Copenhagen, Denmark

Oh, Denmark. If it wasn't so hellishly expensive I could totally live there. LOVE. IT.

Fact: They make excellent danishes in Denmark. Fact: They even call them danishes. What if we had pastries that we called "Americans"? The world would explode.

I probably liked Copenhagen so much because it was the most American of all the cities we went to. Plus, the food is good, there's a comforting hustle and bustle that I love so much about New York, AND the nightlife kicks ass. On one eventful evening, when taking a break from drinking Carlsberg and Tuborgs, I was served a Hoegaarden in the largest glass I've ever seen. Plus, my friend somehow convinced himself that the guy playing guitar at the bar was a member of Dave Matthews Band. I don't know what the members of DMB look like so I took a picture for later verification via Googling. My conclusion is that this guy is definitely NOT in the band. Which is probably for the better, because I hate DMB.














As far as fun sightseeing, I would say the Rosenborg Castle was by far my favorite. The crown jewels? GORGEOUS. Where do I sign up to become royalty?

We also saw the Little Mermaid statue, which was underwhelming. However, since pretty much every person I've ever met mentions something about mermaids when they first hear my name (hello, title of this blog), taking a picture with the statue pretty much made my life. I'm bummed though that i couldn't get closer to it.


Here are some random pictures of Denmark being pretty and awesome.














While in Copenhagen we of course also went to the Carlsberg brewery, which houses the world's largest collection of beer bottles. I found the Hebrew one.


We spent our last night at Tivoli Gardens, a super awesome amusement park. I won't put up any pictures since this post is getting pretty long. The park was super fun, but was also the site of what was arguably the only bad experience of the whole trip.

Some friends and I were waiting in line for the roller coaster. At one point, the line went up a flight of stairs. At the bottom of the stairs were some lockers that you could pay for to put your bags in. Half our group stepped off to the side to put our stuff in the lockers, and by the time we were done, the line had moved, and our friends were now at the top of the stairs. I led the way back up the stairs, saying "excuse me" over and over and explaining that we were just rejoining our friends, not cutting the line.

I feel someone grab my arm, and I look over to see some random dude trying to stop me from going ahead. I said, "Sorry, we were up there," get my arm out of his grip and try to keep walking. He then yells, "NO YOU WEREN'T!", grabs me with both arms and won't let go, and I promptly start screaming my head off and trying to break away from him. One of my friends who was ahead in line saw what was happening and started screaming HIS head off, and eventually the guy let go of me (my friend is over 6 feet tall and rather imposing).

The entire line for the ride was now dead silent watching the exchange. Instead of heading up the stairs to join my friends, I stood in front of the guy's face screaming at him, expletives flying. Before turning around to finally join my friends, I yelled, "What the hell is wrong with you? Don't you EVER grab someone like that!" The guy, who is lucky I didn't punch him in the face, says, "Why not?" From the top of the stairs, my tall friend yells, "Because of ME!"

Bad. Ass.

Tall friend continues yelling at the guy for putting his hands on a woman as I make my way up the stairs, along with the other people who had used the lockers and who had pretty much been frozen to the spot behind me during this whole thing. We then all get yelled at by some random guy in line because we were cursing in front of his kids. I then get in a screaming match with him for daring to yell at me when I nearly got assaulted.

The line at one point wraps around, and we are essentially standing next to the guy who grabbed me. He beckons to my tall friend and apologizes. I go up to him and get in his face and yell "WHY DON'T YOU APOLOGIZE TO ME!" at which point he looks at me like I'm an idiot (umm hello, am I wrong? My friend deserves an apology but I don't?). Another one of my friends turns to me and says, "Seriously Arielle? Why don't you just be the bigger person?" How I managed to keep my mouth shut after that I will never know.

I then got yelled at by the man with the kids AGAIN, and AGAIN I let him have it for daring to tell me to be quiet.

And then it was over. And we rode the roller coaster and even though it lasted about 20 seconds, it was awesome. I was a little shaky for an hour or so but eventually got over it enjoyed the rest of the night at the amusement park. When it closed at midnight (it doesn't get dark until 11 PM or so in Scandinavia, LOVE), we went back to our hotel, passed out for 4 hours, woke up and went home.

BEST. TRIP. EVER.

Stockholm, Sweden

Ah, Sweden. Home of Swedish massages, Swedish meatballs, and Swedish fish. Unfortunately they don't actually have Swedish fish in Sweden, but you better believe I got a massage and ate meatballs. Both were delightful.

The thing about Stockholm is that it's freaking GORGEOUS.


Tiger Woods and the wifey definitely have an apartment somewhere near where this picture was taken. And as we walked around, my friends and I definitely came up with a very elaborate story where we ran into the Tigs on the street and he invited us up to his apartment where we hung out and ate delicious food and pretty much became BFF. Sadly, it didn't happen.

We did, however, go to the Vasa Museum, which features a big ass ship from the 1600s that didn't exactly make it very far. So the Swedes were all, "When life give you lemons..." and made an awesome museum out of a big mistake. It made me want to be a pirate.


Arrr mateys!

In Sweden we started noticing that the local language calls for the use of the word "fart" a lot. Does anyone here speak Swedish and know why? I don't, but you can bet there was a whole posse of us mature folk that took pictures of every fart-tastic sign we saw.


While in Stockholm we went as a big group, professors included, to the Absolut Ice Bar. It was HOTTTT. Not temperature-wise though, because in that sense it was actually quite cold (hello, bar made of ice). We got huge puffy capes to wear and really thick gloves because even the glasses you drink out of are made of ice. It was quite an experience.


Here I am in my sexy cape and gloves drinking my delicious raspberry vodka drink (all the drinks were fruity vodka drinks and they were all fabulous).

That about sums it up for the Stockholm highlights. Our last and final stop (sad!) was Copenhagen, Denmark, which is up next.

Helsinki, Finland

We left Russia and headed to Helsinki, Finland. The 2nd of 4 countries, 4 languages, and 4 currencies. We were only there for 2 nights (as opposed to 3 or 4 everywhere else) but we still managed to squeeze in 2 company visits, lots of sightseeing and some awesome nights out.

This Lutheran church is the most photographed site in Helsinki. Understandably so, because it's pretty hot (the picture doesn't do it much justice). Finland is a pretty secular country but about 90% of the people identify as Lutheran. Don't ask me for details about Lutheranism because, as we all know, I'm a very ignorant Jew when it comes to Christianity.


After this church my roomie and I walked across the (very small) city and found ourselves at another pretty famous church. We went inside and randomly stumbled upon a rehearsal of the Helsinki Symphony Orchestra. I was a band nerd in high school and she was in the dorkestra, so we sat and watched for almost an hour and it was fabulous.

Our 2 company visits were, yet again, awesome. We went to Skanska, a construction company, and Sinebrychoff, a brewery. Sinebrychoff was particularly great because we got delicious lunch, delicious beer, and yet again, we had to wear gear to walk around the factory.


We had to wear these caps, which we got to keep, and then later we were given big white coats to wear too. I love gear.

Later that night a bunch of us went out to dinner at a traditional Finnish restaurant because we all wanted to try reindeer. I know, wah wah don't eat Rudolph blah blah blah. Jews don't care about eating Rudolph! And apparently neither do a lot of other people. And you know why?

REINDEER IS DELICIOUS.


Seriously. This sauteed reindeer, potatoes and lingonberry dish was one of the best things I ate all trip. I actually tried to find a restaurant in NYC that serves it. So far, no luck.

After dinner we went out for some traditional Finnish boozing. I found myself at a crazy ass bar drinking Nicolais and Koffs (Sinebrychoff beers, of course) with most of the guys from my trip and no other girls. This meant 2 things: 1) there was no way I could hit on any sexy Finnish men without a proper wingwoman, and 2) I would have the chance to observe the hilarious antics that were the guys trying to put the moves on European girls. It was entertaining beyond belief. At one point I went up to one of the guys to offer my sage advice. He said I was wrong.

Did any of them get any that night? No. Guys, take note. If a girl offers you advice on how to work your game, TAKE IT, STUPID.

We left Finland and got on a one night cruise to Stockholm. That's right, CRUISE. With multiple bars, awesome food, and a casino. Despite international rules that made blackjack even MORE in the house's favor, I still came out even after playing and I was pretty proud of that.

Our professors had bought a ton of cigars and organized a cigar party on the deck. I didn't partake in the cigars but I DID partake in the huge bottle of the Jager that one of the profs brought. One guy also brought a bottle of Aquavit, whatever that is. It was described as "sort of sweet-ish whiskey." The point is, it was quite obviously a disaster. And also, our professors are AWESOME.

Here is a pic of the cigar party. The kid who took this on his camera is the best camera self-timer user I've ever seen. Seriously, he's talented.


We arrived in wonderful, beautiful, superfab Stockholm the next morning. More on that later.

St. Petersburg, Russia

Let me start off by disappointing my lovely guest poster, Caz - sorry my dear, I didn't see anyone walking bears on leashes in Russia. I didn't see any bears at all, really. But now that we've cleared that up...

Russia was a crazy, crazy place. St. Pete is supposed to be a gorgeous city, but I actually found it to be kind of old and run down looking. One of my classmates pretty much summed it up when he said, "this place needs to be power washed and repainted." From the pictures I took it actually looks really nice, but then I remember that I only took pictures of the pretty stuff. Everything else - meh. Anyway, here is by far the best sight we saw - The Church on the Spilled Blood.


The food in Russia wasn't nearly as bad as I had expected, probably because I avoided any and all things involving pickled fish. Breakfasts were sort of a weird combo of cereal, bread, fruit/veggies, cheese, sliced meat, and either meat dumplings or meat blini. I tried both of the latter because I wanted to experience local food. There were definitely people who ate Cocoa Puffs for breakfast every day. I also ate some AMAZING food at an Uzbekistani restaurant, had a pretty interesting bread/funky sauce/cheese/veggies/other weird stuff lunch off a street cart, and was entertained by this portion of french fries pictured below. No, we hadn't eaten any. This is the full portion.


The vodka wasn't nearly as plentiful as I had expected it to be - we mostly drank beer. Our hotel bar had a special on Baltika and we more or less went to town. A friend of mine did have a vodka tasting in his room on the last night there, so at least I got to try some. Newsflash - it tasted just like American vodka.

Our company visits were all pretty great. Here is a lovely picture of us in the hairnets we had to wear on a plant tour.


While we were there I actually taught myself to read Russian. I was pathetically slow at sounding out words but I loved practicing by reading every sign around me, to the great annoyance of pretty much everyone else. I imagine this is what it was like learning to read English. Thankfully a few of the characters in Cyrillic are the same as English, so at least I had a baseline. Someone else had actually taught himself to read Russian during class one day, so he knew more than I did and I asked him for help about every 3 seconds.

"CHRISTIAN! What does the "3" mean again?"
"CHRISTIAN! What about the pi with a little foot thing coming off of it?"
"CHRISTIAN! If a "6" is a "b" sound, then what is an actual B?"

You get the idea. My Russian actually paid off a number of times when English translations weren't available. For instance, while at Pepsi we got to sample a number of different products, including Frito Lay chips. The writing on the bags was in Russian so no one knew what was inside.

"Uh....pee...errr...zzz....PIZZA FLAVORED CHIPS!"
"Ba...s...no wait. Ba..c...on BACON!"

And so on. I'm awesome. PS, they also had caviar flavored chips. They were nasty with a capital OMGTHEYWILLSERVETHESETOMEINHELL.

So that is the very very abridged version of St. Petersburg. It was a great first stop because it was definitely the hardest city to get around due to lack of English speakers. Plus, Russia seems to be around 20-30 years behind the US in a lot of aspects - things are pretty hard there and it's reflected in the demeanor of the people. So to transition from there to our next 3 countries made the other places seem even better, and really put things into perspective.

Next stop: Finland!

Wow

I'm finally back from the great European adventure. I don't even know how to begin talking about it because it was 15 days of AWESOMENESS. I think I'll do a separate post about each country. I personally hate reading about other people's vacations and most of you probably do too, but I don't care because even though I kept 2 journals throughout the trip (my personal one and the one I handed in for school as part of my grade), I feel the need to document it as much as possible so I can remember every awesome detail.

In general, our 12 company visits were amazing, I ate lots of delicious foreign food and drank tons of foreign beer, got to know my wonderful classmates better, and pretty much went strong for 15 days straight. Burned the candle at both ends, as they say. A few people on our trip took some of our free afternoons or evenings to relax - to nap, to catch up on American TV they had missed or watch movies on their computers.

To this I say, EPIC EUROPE VACATION FAIL. You're in 4 awesome countries and you're going to catch up on the Real Housewives of ~whatever stupid city they're in now~? Not my style. I walked around until my legs ached and slept...hardly at all. Which is probably why I got pretty sick for the last few days of our trip, completely ignored it, and when I finally went to bed last night, passed out for 13 hours.

This trip wasn't cheap and now that it's over, I would have paid double to have this experience. Amazing. Stay tuned for pictures and details!

Guest Post: Caz

Hey kiddos! Caz here from over at Cherry Blossoms and Vodka. So now that I've totally ostracized my readers by talking too much about obscure Australian music that no one outside of Oz really cares about, I figured I'd do my best to entertain you guys. And I promise I won't talk about music, despite the fact I'm watching this fricken hilarious Aussie musical quiz show (that sounds WAY more nerdy than it is).

Anyway Arielle's away in Russia? Yeah I think she's in Russia... Regardless I know pretty much nothing about Northern Asia besides that my bff went to St Petersburg and saw people walking their pet BEARS in the street. Oh and my college-tequila-bff was from Bulgaria and always gave me delicious feta. So there, Arielle, I hope you're enjoying copious amounts of vodka, while eating feta and watching bears on leashes in the street. Along with learning MBA-esque things of course.

So, since I know nothing about where Arielle currently is, I'm going to take advantage of all you wonderful US bloggers and pick your brain about a few things.

Despite my lack of Russian knowledge, I have travelled a fair bit. All across Canada, England, Scotland, France, New Zealand, Australia... I haven't however been anywhere cool in the USA.

Now, I admit that pre-blogging, and pre-Obama I didn't really have much desire to see much of the USA. I'd been to Sarasota, Florida (aka Canadian-Retiree's-ville) and through all respective states to get there (Michigan, New York, Virginia, North/South Carolina, Georgia?) and I'd been to Vermont to go snowboarding. Once I moved to Vancouver, AB and I road-tripped down to Seattle for a music-festival for a day. And we spent 4-hours driving around LA during a layover. Oh I've also spent 12 unexpected hours in San Fran also on a layover.

However, now that I've 'met' all these hilarious and awesome bloggers I'm way more excited to visit more of the good ole' USA. Of course, I now live across the world and plane tix are prohibitively more expensive so I can't participate in meet-ups like Vegas, Chicago, New York, DC etc. etc.

So, instead of me bragging about all the cool things I do in Australia (because, I admit I do that a lot. Sorry.) I want YOU to brag about YOUR city. Tell me WHY I should visit Boston, New York, LA, or small-town Missisipi, Wisconson (did I even spell that right?) or Texas.

Because when I spend 6 months going on a huge USA road-trip (who wants to come?) I'm counting on you to tell me where to go!

Epic Nerdery, Revealed!

Hi. My name is Jaime. None of you probably know me, but Arielle asked if anyone wanted to guest post while she was gone and I volunteered! Lucky readers lolz.

Anyhootsits, It's nice to meet you all. :]

Now I’ve been keeping a secret for years, and I think it’s about time I let it out. I also think this is the place to do it, on someone else's blog. And so, with all of you strangers from Arielle’s blog, I will share this deep, dark secret…

Are you ready? Here goes nothin'!

I’ve always wanted to do cosplay.

You know what cosplay is, don’t you?

Basically it’s like Halloween for grownups, without restriction to a specific day of the year and minus the candy (there should still be candy...). Most cosplayers dress up as video game or anime characters (read: Cloud from Final Fantasy VII) and attend conventions or movie premiers.

Don’t tell me you’ve never thought about it.

Now, having spilled the beans about this uber-nerdy secret that I’ve been holding inside, I feel obligated to tell you who my desired cosplay character would be should I ever enter this fantastic community in the World Of Epic Nerdery (a world in which I currently live).

I semi-proudly introduce you to: Chii.

Her outfits are just so cute! And what actual reason would I ever have for buying something like this if I can’t wear it?

Not that I’ve ever bought anything like this.

>.>
<.< -.-

But... you know... if I wanted to buy one… surely I would need someplace to wear it! And what better place to show it off than with thousands of others who probably have the same one?!

So I'm faced with a series of perplexing questions: Would I actually have the guts to dress up as an anime character and go out in public? Would any of my friends consider dressing up themselves to share in the experience with me? What convention would I (we) go to? Would people still love me?

And probably the most important question of them all: Who would take all the pictures I needed to blog about it?!

*****

Jaime is guest posting today from Fast Times @ Life's-A-Bitch High!

ASL;DNAOEIRJALSKDFA;E

EUROPE TOMORROW EUROPE TOMORROW EUROPE TOMORROW!!!!

School is finally, officially, superly, OVER for the year. Even though I finished my finals last week, we had these huge presentations as part of an annual competition on Wednesday, and even though my team knocked it out of the park we were sadly not asked to be in the next day's final round. But we WERE part of the top 6 teams that were in contention for the top 3 finalists, so I'm cool with that. MY TEAM IS AWESOMEEEEEE.

Anyhoo. Since then there has been a considerable amount of drankin. And packing. And HOLY CRAP I WILL BE IN ST. PETERSBURG IN TWO DAYSSSSSS.

And um..that's it. Oh, does anyone want to guest blog? I forgot to ask about that earlier, probably because I've been too busy filling my stomach with delicious and citrusy Sam Summer. Do I have any readers, even?

I doubt I'll post tomorrow because all I will be doing between now and my flight tomorrow evening is packing, drinking, running errands and watching episodes of Taking the Stage on mtv.com. Does anyone watch this show? I love it. Team Mia all the way! Peace out, kiddies.

Coming even further out of the nerd closet

I'm a huge nerd. And sometimes I even amaze myself with how nerdy I am.

I was going through my Google reader when I saw a blurb under CNN International that read, "A U.S. government panel listed 13 countries Friday as "egregious" violators of religious freedom."

And you know what I did? I thought to myself, "OOOH FUN! I'm going to see how many of them I can name correctly!" So I got out a pen and paper and wrote down 13 candidates, then clicked on the link to compare them to the master list.

I got to 7 pretty easily, then struggled a bit to think of 6 other viable options. 6 of my first 7 were right, plus 1 from my other 6. I was going for half so I reached my goal. And I had way too much fun doing this.

For anyone else interested, the link is here: Probably Not Supposed To Be A Game But I Don't Care.

OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG

I posted this picture on my old blog, but seeing as my old blog is..well..old, I'm going to post it again here.


This is my sexy face planted all over a map of Europe. Because in exactly ONE MOTHERF'IN WEEK I will be going to these places.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Specifically, I will be going to Russia (St. Petersburg), Finland (Helsinki), Sweden (Stockholm) and Denmark (Copenhagen).

ONE. MORE. WEEK.

The trip is part of a class, so I'm going with 19 other students and 2 professors. All of whom are fantastic. And we will be doing some company visits and other business-y things while we're there. But we will ALSO have tons of free time to explore, sightsee, and get drunk on foreign booze.

HOLY CRAP I CANNOT WAIT.