Europe – Page 2 – Kids on Camels

Fjords, Friends, Family, and Trolls

Norway is well-known for incredible natural beauty, and after 9 days here, we can definitely testify to that. We’ve also found it to be an incredibly welcoming place, although our first day didn’t start that way for us.

We began a couple hundred miles north of the Arctic Circle in the university town of Tromsø. After a long trip including a 6-hour layover in Oslo, the airline lost James’s bag, and the guy at the Hertz counter was just missing for 30 minutes when I arrived tired to get the car. We then had bad GPS instructions into town, and as we were buying groceries for a 10pm spaghetti dinner cooked from our farmhouse Airbnb, I was told that beer sales after 8pm aren’t allowed in Norway. It was a long day that Henry says we should promise to never talk about again. (Sorry, Henry.) As a palate cleanser, here’s Henry chasing a pigeon:

Adding Tromsø to a lifelong avocation of chasing pigeons across 6 continents. You’re never too old to chase pigeons.

I realized later that they were really serious about the no drinking thing because Sunday morning at 10am, the police were pulling over every driver crossing the main bridge and making them do a breathalyzer test to check for sobriety. The legal blood alcohol maximum here of 0.02% is one fourth the limit of Illinois. As a palate cleanser to that story, here’s me having a $20 beer.

To be safe for driving, I ran a half marathon after drinking this beer.

Ølhallen is the oldest pub in Tromsø, attached to the northernmost brewery in the world.

As I’ve shared before, we primarily came to Tromsø so I could run in the northernmost land race in the world, the Midnight Sun Marathon. I had a few leg issues in the runup to the race, so downgraded from the full race to the half marathon, but it went really well, and I ran one of my fastest halves at 1 hr 52 min! (Since most races are in the morning, I probably won’t switch to the pre-race beer as a normal strategy. It was a nice birthday treat, though!) Charlie also had a great time running the 4.2K “minimarathon”, finishing in 27:55, and now wants to find races to run during the rest of our trip. (“Running is fun!”)

Ready to start, although he didn’t like the “dance party” warmup.

Besides the race, Tromsø is a cool place, with the northernmost university in the world, and is the 3rd biggest city north of the Arctic Circle behind Murmansk and Norilsk in Russia. Highlights for the boys were the “Polaria” museum, with great underwater views of seals in their aquarium and the little Troll Museum, with beautiful art and interesting stories of Norwegian mythology and folklore.

Arctic Cathedral across the Tromsø Bridge

After Tromsø, we caught an early flight through Oslo to the west coast city of Bergen, which used to be one of the most important trading cities in Europe, home of the old Norwegian capital and a big outpost of the German Hanseatic trading league.

More importantly to us, it is also currently home to Karen’s cousin Jörg, his wife Jeanette, and their daughter Jule, and they were kind enough to host us for our 3 nights in their huge home 30 minutes outside of the city. After Jörg met us at the airport and showed us around town on a rare sunny day, we had a huge barbecue feast at their home, and the boys were delighted to stay in separate rooms for the first time during our trip. Thanks, Jörg and Jeanette!

James is looking away from the sun, but if he was looking up, you would see he probably looks more like Jörg than he does me! Genetics is fun.

In addition to the hospitality, the highlights for us were probably the excellent Museum of Natural History, and (for me and Karen) a walk from the house to the local beach.

Whales at Bergen Museum of Natural History

Taken for website name alignment and Charlie’s constant requests to try our coffee. The kid doesn’t sleep enough as is!

After our last day in Bergen, Jörg dropped us off downtown to catch an early boat/fjord cruise to the town of Flåm. As we explained to the boys, fjords are long, deep, narrow valleys carved by glaciers and full of water, and western Norway is chock full of them. In fact, they cover most of the coastline, with over 1,000 along the country’s coast. As we sailed our 5.5 hours from Bergen, we went through the “King of Fjords” or Sognefjord and mostly took a bunch of pictures.

30 minutes into the trip, we passed the bridge we used to get to Jörg and Jeanette’s house

Kviknes Hotel in Balestrand, built in 1877

Same place + selfie with James! (He still looks like Jörg)

After the cruise, ending through Aurlandsfjord, we arrived in the early afternoon in Flåm. We were a little tired from an earlier start, but after some nice pastries, thought we could try the “easy” “1-hour” hike to a waterfall on the map provided by the tourist office. My use of quotes there should let you know that neither of those facts were true.

It started out quite easy, almost perfect on a pleasant and sunny afternoon. When we saw the sign up the hill for the waterfall, Henry elected not to join us, but we assumed we’d be up and back 15 minutes later. We of course returned over an hour later after at least 1,000 steps that took us halfway up the mountain. We did, however, get this view out of it:

Afterwards, Karen and I had a relaxing drink in the local beergarden while the boys played screens in the hostel room. After a taco dinner, we relaxed for a bit by the water during the low-key local Midsommer celebration, which included a bondfire and people eating cake.

…along with tossing rocks into the fjord

The next morning began with a 6.5 hour train journey to Oslo. The first hour was the special “Flåmsbana” train, the steepest standard train in Northern Europe, with 20 tunnels and a ridiculous number of scenic valley and waterfall views.

After that, we did the last 5+ hours in a normal train and kicked off two things: our 3-month Eurail pass, providing unlimited train travel in Europe until late September, along with school! I gave the boys assignments in history, math, English, and Spanish. (The latter will mostly be Duolingo until we do language classes in South America towards the end of the trip.) They grumbled a little, but mostly liked it.

When we arrived in Oslo, we checked into our Airbnb, watched an episode of Obi-Wan on Disney+ (I have a Chromecast that we just plug into any non-ancient TV) and then headed off to meet my friends Kjersti and Shahbaz for another Barbecue! I met Kjersti in Prague more than 23 years ago while backpacking through Europe after college, and she invited me to stay at her place in Oslo when I visited a few weeks later. While there, I also met her boyfriend Shahbaz, who took me rollerblading around the city. (It turns out that was one of the last times for both of us!)

We’ve stayed in touch via Facebook and it was fun to catch up now with families, including their two daughters. It was Charlie’s birthday, so in addition to prepping an awesome dinner, Kjersti made a cake. Thanks, Kjersti!

He had many slices of chocolate cake. Note Henry diving out of the way on the left.

For our final day in Oslo, it was hot, so we’d planned to catch a ferry to a local island and hang out at the beach with a picnic lunch. It was a Saturday and everyone else had the same idea, though, so we instead relaxed from a city beach, without the ferry with its one-hour wait. Still nice. Afterwards, we found some swings and the local castle before heading home and putting the kids to bed.

That was supposed to be the end of the day, but we’d missed one of my favorite sites from my 23-year-ago trip, The Vigeland Park, with the fascinating and often bizarre sculptures of Gustav Vigeland. Karen and I were planning to make the 20-minute walk over in the morning before catching our flight, but we were worried about predicted rain and potential airport delays, so instead yanked the kids out of bed for a surprise “bonus” visit.

The 10 pm Norwegian summer sun made for some awesome colors and the late hour also made it fun for both me and the kids. I’m lucky to have such a fun and spontaneous wife who came up with the idea to blow-up bedtime for the opportunity. Here are some of the pictures:

So that wraps up Norway! With this visit (pre-Ireland, where we are now), our counts are as follows:

Me: 57 countries (including 29 eating McDonalds–I added Norway!)
Karen: 55 countries
Henry: 20 countries
Charlie: 14 countries
James: 10 countries (double digits!)

All about that boat, about that boat, (then an airplane)

We finally started our trip around the world! We began in Stockholm, Sweden, because we had flight credits from our aborted trip two years ago and that was the cheapest destination we could get to on Lufthansa. Karen and I had both already been to Stockholm, but we were excited to be able to take the boys. We’ve had a great first week visiting Sweden, Estonia, and Finland, and are now traveling to Norway.

Stockholm, Sweden

As my post title suggests, boats were a big theme for the first week, starting with our home for the first three nights, a late 1800s sailing ship named the Af Chapman. It’s docked on a quiet island in the middle of Stockholm and our “family cabin” for this converted hostel had five bunks at the very stern of the ship.

Our morning breakfast spot at the bow, with pastries I grabbed from a grocery store a mile or so away

In fact, the entire city of Stockholm is a bunch of islands grouped together, so we had to cross so, so many bridges anytime we wanted to walk anywhere. And we walked everywhere. As we left our hostel for the last time on the way to our ferry to Tallinn, Henry said, “finally, our last time on this bridge!”

It was a pretty bridge, though. I don’t think he really had an excuse to choke Charlie over it. This pose has been (playfully?!) recreated several times already in our first week.

On our first full day, our first tourist stop was, you guessed it, a boat. We went to see the incredible Vasa, which was the most powerful warship in the world, boasting 64 cannons, when it launched in 1628. It only maintained that status for about 20 minutes, though, because while trying to keep it fast for the demands of an unreasonable king, they built it too narrow, and it tipped and sunk after the first strong winds of its maiden voyage, right in the Stockholm harbor. There it lay for 333 years, an embarrassment so great that the king had the masts cut down, because the harbor was shallow enough that they originally kept sticking up after the sinking.

The entire exterior is covered in these intricate carvings, which were originally painted in bright colors.

The boat was rediscovered–incredibly well-preserved by the mud and salt water–in 1956, and was carefully raised to eventually be displayed in the museum we visited. The museum, of course, had a whole section about how this happened, but Karen and I were almost equally impressed with the little Swedish girl who explained this to us.

Puckish, maybe 9-10 years old, and sporting a quarter-shaven head, mohawk, and a fur sweater we think she may have trapped, skinned, and constructed herself, she appeared–seemingly with no parents–and started explaining everything to us in perfect English. The English part isn’t all that unusual for children all across Scandanavia, who often start in early elementary, but we’ve been speculating about this child’s entire backstory. Did her parents buy a membership and just drop her off there every weekend morning so she can live her best medieval life and pretend to be a tour guide? Rather than being dropped off, does she simply sail there on the boat she constructed by herself? Alas, she skittered away when Karen complimented her, so we may never know, but we have evidence of at least one super cool child in Sweden.

Next, we stayed on the same island and visited the Skansen open-air museum: a very cool place with a zoo and a bunch of historically accurate buildings with actors who populated the buildings in authentic clothes and were there to answer questions about their historic roles. Charlie, who recently realized he loves Monty Python and the Holy Grail, decided instead to ask everyone he sees, “what’s the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow?” Almost everyone answered with a reference to the movie (“do you mean an African or European sparrow?”) and when he asked one woman why they knew, she said, “of course, we are European, Monty Python is part of our heritage.” The kids are suddently very curious about Eurovision as well.

The best part of Skansen, though, was that we happened to stumble into an annual event that was started with the wedding of Crown Princess Victoria in 2010. Once a year, they host a “drop-in wedding” day, where couples can just show up with a “certificate of no impediment” (which proves they’re not related) and $150 and do a casual no-planning-required wedding with their friends and family. They do hundreds a year (this was the first year back after 2020 and 2021 pauses for the pandemic) and we saw dozens of happy couples as we toured the park.

Our next day revolved around yet another ferry, this time about 45 minutes away to visit the idyllic island of Vaxholm.

Our island to the left, the “fun” island we visited the day before, which also boasted an amusement park to the right, with a ferry similar to the one we were on in the middle.

You might imagine they’re playing “war” with the artillery gun, but actually they were checking on the baby seagull that was trapped in the middle.

Our final day in Sweden, we did a tour of the opulent royal palace and walked the old city, Gamla Stan, before catching an overnight ferry for Tallinn, Estonia.

It turns out these kinds of statues embarrass our children. We therefore like to continue to point them out.

Gamla Stan: Touristy, crowded, overpriced, and more than a little kitschy. Still great, though.

Estonia

Karen fell in love with Tallinn 18 years ago while visiting with her mother and sister, so made a point of adding it to our plans to make sure the boys and I could experience it too. I’m very glad she did. In addition to the charming old city that survived the world wars, it was walkable, and by far the cheapest city we plan to visit in this Scandanavian leg, which has otherwise been a budget buster.

Hey there. Don’t mind me, just enjoying the view and the cheap food.

Tsungel, an outdoor-only Mexican restaurant specializing in a big drink menu with a live DJ and a bunch of old busses painted and framing the seating area. Maybe as indoor seating? It was in the arts district as you might expect.

Also, we had a nice Airbnb where the owners, Jevgeni and Katti, went out of their way to help us out. When he heard our dismay that the apartment didn’t have a washing machine like we thought, he volunteered to pickup our clothes and have Katti wash them, free of charge. He then made two additional trips to drop off the clothes because a couple of items were accidentally left out. I’m going to just assume all Estonians are as nice as them, because they were total lifesavers.

James is on a mission to eat pancakes every day of this trip. I promise you that it will break, but not yet! This was at a Russian restaurant and both the sweet and savory ones were great. It was brunch, so I had a beer with mine.

After a couple of days in Estonia, we reprised our boat theme and took yet another ferry to Helsinki, Finland. (This time only a couple of hours instead of overnight.)

Finland

From one ferry to another: as soon as we arrived, we tossed our bags in a locker and took a tram to another local ferry to see the UNESCO World Heritage island fortress of Suomenlinna, which was a delightful place to pass a couple of hours before going on a “free walking tour”. This is a thing that we also did in Tallinn–you join with no upfront commitment, but “pay what you like” at the end assuming the guide was good. Ed, an Irish transplant who moved from Spain to be with his Finnish Kindergarten teacher girlfriend was excellent.

As my class at UChicago would recognize, Finland is actually kind of a famous country for good educational outcomes, and after Ed mentioned some aspects of their approach I chatted with him a little between stops about teacher recruitment policy. I’m hoping I didn’t cause other folks to think he was too boring for the money!

We finished off the day with the boys staying in our Airbnb while Karen and I went to grab dinner like adults by ourselves. I had reindeer meat, which is a little tough but a nice novelty. The boys didn’t complain, though, because (1) they got to play games while we were gone and (2) we found a Taco Bell and brought it back to the apartment. My kids are classy.

Which they obviously get from me, because I went and grabbed McDonalds for breakfast this morning. This allowed me to increase my count of countries I’ve eaten McDonalds in to 28 total. (It’s often a quick place to eat and be sure the food is illness free while also taking advantage of good bathrooms.)

At the end of our first week, that brings our lifetime countries visited count (prior to Norway) to the following:

Me: 57 countries (including 28 eating McDonalds)
Karen: 55 countries (although I’m 3 years older, so if you pro-rate it, I think she’s beating me)
Henry: 19 countries
Charlie: 13 countries
James: 9 countries (he’s excited to break double digits with Norway!)

We came, we saw, we ate, I ran

Just a quick post, almost two months later, but I wanted to capture here our first flights since the pandemic started. Here’s just me and Karen on our way to Rome at the end of March:

Recovering after — And here’s the traditional crash (briefly) in the bed after the transatlantic flight

It was only a brief rest, though, because we were only in Italy (without the kids!) for a short 72 hours. Our first night and then Saturday, we walked all over and took in some of the sights of the city. Saturday afternoon, we went to the Vatican and took a tour of the museums before heading over to a fancy dinner in Trastavere.

St Peter's Square, Vatican City — St Peter’s Square, Vatican City

Raphael's School of Athens — Raphael’s School of Athens, Vatican Museums

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Friday night party in Trastevere square (@kidsoncamels)

Sunday morning was the marathon! I ran with 10,000 other people through central Rome. The first half or so of the 26.2 miles covered neighborhoods that Karen and I had already walked through. I was excited to finish in 4 hours and 5 minutes, which was a personal best by at least 12 minutes. (This was my third marathon ever.)

Waiting to start! Masks on at the start and for the first half mile or so.

9 miles into it. Doesn’t that guy to the right look SUPER Italian?

Passing Piazza Navona, only a couple miles left

Karen proudly slept in while I ran my race, but we ate some pizza in a park afterwards and then went out for a second fancy dinner before flying home the next day! Both of us have visited before, so we didn’t feel bad about skipping a few of the big sites, but we’re definitely planning to return with the boys, likely in September.

Speaking of our trip, we leave in 2.5 weeks! Our first stop will be Stockholm. I’m planning to post something here roughly every week, posting more frequently to Instagram. Next week, I plan to write about some of the logistics of taking a one year trip around the world while homeschooling three kids. (As a preview, the logistics are mostly annoying.)

Since this is intended to be a family blog and I’ve only shown me and Karen so far, here is a recent shot of the boys with their fancy easter baskets at my parents’ house.

Easter 2022. Only one egg stayed missing.

Marathon Madness!

I wasn’t sure if I’d ever run a marathon. It’s something I toyed with briefly in my late 20s, but shin splints and long hours of work quickly put it out of my mind.

That was until I turned 40 and decided to do a half marathon to mark the occasion. Here I am finishing that race in Maine in 2016:

The Rail Trail Half Marathon, Augusta, Maine

I did one every year after that and was about to run my annual half for 2020 in Oakland, California when the pandemic hit. Realizing we’d have to postpone our trip around the world, as a consolation I decided to run my first marathon in the fall. The regimen and repetition of the training was a comfort to me for those middle months of the year as the pandemic stretched on.

Of course, unfortunately no marathons were held that fall, so I just made one up to run by myself. Karen dropped me off at a park in Indiana and I ran the 26.2 miles home. I picked the same day that the Chicago Marathon would have run in October for my “Chicago Marathon” and ran past 5 of Noble’s schools, so someone from our sports team followed me and made this cool video to commemorate the event. (Thanks, Anna!)

In 2021, I finally ran the real Chicago Marathon:

Even though I look in pain there, my training was good and I felt fine a couple of days later. Good enough that I thought I ought to squeeze one more big race in before we start traveling for a year this summer. I’d been eyeing the beginning of April in St. Louis over the boys’ spring break, but had to look for something else when we changed plans for that weekend.

Then, I got an email about $500 flights to Rome. We haven’t been on a plane since Jan 2020. But…in my search for marathons to replace the St. Louis one, I’d briefly noticed that the big one in Rome was on March 27. I’d assumed it was out of the question. Maybe not? (Obviously not.)

So, Karen and I are going to Rome for 4 days while my brother Paul and his wife Özlem come and watch the boys. It’s kind of a crazy thing to do, but crazy like we’re used to doing. It feels good after this long pandemic, which we’re hoping will stay manageable.

To make things even crazier, we’d already noted a cool opportunity at the beginning of our “big, big trip”. We’re starting off in Stockholm on June 10 and realized that on my next birthday, 8 days later, there was going to be the “Midnight Sun Marathon” north of the Arctic Circle in Tromsø, Norway. It starts at 8:30pm and even though I’ll finish after midnight, I’ll have daylight the whole time. Since all of the training will happen before we go, it somehow works. More of the good kind of crazy. Charlie and Karen are planning to run the shorter race there too.

So, even though I’ve never really been a marathon runner, that’s how I’m going to end up doing 3 of them over the course of 10 months. I’m excited for how memorable the races I’m running are meant to be. In fact, this article puts all 3 on a list of the 23 “World’s best marathons in 2022”. I won’t really have time to train after Tromsø, but can’t help but think how fortunate I am to get to do all of this.

(Cross-posted to mattniksch.com)