I am going to try and break up the posts from my 3 week Europe tour, just so it doesn’t get too overwhelming for me as the writer and you as the audience!
I will start by sharing Denmark and Germany with you! So three weeks (I think?) ago on June 24th I left Northern Sweden, bound for the very south of the country. My host dad drove me to the train station here in Undersåker, where I took the train to Östersund, then a bus to the airport, a flight to Stockholm, a two hour stop over, another flight down to Malmö, and then another bus to a city nearby called Lund. In Lund I was met by a fellow Canadian exchange student Jinell who generously let me stay at her house for two nights. We had to take a small commuter train to her house, and we didn’t arrive until after midnight. The first thing I noticed about Southern Sweden is that it is FLAT as a pancake, coming from the mountains this was super weird, and also second thing IT GETS DARK THERE! I hadn’t slept in darkness at all in like 4 months, so this was fantastic!
The next day I was up fairly early to catch a train to Copenhagen, Denmark. For those who don’t know Malmö is very close to Copenhagen, it was only about 45-50 minutes on the train. The cool thing is there is a bridge the connects Sweden and Denmark, and believe it or not, part of the bridge is a tunnel under the ocean to allow big ships to still be able to pass and since the bridge is very close to the Copenhagen airport they could not build it any closer or it would be dangerous for the airplanes. I met my mom’s cousin Dorte and her daughter Mille at the Copenhagen Central Station around 10:30 and we started the day. I have never met any of my mom’s family living in Denmark so this was super cool that we were able to arrange for it to happen. We began by walking a bit in the city of Copenhagen, with the first stop at Amalienborg the Royal Palace, then lunch (I had a typical Danish Sandwich on Danish Rye Bread, aren’t you proud mom?) We then walked along the main shopping street named Strøget for a while. Dorte had to leave early to go to work, so she brought Mille and I to a boat tour and then left us. The boat tour was actually really cool and took around one hour, we saw a lot of things this way! The tour went through all of the canals of the city. Here we also saw the famous “Nyhavn” or New Harbour as it is translated to in English. After this Mille and I went and climbed the Round Tower which gave a fantastic view of the city! Up next we went to the Rosenborg Castle which is not the main castle of the royal family, but like a secondary castle and this is also where all of the crown jewels are kept under the ground. Lastly we went to Tivoli, however we just walked around instead of going on the rides, because the rides were very similar to the ones at the Swedish Gröna Lund which I went to just a few weeks ago. I took the train back to Sweden around 7 pm and Mille took a train to her home in Denmark. I’m so grateful I got to meet both Mille and Dorte and for all they did for me that day, they could both be tour guides!
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Up next, I woke up super early on the morning of Thursday June 26th, full of energy and good spirits! Jinell and I left her house around 6:15 am, and made our way into where all of the exchange students were to meet in Malmö to begin our 17 day Europe Tour! We met some other exchange students on our local commuter train together and then we all got lost trying to find this place but we eventually made it. Let me tell you hauling around a super heavy suitcase on cobblestone streets for over an hour is not fun but I survived. Around 9:00 all 67 exchange students, and 4 chaperones made our way on to the bus headed towards Berlin! First we drove through Denmark and had a little stop, and then we took a ferry from Denmark over to Germany. The ferry took around 2 and a half hours, and we had our lunch on board. The ferry had an amazing view. We were in Germany around 3:30 pm and then continued driving to Berlin, which we reached around dinner time.
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Ther first night in Berlin we went to an Italian restaurant for dinner, weird thing to do when in Germany right? Germany was also playing the US in a world cup soccer match that night and they won, so of course Berlin being the capital went absolutely crazy. Some of my friends and I went to a street parade/party in downtown Berlin, it was definitely wild! Germans know what’s up when it comes to winning soccer matches.
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The next day we went to a museum on the stasi which once controlled Germany, following this we took a city bus tour where we got to go to the remaining East Side Gallery of the Berlin Wall, the TV Tower, Checkpoint Charlie, the German Parliament, and some other cool places in the city. Sabrina, Madie, Hannah, Abigail and I took the metro to Alexanderplatz which is one of the largest if not the largest shopping centres in Berlin. We ate lunch there, and followed with a little shopping. We then took the metro to an outdoor Jewish memorial, this was really touching to visit. Following this we walked to the Brandenburg Gate and took a lot of pictures. Feeling rushed and pressed for time we took the metro back to the hotel where we got ready for our traditional German schnitzel dinner. The rest of the night we just spent chilling in Berlin. Good times enjoyed by all.
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On the morning of Saturday June 28th we left Berlin and headed towards Poland, but you can read about that in the next post! I promise I will try to post a little more soon, but I am really busy as time is running out faster than I would like to think 😦
All the best,
Jessie
Swedish Experiences 