ha det bra, Norge :(...

So, as promised here's the last post about Norway. (Side note: I'm back in Constance, and the trip here was fine. I would have liked to have posted yesterday evening, but I had no internet - surprise!)


The Stokkelands have done some remodeling since the last time I was there.


Their house is gorgeous. And it's seriously hard to believe the view they have from it.


We went the Munch Museum, where they have "The Scream" (above) and "Madonna". Both of these paintings were stolen by very stupid thieves who nearly ruined them because they didn't know how to take care of the works. I lucked out, however, to have come during the brief stretch of time that the two pieces are back up on display before being taken down again in order to be further restored. I struggled to decide which photo from this museum to put up (I really like Munch); I ended up choosing "The Scream" simply because even if the name Edvard Munch didn't ring a bell, the image of the second most recognizable painting in the world (BNET) would.


We had a picnic in the Botanisk Hage in Oslo. (Look at Mira!)


Then we waltzed to the Viking Ship Museum ;)


This is the Oseberg Ship. It was buried in the ground around 800 CE and discovered near Tønsberg (Norway) in 1904. Imagine burying that massive thing. That was someone's funeral!


The Viking Ship Museum inspired Magnus to become a gansta.


Oslo harbor - I like the mixture of eras here: You have the fortress from around 1300 CE, some very modern looking ship (I own that one) in the foreground, and what looks like a pirate ship (but probably fishes for shrimp) to the right of that.

And, though I'm sure most of you didn't, we obviously watched the last soccer game in the EM 2008. Only one goal was scored, but it was by Spain, so unfortunately Germany's chant "So seh'n Siegler aus" doesn't end in "Deutschland!" this time.

But this does remind me of something I'd been wanting to post for a while now. Lukas Podolski plays for the German national team (although he was born in Poland). He's quite the player. For example, he scored both goals in Germany's first game - against Poland! (I think the Poles might think of him as a traitor.) Well anyway, I'm not writing about him because of his sweet Fußball skills. No, I'm writing about him because he has some amazing quotes.

Soccer is like chess, only without the dice. (Fußball ist wie Schach, nur ohne Würfel.)

There's only one possibility: victory, defeat, or draw. (Es gibt nur eine Möglichkeit: Sieg, Niederlage oder Unentschieden.)

(Spiegel article in English)

So Germany's game against Spain?

sorry, Podolski…

But seriously, thank you, Stokkelands, for the wonderful five days in Norway!

tilbake i Norge!

I'm in Norway! I got here at about 11:00 am on Thursday and am staying with my relatives, the Stokkelands. They used to live in Rochester way back in the day, so I (and the rest of my family - and Grandma) know them quite well.


They live in a town near Oslo. This is the view from their house - gorgeous, right?

Today we went into Oslo to do a bit of touring. Our first stop was the castle.

Norway elected its most recent dynasty. That's right, elected. They apparently have quite a bit of popular support, even tho the prince and princess are kind of … unique. (Princess Märtha Louise has founded an engelskole, where people learn to talk to angels as a form of medicine; and Prince Haakon married a single mother with possible drug history.)


Here's the group of us. Eline isn't in the picture, because she just got home this evening from a rock festival.


Mira, who's five and still insanely rambunctious, also likes ice cream ;)


We went to Vigeland Park, which is known for sculptor Gustav Vigeland's numerous nude statues of people expressing the gamut of emotion at various stages in life.


more Vigeland


Magnus was more mature about it than I was, I think.


It is very pretty, huh? We had brunch here (lefse!).


Then we went to the new opera house, which was coincidentally built by the same architecture firm (Snøhetta) as the library in Alexandria. It is likewise one of my favorite buildings ever.


The walls of it are covered in braille. (photo with Ingvild and Magnus)


the family :)


Magnus the Magnificent did some spectacular magic tricks with his bottle of water.


more opera house

And I'm here until Monday around 5:00 pm, so expect at least one more post about Norway!

weitere Infos über den Alltag

You know those entomologists who go into the Amazon to catch insects? That’s me every day. Each morning I trek into the steaming lavatory (or WC, as they call it here) to shower, and each morning I discover a new species of bug previously not known to live in our “bungalow.” Today I was especially lucky to find not only mosquitoes, flies and spiders, but also three very large moths.


One of them (which looked like a bird dropping) was unfortunately no longer there by the time I’d gotten my camera.

Speaking of bugs, in order to protect myself from being covered by mosquito bites during the night, I recently purchased this lovely silver net (Fliegengitter) to cover my window. (Apparently Sonnenbühl Ost doesn’t believe in window screens.) Well, it cost me €5,50 (or like a trillion US) and it sucks. It came with “tape” (Klebebände) to put it up, but it’s only one sided, and the other side is covered with these brail-like bumps that you’re supposed to press the mesh onto. Nonetheless the Gitter falls down more often than it stays up. So I duct-taped it to the sill, but it still falls down. Plus it looks like one of those metallic sheets they put up when the bad guys quarantined ET. That was a good purchase.

But anyway, to keep with the “daily life” theme of this post, let me tell you about the every-night excitement of the EM (European Soccer Championship, or Fußballeuropameisterschaft – yes, that’s one word). So there are one or two games a night, and most Europeans go crazy over them. People drive around honking and screaming and celebrating until 3 or 4 am basically every day. It’s awesome! The last game that Germany won, fans ran into the street and were draping passing cars in the German tricolor, sometimes not letting them pass until they’d called out every one of the German players’ names.

So apart from watching soccer, what have I been doing recently? Well, this Saturday a few of us went to Meersburg again.


We took the ferry there.


It’s much prettier in the summer.

Then yesterday a bunch of us Ostians went to the beach, laid out and swam.

And this Thursday I’m off to Oslo to see the Stokkelands and will head back to Constance on Monday.

Lac de Genéve/Genfer See/Lago di Ginevra=Heaven

For the last leg of our trip, my lovely family and I went to Lake Geneva.


International Red Cross and Red Crescent (Croissant-Rouge - ha!) in Geneva


Geneva has one of the world's largest fountains (le Jet d'eau - that spout on the left side of the photo). They also have a giant soccer ball balloon flying over it in honor of Euro 2008.

Geneva was okay, but Montreux (a small city also on Lake Geneva) was spectacular. It's even prettier than Constance, and that comment's coming from someone with a massive bias toward the latter.


family minus Dad in Montreux


Montreux (it was in the 80s)

While in Montreux we took a boat to Château de Chillon, the castle about which Byron wrote his poem about François de Bonivard.


De Bonivard was imprisoned in the castle with this view to taunt him every day. He was the real life Tantalus.


another shot of Chillon Castle


and another, with Lake Geneva and the Alps as backdrop


Swans are all over this lake. At one place in Geneva (the space of about 6m²) I counted a dozen.


They're also friendly. (They thought my sister had food.)


Dad in front of Chillon Castle


Then we rode first class around the lake for 2 hrs. It was an extremely nice end to an extremely nice trip.

It was wonderful to see the family, and (at least I think) we had a wonderful time traveling this little slice of Europe together.

Deutschland mit der Familie

I'm writing from Geneva! We spent the last few days with the Egenbergers in Augsburg, but first family photos from Constance, as promised:


To our left would have been the Alps if it hadn't been so cloudy…

After checking out my "sweet pad" as I call it, we decided to see something of a different kind of beauty: Insel Mainau.


my mom and my sister on the bridge to Mainau


on Mainau


My mom kept saying how much Teri would love Insel Mainau.

We went to Mainau in the evening, which turned out to be a stroke luck - there was hardly anyone on the island. And in the butterfly house, which is normally jam-packed, we were literally the only visitors.


Another cool thing about going in the evening was that a lot of animals were out and about. (I assume the normal crowds tend to scare them away.)

So sorry for that anachronistic tangent, but I promised photos. For recap: first off was Constance, then Colmar, and then Augsburg to visit the relatives. The second day we were in Augsburg, Hermann, Anita and Rolf gave us an amazing tour of the city.


cathedral


more Augsburg: Sts. Ulrich and Afra


Jesus vs Whore of Babylon at 10pm only on FOX!


near the city wall


Egenberger reunion! (Though not in the photo, we also visited Walter, who will be 90 in August!)

In summary, the visit in Augsburg was amazing! Anita, Hermann and Rolf are wonderful people and spectacular hosts - thank you so much yet again for the great time!

à Colmar avec ma famille

My family came to visit me! (Because I visited them, right? Except it's a little more fun to vacation in Europe than in Byron…) They arrived Wednesday evening. Thursday we went to Mainau and walked around town, but unfortunately my camera battery was dead, so I have no photos (I may put some up later after I steal them from my visitors). Then today we went to Colmar, a small city in the Alsace région of France (near Strasbourg).


We went to the Unterlinden Museum, which is in what used to be a convent. It has lots of paintings that my mom really likes. Some of them I also liked a lot (e.g., the Issenheim Altarpiece and Schuler's "La char de la mort" - sorry, I couldn't find a good image of that one), but mainly I took pictures of the ones I thought were ugly (see below).


That's what baby Jesus really looked like: Mr. Potato Head on meth.


Then we wandered.


There are more German half-timbered houses in Colmar than all of Germany put together, I'm pretty sure - and it's in France! Madness, I tell ya.


This cathedral is one of many buildings that had these unique, green-tiled roofs.


And here's Colmar's Petite Venise (Little Venice). This city's beautiful.


After checking out the Musée d'Histoire naturelle et d'Ethnographie (they let us in as a family for €4 total, instead of what we were supposed to pay - €14!), we were ambushed by young women in weird clothes. The one in the purple tutu was apparently about to get married, but before she did so, she and her girlfriends had to go thru town and measure 500 meters worth of men (like, e.g., my dad and me). After measuring us, she kissed us and gave us candy.


And this is Alsace on the way back to Constance.

So I realize I didn't actually put any pictures of us as a family up, but I promise to do that in my next post. So far all I have are a bunch of photos of my sister being a goof (shock, right?). More to come - soon!