Vienna

We spent ten days in Vienna. There’s no end of things to do and see, so I’ll break it up into a few blog posts. Our apartment was just a few blocks from the Hofburg, the enormous palace of the Hapsburg dynasty, and many of the other sights. We made the most of it…in our […]

Oberstdorf

As we got closer to Oberstdorf, the landscape got hillier and greener, the houses grew stouter with longer eaves and lots of flower boxes, and cows were everywhere. But it was still a surprise how quickly the Alps spring up, with Oberstdorf cradled among them. On our first visit, we arrived by car and felt […]

Weimar

We’ve fallen in love, and our love’s name is Weimar. M said several times he could imagine living here. We would, of course, have to study up on Johann Wolfgang von Goethe to fit in, because it’s Goethe everywhere here. Goethe National Museum, Goethe’s garden house, Goethe’s family house, … Even things that at first […]

Peace and Quiet

We left Copenhagen on a night train to Berlin. It was M’s first time on an overnight train. I still remember a post-college night train from Italy to Switzerland, where they took all our blankets and pillows when we reached the Italian border, despite it being around 4 am. This time we had the compartment […]

Danish Design

On our last day in Copenhagen we went to the Designmuseum Dänemark. Going to a museum on a rainy day wasn’t quite the relief from the weather that I expected. Like so many places in Scandinavia, there was no air conditioning. In fact, the windows were open, letting in the humidity, and the rooms were […]

Copenhagen

We spent three days in Copenhagen. I had booked a bike rental from the hotel for one day, so we biked around the first day and walked around the second. M took SO many pictures of bikes – because there are SO many bikes everywhere. Not as many as Amsterdam, I think, but enough to […]

Stockholm Near and Far

The Stockholm archipelago has, in round numbers, a bazillion islands. (Okay, around 25,000.) We took a 2.5-hour ferry ride out to Sandhamn, which is one of the furthest out. It’s so far out it’s a blast from the past with no paved roads and no cars. People get around on bikes, motorized bikes, and ATVs. […]

Cardamom Central

It’s easy to tell we’re in Sweden – everywhere we turn we find cardamom bread and cardamom buns: at the breakfast buffet, at restaurants and cafés. And it’s not the mild cardamom flavor of the cardamom buns in Oslo; they’re serious about it here. It tastes like they use the whole pod, not just the […]

Oslo

The train ride between Bergen and Oslo lived up to its reputation of being especially beautiful, but unfortunately it wasn’t highly photographable. The train tracks along the fjords gave stunning views but if you blinked you might miss them as the train went through tunnels or into wooden snow-protection “shelters”. By the time M had […]

Southbound

The weather wasn’t as good on our southbound trip from Kirkenes back to Bergen. But it was definitely what we now call “Norway weather” – changing every couple of minutes. Both of our southbound excursions were cancelled, one due to high winds, one due to needing to refuel unexpectedly (presumably also due to high winds […]