Days 9~11: "De volgende halte is..."

Hallo, ik ben Mika. Hoe gaat het? De volgende halte is...

translation: Hello, I'm Mika. How are you? The next stations is...

That's all the Dutch I've learned so far.

We're in Brugge at Laya's beautiful house now! Ah, so luxurious! Probably the closest thing we'll get to 5-star hotel on this trip. Anyways, here' what we've been up to on days 9~11.

Day 9: Den Haag


The Hotel School!! Laya's school is so amazingly amazing! The cafeteria is top notch, as are the two restaurants and the house keeping. All of which are run by students studying hospitality management. Lunch: gourmet scampi with fries and salad for under 3 Euros. Amazing.




In the afternoon Laya showed us around Den Haag. I'm pretty sure that this is probably a traditional-looking government building. Yeah, I really learned a lot about Den Haag.



This is where Laya worked on Monday: the Mauritshuis Museum!



A nice break from walking at a cozy little cafe.



Dinner: mapo tofu by Mika and Claire.

Day 10: Den Haag --> Brugge. Laya drove us to her home in Brugge, which was about a 3 hour drive, most of which Claire slept through. She's a sleepy head, this one.



In Brugge in front of the city hall. According to Claire, Brugge is "charming and cute".



Yes Geraldo, that is 1/2 a chicken with one leaf of lettuce on the side. Seriously? Brilliant.



Yay for Laya, who got a full salad on the side. 1/2 chicken...literally half a chicken per person. Insanity. I think it was enough chicken to last me the rest of the trip.

Day 11: More Brugge!



Doggie on a window sill. How cute.



Lunch: frikandel and fries with mayo. The Belgian style.



We climbed the bell tower! It's the tower that was in the movie, In Brugge. Look at these crazy stairs! It was pretty scary.



The view of the square from the bell tower...not the top. Though we did get there eventually! Little did we know that we were only about 1/3 of the way up.



Our delicious dinner. We made stuffed paprika- yum.

De volgende halte is...PARIS!!!

Days 6~8: Charming!

Mass update on days 6~8! We are now in the Netherlands in Den Haag with Laya! It's so nice to have a familiar face around :) So here's our photo haul of the past 3 days!



Cophenhagen! In front of the national museum. As Claire would put it, "Isn't it so charming?" It really was charming.




Hemp beer. Our couch surfing host Johan had some at Christiania, it was actually pretty good!

A little about Christiania- it's a small hippie community in Copenhagen of about 1000 inhabitants. It's probably most famous for the fact that weed is legal there, and that no photos are allowed within the grounds of Christiania. Let me just tell you that it was awesome. Never have I ever seen that much pot out in the open! The vibe reminded me a little of Portland too :)

We stayed there till pretty late, and got to know some other couch surfers because coincidentally, there was a CS event going on! CS-ers = awesome.



Johan's cat Jack.



More of Copenhagen's charm. This is the city hall.




The Rosenborg Castle. What do you think we're doing in the photo? Yeah, I don't know either. (actually we were trying to curtsy...)




These are two of the guys that we met at Christiania. We met up with them the next day at Johan's cafe! He makes delicious hot chocolate. (left-right) Eric, Danny, Johan, Claire, Mika




Then we took the overnight train to Amsterdam... Man, do I have stories about that ride. It would have been so great if Claire and I had the compartment to ourselves, but no, some sketchy homeless-looking man who gave us a boiled egg had to book the same train ride. Let's just say I'm glad it's behind us.



Amsterdam. Reunited with Laya! We kept walking in circles but according to the guidebook, we saw most of what there was to see! Also went to the Anne Frank Huis.



After Amsterdam we headed to Den Haag, which is where Laya lives. She lives by a beach! Whaaaat?





Dinner time at Laya's place. Food always makes for a good time. Laya's home cooked Thai curry was so beyond delicious. Yum!

We just did our first load of laundry this trip. Hooray for clean clothes!

Day 6: My friend's friend's friend's friend's friend is my friend too!

It's already day 6, our last day in Sweden! We're writing from the apartment of a friend of a friend of a friend (also now known as our friend, Amy) in Lund, where we've stayed for the last three nights. Lund has been a blast! Here's a quick recap of our adventure here:

On Thursday afternoon, we piled into a little KIA five-seater with a trunk and backseat full of bags with three of Kiyoko's friends from Uppsala -Anna, Marisa and Guilhem for the beginning of a near 10 hour drive down to Lund. There were like, thirty people making this trip, all from different times of the day (and all who know Kiyoko- she's a superstar).

Along the way, Marisa gave me a brief stick-shift driving lesson before I concluded that I couldn't drive on the highway on the same day, and then we caught up with two more cars and switched drivers.

We finally arrived in Lund around 12 AM and after driving around town for at least half an hour, found a random parking lot and field across an apartment complex to camp out for the night. We hadn't made any plans for accommodation or parking so this was the best we could do! Some of us pitched our tents, some slept outside under the stars and some slept in cars. We blasted music from the cars and peed in the bushes. It was very hippy.

While we camped out, we ate lots of Knäckebröd (Swedish bready cracker thing) and caviar in a tube- very Swedish food.

It was yummy.

Onto friday!

We were woken up by a couple of the Spaniards in the group going "WAKE UP! IT'S EIGHT O'CLOCK!" We packed up our stuff to put in the car and walked around town to get our tickets to Lundakarnevalen. And then we had a good time. There were booths and food and we had some cotton candy.

We're going to display our pictures and have captions now, since it's probably easier for both of us: for us to write and you to read. so here goes:

The group taking a mid-day nap outside

Special Lundakarnevalen beer can!

A float from the parade we watched on Saturday- lots of spoofs on current events and stuff. This one's making fun of Sweden. Swedes are funny.

We visited Malmo on Sunday! It's a nearby city.

Leningrad cowboys- we watched them at the carnival

AMY TAN! She's a rockstar. She's a friend of a friend of Kiyoko who goes to school in Lund and let us stay at her place the last three nights. She has a friend whose friend is our friend from Seisen. This morning we made curry! Thanks Amy!

We're off to Copenhagen now where we're staying with our first couchsurfing host!

Thanks everyone for a great time in Lund!

Day 1: "Okay, so Sweden's not as tall and blonde as I thought."

This was Mika's reaction as we walked around Stockholm today.
The plan was to explore Stockholm before we headed to Uppsala where KIYOKO is :)

However, despite our efforts to research our destinations by having deadlines, we did close to zero research because of school work and laziness. So when we got off the bus from Arlanda airport at central station, we didn't really have a clue what to do.
We walked to Gamla stan (the Old Town), got hot dogs and tried to take artsy pictures.

Is this one artsy?
This one is artsy right?

After a few hours in the city we caught the Swebus to Uppsala at 18:20. As the bus neared Uppsala and hour later we suddenly wondered how we would find Kiyoko as, like our research, we hadn't really been on top of things. Our last exchange with Kiyoko was a hurried conversation on gchat where she told us which bus to get on and which stop to get off at. So when we got off at our stop we decided we should giver her a call on her cellphone.
So we entered a shop and asked the owner if he could dial the number for us but when he looked at the number he said, "Where is she? This isn't a Swedish number" So instead we asked him for the directions to Flogsta Building 4 where Kiyoko lives (we later learned that the first 2 digits of the phone number was the country code).

We got to building 4 but still didn't know how to contact Kiyoko so we camped outside on the grass and had our first hippie moment.

We finally found KIYOKO!!

Tomorrow we're off to a Lund, on the west of Sweden, for a carnival.

Hard at work

Almost 4am.

We're still in NY, and Claire's a rockstar. She is working insanely hard on her Engineers Without Borders project, designing this really cool latrine that's going to be installed in Ghana this summer. I want to help, but unfortunately, I am completely useless in this field. So I'm going to sit here and blog.

Sit tight, the travel writing will start shortly!

Claire's packing, and I'm bored

Hi all,

This blog is dedicated to Claire and my adventures as we take on Europe! Yes. It's all very exciting. By the way, it's called adobenchaa.blogspot.com because that's how us Japanese people pronounce "adventure". Yup. Here's our itinerary-

5/18 depart NYC

5/19~5/24 Sweden

5/24~5/25 Copenhagen

5/25~5/30 Netherlands/Belgium

5/30~6/2 Paris

6/2~6/3 Toulouse

6/3~6/16 hiking Girona to Barcelona on GR-92

6/16~6/19 Valencia

6/19~6/21 Sevilla

6/21~6/24 Granada

6/24~6/27 Madrid

6/28 arrive Narita

Yaaay!!!

I'll leave you with some pictures of Claire's dorm and the view from her room. She's moving out right now, and it's quite a spectacle. Ciao for now!