From the Milan Malpensa Airport we took an overnight Flixbus to Nürnberg. This was mostly an OK trip, although we had a layover in Verona from 9-11pm which involved just sitting on a sidewalk on a random street while other flixbusses came and went. We also had passport control done at 4am on our way to Germany and arrived at 7am in Nürnberg, where Will picked us up. Will is Travis’s mom’s cousin who has been living in Germany for 12 years with his family. He rarely gets people visiting from New Zealand and so was quite excited to see us. We only got to meet his family briefly because they were going to Berlin to see their family for Christmas, but they were lovely and Tinka made a yummy Kaiserschmarrn for breakfast.
While at Will’s we went on a nice walk, had some classic Bavarian food, went to the Nürnberg Kristkindlmarkt (Christmas market), and talked a lot about New Zealand. It was so nice being in a warm house with hot showers and a kitchen after living in a car for almost a month.
On December 22nd we took the train to Pulheim, where my parents had rented an apartment near Omama so we could have Christmas there. To take the trains we had bought a Deutschlandticket, or rather, my uncle had bought them for us, because you need a German bank account to buy them (this was a whole process). The good thing about a Deutschlandticket is that for a reasonable fixed monthly price, you can ride any of the local and regional trains and busses. This means that traveling takes a lot longer than on the faster ICE (Inter-City Express) trains, but is a lot cheaper. Unfortunately, it seemed like half the people in Germany had bought Deutschlandtickets and were traveling to their relatives that day, because every single train was packed. We were traveling with 2 small bags, 2 large bags, and a ski bag, which made everything quite a bit more difficult.
The other thing about the Deutsche Bahn is that the trains are often significantly delayed, causing you to miss your connecting trains. Travis watches a YouTube series where people play tag or hide and seek over all of Europe, and when in Germany they are often “Deutsch-Bahned”, or held up by the German trains, and Travis was excited about experiencing this himself – a mystery to me, it’s usually not very enjoyable.
Our first train that day was late, and Will drove us 15 minutes to the second train station so we wouldn’t miss it. Other than that, the trains were miraculously on time that day. During the last 4 hours of the train journey, however, none of the trains had functional bathrooms, which made the end of the trip a bit of a clencher.
We arrived that evening in Pulheim and went to the apartment – my parents and sister had arrived earlier that day. Tovia had gone shopping, and after what felt like an eternity finally came back with some dinner. Over the next couple days, we took turns going to Omama’s house to visit because too many people quickly overwhelm her. She has effectively no short term memory, so things quickly become very confusing when you don’t know what happened yesterday or even five minutes ago. It was still nice to spend some time with her, but sad too. Every time I see her, which is less and less often now I’m living in New Zealand, she’s lost a little more of the Omama I remember from when I was younger.
On Christmas Years Eve I went to see her in the morning, and then we all went on a walk in the afternoon together before we all went back to the apartment for tea, cookies, and presents. Since everyone was traveling no big gifts were exchanged, but lots of small thoughtful gifts. It was still really nice to spend Christmas with my family, especially since I don’t get to see them that often anymore. It was nice to show Travis around as well, and for him to spend more time with my family and to meet Omama, even though she probably won’t remember him. I’ve spent a lot of time with his family, so it’s only fair now he sees some of mine.
Travis and I went shopping for things you can only get in Germany… we had some explaining to do to the check-out lady, she was a bit surprised at the amount of candy we were buying 
We went to see the Cologne Cathedral one afternoon 
It has some very impressive windows 
Although the windows were removed during WW2 to preserve them from bombing, this one broke and was replaced 
Tovia and Travis and I at the Cologne Christmas Market
On Christmas Day, we got back on a train and traveled to my aunt Natascha’s house in Kassel, where we spent two nice days with the family. I got to make my first Raclette, which is where you cook food on your own little frying pan and melt cheese all over it. Travis felt a bit left out at times amidst all the German speakers – I tried to translate when I could, but it’s hard to translate every word.
(Pictures of family not included to protect privacy).
We then took the train to my uncle Kolja’s house in Holzminden, and got very Deutsch-Bahned on the way, which often happens with the connection we were catching – I don’t know why they don’t make the second train just 10 minutes later. We also got off a stop too early and Kolja had to come pick us up.
We accidentally slept in till 10 the next day, and much of the day was taken up by a Raclette lunch and preparing for a concert we were going to in the evening. We had to pull out what we had in nice clothes which was not much – those are the first to get cut when trying to pack light. We nevertheless managed to look halfway decent, if not quite fashionable. The concert itself was lovely – a flute/clarinet/piano trio that played some absolute bangers, including excerpts from Carmen by Bizet.
From Holzminden we took the train to Itzehoe to see my great aunt Roswitha. This train journey took us 8 hours because of various delays and rerouted trains due to a derailment – literally from sunup to sundown. For context, the drive is about 3 hours.
Roswitha had popped her car tires on a curb that morning, so she and Henning, her son, picked us up in his Landrover. Travis’s eyes immediately lit up when he realized that was the car we’d be going in. He was even more excited to learn that we would be borrowing the car the next day while Roswitha’s was being fixed, and that he would be driving it since he was the only person who could confidently drive manual between us three.
That evening we went over to Henning and Jelly’s to light the Christmas tree and sing some Christmas carols. The next day we went on a walk in the morning with Roswitha and then went to visit her other son Hauke and his wife Astrid in a town 30 minutes away. Roswitha is pretty amazing – she is in her late 80s but is in incredible shape both mentally and physically. She goes walking and swimming with her friends four times a week, sees her children and grandchildren and great grandchildren frequently, has a smartphone, and drives a car. I hope I can be in the same shape as she is when I’m her age. The difference between her and Omama is striking, and really shows the importance of having a social life and frequent contact with younger people. It’s also nice to have a good relationship with someone from Omama’s generation with many shared memories and accounts of what were some very interesting times in German history.
From Roswitha’s house we took a train to the border of Germany – our first train was once again delayed so Roswitha drove us 30 minutes at 6 in the morning so we wouldn’t miss our second train. Once at the border we got on a FlixBus to Copenhagen, where we arrived around 1:30. We took a city bus my friend Fiona’s girlfriend’s apartment. Once we stowed away our bags, we went on a long walk until sunset, which started around 3 and ended around 4.
That evening was New Year’s Eve, and we celebrated with Fiona and Hafdís. Fiona had made some delicious sushi for dinner, and after dinner we watched the Danish King’s speech and Dinner for One. We then played a version of 21 questions where we wrote words on cards and then the person guessing wore the card on their forehead. Hafdís apartment is on the 9th floor of a building where most of the nearby buildings are only about 4 stories. This meant that we had front row seats to the fireworks set off by the residents of Copenhagen, sometimes literally right in front of the window when people set them off from the parking lot below. Around midnight however, the air got so smoggy that the view disappeared, and we went to bed soon after.
The next day we slept till 11, and in the afternoon Travis and I went for another long walk, and Travis went for a skinny dip in the ocean where lots of Danes were doing the same thing. This kind of thing would be unheard of in the US or New Zealand, but Europeans are not so squeamish about human bodies.
On the 2nd Travis and I went to the Danish Architectute Museum in the morning, where we learned a lot about Danish Architecture but also about Danish social structures and policies – I did not know, for example, that many Danes live in what are effectively housing cooperatives, where many people own an apartment building together and share some communal spaces. That evening, we went to Fiona’s parents’ house with Fiona and Hafdís, which was lovely – last time I was in Copenhagen Fiona and I stayed there and it was very nice to see them again.
Now, our trip in Copenhagen was defined by generosity – Fiona for letting us stay in her room and planning things that were worth seeing, Hafdís for hosting us for New Years in her apartment, Fiona’s parents for a yummy dinner, and one more unexpected gift: the evening before we came to Copenhagen, Henning and Jelly came over to Roswitha’s house and gave us some cash left over from their last trip to Denmark. We gave them some Swiss Francs we still had in exchange. When we counted the money later, it turned out to be 2000 Danish Krone, or about 250 Euros. In other words, quite a lot of money – we were truly blown away by their generosity and very grateful. Copenhagen is an expensive place to visit, and is very digital currency focused, but most places will still take cash. That 2000 Krone covered most of our expenses over the course of our 5 days there.
On the 3rd we went to the royal treasury to see the crown jewels. There is so much unbelievable opulence there, and so much ivory, it makes you shudder to think how many elephants and rhinos died. In the afternoon Travis and I walked around Copenhagen on our own. It was snowing, which on the one hand was quite cold and resulted in lots of snow in the eyes, but on the other hand was very beautiful. In the evening we went back to Hafdís’ apartment and had Smørrebrod, which is a traditional Danish dish of open face sandwiches with fish and eggs and all sorts of other goodies. There are some traditional combinations, but towards the end we just put whatever we liked on the bread which made Fiona cringe a bit with some of the more heinous concoctions.
The next day was our last in Denmark, and we took the train to a nearby town called Roskilde with Fiona and Hafdís. There we went to visit the viking ship museum and learned a lot about the vikings – I didn’t really know too much about them beforehand and was really most impressed by the system of laws they had in place with regards to human welfare. For example, when going to battle each soldier was required to have access to a certain amount of water and food, so its possible for historians to calculate how many ships would’ve been necessary for a 10 day mission. On the other hand, some of the customs seemed quite barbaric, like the description of a funeral that involved the rape and murder of one of the deceased’s female servants.
In the afternoon we went to the Roskilde Cathedral, which is a 12th century gothic church where generations of the Danish royal family are entombed. While in the cathedral I kept thinking about how this building has been standing before the Americas were colonized by Europeans, and how much the world has changed since it was built. Reading some of the information about the Danish royalty was quite funny as well – one placard stated something along the lines of “all this king did was drink and party, he was not interested in ruling at all and left everything to hos advisors, and his reign was characterized by unprecedented peace and economic prosperity”. Maybe there’s a reason we don’t have kings anymore.
The next morning we woke up around 2am, hauled all our stuff to the airport, and boarded a flight to Portugal. When we bought the flights the cheapest ones were with TapAirportugal through Lisbon, so we decided to have a 24 hour layover there and explore the city. We arrived around 10, stored our bags in a locker at the airport, and then tried to take the metro into town, but they had closed the station for some reason so we took a bus – a certain type of busses would let people off but not on at the airport, and we spent a frustrating 30 minutes trying to get on a bus – any bus. Finally we managed to get one that took us into town.
Once out of the airport we were desperately hungry and went to a grocery store to buy some lunch. To my delight the bakery section had Pão de Queijo, a Brazilian classic that is a little ball made out of tapioca flour and cheese. I bought them all the time when I was in Brazil. Feeling better with some food in us we took another bus down to the waterfront where we looked at a famous Belém Tower that was unfortunately covered by scaffolding. There was also a large monument commemorating the early explorers. I had very mixed feelings about the monument – on the one hand, there is nothing inherently wrong about exploring, after all, that’s what we were doing them. On the other hand, those explorers were the first step in the colonization of the Americas and all the evil that came after.
A highlight of the day was that we came across a ceremony of mounted officials on horses, including a mounted band. The horses with musicians on them were quite well behaved, but towards the back of the ranks there were some skittish ones causing havoc in the ranks. We never quite figured out what the ceremony was for, but it was great fun to watch the parade.
That afternoon we went to a neighborhood called Alfama, which was filled with interesting streets and side streets, houses with beautifully tiled fronts, and lookouts with beautiful views. We had a great time just exploring the nooks and crannies of the neighborhood before heading to our hostel to check in. The hostel turned out to be probably the worst one we’d stayed in – it was dirty and the beds were so squeaky. We’d chosen a 4-bed dorm, and the guy who was under us coughed very disgustingly for most of the night. The only consolation was that we had payed €9 each for the hostel – I guess you get what you pay for.
We got up even earlier than planned – we had planned to get up at 6 but had both been awake for several hours because of the coughing. From the hostel we took a metro to the airport, checked in our bags, and went through security. We were now flying to LA, and therefore had to go through an extra passport control at the gate. Our plane was supposed to finish boarding at 10am and leave by 10:30. 10 crept closer and closer and we still weren’t done boarding. We were finally sitting on the plane at 11, getting ready to leave. And we sat. And sat. And finally they told us there was a technical issue with the plane and we would all have to get off and board another plane. All 300 of us. By the time we finally left it was about 1:30pm. The only saving grace in all this was that by some stroke of luck, we were seated in the row right behind the bathrooms, which meant that there were no seats in front of us and we had more leg room than I could’ve dreamt of. A godsend for a 12.5 hour flight.
It would have been quite nice, actually, if we had been just a bit more delayed: for flights leaving from or landing in Europe, there is a rule that if the flight is over 3 hours late the airline must reimburse the passengers. There are tiers for how many kilometers traveled, and the longer the flight, the more the reimbursement, into the hundreds of Euros. Unfortunately, our flight landed 2 hours 40 minutes after it was supposed to. No money for us.
We were quite worried about immigration into the US, having heard many stories about people being turned away for God knows what reason. We were prepped with anything the immigration agent could possibly asked Travis for. We went up to the agent together, and all he wanted to know about was the date of the return flight, and then we were in.
Here begins the next chapter of our journey, so this is where I’ll stop this blog. Another heartfelt thanks to all the family and friends who hosted us during this time, it was truly great to get to see each and every one of you!