Christmas break adventures

A late Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to everyone! I hope you all had a great time over the holidays and were able to enjoy celebrations with friends and family. From what I read on the internet, and heard from some people, it was very cold in parts of the U.S. It has gotten colder here in Slovakia. The high the past few days has been around -4C (~24F). As I said in my last blog entry, I had plans to travel to Denmark over my break. I traveled to Bratislava in the morning of December 20th. I was met at the train station by two fellow lecturers and we went to where I would be staying overnight to drop off my bags before traveling to Vienna for the day to visit the Weihnachtsmarkts there, Christmas markets.

The next day was Sunday so those of us in Bratislava went to church and I made a brief stop at the coffee hour afterwards. But then Carsten and I had to get ready to leave for the airport. Our flight was at 3, so we wanted to be at the airport around 1 to make sure we had enough time for check in and such. We had to wait for a little while but it gave us time to arrange things in our bags so we could store our coats in our backpacks for the flights and grab a little something to eat.

We had two flights to get to Denmark. We flew from Bratislava to Prague to Copenhagen. When we got into Copenhagen we bought train tickets to Middelfart where Carsten’s aunt and uncle met us and they took us back to their house in Strib. We stayed there most of the time we were in Denmark. Carsten’s family is very nice, friendly and a lot of fun. I really enjoyed my time there learning about Denmark, meeting Carsten’s family and getting to know Carsten better.

I was able to see many sites around Denmark. We were on Fyn which is the island just east of the Jutland Peninsula. We visited Ribe, Middelfart, Koldinghus, the West Coast of Denmark, Vejle, Legoland and a few other places. I was able to experience Danish traditions for Christmas like holding hands and walking around the Christmas tree while singing. I also helped with some of the food preparations and so learned how to do things I had never done before like peeling boiled potatoes, making a carrot-cabbage-orange-raisin salad and making marzipan candies. There were others too, but those a just a few examples. I was informed by various members of Carsten’s family that I was now a part of their family too, which was very nice to hear. I also received some very nice Christmas presents that were unexpected. I have many pictures from my time in Denmark and I will post links at the end for many of them.

At the end of the time in Denmark Carsten and I traveled back to Copenhagen to see my friend Ditte. Ditte and I met and became good friends while I was living in Germany. We were in the same seminar group and worked/volunteered at the same place in Germany. Ditte was the only person in our group from Denmark and I was the only person from the U.S. in our group. Carsten and I spent the night at her apartment and she and her boyfriend took us to the airport the next day. Our flight was at 9:30am and we were told the Copenhagen airport can be busy so we aimed to get to the airport by 7:30am. Ditte and Uffe were not sure what rush hour would be like so we left at about 6:50am and ended up making it to the airport around 7:20. It was a good thing we got to the airport with a little extra time because of what happened at check-in. When we went to check our bags and get our boarding passes the clerk told us we needed to go and pay for our bags. We were both surprised and perplexed by this. When we flew out no one said anything about needing to pay. We each had one bag each and had a limit of 20 kilos (44lbs.), Carsten had 16 kilos (35lbs.)and I had 15 kilos (33lbs.). The man that was assisting us at the window we were sent to was very confused by this situation as well. He told us we did not need to pay and stamped and signed where he needed to so we would be sure to have our bags on the plane with no problem. We were both relieved by this and thanked the man for his assistance.

We arrived in Slovakia with no problem, as did our bags. We went to the bus stop and were glad we had some Euros on us. On January 1, 2009, the Euro became the currency of Slovakia and the ticket machine no longer took Slovak crowns. However, at stores people are able to pay with crowns until January 16. Once we got to the train station we said our good-byes and I headed for my train while Carsten went to see some fellow lecturers until it was time for him to catch his bus. I ended up making it back to Liptovský Mikuláš with no problem on a very warm train. Carsten did not have as much luck. None of the lecturers ended up being home but he caught an earlier bus only to end up waiting in 5F (-15C) weather for 105 minutes or so. He was very cold when he got home and could not warm up until the next day.

I had a wonderful time in Denmark. I had a lot of fun, learned a lot about Denmark and was able to experience some new traditions. I was also able to talk to some family members during the time too when they were at family Christmases. That was very nice. Once again I hope that you all had a wonderful time over the holidays and that 2009 is a wonderful year. I look forward to finding out what will happen this year and adding more stories to my blog.

Sites in Denmark-http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=200654&l=580e6&id=682430592
Christmas-http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=200585&l=5279e&id=682430592
Sites in Denmark-http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=200691&l=611cf&id=682430592
New Year's Eve-http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=200714&l=4b6d3&id=682430592