German Wedding! Deutsche Hochzeit!

MAN! The semester hits and I just get swamped! But more travels are happening so I desperately need to finish reporting about this trip!

I took the train to Sweden and landed in Fallersleben (near to Wolfsburg) around midnight. My dear friend, Fiona (originally from Australia who I befriended in Germany), was getting married the next day!! Early Saturday morning, I met two friends from Mannheim, Rosa, from Italy, and Miriam, from Germany/Canada at the train station. We hadn't been together in a full 2.5 years (or more for some of us!) and there was a lot of waving and yelling and hugging.

Miriam, Rosa, me, outside the church!

The wedding was, without a doubt, the best one I have ever been to (no offense to anyone reading whose wedding I have previously attended...). It started at 1pm. No photos were allowed during the ceremony, but here's the church: 

It was classy and simple. Although the ceremony was mostly in German, parts of it were also in English (for Fiona's family from Australia who mostly does not speak German). For example, they did their vows first in German and then in English. After the formal ceremony, they let off a basket of doves (has anyone heard of this tradition before? A bunch of white doves being released outside? I hadn't). We went to a park for some photos and then back to the hotel/reception for finger foods and mingling. Starting around 5, the guests were seated and the speeches started! Timo (the groom) gave a long speech about their history, and thanked everyone (by country) for coming. They had guests from Germany, Australia, France, USA, Italy, Canada, England and Ireland. Talk about an international wedding! Fiona's father gave a long speech telling stories about Timo and offering advice. Then we started eating and man did we eat. There were many courses and 2 hours of food that included traditional Saxony soup, salad, warm buffet (casseroles, meats, and the like), cold buffet (lots of fish and caprese salad), and a dessert buffet. Europeans really enjoy these long drawn out meals. And I certainly did too!

Later in the evening the dancing started and every hour or two was a game - either for Fiona and Timo or for the guests to play. One of the games (shown below), had Fiona and Timo sitting with their backs to each other, with one of their own shoes and one of their partners shoes. They had to answer questions by holding up the correct shoe. The questions were things like: Who is the better cook? Who is the better story teller? Who made the first move?

The answer to "Who made the first move?" They were both quite convinced that they were correct (Timo is holding up Fiona's shoe and Fiona is holding up Timo's shoe)

There were many more games, much more dancing. and then... Wedding cake AND A CAKE BUFFET. To remind you: we already had a dessert buffet 3 hours ago! WOW! 

The dancing, eating drinking, celebrating all continued past my bedtime at 4am. In total, the celebration lasted almost 16 hours. Respect. 

Miriam, Fiona, Rosa. 

We were all so happy to be back together if for only one night.

Tune in next time for the last installation of the trip to Germany.

2. Malmö and Southern Sweden

After spending 2 delightful, if not somewhat jetlagged days in Stockholm with Corinne, we took the train down to the southern coast of Sweden to stay with her boyfriend's family in Trelleborg (https://maps.google.com/ - look it up). Carl picked us up in Malmö and we drove to his favorite beach. We spent all afternoon on the beach (not your stereotypical Swedish activity, but turns out it is) and then headed to his parents house for a delicious dinner of homemade mushroom risotto and a wine tasting.

(beach by Carl's parent's house)

The next morning, Corinne and I borrowed bikes from his parents and she gave me the Trelleborg tour. It was/is a fishing town, the houses are small, but their yards are extremely looooooong so that they could spread the fishing nets out at the end of the day.

(adorable tiny houses)

(really looooong and thin yard)

I really wish that I was able to spend more time in Sweden and with Corinne, but alas, the time had come for me to depart to Germany for my good friend Fiona's wedding!! 

Bye Corinne!!

1. Schwedentigioruirsok

My most recent adventure took me to my favorite side of the pond (Sorry, USA), for 12 blissful days of travel. I am going to have to write this trip in installments because there were so many different aspects that deserve attention. 

The title of this post accurately describes the Swedish language. I mean absolutely no disrespect or jest in saying that, rather the complete opposite. I spent 4 days in Sweden and still have not a clue as to how to even pronounce the simplest words. It was strangely more related to German than I anticipated... and sounded a lot more like French as well... Kudos to anyone (Corinne) who is trying to learn it!

Stockholm, Sweden: July 24 and 25

Stockholm was added to the Euro-Trip for one main reason: Corinne, my best friend from college. She is doing her Master's work at the Karolinska Institute (see below)

You may have heard of the Karolinska Institute because this is where the committee meets to decide the Nobel Prize in Medicine!

(me with Alfred Nobel, outside the Nobel Forum)

In any case, the first day, I spent walking around Stockholm in a jet-lagged daze. The city is beautiful, though, lots of amazing architecture, on the water, tall, blond people speaking this insane language. The church pictured below was one of my favorites, although you couldn't go inside. It was founded as an abbey in the 13th century and has been the burial place for Swedish kings for at least 4 centuries. It is located on an island (well, really all Stockholm is a collection of islands) called the "Island of the Knights." 

We also just happened to walk up to see the changing of the guards - completely by chance. Perfect timing!! It was not horrendously exciting, some guys in royal blue dancing around with really big guns. 

On the second day in Stockholm, we went to visit one of the archipelagos. There are three layers of archipelagos (the islands in the Baltic Sea surrounding Stockholm), inner, middle, and outer. The outer archipelagos require ferries to see them. We took a bus to one of the inner ones and visited the town of Vaxholm. The weather was perfect and the town was really quaint and cozy. 

On my next trip to Sweden, I would like to buy a boat pass, which allows you access to all the ferries in the archipelago for 5 days. You can turn it into a tour, camping and archipelago hopping.

Two days was not enough in Stockholm for future reference. I would like to go back there.

Coming up next: Installment 2 - Trelleborg and the Southern Coast of Sweden.