Scandinavia: Of Danes, Swedes & Norwegians.

Let us tell you the tale of the time we spent in the land of ice and snow, the land of eternal sunshine, the land of trolls, vikings and unicorns. It is a tale wrought with intrigue, hardship, romance, friends and foes alike. It is a tale told mainly through photography, and it begins in the city of Malmo, Sweden, a stones throw away from the shining Danish capital of Copenhagen. Though we did not explore much of Malmo, opting instead for daytrips to Copenhagen and Ystad, we are very much grateful to Marcus for his hospitality (Norwegian salmon, yes please) and tolerance to the destructive tendencies of Phoebe. Sorry about the oven.

We spent a very rainy morning in Copenhagen, but once the sun finally came out, so did the smiles. It seemed like a rather nice city, but one that we shall need to revisit to get a proper feel for it.

Hanging with the hipsters in Freetown Christiania. This is a little community who don't identify as being part of Denmark (even though it is part of Copenhagen); they manage to keep police out and have established their own rule system - no weapons or violence, but marijuana is legal and the beer is cheap. Seeing as they are still officially under the Danish legal system though, they try to keep it all a bit hush-hush, hence photos aren't allowed in most of Christiania. An interesting place!

Marcus leading the charge into the Baltic sea in Ystad. It was cold and smelt like fish.

The tale continues as we headed to Oslo, the geographical zenith of our Europe trip, and the capital of Norway. For a European city, Oslo felt pretty modern. A lot of the buildings were big and shiny, and those that weren't were surrounded by construction workers. The other rather noticeable thing about Oslo is how expensive it is. No amount of money saving initiatives could save us in this city, and we were rather happy that Phoebe's Swedish brother Emil was lovely enough to put us up in his apartment!

Emil gave us the grand tour of Oslo's new port.

Midnight in Oslo. The sun disappears for a few hours each night, but it never actually gets completely dark. When do the hedgehogs come out to play? :(

There are heaps of trolls in Norway, most of them are pretty friendly but you can never be sure.

We bought in to the whole tourist business and invested in an 'Oslo card', which meant we could get into as many museums as we wanted within 24 hours. And free public transport, which in Oslo includes boats. Oh, the novelty.

 The viking ship museum was only for the most badass of badasses.

We got the feeling that the Norwegian Folk Museum was aimed at younger audiences than us - sadly we missed the "Meet the farm animals" and "Bake your own muffins" events they held earlier in the day. Got to see some delightful Norwegian folk dancing though.

The world's only steel ski jump, a short train ride out of Oslo. The record on this jump was 142 metres, which we thought wasn't too shabby.

It would have been rude not to visit the reptile museum.

All museumed out, we headed back into Sweden, to spend an evening with Emil's parents Eva and Leif in Karlstad. We spent most of the evening in a tiny lakeside hut, eating homemade moose sausages and joining in with Leif's Swedish folk band, both things we had never done before. When we say Swedish folk band, we're talking fiddles, mandolas and predominantly Swedish lyrics.

Our final chapter in the Scandinavian saga takes place in Stockholm. We had by far the best weather of our Scandinavian trip, which may have positively influenced our opinion of Stockholm, but we thought it was the funkiest and most enjoyable of the Scandinavian capitals. Lots of water (Stockholm is built on 14 islands), a nice mix of old and new, just the right amount of bustling, and a nice sprinkling of hipsters.

We were starting to wonder if it ever got warm in Scandinavia.

Stockholm prides themselves in being one of the only capital cities in which the harbour water is clean enough to swim in - not particularly impressive for a pair of kiwis, but still pretty cool.

Felix was in his element as there was a ski slope 10 minutes' walk away from where we stayed.

Phoebe was in her element when we found a vegetarian buffet restaurant for lunch. 

"I could easily just vomit right now" - Phoebe, after her 4th plate.

Next time: Returning to the land of sausages and sauerkraut!

Southside & the Netherlands: Scarfies in Europe.

You may have noticed that most of our blog posts begin with some sort of travel-related shenanigan which wasn’t funny at the time, but in retrospect it’s hilarious to laugh at our expense. This post is no exception.
When we arrived in the middle of god-knows-where (somewhere in the south of Germany) for the four day camping Southside Festival to meet up with Ally and Molly, excitement levels were pretty high. This was quickly dampened by the thunderstorm which broke out as we struggled to put up our non-waterproof tent. Determined to keep our spirits high, we crawled into the tiny tent which could only just fit all 4 of us it with our bags, and huddled for warmth, taking turns to puff up our double air-mattress. We woke up many times in the night, partly because the mattress was deflating, partly because there were raucous Germans singing along to Rammstein outside our tent, but mostly because of the amount of water entering our tent. Thankfully the days were dry and relatively warm, so we could lie in the sun, dry out our sleeping bags, drink sangria and forget about the nights.

 Money saving initiative #4: That canvas shell that goes over most tents and keeps it dry is definitely not worth the extra 40euro - go instead for the cheaper, non-waterproof option. Even if you've seen the weather forecast and it predicts thunderstorms.

 Although we spent some long, wet, sleepless nights in our tent, we grew pretty fond of it.

Drying off in the sun with a cheeky wee boogie. We introduced the Germans to Flight of the Conchords, they didn't get it.

We almost forgot to mention, the festival itself was mindblowingly great. European festivals are on another scale to NZ ones (unsurprisingly)! Alt-J, Two Door Cinema Club, Ben Howard, Frightened Rabbit, Bloc Party, Of Monsters and Men, the Arctic Monkeys and of course the National were all amazing. Rammstein must also be mentioned, for exceptionally terrifying use of fire on stage.

Matt Berninger you beautiful, beautiful man. WE ALMOST TOUCHED HIS FACE.

Toning it down after the festival in Alex's study town, Tubingen.

After our night of recovering in Tubingen, we were ready to face our next challenge: Amsterdam. Here Molly introduced us to her friend Lieke, who made a very good tour guide. Of all the cities we’ve been to, Amsterdam was probably the most useful one to have a guide for – Lieke showed us the ins and outs, the highs and lows, the dos and donts of this crazy city. Getting around Amsterdam is a bit like that scene in Dodgeball where the guy says “If you can dodge traffic, you can dodge a ball”, except instead of just cars it’s with bikes, trams and pedestrians too. There was even an educational side to Amsterdam as we visited the Anne Frank house and the Sex Museum - one of them was sobering and informative, the other was shocking and hilarious.

The team in Amsterdam. Beers and our first introduction to bitterballen.

 Everyone in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, and northern Europe for that matter, gets around by bike. It's the cool thing to do; they're at the top of the food chain. Here is an example of one such bike.

 In this photo, you see an assortment of lots of different bikes all hanging out together.

 Molly in action, riding one of these bike things. See how it makes you look badass?

 HOW MANY BIKES IS TOO MANY BIKES?

Raw herring with pickle and onion, somewhat of a Dutch delicacy.

Being students at heart, our next stop was in Lieke’s study town, the Dunedin of the Netherlands; Groningen. We have to be honest, there isn’t a lot to do in Groningen other than get amongst the student culture, which is exactly what we did. Our favourite bar was Chupitos – think 'Shot Shack' in Wellington, but with more epic shots. Shots that light the whole bar on fire, shots with flames on which to toast marshmellows, shots with flower buds which numb your whole mouth… Lots of shots. Due to this we don’t have very many photos of Groningen, but we would recommend a cheeky visit!

Money saving initiative #5: Buy your food from the wall! It's cheap and avoids human interaction. Here Phoebe is opting for a delicious kroket, which resembles a burnt, crumbed sausage filled with mince and gravy. Mmmm.

Lol. Geddit?

Next time: Continuing north for some Scandinavian adventures.

Venice & Slovenia: Traveling On a Shoestring.

The last stage in our Tour d’Italia was the unmissable crowd-pleaser, Venice. We stayed in an awesome camping-hostel which even had a pool! This, combined with the absinthe-wielding Dutchmen we met on the first night made it a little difficult to leave the hostel in the mornings, especially with the temperature staying around 35 degrees from 8am to 11pm. However when we did get into Venice, we started to see what all the fuss was about. There’s no denying that Venice is beautiful and unique – the narrow winding little back canals and alleyways are super cute, and it’s easy to duck into a side street and get lost from all the tourists. As with all touristey cities though, it is expensive, and it has kick-started our new regime of money-saving initiatives...

Let us introduce you to our latest money saving initiative, salad-in-a-sack. How to prepare: Buy a lettuce, some mozzarella, tomatoes and olives. Strain the mozzarella and olive liquid into the train toilet. Mix all the ingredients in the sack in which you purchased the lettuce. Eat the salad out of the sack. Healthy, and delicious...

The life-saving pool. Undoubtedly we would have died of sweat without it.

Money saving initiative #2: Watching people riding in a gondola is just as good as riding in a gondola yourself, but cheaper and safer.

Gelato for breakfast, lunch and tea, ge-la-to is for me-ee-ee! Our Achilles Heel when it comes to money-saving.

Masks are a big deal in Venice. In this awesome mask shop the mask maker creates everything from the original clay mold to the decorative paint work. That's him in the mirror there, such a boss.

From Venice we cut a path north-east into Slovenia, a tiny country hidden away between the big boys of Europe. We spent 3 nights in Slovenia, 1 in the capital Ljubljana and 2 in the lovely lakeside town of Bled. We still have no idea how to say hello in Slovenian, let alone “I’m about to miss my train because you are taking too long to scan my groceries, please hurry up lady!” (we ended up missing the train). For a country we had hardly even heard of, we were surprised at how much Slovenia reminded us of home. It was so green with more than 50 percent of the country covered in forest, the lakes and rivers were beautifully clean and clear and the people were incredibly helpful and friendly (with the exception of that supermarket cashier).

Ljubljana, the capital of Slovenia. We only spent one night here, but got a fairly good feel for the place. It was thriving with Slovenians (mainly students) drinking and getting merry in the streets to celebrate the end of their exams and the arrival of summer. Like a much classier version of Dunedin!

Caution: Small Slovenian children may run out onto the road and explode at any moment.

KITTY! Felix begged me not to put this one in.

Ahhh, Lake Bled. The loveliest place you ever did see. The perfect place to rest and recover from the exhaustion of travelling for a few days!

Money saving initiative #3: Instead of hiring a boat to row to Bled island for 10euro per hour, swim there yourself. The water's warm and the carp don't bite!

Everyone in Bled loses the plot when they talk about the local speciality - Kremna Rezina. There was one restaurant in Bled where they make all of them fresh each morning and distribute them out to every cafe in the region. Not bad at all, yet we're not sure it beats the good old kiwi custard square!

The Vintgar gorge, near Lake Bled. Clean, green, Slovenian natural beauty at its finest. The water was deceptively cold - compared to Lake Bled which was near swimming pool temperature, this glacier-fed stream was bone-achingly chilly.

You can't spell Slovenia without love ;)

Next time: Getting ruckus with Molly, Ally and Rammstein.