Germany: Berlin!

After departing Norway, we left for adventures in Germany! We arrived in Berlin on Sunday evening, found our hotel, met Ken and Nola, and then explored the neighborhood. We went to Checkpoint Charlie which is the best known crossing poing between East Berlin and West Berlin during the Cold War.

Today you can get your picture taken with actors representing American and Soviet soliders.

Here is the sign letting you know that you are leaving the American sector.

These are remnants of the Berlin Wall.

On Monday morning we spent some more time exploring the city. Here is the Storm family in front of the Brandenberg Gate! This is the only remaining gate from a series through which Berlin was once entered, back when Germany was Prussia.

Here is the  Quadriga at the very top - this was once stolen by Napoleon!

After the Brandenburg Gate, we walked a few blocks to the Reichstag - the German parliament building.

One other site of great historic and political importance that we saw in Berlin was the Hotel Adlon.

Yes, this is the place where Michael Jackson dangled his baby, Prince Michael Jackson II AKA Blanket, from the balcony. If you want to see a video to remind yourself of this historic event - here is a link to the video on YouTube :)

Michael Jackson's Baby Dangling Video

Here is a baby that will never be dangled off of a balcony! Lucy enjoyed her stay in historic Berlin!

Norway Continued: Bergen and Tundra

At the end of our stay in Norway, we visited Bergen, a fantastic fishing town on the west coast of the country. It is the second largest city in Norway - about the size of Madison, Wisconsin. :)

Like all travel in Norway, we needed to take ferries across the fjords and drive through mountain tunnels to get from our cabin in Balestrand to Bergen. Here are some shots of the car ferry. The ferry system is amazing. These boats connect small communities and they are the one thing in Norway that stays in operation past 6pm!*
*Except for the ferry at Urnes! We missed that boat and had a very l-o-n-g journey around the fingers of the fjords to get back home. :( At least it was a beautiful drive!!

Bergen has a great neighborhood called Bryggen. It is a series of really cool buildings just off of the harbor, they are mostly commercial and tourist shops/cafes today. The neighborhood has been there for hundreds of years, the buildings have burned down a number of times because they are so close together.

Here is a view of the city from the harbor.

Bergen has a world famous fish market. We had to eat there before leaving the country! We did a fair amount of sampling. Here is Dan trying a morsel.

We saw this advertisement for Whale Toast and we decided to give it a try. We bought a sandwich and split it 4 ways. Daniel asked what type of whale it was but the clerk did not know. We felt kind of bad eating it! The meat tasted like jerky, it was pretty salty!

Here are some scenes from the market - salmon and caviar.

After Bergen we drove to Geilo which is a skiing town in the mountains of Norway. One of the neat things about Norway is that you can drive through such diverse landscapes within a matter of hours - the fjords and ocean, the green rolling hills, the mountains and the tundra. While it was green and summer like in Bergen, it quickly turned to winter as we drove up the mountains.

During another trip up the mountains (after our glacier hike) we passed through an area called the backbone of Norway. It is the tallest drivable mountain pass in Europe. Here we are posing on a mountain lookout stop.

At the top of Norway, we happened to see a couple with a dog that looked very much like our Chief. Dan stopped and asked them if their pup was a Large Munsterlander and they said yes!! They said that the dog breed is pretty uncommon in Norway (just like the US!) and that they do not use their dog for hunting. He is a sled pulling dog. His owners said that he is stronger than the Huskies. :) This totally makes sense! Based on how Chief can pull on the leash if he sees birds/ducks on our walks, I am confident that he would be an excellent sled dog as well. Here is a picture of Chief's distant Norwegian cousin. :)

Some of the roads that we drove to get to Geilo had just opened up for the season. The snow pack was very high! Can you imagine plowing these roads?!

We relaxed for an evening in Geilo at an awesome ski lodge and got up very early to head toward Oslo. Mom and Dad continued their vacation in Norway and the Storms headed to Germany! Watch the blog for our adventures in Deutschland. We had such a wonderful trip to Norway and we would love to go back someday. The scenery was spectacular and the people were so nice and welcoming! Thanks for joining us Mom and Dad Hoekman! We will always remember this amazing vacation. :)

Norway: Churches and Glaciers

During our trip to Norway, one of our goals was to hike to a glacier. We did it! Jostedalsbreen is the largest glacier in continental Europe and it happens to be quite close to Balestrand. We were thankful that Lucy was able to see (and touch!) a glacier before they all melt away!

The glacier was pretty accessible - it was a brief walk from a parking lot the Jostedalsbreen. The guidebook said that it was a half hour to get there but in reality it took us about an hour and a half, there was a lot of large rocks, streams, snow, and loose gravel to climb over. It was well worth the trek though, it was beautiful!

Here we are about halfway on our walk to the glacier. Doesn't Lucy look cute all bundled up?

Here is the glacier from afar!

Another reason the hike took awhile is that we needed to stop and take in the natural beauty along the way! Here is Lucy checking out the local flora. We hope that she grows up to love the outdoors!

We all made it to the glacier! Here are mom and dad enjoying the view.

And her is the Storm family at the base of Jostedalsbreen.

Of course, we all needed to touch the glacier as well. Her are Daniel,  Lucy, and Dad touching the snow.

   

I wish that my camera did a better job of capturing the amazing colors of this glacier! The different shades of blue and white were breathtaking.

You will see that there is a steady rush of water leaving the glacier. There was a huge glacial lake and a tremendous amount of water coming off of Jostedalsbreen. It is crazy to think of how much snow is melting every second of every day yet it remains such a large glacier!!

Before we started our hike back to the parking lot, Lucy needed to eat. So Dan snapped this picture of me feeding Lucy before we left. How many other babies can say that they were breastfed on a glacier? :)

In addition to the natural wonders of Norway, we saw many beautiful  and old churches! Here are a few snapshots from our travels.

The church below  is very special because it is the oldest church in Norway. Urnes church was built between 1100 - 1150! Isn't that incredible? It was an amazing place. Our distant cousin (Mr. Torvund from my previous Norway post) is an old time blacksmith and one of the projects that he worked on was building custom pieces for this church. (Side note: his current project is parts for a Viking ship replica! How interesting!)

Fishing Adventures in Norway

When we were planning our trip to Norway, we knew that we would be staying on the fjord. Since we would be so close to the water, Dad and Dan immediately started plotting their fishing plans. They were hoping to catch some huge cod in the Norwegian waters.

They were disappointed to get some poor fishing reports out of Balestrand but they eagerly jumped into the boat ready to fish. They did not catch any cod but my Dad did catch an octopus!! Say what!?! I sometimes forget that the fjords are made up of saltwater. When we walked to our dock outside of the cabin, you could see lots of starfish. Here is a picture of Dad with his catch.

The Octopus came out of the water as a reddish/brown creature but it quickly turned all white - kind of like E.T. 

We weren't sure what we were going to do with the octopus, we debated using it as bait to catch other fish but we ended up deciding to eat it ourselves. What a delicacy, right? :) Dan did some research online on how to prepare an octopus for cooking. It turns out that it is a lot easier than filleting a fish. We pan fried it in our kitchen!

Here is a video of us enjoying Dad's catch. It was pretty good! :) Everyone except Mom ate some. It was a chewy and memorable experience!

Norway Part 1 - Balestrand, Waterfalls, and Lavik!

We spent a wonderful week in Norway during my sabbatical. Let me just say that Norway is the most scenic place on Earth! Wow! Everywhere you looked there were mountains, fjords, waterfalls, tundra, or rolling valleys. Spectacular!

We arrived in Oslo and drove across the country to Sogn Og Fjordane - this is the part of the Norway where my Grandma Smeby's family lived. It is in the fjordlands and we needed to take 2 ferries to get there.
These is a typical scene from the countryside:

This is a picture of Dan sporting what I call his Ray Charles look. :) It was pretty sunny during our drives so he needed to borrow my sunglasses sometimes. Dan was an excellent driver - we drove on some pretty gnarly mountain passes with hairpin turns and through dark tunnels with single lanes without any sort of dotted lines! On top of this, my nervous mom had lots of commentary from the backseat! :) He did a great job and put on lots of kilometers during our stay.

Here are some more of the great views we had driving across Norway:

Even the barns were so beautiful! They had fantastic stone foundations and they were usually multiple stories tall. Norway has lots of sheep and goats; if you were outside you could hear lots of bleating and the tinkling of tiny bells that they wear around their necks.

The countryside also had lots of stone bridges and archways.

Yours truly in Norway!

We were in Norway during springtime so lots of snow was melting and, as a result, the waterfalls were in full force! Everywhere we went we could hear the rush of the water. They were beautiful!

Here we are alongside a scenic trail:

Our basecamp in Norway was a town called Balestrand. It was a sweet village right on the fjord. 

We rented a nice little cabin in Balestrand. This is the view from our front yard - off the dock!

Our cabin came equipped with a boat! Dad and Dan did some fishing - details to come in an upcoming post.

One of the highlights of our trip was learning more about our family heritage. My Grandma Smeby's father's family is from Lavik. We made the journey to Lavik and, based off of mom's and grandma's cousin Lucille's research, we were looking forward to seeing the church where my great great grandfather was married and the house where he was born and lived in until he left for America.

We saw the church - here are the three generations in front of the church where great great grandpa and grandma got married.

We stopped by the tourist information desk at the hotel to ask for directions to the Torvund homestead. We were just planning to do a drive-by viewing. But, the man at the desk said that he knew the Torvund family and that he would give them a call. Mr. Torvund (a distant cousin of ours) invited us over! He is a blacksmith and works at a shop on the property just outside of the house. He was so welcoming!! He had coffee ready for us and was ready to give us a tour of the property. The original homestead is still there, right on the fjord. It is awesome that the Torvund family still lives there. Here is the house:

They had a great field of dandelions in the backyard. Lucy looked so cute just lounging outside.

The Torvunds have twin 5 year old daughters - Hannah and Vilda. They were shy but very nice to Lucy. They gave us a tour of their property all the way down to their little harbor. After our walk we ate dinner together.

Here is the entire Torvund clan - grandma lives on one side and the family lives on the other side of the house. You can see that there are 2 separate entrances on the building. They were the nicest people! Connecting with them was definitely one of the highlights of the trip. Grandma Smeby would have loved it!