Frankfurt: The End

Our last two days in Europe were spent in Frankfurt-am-Main, Germany. Unbeknownst to me, I booked a hostel in the Red Light District :O Prostitution is legal in Germany and Frankfurt is a big town for travellers and the like, so there were "Eros Centres" (legal brothels) and strip joints everywhere. It made for some interesting sights!

Grayson and I walked along the Main river that flows through Frankfurt

and saw an interesting sculpture in front of the Museum of Communication (though I would have thought it was some Modern Art museum) he's a tv-robot-samurai!

We went to the Museum of Filmmaking and saw the entire history of film (with no English descriptions!) and a bunch of work by the Swiss artist HR Giger (Google at your own risk) who was on special exhibition for the design work he's done for many movies, including Alien and Species. They also had some of his paintings and drawings and furniture designs.

Here is a poor picture of a recreated camera obscura in the museum, the view is the river outside the front of the museum...we could even see runners jogging across the wall, upside down!

Frankfurt is also the home of the European Union bank, commemorated with a huge Euro sign in front of the building. Why isn't there a big dollar bill sign on Wall Street?

We also walked around through other parts of town and found this crazy mall that looked like it had a hole through it, and that ended up being this tube of glass that moved through the whole thing, it was some of the craziest architecture ever!

View from the front...is it a hole?

View from the inside...no, it's not a hole, it's a long cylinder of glass moving through a mall. Okie-dokie!

And for Jenny, a German copy, finally!

Following our last day in Germany, we got on a train and hung out in the airport for three hours, then sat on an airplane for ten hours (but I finally got to see The Reader and Slumdog Millionaire, Lufthansa is awesome) and then we arrived in SUNNY Seattle! Don't worry, it's back to rain today, and the rest of the week apparently, but it was certainly nice while it lasted. And Grayson and I are still working on getting our sleep set straight. All in all an insane, huge, amazing trip with far too much for my brain to process. I adored Europe and can't wait to return! (And see more, with longer time in each city! By the time we got a city figured out we were gone for an entirely new one. Kept things interesting though.)

Norway

We flew from London to the Land of the Vikings, or, an airport a couple hours outside of Oslo, Norway. We stayed with a friend of Grayson's in a town called Drammen, and spent a day in Oslo, the capital. Norway is a lot like the Alaska of Europe, and it was the first time we saw overcastness on our whole trip. Clearly, Europe was ready for us to return to Seattle :) We went to the National Gallery that had paintings by Edvard Munch (including the Scream), and also to a museum commemorating the resistance efforts of the Norwegians during WWII, when they were occupied by the Germans. That museum was in the middle of a huge fortress overlooking the harbor. Another crazy thing about Norway is how expensive it was. People tell you this all the time, but we really had to experience it ourselves to believe. $20 for McDonald's double cheeseburgers, small fries and soda for both of us. $30 for a little copy of Alice in Wonderland. $60 for three people to play two rounds of bowling. Free for me to cry as our budget was wiped out by lunch time. On to a few pictures:

Grayson hugging a huge tiger statue in Oslo

Oslo town hall - we were there on some special day, as there were Canadian flags everywhere...

Oslo harbor

Norwegian bookstore with an awesome awning!

Norwegian Troll soda

Norwegian Troll candies - these tasted like caramel snot. No joke.

Calvin and Hobbes in Norway is "Tommy og Tigern," or "Tommy and Tiger"

Crazy bridge in Drammen, Norway

My new favorite drink that will be impossible to find! Villa (pronounced Wee-la in Norwegian), the "champagne soda," it tastes like subtle cream soda.