Venice

It's been a while... what have I been at? Cailan, I and a girl we met from Saskatoon hiked Cinque Terre, breath takingly hard work.

Went to Tuoro sul Trasimeno on Wednesday to check out an archaeology dig which actually ended up being an ethnography class. Regardless it was good fun. I learnt how to congugate verbes in Italian and that made me feel good. I love languages.
Now we are in Venice! Spent the morning sunbathing at the pool at our campgrounds. Bad idea. Now I am solid red with blisters on my back. Damn.

Headed into town today, and I must say I am blow away! I really wasnt expecting too much. But I have been in awe all day. Pretty cool. It doesnt smelt like I had been warned and the water was a nice bluey green, compared to the water in Umbria which was dingey brown. We took a boat bus through the Grand Canal of town to St. Mark's square, drank the most expensive belinnis of my life and gazed through the Bascilica, which was beautiful. I love the gold mosaics of the East.
After we walked through a palace and dreamed of what it would have been like to have lived there and been so rich that we could have gold gilded and stucco ceilings in our own stairwells. Far from ever being proabable.
The rest of the day we spent walking over little bridges, admiring all the beautiful glass jewerly, and once again imagining that we could afford anything we wanted. The night ended with delicious wine, and of course, pasta. That is all I have lived on here.
I would move to Italy in a heart beat - fantastic food, great weather and wine all the time.

Que Bella

Soo I have arrived in Italy!
We had a fantastic time at the West Coast Riot, partied hard to Flogging Molly and froze ourselves with the lack of sun and heat which had been forecasted.

On Friday, the guy who let us have his extra appartment toured us around Gothenburg with a couple of his friends.... which consisted of talking at a cafe for an hour, going to an amusement park and then eating at a bar which was supposed to have this amazing all you can eat buffet, but it was cancelled because of the world cup. Regardless the day was lots of fun. Apparently his father owns a fishing camp and has offered to take us crayfishing in August. Fun!

Friday night we trained to Copenhagen, it was a neat town, but we litterly spent 24hrs there. We actually went on this huge adventure to find the Little Mermaid (Our favourite Disney character, though Danish) but when we eventually found where she was supposed to be... we were informed that she is on load to Shainghai for the Expo 2010. Bummer! So instead we observed some swans attacking some mallards because they were too close to thier ducklings, or are they swanlings? Either way, their babies.

We trained down to Lubeck Germany from Copenhagen and the train went on to the ferry. I know this is a common occurance, but had never experianced it! On the ferry we indulged in some duty free wine. That is six individual portions of wine which came in the juice box foils! Ha, they we fun, and saved us in Lubeck when we had to sleep outside of the aeroport. All of our informants had told us we could sleep inside, European aeroports were 24hrs. Apparently not in Lubeck though!

Saturday we arrived in Pisa, Italy. Warm Weather! Watched the Italia vs. New Zealand football match with our housemates and had a bbq. Seriously a blast. There is nothing to do here except enjoy the company of italians and drink vino. Que bene!

Today we biked down to the Leaning tower of Pisa, and then enjoyed some fabulous pasta we found on this sketchy back road with a Swede and Frenchman from our hostel. Fantastic pasta... and olives! I forgot how much I enjoyed fresh olives!

Tomorrow Cailan and I are heading to Cinque Terre for the day and then down to Tuoro sul Trasemino so I can check out an archaeology dig I was invited to.

After that... I think its Venice? Crotia by the 2nd!! Yay beaches and birthdays!

Hej då Sweden!

Well today begins our continental adventure... though we don't actually make it to the continent until Saturday/Sunday.
Tonight we head to Gothenburg for a punk/rock festival... I dont really know how to describe the bands playing... I know the ones I want to see are like celtic punk bands like Dropkick Murphys and Flogging Molly, but then there are other bands like Rise Against that I'm stoked to see. I hope it's nice out and not raining! Nor any bugs! Cailan met this random guy over the weekend who has an un-used apartment from when he was studying in Gothenburg and has offered to let us crash there for free! Super nice of him, and very trust worthy of us too... but we dont have to pay for the ridiculously expensive hostels!
From there we are heading to Copenhagen on Friday. Another place with wicked expensive hostels (stupid Scandinavia) so we are only staying one night, two days. Hopefully we'll get on a night ferry/train to Germany on Saturday night. We have to be in Lubeck to fly to Pisa. That should be an interesting journey... we dont know how we're getting to Lubeck yet. It's either a 4hr train ride and sleep in the train station/aeroport or take a 9hr overnight train. Blah.
I'm excited for Italy, not just because of the food that I looove, but because a friend of Cailan's is running an archaeology excavation at Tuoro sul Trasimeno for Grant MacEwan. Cool!! I'm stoked for that! It probably trumps all the pasta and pesto I'm gonna eat.
Not sure when my next entry will be so I figured I'd summarize what I know we are doing this far.... I think we anticipate to be in Croatia for July. My birthday present from Cailan is to spend my birthday on a beach. That equals Croatia.

Weekend getaway

One cool thing about living in a small country is that you can go away for just a weekend.
Cailan and I went to Stockholm on Saturday for a party. Just for a party, no big deal.
A friend of ours just graduated from his masters and he had a graduation party. So we hopped on the train, enjoyed some wine on our way there. Arrived in Stockholm and met a bunch of people.
Woke up Sunday morning and went to the National Natural History Museum with four others then we were going to check out an Annie Leibovitz photography exhibit and catch the train back home.
I wish I could do that from home, I guess you can fly to Edmonton or Calgary... but that's such a hassle! Having to check in at the aeroport and get to and from the areoport.... train travel is where it's at.

The Natural history place was actually pretty lame... even when you're punch drunk and everything is amusing, it managed to be a buzz kill. The human evolution section, I expect to interest me no matter where I am, was really bad. Everything else was just all jumbled together, like someone's cluttered shelves at home. And it was all pretty random... ammonites, humming birds and some bird wings all bunched together. With no little information thingers. Ha, it was actually fustraiting being there because it was such a mess. Mind you they did have some cool things, like a wall that was covered with mounted flutter-bys. We also stayed to watch a National Geographic 3D IMAX film Sea Monsters: A Prehistoric Adventure. Very brutal. I don't know why, but we were all anticipating it to be intense and thrilling and interesting and everything that the film wasn't.
We went to Gamla Stan, the old city for lunch at this amazing Italian restaurant. It reminded me a lot of the RichTree Market restaurant in Toronto... you have a card and walk up to different stations where they cook pasta or pizza for you right in front of you. Swipe your card and then pay for whatever you got at the end. It made me very excited to go to Italy cause my ravioli di carne was sooo good and I dont think I ever had a bad meal when I was in italy last time. Mmm good food!
We never made it to the the Annie Leibovitz exhibit, we took too long at the restaurant and we needed to get home at a decent time because Cailan needed to go to work this morning.
We're leaving Sweden this week, heading to Gothenburg on Wednesday for a music festival the West Coast Riot. Then to Copenhagen and we'll be in Pisa on the 21st, where it is currently 27c!

Archaeology day

On Monday I headed down to the southern coast of Sweden to a town called Ystad. It's a typical beach town, and I was really looking forward to enjoying the sun, the sand and the sea!
I chose Ystad because it is the closest descent size city to this Stone Ship that I wanted to see, the fact that it is a beach town was surprisingly secondary.
Ystad, when I left that morning had a weather forecast of being in the high teens, slightly cloudy and 10% chance of rain. But when I arrived it was pouring rain. Ahhh! Ok, no big deal, the man at the hostel said that Tuesday was supposed to be much better weather. The hostel I stayed at was on the beach, a few km out of town, so I rented a bike and cruised the beach! My plan was on Tuesday to bike to Ales Stenar, about 20km away along the coast.

Wake up Tuesday morning to even more rain! Seriously! Well, I was pretty rotted at first and contemplated just coming back home. But, I was there and I was't sure if I'd get another chance to get down there... so I packed a lunch, pulled on my rain coat, hopped on my bike and started peddling in the rain. Ha, and all I could think about was that I better not get sick from this.
The bike was actually quite pleasant, and the rain let up after about a half hour. The scenery was all fields and farms, or rolling hills. It was really pretty.
Anyways, so Ales Stenar, is a large stone ship up on a high cliff in the middle of fields and cows. I arrived there expecting to be the only one, alas, no. It was full of little school kids. I guess I believed that because the weather was so crappy, and it's very isolated that it would be deserted. I was wrong.  The stones were very short. Nothing like the stones at Stonehenge. I was taller than all of them, except the two stones at the edges.
Ales Stenar is sort of in a league of it's own, a mystery to scholars. Generally stone ships are burials, but there have been no bodies found there, or evidence that there might have been a burial. The two other theories are that it was built as a memorial for a lost or sunken ship (the coastal area is a notorious ship graveyard) or some sort of astronomical calender - during the solstices the sun shines on one or the other of the two end stones. Regardless it was neat, and I enjoyed my little picnic amongst the stones.

On Wednesday I woke up to blistering heat and sun. Just my luck. It pours rain on the day that I went on my 40km bike trip, then the day that I'm travelling via bus, it's rediculously nice out! I took advantage of what little time I had left there - enjoyed breakfast on the beach. I then bussed to another town called Kivik.
Kivik is home to the largest bronze age burial mound in northern Europe - Kungagraven. Though it's extremely flawed... probably not the right word, but I cant think of what else I could use to describe it? According to it's history, it was used a stone quarry by famers until the mid 18thC when some historical people stepped in and intervened its destruction when some petroglyphs were reported to be found inside the mound of stones.
They tried to restore it, but failed miserably. The petroglyphs inside look extremely retouched, so much so that they dont look real. They reconstructed it based on 18thC sketches of other mounds and it is now assumed that it should be about 3m taller than it actually is now. All the archaeological research at the time stated that because of it's size, it was obviously a Kings burial, but recently the bodies exhumed were restudied and at least one of them is actually a women. Aw yeah for armchair archaeologists!
The setting was nice, next to a large apple orchard in a quaint little beach town. I really liked the town, sadly I couldn't stay, so I hung out on the beach waiting for my bus to return back home to Örebro. I would have gone swimming, but considering it was the Baltic Sea, I refrained on the of chance that it would be fricken freezing. Despite my regular dips in Great Slave, I didnt think I could handle the Baltic.