Reindeer, Rallies, and Tacos

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Well as many of you can probably assume, based on my lack of blogs lately, things have been pretty busy around here. I am starting to get into the swing of things with my work schedule, but it doesn’t leave a whole lot of time in the evenings to catch up with everyone. None-the-less, I love my job and am enjoying my new apartment and area of Germany. I am also getting to travel around Europe with work, and I had my first international business trip last week!




After a relaxing weekend in Karlsruhe to adjust to my new surroundings, I was off on Monday to Stockholm for work. Pretty crazy to show up your first day of work and be booked to Sweden for the next week! It was a pretty uneventful trip up to Stockholm, I am getting to know the travel systems in Germany quite well and am enjoying the fast train connections and easy check in airports. I took the one hour train to Frankfurt airport, right into the terminal, checked in at Lufthansa and then started off on my 45 min treck around the terminal to my gate. Really, I was on the other side of the world. I am working on purchasing some extras for my new shoes that decided to stretch on me. Girls, you know what I'm talking about. :-) It was an easy flight, I managed to carry my suitcase on for the first time in a long time. (I went out and bought the appropriate 100 ml. bottles for my toiletries finally)




I arrived in Stockholm around 6 pm, of course, that far north it was already dark. I took the fast train from the airport to the main train station in Stockholm and then walked all of 5 minutes to reach my hotel, the Radisson SAS! I didn’t give myself much time to enjoy my room after checking in, because I knew that I wouldn’t have a whole lot of time to see the sites over the next few days. Here, I deem myself the new title of ‘speed traveller’. I walked down to the Old City in merely 15 minutes, on the way enjoying the shopping street with Christmas lights still up. I managed to see the Palace, the church where they used to inaugurate their royalty, and capture the quaint feeling of the small streets and alley ways throughout the island. I didn’t realize that Stockholm is merely a series of islands connected together. It still stuns me that Hamburg has more bridges than any city in Europe, including Venice.




Anyways, I will attach my pictures from my speed travelling experience, but my apologies, I did not haul my nice camera up there and well it was at night, so many are quite blurry. I will try not to attach the ones that are too hard to decipher.




After my nice tour of the old town, which I have to say, I love, I headed off to eat at a restaurant I had found online before I left Karlsruhe, called the Hip Pocket. Its part of the Opera House, and is just a little restaurant on the corner with a few tables surrounding a large bar. I enjoyed the atmosphere of feeling like I was eating with other people. I enjoyed a fabulous meal including lobster bisque with crab meat. It really was one of the better meals I have had in Europe. I managed to get back to the hotel all in a total of 2 hours. I met up with some other team members for a drink and then headed off to bed. Over the next couple of days, I worked most of the time, but enjoyed some nice meals as well.




The highlight of my trip was on Wed night before we headed back to Germany, and I took my chance to try Reindeer! Yes, Reindeer is a specialty of Sweden. It was absolutely fantastic. I take it as a bit of a mix between veal, beef, and well…it was ‘melt in your month’ quality. I was excited to call my mom up and exclaim that ‘I ate Rudolph’ he he.




It was early to rise to head back to Germany, and by the time I got home from work on Thursday night I was completely exhausted. That however did not keep me away from visiting Stuttgart for the weekend. Jason, my cousin, and his family were kind enough to let me crash with them on Friday night. They took me on the base on Saturday where I had the chance to buy all my American products I so love and miss. Included in my purchases were: PAM, Bisquick, Rotel, Enchilada Sauce, tortillas, Mac and Cheese, and Rice a Roni, just to name a few. There were even little girl scouts at the PX selling girl scout cookies!! It took me back and get this…they take Euros here! Fantastic. I felt like Santa Claus showing up to my fellow program participant’s apartment on Sat night with an entire Mexican dinner, girl scout cookies, and other requests they had made such as Mac and Cheese.




Saturday night was spent cooking tacos, drinking, laughing and catching up with about 6 other people from my program that live in the area of Baden Württemberg and Frankfurt. We all went out downtown in Stuttgart to enjoy some cocktails together. We all ended up in a big slumber party of air mattresses on the floor of their student apartment. On Sunday, we took our time getting up, I think we are all tired from our first weeks of work, and then headed downtown to grab some brunch before we all had to head off. It was a beautiful day, a bit cold and frosty, but the sun was shining which is something I have enjoyed about southern Germany. On the way to lunch, we spotted one of the many Kosovo rallies throughout town. We inferred through this the news that Kosovo had declared independence. It was really nice to see signs that said ‘Thank you USA’. This is obviously something that we don’t see often, really ever, here in Europe. They were flying American flags with Kosovo flags and peacefully marching through town.




So this week, I’ve been hard at work. I am very excited because my Australian friend Megan that lives in Hamburg is on her way down for the weekend. I believe we will be checking out Heidelberg and maybe Baden-Baden! It will be nice to see a familiar Hamburg face! The two of us will be heading to the Turkish Riviera at the end of March for easter! I am very excited about the thought of lying in the sun at such a beautiful resort! :-)




I hope that everyone is doing well. I am all set up for Nashville and Vanderbilt next year, Rachel and I have officially applied for our apartment! I am really looking forward to my next adventure, even though I still have about 4 months left of this one! I would love any updates from home. I promise to try and be more regular with my blog.

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Photos

Streets
The streets were so neat, can just imagine what it was like many years ago

Church
I think this is where the kings and queens went

This was cool....
I cant even begin to describe how cool this looked in person...yeah...

Palace
This is the big palace on the old town island

Beautiful
Beautiful Gates

My Room
This is my new room in Karlsruhe, and me with dark hair.

Karlsruhe Schloss
This is Karl Frederich's Palace that is the center of the city of Karlsruhe, "Karl's Peace".

Stuttgart
Out with Travis and other friends in Stuttgart

Thank You USA
If you look really hard that little white sign says "Thank You USA"