End of an Era

On this trip we had been keeping track of the various modes of transportation that we used. Every few days, or when we remembered, we'd think of all the metros, cabs, trains, and so on that we had ridden recently and put it all on a list in Auberon's notebook. We were, however, initially at a loss as to how we should record the journey to Denmark - as the train itself chugged onto a massive ferry and we were thus brought to Copenhagen by two methods of transportation at once. (It ended up in the logbook as three entries, train-ferry-train, due to the technicality that we were not allowed to remain on the train once it was off dry land.)

In Copenhagen we learned that our accommodations were Poland-style: far away. It was a long but pretty march to the fairly sterile business area where our hostel was located, across marshes and flatlands dotted with modern Nordic Design concrete ponds and benches. It was late when we arrived and the prospect of going all the way to the city and back for dinner wasn't great, so we ended up eating at an Indian place. I had fortunately not internalized the conversion rate for krøner to dollars, which consequently resulted in our most expensive dinner all trip.

Such is life in Denmark. We saw very high prices absolutely everywhere, the unfortunate opposite of the under-budget first weeks of the trip. But, we reasoned, we would still come in well under our estimates thanks to the Workaways and general miserliness throughout.

The next day we had a few boxes to tick. Auberon had seen the outline of a star fort on the map, which was conveniently next to my own goal of seeing the Little Mermaid statue in the harbor. The fort reminded us both strongly of colonial American architecture, though it dates to the late seventeenth century. We were unable to go into any of the buildings but it was very pleasant to walk around the grounds and along the ramparts. The weather was gorgeous. The suffocating heat of the first several weeks stayed with us in memory, so we didn't mind the chilly winds as much. And despite the grim warnings of a man on the train that we came at a bad time, the sun shone and the sky was clear.

On the way to the statue Auberon happened to glance into the harbor and notice that there were hundreds and hundreds of tiny jellyfish present among the boats. We sat and watched for a long time, picking out subtle color differences and particularly large ones, wondering aloud about the life of a jellyfish and how it perceives the world. Then to the statue, which we saw only briefly as dozens of other tourists were clamoring for their turn. I can only imagine the scene in the high season. As much as I talk about the wandering we do, I still have a soft spot for famous destinations like the mermaid statue, the terracotta warriors, and Red Square.

We next found the Design Museum, which impressed us first with its lenient admission rates (free) and then with its collections. There was a fantastic section on Japanese art and Danish artists who had been inspired by it, and I was enchanted with some of the Japanese paintings - a school of art I'd never given much thought to. A lot more of the museum was devoted to examples of Scandinavian design in furniture, architecture, and so on. It was a great museum, one of the best on the trip. The only problem was that I kept wanting to sit on the chairs.

That evening we saw the pedestrian street Strøget, a very long shopping plaza that, while pretty, didn't offer us anything we hadn't seen in other countries' versions. We had a Chinese buffet for dinner (far from the culinary high-water mark of Chengdu), a bowl of what claimed to be Sichuan noodles at another shop (ditto) and then headed for the metro home. At the station we noticed a family of tourists rush to get on and then leave two members of the party behind. This they fortunately found hilarious, and as they spoke together about it I was glad to hear Vietnamese again for the first time in months. It happened that they were on the wrong train line anyway, and we were able to set them straight. More bookends: we had started the trip quite confused in Vietnam, now in Denmark we were able to help some Vietnamese people on their own trip. I was hoping to hear them say something about their plans for traveling overland, from Denmark to Vietnam via Russia...

The day of departure soon arrived. Auberon had refused to pay Scandinavian prices for a meal on the plane, so we stocked him up with muffins and fruit at a grocery store. Then with plenty of time to spare we got to the airport. One last selfie, some parting words, and then Auberon was off.

As for me, I stayed in Denmark for a few more days, traveling around to some more very nice cities and setting fire to my remaining money. I'm writing this from Germany now, where I have another week planned. Then I'm off to China, where I'll return to my friends in Chengdu and do some more teaching, eventually getting to California in early December.

This blog is really about the trip before that: Auberon and Alex went Around the World. So I won't turn it into a personal diary, but I won't abandon it either. We collected a lot of information as we traveled, and some of it is useful but all of it should be relatively interesting. Data like steps walked per day, number of taxis taken, total trip mileage - these might interest a few readers, especially if you know us well or are my dad. There are thousands of photos on my camera that I fully intend to edit and share with the world, and those will make it on here some time after I get back to California. And I also collected a lot of knowledge that might be useful to tourists of the ten countries and 30+ cities we visited, like what transportation is like and how not to get scammed at ticket offices. All these things and more will appear, so stay tuned.

Until then, dear reader - thanks for coming along!

Retreat to Paradise

We realized fairly quickly that the new Workaway we had signed up for was squarely in the boonies. But that was part of the charm - it was billed as a meditation retreat and seminar center. Our work was simple. Auberon was to repair and expand the booking website, and I was to shoot and edit a series of short promotional videos.

The house was enormous. Auberon and I both tried and failed to name houses of friends or family that even approached it in size, plus it had a backyard orchard. When we arrived there was one long-term guest (a German medical student), one solo volunteer (a Lithuanian wanderer), and one volunteering couple (German/Bulgarian off-grid hippies).
After a few days we realized that we had actually had plenty of relaxation recently, and the tiny town seemed closed-in. So we took advantage of the ample free time offered us to go to Hamburg and Lübeck on separate day trips, plus regular long walks around the countryside. I use the word "countryside" because our host did, but in reality the little towns were all close together in car terms, and simply a longer walk by foot. There were great bike paths thanks to the dismantling of local train service half a century ago (a dilemma for me - train or bike?) and they led through wonderful tall forests.

Each day we cooked something, either with the other guests or alone. Our meals when living together in college were often somewhat bachelor chic, that is to say, unimaginative. Here, I did my best to stay vegetarian (all bets were off outside the home) and experimented with cooking all kinds of rice and vegetable dishes from scratch. It turns out rice is a lot easier and more versatile than I ever gave it credit for in college.

In Hamburg we saw the huge park and made fun of the street art for a while. It reminded me of both Frankfurt and Berlin, which isn't saying much as that's the rest of my big city Germany experience. Several of the attractions we walked by were closed, and the cutting wind made us walk past things faster. At night I sought out the Reeperbahn, years after reading a description of it by Bill Bryson. It was going downhill in his day, and from what I could gather the same was happening 26 years later. The red light district lure isn't enough to keep businesses running, and many of them are becoming ordinary bars or dance clubs to attract young people.

Lübeck was entirely different - a very old town that had the architecture history advantage of not being blown up in the war. For the first hour or so we walked in entirely the opposite direction from the central old town, seeing only suburbs and wondering what all the fuss was about. Once back on track, the majesty of the old town was wonderful and it was beautiful to see the ancient buildings and streets as the sun set. In the Yugoslavian restaurant where we stopped for dinner, we ordered an enormous and delicious plate of assorted meats and potatoes, which arrived on fire and inspired its order by at least two other tables.

Somewhat surprised by the closeness of the date to Auberon's departure, we finished up our work at the retreat and took the last train of the journey - to Copenhagen.

Pictured: one of my culinary creations, view of Germany from the ferry, and a scene that I found hilarious but that sadly doesn't come through in the photo: the foreground and background signs say you're entering and leaving the same town on a single empty stretch of road.

Poor but sexy

The first time I went to Berlin, last year, I was admonished on the train for planning to spend only one day there. But that's what we did, thanks to lodging prices that were mysteriously three or four times higher than I had expected. So we planned to spend two nights in Berlin and then a week in a Workaway near Hamburg, giving me (I minored in German in college) lots of time in Germany at a fraction of the usual cost.

Our train arrived late in the day. The rail passes gave us unlimited travel on the wonderful Berlin transit system, so after dropping off our bags we went directly to Alexanderplatz, home of the TV tower. From there we walked haphazardly toward the Brandenburg Gate, illuminated at night and obscured somewhat by some odd fences. I love that in big touristy cities you can find the famous sights in a matter of minutes, all practically right next to one another.

In the morning we went off in a new direction and found a bakery for breakfast. For a reason I cannot understand, in several German bakeries I've been to there are wasps crawling over the pastries. Nobody seems to mind and in fact I question sometimes if I'm the only one who can see them. Then they fly around you as you eat and try to fall into your drink. This trip, so late in the year, we saw them only in Germany. I should have studied French instead.

In a little while we began to get some answers to the mysteries described earlier. Police erected more barricades in an intersection as we watched, and crews used rubber strips to cover up the tram rails. A crowd began to form, and almost immediately applause began as some men in Lycra roller-bladed toward us at high speed. We had arrived in time for the world-famous Berlin Marathon - which apparently has a skating component the day before. First dozens, then hundreds of skaters went by, ranging from individual to team with custom jerseys. I'd never seen anything like it.

I was very excited to show Auberon the fact that there are some streets and neighborhoods in Berlin where you can walk for an hour and see a constant stream of shops on either side of the road. The same distance in other big cities we visited might have put us into suburbs or outside the city entirely. I got to see new parts of the city I'd never been to, and although the weather was a bit warm we had fine energy all day. We spent a while at the Berlin wall memorials, something I hadn't seen as much of before. They're huge and sobering, and I was able to draw for once on my history knowledge rather than my linguistic knowledge in conversation.

A single day only lasts so long, and we had split it about 60-40 between simply walking and goal-oriented sightseeing. At night we visited the Holocaust memorial - even more powerful and haunting in the dark - and turned in late to the hostel. Then it was back to the train station the next morning, to our destination of Hoisdorf in the countryside outside Hamburg.

Pictured: Blurry skaters, my new business venture, and a total of one remaining bike.

Big city Poland

In Krakow we were immediately taken with our biggest city since Moscow. As we left the train station buses and trams whizzed by and advertisements flashed over the heads of the shoppers in the crowd. It was very much like those montages of people from the countryside coming to the big city for the first time ever.

We had rented a room in an apartment, and the landlady came to meet us with her young son. I played peekaboo with him as she filled out our rental forms (by hand in duplicate using the same information I provided on the booking website) and told us not to have too much fun. Then we got the keys and went off into the night.

We had become accustomed to seeing the cities we visited close up shops and restaurants around 8 PM. Thus we practically stopped in our tracks when the quiet and looming apartment buildings gave way suddenly to a wide square that was lit up beautifully and filled with people. In the center was a market hall selling furs and jewels, and surrounding it were fancy restaurants with outdoor seating, flaming heaters fighting the September cold. We walked down one of the side streets and soon saw the old city wall, which unlike Xi'an was closed to tourists at that time.

The next day we planned to see what the city could show us. We went back to the main square a few times as well as toward the outer areas, breaking in Auberon's shoes some more and working our way to the big commercial shopping centers.

I had left my sweater in Augustow and so had to layer three or four shirts to keep out the chilly autumn winds. Auberon, too, lacked a good fall layer. We went through a few stores with typical indecisiveness and stinginess, but eventually picked up a pretty heavy sweater for me and a thinner turtleneck for Auberon, with some made-in-Poland socks thrown in at the end.

Auberon wanted dearly to take the bus to the town of Zakopane, about an hour and a half south toward the Slovak border and famous for its mountain hiking. The next morning I accompanied him (he used the words "grumpy" and "dour" but I simply felt I had seen quite a few rocks and trees already) to a small diner in Zakopane where we waited out the rain and discovered that our hiking map was uselessly out of scale. We picked a mountainous direction and forged ahead, crossing little streams and seeing the town quickly disappear into forest. A gate and entrance fee indicated that we were on the right track. The rain had stopped completely and we surged ahead at the initial climb, finding ourselves in half an hour or so above a very picturesque valley. Here I learned that Auberon likes to see nature at speed, so we continued on for a good deal longer on another trail.

We had the park almost wholly to ourselves, and on the one occasion that some rain appeared we happened to be near a shelter anyway. We filled the time with academic discussions, talking about the machine learning and artificial intelligence work that Auberon is interested in as an engineer. In an hour or so we ended up underneath some impressive switchbacks, and once these were crested we found ourselves at an even better summit than before. On the one side, the red roofs of towns and cities on the plains. On the other, hills becoming craggy rocks stretching into the clouds. As the clouds shifted we saw a glimpse of snow on the highest peak - so far had we come from the hot days in Vietnam.

But a sun low in the sky told us that we'd better turn back, and we began to retrace our steps. The whole way back was almost more beautiful than before, as the golden sunset pierced the clouds and shone through patches of rain. We reached the bottom just as darkness fell, and put off dinner in favor of getting the first bus back to Krakow.

Two full days behind us, we arrived at the station early next morning for our train to Berlin.

Pictured: the Krakow main square and the mountains of Zakopane.