Okay, finally here are the Christmas vacation blogs! I decided it was a good time to stimulate my brain and write something relatively interesting.
Warning: There will be multiple, long blogs. You have been warned. J
First of all, we had the glorious process of actually getting out of Finland. The two times that I’ve left Finland it’s been such a hassle! I guess this didn’t actually happen in Finland but still. After our train ride to Helsinki and our flight to Munich we had a few hours to kill to wait for our flight to Vienna. We were about to board our flight and our tickets scanned red! First thought: Oh, my god we’re in trouble. False. After eavesdropping on a group of French people in which the same thing happened and we weren’t told why our tickets scanned red. My French finally came in handy! The stupid airline overbooked our flight and didn’t ask customers if they would wait, they just chose randomly who was to wait! As Americans, in which everything is run like a business and customers are always right, Ian and I were beyond peeved. Also because this was a forty five minute flight we were waiting for. We could have taken a train to get there faster. Finally we get our turn and we have to wait another hour and a half for the next flight to Vienna. We didn’t get anything free except a telephone call to Ian’s aunt, Jan. It didn’t go through but we somehow got a hold of Laura, Ian’s mom in the freaking United States. We were so frustrated and slightly panicking, now I don’t know why. We probably scared her calling from Munich and panicking just because we needed to get a hold of Jan to tell her we were going to be late. After fifteen hours of travel, we made it to Vienna safe and sound and bit irked.
The next day we went to Christoph’s university town, Nuremberg, where he helps put on a huge party in their university. Just imagine on of the largest buildings on campus being rented out, a mock bar being thrown in, and a few deejays! So awesome. This would have never flown in the U.S. There was a DJ, MC Hollywood who is from the Bronx! Hahaha! He’s this hilarious black man who randomly lives in Germany now.
Before the party we went to the biggest Christmas market in Germany. There’s anything and every kind of food, knick-knack, or trinkets you could imagine. I had a sausage overdose in Germany. Eating a sausage a day keeps the doctor away?
Photo courtesy of Ian, who took pictures of the party.
The next day, after about four hours of sleep, we got some cheap Chinese food and saw a castle!! They’re amazing. There was this well, and it takes seven seconds for water to hit the bottom. It took ten years just to build the well. The entire thing was build out of stone, and it’s almost like a little village since people who actually lived in castles never left them.
After we got back to Cham, Christoph took us to this sauna complex. And I don’t mean like the local gym with a sauna that fits five people. This was massive! For about an hour we did waterslides then we went to the sauna area. There are an unimaginable amount of saunas and they’re all themed with a ‘sauna master.’ Therefore: somebody controls how much flavored water goes on the rocks and therefore controls how hot the sauna is (the more the water, the hotter the sauna). Ian and I were pretty nervous for our first mastered sauna that was eucalyptus flavored. It so unbelievably hot! Ian got sick and we both had to leave early. Apparently this is why: a) it was our first time, b) we sat in the worst place in the sauna in which Christoph failed to tell us, c) it was unusually hotter than normal. We could not get outside fast enough! Haha! We survived though and ventured to try it again. Christoph made me go with him to a “surprise sauna.” It’s the traditional Finnish sauna (they say it’s Russian, but now I think the Russians are trying to claim that everything is theirs) where they beat your back with wet branches and leaves. All Christoph said to me before we went in “Don’t worry, just remember it doesn’t hurt.” Thanks Christoph! It didn’t hurt, but I was the only female in a room of German men.
And last but not least about the saunas: everyone’s naked! Men and women go to the saunas together… completely naked. In fact, you’re not even allowed to go in with a swimsuit.
The next day was pretty laid back. We drove to a schnapps distillery near Cham. It’s very traditional Bavarian, all the schnapps are made with berries, herbs, and natural things that grow in that region. Take one shot after a fatty meal and it’s supposed to be good for your digestive system.
Our last full day in Germany, what did we do? Went to another, bigger, and more wonderful sauna complex! It’s funny we go to Germany and spend plenty of time in the sauna, something that is totally free and encouraged in Finland. But they’re so much different than Finnish saunas! This one had about thirty waterslides and maybe forty saunas! There was a manmade lake you could swim in, indoor pools with bars you can swim up to, outdoor pools, anything you could imagine it was there. The slides included one where you go straight down, jump off (!) and land on a mat then into the water and one of the bowl slides where you go down the slide and into a big toilet bowl then back down another slide! These saunas were so amazing, I can’t even say everything about them. We did salt scrubs, yogurt facials, sugar scrubs with vanilla flavored water, honey peels, swam, a citrus flavored sauna, Celtic sauna, anything you could imagine! We ended up staying there fifteen hours and didn’t even do half the saunas.
If you feel like checking it out, here’s the link because this place was incredible. Oh, I forgot to mention that it’s the biggest in Europe!
The next day we headed back to Vienna! Successful first five days of being a European traveler.
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