europe

if i don't hurry up and compose this blog post, then i'll forget everything about my trip to europe.

i can honestly attest to this statement: my recent trip to europe was one of the best experiences of my life so far. i learned so much from this trip, from how to immerse myself in a foreign culture and take on unfamiliar situations, to how to take care of myself as an adult individual and the value of friendship (on that note, for the record, joe was a fabulous travel partner!).

thursday the 12th was one of the most stressful days of my life. i had to turn in 2 papers (which, of course, involved finishing them within minutes beforehand), take my forensic anthropology midterm, pack, and head to dulles airport, which is conveniently located not only nowhere near my house, but nowhere near a metro stop as well (though they're working on it... or at least in theory).

dulles continues to be one of the most antiquated (not to mention puzzling) airports in america. bearing a resemblance to a cross between the 1960s and star wars, dulles requires its international passengers to travel in a "mobile lounge" (basically an oversized, army surplus-esque bus) to the international terminal.

upon boarding the 767, i immediately started feeling anxious. after all, this was to be my first trip outside of the united states, and to make matters worse for me, the flight was a transatlantic one — that's a lot of ocean to pass over! one phone call with my dad and a few pills later, i was ready to roll.

we arrived into heathrow on the morning of the 13th. customs and passport control were pretty easy (when asked how joe and i know each other, i proudly responded, "best friends!"). from there, joe and i boarded the heathrow express train toward paddington station, during which time we were amazed to learn that the train system (as well as the tube system) has a policy stating that if you are delayed by 15+ minutes, then you qualify for a refund. (could you imagine if metro promised that? they'd be even more broke than they already are!)

joe and i checked into the tower hotel before crossing the tower bridge toward shakespeare's globe theatre. unfortunately, the only performances going on while we were there were restricted to school groups, but we got to walk around the theatre. i also bought some pretty bamf things at their gift shop:

• a bottle of mead (my first legal alcohol purchase!)
• a shotglass that says "quaffing and drinking will undo you" (from twelfth night 1.iii)
• a shotglass that says "i'll ne'er be drink whilst i live again" (from marry wives of windsor 1)
• an eraser that says "out, out, damned spot!" (my favorite purchase)

outside of the globe, i think i spotted this guy from gwu walking past us (i was friends with his boyfriend last year). totally random. i also discovered, then, that pigeons fly incredibly low in england. i kept on nearly getting attacked by them, causing me to have to duck and jump out of the way. (it was later confirmed for me that this didn't just happen to me.)

after lunch at a winery (which was impossible to find, due to london's hopelessly random road system) and a quick spell of relaxation at the hotel, joe and i carried on to the british museum. joe and i were shocked by the apparent lack of security measures taken on the part of the museum. honestly, we could have easily climbed into the sarcophagi in the ancient egyptian exhibit without repercussion. (seeing the rosetta stone was pretty amazing, though.)

joe and i then went on to have dinner at an italian restaurant with sophie and lindsay, 2 high school (theatre) friends of mine who now live in europe (sophie attends the academy of music and dramatic arts, and lindsay is studying abroad in bonn, although she was coincidentally in london at the same time). after dinner sophie took us on a very impromptu tour of central london, where we took in the sights and sounds. all in all, it was a fun evening, and it felt great to be able to meet up with old friends in a foreign city. :)

joe and i woke up on the 14th (after coming home exhausted from our travels the night before) and headed over to notting hill (of julia roberts fame) for the portobello road market. we expected it to be quite similar to washington's eastern market, but there turned out to be a few decisive differences. first of all, the variety of goods for sale is far greater. there were multiple antiquarian map dealers there (not just one like at eastern market), and the artwork for sale there was actually good, unlike that postmodern rubbish they sell at eastern market. there were fewer burnt-down buildings, as well.

i bought a bagel with lox and cream cheese for £1 ($1.40)... amazing! those cost me at least $5 stateside! i also bought some boxers with a map of the tube on them (that's another difference: the clothes they sold there weren't sketchy and diseased). from there, we passed by george orwell's house and wound up boarding a double decker bus. we sat at the front of the bus on the upper level, so it turned out to be one of the scarier and more harrowing parts of the trip for us. not only are the roads far narrower in england, but vehicles make extremely sharp turns; it was disorienting to be on the other side of the road as well. there were a few occasions that i was sure we were going to crash into (read: crush) oncoming traffic.

somehow, we survived, and we wound up at buckingham palace. it was even more beautiful than i expected. from there, we headed into the shopping district of knightsbridge, ultimately ending up at the world-famous department store, harrod's. this had long been one of the most attractive of london's destinations to me, and i even wrote about it in my paper for architectural history last year. so, as you can imagine, my pilgrimage to harrod's marked the realization of a dream for me.

"fur is murder" protesters outside notwithstanding, harrod's was definitely the coolest place i've ever shopped at. first and foremost, it is a BIG store. i could have spent days upon days in there. it is also beautiful and ridiculously expensive. that being said, i did manage to make some purchases there:

• a britpop cd for peter that hasn't been released in the us yet
  
• 100 grams of chocolate pralines (which apparently doesn't amount to much)
• a harrod's brand bottle of wine (hey, it was only £7.50)
• a paddington bear! (aww ♥)

i imagine that paddy (my paddington bear) will eventually become regina's husband. anyway, while i was at harrod's, the woman at the humidor tried to sell me a cuban. she seemed shocked to learn that purchasing that would be an extreme act of treason on my part... i thought our embargo on cuba was common knowledge! i also got a photo with the opera singer, who looked much older closer up than she did singing from her balcony.

after that, we went to the transport museum. there were lots of children there, but british children are much better behaved than the brats in america and so it was okay. the museum turned out to be cool and surprisingly untacky, although i definitely made an ass (arse?) of myself by asking where the coat check was (apparently, brits call it a "cloak room"). the museum itself had some great exhibits chronicling the development of the tube; it makes me wonder if the washington metro could ever develop to the point of expansiveness that the tube has. (they got through wwii with the trains still running... that's setting the bar quite high!)

stepping outside the transport museum, we watched a fairly uncharismatic street performer at covent garden untangle himself from a straitjacket, and i got attacked by a few more pigeons. we stopped by the hotel to drop off our purchases, then we met up with chad. (for those of you who don't know, chad is actually the one who introduced joe and i; he's studying abroad at lse this year.) chad failed at finding a restaurant for us, so we were lame and went to vapiano's (even though there's one 4 blocks from my house). we also ran into some problems afterward, because (a) the line to get into the club we wanted to go to was blocks and blocks long, and (b) apparently bars in london close at midnight, limiting our nightlife opportunities. we wound up going to a really fun party at lse, and even though the brits' sense of pop music is 20 years behind ours, we still had a really fun time. (i can't believe lse would sponsor such a swinging party... cheap drinks, too!)

on the 15th, joe and i had to wake up at the ungodly hour of 6am in order to catch our tour bus. i took various persons up on their suggestion to take a tour bus, but of course that comes with a price: my patience. obviously, there were no brits on the bus, and the majority-american bus managed to embarrass our country (the worst being the woman from texas, who vehemently explained to our tour guide that "we have the death penalty... and we use it!"). i sunk my head in dismay as comments like these were uttered with the utmost of density.

our first stop was stonehenge. it was a little disappointing how the roping off severely limited how close to the structure you could get. (honestly, it's been there for thousands of years... do they really think anybody would break them this late in the game?) being the history dork that i am, of course, i still managed to geek out over the structure. as we were preparing to depart, however, the tour guide realized we were one passenger short. to my relief, she only allotted 15 minutes to wait for the passenger to return; he never did, so we continued on. (we all knew what time we were supposed to return, so i was remorseless.)

we went to the town of salisbury after that, which i can't say was terribly interesting. the 789-year-old salisbury cathedral is located there, but i considered its transformation from a house of worship to a tourist attraction to be fairly sacrilegious. however, that trip also entailed me geeking out once again over the sight of the magna carta. we also had a "traditional english" lunch in salisbury, which all of us americans miraculously managed to choke down.

our final destination on the bus tour was bath, which is the one i was really excited about. (it's also where the previously lost passenger miraculously wound up meeting us at.) in retrospect, i should have opted to just spend the entire day there; it's a beautiful city that i would have loved to explore in greater detail. we went to the roman baths, which in themself were incredible, but the surrounding accompanying museum was fairly forgettable. they also sold small glasses of the bathwater (flouridated) for 50p. i should have passed on that one.

sadly, we didn't have much time to spend at the jane austen museum (which was fittingly located on gay street at queen square), so i managed to capitalize on the gift shop and have a sufficiently geeky conversation with the cashier that would have done mrs. novak proud (apparently, a requirement for working there is that you've read each of jane austen's books). after that, i had a weird craving for burger king's onion rings (the burger king in bath, of course, is located in a very old building and employs only white people), but i didn't have time to satisfy that craving of mine before we had to get back on the bus (we were fearful of getting left behind, of course).

traffic was slow getting back into london at that point, but once we did, we jumped on the jubilee line and headed up to stanmore to have dinner with uncle henry and aunt judy. the only adjective i can think of to aptly describe our time up there is fabulous! aunt judy really outdid herself with a delicious dinner; joe and i both had a lot of fun with them. they are great people to talk with, and i had fun chatting about both england and our family from "their" perspective. ;) uncle henry was even nice enough to drive us back to our hotel after that.

the 16th (our last day in england) saw us taking a walking tour a few more of the tourist destinations in london: big ben, parliment, westminster abbey, and no. 10. we also randomly ran into lindsay across the street from big ben, which was sufficiently weird considering how large of a city london is.

our final destination in london was the tower, so we decided to take the long route there so we could check out the docklands light rail. that took us by canada water, which is a ridiculously named/horribly pointless tube station. (however, there is a finnish church off the canada water stop...) so anyway, we got to the tower, and i was hardly impressed by the crown jewels (although joe was); i thought the structure of the facility was far more fascinating. the exterior wall had those slender, cross-shaped windows so that arrows couldn't fly through, once again appealing to my geeky side.

purchases at the tower's gift shop included:

• a glass bell for andy, our very special friend (fit for a queen!)
• a poster-sized chart of the british monarchs' lineage
• a pencil (that pushed me over the edge so that i would qualify for a vat refund)

after that, we picked up our luggage from our hotel and hopped on the heathrow express toward the airport.

our flight to copenhagen only took 2 hours, and when we landed the fog was so thick we couldn't even see out the windows. on the interior, kastrup airport bears a strong resemblance to ikea; they also waved us through customs and passport control pretty quickly (no questions asked). :)

we took the metro to the kongens nytorv stop and checked in to the hotel opera. i immediately fell in love with its carpet, which had a pattern of g-clefs all across it, although it was a tad annoying getting our luggage up to our room (we were on the 5th floor, and the elevator only went up to the 4th). the european-style shower set-up was a unique feature of our room, too, but it was just as clean and comfortable as our room in london, so i was more than fine with it.

despite the rain and the fog, we decided to explore the city a little bit. we found a great restaurant at which to have dinner along nyhavn, the canal that appears on many of copenhagen's postcards. our waitress informed us that the city is very safe (with the infamous exception of christiania), so we took the liberty of walking around a little before retiring for the night. it's a very beautiful city, but not in the same sense that london is; the color scheme that comprises the buildings is more drab, but that gives it more of a gothic look than anything else (in my opinion, at least). the copious amounts of graffiti are a turn-off, though, although its prevelance doesn't necessarily signify that a neighborhood is dangerous.

the 17th began with a bit of a blunder, but wound up being excellent. after hastily getting ready, we missed the tour bus that we had planned on taking around town that morning; so, we decided to slow down the pace and enjoyed a nice breakfast at a coffeehouse. the barista there had recently emigrated from iceland, so we made great fun at her expense with regards to iceland's recent economic downturn/her probable status as a refugee. i don't think she appreciated those remarks, but nonetheless, my irish coffee was delicious (give me a break, it was saint patrick's day!).

(i would just like to interject here my fascination with women's fashion in copenhagen. all of the women were wearing gorgeous fur coats and boots with 3+ inch heels. what was interesting to me about this, though, is that all of these women were riding their bicycles! amazing.)

from the coffeehouse, we went to the central train station (which was close by) to buy stamps for our postcards. there was this really cool model train exhibit set up at the station, and being a model train aficionado, joe was immediately engaged. a business card indicated that the models originated at a shop in hellerup, a suburb of copenhagen, so we decided to take a spur-of-the-moment trip there via the s-tog (commuter rail). fortunately, trains in europe run so frequently and with such efficiency that we hardly had to wait longer than a few minutes for a train to run (mind you, the s-tog's american equivalents include vre and metrolink). and, of course, the train was clean and comfortable.

if i only had one adjective to describe hellerup, it would be WINDY. the strong winds could have nearly knocked us over. however, being in hellerup gave me the opportunity to see a part of denmark off the stereotypical tourist's beaten path (which, of course, i avoid). i bought a stick of deoderant there, so now i have a really awesome stick of deoderant written in danish. :) the model trains shop wasn't terribly different in infrastructure than one in the us, and the train that joe bought (a model of the s-tog, i believe) was a little pricey. however, just down the street from it was a small beach along the shore of the øresund, the strait that separates denmark and sweden. we collected a bit of sand in a ziploc for william (we'd have taken some foliage too but we figured that'd have been hard to take through us customs).

i also loved seeing middelgrunden (the windmill farm in the middle of the øresund) from the beach at hellerup.

after the beach, we got back on the s-tog and traveled back into copenhagen, where we did some shopping (so many h&m stores!!). then, we had dinner at wagmama, which seems to be pan-asian cuisine's answer to vapiano's (except with less attitude). joe especially jumped on the "bring wagamama to america" bandwagon, although i found out a few days ago that wagamama apparently already exists in boston. after dinner, we met up with joe's friend christian, as well as his friend peter, for drinks. that was a lot of fun; i had a great time with them. the guys had some great insights on the danish culture in which they were raised, particularly scandinavians' resistance to small talk (remember that for later on in this story).

peter had recommended that we hit up this irish pub called the dubliner in celebration of saint patrick's day, so off joe and i went. (to be fair, though, i think every major city worldwide has a bar called the "dubliner".) the scene was energetic and peaceable, if not seemingly on the young side as well. the dj's taste in music was as antediluvian as that of the lse party's dj, so when the killers came on and no one knew how to sing to them, the people singing on the tables cleared off; it was then that i took the opportunity to pull joe up with me to dance. the danes, puzzled by the top 40 hit that was playing, stared at us in disbelief, but joe and i sufficiently enjoyed ourselves. ;)

that being said, we knew it was time to go home when the live band that began to play consisted of members who were easily over twice our age. :(

seeing as the 18th was to be our last full day in europe, joe and i got a reasonably early start. we decided to start off with a walking tour, and our first destination was amalienborg. the square in front of the palace was practically devoid of any life forms, and the guards, partaking in their ceremonial march, seemed silly without an audience (think arlington cemetary's tomb of the unknowns sans the crowds). then, suddenly, the gates opened, and out came the queen of denmark in a bentley! (yes, we're sure it was her.) security around her car seemed pretty casual: there was only one other car traveling with the bentley, and the queen's windows were markedly untinted. it would have been easy to stop her and say "hej!".

from there, we went on to kastellet. mind you, kastellet still serves as an active base for the danish armed forces, but we had no problem just sauntering on to the base and walking around. in fact, there were a few civilians jogging around, and the soldiers seemed pretty relaxed. based on this experience as well as our ones with the queen and clearing danish customs, we realized how lax security is in denmark. (fun fact: it only took the nazis 2 hours to take over denmark in wwii. wow, did it really take them that many?) the grass bunkers were fun to run up and down, too.

after that, we stopped by the little mermaid statue. as we had guessed, it was fairly unimpressive. (see african-american civil war memorial.)

then, we got on the train and traveled north to the town of helsingør, particularly its main attraction, kronborg castle (immortalized as elsinore castle in shakespeare's hamlet). for years, i had been dying to explore a castle, and kronborg was definitely the perfect castle for it.

kronborg typifies an ideal medieval castle: seemingly large and looming from the outside, cozy and safe on the inside, but in reality expansive and intricate in its architecture. kronborg sits at the northernmost point of zealand island and soars above the øresund (you can see the swedish shoreline from kronborg). it is an old structure; that fact becomes readily apparent early on. the tightly winding circle staircases all have steps that are warping, and the inscriptions in the stone fireplaces are from centuries ago (except for the one by that jackass dated 1991).

it is also a complex structure. the seemingly endless series of rooms on the upper level featured room after room of antiques (microsoft encarta fans can equate the complexity of kronborg's floorplan to the mindmaze game). it only got more convoluted as we descended into the basement, which is where the granaries, prison cells, cold storage areas, etc. were located. virtually all of it consisted of a dirt floor of shifting elevations... oh, and it was pitch black, too. since joe and i refused to shell out 40 kroner for a flashlight at the (cleverly placed) vending machine, we tried feeling our way around in the dark, occasionally with painful results. it was a miracle that we made it out of there; i wonder what happens if you become truly lost? (i can't imagine how one wouldn't.)

once we emerged from the underworld, joe and i continued on by walking around the chapel and the grounds (oh, and the gift shop, of course). then, joe and i walked back to the central part of helsingør, where we bought hot dogs with an unidentifiable white condiment. (naughty jokes ensued, of course.) i did enjoy their buns, though: they were enclosed at all but the end where the meat stuck out, which prevented drippage. i've decided to make it my own personal goal to popularize them in the united states. ;)

joe and i boarded the train again, this time toward malmö, sweden's southernmost (and 3rd largest) city. since 2000, travel into malmö from denmark has become a cinch thanks to øresundsbron, the bridge crossing the øresund. since joe loves feats of transportation technology, he especially enjoyed this journey (not to say that i didn't, but to be honest, i think i was taking a nap as we were crossing the bridge).

we stopped by the visitor's center at malmö's central train station to purchase malmö cards (that's when i discovered that swedish signage is much more difficult for anglophones to comprehend than danish) before backtracking to the malmö syd station. from there, we boarded a city bus (thanks to our malmö cards, which paid for our fares), which took us where?

to ikea, of course!

that's right, folks. in a moment of ultimate geekiness, joe and i paid homage to the great swedish corporation by visiting an authentic swedish ikea. it wasn't terribly different from an american ikea, but i always have fun at ikea because i love looking at their displays. there were some subtle differences, of course: the "apartment in 200 ft²" displays were instead in metric measurements ("lägenhet i 30 m²"), and all of the escalators were ramp-style (and thus more awesome). the café was better, too; i can now say that i have enjoyed a truly delicious cappauchino at ikea. ;)

also, joe and i bought awesome matching neon yellow ikea employee vests for 40 kroner each. :)

after ikea madness, joe and i were waiting for a bus to take us into downtown malmö. while waiting, joe decided to make the swedish woman also waiting for the bus feel sufficiently uncomfortable by forcing small talk on to her (remember what christian and peter had told us?). the results were beyond hilarious.

joe: "(incomprehensible attempts to greet the woman in swedish)"
woman: "va?"
(joe shows the woman the phrase in our guidebook he was trying to articulate)
woman: (in flawless english) "oh, how am i? i am good. how are you?"
joe: "good. we're just waiting for the bus to take us downtown."
woman: "where are you from?"
joe: "california."
woman: "what part?"
joe: (referring to me) "he's from the los angeles area, and i'm from san diego."
woman: "have you heard of thousand oaks?"
me: (exclaiming) "what? no way! i'm from thousand oaks!"
woman: "oh, really? my son-in-law is from thousand oaks!"

we then chatted for a bit about how her son-in-law used to work in retail there before immigrating to sweden, how her daughter has visited there, etc. i got the common question regarding thousand oaks ("it's not that close to los angeles, is it?" "no ma'am, it isn't."). talk about the proverbial small world.

upon arriving in downtown malmö, joe and i made our way over to the citytunneln museum. to explain, banverket is constructing an underground rail tunnel between øresundsbron's northern terminus and malmö's central station to relieve overcrowding, to provide quicker routing between malmö and copenhagen, and to encourage malmö's development as a population and economic center; this project, called citytunneln, has its own associated museum with information and exhibits about said project. as transport-philes, joe and i had to check it out.

the museum's docent was extremely eager to educate us about citytunneln (as if we'd been her only visitors for the day!), even so far to putting on the english-language video about citytunneln in the auditorium for us. i wasn't expecting such warm reception, but nonetheless, i thought it was pretty cool that banverket had established an entire museum in honor of its project; could you imagine if wmata, who can't even complete their projects on time, did that? anyway, this all explains why i now have a stress ball that says "citytunneln" on it.

for dinner, we went to what was advertised as "probably the best steak house in town". awkward translation aside, the service was strange (as had been the service throughout our trip-- no gratuity really changes things!): we were told that the wait would be in excess of 45 minutes; then, after leaving the restaurant in dismay and returning 3 minutes later (after realizing we'd rather just wait than try to find another restaurant in malmö), an available table for 2 suddenly materialized. once we sat down, though, the meal was fine (although by that point i'd begun to miss america's freakishly large portions at restaurants).

after dinner, joe and i took a walk through malmö, past the casino (which i wasn't allowed into because i'm not 20-- i didn't even want to gamble, i just wanted to see it!) and malmö castle, before boarding the train back to copenhagen. back in copenhagen, joe and i sought out a long-lasting gay bar that our guidebook raved about, but apparently it closed in 2007, so we found a rather empty bar (hey, it was a wednesday night) and hung out in there for a bit. a woman approached me who looked like the queen (in the hag disguise) from snow white, but the bartender quickly shooed her out. (she was complaining about something... the government, possibly? i asked the bartender who she was, and he said "my mother". i'm still not sure if he was kidding or not. consider it the mystery i left behind in europe!)

our time in copenhagen on the 19th mainly consisted of us packing and getting ready to go to the airport. the 9-hour flight was fine (sas airlines is amazing!), but i overdid it with the sleeping pills and couldn't bring myself to composure when the flight attendent came around with dinner (in fact, i think i was drooling). re-entering the united states through customs was a nightmare, of course; our time spent there totaled over an hour and consisted of 3 unnecessarily long lines. finally, we were allowed into the country (what a surprise).

well, there you have it: my detailed review of my trip to europe. :) as i said, it was one of the most amazing experiences in life, and partaking in that experience makes me want to travel even more. photos will be uploaded to facebook shortly.

also, do any of you have twitter? i was skeptical of it at first, but now i'm starting to really get in to it. if so, you should "follow" my "tweets". ;) even though i'm going to try to get back into blogging, i'm finding that twitter is a good way to let everyone know what's up.