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!