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:
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