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Europe Finland Study Abroad

Helsinki: Saunas, All Saints Day, and Kraft Mac & Cheese

If you’d asked me what my expectations were for this city, I’m not sure what I would have said.  Probably cold, a bit like a smaller St. Petersburg.  Helsinki, however, surpassed all of my expectations.

My first view of the city was from the airplane, and the whole area simply seemed to simply glitter.  After Sarah and I checked into our hostel, we went into the city center in hopes of going to an ice bar, which had unfortunately gone out of business.  Instead, we went to a couple of other bars and got a feel for the city.  The area where we were reminded me of Michigan Avenue, but instead of one street it was pretty much the entire downtown.  Everything was well lit, beautiful, and clean!  Of course, it should also come as no surprise that it was also an incredibly expensive city.  More so than Copenhagen, even.  One thing that was surprising: how many Finns dressed up for Halloween.  The whole city seemed to come alive while we were out, and a good portion of the people out were wearing some form of costume.

Most of the next day was spent doing an unofficial walking tour of Helsinki, which was perfect because although it was cold, the sun was shining!  We went to three churches, the market square, a park, and the Kappeli restaurant, as well as a place that sold delicious cupcakes.

For the early evening, we went to the sauna.  The first one we tried was unfortunately closed, because All Saint’s Day is apparently a big thing in Finland and so most of the stores were closed.  The second one we tried, however, was a success!  This was my first sauna experience, so I’m glad that it was in a place renowned for them.  Sarah and I pretty clearly marked ourselves as Americans by wearing bathing suits, but otherwise we even did the thing where we doused ourselves in cold water in between sessions in the sauna part.  I completely understand the appeal, it was incredibly relaxing!  It made the chill of the night feel much better.

In our day’s travels, we had found some Kraft brand mac and cheese, and did the very American thing and bought it to make in the hostel that night.  Unfortunately, because of the whole All Saint’s Day thing, the regular grocery stores were closed.  We did find a kiosk place that wasn’t closed, and even managed to find milk and butter by using our Danish skills applied to the Swedish words on the labels.  Often, things in Finland are also labeled in Swedish and Russian.  While buying it, the woman behind the counter spoke to us only in Finnish and we responded with “kiitos,” the only Finnish word we know (aka thanks, pronounced key-toes).  Turned out the milk had a bit of a vanilla taste and the butter was strange too, but through the power of Kraft our dinner was still delicious.

Sunday was pretty rainy, so after walking into the city center, we spent the rest of our time doing primarily indoor activities, like going to the National Museum and looking at Stockmann, which is a giant and gorgeous department store that was kind of like a mall in and of itself and was already decorated for Christmas.  It was strange to see Christmas trees lit up already, with the season fully under way.  It doesn’t get to that magnitude in the US until after Thanksgiving.

If anyone out there is considering going to this city, or Finland in general, I highly recommend it.  Kiitos, Helsinki.

Categories
Europe Germany Study Abroad

Bavaria: The Family I Never Knew I Had

After Romania, I traveled to Munich (via Copenhagen) to meet up with my German family!  Quick background: shortly after WW2, a portion of my family moved to the US (I think somehow as refugees but it’s a bit unclear), and so the part of the family I met is my dad’s father’s family.  I believe I met my second cousin once removed, but since my United States family is so tiny I really don’t know the terms very well.

Regardless of our technical relation, Gerhard and Marina were so welcoming to me!  The first night we stayed in Passau, which is right near the Austrian border.  I was exhausted from the hiking trip, so I went to bed early the first night and tried to get up reasonably early for the next day.  We went into Austria for an hour, where I ordered a pastry without knowing what was in it that luckily turned out to be pretty delicious.  Then we went to a different part of the Austrian border and did a little hiking around at an area that used to be an old castle.  For the rest of the day, we walked around Passau, and they took me to a concert with the world’s largest cathedral organ.  Then we drove to Weißenhorn that night, and Gerhard and Marina even put me up in a hotel since the apartment was too small to have my room.

The next morning, we went to Neuschwanstein!  Seeing this castle was pretty much on my all time bucket list.  The inside was pretty strange though, which is how it goes when you have an insane king I would imagine.  One room was pretty much entirely swan motifs, and there was an artificial cave that he had added because he really liked an opera!

When we got back to Weißenhorn, we had dinner with the whole family.  It was basically me and eleven Germans, with only four speaking English.  Thus it was definitely the most acutely I’ve felt the whole language barrier thing.  But despite my confusion, being at a family dinner was so lovely.  It’s a much nicer atmosphere than sitting in my dorm.  If it’s appropriate to apply a Danish word to an interaction between Germans and an American, I would describe it as hyggeligt.  After dinner, we went to Ulm and walked around for a while.  We also tried to get ice cream before realizing that 9pm on a Saturday in late October is not a particularly popular time for this craving, but we did find some at an owl themed café back in Weißenhorn!

On Sunday, we went back to Ulm so that Gerhard and I could climb the world’s highest church tower, the Münster.  Sadly, it was pretty foggy, so the views weren’t as cool… apparently on clear days you can see the Alps from the top!  We spent the rest of the day walking around Munich before my flight.  I got a beer and a pretzel in the Hofbrauhaus, which feels like pretty much the epitome of German stereotypes.

The whole weekend was incredible.  The German side of my family was so welcoming, and I had so much fun wandering around Bavaria with them.  I’m so glad that we managed to reconnect, and look forward to staying in contact with them.  I would love to try to come back and visit again!

I leave for Helsinki in two days, so look for those pictures next week.  Vi ses!

Categories
Europe Romania Study Abroad

Transylvania: Mountain Climbing and Dracula’s Castle

On Monday, we spent all day climbing mountains.  At first, it was just fairly normal (albeit a bit steep) forest trails.  Then at one point we got to a clearing and we were taking a break, drinking some water, and all of that.  We looked up towards the top of the peak and saw people rock climbing, and someone commented that it looked hard or something to that effect.  Our guide turned to us, confused, and said, “That’s the route we’re doing.”  And indeed, it was essentially just rock climbing without a harness.  The holds were good, but it was honestly pretty terrifying at parts.  One moment, in particular, I was going across a narrow section where the wind was howling, holding onto a cable that was not quite as tightly attached as I thought it was and I experienced the scariest moment of my life.  We got to the top of three mountains, including the second highest one in Romania.  After six and a half hours, we made it back to our cabin, and I felt incredibly accomplished.

Had I known exactly what we would be doing, I’m not sure if I would have done this trip, considering I’m not a particularly outdoorsy person and, although I’m in decent shape, I’m really not that athletic if we’re being perfectly honest.  But despite all of that, it was totally worth it.  The views were unbelievable, and I got to have an amazing experience in a part of the world I had never imagined I would even go.

The next morning, we hiked back down to the base of the mountain and returned to civilization.  We had a night tour of the historic part of Sibiu, which was awesome.  Our guides told us about a tower that another town wanted to copy and make higher, and so the other town sent a few people to come measure it with a rope.  The people from Sibiu found out about it, got them drunk, and cut a meter off of their rope.  And so there is another tower in Romania that looks the exact same but is a meter shorter.  Our guides also took us to a Scottish themed bar that had American and British newspaper articles lining the walls…

For our last full day, we went to a fortified church, where I think I may have found the gravestone of a very distant relation (it was an Austro-Hungarian soldier with my great grandmother’s maiden name who died in WW1, so it’s completely possible).  In the afternoon, we went to Bran’s Castle, perhaps more commonly known as Dracula’s castle!  Highlight: the secret staircase going from the first to the third floor.  All I want in life is to have a secret area in my home.

The next morning we got up before dawn so that we could have a three hour bus ride to the airport, and then I spent the rest of the day traveling from Bucharest to Copenhagen and then Copenhagen to Munich.  Those pictures will come later though 🙂

Hej hej!

Categories
Europe Romania Study Abroad

Transylvania: A Reflection

Hello again!  It’s been nine busy days of traveling, and I’m back in Copenhagen for… the next few days at least.  This past week will take multiple blog posts to describe, because I went to three countries and took over 500 photos and did a lot of things!

My week started in Romania, with a DIS hiking trip to Transylvania for six days.  After a three hour bus ride from Bucharest to Transylvania, we started out at Peles Castle, which was very beautiful.  They had separate rooms to greet important people from different nationalities, and there was a ton of intricate woodwork and stained glass inside.  We also had a night tour of the city of Brasov!  Our guides, Vlad and Stefan, were awesome and knew so much history of the places we saw.  A few initial impressions of Romania:

1. Stray dogs.  It’s a big problem in Romania.  They’re everywhere.

2. It’s kind of like taking a trip into the past.  It seems that a lot of the people we saw are farmers, and I saw quite a few cows and sheep during our bus rides.  A lot of the buildings we saw outside of the cities were fairly run down, although parts of Sibiu (and I would assume Brasov) have modern or at least recently updated buildings.

3.  The roads are a bit rough.  At one point we hit a pot hole that was enough to launch a few people into the air.  I experienced more turbulence on our buses than I’ve ever felt in a plane.

The next morning we headed up to the Rasnov citadel!  It was cool to see the medieval defense systems, and our guide told us about how they poured boiling oil on people and shut other people between walls.  The views from the hill of Rasnov were stunning.  In the afternoon, we started our hike into the Carpathians, which was through the forest and fairly steep.  For the next two days we stayed at a cabin with no running water, so it was a bit out of my comfort zone!  However, due to the volume of pictures I took, the hiking portion will be continued on the next post….

Categories
Denmark Europe Study Abroad

Copenhagen: Tivoli at Halloween and the Crown Jewels

This weekend Kelcy came to Copenhagen!

Her flight got in pretty late on Thursday night, but the next day we still got up early because I had to go to class.  After some pastries, I dropped Kelcy off at the museum and we met up again after criminology to go to Tivoli!  It just reopened for Halloween season, so everything was decorated with pumpkins.  We went a bunch of rides, including one that went upside down super slowly (and I don’t think either of us recommend that one because it made us pretty dizzy).  We also got shouted at in Danish at the upside down ride because we were supposed to empty our pockets.  Seeing as that is not a phrase I had encountered before, I was unable to translate this time.  In general though now I’m at the point where when people speak to me in Danish I usually can tell what they want me to do, so that was a pretty exciting realization.

Saturday was basically an informal walking tour covering most of Copenhagen.  We went inside Rosenborg Castle (which used to be the summer castle for the royals) and got to see the crown jewels and some other gorgeous artifacts.  Then we stopped by the Little Mermaid, Nyhavn, the sidewalk trampolines, Amalienborg, Christianborg, the old stock exchange (which, fun fact, the Danes tried to put crocodile statues on but no one knew what a crocodile looked like and so they look pretty weird and everyone just calls them dragons) and walked down Strøget.  As the day progressed I realized that I’ve learned quite a bit of history about Copenhagen, so it was exciting to put that to use and tell someone else about my favorite sites.

Kelcy, I know you read this, so thanks for coming to visit me!  It was great to see you again.  And we’ll be reunited in a month in Paris 🙂

Hej hej!

Categories
Denmark Europe Study Abroad

Copenhagen: Sculptures, Suburbs, and Christiania (again)

A few things I’ve done in Copenhagen since getting back from Russia:

1. Met my visiting family- they live in this gorgeous suburb called Holte and back up to a lake.  Having dinner at their house was great, although it was unfortunately scheduled the evening I got back from Russia so I was proud of myself for not falling asleep at their table.  They’re really nice though!  They made me a Danish dinner (for those of you who have seen me eat, I did better than one might expect) and then told me about their grandkids and the classic car convention they went to.  They even lit a fire, so it was very hyggeligt (a Danish word meaning cozy, more or less).

2. Went to the sculpture museum- whoever designs museums in Denmark needs to get a new job because I swear they’re all mazes.  It’s free on Sundays so I went in and wandered around for a long time.  I snickered to myself throughout most of my exploration because at some point during my Russia trip we talked about some author who’s friend wasn’t very…well endowed… so the two of them went to an art museum and the author pointed out that all the statues were smaller so it was fine.  I of course forgot this story until I was in the museum.  It made looking at the art more entertaining though….

3. Toured Christiania- I’ve mentioned Christiania before because I went one day with a few friends, but this time I went with my Danish class and got a guided tour from someone who had lived there for around 15 years I think.  Quick recap: it was founded in the 70s by a bunch of homeless hippies and is now pretty much just a communist society in the middle of the city.  You can build a house and live there but you don’t own it.  They’re big on street art, a sense of community, and nature/gardening.  Part of the reason that it’s well known is Pusher Street, which sells marijuana.  Since I’m from Denver this doesn’t seem like as big a deal to me, but it is still illegal in Denmark so you’re not allowed to take pictures.  Also something we talked about in Danish class is that there was a court case a few years back against the state over the land that Christiania is on, and the state won which means Christiania had to buy the land from the state.  They sold “people’s stocks” and so some Danish people put in money to finance Christiania, and now Christiania owns the land that it’s on.  It’s a pretty fascinating area!

Hej hej 🙂

Categories
Europe Russia Study Abroad

St. Petersburg, Pt 2: Reflecting on Russia

On Wednesday we got some free time in the morning, so my friends and I went to an island in the city and did some souvenir shopping.  Since everything in Russia is so cheap, particularly when compared to Copenhagen, I actually ended up buying a lot more souvenirs than I expected.  In the afternoon, we got to hang out with some Russian students!  Our teacher put us into groups, and my group ended up being four American students and four Russian students.  I ended up talking to a student who was actually from Crimea, and she told me how her Ukranian passport isn’t truly valid anymore and how the time zone in Crimea was changed when they became Russian.  It’s a lot different hearing the ways that it impacted people who lived there beyond what we hear on the news.  Our group ended up going to a modern art exhibit and then we went to one of their apartments for dinner.  Spending time with them made me feel like less of a tourist, and I really appreciated that experience.

The next day we did another tour of the city, but this one was focused on getting away from the touristy spots.  My favorite part of this tour was going to a communal apartment.  It was clear that it had been designed for the nobility, but during communism each apartment was divided and each family would get a room.  There were fifteen people living in the apartment we saw, and they all shared the kitchen and bathroom.  It would be like living in a dorm for the rest of your life.  This was the first point where I really felt that I was in the former Soviet Union.

We also stopped into a special Russian type of bar and learned the “real” way to take a shot, which means breathing out, drinking it all, eating a bit of pickle, and then breathing out.  Oh, and did I mention it was 11 am?

Afterwards we had one more touristy visit, which was going to the Church of Spilt Blood.  It was where Alexander II was assassinated.  It was absolutely gorgeous, both inside and out, and it seemed like the quintessential Russian church with its colorful domes!

A few other thoughts on my week in Russia:

1. The water quality- in St. Petersburg, you can’t drink the water from the tap.  They even recommend making sure to not accidentally swallow the water when brushing your teeth.  Apparently some of the pipes are back from when the city was founded, and they’ve also had problems with parasites.  This is the first place I’ve ever been where the tap water isn’t safe, which made me realize that I was really in Russia.

2. Language barrier- Not only was it the first place with unsafe tap water for me, it was also the first with a real language barrier.  The only places I’ve been to this point are the USA, Canada, and Denmark.  Denmark has a language barrier in theory but I’ve only met one person who didn’t speak almost flawless English.  Russian has a new alphabet and language, and many of them don’t speak English.  Even at the airport I had an experience where the security person was trying to convey that I didn’t need to take off my shoes, but she spoke no English and I spoke no Russian so it took a while to communicate.  This was my first taste of the language barrier and I’m sure it will not be my last, but it was definitely exacerbated by the different alphabet in Russia.

3. Russia as a separate place from Europe- during our Dostoevsky tour our tour guide told us that he “gambled in Europe but not Russia” and I found that distinction very telling.  St. Petersburg, in a lot of ways, does look European, with the facades and the canals; this makes sense considering it was designed to look like the rest of Europe.  Then there are more subtle differences, such as the domed churches and wide open streets, and as you get out from the city center it becomes so different from anywhere I’ve seen with the communist buildings.  Granted, I haven’t been to many European cities, so it might be even more interesting to think about the differences after I’ve seen a few more.

I definitely want to go back to Russia at some point later in my life, to see Moscow and to cross off a real bucket list goal of seeing real Russian ballet.  Nevertheless, I am incredibly happy that I got to go with DIS to St. Petersburg.  They made it easy to get a visa, navigate the city, and experience Russian culture, and they handled all of the logistics.  Even with questionable water quality, cold winds, and difficult interactions with Russian shopkeepers, it was an amazing experience, and I wouldn’t trade it for anything.

Categories
Europe Russia Study Abroad

St. Petersburg, Pt 1: Churches, Castles, and Canals

Got back from Санкт-Петербург, Россия yesterday!  For those of you who haven’t been working on reading in that alphabet for the past week, I’m talking about St. Petersburg, Russia.  My core course spent the past six days in the city, which was an incredible experience!  I’m going to split this into two posts, because six days is a long time and I took somewhere around 500 pictures.

Our first couple days were pretty touristy.  We got up at the crack of dawn to go to the airport, which meant we were still able to actually do some sightseeing when we got to the city.  Driving from the airport to our hotel was fascinating: the buildings nearest to the airport looked much more industrial and communist, but as we drove into the city center we could see the architecture change into a more European imperialist style.  For all of our tours, we were given headphones and receivers so that we could hear our professor even if we were behind the group, or in a room full of other tourists, which made it a lot easier to understand what we were seeing.  Our sightseeing tour that first afternoon included going to a Russian Orthodox mass, where they required all women to cover our hair.  Considering I have never really been to any type of religious ceremony, I felt a little out of place as the Russians lit candles, kissed icons, and crossed themselves.  The evening concluded with us taking a walk on Nevsky Prospect, which seems to be the Michigan Avenue of St. Petersburg.

The second day we headed out of the city center to Catherine’s Palace, with was breathtaking.  It was easy to imagine fancy balls and dinner parties among royals taking place there, as many of the rooms were covered in intricate gold leaf designs.  The coolest room was the Amber Room, which had panels of amber across the walls.  Despite originally being looted by Nazis, the room was recreated based on old photographs.  We wandered around the grounds of the palace as well.  A bride and groom were getting pictures done, so our teacher taught us a Russian tradition where you say “bitter” to the couple (it sounded like goy-ka) and they have to kiss.

That night, after a Dostoevsky city walk, our class took the metro!  In Russia, the metro is far enough underground that it can be used as a nuclear bomb shelter.  It’s surprisingly easy to use, since there’s no zone system like in Copenhagen.  For me, using the metro that day was a huge step to feel comfortable in the city, since it’s so important to be able to navigate the place where you are.  I appreciated knowing that I could find my way back to my hotel from anywhere in the city.

Our third day started out with a canal tour, and then we went to the Winter Palace/Hermitage, which, fun fact, has the largest exhibition of artwork in the world.  Sadly, we only got about an hour and a half in the museum because our professor wanted us to go to the Dostoevsky museum that day as well.  The highlight of that day, however, was that we got to go to the opera!  Although as a former dancer I would have preferred to see a Russian ballet, I love to see any performance, and I was thrilled to see Mariinsky Theater.  The part of the theater we were in had just been remodeled, so it was absolutely beautiful and modern.  Although I learned that I’m not a huge opera person, I still had a great time!

Categories
Denmark Europe Study Abroad

Jyderup: Observations from an Open Prison

When you speak of culture shock, you might expect it to hit you right away when you arrive in a new country.  However, someone once told me about a theory of culture as an iceberg: you can see some of it as you walk down the street, but there’s so much more that isn’t obvious.  It only starts to become apparent later, when you learn about the underlying values of that culture and how they think about things differently than you’re used to.  For me, I feel culture shock whenever I spend time in my criminology class.

Today, we went to the Danish open prison in Jyderup and got a tour from a prisoner and a guard.  An open prison means that prisoners are often allowed to leave the grounds for work and school.  Even if they aren’t granted leave, the inmates are still allowed quite a bit of freedom.  In open prison, they are each given cell phones where they can text and call people at any time, they just can’t access the internet.  Denmark also has closed prisons, which are more similar to the type we see in the US, and are usually where prisoners with longer sentences start serving their time.  Criteria for a “long sentence” is 5 years.

We didn’t go through a metal detector or have any kind of search to enter the prison.  The inmate met us wearing regular street clothes, which is completely normal for Danish prisoners.  In the cells, most of the prisoners bring their own furniture, so the rooms end up looking quite nice.  We went inside two of them (but of course we weren’t allowed to take pictures).  The first was someone who I gather was from a rich family, as the inmate and guard warned us that most cells were not like that.  The room looked as nice, if not nicer, than my bedroom at home, with a TV on the wall and a personal bathroom.  The other cell was a bit smaller, but that one was in the drug treatment ward so it was less personalized and looked equivalent to most dorm rooms I’ve seen in the US.

When we saw the kitchen, one surprise was that there were knives hanging on the wall.  They were attached to the wall, but as the guard talked about that area of the prison she told us that she wished the knives were not attached.  It’s interesting, because Denmark’s philosophy on that is that anything can be made into a weapon if you try hard enough and so they would rather make it a little more normal for the prisoners.  Their entire criminal system is about normalizing the prisoners as much as possible.  Visitors are allowed to spend time in the prisoner’s room, and they’re allowed to cook together in the kitchen or play football in the yard.  Girlfriends or wives are even allowed to have sex with the prisoners- the guard told us it was nicer to be able to use your own bed than the one in the visiting room “that would be used probably six or seven times before you got there.”

We went to see the gym, where they told us that Denmark restricts weights in prisons.  To use the heavy weights, the inmates must have a ‘green card’ from an organization that tests for steroids, which the prison implemented to stop steroid users from bulking up and being more aggressive.

Both the inmate and the guard said that the prison we saw was Denmark’s nicest open prison, mainly due to its policies for family visits.  The prisoner talked about how it made him want to follow the rules more, because there was more at stake and he didn’t want to go back to a closed prison where he couldn’t see his wife and children as often.  He had served approximately four years of an eleven year sentence for trafficking cocaine, and also spoke about how difficult it would be to adjust to life outside since he had never known a life where his primary source of income was not criminal activity.

For me, coming from a summer of working in the District Attorney’s office, it was fascinating and shocking to see this type of system.  I’m still somewhat baffled as to how it all works, since that level of social trust is a foreign concept to me.  They have open prisons, open public transportation systems, and most of their society relies on people doing what they’re supposed to.  And people don’t take advantage of it!  I’m so glad I got to go see open prison while I’m here, since the legal system has always fascinated me and Denmark’s is so incredibly different.  Even after this, though, I’m sure my criminology class will continue to surprise me.

I leave for Russia on Sunday, so the next time I post I will hopefully have pictures and stories from that!  Vi ses!

Categories
Denmark Europe Study Abroad

Aarhus: Rainbow Fog in AROS and Taking a Taxi to Legoland

This weekend, my friend Emmy (who lives in my kollegium) joined me in traveling to western Denmark, specifically Århus and Legoland!

On Friday, we took the train into Århus after classes and walked around the city a little, but we went to bed early, since we got up the next morning at 6 to travel to Legoland.  We walked to the bus station, where we were supposed to be able to take the bus the hour and a half to Billund.  The bus was late, which to us Americans is not that weird.  The Danes also waiting for the bus were far more concerned than we were, though, and so one woman actually called the bus company.  Apparently, there’s a policy where if the bus is over 20 minutes late, the company has to reimburse everyone for a taxi.  The woman who called was amazing, and she took care of everything.  She came over to explain to us in English what was going on, got the taxi, and fronted the money for all six of us at the stop who ended up taking the taxi.  The whole thing was incredibly lucky, because we ended up not having to pay for transportation to Billund at all!  Once we got to the airport, we walked three kilometers to the actual entrance of the park, in time to actually watch it open.

Legoland was awesome.  Just the mini Lego landmarks alone were totally worth it (as you can probably see from the number of pictures I took of them), and after we finished looking at all of that we went and rode as many rides as we possibly could.  A couple highlights of the day:  I managed to order us ice cream in Danish, I touched a starfish, I bought my first set of Legos at the world’s largest Lego store, and we split a giant plate of french fries in the shape of Legos.  All in all, an excellent day.

We spent the night in Billund, and headed back to Århus the next morning.  Our main goal in Århus was to see AROS, a modern art museum.  One of the coolest parts of that was a room with mirrors in it, so you could stand in a hallway or stick your head out of a window and see yourself infinitely reflected.  I felt like I was in a sci fi movie and I was staring at clones of myself.  There was also a room entirely filled with fog and it turned brilliant colors as you walked through it.  The lack of visibility meant you couldn’t see more than a few feet in front of you.  Then, the top section is a giant rainbow hallway where you can walk through it and see the city.

Once we’d seen the whole museum, we walked around Århus for a while and enjoyed the feel of the city.  It’s Denmark’s second largest city, and it’s more quiet than Copenhagen.  Sitting in a square and eating a late lunch was lovely.  I’m glad I got to see a little more of the country I’m living in.

Vi ses!