Basel, Switzerland

Wednesday February 17th
I arrived in Basel, Switzerland around 2:30 pm after a 3 1/2 hour train ride from Luxembourg. Celine was at the train station waiting for me with a big hug. We quickly grabbed a sandwich (I hadn't had anything to eat since breakfast at the hostel), an all-day transportation pass and some money since they use Swiss Francs here and not the Euro (the francs are about the same value as the American dollar right now). Then we jumped on a bus to take us to Celine's house to drop off my bags. We rested at Celine's for a bit in order to decide what we'd be doing for the day and so I could take a quick shower (I always feel so gross after riding on trains and traveling) and then we headed out to a restaurant on the top floor of a really nice department store to have some tea and cake and catch up with the latest gossip and news. After we finished our tea and cake we walked around the center of Basel for a bit, jumping in and out of shopping stores and running some errands before heading back to Celine's to rest before going out to dinner. Basel's center is covered in cobblestone roads, trolleys and fountains. There are tons of fountains in this town!! For dinner we'd planned on going to an Irish Pub that's known for its food, but it was full so we moved on to a different restaurant that was really chic. Celine and me both decide to have the 'menu' of the day. Our starting dish was a bowl of a soup made of finely chopped veggies in a chicken bouillon, then the second course was a white veggie cream wrapped in ham and a side of salad. The main course was chicken risotto (chicken on rice). All this was accompanied with wine, beer and an after dinner espresso. All of it was amazing tasting, so needless to say we gorged ourselves. After dinner we hit up a couple of bars (it was hard to drink the beers, because there was absolutely no room left in my stomach after our enormous dinner) and were later joined by Celine's boyfriend and some of his co-workers for a few drinks before calling it a night.

Thursday February 18th
Celine and me spent the morning sleeping in and watching the winter Olympics (they had the Olympics and other programs in almost every language in Basel except English. There was German, French, Spanish, Italian and some eastern European, but no English! WTF!!)When we finally got up and ready for the day we headed into town to do a little shopping (I bought a new gray peacoat) and do a little sightseeing, but our first stop of the day was at a food court in a shopping center. This wasn't like the food courts in the USA. There was no stereotypical Mcdonalds and chinese place that indicate an American food court. It was almost like a huge cafeteria and all handmade swiss specialties...ahhh bliss... So after once again gorging myself on Swiss food we hit up the old 'pedestrian only' area of town which is all cobblestone paths, the Cathedral, the frescoed Hotel de Ville and passed many, many fountains while sightseeing. Shopping was entertaining. I basically would find the most hideously atrocious clothes in the store and then try them on for giggles. When we finished sightseeing and shopping for the day Celine and me stopped in a grocery store to buy the ingredients to make some homemade pizza for dinner. Once back at the apartment I watched the Olympics some more, replied to some emails, had some pizza and then got ready to go out for the night. Nightlife in Basel is a little different. People dress down instead of up when they go out. So I would wear my nice fashionable french dresses and clothes during the day and then change into jeans and a t-shirt for my evening wear. Which if fine by me, because they still allow smoking cigarettes in all the establishments, so I'd come home from the bars smelling like stale smoke and I wouldn't want my nice clothes drenched in that smell. First stop of the night was at a billiards hall to shoot some pool and have a few drinks with some of Celine's friends, then her boyfriend dropped the two of us off at a club for the evening. This is definitely one of my favorite clubs I've been to in Europe. Its hard to describe the place but I'll try. It kind of reminded me of a pirate ship. It had wood carved statues of mermaid lining the walls of the second floor where there were balconies to watch the people dancing below. The tables that lined the walls were wood and shaped like barrels and there was rope hanging here and there. But best of all was the music. They had all the new hits that I love to dance to, but also all the classics and the DJ was great at remixing and spinning. Celine and me stayed there dancing and drinking until around 2am when we finally walked back to Celine's.

Friday February 19th
Celine and me slept in and watched the Olympics in the morning. In the afternoon we met up with her boyfriend in order to buy a Raclette Grill for the Raclette Dinner Party at Celine's in the evening. We also stopped by a grocery store and picked up all the supplies for the dinner and I bought swiss chocolate for all my friends who requested it. The rest of the evening was spent watching the Olympics and getting everything ready for the Raclette Dinner Party. Maybe I should first explain what is a 'Raclette Dinner Party'. Raclette is a type of cheese which you melt and place on or mix with a variety of things like potatoes, sausage, pickled veggies, eggs, etc. Its amazing. I've decided that when I return to the states I'm buying one of these machines in order to introduce this amazingly savoring chic 'meat and potato' meal to my fellow Americans. Hours later after we'd all finished gorging ourselves (no wonder why I gain so much weight when I'm in Europe) we hungout at the apartment drinking for a bit longer before making our way to an Irish Pub called Paddy Reilly's to drink and dance until the wee hours of the morning before taking a taxi home and calling it a night.

Saturday February 20th
I woke up and started arranging/packing all my things in order to be ready to catch my train that afternoon back to France. Celine and me hungout in the morning. We headed to the train station a little early in order for me to stop by the candy store that Celine works at in the train station to buy some specially requested chocolates for Nalleli. I still had a lot of Swiss francs so we ran around the train station finding things for me to eat for lunch on the train, then we said our goodbyes and I boarded my first of three trains. The journey back to France was long and obnoxious. I had to switch trains in Strasbourg and had a 45 minute wait. Then I had to not only switch trains in Paris, but also train stations so I had to take the metro across Paris. By the time I arrived in Poitiers the last train to Montmorillon had already departed so I made arrangements to stay at my friend Moona's place. A french friend met me at the train station and we dropped my bags off at his place since Moona wasn't home yet and we headed out to the bars. We ordered a bottle of 'punch' which is rum mixed with tropical fruit juices. Some of Cedric's friends met us there so we hungout for a while and then Moona called and we met up with her and I headed back to her house to crash for the night.

Sunday February 21st
I caught the first train from Poitiers to Montmorillon. I could have stayed and hungout with my friends longer in Poitiers, but I was exhausted from all my travels and ready to be home. I arrived back in Montmorillon at 12:30pm and spent the rest of the day resting and watching tv. And so ended my February vacation :)

Oslo, Norway

Friday October 30th I arrived in Oslo, Norway after a very long journey from France (trains, metros, planes, buses and more buses in order to reach my destination). I got into town rather late or at least it seemed late because the sun hadn`t been shining for a while (there`s not very much daylight here, but I really hope to be able to see the Northern Lights while I`m this close to the Arctic). I took a bus from the Oslo city center in order to meet up with Ellen (the couch surfer who`s hosting me while I`m here), we dropped my stuff off at her apartment and then we walked back to the city center in order to meet up with some other couch surfers. We all ended up going back to Ellen`s and making pizza and having a few mixed drinks (strawberry sherbert blended with vodka and russian schwepps...very good) before heading out to the opening of a club in Oslo. Ellen is well known on the Oslo nightlife scene and gets us VIP passes into elite clubs and openings, so it was pretty cool. We didn`t stay out too late though (we were home by 2am) because I wanted to get some site seeing done the next day and the other couchsurfers had an early morning flight to catch.

Saturday October 31st HAPPY HALLOWEEN. Halloween is by far my most favorite holiday whether I`m dressing up to go to a party or sitting at home watching Halloween movies and handing out candy to the little kiddies. I woke up early even though I`d been out moderately late and commenced my day by grabbing an energy drink and a cinnamon roll at a cafe around the corner from where I`m staying. From there I walked into the city center. First stop of the day the Oslo "Opera House" which is located along the water front and is architecturally really awesome to look at (you can also climb to the roof and take amazing photos of the port). From there I went and visited the "Akershus forstress and castle" and watched the changing of the guard in front of the tomb of the unknown soldier. After that I visited a few museums like the "Film Museum" which showed the history of film making (from the telling of stories on cave walls to the first optical toys to the 1920s hollywood cameras to present day). It also had a small theater in order to watch short ten-minute norwegian films (I watched one called "Ackornet" the Squirrel in english which was very good). I also visited the privately owned museum of "Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art" which was having a showcase of Nate Lowman`s work. I`m not usually that into art museums (especially not modern/contemporary art, I just don`t get it), but this one showed a movie of the artist explaining the meaning behind the works so it actually made it quite interesting. I also visited the National Gallery and was introduced to the artist Gude and (I forgot the other one`s name so I`ll have to look it up again) who I really liked and they painted realistic scenery pictures. The gallery also held one self portrait of my favorite artist Van Gogh, a couple Manets and Picassos and Degas. I did lots of walking around (in fact I only walked everywhere like usual) and saw the Royal Palace, the City Hall (where people recieve the Nobel Peace Prize, they currently have an exhibit of Obama there, since he most recently won the award), the National theater and lots of places. I returned home around 5:30pm because it was already getting dark and also I needed to get ready for the Halloween partys.

This year for Halloween I dressed up as a 1920`s flapper girl (think Great Gatsby style, I`d read that book in the spring, which is what gave me the idea). Ellen dressed up as Edie Sedgewick and her friend went as Andy Warhol (they looked exactly like them too) and Johanna (Ellen`s roommate) dressed up as Ziggy Stardust (her makeup was awesome). Ellen is friends with the host of the Norwegian tv show American Idol, which they call over here "the X-factor". So she is basically the Ryan Seacrest of Norway. Anyways we stopped by her Halloween house party for a while before heading to another Halloween party at Johanna`s university and then we went to club called "the Living Room" where we were on the VIP list (Ellen had called ahead and put us on the list) so we got to use the VIP entrance and get right in even though the line was forever long. We hung out there for a while before calling it a night (I couldn`t stay out to late, because I still had a lot of site seeing to do especially since I only have 2 full days to see all of Oslo). I had an awesome Halloween!!

Sunday November 1st: it was very hard to wake up this morning and get going, but I did. I had the motivation of only one more day in Oslo and a bunch of fun museums to go visit, so I rolled out of bed, got dressed, headed to the cafe for an energy drink then made my way by bus to the Kon-Tiki Museum.

The Kon-Tiki museum both enthralled my imagination and ambition, but at he same time saddened my spirit a little. The museum is a dedicated biography of an explorer/adventurer/zoologist named Thor Heyerdahl who would prove his theories by testing them out himself. So in the first half of the 20th century he went on many adventures including building a raft of paper (papyrus like ancient the egyptians boats) and sailing across the Atlantic in it (the egyptians always said the boats would sink after 51 days or something like that so they never dared the journey out to sea, but Thor believed it would actually be possible and he proved that it could have been possible). In the 1940s he also built a raft out of balsa wood that was constructed like how the ancient civilization of Peru used to build them to prove that the peruvian could have been the first inhabitants the Polypolisean Islands. It was a success. The reason that he`s both inspired and saddened me is that I now would very much like to visit Easter Island (which he helped build to its current granduer), but I`d also like to undertake some kind of heroine operation like that, but have no idea what (which is what saddens me, I feel like all the world has been explored and discovered already in every way).

After the Kon-Tiki, I visited the museum that holds "The Polar Ship FRAM" which was a large ship used to try and reach the North Pole of the arctic circle. They failed miserably, in fact no one has ever even come close to making it to the North pole, the closests they`ve ever got was to the 86 degree latitude 14 degree longitude. The building exhibited a lot of information on attempts to reach the North Pole and also explore Antarctica (which made me really excited to go and work in Antarctica for a while, which is on my list of things to do in the next couple of years). The ship the FRAM is actually inside the building and I was able to walk around inside of the ship and see what it would have been like for the men who went on the voyage (they were out to sea of over three years, part of that time frozen and unable to move the ship until summers came).

After that I visited the Viking Ship Museum, which house the remains of three old viking ships that were used as funeral boats. Then I took the bus to the Vigeland Sculpture Park which is famous for having tons of sculptures. I really liked it. There is a bridge that is covered with statues of naked people engaging in normal human activity (I don`t mean that in any sick/perverted way at all, were in Norway, not France ;) I`ll make sure to post pictures in the next couple of days so you can see what I mean. I think Amanda would really have liked it because the statues reminded me of the "Willow Tree" sculptures that Amanda collects (except without clothing on). By the time I finished looking around the park it was getting dark and really cold (it had been really cold all day, but I`d been inside visiting museums so it hadn`t been that bad) so I caught the tram back to Ellen`s. I wake up really early tomorrow in order to walk to the bus station, take a bus to the airport and then a plane to Stockholm. So the next time I write it will be from Sweden. LoveYa. Ciao!