Trip in Pics.

i thought i'd put up some pictures from places the train took me. My route was as follows: Helsinki-->Turku-->Stockholm-->Copenhagen-->Hamburg-->Berlin-->Prague-->Chotilsko. And heading back: Chotilsko-->Prague-->Nurnberg-->Copenhagen-->Stockholm-->Turku-->Helsinki. Sat on lots of trains, slept in random places and ate a lot of falafel and too much potatoes. All in all a great trip.

The sky and sea looked pretty, viewed from the ferry between Denmark and Germany. Our train actually boarded the ferry, which was cool.

We got to Berlin at around midnight. A lot of empty buildings and squats in East Berlin. A lot of cool street art, too. This was a wall we passed on our way to Ostbahnhof the next morning.

Randomly spotted this on the sidewalk. Walked across where the wall stood. Can't believe it was there for more than a quarter of a century.

To take a break from conferencing, we went tree-walking in a forest valley in Chotilsko. I'd never heard of this before, but the idea is pretty simple: You get strapped into a harness, which is attached to cables that connect from tree to tree. Then you walk on planks of wood and tightropes in the forest canopy and try not to look down. It was ridiculously cool.

We also took a break from conferencing in terms of enjoying a little pre-breakfast swig of (ridiculously bad) absinthe that i picked up in Prague. There was enough conference reading to make a sturdy makeshift table for three glasses of the green stuff. Paper put to good use. 

A meal to remember. We went out to a restaurant one night. The (only) vegan option on the menu was 'Stewed vegetables and french fries'. While stewed vegetables didn't induce happy rumbling in my tummy, the idea of french fries sure did. Hells yeah, potato in a form i haven't yet encountered on this trip! A spirit-crushing experience it was, then, to see my starchy arch nemesis, the soggy, mushy, bland, yellow tater in its most mundane form. Be that as it  may, the potato still beat the other half of the dynamic duo; The stewed vegetables were the legume equivalent of mystery meat. Icky.

On the way home i had a couple of hours to spend in Prague before catching my train to Nurnberg. It was the first sunny day in a long while, so i got a Czech version of a pita falafel and walked around the old part of town and sat in the sunshine. And enjoyed it so much i almost missed my train.

Night train from Nurnberg to Copenhagen. Got the compartment all to myself. The lovely ticket inspector told me i could sleep in all six beds if i wanted to. I slept in one. (but first i watched the season finale of Carnivale and couldn't sleep cause i thought Professor Lodz was outside my window).

Breakfast in Copenhagen, which rocked after a long night on the train. What rocked more was having enough time to swing by Urban Outfitters and finding the coolest woolly hat. 
Said hat might have had something to do with the dude at the train station later throwing coins at me. Le hobo hat. I likes.

Homeward bound. With inspired thoughts, muddy shoes  and significantly less absinth than i started out with.