Italy

Ciao!

So after Copenhagen I made a brief trip to Kolding to visit a thesis case study, the Kolding bioworks pyramid, which was very cool. Then I spent a couple days in Munich which was nice but rainy and I was a bit burnt out on wandering around touristy areas of cities. So I just arrived in Bologna Italy and met up with my friend John. I will fly to London on the 17th. More details soon, just a quick update before I head off for some Italian food here.

Nicole

heading south for some summer

So yesterday I went to the Dyssekilde ecovillage and had a nice tour with my contact there, Jacob. Last night I wandered around Copenhagen more and enjoyed some ice cream by the evening light on the canal. I won´t be missing the hostel here as I move on to new accomodations this afternoon. My plans have been mutating on the hour the last couple days. My latest plan is to head to Kolding today and spend a day or so there to see if I can track down the illusive bioworks pyramid which would be a great case study for my research - a glass pyramid greenhouse which has layers of plants and fish inside to treat wastewater from an apartment block. I haven´t been able to find a email contact about it yet so we´ll see. After that, I may be skipping another place I planned to visit in the north because the trains here are rediculously expensive. It sounds like it might cost me around 200 dollars on the train to get there round trip which is really not in my budget. In the mean time, I´ve been emailing with some old euro friends from my Australia exchange days. John is in Bologna, Italy in grad school there and I´m thinking of hightailing it out of the expensive north and back to some mediterranean climate zones. The plan now seems to be to take the train back through Germany this weekend with a stop over in Munich. Then about a week in Italy based in Bologna with Pisa, Venice, and other beach towns short distances away. Then I will take a cheap flight from Italy to London and meet up with a couple other Aussie-time buddies to tour the UK. So much for Amsterdam but I think the new itenerary should be worth it. Stay tuned to see if this schedule completely changes soon. Happy fireworking.

Nicole

Kobenhavn

My train ride went smoothly yesterday from Berlin. The view out the window when we got near the sea was beautiful and I am excited to be by the water. In the middle of the train ride, there was some announcement I couldn´t quite understand about a ferry. At first I thought that we would have to get off the train and take a ferry across and get back on another train, but to my surprise, the train drove onto the ferry! So I was on a train, on a ferry - a new experience! Everyone on the train got off onto the ferry and went to the upper decks which had a shopping mall and cafes. The views of the sea were wonderful with wind turbines lining every visable coast on the north and nothing but a sea horizon to the east and west. I can understand why the wind power is so popular because it is soooo windy here.

I arrived into the Koebnhavn train station around 8:30 (there was still light in the sky until around 11:30 at night, so it wasnt even close to dark). I was less impressed walking through the city to the hostel, which just a short walk from the station, than I expected to be. Everything here seems pretty touristy or kind of run down. The hostel is equally less impressive than I thought and while safe enough feeling is probably one of the lesser hostels I've stayed in with little character and little convenience. They require you to put all of your things in a locker room and leave between 11 and 3 every day. I found out from a coulple of nice Swiss guys in the room that it is the cheapest hostel in town at the equavalent of 20 euros per night. This country is not cheap at all.

My opinion of Copenhagen got a little better after my walking tour today. It was very cool and windy making for not so ideal picture taking, but the coast was kind of moody in a neat way and I saw some neat palaces, churches and fountains. There is an opera house across the water in one spot that was in an axis with a huge fountain and a church with an amazing dome. Just as I was about to finish the walking tour and head to the botanical garden, it started pouring rain. I tried to keep going thinking it would let up but it just started raining harder so I found a little jazz cafe to sit and have a glass of wine in and do some writing. After trying to wait out the rain in the cafe, I gave up and walked back to the hostel in the rain. I ended up talking with a girl from Minnesota and a guy from Australia in the room. The three of us went to find this vegetarian buffet that had mediterranean food which was recommended in the guide book for dinner. The food was really great and it was relatively cheap compared to most other options - I think still around 12 dollars though. The food was a refreshing change from cheese sandwiches and pizza and we all stuffed ourselved.

Tomorrow I´ll take a morning train out to an ecovillage near here as part of my thesis research, supposedly 80 minutes away on two trains. I´ll come back and stay in Copenhagen again tomorrow night and then I'm thinking of moving on unless I find the inspiration to stay one more day. It seems like all of the other backpackers I´m meeting are equally unimpressed with the city and moving on quickly, but I wonder if part of it is the rainy weather as well. I´m thinking of trying to find my way to the Folkecenter, a alternative technology research center on the northwest coast, for a tour they have on Thursday.

Hope everyone watches some good fourth of July fireworks for me!

Nicole

Berlin again

Today was officially the end of our class portion of the trip. The last few days were busy with some of the people we were working with in the ecology org in Turnov taking us on more tours including a brewery tour of the local beer called Svijany. The didnt leave us a whole lot of time to work on the project, but we pulled it together and had a good public presentation of our ideas yesterday. One of the guys in the office who was our translater for the last few days put out a press release about the presentation so we had a packed room of local citizens who gave us some good criticism and compliments. After the presentation they took us to a beautiful area with a nature center and arboretum and gave us some good food and drinks as thanks for our work. The group split up this morning with some people heading to back to Prague to fly home in the next few days and the rest of us to various destinations. Harsh and Bhavna for example have the most interesting itenerary. They are flying to Moscow and then traveling from there to Tibet where they will get married in a monestary before heading home to India. Ben and I are in Berlin now for the night but I will be splitting off tomorrow morning on my own to head to Copenhagen (a seven hour train ride from here). We just did a lot of walking around the city after dinner so Im off to bed uhere at the hostel until my feet recover for the next round of walking tours.

More from Denmark soon . . .

Nicole

Exploring Turnov

Dobry Den again,

We've spent the last few days exploring Turnov. There are extensive hiking trails all over the region. Ben and I hiked up from the middle of town to some overlooks in the hills and a castle in just a couple hours. Today our hosts at the organization we're working with for the highway project took us on another day of touring. We climbed up to the Trosky castle ruins, then up to a tower that was used for military radio on the highest point in the region. The weather has been warm but last night a big storm came in and cooled things off. It was quite cold and windy up on the high overlooks. We also stopped at a mine and broke a few rocks to look for precious stones, finding just a few little crystals. Next we stopped by a huge Linden tree that is 800 years old. On the drive back, we pulled off to the side of the road and all of our drivers/hosts ran up to this non-descript window at what looked like someone's house turned snack stand. We found out that this place was known for making a local variety of little cake pastries and they bought us a few boxes as a treat. Speaking of new unhealthy local cuisine, I was excited to try a traditional dish that's actually vegetarian - breaded and fried cauliflower with potatoes on the side. All the dishes tend to be served with great garnish of cucumbers, tomatoes and other veggies, so my latest technique is to collect everyone's garnishes that the meat eaters ignore to get my veggies.

The project is moving along also. The group here seems to want more than anything else to document us agreeing with them that the highway in the northern proposed route would be a horrible idea and the southern route a much better idea. They were pleased when our analysis confirmed this and immediately after our presentation offered to plan a tour of the local beer brewery, telling us it looked like we were working too hard. They are interested in us making a documentary of our experiences and research here to rally some support. We had already been talking about making a website with our work which could be handed over to the locals as a forum about the status of the highway project. Another idea was to make some propoganda t-shirts with logos showing the historical castles getting ground up to pave the highway. We only have four more days here, so considering our busy schedule of brewery and museum tours, it looks like our product for Friday will be a storyboard mock up of work we will continue as part of our seminar class next semester.

I've booked a hostel in Berlin as a stopover on my way to Denmark on the 30th. Then I'll be in Copenhagen until the third or the first.

Ciao for now.

Nicole

Project in Turnov

The group arrived in Turnov, a small town in the northern Czech region of Cesky Raj, which means Bohemian Paradise, on Tuesday. We're working with a local environmental office to analyze a freeway project in the region. The freeway has been in the works for many years now, aiming to connect a direct route through the country. The proposed route will cut through a scenic valley with many little towns and preserved forested hillsides on either side. The local residents have been protesting the project with signatures but some political pressure that thinks the freeway will help develop the industry and economy of the region are pushing for this valley route over a more southern option. The office we're working with is a little bias being located in the northern area, but seem to have some good arguments why the southern route is less impactful. So we're setting out to figure out what our role for the project should be, exploring the proposed options. The first day we went on a driving tour and hiked up to many overlooks (I had mistakenly worn a skirt and flip flops thinking we would mostly be in the car and not having other dry clean clothes after doing laundry in the bathtub). Ben was very helpful taking pictures of Julie and I falling down one of the steep slopes and laughing. On one of the trails, we all bought bas of cherries from a woman that had a table set up. After munching half of them and going on a long warm trail, Julie discovered little maggot-like worms that had either hatched or crawled out of the cherries in the warm plastic bag. We were a little tramatized and unappetized for the rest of the day.

Yesterday we spent way too much time in the office trying to organize the project and were practically brawling across the table in the afternoon over how to go about our analysis. Yes, the group is becoming more like sibblings with immaturity on he rise and occasional yelling matches. Today we have some smaller groups armed with maps and are exploring pieces of the proposed freeway routes. It's hard to believe we only have a few more days until the end of the organized Czech trip. We will leave Turnov on the 29th. From there, Ceci, Ben, and Jeff are heading back to Prague and then back to PA. Ken and Julie have a honeymoon route through Austria, Switzerland, Spain, etc. planned. Mike and Brian are also exploring Europe for another three weeks. I'll be on my own headed to Denmark first to eco-geek out at a couple more ecovillages and centers for alternative technology.

Hope all is well on that end and feel free to send some emails (nicole.a.stern@gmail.com is the most frequently checked).

- Nicole

Decin - Berlin - Turnov (a summary)

Hi,

Sorry for getting behind in the news mom. I'll have to send a more detailed recap soon, but just to summaraise the past few days . . . we spent some long days working in Decin and the project came off very well. The presentation was a hit and the local people there wanted to put our work up on their website and show more of the people in town our ideas. After we finished up in Decin, we had a four day break to split up and travel around. I ended up going to Berlin. Russell contacted one of his friends, Isabel, who lives there. She invited me to join her for the launch of an english literary magazine for english writers in Berlin. Many of the authors did readings and there was music and comedy - a fun night. I went out to an ecovillage just outside of Berlin on Saturday, then came back to Berlin and spent a couple of days looking around the city more. Yesterday the group merged again in Turnov and took a regional tour today to begin our next project. I'll write more on the intermitten adventures along the way soon but have rushed internet access at the moment. Happy Summer Solstice to everyone tomorrow.

Nicole