We began moving out of the apartment on August 2nd. Over the next few days we gave some of our stuff away to friends, sold our furniture to our landlord, cleaned the apartment, and stashed most of our luggage with The Natives. Our landlord reclaimed our keys and gave us a ride to the airport at noon on August 6th.
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| After cleaning our apartment for the final time we celebrated by jamming a Swedish birthday candle into a lime. |
Our destination was Gothenburg, Sweden to hang out with The Swedes and attend the
Way Out West festival. Of particular interest to us at the festival were The National, Neutral Milk Hotel, OutKast, and Robyn.
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| The festival had two stages that were not covered; this was the larger of the two. |
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| A third stage was placed inside of a tent to enhance the club atmosphere. |
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| OutKast were underwhelming and created controversy amongst the locals with their videos of gyrating, scantily-clad women. However, no one took offense to Robyn spending 10 minutes pantomiming a sexual encounter with a robot during her set on the following evening. |
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| We really like spending time with these guys. |
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| The weather stopped cooperating on the final day of the festival; disposable rain ponchos weren't the only way that people escaped the downpour. |
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| We finally had an opportunity to visit the Liseberg amusement park; it is very Swedish and a great place to spend a sunny afternoon. |
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| Our unwillingness to ride the scary rides thoroughly disappointed Anders. I totally would have maybe ridden this children's ride except someone had to stay behind to take some blurry pictures. I think the intensity of the smugness on Becca's face interfered with the camera's autofocus system. |
After spending five excellent days in Gothenburg we flew to Munich so Becca could show me a few of the places that she had visited with her parents during their trip in 2013.
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| The Augustiner-Keller beer garden is definitely the best place to spend a sunny afternoon in Munich. |
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| The beer gardens in Munich are truly exceptional. |
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| The Hofbräuhaus in Munich is worth visiting if only to stay long enough to take a photo like this one. It is loud, crowded, and unpleasant so don't plan on staying long. Pro tip: get there early and eat dinner at the Wirtshaus Ayingers that is located across the street before your visit. |
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| We had the opportunity to pat this old man on the head at the Hellabrunn Zoo. |
After three full days of wheat beer we hopped on a plane to Bergen, Norway. Despite the non-stop rain we took a tour of the fjord (not recommended) and purchased a Norwegian sweater for Becca (recommended). It stopped raining long enough for us to ride the
aerial tramway to the top of a nearby mountain so we could watch the arrival of the
ship that we were going to ride to Trondheim.
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| Most people ride the tram to experience the view from the top of Ulriken. However, it is also possible to ride the tram to the top and then hike or mountain bike down. |
On the 17th of August we checked into our cabin on the Hurtigruten for a two-night voyage back to Trondheim (via the famous
Geirangerfjord). Normally, boarding the Hurtigruten is as easy as checking into a hotel. However, if you board in Bergen expect to spend an hour checking in, waiting, and watching a safety video.
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| Our cabin port holes were at least 10 feet above the water line. During a storm the sea became rough enough to submerge them. |
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| We had moody weather during our trip to Geiranger: low-strung clouds, occasional patches of sunshine, and just a touch of rain. |
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| The spotty sunshine caused rock faces like this one to look almost metallic. |
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| Although our ship was giant compared to this little ferry, there was a cruise shipped docked at Geiranger that was giant compared to our ship. |
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| We spent a fair amount of time speculating about how people physically arrive at little villages like this one. |
Of course the first thing that we wanted to do when we arrived back in Trondheim was to head back to our apartment. We no longer had an apartment, of course, so we decided to embrace our new status as tourists until The Natives got off work. We followed the walking route that is suggested to people that are visiting by boat and also ate a hamburger at the new bar in Solsiden.
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| One of the things that we had neglected to do until that point was to visit the Leif Erikson statue on the waterfront (it's a copy of the one in Seattle). |
We spent our two final nights in Trondheim hanging out with The Natives in their apartment. Our flight was very early so we called a day in advance and ordered a taxi to take us to the airport. However, after standing outside for almost an hour it seemed obvious that the taxi wasn't going to arrive. It took another 20 minutes and several phone calls to get someone from the taxi company to send us another car. When the driver arrived he knew we probably weren't going to make our flight so he began speeding as soon as we exited the parking lot ... and was pulled over by a police car two blocks later. The police officer chastised the driver for speeding but let us go 10 minutes later and the driver immediately began speeding again. Once we were on the freeway I paid for the ride in advance to save some time and our driver left the car running while he helped us run our bags into the terminal. Even though we didn't get to the counter until 30 minutes before the scheduled departure we still managed to check our bags (after a lecture from one of the two ladies that checked us in).
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| Our first dinner back: Travis' ribs, fresh corn-on-the-cob, mashed potatoes, pickled asparagus, and Hopworks beer. |
The rest of the trip back was uneventful and Becca's parents picked us up from PDX. Then, as is tradition, William met us at Hopworks for lunch.
