bad metaphor

I made it across the pond and back by Wednesday evening, more or less in one piece, and have been recovering / rearranging my apartment / hiding from socialization since then. Before I post my trip reports, here are a few general lessons I’ve learned:

- Germans, especially big German men the size of refrigerators, can DRINK. It is not a good idea, when you are a petite 5’2″ Asian girl, to try and keep pace with them!

- It appears that the “in” accessory in Sweden is a beautiful blonde baby. I’ve never seen so many cherubic babies as I did walking the streets of Malmö. Apparently this is because Sweden offers the world’s most generous maternity (and paternity) leave packages. I’m not a kid person, but if I got 18 months worth of paid vacation per tot, I might reconsider the whole birth control thing!

- Denmark is full of windmills. Almost a quarter of the country’s electricity is provided by wind energy. I don’t quite understand the people who think windmills are ugly; they’re like big sleek modern art installations. They’re especially more beautiful considering their function in replacing hideous smokestacks and coal plants. And the people, like my friend Melinda, who worry about windmills killing birds? Even if that were true, I say, bring it on.

- Brussels is a very confusing city for drivers. Six-way intersections, four different kinds of traffic (cars, trams, buses, people), and streets signs that are barely legible when standing in front of them, let alone from the street? We would have been hopelessly lost, had it not been for…

- …Kate, our GPS, saving our asses. If you plan on doing any significant amount of driving in Europe, shell out for a GPS with European maps. It’s well worth the $400. I’m fairly certain Kate got annoyed with us humans at times. Her robotic voice seemed to take on a slightly snippy tone whenever we’d miss several turns in a row, and when in Sweden, flat out gave up trying to pronounce some of the incomprehensibly voweled street names. Any longer and I’m sure she would have quit, or navigated us into a nice Scandinavian ditch. But we’re lucky and very grateful she didn’t! (nice robot, now please don’t rise up and kill your masters)

More notes and observations to come over the next series of posts. Again, I’ll be backdating these to their appropriate dates and times:

• Mile High Observations
• The Drunken Hamburgers
• Malmö the Beautiful

Today we set off to explore the lovely city of Malmö. We chose to CouchSurf here because of its proximity to Kristianstad, the town from whence Andy’s ancestors came. I won’t pretend that I’d heard of Malmö prior to this trip, but I’m glad we ended up going here – it wasn’t exactly warm per se, but the weather was tolerably beautiful, and I think we were in more or less the warmest part of Sweden.

Before we set off for the city, however, we had to jump over a number of language barriers. Our host was having some work done on his attic, so he let us know that some carpenters might be knocking on the door to use our sink or borrow some things. Shortly after we woke, someone knocked at the door; Elijah answered it, while Andy and I gathered our things together in our makeshift bedroom. We overheard the following conversation:

Swedish carpenter: *something incomprehensible to us*

Elijah (flustered): “I, uh, I’m sorry – I don’t speak Spanish!”

Swedish carpenter: ¿Es verdad? Ay, lo siento…

Then Elijah says he got even more flustered and switched to some strange pidgin of English and German. Meanwhile, Andy and I were helpfully laughing hysterically.

I was to get some comeuppance later, when we were at a nearby mall searching for an electronics store (Andy had not packed a battery charger for his video camera, and thus began the epic quest for a European one). I attempted to withdraw some money from an ATM, which never posed much of a problem on the continent. Every ATM we passed here snubbed my card, and I worried that it would get eaten by ATM trolls eventually. The line at the mall ATM disappeared, so I thought I’d try it. I mashed some buttons, attempting to see the screen in English, when a woman in line behind me barked (borked) at me. I turned and looked at her with this deer in the headlights look, thinking, “how do you say ‘I can’t speak Swedish?’ again?” (According to Elijah, you say “I’m sorry, I can’t speak Spanish” ) Instead of attempting to say something, I grabbed my check card and ran like a rude person. In retrospect, saying something in English would have been about a billion times more polite (or even saying “I’m an American tourist!”, but I wasn’t thinking. Oh well.

We explored quite a bit of the city, due to being lost (even with Kate in our possession). Here are a billion photos because I know you’d rather look at pretty pictures than read my blather!

Is this one of Andy’s ancestors? Don’t quite see the resemblance.

Yep, we’re lost.

A cock in a bush! No I’m not above juvenile humor!

Greedy ducks and geese that kind of came up and mobbed us. Like a fraidy cat I ran away while the boys were having a good time. They don’t know the dark hearts that lurk in birds.

Andy’s on the epic quest for his relatives in the land of the elves.

Another pretty lake in Malmö.

Is Sweden really real? I was there and all, but I still can’t make up my mind.

Fly away, modernist unicorn!

In front of the Malmö house, surrounded by probably what is the least effective moat ever. I don’t think it would even deter invading ducks.

The Malmö house.

At a beautiful dog park by the coast, now dubbed "Dog Heaven" – due to its idyllic features for dogs, not because there were dead dogs there. It had big open spaces for dogs to run around in, obstacle courses, and of course, access to water.

This crazy building here is called the Turning Torso.

Closeup of the Torso. It made me dizzy standing so close to it!

The Oresund Bridge, one of the longest and most expensive bridges in the world. You can drive over it, or if you like, lean over the rail and throw euros into the open sea.

Pretty lego block looking buildings in front of the Turning Torso (yes, I know lego blocks are actually Danish).

Elijah van Winkle wakes up and discovers himself in a land of blonde people, rigid lines and primary colors.

This area was such a photographer’s dream. I’m sad I didn’t get better photos, but I’m no expert!

Can one actually go inside Outside?

We found Noah’s Ark…en! It’s in a little park near where we stayed.

In Sweden there are oversized bunnies and piglets who live amongst the elves.

The homestead Ol’ Gnomy McGnomester and his pet piggies.

Possibly a level in Super Mario.

That’s it for Malmö. Stay tuned for smaller towns in Sweden, and Copenhagen, in the next entry!

I arrived in Brussels Airport okay, in one piece and sans the credit card (and other goods) they were trying to push on the flight (is this a new thing these days, where people try and sign you up for credit cards on planes? I guess as long as they’ve got you cornered…). As soon as I met up with Elijah and Andy, we immediately set off for Maastricht, guided by Kate, our trusty GPS unit with the calm and collected Australian voice. We arrived into town and roamed about the centrum a bit, looking for a place to eat. Fun fact – if you’re in a Western European city, lost, and unsure where to go, it’s a safe bet to head to the ‘Centrum’ or ‘Zentrum’, which is the downtown area.

Sunny (gray) Maastricht, in the Netherlands, where we stopped to get a quick lunch before heading out on the open Autobahn.

The place we finally settled upon was mentioned in both our guidebook and on Wikitravel, I think La Cloche? At any rate I can’t say I’d recommend it. We each ordered different things, but somehow all of those different names translated into the same thing: gravy, of varying shades. Mine was deep-fried gravy. Elijah’s and Andy’s just consisted of a glop of the gravy over a scrap of meat.

"Hmm, what can I order here…there’s gravy, a slightly different shade of gravy, fried gravy with french fries…"

As soon as we finished consuming our gravy, a couple immediately swooped in to take over our table, polishing off the fries I couldn’t finish. We had to get on the road, so the various shades of gray in the sky and our food was my lasting impression of Maastricht. I’m sure it’s a charming town otherwise!

In Hamburg that night, we stayed with Elijah’s friend, a big but sweet and dorky metal-head; he has quite the collection of dragonbooks (you know the kind: big busty women in chainmail on the front, dwarves with battle axes, and of course, jewel-toned dragons), and roleplaying die scattered all over the bachelor pad. Our host was very hospitable, and baked us a big German meal: pork and potatoes, which we washed down with a bottle of wine and two beers. Then we set off to explore the Hamburg nightlife, aiming to go to the district known as the Reeperbahn – the largest red light district in Europe. Yes, even bigger than its more famous and seedier cousin in Amsterdam, which doesn’t cover quite as much ground. Also known as the place where the Beatles really took off. But before we set off, our host and his drinking buddies loaded up their backpacks with beer bottles to tide us over until we made it to a bar.

Now, let me see if I can do a bit of beer accounting (if that’s even possible, given the flawed instrumentation I am using to measure quantities): we drank two beers on the way to the subway station. Had another beer while on the subway to the riverside. While tarrying at the river, had two more beers. By this point we were out, and the Germans panicked, so we ducked into an English pub and had one or two more overpriced beers. Got lost on our way to the Reeperbahn after the pub, and our German hosts were rapidly attaining critical levels of sobriety. Contemplated taking a cab to a bar, before we finally reached our destination. Bought some beers from a drink store and roamed up and down the street, before ending up at a bar for awhile. Oh, and everyone had to buy a round at this bar of course. I can’t really say how many drinks we had at this bar, though I remember Elijah and I (both considered lightweights by the much larger and more alcohol-tolerant Germans we were with) were trying to just split drinks between the two of us. All in all, the final count? Too many!

Keep in mind that German beer is, by and large, much “meatier” and more alcoholic than its pitiful American counterpart. The Germans, at one point early in the evening, mentioned to Elijah that they were less than impressed with my drinking skills – me! A petite, 5’2″ Asian girl, failing to impress people built like refrigerators and who had likely been imbibing beer since their days in utero. The trick worked, and I tried to keep up with the Germans.

Did I succeed? I guess you could say so, but I was certainly in pain the next morning. But so were the Germans (ha!), two of whom had to go to work very early – it was a Sunday night, after all. And Elijah’s friend grudgingly conceded that I was able to keep up, so the hangover was slightly worth it. Maybe.

After the three of us recovered, we bequeathed an octopus to our host for his troubles and departed. We stopped by the Hamburg river to enjoy it during the day:

A brief moment of sunshine before the rain clouds came over Hamburg again.

The boys horsing around.

Getting all our ducks in a row.

Then it was off to the ferry that took us from northern Germany to Denmark. I’d never been on a ferry before and it was kind of like being stuck in a tipsy, swaying mall. Everything was duty free, which I’m pretty sure translates to “we’ll not charge any taxes, but markup the prices by at least 20% anyway.” As soon as we got on, everybody immediately got in line at the cafeteria for food. About half an hour later, Andy decided he was hungry and wanted to get something, but the cafeteria was now closed. I guess we didn’t get the memo.

Waiting for the ferry. I found something kind of surreal about this clock.

Sailor art.

Who doesn’t go for Prince?

The German landscape features lots of windmills, but Denmark even more so – I mentioned this before, but am still impressed with the giant white pinwheels, tracing lines of energy in the sky. I wish I could have gotten a better photo of them, but here’s something stolen from Google Image Search:

We got into Copenhagen and stuffed ourselves at an excellent and cheap Mediterranean buffet called RizRaz. Roamed around the city at night for a bit:

Copenhagen at night! If you look closely, you can see that this appears to be a combination Chinese buffet and gun store. Why didn’t we eat here?

The siren call and the bright lights of…McDonalds, where Danish teenagers hang out at night.

We didn’t stay long that night, because we had agreed to meet our host at 9:30 in Malmo, Sweden. Before the trip, I had contacted several prospective hosts via this website called CouchSurfing. It’s a social network of travelers who offer to put up their places for other travelers to stay. People can leave reviews and references for others, as well as verify the identities of the potential hosts and guests. It’s a brilliant way of meeting new people in other countries (as well as saving money, of course), and we were lucky enough to have found a host right before we left.

When we got to our host Fred’s place, we found, to our dismay, that his door had no buzzer! We had a cell phone with us that Elijah’s parents had used on their last trip to Europe, which would have been highly useful, except 1) it was Dutch, and we could only buy more minutes in the Netherlands 2) it had trouble connecting to any of the networks we found in the area and 3) none of us could figure out how to dial a Swedish phone number. Really, European phone numbers resemble lottery numbers to me: “Zero zero! Four six! Eighty two! Sixty nine! Thirty-seven!” And you’re supposed to omit the zero in front of the city code when calling from certain countries, and…this was quite a bit for our beer-addled, road-fatigued brains to handle.

Our saving grace was that Andy, ever the intrepid Geek Boy Scout, had brought along his laptop. Luckily enough, there were several unsecured wireless networks in the area (oh, tech savvy Swedes!). So the three of us huddled beneath a tree in front of Fred’s house, emailing him and hoping that the guy would just randomly check his email at that moment. Sure enough, a few minutes later, he leaned out his window and yelled out “Are you from Couch Surfing?” I still feel quite grateful that he didn’t just decide to kick those frumpy looking nerds off his doorstep.

Instead, Fred let us into his apartment, which turned out to be a gorgeous little IKEA-esque place (okay, so maybe all of Sweden just looks like IKEA to me. I love me some Scandinavian design). He welcomed us with the warmest, kindest hospitality – offered us tea from his garden, which was much appreciated, and some Swedish food specialities, which was also appreciated…but maybe to a lesser degree. At least from Elijah and I. If there were any doubt in my mind that Andy was descended from Swedes, it was swiftly eradicated when I saw how he gushed about a particular Swedish treat: caviar mixed with cheese, packaged in a tube with a maniacal winking boy on the front that strongly resembled Andy. I squeezed a little dab of it on a square of flat Swedish bread, nibbled at it, and politely choked it down with some tea.

Distaste for fishy cheez-whiz notwithstanding, we were all very happy we tried out CouchSurfing. I’d highly recommend it, especially if traveling with at least another buddy just in case the situation turns, well, weird. I’ve heard of some negative experiences, but overall everyone I know who has done it has been happy with using it.

Thus, we managed to hit up four countries over the course of two days. The next post: our stay in Sweden!

Airports induce stress. I’m sure it has a lot to do with the fact that everyone is rushing around, trying to get to their planes on time, while tumbling through the obstacle course that is airport security. I recognize the need for heightened security, especially nowadays – though I can’t take some aspects of it seriously, like the color coded threat level, which remains a constant hue of terrifying macaroni and cheese orange. I’m beginning to suspect, however, that the constant changes in pressure, from repeated takeoffs and landings, begin to do something not quite pleasant to the human brain.

My trip almost got off to an unpleasant start, starting with the Kansas City International Airport. Now the busiest I’ve ever seen KCI cannot even rival the deadest times at an O’Hare or JFK; realistically you could, if you wanted, show up to the airport half an hour before, and expect to make it through security with plenty of time to spare. Most of the eateries seem to close up shop by 8 or 9, that’s how un-busy it is at KCI. Such was the case the day I left. This didn’t seem to put other travelers at ease, however; for the most part people were really snippy and anxious. The line to the ticket counter was about five or six people long, and moving at a fairly even pace. A man in front of me decided to leave the line for some reason, and was retrieving his suitcases. When I failed to move forward in the brief nanosecond after his suitcase had rolled out of the way, I felt myself propelled forward by the man in line behind me! Indignant, I turned around – the man had actually bumped me, not with his hands or suitcase, but with his oversized paunch. Yes, that’s right, I got penguin-bumped by a complete stranger.

Then another woman, a mini-Blanche DuBois behind him complained about how “it’s usually never like this. This is unbelievable. Simply unbelievable,” fanning herself and waving her arm towards the line. Of five people (well, now, four). I’d hate to see Blanche’s reaction when she inevitably had a layover in a real international airport.

After I got my tickets and scrambled away from the wrath of the penguins, I headed toward the security checkpoint for my gate. I stopped when I realized that I was several hours early, and decided to stop by the bathroom before going in. I paused to tuck my tickets and passport inside my purse, and a guy behind me (politely, but frostily) said, “Ma’am?” gesturing to the security gate. It was as if he’d badly wanted to cut in line, but decided to go the well-mannered route. The thing is, though, there wasn’t a line at all, and there was nobody either around or beside me – except this dude, who was evidently tailgating me on foot.

Now I’m certainly not a fan of sloth-paced people when I’m in a hurry myself. It was really odd, though, because KCI, as usual, was quiet as a mausoleum that day. No lines, either at security or otherwise, and really no reason to freak out, unless they showed up really late to try and catch their flight. I guess people need something to do in an airport beyond browsing the endless selection of SkyMalls and travel pillows, and stressing out is just as good of an activity as any.