Christmas ended up being much busier than Christmas Eve this year. Dad and I went to my Grandma's this year and had lunch with her and my Aunt Elaine and Uncle Bob. Anyways, lunch was not bad for $3.00: chicken kiev, wild rice, and some mint cheesecake for dessert. As usual when my Dad, Grandma and aunt get together, I get to learn about some "ancient" Stearns county history; however, it is pretty interesting .

When we got home, we began preparing dinner for the Kollmann family's 1st Annual Authentic German Christmas Dinner. I originally came up with the idea after thinking about my unfortunate birthday experience from last year. After going through some websites and cookbooks, I decided that it would awesome to make up some rouladen, sp?tzle, and pfeffern?sse for dessert. If you think we are good "Germans", you'd be wrong since no one in my immediate family (myself included) ever had prepared any of this before. Basically, rouladen is a sliced roast that we wrap up around some bacon (we used turkey bacon), pickles, and some onion. Sp?tzle is an egg noodle, and pfeffern?sse is a christmas cookie.

The dinner definitely required more work than I originally thought and got some great help from the whole family which really added to the whole "togetherness" feel which I hoped. BTW, the picture is of the rouladen cooking. The sp?tzle definitely required some work as well. I had grabbed a recipe online for it and the directions were sort of vague, like a particular direction telling us to add "some" lukewarm water to the dough. We used a potato ricer to make the noodles which only take about 30 seconds to cook in boiling water.

Overall, the dinner turned out awesome, but mostly thanks to my family. We were all pretty surprised and definitely hope that it turns out this well every time we experiment on random food, though I suppose it doesn't make me feel more German . I think we've all agreed that this is a tradition we should keep going for a while.

-Trevor

I hope everyone is having a great Christmas / Holiday Season. My parents and I are having a low-key Christmas eve this year as my parents are recovering from a cold and don't want to spread the cold at my relatives since my grandpa just got back from the hospital . However, we are still planning on having an authentic German dinner tomorrow. We are making some Rouladen with some sp?tzle with pfeffern?sse (cookies) for dessert. However, we bought some Argentine wine, but it came highly recommended, so we were willing to make some sacrifices.

BTW, I was in the giving spirit today so I uploaded some photos from Sweden in my gallery. Check them out, they are chock full of useful information if you want to take your next trip in Sweden.

I'm also in the process of redesigning my website. What better way to spend my off hours on vacation than doing a little PHP programming. I picked up a couple of books to help me with a few things I've been working on. I even created a couple of b2evolution plugins, I was pretty excited about that. I don't know if you will see the redesign before the New Year, but you can see how the design is developing by checking out my Test Blog.

-Trevor

Sorry for the late post, I kept on putting off this post. I originally wrote it while waiting in New Jersey, so it was fresh in my memory.

How can I spend my last day in Europe? Well, it did not end quite as well as I would have liked. It was fairly cold today, being cloudy, cool, and breezy. So since I had planned this day as a walking tour of Copenhagen, I decided that dressing in layers was the only way to go. With two t-shirts underneath my sweater as well as two pairs of socks, I thought I would be well off. It helped. However, despite the cold weather, the walk ended up turning out pretty decent, I saw plenty of very interesting sites.

I started off checking out the royal palace at Christiansborg Slot. While it is no longer used as the royal palace, it is still used for important state functions. However, tours did not open until 1 pm, so I did not think I would make it back in time, so I thought pictures of fa?ade was sufficient. Actually, from the outside the building was fairly unremarkable, but the guards had nice bushy hats. Afterwards I checked out a couple of churches (Copenhagen seems to have plenty), one being the city?s cathedral, Vor Frue Kirke. To say that it was the brightest church is an understatement. The exterior is drab, but the interior practically radiates light. If I was a better Catholic, I think it would be easy to be moved spiritually.

Maybe I was just getting tired from traveling over time, but it seemed that after a while, many of the buildings sort of looked the same. Of course in central Copenhagen there is Nynhavn, which has a pretty rough past. It is next to a navigable canal and once was essentially the red light district for incoming sailors. Walking through, it seems to have cleaned up, and is now content to house plenty of trendy cafes.

In northern Copenhagen, I first walked to the Amalienborg Slot. Most of the palaces there appeared to be under renovation, but there was, yeah you guessed it, another church. However, Marmorkirken (aka. Frederikskirken) has a very unique dome and really dominated the buildings in the area while not clashing. Inside were some pretty nice postcards for 5 DKK each. Luckily for the church, I only wanted two and only had a 20 DKK coin on me, but I thought donating a little extra to the church probably won't come to any harm.

After this church, it was time to walk further north and find the famous statue, ?The Little Mermaid? cast by Edvard Eriksen who used his wife as the model. It was around this time that a group of Chinese tourists came out of a bus with their stereotypical SLRs strapped on their neck (Actually I think the stereotype is Japanese, but anyways, they fit a stereotype as perhaps I did as well). I was glad that I was no longer the only tourist who goes to Northern Europe in the winter. The mermaid statue is near Kastellet which was a fortress surrounded by a star-shaped moat. The fort evidently is used as an academy, so no luck on entering any buildings (I was able to walk around the hill that followed the moat).

By the time I made my journey around the moat, I was freezing. I had been walking around town for almost three hours and my mouth was getting a little numb. So I thought it was an excellent time to get some lunch. It seems that Europeans are really in no rush to eat lunch, so the whole process will always take a minimum of an hour. That was fine by me. I found a little basement caf? and had an open-faced sandwich with smoked salmon, cheese, and a sauce which I believed contained avocado. It turned out to be pretty decent and much improved over the wrap from the night before.

After lunch, I knew I was getting pretty tired, so I wanted to finish up the day on a good note, so I stopped at Rosenberg Slot. The castle/palace is set around a park that I imagine must be gorgeous during the summer months. I was able to get tickets for the treasury and a couple rooms of the castle. Inside they had some royal jewelry, including some crowns. The details on the crowns were amazing, it is so amazing that anyone was able to manipulate gold and precious stones as well as that. I finished up the day by checking out the botanical gardens. It seemed to be reminiscent of Munsinger Gardens in St. Cloud, but on a larger scale. They had some greenhouses featuring cacti (some of them were from Arizona!), as well as other exotic plants.

Maybe, I didn?t quite end the day on a good note. As I had mentioned, I wanted to check out McDonalds, and I had a huge hankering for a good American burger. I got there, and the atmosphere is much different. Being Denmark, the McDonalds has a lego themed playroom, while Euro-techno music is playing through the speakers. It seems to be a fairly trendy area. I ordered a cheeseburger from the centomenu which most items being about 10 Danish crowns (about $2). I also ordered my usual strawberry shake, but I found the food to be disappointing. While McDonalds is not great, I expect a certain level of quality that just was not present. I think it still must be good enough for most Europeans, but the shake tasted just too much like cardboard to be able to finish it. However, one bad meal does not a ruined journey make.

While I won?t bore you with the details of flying home, overall this was a great trip. I was amazed about the level and range of emotions I felt on this journey. I learned a bit about myself as well as other parts of the world. I also learned how to swallow a lot of pride and ask people directions; Arnab has some firsthand experience on how difficult it was for me to ask for directions when lost in San Francisco (maybe not lost, we were just getting our bearings.) Overall, while I am going to be a bit financially constrained for a while, I think I would go on this trip again if I had to do it over again. I would like to say thanks to everybody for being very supportive. It made the trip much more bearable when I know that there were people in the U.S. wishing me well. I really appreciated seeing e-mails and comments about my trip. BTW, I have postcards from the trip, some with stamps on them, but unfortunately, I wasn?t able to find a mailbox in Sweden to send them off in and the worker in the hostel in Stockholm would not mail them off for me. For those who requested postcards, you will be seeing yours shipped via first class U.S. mail.

-Trevor

P.S. The flight from New Jersey was delayed, but I was lucky enough to get an in-flight meal as a way of saying sorry. This was good considering that I had no food at home and all the grocery stores near my place was closed by the time I got home after 1 am.