Paris is a city that’s always hard to leave. No, I mean, like, physically difficult to leave. The last time I was there, I had a flight out of Charles de Gaulle. I left the hotel 5 hours before the flight, and still nearly didn’t make it. This was on account of the train strike that stopped the train halfway there, throwing everyone out into the station and into mass confusion. On the bright side, I’ve never spoken nor understood…
“Oh, dear.” After traveling half the day, and lugging our bags up the hills of Montmartre, those were the first words Ruth softly spoke as we stepped into our new home for the next three nights. Erika and I immediately set about to doing what we do: checking out the bedrooms, finding the washing machine, exploring the kitchen. But Ruth was quite clearly stricken. “It’s just so… old, and… run down,” she clarified. Truth is, I don’t think Erika or…
“How long are you here for?” the immigration agent asked us. “Just five days,” I replied. “What’s your next destination?” she followed up. “France.” “And then?” “Portugal!” I said brightly. “And then?” “Spain!” She made a haughty hand motion; ‘get on with it,’ it said. “Keep going until you’re back to your home country.” “Whew, that could take a while. Italy, probably Bulgaria, Turkey… then Asia, but we don’t have it planned…” “When do you go home?” I shrugged. “I…
“Je vais te tuer!“ I couldn’t hear much of what was being said in the street four stories below us, but I heard that loud and clear. The woman hustled up the street–hurriedly making a call on her cell phone–away from the man who’d uttered those words, and away from the Mercedes S-class she’d just smashed up. She hadn’t been able to shatter the windshield, as much as she’d tried. All in all, the guy seemed to handle it pretty…
Sadly, traveling to Amsterdam brought our airplane-free streak to an end. This was doubly sad because Arlanda airport, in Stockholm, is way outside the city. From Nacka, it was over an hour for us to get there. Then the flight had a short layover in Copenhagen… it was a long travel day. Fortunately, our hotel was very close to the airport in Amsterdam, so once we landed, getting to our place was easy. Why’d we stay out close to the…
Going to Stockholm, I was terrified. I’d just seen Erika–who was far more excited about Copenhagen than even I was–be crushed by unmet expectations. Now, here, we were going to maybe the one city on earth I most wanted to see, and I was terrified Stockholm would do to me what Copenhagen just did to Erika. I could walk through our steps of getting into the city, how we spent our time there, slowly building up to the answer to…
The train out of Berlin was totally uneventful. We made a brief stop in Hamburg, then we were off again. It wasn’t until we got to the border with Denmark that something interesting happened. That ‘something interesting’ is that our train went onto a boat. Our train went onto a boat. I figured we’d go into Denmark the long way, which went over land. When it was clear we were heading for the strait, I thought, oh interesting, they must…
The elevator doors opened, and we shambled out into the bright early morning light. With Franz and Helga—and fatigue—weighing us down, we found ourselves in the middle of an overgrown field with some crumbling structures near by. Hmmm. That’s a weird first look at Berlin. To get to Berlin from Munich, we did something kind of weird and crazy for us—we took an overnight train. It was kind of ridiculous, being on a train for 11 hours and making ourselves…
For the first time on the trip, we were going somewhere I’d already been before. And I couldn’t be more excited, because it was one of my favorite places I’d ever gone. Munich! I’d been looking forward to getting back for years. I had a little trepidation about it, though. What if I didn’t like it as much now? What if, after seeing so much more of the world, I now realize Munich is just ehh? I prepared myself to…
Even for Switzerland, Zurich was expensive. We couldn’t find affordable hotels anywhere, so eventually we burned some credit card points to get a room, and cut our stay down to only two nights. Let’s get in and get out with our wallets in tact. This turned out to be just fine, as though Zurich was lovely and comfortable and beautiful, it wasn’t like there was a ton to do there other than just be. We do love just being, and…
