I Hamburglieve this journey is Ulmost over

Hallo,

My time in Olso ended with a very intreresting experience. Due to exorbanent prices of hostels and a general lack of planning on my part I had no place to stay for 1 night in Oslo as my friend headed back to his hometown for a festival. With my flight being the next day I decided to spend the night in the Oslo airport rather than be a bum on the streets. This could have been a lot worse, but has deffinaltly been the worst night of sleep I got the whole trip. However, a few valuable things came out of the experience. First, I learned to appreciate being able to sleep horizontally. Second, I began reading a book I bought in the airport. The tome, entitled Atlas Shrugged is one I have attempted to read several times before, but could never get past the first 30 pages. This means nothing in a book thats over 1200 pages long. The night at the airport, however, gave me the perfect oppertunity to be force to read. So far it is going quite well. Finally the night was made bareable by the free internet that they had at the airport (thanks to everyone who was online and spoke to me in this time of need). It kept me awake and sane as I waited 16 hours for my flight.

Departing Scandinavia, I soon found myself looping back around to Hamburg where I met up with my friend Holger and a few of his friends. The city was 7.27 times more exciting than the last time I was there. For instance, I actually knew some people and wasn´t lost on the Reeperbahn alone. The place we stayed was a little outside the city center in an office. When Holger had told me we would be staying in a friends office I was quite skeptical and figured I could be curled up in a cubical under a desk hopeing to not get strangled by computer cords as I slept. Apparently the German version of an `office`is quite different. The place was formerally a flat and was absolutely enormous. It was clean, sleek, and open with a full shower, jacuzzi tub, and swimming pool in the yard.

We did a few other things in Hamburg including seeing and crawling around in a old Russian submarine, visting the largest model trainset in the world (which was absolutly astounding in detail and hilarity) and also ate at an amazing Brazilian resturant where they brough giant spears of meat to your table and hacked them off right on your plate. It was absolutely great.

After Hamburg I travled with Holger to his home in Senden where I spent the night. Last year I had also visited his house and met his lovely family. They are all even more wonderful than I remember.

From here I will travel to Budapest and stay in a hostel for the first time in about a month. It will be a groovy transition. I can´t believe I have less than a month left...

Tschüß,
Eurokid