anyways, we arrived around 2am and the first thing we did was open a bottle of wine "to help us sleep" , this would be repeated many times during out stay. The Kolind family's apartment had everything we needed, the game Settlers to pass our time while we hid away from the hottest parts of the day or after a night out, a beautiful outdoor dining area as well as comfortable chairs to recline and read a novel.

 

But we didn't spend all of our time in the apartment. The first day was spent walking around the city where we saw Ponte Vecchio (Old Bridge: which has shops built upon its edges, held up by stilts), The Duomo (The cathedral in the center of town) where we walked the 400+ steps up the Campanile tower (Bell tower) with its view of all of Florence. We also saw the market where the fresh food part was unfortunately closed (as we wanted to buy some authentic Italian food), so we went to the supermarket instead. Which did not disappoint us at all! We bought all the things we needed for our snacks and lunches which was crusty bread with homemade creamy green pesto spread on top with our choice of either salami or prosciutto... mmmMMMMMmmmmmmm! The tomatoes are some of the best I've had as well! My mouth is watering just thinking about the food we ate in Florence!

 

We also walked up to Piazzale Michelangelo where we watched the sun set while talking about life with the beautiful city of Florence in front of us. An ice-cream and a drink later, we were ready for some more wine and the challenge of Settlers before getting some much needed sleep.

 

The second day, Trine and I went to book reserved tickets to the Uffizi (otherwise you line up for 4 hours), went shopping, then had lunch at home. Once the heat had subsided a bit, we then spent an hour walking through the Uffizi Gallery which houses some of the oldest and most famous artworks of the Renaissance. After being inspired by the art, we were motivated to taste some of the best Florentine cuisuine at a nearby restaurant. And we were not dissapointed. For the first course, I had some of the best homemade potato gnocchi, while Torsten had some Rabbit Ragout and Trine had a nice anchovy salad. We all chose the steak for dinner with one of their best reds to wash it all down. None of us were the least bit disappointed with the delicious dinner.

 

The last day, we hired a car to see some of the countryside. We made our way to San Gimignano; a small walled medieval hilltop town in Tuscany. It is mainly famous for its medieval architecture, especially its towers, which may be seen from several miles outside the town. But the highlight for me was eating lunch while overlooking the Tuscan countryside! The next stop was Volterra with even better views before we drove to Pisa to catch the flight back to cloudy and cold skies

 

you know, when i look at other people's blogs they list all these cool and famous and prominent books that they're reading which i guess talks about life and so on. So i thought i would give it a try....

 

 I'm reading: "Seven Years Of Highly Defective People - Scott Adams' Guided Tour of the Evolution of Dilbert"

So, after 1.5 years in Denmark I finally got to go to LegoLand!!! A whole bunch of Interns have been looking forward to this trip for awhile which was organised by the AIESEC people. We woke up early Saturday morning to take the train at 7, where Cagri Han (Turkish) and Rob (Canadian) started downing some beers for breakfast. We arrived in Vejle where we had our own bus take us to LegoLand. And there was sooo many people waiting to buy tickets and get in but luckily we had a group booking. So once inside we made smaller groups and started going to place to place to see the miniatures made of lego, go on the lego train, jump onto a few rides etc. It was such a fun filled day. Danes kept telling me before I went that LegoLand was just for kids, but I think for all of us, we went back to being a kid for a day and had a hilarious time

 

After being out under the sun and walking around LegoLand, most of us slept on the bus and train to Århus where we were to stay the night. We had a nice dinner prepared by the wonderful AIESECers of Århus before we went into town for some drinks and dancing. The next day was some quick sightseeing for Vinny and Marjan as they have not been to Århus before. So Anne, the girl we were staying with, showed us around before we all caught the train back to Copenhagen.

 

That was a pretty quick update but I can't think of much else to say apart from the fact that I had sooo much fun!! I've uploaded some of my pictures but you should cruise around Facebook as there are a lot more photos there!