Mom's Visit and Copenhagen!

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November 4th 2007

Published: November 14th 2007

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SweetCaroline

Mom's Here!

Well, this update is long overdue, I have actually been a bit more busy this week than normal which is nice. I am headed to Scotland tomorrow and am very excited about visiting my relatives, the Beattie family, in Glascow! I am sure it will be a very fun weekend! In other news I had my last MBA interview tonight here in Hamburg. So now it is the time to sit and wait. I should know by early January where I will be going, which is exciting but scary at the same time! I will keep everyone updated of my future destination for the next couple of years.

It has become VERY cold here. Well cold for a texan. It stays mostly in the high 30's, low 40's. The sun doesn't stay up incredibly long, it seems to go down sometime around 4:30-5:00 pm, but sometimes its cloudy so it gets a little darker earlier. Im coping with the change though and I seem to be getting more used to the cold. I have all my winter clothes now thanks to my mother. So speaking of...here we go...

So I sadly said goodbye to the Bothwell women on Sunday

Sightseeing

night and went home to go to sleep as I had to get up and head to the airport around 6 am on Monday. My mom even arrived early so she was already sitting there waiting for me when I got in. I was so excited to have her all to myself for a whole week! Also very excited to show her where I was living, my new city, and show off some of my new found German language skills. We hopped in a cab and headed back in the lovely rain to my apartment. We were both exhausted so after a catch up chat, we took a quick nap. I had to get up though after an hour because I had to take a shower and head to class. I left my mom to get organized and headed to my 4 hrs of classes.

It was a lovely day of rain and clouds, but we decided to venture out for a bit and see some of the city. We made a reservation at a restaurant I had heard a lot about, Gastraum 4, but we still had a couple of hours to kill. The rain let up a

Hamburg

Great view of Hamburg on the lake tour

little bit and I showed my mom some of the city. We decided to head over to the Vier Jahreszeitens (four seasons) hotel and have a nice glass of wine. We enjoyed that and a selection of cheeses with the elite of Hamburg's visitors. It is a beautiful hotel, one of the nicest in Hamburg and right on the Alster lake. After our glass of wine we headed to Gastraum 4, which was a fun experience. The restaurant is headed up by 4 chefs and every night they come up with a new menu. It is written on chalkboards that they bring out throughout the meal for you to decide. The food was fabulous and we had a wonderful time catching up on life. :-) It was early to bed after that as we were both exhausted.

Tuesday we woke up and went out to explore the city and do a bit of shopping. We took the Alster winter lake boat tour. It was so beautiful because the trees were still all kinds of golden and red colors. The tour took us around to see all the sailing clubs on the lake as well as some of the most

Birds!

Mom with the Swans and birds by the canal!

exclusive "streets" in a few canals. There were some beautiful and huge houses, really impressive. After the tour we went to have a bite of lunch at the Cafe Paris. There food is even better than their coffee! Mom practiced a bit of her french on the placemat. :-) We then hit up Monkenberger Strasse, the big shopping street near the city hall. We did some great shopping and I finally got some boots, much needed as it is getting colder around here. I also got a pillow and some towels for my apartment which will help a lot. We came home for a bit of a break before dinner and changed into some nicer clothes. I made a reservation at Hensler & Hensler, a sushi restaurant down in the harbor area. We decided to get off at the Landungsbrucke and walk all the way down past the Fischmarkt and everything to get a good nights view of the harbor. It really is beautiful when everything is lit up. We had an amazing sushi dinner, the best ive had in months, and enjoyed the atmosphere a lot. I will definitely be going back to this restaurant. After we ate, we

Beer!

Mom with german beer!

walked all the way back to the Landungsbrucke again and then hiked up the hill to the Hotel Hafen. We discoverd a bar up in the top where you could sit and enjoy a view of both the city and the harbor, it was beautiful! We had one more drink and both started to fade so we headed back to the hotel.

Wednesday was filled with more sightseeing and shopping. Hamburg really is a beautiful city, I feel very lucky to be able to spend a year here. It is not somewhere that I would have necessarily gone without this placement. We of course enjoyed the typical German coffee and cake in the afternoon and walked around the city. We were leaving fairly early for Copenhagen in the morning, so we decided to take it easy and eat somewhere around my apartment for dinner. It was funny because it was halloween, and I was surprised to see all the children out "trick or treating" They were doing it up and down the streets in the businesses and not so much in all of the apartments. The outfits were a bit different too, it was like they just took lots

Rathaus

Posing in my new boots at the Rathaus fountain

of funny looking tights and capes and then painted their faces white or green. Quite entertaining to see, but I think that the holiday is catching on over here, but I am told it is very recent.

We woke up early on Thursday and hopped on our train to Copenhagen. I found us a great deal on the bahn.de website and I was excited to get out of town for a couple of days. I had been once to Copenhagen 3 years ago to visit Ryan Lamb while he was studying abroad. I remember that it had been a beautiful city, but had only one and a half days to explore before. The trip up was an exciting one, they actually put the train on a ferry!! My mom and I were amazed, and it was a nice break during the 4 1/2 hr trip to head up to the deck of the ferry and have some lunch. When we arrived in Copenhagen we were trying to figure out where to go, and a nice man on the train offered to walk us to our hotel on the other side of the Stroget, the famous shopping street! He was

On the Train

very nice, worked at the university, and pointed out stores and cafes all the way there for us to try out. After dropping off our things at the hotel we headed out to see some of the city. We checked out Nyhaven, the harbor area that was cleaned up for tourists, it is beautiful. We made some dinner reservations at a restaurant and then headed over to see some of the Stroget. We did some window shopping and then ended up in an Irish pub for a copule of drinks before dinner. They had a live Jazz band and it was a lot of fun! We had a wonderful dinner and enjoyed some wine together.

Our next day was filled with sightseeing. We got up at a decent time, got dressed, and headed out to see Copenhagen. We grabbed some bagel sandwiches and coffee on the way to the Rosenberg Slot. This is where they keep all of the Crown Jewels. The Slot itself was beautiful and the leaves on teh ground/fall colors, really made it even better! I got some fabulous pictures and we ate breakfast on a bench enjoying the scenery. We hopped in line just for

Artistic

Getting artistic in Copenhagen

the opening of the castle. Our ticket in let us see one small portion of the castle, the amazing crown jewels and treasury, and then a small art display in a building in the behind the castle. We had to basically run accross the city to make it to the Amalienberg Slot in order to catch the changing of the guards. Had we known how long it would last we may not have run so fast. We observed about half of the process and I got more pictures than I would have imagined, and then we decided to move on. We headed back to Nyhaven and caught a canal tour boat. This was honestly the best tour in the city I think. We went all over, saw the new opera house, the Little Mermaid of course, and other churches and famous buildings in the city. I got lots of great pictures and we met a nice lady from Canada during the tour as well. After the tour we grabbed a quick lunch and headed over to the Stroget. We walked around and stopped at the cafe that was suggested to us for some coffee an cake. It was absolutely amazing

Fall Leaves

and I think we both took in a little too much sugar but very much enjoyed our little treat. We did a little more shopping and then decided we'd head over to the Copenhagen Absolut Ice Bar! On the way, we ran into a ski promo in the big square of the city. They had made fake snow and people were doing jumps and skiing down these ramps, it was hilarious, and got me excited about ski season!! We made it over to the Ice Bar and donned our big snow suit covers to go into the -5 degree celcius room. The bar was amazing, made all of ice that was imported from the Ice Hotel in Sweeden. The drinks came in these ice glasses which melted where you drank out of them and made a bit of an indention, very funny. We enjoyed a couple of drinks and had a great time, but decided that we were a bit cold at that point, so headed out of the bar.

From the Ice Bar we headed back through the city surrounded by blue santas and christmas carols, yes, it was the opening night for the local Tuborg Xmas Beer!

Rosenberg Slot

With the Crazy Tree in front and all!

We really hit our timing right. We settled into the irish pub again and enjoyed a good ole fashioned burger(my first in many months) and waited for the 8:59 PM signal for the taps of xmas beer to start flowing. What a funny experience to be sitting in an irish pub in Copenhagen listening to Xmas music at the beginning of November! We enjoyed a couple of pints with the local crowd, acquired a t-shirt, and then decided we were quite tired and headed back to go to sleep. The next morning we woke up early and then headed off to the train station to make it to our train in time. The train ride back was fairly uneventful, we enjoyed the ferry ride again, really quite an experience, and returned back to Hamburg around 5 pm. We had an easy night and grabbed some food around my apartment and just enjoyed a last night of conversation. I took mom back to the airport early on Sunday morning so that she could make her flight in time. We enjoyed one last cup of coffee/tea and then I said goodbye for another 5 weeks until xmas! Can't wait for the whole

Rosenberg Slot

Me in front of the Rosenberg Slot

family to come over, it will be quite a vacation together! Overall it was a fabulous week and I enjoyed every minute. She really picked a nice time to come because the next week it all of a sudden became quite cold!

Well, im off to bed, early flight in the morning to Scotland! More updates when I return!

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