Paris in 24 hours! Impossible, but we gave it a shot anyway. We actually visited Paris on two separate days, but it didn’t add up to much more than 24 hours in the end. Sure, we would have liked to stay longer, but not at the expense of passing on something else (like Switzerland, our next destination).

We wanted to visit the sites that most tourists do; the Eiffel Tower, the Arc d’Triomphe, Notre Dame and the Louvre. And these places were indeed, very popular. There are a lot of people in Paris and a huge chunk of them can be found at these sites on any given day.

Here are some of the observations we made about Paris:

• Paris is intriguing and surprising.
• The Eiffel Tower is a little ugly up close.
• The subway system is very extensive and good, but the stations aren’t well designed. We had to walk a lot when transferring from one train to another, so we saw a lot of concrete tunnels.
• The Louvre is enormous and worth a visit even you never look at any art.
• People speak French in Paris. If you talk to them in English, they will likely understand but reply in French.
• Apparently, the French I learned in school was not a complete waste of time.
• People still wear berets.
• At the Pere-Lachaise Cemetary, Chopin’s grave is covered with fresh flowers. Jim Morrison is also buried there, but his grave has more than flowers laid on it; we also saw half a bottle of beer and… I think, maybe – Sea Monkeys? Hard to say.
• You can buy crepes or croissants on almost every street corner.
• Legwarmers are back in style.
• There are a lot of wounded pigeons.

We spent one afternoon and evening at the Louvre and Musee d’Orsay. They are really good museums and there was a lot to see. I’ve always loved some of Monet’s paintings and I was happy to see a few good ones. But honestly, I’ve never been much of an art buff. I’ve never liked the old stuff, and I still don’t. I’m not saying I don’t respect it, I just don’t like it. And lets face it, there are a lot of really bad paintings in the museums and I’m sure the artists who painted them meant for them to be hidden for all eternity. They’d be appalled to see some of their lesser works on display in a museum.

But I did see a few things I liked and I discovered one fabulous painting by Eugene Delacroix. And the Art Nuevo section was good. As far as the Mona Lisa is concerned, who knows? She was 10 feet away behind glass with so much light glaring off her that I never got a good look. Gotta protect the art, you know. And yet they were allowing flash photography…

Actually, I may have come close to not only getting kicked out of the Louvre but being arrested. You see, I was tired and wanted to take the elevator. So we found one and I pressed a button on the wall, but the button was really stiff and didn’t move much and no lights came on. So I wound up to hit the button again, harder, but just before punching it I realized it didn’t look right. From the picture of flames I deduced that it was the fire alarm. At first, I was concerned that I had triggered the alarm. I looked around to see if security was on its way or if any lights were flashing, but all was well. You must have to hit the button really hard, because I doubt that false alarms are common at the Louvre, and I can’t be the first person to have done that. Who puts a fire alarm button next to an elevator?!

I wonder if I should have wiped my prints from the alarm button.

Too much chocolate. I know, you think, there could never be too much, but there is in Belgium. Brussels has a lot of chocolate shops that offer free samples, and of course, since the chocolate is good, we bought some too. My favorites are the chocolate covered cherries. By the end of the day though, I didn't even want to smell or see any more chocolate.

Oh, and there are waffles too. And some very strong, dark beers. Quite delicious. There are also mussels everywhere, but Rich told me to stay away from the street vendors because ‘Mussels in Brussels will cause cramps in France.’

We liked the cities in Belgium (Brussels and Antwerp, at least). We didn’t do much (besides sampling chocolate), but we did walk around town and we really liked that the cities are a mix of old and new buildings. The new buildings are really unusual and very modern; an eclectic mix of shapes, materials and colors, but they seem to ‘fit in’ with the historic buildings in town.

The trees are changing color here too, lots of reds, yellows and oranges. I told Rich that it looked very ‘Autumnal’.

Rich said, “Autumnal? So you’re making up words now.”

“It’s a word. Look it up.”

“Right. Autumnal as opposed to springnal, summernal and winternal?”

“No silly. That would be springy, summer-like and winterish.”

“Uh huh. Sure.”

Richard still doesn’t believe me.

We hooked up with some great couch surfing members in Antwerp, our base for exploring Belgium, but we didn’t stay long. We only have a few days left before we need to be back in Vienna, and we still wanted to see some of Paris, so we said farewell and headed west.

We went to Tours, France, where we had arranged to stay with new couch surfing hosts. We were thrilled to see that Tours is a lovely city without the hordes of tourists you find in Paris. Our hosts were kind enough to take us on a walking tour of town and we had a great time. The old buildings, churches, cobblestone streets and squares are stunning. And we saw the remains of St. Martin – or, some of the remains anyway – there wasn’t much there...

And the castles! Tours is castle heaven. We couldn’t see them all, so we picked just one: Chateau de Chenonceau. It looked nice in the brochures, plus, it’s a bridge AND a castle at the same time. How cool is that? It was nice inside and out and we really enjoyed it. If our pictures aren’t good enough for you, go to www.chenonceau.com.

Gosh, what else? Quark’s battery isn’t working!!! So we have to plug in to type up blogs, review pictures and use the internet, and we haven’t had much luck finding electrical outlets… so it’s been a few days since I’ve typed anything.

And though you may not care, I’ve been agonizing for days over a Sudoku puzzle that seemed completely unsolvable. Finally, I started guessing and it turns out that no matter what guesses I made, it worked! I tried a few different guesses – everything worked. There is actually more that one solution! Somebody at the newspaper should be fired.

Anyway, it’s 2:50 AM and I’m tired. So, I’ll write about Paris tomorrow, but I’ll post a few pictures from Belgium and France now so my mother doesn’t e-mail…

We didn’t spend much time in the Netherlands. Or Nederland, I guess, which is how the Nederlanders would say it. We still don’t know where the word ‘Dutch’ comes from.

The Netherlands are very flat. We learned a little about the geography and history of the Netherlands from our couch surfing host, Humphrey. He’s quite knowledgeable about his country and he had a lot of maps and books. We found it interesting, but I’ll spare you the details.

We spent a day biking around the countryside near Eindhoven. It was cold, but sunny, and we had a nice time. Curiously, most of the small towns in the area have their own animal park (like a petting zoo). We, sorry, I took a lot of pictures of goats and horses and sheep and geese.

Then we spent a day in Amsterdam. It was cold there too, so we left when it started to get dark. But really, we saw all we wanted to see.

We were a bit surprised to find out that the Anne Frank house was in Amsterdam. I remember reading the diaries, but I didn’t remember where her story took place. We saw the house – just walking by. It didn’t look like much from the outside, so maybe the house is behind the existing building? At any rate, there was a huge line of people waiting to go in, so we kept walking.

Amsterdam is a beautiful city. There are many canals running through the old town. And of course, there are lots of boats. Bikes too. Amsterdam is the bike theft capital of the World, which explains the heavy chains and locks that are attached to bikes everywhere.

And then there are the cafes. Not, like, coffee houses. More like, joints. You can smoke and/or buy marijuana in the cafes in Amsterdam. We asked about the laws and apparently marijuana isn’t exactly legal, it’s just ok in certain places and in certain amounts. You can have some, smoke some, grow some, but you can’t sell it. The cafes are legal, but they have rules about how much marijuana they can keep on the premises. They can sell it, but they can’t tell anyone where they buy it. Confusing, a bit like it is in Canada, I guess. By the way, should you ever find yourself wandering the Amsterdam on a cold day, the coffee in the cafes is very good and reasonably priced. And the ‘menu’ is a hoot.

We also walked through the red light district. Interesting, but not all that shocking – disturbing, perhaps, but not in the way you’d think. It’s just that some of the women are scary looking. So here’s how it works; women buy or rent windows (or doors with big windows in them) and they sit or stand behind them - on display for the passersby. They let their clients in, close the curtain, services are rendered, fees are paid and then the clients leave (in a hurry, their heads lowered and avoiding eye contact as we’ve discovered). The curtain is then opened and woman is ready for another client. And even though some of the signs said ‘couples welcome’ there is nothing more we could tell you – even if we wanted to.

For the most part, Amsterdam isn't really the center of depravity it's made out to be. Unless you think a pound of french fries smothered with one of 20 different sauces is immoral. 

So that’s all we can tell you about our short Dutch adventure, except that they have really good junk food and speed skating is a really popular spectators sport. And there are a lot of animal parks.

It turns out that Norway is really quite nice once you’ve got your trip planned out (as long as you don’t worry about the money you’re spending). Our scenic train ride across the country and the ferry trip through the fjords back to Denmark went without a hitch and we had a really great time.

We started out by taking a train four hours north and west of Oslo to a place called Myrdal. The scenery was stunning; at first there were a lot of towns and evergreens and it reminded us of the west coast of Canada. But as we got further north and gained some altitude, it got colder. We rode through rocky, multicolored grass plains. And then there was snow. At the highest altitude on the trip (just over 1200 meters) we stopped for a few minutes so we could jump off and take pictures of the nearby glacier. It was quite cold and wet.

Myrdal wasn’t much of a town, but it’s the place to switch trains if you want to take the scenic train ride 20 kilometers down to Flam. We heard it was great and we figure we’re probably never going back to Norway in our lifetimes (except in the event of a lottery win) so we forked out the $80 or so that it costs two people to make the round trip. That was the discounted rate, mind you… since we have rail passes we got a tiny reduction. We weren’t that quick to fork over the cash – the train only goes 20 kilometers!

But we did and it was a really incredible 20 kilometers. The train descends into a deep gorge, goes through 20 tunnels and makes several switchbacks along the steep track. The valley is amazing; sheer cliffs on both sides with more waterfalls than one could count. There were reds, oranges and yellows all around as autumn had come to the valley. The train stopped once so we could get out and take pictures of a waterfall. Rich and I looked out the window up at a big ribbon of water falling from the cliff above. We said ‘wow’ and then turned to look out the other window and burst out laughing because the waterfall on the other side of the train was even more impressive.

I think the valley between Myrdal and Flam may be the most beautiful place on Earth. Well, it certainly takes top rank among the places I’ve been. (Sorry, with the rain and dirty train windows, the pictures aren’t that great. You’ll have to see it for yourself.)

It was cold in Flam, and it rained a lot of the day, so we didn’t stay long. We saw a bit of the town and the bay leading out to the ocean, but we were eager to get back on the train and take the return trip through the valley. It was lots of fun to hear the oohs and ahhs from the people who hadn’t seen the valley yet.

In Myrdal we hopped on another train that went further west past – you guessed it - stunning scenery. The tracks ended at the coast; Norway’s second biggest city, Bergen. There we stayed at a guesthouse; a true guesthouse. It was a family owned house that had three or four rooms for guests. I can’t remember how old the building was, but it was neat. Our room was through the back yard and up a steep, narrow staircase. Only $100. We liked it.

We slept well - we slept in - then ended up speed walking and jogging to the ferry terminal the next morning. We only had a half hour to get to our ferry and it was 3 kilometers away, or something like that. But we were most worried because we weren’t exactly sure WHERE we were supposed to go. There are a lot of ferries to a lot of places. We were close to flagging down a taxi (but we were warned that the short trip would cost about $20). We ended up going the whole way on foot and we got there a couple of minutes early and just before it started to rain. We figured our luck had definitely changed.

The ferry was more like a cruise ship. There were hundreds of cabins and plenty of bars and restaurants. There was also tax free shopping and a casino. We split our Norwegian change between the two of us (since you can’t always exchange coins at money changers). Rich bought a Toblerone and I fed my change to the slot machines. The slots were reluctant, but eventually agreed to take it all.

Our cabin was a really good deal with our Eurail passes. We paid about $85 I think for the two of us, which is cheaper than any hotel in Norway. It took a while to find it though. The signs on the ship directed people to their cabins numbered 3000 through 7000, but ours was 1419. We were told we had to go down – way down – to steerage. No, they didn’t actually say steerage, but we knew that’s what they meant. We went down, past the truck deck, past the car deck, and eventually found our cabin. We think we were below the water line, right next to the engine. It was loud and the walls were rattling. But our room was actually quite good. We had a private cabin with bunk beds and a sink. The bathrooms down the hall were big and clean and smelled a bit like peppermint candy. Hardly any rats.

We really enjoyed the first few hours of our trip while we had some daylight. The Norwegian fjords are really beautiful. The villages, fishing boats, bridges, cliffs and ships were really spectacular. It would have been just a little bit nicer if it hadn’t rained half of the afternoon, but it was great nonetheless.

We both ended up taking some sea sickness pills before bed. The seas were rough and it was extra nauseating in our cabin. But the pills did the trick and we slept great.

In the morning, we disembarked before 8 AM and we had a plan. Take the train to Hamburg. Good plan, really, except that shortly after boarding the first train, I realized the fare wasn’t covered by our rail passes. The train is a short distance commuter and we were required to pay a supplement with our pass. So I went to the machine aboard the train to buy tickets and then realized, we were in Denmark and we didn’t have any Danish currency. The machine didn’t accept plastic. By that point, the train was moving and we were stowaways. So we watched out the window, waiting to see if the next stop would have a ticket counter. Nope. The next one didn’t either. It looked like the machine was our only option and there didn’t seem to be any place to get Danish money. Then we stopped at a small station in the middle of nowhere and saw an employee getting on our train – I figured he’d be checking for tickets. So we grabbed our bags and got off.

And there we were; in the middle of nowhere in Denmark with no way to buy train tickets or get Danish money. Looking back, we should have tried to exchange some Euros with someone on the train. Or maybe the ticket checker (we saw him checking tickets as the train pulled away) would have been able to sell us a ticket if we’d just asked nicely? Anyway, we’d come 7 kilometers and it was another 9 to our first destination. I convinced Richard to start walking. I told him we might find a store or maybe we’d be able to get tickets at the next station, which couldn’t be that far. I was actually much less optimistic.

We ended up walking the whole way. I enjoyed it, for the most part. It was lovely countryside and the weather was fantastic. Well, it was a bit cold and windy. Richard said, “It’s called a SEA BREEZE and my condition is called HY-PO-THERMIA.”

Richard hated every minute of our hike and was mad at me for enjoying myself. He said he wanted to strangle me when I pointed out the ‘big red berries’. Anyway, 10 kilometers, two hours, an apple and three cookies later, we were in Hjorring. We missed the next train by two minutes and had to wait an hour for the next. We were suddenly 3 hours behind schedule. But it turned out okay. The train took us all the way to Hamburg and first class on the Danish trains is really nice – free tea and coffee, fruit and chocolate. And plenty of empty seats.

So, we’re in Hamburg, a block from the train station in a red light district of some kind or another. Lots of ‘seXum’ around here. We’re in a cute little hotel with some Kama Sutra paintings and photos of nude males in the halls – really good photos, I think. Rich is checking out the German TV (I won’t go into the details, but it’s quite shocking). Oh well, we wanted to see the World; experience other cultures!

The last few days have been really frustrating. We think that Sweden and Norway are nice, but we can’t be sure because we spend most of our day trying to survive until the next. We can’t seem to find affordable hotels with any vacancies even though it’s the low season. The train schedules are really impossible, since it’s the low season. And of course, it costs us a buck a step to use the sidewalk. We ducked into a McDonalds yesterday in Oslo and discovered we couldn’t afford it. You know the 88 cent menu? Any of those items are at least 3 Canadian dollars here. And, if you want to eat in - you pay more. Not just a fee to sit, but a surcharge of every item ordered. So if you ordered a lot of food, you could pay five dollars extra to eat in. We thought it would make sense to order a small coke to stay and the rest to go… you could just pick at the food while you drink your coke at your table.

The most insulting fees are the ones at the pay toilets. Sure, I can understand paying a few cents to use the facilities, but two dollars? And that’s at the malls and restaurants. I’m surprised we haven’t seen anyone going on the sidewalk! Going to the bathroom factors into our daily life in a big way. We always ‘go’ before getting off the train, before leaving the hotel and just whenever we see one that happens to be free.

We quickly figured out that we could take short train trips with our rail pass (free of charge) just to warm up, sit in nice seats, have a complimentary cup of coffee and go to the bathroom. Yes, we went to Uppsala and back to do just that!

We couldn’t afford to stay in Sweden very long, so we decided to head west to Oslo, Norway. But as far as prices go, we knew we wouldn’t be able to stay in Norway very long either. We tried to find some place to couch surf so we could save some money on hostels, but we didn’t have any luck… and yet we still wanted to see Norway.

So, we thought we’d save some money by taking the overnight train to Oslo and then just staying one night instead of two. It was a good plan, except there were no beds left on the train. That’s kind of how things have been going for us in Scandinavia. It’s expensive, it’s fully booked, nobody will answer the phone, the train schedule doesn’t work out and so on.

We ended up taking the night train anyway, but we just got a couple of second class, non-reclining seats in the pet compartment - not exclusively for pets, not that it would have surprised me, but it’s just the compartment where pets are allowed to travel. It turned out to be good and bad. We were in a five seat compartment and there were no pets. Actually, there was only one other person in there with us and he slept on the floor - yeah, it’s weird, but it gets weirder. Anyway, since he was on the floor, Rich and I were able to flip up the armrests and stretch out a bit across the seats. But… there was a downside. You see, the guy on the floor, he smelled really bad. Like he’d been drinking and smoking a lot and hadn’t seen a shower in days. The odor was quite offensive. Fortunately, he was a deep sleeper (could have been the booze) and he also had a plastic sheet that he pulled over himself as a blanket. The plastic held the smell in check except for the odd time that he shifted positions.

Anyway, we made it to Oslo at around 6:30am and had to go without a shower for most of the day while we waited for our hotel room to be ready. We only had one day in Oslo and we didn’t see much except for the train station, the docks and what we walked past to get there. We spent all day – and I’m talking ALL DAY, trying to find accommodations and a ferry in Norway for the next two nights. In the evening, when we finally thought we had it figured out, we had to change it because there was no day train in time to make our ferry connection! Then it was getting late and reception everywhere was closed… and so on. I was up until 1 AM trying to figure it all out. Seriously, getting out of Oslo isn’t easy. You have to reserve everything in advance and there is no bridge to the mainland.

Too bad we never got to see much of Oslo. We read that it was the most expensive place to live on the planet if you bought a home or something like that. Sounds about right. I can’t believe dorm beds cost as much as $100 – without sheets!

Oh well, we’re off to see some of the uninhabited land in Norway. Our fingers are crossed.

I’m not sure what to say about Sweden. It’s a little like Canada, I suppose. But we’re having trouble enjoying ourselves because everything is so expensive.  The trains and hotels seem to be fully booked most of the time so we spend hours every day just trying to figure out where we’re going to be sleeping tomorrow. Oh, yeah, I should mention that it’s really, really cold. We're wearing long underwear, hats a gloves, and take the stairs to stay warm.

We started out in Malmo, Sweden. We stayed with a family there for two nights. Their home looks a little like an IKEA showroom, they drive a Volvo and go moose hunting. They taught us some interesting things about Sweden and Malmo and we had a great time. It turns out that those two nights saved us a LOT of money too. The cheapest hotel/hostel we found in all of Sweden cost $40 CAD per person. And that’s with a shared bathroom! Food costs a fortune too, even at the grocery store. I wanted to buy some mixed greens, but it worked out to something like $80/kg. It looked like about a buck a leaf! For some reason (maybe it was a check-out error), we paid $2 per banana the other day! But it’s cheaper than fast food; $6 for a slice of pizza, $7 for a hot dog, $10 for a sandwich… and that’s just the vendors on the side of the road.

Stockholm continues to bleed us dry; it cost us about $7 each to take the subway 3 stops to our hotel. Transit day passes are about $20 per person. If I heard right, people with the highest salaries can pay as much as 80% in taxes. I figure these people must make about a million a year, otherwise it would be cheaper for them to forget about their jobs and just stay home.

We did find a couple of museums in Stockholm that are free, and we like free. When we got to the first one, however, it was not free.  It was $10. I guess they got some new and exciting exhibits within the last 6 months. Anyway, we didn’t think the exhibits could be that exciting, so we passed on that museum and headed for the other free one. As we approached, we saw a huge line of people streaming from the front doors and snaking its way down the street. At first I thought that these people were crazy. Free or not, how could the museum be worth waiting two hours to get into?

But, then I saw a sign that said there was a PEZ collection on display inside. I didn’t think all those people were interested in PEZ dispensers, but I kinda wanted to see them. So Rich stood in line while I went to check out the situation. I went into the lobby and saw cash registers hard at work. I was really disgusted to discover that the 200 people in line were waiting to PAY to get in! Again, the museum was not free as advertised; the admission had gone up to $10. So, I wandered deeper into the lobby to find out what would make these people wait so long to pay so much.

The explanation: chocolate. There was a special weekend event held at the museum, a chocolate show. I like chocolate, and I thought that the $10 didn’t sound as bad… especially if there were lots of free samples.

But then, as I was standing in the museum, looking around, I realized that I was inside the show and I hadn’t paid. Nobody was checking tickets. So, I thought, maybe the chocolate show was free? I managed to snag a few skimpy chocolate samples as I wandered. Not many samples – you could buy chocolate, but it looked overpriced to me. Then I found some event signage that said show admission was 100 kr (about 16 dollars). I guess they just didn’t have anybody guarding the entrance.

Anyway, to bring an end to this long story, we think 16 dollars is too much to pay for the opportunity to buy expensive chocolate. So we snuck in, got a few samples, caught a glimpse of the tiny PEZ collection and marveled at the building itself which is a spectacular, centuries old castle. The samples were pathetic and some weren’t even free. There were no real chocolate bargains either. I can’t say I felt bad about sneaking in, though I felt bad for the people who waited in line and paid. They were duped, if you ask me.

One last thing I want to mention – these people are huge! I’ve come close to anxiety attacks when I’m stuck in a crowd; I can’t see anything but belt buckles and bums! Some are so tall they have to duck when they go into the shopping mall. That surprises me, really, you’d think Sweden would allow for bigger doorways.

That’s right, I said musical cheese. It’s a Frankfurt specialty, and we ate some. It’s a little strange looking and it smells terrible, but it tastes okay. We wanted to know, of course, why it was called musical, and the best answer we got (confirmed by another source) is that the onions in the cheese will make you gassy. So, later that night, as we were crawling into bed, I was suddenly concerned when the air smelled a little foul.

“Richard!” I yelled.

Rich sighed and stretched out on the bed. With a huge grin he said, “Let the symphony begin.”

Richard’s Opus wasn’t the only thing we got out of Frankfurt. We discovered Apfelwine (apple wine). It’s… different. We also learned that Frankfurt is the only city in Europe with a modern skyline; in other words, the only city with a cluster of tall buildings. Of course, it’s not like Tokyo or Hong Kong or even any average city in North America, but there are some tall buildings and it’s something you just don’t see in Europe. The reason, we’ve learned, is that Frankfurt was more than 80% destroyed during the war and since they had to start from scratch, they decided to build modern.

We stayed with a young lady there named Claudia - in Offenbach, not Frankfurt - the people in Frankfurt and Offenbach think the distinction is important.  She had cats, which is always a bonus. We had dinner with her and her family at a brewery restaurant. We learned a bunch of things about Germany, the European Space Agency, beer, cheese, and so on. There was a lot of German at the table followed by a lot of translating and we loved every minute.

The next day we were on the train again, heading north for Malmo Sweden. We had a short stop in Hamburg and after a little people watching began to wonder what the people there are called. Are they Hamburgers?

Oh yeah, there’s something else we saw at one of the train stations. Instead of lockers they have these amazing machines that make your stuff disappear in exchange for a few Euros. Then it gives you a little card that you can use to get your stuff back later. But here’s the catch: you can go to ANY machine at the station to get your bags back!

Our next train headed for Denmark. We were expecting to go over a bunch of bridges in Denmark, but were confused when we half heard an announcement over the train speakers. We could only make out that it would be a 45 minute crossing to Denmark and there would be shops and restaurants on board.

“So…” I looked at Rich. “We’re taking a ferry?”

“Maybe? But our itinerary doesn’t say anything about getting off here. Do you think the train goes over on the ferry?”

“No way… You think so?”

Then a train employee walked by and Rich asked, “Excuse me, are we supposed to get off here?”

“It’s up to you. If you would like some fresh air, you can go up.”

We were still confused. Rich asked, “So, does the train go ON the ferry?”

The man hesitated. Maybe he was trying to translate our question in his head. It seemed like a long moment before he said, “Yes.”

“Oh!”

“Okay!”

“We get it now! That’s interesting!”

“But,” added the employee, “be back five minutes before four o’clock if you get off.”

“Yes, okay. Thank you.”

He nodded and left.

So, we pressed our faces to the window and watched the train crawl onto the ferry. We debated the size of the train and the length of the ferry. I told Richard that the ferry was wider than most to accommodate a spiral track. This means of course that the ferry would have to back in at its destination and the train would have to back out of the spiral. Richard wasn’t stupid enough to buy my story.

As it turns out, the train had dropped some cars somewhere and the train was quite short by this point. The ferry was quite large. The train just fit nicely. We walked around the car/truck/train deck (despite the signage) to get a good look. We don’t know how they’ve engineered the dock to make the train tracks line up so nicely with the tracks on the boat.

So. We were on a train on a boat!

And now we’re in Malmo, Sweden! More to come…

Today, the most exciting thing we're planning to do is laundry... which is actually very exciting when the clothes line is hanging just a few inches above the worlds largest collection of cacti.

As most of you have probably figured out we’ve finally made it to Europe.  And that’s a good thing…in fact it’s a very good thing.  I kind of look at it as coming from a land of the dysfunctional to a land of the functional.  Everything works here.  For example, and trust me there’s a lot of examples, the transportation here is amazing.  In India we once waited 3 hours for a train.  We knew it would come, it was just late.  Here we were waiting for our train which we knew would take an hour.  While we were waiting we could follow the schedule and predict which trains would be coming and when they would come.  When one of the trains was 3 minutes late, we pretty much knew it wouldn’t be coming.  By the way it didn’t come because it wasn’t supposed to, our german kind of sucks and we were reading the weekend schedule.  In fact when we’re riding the trains we don’t pay much attention to what stops we’re passing as much as we pay attention to what time it is, you can literally set your watch to the train.

Something else incredible here is that you don’t have to be afraid of the tap water, in fact, you can even drink it!  In India we were scared of it.  When I’d shower, if I got any water in my mouth I would immediately spit it out.  Another difference is you can walk here; around town, from place to place, and there are numerous reasons for that:  First of all it’s not 40 degrees here, instead it’s around 20 during the day (we’ve actually been able to wear pants).  Another reason we can walk is that there are sidewalks…glorious sidewalks.   Not only are there sidewalks but there are beautiful bike paths going through the country side and cutting through the forest.  We’ve been fortunate to enjoy these too.  Another reason we can walk here is because we don’t stick out like a target, we look like everyone else.  No one asks us for money anymore or tries to lure us to their crappy hotel.

And then there’s the food.  As most of you know food is generally a tough area for me.  The first thing I noticed here were all of the German delis (go figure).  People walk around snacking on rye bread and beer.  And then there’s the cheese.  I don’t think most of the stores back home, even the big ones, have the selection of cheese that the railway convenience stores have here.  And the beer, did I mention the beer?  In fact not only is the beer plentiful here but so is the wine.  You can get beer/wine anywhere and it’s quite cheap.  You can easily get a bottle of Italian wine for about 4 bucks…and it doesn’t matter what kind because it’s all good…ok, I haven’t exactly tried all the wines to know that they’re all good but I’m working on it.  Something else that’s great here is dessert; these people really know their cakes and pastries and cookies and especially chocolate (usually on their cakes and pastries and cookies).  One thing that sucks is that we don’t sprechen german and all of the menus are in german.  However, the food is almost so good that you can order anything and probably like it…ok it’s not always good (we accidentally ordered liver).

This place also has my favorite cars.  They include; Audi, Mercedes, BMW, VW (if you’re roughing it), Opel, Porche, the odd Peuget and very odd (looking) Citroen.  And not only do they have these cars here but they all look brand new and there are models I’ve never even seen before.  And did I mention how fast they go?  We were driving on some of the highways here, which don’t generally have a speed limit.  We were going about 120km/h and were getting passed like we were standing still.  A bit scary but kind of fun (more fun if you’re in a Porche, I bet).

So there must be a catch.  Good food, fast cars, side walks, it can’t come for free.  Well it certainly doesn’t.  The one thing I’m having a very hard time with is the prices.  Even compared to home this place is expensive.  Right now the Canadian dollar is doing very well (God bless the Looney).  Even so, it takes nearly one and a half loonies to buy one Euro.  Most of the prices here are numerically similar or even higher than home but then you have to multiply by one and a half.  Ouch!  Oh well I guess it’s only money (if you were reading a printed version of this you would see the dried tear drops).  It’s almost 11:27am now which means I have to switch trains.