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How to Drive in America Without Getting Shot

I recently made my (almost) annual trip back to the beautiful Pacific Northwest in the US, where I visited my 96-year-old mother and other various friends and family, as well as to be there for two granddaughter graduations.

I decided to approach this trip as if I were a foreigner, I guess a Portuguese. I’m nowhere close to becoming an actual Portuguese, of course. Just to look like one I’d have to change the color of my eyes from blue to brown, lop off about six inches in height, and undergo intensive Portuguese language and culture training for somewhere between three and infinity years without being let outside the classroom. That said, I think I’ve spent enough time in Europe to more readily spot the differences, so I hoped to feel a little bit like a European might when visiting the US for the first time.

But first, let me dispel a few myths that some Europeans have about the United States. No, you’re not going to get shot the moment you step out of the airport (although it’s best if you avoid classrooms, mosques, synagogues, and Trump speeches during your visit). And no, there isn’t an oppressive, 1935 Nazi Germany-style atmosphere hanging over the country (unless you read too much news). Homelessness is still a problem, but the situation has improved significantly in many places (apparently, other than San Francisco). In Oregon, for example, the tents that seemed to be everywhere—lining parks, sidewalks, and even freeway shoulders—have largely disappeared.

Yes, there are a number of Americans who still think everyone should carry a gun. Incredibly, several politicians were caught by a Sacha Baron Cohen comedy prank endorsing a fictitious “Kinderguardians” program designed to arm toddlers as young as three. The American gun culture can be a little crazy, but that doesn’t mean everyone walks around with a gun in their pants. A handful of politicians believing kindergartners should own guns is a little embarrassing and disturbing, but it doesn’t reflect the opinion of the vast majority of Americans. In any case, I survived the expedition to the US without getting shot, thank goodness. Also thanks to my basic American training of proper ducking.

As a matter of fact, due to the number of mass shootings and so on, proper ducking is taught to many of the country’s grade school students. Ducking has become such an ingrained part of American life that even the University of Oregon in Eugene (commonly referred to as Duck U) adopted it as its mascot, as you can see by the Oregon Duck logo. The proof that ducking works is that there has only been a handful of murders in the University’s history, going all the way back to 1876. They even have an annual Duck Off competition to award the best ducker, but in the late 1940’s they stopped using live ammunition after a couple of near-tragedies.

Other than boning up on my ducking techniques, I realized I really wasn’t going to act much like a European tourist because my agenda was pretty full up with visits to friends and family, which resulted in a lot of freeway driving (about 1200 miles / 1930 km total). So that’s how this entry became mostly a commentary about the freeway driving differences between Europe and the US.

Before I go on about the driving, I was quickly reminded as to how genuinely friendly most Americans are. I know smiling strangers are viewed as something rather odd in most of Europe, but in the US they really are genuine and friendly. I passed by a woman in a parking lot and she beamed a radiant smile at me for no reason at all. It was nice to feel some of that friendliness again.

Anyway, when I hit the road, I was also quickly reminded that American freeways appear to be absolutely packed with heavy tractor-trailers (aka semi-trucks) compared to what I’ve seen in Europe. (The word freeway, incidentally, doesn’t really translate into Portuguese. Even Portuguese who are fluent in English will often give you a puzzled look if you use it.) … (At least I hope they thought I said “freeway.”)

(Also, a semi-truck gets its name because the trailer has wheels only at the back and relies on the hitch—called the fifth wheel—on the cab to support its front end. Personally, I think the name makes no sense. Once you hook the trailer to the cab, it’s no longer “semi” anything; it’s a complete truck, yet Americans still call it a semi. That despite the fact that people who duck poorly are derogatorily called semi-duckers.)

I do find American semi-truck drivers to be more aggressive than in Portugal, with trucks sometimes passing other trucks even while going uphill, making the cars behind them wait impatiently as they stare at two big truck butts. In the photo on the above left, I had to accelerate to pass that truck via the right lane, which is a big no-no in Europe. But I wanted to avoid what you see in the photo on the right, as well as this meme, which is only funny because it does sometimes happen.

Oddly enough though, the European Union actually has more of these trucks overall—including per capita—than the United States. The difference is one of geography and logistics. In America, long-haul truckers routinely travel thousands of miles, spending much of their time on major interstate highways. In Europe, trucks are more likely to serve shorter regional routes, so they’re spread across a much denser network of roads and spend less time on the continent’s main motorways. That makes America’s highways feel far more dominated by big rigs, even though the numbers tell a different story.

In the US, it’s very common to be driving on a freeway with three lanes and cars, trucks, and semi-trucks using all three lanes, all at different speeds. In addition to paying attention to all the chaotic traffic, you have to watch out for cop cars lurking about, poised to catch speeders like spinning-red-eyed spiders pouncing on beetles and hornets. In the US, when a posted sign says “55 MPH speed limit,” it really does mean “limit.” You could legitimately get a ticket for going 56 MPH if you really annoy the cop who stopped you, although that would have a hard time standing up in court. But when the drivers are fairly certain there are no cops ahead, they’ll risk going as fast as they want, in any lane they want. There are signs that proclaim, “Slower traffic keep right,” but that suggestion gets about as much attention as signs that say, “Free used mattresses” or “Honk if you love Hitler.”

Another difference is school busses. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a school bus in Europe. Since the US has more distance between just about everything and so relies on cars much more than mass transit, school busses are a common site. When I was a kid and rode them, I always wondered why they had no seatbelts, especially when it’s illegal to ride in a car without a seatbelt. Currently, only eight states require seatbelts on large school buses. However, statistically, school busses are actually the safest mode of road transportation there is, perhaps because people prefer not to run into things containing children, so they aim for the adults. Given that safety record, I think having a car shaped like a bus would be an excellent way to avoid accidents!

Still, according to data tracked over the last decade, school bus-related crashes average just over 100 fatalities per year nationwide. Dunno how much lower it would’ve been with seatbelts, much less given how often kids wouldn’t bother putting them on anyway. But if I were a parent today I’d send them off every morning with the shouted admonition, “Try not to be one of the 100!”

I took this shot just to show what a typical American busy street might look like, for those who have never been to the states. Traffic lights are everywhere because the US is only now figuring out that roundabouts (aka rotundas) are actually an awesome way to keep traffic flowing. I got steamed more than once sitting at a traffic light preventing me from turning left when there was nary a car in sight coming my way. With roundabouts, you’re nearly always moving. In the US, the incessant start-stop, start-stop, start-stop tends to drive me a little crazy.

It’s also currently a big deal as to how expensive gas has become since Trump pulled a Putin and thought he could beat a smaller country into submission within days. (Can’t we just send all these warmongering dictator-types to the Antarctic or Mars or something?) Despite that, this $5.69 price per gallon –which looks pretty shocking to Americans– translates and converts to only 1.32€ per liter, which is still cheaper than the 1.80€ to 2.00€ a liter experienced in Europe at the same time. I’ve found that almost the only things in Portugal that are more expensive than the US are fuel and electricity. Everything else being cheaper more than makes up for it, of course, but it’s a little funny that Americans howl in outrage when their gas still isn’t as expensive as it is in Europe.

While I didn’t stop to take in any scenic or tourist views on account of the fact that I used to live there and have seen most of them, just driving in the Pacific Northwest certainly offers more than its share of beautiful vistas and scenery. The image on the left is from the scenic Cascade Loop in eastern Washington. They really do look like the Alps. The image on the right looks a bit like a road you’d take to dump a body, not that I have much experience with that, statute of limitations-wise.

In the middle of the Cascade Loop is a town called Leavenworth, which has been made to look like a German village in the Alps. Some cheeky entrepreneur even named his tourist shop “The Alps,” right before that sign that helpfully says “rocks,” in case you’re a collector. I had never seen Leavenworth, so I was glad it was on my route as I drove to see my son and his family in Moses Lake, Washington. However, I have to admit I was a little underwhelmed after driving slowly through Leavenworth. To me, it looked more like a Disneyland version of a foreign town than the real thing. Granted, I didn’t give it much of a look other than the drive-by, but over the years, I’d had so many people excitedly ask me if I’d ever been there, I really expected more.

Alas: Leavenworth, I was served in German towns. I know German towns. German towns are a friend of mine. Leavenworth, you’re no German town.

(With props to the hapless Mr. Quayle and clever Mr. Bentsen.) (Yeah, I know some of you have no clue as to what I’m on about with all that, but I’ll let it sit, because a lot of time I have no idea what I’m saying as well. But if you get it, you get it. And if you don’t and want to, click here.)

A lot of people think the Pacific NW is just miles of endless trees. But in fact when you cross the Cascades and enter eastern Washington or Oregon, the terrain turns into high desert, and is quite hot in the summer and often snowy in the winter. Here’s a bit of tree trivia for you: There are over three trillion trees on earth. Also, it is estimated that there are anywhere from 100 billion to 400 billion stars in the Milky Way galaxy. Which means there are at least 7.5 times more trees on earth than stars in the Milky Way. A billion, much less a trillion, are actually a lot bigger than our brains can comprehend. Which is why anyone becoming a trillionaire should be viewed with a whole lot of caution and trepidation. Why? Because, If you spent $1 million every single day, it would take roughly 2,740 years to spend $1 trillion. To spend it within a standard 80-year human lifespan, you would have to spend over $34 million every single day without fail. And that’s just stupid.

Anyway, after driving extensively in Europe, I can honestly say I prefer driving there vs. the US. Mainly it’s because almost everyone follows the rule that only the fastest cars should be in the left lane, with the next slowest on the right, and the very slowest on the far right, plus the roundabouts and a trillion or so other common sense things.

In the US, it’s pretty much whatever you want to do. I saw plenty of cars passing on the right, which can actually result in a 750€ traffic ticket in France, no joke. I also ended up behind a car clogging up traffic on the far left lane by going exactly the speed limit, despite people swerving dangerously around her to make a point. I even flashed my brights at her like they do in Europe. Nope. She stayed in the left lane at precisely the speed limit. I tried shooting out her tires with the gun I had rented from Portland Pistol Rentals, but I kept missing and eventually ran out of bullets.

That said, upon my return to Portugal I found myself on a three lane freeway during rush hour. I was in the far left lane, but hemmed in by the steady line of cars in all three lanes. I happened to glance up into my rear view mirror, and saw some knucklehead riding my bumper as if somehow I could either go faster or move to the right lane despite being surrounded by cars. So I made a motion with my hand to back off, and he motioned back, and soon we we had a rollicking conversation via middle-fingered sign language. Eventually he was able to veer dangerously into the center lane and then swerve rudely and wildly back to the left lane a few cars down, still not making much more progress than anyone else. Sometimes I do get irritated at the the pushiness of left-lane drivers in Europe, but overall, it feels a lot safer than the chaos that is American freeways. I wouldn’t say the same about Italian roads, however, that’s my vote for the worst. (As a side note, I realize sometimes people might have a medical emergency or whatnot, but his car and demeanor just screamed “asshole.” If he really was having an emergency, I hope it was something along the lines of being minutes away from shitting his pants.)

One of my visits was to my friend Jeff, who was featured a few years ago in one of my BaldSasquatch entries when we visited Porto and other places in Portugal together. While it looks like we were high on the very legal marijuana available in Washington, we actually, well anyway, ahem, we were just having a good time. The view of Mount Rainier is from his backyard. The dramatic and beautiful scenery is certainly one good reason to visit many parts of the US. I’d even wrangle a visit to Jeff’s house just to see the scenery even if I didn’t like him. Let me know if you’re going to Washington state and I’ll give you his phone number,

Every year near the end of June, the US celebrates Memorial Day, which began after the Civil War as a way to honor Union soldiers who had died in the conflict. Today, it serves as a solemn tribute to those who made the ultimate sacrifice in service to the United States. It’s also a time when uber-patriotic people love to show off how patriotic they are by blowing up things, in more ways than one. The ubiquitous presence of American flags and other signs of patriotism is not something you usually see in Europe, which is why American cheeks are so much stronger than Europeans’.

There’s nothing that says sightseeing has to be relegated to large scenic views. I took a shot of this soda bottle top as an illustration as to one of the differences between Europe and the US. In Europe, plastic bottles now must have the lid attached to the bottle itself, resulting in a huge reduction of those little caps rolling around all over the place. In the US –famously averse to having laws passed to make companies do things– some companies just put a little note on top: “Recycle bottle with cap on.” If it’s cheaper for companies, that’s usually what flies in the US. Americans have long been taught to chafe at government regulations, but to be honest, I really appreciate most of the EU rules I’ve encountered. They do in fact often make the populace safer, the environment cleaner, the food healthier, and the ground more capless.

As a final note, I’d mentioned above that during my trip I visited my 96 year-old mother, who, for the last twenty years at least, never looked anywhere close to her real age. We had three days of quality time together, but I knew it would probably be the last time I’d see her, because time was finally catching up to her mortal body. I received word that she had peacefully passed away just three weeks after I’d returned to Europe, making it obvious that I was her favorite child. (It’s also now probably obvious why none of my siblings read this blog.)

Losing your mother is never easy, of course, but she had been ready to go for at least a year, so it was as if her wish was finally granted. Additionally, I think most people would say living 96 years without a lot of painful or annoying illnesses and passing after just a brief and peaceful downward spiral is about the best outcome anyone could hope for.

Joan Mae Anderson was a wonderful, wonderful woman, and I’m proud to be one of her six sons, and I will cherish her memory forever. Rest in Peace, dear mother. And thank you for being such a good mom, and teaching me so much. I will always love, and be grateful for you. You were the best mom I could have ever hoped for.

(Scroll down to see previous entries.)

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How a Little Honey Can Improve an Abusive Relationship

I think one of the hardest things anyone can admit to is that they’re in an abusive relationship, especially if there are no visible scars to show it. In fact, it took me some serious introspection to realize that a relationship I had thought I was enjoying was in fact abusive.

What some people might not always know is that the abuse can occur even when the abuser is actually somewhat obsessed with you. They can monopolize your time, follow you around the house demanding to know everything you’re doing, and interrupt you when you least want to be. They can even “accidentally” damage some of your favorite things when you try to enforce the idea of getting some alone time, or even when you just say “no” one too many times.

This can all be a little more difficult for expats because you’re a bit more isolated than if you lived in your hometown. One of these days I plan to write a blog entry on the pros, cons, and hazards of being an expat. Being an expat can be very rewarding but it’s not always easy, especially when the unexpected happens.

An image of our Beer Club after 40 days and 40 nights of rain in Portugal. This ark really saved our beer can -er, bacon.

One of the unexpected things that can happen after moving to a different country, if you come over as a couple, is that you may not stay a couple. In my case, I ended up living alone in a house in Portugal, which wasn’t exactly what I had on my bucket list.

Since then I have been fortunate enough to have been welcomed into a couple of expat groups; one is a Friday Beer Night get-together at a bar with a bunch of grizzled men who started the thing when some of their wives began a book club. The book club is long gone, but Beer Club is still going strong, which proves that beer is mightier than the pen. There’s also a group in Sesimbra that has welcomed me with open arms. I gotta tell ya, one of the coolest things about living in Europe is the variety of nationalities you can end up making friends with. Our Sesimbra group has members from Brazil, Canada, Finland, France, Germany, Iran, Ireland, Israel, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia, the U.K., and the U.S. So every gathering is a bit like being in the United Nations. It’s just so cool to hear the points of view, wisdom, and experience from people who have come from all over the planet.

While those groups help keep me social, they don’t always alleviate the occasional loneliness I feel when I’m home alone. Some friends suggested I should get a dog, but I never really wanted the responsibilities, including what to do with him/her when I traveled, the fact that I had a yard full of gravel (picking up dog poop in gravel is like trying to salvage undigested M&M’s from your toilet… ooh- that was a gross metaphor!), and said yard has fences that aren’t particularly designed to keep animals in or out. Not to mention duties like vet visits, feeding, leaving them alone while I go to the store, secretly burying the cats, and so on.

Our Sesimbra group on Clown Day (I’m the closest on the left). Little ol’ Sesimbra has one of the largest clown gatherings in the world!

But then I met a new puppy dog up the street, I think a terrier mix of some sort. The owner told me her name was Mel, which means “honey” in Portuguese. Despite being nearly full grown, she was slender enough to fit through the fence railings, and energetic and friendly enough to do so as I strolled past on my way to taking a walk. It wasn’t long before she began following me on every hike, including back to my house after I was done with the walk. After this turned into a routine, getting her to go home became difficult. She wanted to stay with me and outright refused to leave the property. So I’d bribe her with a treat by throwing it past the electric gate and then closing it after she ran to get the food. Looking at her puzzled and broken-hearted face as the gate closed nearly broke my own heart, but she had to go home!

That worked for about a week, until she figured out how to jump over my fence. Initially, I didn’t think she’d be able to; I knew she ran like the wind but I soon discovered she is also quite a majestic leaper. In what turned out to be the last time I threw the treat past the gate, I watched it close, with me on one side and Mel on the other. Once it clanged shut, I turned and walked the ten meters to my front door, only to be beaten to the door by Mel.

Mel.

All I could do is laugh and hope that she’d give up after a while. So before opening my front door, while stifling any overt display of admiration for her leaping abilities and determination, I gave her some scritches along with some very specific instructions as to the hows and whys she had to go home, then squeezed through the door without letting her in. She immediately started yipping and yelping and scratching at the door, so I surrendered and let her in just to keep my house in one piece. She ended up spending the rest of the afternoon and into the evening with me. Eventually it became time for bed, so I really needed to try to make her go home. Once again I put her out and locked the door and went right to bed so I wouldn’t have to listen to the whining, eventually putting a pillow over my head to drown out the mournful sounds and banging. I don’t know how she did it, but she rattled that door like it was a group of zombies trying to burst through to eat what’s left of my brain. I have no idea how long she was out there, but I drifted off to sleep to the sounds of pounding, rattling, whining, barking, and some very ribald doggie cursing. I fully expected to find a horse’s head on the welcome mat in the morning.

Instead, I woke up to find the welcome mat completely ravaged and scattered around the yard in pieces, no longer offering a welcome in front of what was now a very scratched-up front door, and a torn-up screen in a section of the screen door in the patio, which she ripped through just so she could get to the house door and scratch on that too. The second time I attempted the same process I went back to see what she was doing before things got out of hand and I saw her climbing up on the couch on the patio just so she could reach the screened window next to the door. Fortunately, I caught her just in the nick of time, and realized I needed a new game plan before she attacked every window in the house.

Mel showing off her newly designed Doggie Door.

It was also then that I fully grasped that not only was I having an affair with my neighbor’s dog, but I was also in an abusive relationship.

She began spending more and more time in my house, but I still had the problem of getting her to go to her real home. I finally figured out how to trick her by first opening the gate and then getting into my car. The first time or two I drove out into the street, at which point she’d understand I was leaving and would trot up the road. Pretty soon she was getting the idea and as soon as I got into my car she would run home, with no need to even turn on the ignition. Although I did catch her now and then going up the road a short ways, and then turning around and waiting to make sure I really was leaving. When I was put under that scrutiny, I drove into the street to sell it better. If she still didn’t didn’t budge, I would drive down the street and out of sight around the corner and make a loop, and when I returned she apparently was finally convinced, and gone.

I didn’t win all those kinds of battles, she’s a smart cookie. But she now trusts that when I make a move to get into the car, that means I’m leaving and she needs to go home. Now I just have to open the gate and reach for the car door, and she gives me a little goodbye nod and trots off to her other home. I quietly close the car door and the fence, relieved that we have a system that still works.

While our relationship began as an abusive one as she made sure I knew the lengths she would go to if I didn’t dance to her tune, over the weeks and months we’ve settled into a nice routine where everyone: myself, the actual owners, and Mel herself, gets exactly what they want. I haven’t taken a walk without her in months, because even if she’s not obviously outside when I walk by their house (and pretty much have to for all my walks), it’s never long before I feel a wet nose on my hand. I rarely hear her coming; she moves like a silent ninja assassin running on a field of marshmallows.

One time when I was returning from a walk with her and was near the owner’s house, the owner drove up and got out of the car. We exchanged pleasantries, then he called Mel to come to him. She refused and sat by my side. He laughed and shrugged. She followed me home, or I should say, I followed her to my home.

The neighbors also have an older dog named Jack that I’ve been friends with ever since I moved in, but he never adopted me like Mel has.

When she’s inside, whatever room I’m in, she has to be there too. I have a spiral staircase she can’t climb up, and the first time I went up it with her in the house she sat down below and barked until I came back down. And she rarely barks. When I sit in my easy chair to read the news or, say, write this blog, she’ll usually climb onto the chair, push the computer off to the side, plant her head on my chest, and start snoring within minutes. Once she does that I allow myself to be held captive because I just hate to wake her up and frankly, having another warm, breathing, living being snuggling on me is like a little slice of heaven. It takes longer for me to accomplish anything nowadays, but ah, the things we do for love.

In fact, I’ve come up with a new theological belief worth considering because of her. From now on, if someone asks about my religious beliefs, I’ll just say, “I believe in Dog.” I think that dogs might have been put here just to show us what loyalty, love, and companionship are all about, and when we die we’ll be judged on how well we treated them. No other animals, just dogs. In fact, I think someone transposed a couple of letters in “God” a long time ago. It’s easy for me to imagine that anyone who abuses a dog deserves a one way ticket to hell, which, by the way, some people feel might be populated by cats. I love cats, but I could be convinced that they were perhaps made by the dark side to distract us from dogs as well as keep an eye on us. Unfortunately, many cats are annoyed at having to do so and aren’t particularly good at keeping that a secret. I think their creators added the purring ability to help offset that as well as all the biting. But they’re still not dogs.

Anyway, I have literally had to change almost all of my routines to accommodate a twitterpated dog, and I’m loving every minute of it. I may have been in an abusive relationship, but love means acceptance and forgiveness, and that’s what both of us give each other every day in addition to lots of doggie kisses.

I tried to give her a bath but only managed to get one paw wet. At least now I have one room in the house she refuses to go into.

As I mentioned earlier, people had been telling me for months that I should get a dog, especially since my Quasimodo looks and Dr. House bedside manner have apparently gotten in the way of the hordes of women who otherwise would be knocking down my door offering to snuggle me to my heart’s content. As a result, my home has gone from generally being neat and tidy to one that has doggie toys strewn about, a water dish that sometimes has more water around it than in it, dust and dirt showing up like swirls of abstract graffiti on my terracotta-colored tile floor, ticks wandering to and fro throwing rowdy parties, and scratched-up doors and window screens. I could have a big sign out front saying, “A Dog Lives Here” and wouldn’t be surprised if someone wrote “No duh!” on it.

The owner’s university-going daughter is apparently the one in their household who is the most responsible for Mel, and we’ve forged a co-parenting relationship whereby we text each other regularly on all things Mel. If Mel is at my house and the daughter is home and wants some Mel-time, she just texts a short message telling me to send Mel home. I just go outside, open the gate, start walking back toward the car, and she’s off to the races.

Nearly every morning between 8 and 9, Mel’s happy little face and furiously wagging tail appears outside my glass door. I left the triangle of screen bare so she has her own doggie door to get into the screened-in patio, which is where the glass door leading into the house is. She no longer scratches at my front door, especially since most of the time between 8 and 9 I make up constant mental excuses to walk within eyesight of the glass door to see if she is there. In fact, she’s learned that whining a little and being patient gets her inside, so we all now have a routine that’s working great and doesn’t involve any ongoing property damage. The other day I went out about 9 AM to hang the laundry and wondered why she wasn’t out there, when suddenly I felt a cold wet nose on the back of my leg. She moves like a ghost. But she shows up virtually every single morning.

A photo her owner sent me celebrating Mel’s first birthday.

So now I have the best of all worlds. I have a dog who adores me, and vice versa, and who shows up in the morning and hangs out all day, then returns to her main home at night. Once in a while she’ll make it clear that she wants spend the night by refusing to even go outside. Since she gets fed at her other home in the morning, after I get up it’s not hard to get her to finally go up there. In this part of Portugal it’s not unusual for people to leave their dogs outside most of the time. I’m imagining that without me, Mel runs around the neighborhood with a bunch of teenage dog rabble-rousers trading doggie treat recipes and playing pranks on other homeowners by ringing the doorbells and then running away giggling. They probably also toilet paper trees and put lit firecrackers in mailboxes.

I’m pretty sure she doesn’t really do those things, but sometimes I wonder if she has a secret double life and gets together with other dogs chasing every cat they can find and digging holes where they shouldn’t, all night long, because often when she arrives in the morning she falls right to sleep and stays that way for hours. I’ve smelled her breath for alcohol, but she’s apparently able to mask that by eating a whole fresh fish. I have no idea what kind of doggie drugs they might be into.

I lined up a collection of items: sandals, shoes, carpet, the screen, that she’d destroyed early on in our relationship in order to try and shame her into stopping. Now I close all my inside doors and keep a close eye on her whenever she’s in my house, which isn’t hard to do since she follows me everywhere.

When it’s all said and done, the way Mel has adopted me is nothing short of miraculous, really. I get all the benefits of having a dog without a bunch of the hassles. You know those movies that have scenes of craziness where the family dog absolutely ruins an entire room or more, like in Beethoven, or a very cute Brazilian movie called Caramelo, and the owners never seem to be upset for more than a minute? Well, that’s just the movies, they never show the hours of clean-up or the credit card receipts for all the furniture that had to be replaced. But it still represents what love is. I love that little gal and think she’s the cutest dog in all the world, and she could destroy just about anything of mine and I’d still love her. Because y’know, it’s just stuff. As Robert Heinlein wrote in Stranger in a Strange Land, “Love is that condition in which the happiness of another person, or dog,* is essential to your own.”

*Far be it from me to add or change anything the great Robert Heinlein wrote, but love makes you do crazy things.

Her owners are delighted that Mel has a place to go and is loved, and Mel can pick and choose between two homes that each give her stuff she likes. It’s also perfect for both owners, I don’t have to worry about leaving the house and they know Mel is safe when they’re at work or school. We communicate regularly, and are both very happy with this very unique arrangement. And I can tell Mel loves both of her “alphas,” I know she’s well treated at home.

Now that’s what I call a win/win/win.

It occurred to me that a great service to offer would be pairing dog owners who have to leave their doggies home alone all day with shut-ins or retired folks who’d love the company of a dog without some of the ownership hassle. In other words, duplicating what I already have. In fact, I even had some friends (who have since moved, sadly) in the neighborhood with a similar situation to mine; their neighbor had a large dog with a lame leg that was left alone a lot, and after a while my friends started bringing him into their house and it was a great deal for all… until they unfortunately had to move. But that’s two of these kinds of situations in just one neighborhood… dunno if this is just a Portuguese thing or if it’s an idea that could work everywhere, but I think it’s a good one! If you have a dog you have to leave alone all day, ask around… there may be some retired folks nearby who would love to have a dog keep them company during the day!

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That was Mel doing a little typing after jumping in my lap while I was writing that last sentence, putting her head on the keyboard and demanding some attention. In the process, she not only typed out a great password suggestion, but she made me smell like dog, probably transferred over a few ticks, and forced me to stop my work. This morning she greeted me with joyful whines and squirms and yelps as if I was her long-lost dad returning from war. She makes me laugh almost every morning with her exuberance, happiness, and cute face. One simply can’t ask for a better way to start one’s day, even if one ends up smelling like dog, and even if your name isn’t One.

Okay, like a proud papa showing off his newborn, here follows an assortment of photos I’ve taken and will probably use when submitting my entry into the Cutest Dog in the World contest.

The photo on the left was taken during a party at my house, and I thought it was cute so I asked AI to make a few changes to it. Mel is definitely a maestro, she had an entire group of strangers (to her) fawning over her constantly, and she worked the room like a pro.

Dogs were created to be intentionally cute, just like human babies, in order to prove that anyone who abuses them deserves a pitchfork right up the butt.

I don’t know if you can see the resemblance like I do, but I used to get the evil eye from Mel a lot during the early days of her training of me.

I honestly don’t even feel worthy of another living, breathing being like this loving and yearning for so much attention from me.

Here she is on our walks. She loves running through the expansive tick housing developments, generously offering a free ride into town for any tick that wants to hop on. Occasionally she’ll encounter another dog, and after brief introductions, they run pell Mel (ha!) all over the place, sometimes disappearing for a quarter of an hour or more. But she always finds me before I get too far down the road.

When the sun’s out during our walks, she finds any shady spot she can to rest up for a while. She also loves digging like mad; I’ve never figured out what she’s after. At the end of our walks, she always goes to my gate and waits patiently for my two legs to catch up to her. Keep in mind we have to pass by her actual owner’s house to get there.

There are two kinds of dogs in this world, those who go around mud puddles, and those who go right through them. Three guesses as to which one Mel is (if you need all three guesses for a question with only two options just know we think you’re very special). She also loves her toys, often cramming as many as she can into her mouth at one time. Her favorite game is tug-of-war, and will play until I’m worn out. I have yet to find the amount of time it would actually take to wear her out from that game.

A man and his dog. Although not quite his, just perfectly so.

She also is photogenic enough to be a dog model. Here’s an ad I made for Spring to use if it ever gets its act together and starts advertising, because the popularity of Summer is starting to eat into Spring’s numbers.

Okay, here’s the last of them. As you can tell I’m completely smitten, but I don’t really care if people think it’s just puppy love… because it is!

Ah, Mel, thanks for making me smile and laugh and snuggle and feel loved every single day.

(Did anyone else just hear a “Yer Wewcum!” in a Scooby-Doo voice?)

I saved the best for last as your reward for plowing through this extra-long post. This is Mel when she was a puppy.

“Aaaawwwww.”

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BUDAPEST DOG ATTACK!

Okay, that was just my lame attempt at sensationalist journalism by tying two unrelated topics together in order to make it sound alarming. What I really meant is that while I was in the midst of completing this second entry on Budapest, I was attacked by a dog and lost use of my thumbs for a while, which is why this entry took longer than planned to complete.

Here’s the backstory: I was volunteering at a dog rescue center here in Portugal, and failed to heed the warning signs the dog, who I had just taken for a nice walk, was giving me that he was really hankering for a couple of thumbs for breakfast.

Granted, the warning signs were easily missed within the 4/10ths of a second it took from him being my friendly walking companion to turning into an unhinged lunatic, maniacally biting whatever his teeth encountered with a force equal to a really pissed off Jaws. I can vividly replay in my head the feeling of his teeth sinking deep into my flesh like butter. The dog was seriously berserking: he was absolutely out to hurt me as badly as possible. While I was being eaten, I seriously regretted ever calling his mother a bitch.

After a week of healing

Thankfully, not all dogs are psychopaths, and in fact I was rescued by a canine hero who burst into the kennel and took on the savage beast in my stead, allowing me to escape with thumbs mostly still attached. I staggered around in a daze for a minute marveling that the pain hadn’t hit yet, even though my thumbnail was so loose it looked like it was floating on my thumb. Fortunately, they had a small medical station just for this type of emergency. While I was being patched up in preparation for the ride to the hospital (mainly so I wouldn’t bleed all over everything) I asked the nurse (at least I think she was a nurse, she was very nurse-like if not) if I’d be able to play the piano after all this. When she indicated that she thought I surely would, I said, “Awesome! Because I could never play it before!” Even on my deathbed (well, thumb deathbed), I’m cracking a bad Dad joke, and a tired old one no less. But I was betting most Portuguese might never have heard it, and I was right! Of course, that just points out that there are multiple ways to be lame.

The incident made me interested in the etymology of the word, “canine,” seeing as how one just tried sending me to doggie heaven. I believe it came from a conversation that went something like this: “How many fingers are you likely to have after a fierce dog attack?” (Man pauses to think.) “Hmm… ‘kay, nine.” And that’s how words get made, my friends.

Anyway, since I usually type almost exclusively with my thumbs, I’m now forced to type very slowly with my elbows, so be sure to read it slowly so you don’t get ahead of the words. Now back to our regularly scheduled programming:

I walked across the river to the former town of Buda (apparently I got a few details wrong about the town names in the last post, sorry, my bad) and noticed a grandiose set of buildings on a hill overlooking the Danube and the former town of Pest, which, to be fair, is definitely a town name someone like me must make fun of if only because of implied reader covenants.

I was there in early January, so they hadn’t taken all their Christmas decorations down yet. Hungary’s religious history, starting around 1000 AD, is like a pinball machine, with the metal ball bouncing noisily between bumpers representing various Christian denominations, including Catholicism, Calvinism, Lutheranism, Jismism, Unitarianism, Festivusism, and none-of-the-above-ism. After WW II the Communist overlords persecuted churches, banned religious education, imprisoned clergy, and gave nuns vigorous wet willies. After 1990, when Hungary completed its transition from a communist state to a parliamentary democracy, religious freedom was restored. Today, Orban’s government is heavily promoting “Christian values” (which somehow always means, “keep the foreigners out!”), but church attendance remains low and Hungary is among Europe’s most secular societies in daily life.

As you can see here, this Stairway to Heaven is pretty lightly attended, even after they turned it into an escalator.

On top of the hill is the Buda Castle, which houses the Royal Palace (Budavári Palota), the Budapest History Museum, the Hungarian National Gallery, the Széchényi National Library, and most importantly for some people, assorted toilets.

I took a tour of the museum, and will post a few of the highlights here. On the left are the seals of various rulers, so the King could send a letter with proof of its authenticity, kind of like what we’re going to have to be doing once AI is so dominant that no one knows if any given letter, picture, video, or maybe even your spouse, has been generated by AI. Funny how history repeats itself, huh? I wonder what our wax seal equivalent will be?

On the right, little did I know that in a few weeks after taking that photo I would be trying to save my hand in real life from a dog with a much bigger skull than those little rat dogs. After suffering a dog bite delivered with the force of heavy-duty bolt cutters, I developed a pretty keen appreciation for the damage they can do before you can even string together two bad words. That said, I’m still pretty sure I could take on any one of those little mutts if one of them started biting my ankles, especially if they were already dead like that.

This is what I might have ended up looking like had that other dog not burst into the kennel to rescue me. Actually, these bones are from the 16th-17th century, and highlight the lack of concern many European countries have in regards to nudity, even when the person is involved, as we can see here, in something very dirty. Regardless as to how this person died, it’s obvious he’s having the last laugh.

Weapons are often named so as to instill fear into the opponent. In this case, the nomenclature they came up with was to take one of the most heinous of crimes, rape, and take it one step further, making it even rapier, which sounds a lot better than murderier.

For a time, Hungary was ruled by people without any heads. The era didn’t last very long, however, mainly because eventually the populace discovered none of their leaders could see, hear, speak, taste, smell, or wear a hat, and you had to have a great hat to be a leader back then. All the other issues are still commonly found in today’s politicians, but at least now you can get away with not wearing a hat.

The other two exhibits of note were the shoes they wore, mostly being notable for the lack of a swoosh on their side, rendering them almost unrecognizable without painstaking research by skilled shoeologists. On the right, we see the result of skull-shaping, which was actually a thing in 4th–7th century Hungary. Unfortunately for this guy, I think his face exploded when they wrapped the cloth a little too tight. Oh, I’m sorry, too soon?

The Buda Castle has seen more than its share of fighting, destruction, reconstruction, redestruction, rereconstruction, reredestruction and on and on: jeeze, there are only so many “re’s” you can use! Buda Castle pretty much represents 700+ years of power politics in stone. It was badly damaged during WW II. The last era of reconstruction began in 1989, leading to what we see today, unless you’re completely blind or are reading this with your eyes closed.

Afterwards, I walked across one of the bridges. The photo on the right was taken from the Pest side.

On that side of the river is one of the most heart-wrenching memorials in the world. It’s a line of 60 pairs of iron shoes, commemorating the Jews that were murdered in Budapest in 1944/45 by members of Hungary’s fascist regime, which was allied with Nazi Germany. Victims were marched to the riverbank, forced to remove their shoes (because they were reusable), and then shot so their bodies would fall into the Danube. Thousands were killed this way.

I’ll never understand why it’s so easy to get humans to hate… and here we are all over again with polarized politics creating genuine hatred and scorn for those who believe differently, or were simply born in a different place, or, unbelievably, just because they have a different shade of skin. Sometimes I wish I was a dolphin.

One of the grandest buildings in all the world is the Hungarian Parliament Building. The Hungarian Parliament Building (Országház) is one of those places where architecture, politics, and symbolism are all turned up to 11. Completed in 1904, it’s one the largest parliament buildings in the world. It features 365 towers, and I suppose every four years they build a temporary extra one. I was looking forward to touring the inside, thinking it wouldn’t be very crowded because tourism in Budapest would surely be at a low ebb in chilly January. Unfortunately, I’m apparently an idiot.

And not just for that day, tickets were sold out weeks in advance. My only consolation was that I heard they don’t allow photography inside, so since one of the reasons I endeavor to see anything anymore is so I can show it to my vast (loosely defined) collection of BaldSasquatch readers, I didn’t beat myself up too bad about it. Just a small black eye that healed pretty quickly.

I contented myself with taking some shots of some of the buildings, monuments, and yet another un-taken-down Christmas decoration, all adjacent to the Parliament.

I hopped on a bus going to who-knows-where, which was fine with me because 1) it was free for me and 2) even when I thought I knew where I was going I’d end up going to a different place anyway, so I just took to riding the buses until I saw something interesting or the person next to me smelled too bad. Of course I had to stop when I saw Fashion Street Budapest, where, as you can imagine, I spent hours and hours browsing through the stores. Not. I did buy a Budapest refrigerator magnet though.

This eventually led me to the Great Market Hall (Nagyvásárcsarnok, pronounced, as we all know, with the silent “á”), a huge 19th-century market with food stalls, souvenirs, and upstairs eateries. I’ve been to a number of market halls throughout Europe, but this is the largest I think I’ve ever seen, and in fact is the largest indoor market hall in all of Central Europe, and one of the largest traditional ones anywhere, and definitely the largest at that address.

I previously had an absolutely delicious bowl of goulash in a nice restaurant in Buda, and so when I saw the food stalls on the upper floor I became curious as to the difference between “street” goulash and restaurant goulash. After eyeing the possibilities, I chose absolutely the wrong one to order from.

This is the place I should have completely ignored. In hindsight, the lady serving me had me immediately pegged as a mark. After I ordered the goulash, she slopped some pieces of meat and gravy on a plate which she then tossed into the microwave. Then she grabbed another plate and began asking if I wanted this or that or the other thing as if everyone gets those things, you know, kind of like they do at Subway. I said yes to the first few, thinking it was part of the package deal, but then I began getting a little suspicious, and stopped saying yes when the number of possible offerings appeared to near infinity. But still I ended up with some potatoes and pasta and weird peppers and a whole mess of purple cabbage and other stuff I swear I didn’t say yes to.

She retrieved the meat from the microwave and put both plates in a box, now with enough food for two or three people. I asked for a Sprite to help wash it down and she put it on the counter for me. She ran the credit card, but the exchange rate is something like 350,000 kopecs or whatever the hell they use to the euro, and I’d still not mastered the art of looking at a number and doing the math in my head. But my suspicio-meter was pushing past 10 heading toward 11, so I asked for a copy of the receipt, which she had not immediately offered, unsurprisingly. Suddenly her already poor English became decidedly worse and she tried to say she couldn’t do it, but I asked another employee to help and he printed it out for me. I took it to the table right across from them, brought out my phone, and calculated. It was the equivalent of 35 euros. And the meat wasn’t even all hot, some pieces were barely lukewarm. I realized, with some self-deprecating black humor, that I’d been had. I also realized that I had forgotten my Sprite on the front counter. So I turned around and asked for it and there it was, now sitting on a back counter, obvious in her hope that I would have forgotten about it. She muttered some excuse in Hungarian as she reluctantly handed it to me, and I just gave her the evil eye. I make it a habit to never make a scene in a foreign country, who knows if she’s the aunt of a sister of Orban or a mob boss’s cousin. She scammed me fair and square because I was an idiot. And this, children, is why idiots tend to have less money than non-idiots.

I did get some degree of revenge by whispering, “shit food” in the ears of three people standing in front of the kiosk trying to decide what to order. After a quick glance at me, whereupon I confirmed my review with a sad shake of the head, they walked away without ordering. Ha! That’s three overpriced meals you missed out on you goulashy bitch, so your scamming of me actually cost you more money than if you would’ve treated me properly! That’ll teach you to screw over a befuddled-looking old American!

Unfortunately, she had the last laugh because I ended up with a serious case of the shits, starting during the night and necessitating a couple of runs to the toilet during the day. Damn, they had the home field advantage.

I’ll let you guess which one of these photos above was one of the best meals I’ve ever had, and which one resulted in explosive diarrhea. The Diarrhea Special also cost a lot more than the delicious one, and to be honest much of it didn’t look all that much different later in the bottom of the toilet. Eew.

The rest of the presumably shits-free stalls included meats, chocolates, vegetables, liquor, candy, and underwear with the words, “I visited Budapest and all I got was this shit-stained underwear” stitched into the rear. I bought a pack of three.

If you’re a vendor, one of the places you definitely don’t want to be in the Great Market Hall is on the lower level. I took a peek, but skedaddled upstairs because I swore I saw a zombie, probably turned into one by eating, yes, ghoulash.

Another place I visited was the Hospital in the Rock, which was pretty fascinating. Unfortunately, like the Hungarian Parliament, they don’t allow photographs to be taken when you’re on the tour inside. But you can read all about it and see some photos here: https://www.sziklakorhaz.eu/en

The short version is that it’s a unique subterranean facility built into a 10km-long natural cave system beneath Buda Castle. Constructed between 1939 and 1944, it provided critical surgical care during the Siege of Budapest (1944–45), and during the 1956 Revolution. From 1958 to 1962 it served as a cold war nuclear bunker. Since it was built by utilizing existing natural caves, the layout from above looks a lot like an ant farm laying on its side.

While visiting that museum it decided to snow outside, turning Budapest into a winter wonderland.

I also visited Aquincum, an ancient Roman city that has been turned into an exhibit and museum. Unfortunately, due to the snow, the grounds were closed, so I took these shots from the street. Since I’ve seen a number of Roman ruins during my European travels, I didn’t lament the inability to walk around these too much. Once you’ve been to Pompeii, other ruins are just like, “Pffft, yeah, that’s fine, but it ain’t no Pompeii!”

They had an exhibition of dog chew toys for some reason, plus a rendering as to what the Sarmation nomadic tribes from the 5th century BC to the 4th century AD likely looked like, as well as their dress. Based on bones they found in a grave, they estimate the height of the 23-25 year-old woman to be 153 cm, or just a smidge over 5 feet (as long as she wasn’t wearing stilettos). The 164 cm tall (5.4 feet) man was 40-50 years old when he died, but might’ve lived longer had he not been caught prancing around in his wife’s stilettos.

The Sarmatians were at times both fierce enemies and valued allies of the Roman Empire. These are actual helmets worn by Roman soldiers during that era. The Sarmatian dominance ended with the Hunnic invasions in the late 4th century, and most tribes were absorbed by the Slavic and Germanic peoples. Sarmations were a new one for me, so it was interesting to learn that little factoid from a region of the world whose history goes largely untaught in the US.

These are pretty interesting if you want to zoom in and read the plaques describing what the ancient writings say. The top left photo shows a military diploma which also granted the soldier Roman citizenship after 25 years of military service. I don’t know what you had to do to survive 25 years in the military back then, but I suspect it might have involved a lot of hiding in the bushes.

A lute, a stone casket (I guess it might’ve been a bathtub), and a statue of Ol’ One-Legged Willie rounded out some of the exhibits in the small but elegant museum they had on site.

But the highlight for me was this organ dating back to 228 AD. I mean, if someone had asked me to guess what year organs were invented, I might’ve said something like the 14th century. But apparently way back when, the Romans could pump out tunes like Light My Fire, The House of the Rising Sun, Hush, and In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida with the best of them, at least until they ran out of electric eels to power their guitars. But seriously, ancient Roman organs? Who’d-a thunk? What’s next? Self-driving chariots?

Ironically, they found some of the heads that must’ve originally been part of the headless statues section of that other museum. These guys obviously called “heads” first. Either that or they’re full body statues depicting how they wrapped their bodies in such a way to make them look like Pez dispensers, which were probably invented about the same time as the organs.

This mosaic floor dates back to the 2nd century, and was part of the palace in Aquincum. The coins and glassware are from the 1st and 2nd centuries. I tell ya, every time I see Roman artifacts I marvel at how advanced they were and how long it took humanity to catch back up to them. If Mrs. Caesar had just plugged in the toaster she got as a wedding present they’d have discovered electricity and you might be reading this from your vacation condo on Mars.

By the last day, I was down to my B-Level attractions, either already having seen or not being allowed to see the best sites Budapest has to offer. So I wandered into the Light Art Museum, which is one of the first exhibition spaces in the world to feature exhibits focused on light. I wasn’t expecting too much out of it, but it ended up being fairly interesting. Some of the exhibits made absolutely no sense nor created any interest in me whatsoever, while other pieces were quite fascinating. A lot of them used movement, which I can’t show you due to the “Cheap-Ass Pix Only” program I’ve subscribed to in order to make this blog. But if you ever find yourself in Budapest, once you escape from the kidnappers, check this little museum out. You could do a lot worse than spending 17 euros on the Light Art Museum. God knows I spent over twice that just for the privilege of sitting on the toilet for longer than usual, so this is a steal in comparison.

Overall I found Budapest to be a safe and beautiful city, in fact data confirms what my spidey-sense tingled to me: statistically, Budapest ranks among the top ten safest cities in Europe. In addition, the buildings are quite magnificent, mass transit can take you just about anywhere, and other than diarrhea-inducing goulash at the big market, they serve some delicious foods in the restaurants. The people were reasonably friendly, although I noticed a direct correlation between English fluency and kindness. Those who didn’t speak English well tended to be a bit gruff and rude. The English speakers were all very nice. I guess it makes some sense, but you can draw your own conclusions as to the why’s of that because the non-English speakers were too grumpy for me to ask them about it. Language issues aside, I do think a lot of ladies like the men there, mostly because they’re, well Hungarian.

By the way, upon my return I was told by someone who’d been there that the baths were actually quite delighful and the older areas that might otherwise be considered dirty were currently closed, so I guess I missed out on one of the signature activities Budapest offers.

Another famous thing in Budapest is the Ruin Bars, which I failed to visit because I only drink alone when I’m not by myself. But you can read all about them here.

Because you know what? With all the traveling I’ve done, I’ve come to realize that no matter how much you do, and how many different places you see, you’ll always miss something. There’s simply no way to see everything, of course, so rather than lament what I didn’t see or do, I treasure and appreciate the things I have done and seen. I never thought I’d ever even step foot in Budapest. It’s still a little awe-inspiring to me that I was able to do that. Thanks for the memories you mad Hungarians!

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I finally conquer my fear of Buda pests and visit Hungary

We begin this post with a trivia question I’m betting almost no one reading this will be able to answer: Budapest is obviously Hungary’s largest city. Which one is second? (Game show music plays.) Answer: Debrecen.

“Doh!” she says as she slaps her head in self-Debrecation. “I knew it!”

As of 2024, the population of Budapest was over 2.1 million, whereas Debrecen had about 10% of that, or just over 217,000. That might seem like a big difference, but Bangkok in Thailand has pretty much everyone else beat with almost 30 times the population of its next largest city, Chonburi. Even though Budapest is the headline act, a true Hungarian adventure would also include the countryside, which has baths and lakes and Roman ruins and historic towns and a lot less English spoken. One of these days I need to explore the countryside of some very foreign country. But not this one, this was all about Budapest.

I admit that for years, I resisted the urge to visit Hungary just because of a fear of Buda pests. I heard a lot of bad things about how annoying they can be, as you can see in the picture above. Eventually, I decided if 2.1 million Hungarians can handle them, I could too. I also take my job as travel blogger seriously, so I’m always ready and willing to venture to exotic and dangerous locales just to satisfy the insatiable travel appetites of my readers. Plus, I had a secret weapon.

I came prepared by bringing a large can of anti-Buda pest spray, which consists of high percentages of Hedonism and Materialism particles. This helps scare them away because those molecules are like poison to their blood. Also, shouting, “Sok pénzt akarok, hogy bármit megtehessek és bármit megvehessek, amit csak akarok!” in Hungarian helps keep them away. In English that means: “I want lots of money so I can do anything and buy anything I want!” That’s very anti-Buddhist, and they shriek like banshees when they hear it, and sometimes even makes their heads explode if you say it with enough conviction.

As most geographically astute people are aware, the name Budapest comes from combining the names of two cities that spent generations staring at one another from either side of the Danube. So obviously there was Budape on one side and St on the other. Unfortunately the Budapolitans looked down on the Stimies, as they called them, mostly because the Stimies were too dumb to have even invented vowels. On the rare occasions they did shout at each other across the river, the Budapolitans usually thought they were being shouted at in anger due to all the flying spittle, when in fact the Stimies were just wanting to borrow a cup of sugar, or sgr in Stimian.

I couldn’t find a lot of history on St, probably because of the vowel thing. Sentences like this: “Ths s wht th St lngg wld lk lk” would be nearly incomprehensible to the average English speaker, so I guess no one even bothers.

The two cities fought countless wars over the years, until the Budapolitans finally won once and for all, and so they combined the two city names into one to form the name Budapest. Some of the intelligence issues persist due to interbreeding, however, as you can see in the above picture with the dumbest looking car I’ve ever seen. Good thing I was able to get a good shot of that because I was using panoramic mode and might have missed it otherwise.

I took these pictures from the plane only because I found it interesting that even as dusk had fallen, there were very few lights anywhere. Even the freeway was only illuminated by car lights. The reality is that Budapest stands alone in a sparsely populated, flat, agricultural region, without the dense city networks common in western Europe. Personally, I think it’s because Buda pests tend to swarm all over the lights.

That said, it did also appear to me that many of the avenues in Budapest were somewhat dimly lit as well. After getting off the airport bus (more on that later), I took to walking closely next to a group of revellers through some of the dimly lit streets, hoping that a sixty-something man dragging a suitcase would blend right in with a bunch of boisterous twenty-somethings.

I do have to say that Hungary endeared itself to me not long after I got off the plane, when I discovered that public transit is free for anyone over the age of “Öreg fing,” which translates directly to “old fart.” If you don’t believe me, do a Google Translate on that. After all, I spent several days in Hungary, so now I’m basically fluent.

Anyway, I clearly qualified for Öreg fing status, which admittedly was occasionally depressing when I’d walk up to the ticket taker and be waved right through without having to show them anything more than my face. Once in a while I’d even pull out a playing card to see if they were paying any attention, but nope- you look like an old fart is what their faces said, so just walk on through old-timer.

So I rode the bus in from the airport, feeling quite like Hungary and I had gotten off on the right foot, because despite effectively being told I was an old fart, it was to get something free after all, which is like manna from heaven for us old farts. Unfortunately, I got off the bus at the wrong stop, which ended up being the first of many mass transit missteps throughout my visit, so it foreshadowed more than I knew at the time. I ended up walking for half an hour to get to the hotel, which I was actually delighted to do just to get an initial feel of the city and find out how easy it was to get mugged. Which I didn’t because obviously I looked just like a native twenty-something reveller and blended right in.

Ahead of the trip, almost every person I told that I was going to Budapest asked me if I was going to the baths. I took to smelling my armpits each time I was asked, wondering if it was something about me. But anyway, here is the building that houses the baths. I’m really not much into saunas or hot baths, unless I get in them, but I figured I should take one for the Sasquatch, as it were. However, after reading up on ‎⁨the Széchenyi Thermal Bath and Swimming Pool, which really is inside that elaborate building, I decided to forgo the experience. Not only does it cost 36 euros just to get inside the place, but you have to bring your own (or buy in their overpriced store, naturally): towel, bathrobe, slippers, swimming cap, and blow up Donald Duck floatie. And there are no rentals, obviously, because no one wants a used Donald Duck floatie. Anyway, the idea of paying anywhere from 50 to 75 euros just to get into a big bathtub or pool just-a didn’t sauna very good-a to me (I’m also nearly fluent in Italian). I also read a lot of reviews on the baths, many of which cited interactions with rude staff as well as concerns about a lack of cleanliness. So I’m sorry, I passed on the experience. I guess I stink as a tour guide, perhaps literally.

I thought I could make amends by describing what it’s like to take a bath in a Hungarian hotel instead, but alas, the bastards want to force you into the overpriced, dirty public baths by not providing one in the hotel, offering only a shower. How rude! However, they did have the easiest-to-operate shower fixture I’ve ever seen. I mean, you just push one of two buttons to get the water flowing, labeled such that even a Stimie could decipher it, and the temperature is an easy-to-understand dial on the right. They even have a nice shelf for soap or perhaps your own shampoo, rubber ducky, or shower martini. Why aren’t they all like that? For some reason my ex-wife had the damndest time with hotel shower set-ups, which admittedly were sometimes incomprehensible. But she never let me mansplain them to her, so I’d sit in the room and listen for the inevitable screams and shrieks when she either got all the cold or all the hot or a hard spray to the face as soon as she turned on the water. I must admit I’d taken to looking forward to the experience, giggling like a little kid whenever it happened. Huh. Maybe that’s why we got divorced: “He giggled when I took a shower your honor!” The gavel bangs. “Guilty! Off with his head!”

The cleverly-named City Park, where the Széchenyi Bath was located, was within easy walking distance from the hotel. It’s quite a large park with lots of things to see, as you can tell by these easy-to-follow guideposts. It was a great first stop to make in Budapest, because inside the park featured the following: the Vajdahunyad Castle, the aforementioned Széchenyi thermal bath, the Budapest Zoo, the Municipal Circus, the Gundel Restaurant, the House of Music, and the Museum of Ethnography, which of course I already knew what that was, right after looking it up: the scientific description of peoples and cultures with their customs, habits, and mutual differences. Which I think is really stupid because anyone who is not a first world white male isn’t worth researching, at least according to too damn many Americans nowadays.

City Park (I just can’t get enough of that name), also includes an amusement park of sorts, as well as a balloon ride, both presumably being a little more active when the temperatures are above freezing.

I was excited to see the Vajdahunyad Castle, because usually when I hear the word “castle,” I get all weak in the knees, anticipating great views, impressive battlements, and the ghost of King Arthur riding forth to arthurize lots of agreements. However, Budapest pulled a fast one by calling a collection of buildings a castle. So Vajdahunyad Castle is actually just a diverse collection of multiple landmark buildings from different parts and time periods of the Kingdom of Hungary, featuring different architectural styles… and I don’t even care anymore because it wasn’t a proper castle. Humph.

The “castle” was built in 1896 as part of the Millennial Exhibition, which celebrated a thousand years of being Hungary. While it’s impressive and all, I couldn’t help but remain miffed at the misuse of the word “castle,” so I pouted the rest of the day and just snapped pictures without even looking at what it was taking, and then I’d kick at the snow in a fit of pique and puff out my bottom lip.

The skating rink cheered me up though. It’s so great to watch talented skaters doing spins, pirouettes, and somersaults, while really you’re only there to see the spectacular falls by the newbies so you can laugh at them. It’s also nice that they put a big Budapest sign there in case you couldn’t remember what city you were skating in.

Heroe’s Square is one of the major squares in Budapest, with monuments and statues featuring the Seven chieftains of the Magyars and other important Hungarian national leaders, as well as the Memorial Stone of Heroes. It also is home to the Palace of Art, the Museum of Fine Arts, and of course the Museum of Pretty Good Arts as well as the Museum of Arts That Only the Artists’ Mothers Could Love.

Once again they make sure you remember what city you’re in, but like a lot of these kinds of signs there’s usually a crowd of people waiting to get their picture taken in front of it. I tricked them all by taking a picture from behind and then just mirroring the photo on my computer. See, I’m not as dumb as I look. I am a bit stupid, of course, which is different.

I made good use of the free mass transit by just hopping on random buses to see where they’d take me. That’s the official version, but the truth is I’m really bad at mass transit so I’d take what I thought was the correct bus, and as soon as it starting moving I’d check my phone to see which direction I was headed. This meant that most of the time I got off on the next stop because I had gotten on the wrong bus. You’d think the odds would be 50/50, but initially I only successfully went the correct direction about a quarter of the time. Eventually that started to make sense to me because there are four main points on a compass, and sometimes I ended up heading west when I wanted to go south. Which also sometimes led to me getting off the bus, looking around, and thinking, “well, this is interesting here anyway.” Despite the free transit, I still walked 14 km (about 8-1/2 miles) the first day. I can’t hardly imagine how far I might’ve walked if the mass transit wasn’t free because I knew I could never figure out their ticket-dispensing machines. I actually can’t conceive of wandering about Budapest without taking advantage of the mass transit, even if you’re just a young pup (as everyone younger than me is) and have to figure out the complicated ticket-buying thing.

Budapest is about the same geographic size as Lisbon, although thankfully much flatter. I’d also say it has more interesting buildings and such to see over a wider area. That’s part of what put the mileage on my shoes (in Europe, is it kilometerage?). I’d get off the bus, look around, say “ooh,” and wander off gawking at various buildings, forgetting all about my original bus plans. It didn’t feel like there was any real hub or central spot for tourists, just an interesting cityscape no matter where you turned. And I got turned around a lot.

I did have to wonder whether this establishment was a combination restaurant and hospital, or perhaps a place for the undead to have life restored to them, or maybe Hungarians just play a lot of the game Life. It could also be that Life Cereal is really popular here, I know Mikey would like it, he likes everything. (For those not experienced in ’70s American commercials, that’s an old TV ad reference and is quite a hilarious one so go ahead and emit a knowing chuckle now.) Anyway, I didn’t go in because I didn’t want to be mistaken for a zombie and end up with a rectal probe or whatever they do to restore life to the undead.

Most major old cities are built next to a great river, because they are essential for growth, crops, toilets, squirt guns, and I guess sometimes water. It seems we’re supposed to just call this river the Danube, not the Danube River. Apparently, it is a little snooty and doesn’t want to be thought of as just another river. At one point it did lobby to be called the more formal Danielube, but that was a bridge too far for most Budapestlings, plus it sounded a little too much like a sex thing. Sometimes you just gotta stand up to vain bullies, but they did agree to leave off the “river.”

The Danube is the second-longest river in Europe, after the Volga in Russia, but no one cares about Russia anymore so that’s another reason why the Danube River just wants to be known as the Danube. After originating in Germany, it flows through Austria, Slovakia, Hungary, Croatia, Serbia, Romania, Bulgaria, Moldova, and Ukraine, making it one of the most multilingual of rivers. Surprisingly, I didn’t see any tour boat offers to Ukraine.

One of my many random bus stops included seeing this bridge and the buildings on the other side. I got off the next stop in order to walk over the bridge (and watch the bus I was just on go zooming by in the same direction) in order to better see the Gellért Hill Cave Church, which is a Catholic church that’s particularly holy because it’s inside a hole. It was originally a natural cave used by the Monkees to practice their music. What? Oh, sorry, it was used by monks. You know, I’d never want to become a monk just so I could never be called a monk. They really need a better name.

So! I try to keep these entries down to a certain size so as not to disincentivize anyone living in a society dominated by two sentence texts with a lot of acronyms. So that means this is part one, and part two, The Hungar Returns, will be coming to a computer, tablet (or worst-case scenario because everything is too damn small), phone, near you! Stay tuned for the exciting finale!

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If Denmark had a middle name, it would be “Efficiency.” Den Efficiency Mark.

My good friends Per and Pia invited me to Copenhagen to experience a genuine Danish New Years, which is different than any other country’s New Year’s because they’re not Denmark. It was my fourth visit To Den Efficiency Mark, and while I’ve been thoroughly impressed each time with the efficiency of the Danish systems as well as the happiness of their citizens and the markedness of their dens, they managed to impress me all over again.

The trip got off to a rousing start at the Lisbon airport, when, after the crowd made its way through security, we were funneled into this room that ended with a locked gate. Most of us then took a nearby escalator down because that was the only way available and we were following someone’s lead like lemmings, but then we collectively realized it was a dead end: a room with no unlocked exits. So we followed ourselves back up the escalator, and stood around some more in confusion and hoping we weren’t all in the Stupid Group. Turns out the authorities just hadn’t opened the gates yet, but it was the only way in, and there were no signs or workers to abate our confusion. And I’ll be damned if I know where all the other travelers ahead of me in security ended up because there weren’t nearly as many people waiting there as were ahead of me in the security line. I’m guessing they were sacrificed to the Lisbon Airport gods because Lisbon Airport has had its share of difficulties lately, and obviously the gods needed to be appeased. I was glad I hadn’t rushed to the front of the line.

While I love Portugal and its people, efficiency isn’t exactly part of the country’s credo. They, along with every other country in the world, could learn a lot about efficiency from all the Nordic countries, including and maybe especially Denmark.

Apparently on New Year’s Eve, most Danes don’t want to be bothered with doing a bunch of cooking for their parties because, you know, they want to party! It’s New Year’s Frickin’ Eve! Christmas is different because you’re cooking for family and after twenty minutes even the most patient of us starts looking for excuses to get out of the living room and away from farty ol’ Uncle Frank ‘n Beans.

Per and I were tasked with driving to pick up a meal for his son, so I thought we’d be stopping at some Chinese restaurant or the like. But instead we ended up in a line of cars as if queuing for a Black Friday sale in the states, albeit without all the shooting and hair pulling and cursing and name-calling and stuff. As you can see by the flags, we were at a company called Gaudium (their slogan is “Oh My Gaudium Our Food is Awesium”), and while there’s no publicly available data as to how much revenue New Years Eve represents for them, it’s gotta be something like 40 or 50%, at least from what I saw as well as heard from the speculation of Per, who basically said, “I don’t know.”

They had all these employees waving cars in and out; it seemed as if half of Copenhagen was out getting their New Years Eve meal. What astounded me was that once we parked, which didn’t take that long because they were… repeat after me, efficient, we walked into the place, which looked like an office in an office park. Per gave the clerk his son’s name (he did say he wanted it back though), the man scanned a list for about two seconds, turned around, grabbed a box, handed it over, and we were on our way. It all happened so fast I barely got some photos taken.

Now just imagine if, say, all the American McDonalds, which you have to admit is kind of a quintessential example of food efficiency, suddenly became the culinary tradition for New Years Eve, with an influx of customers on one day representing an order of magnitude (which is another way to order a Double Big Mac and its 780 calories) over its usual daily business. You’d have cars lined up all the way back to and onto the freeways, there’d be fist fights, all sorts of shootings, cars on fire, people screaming, protesters with signs chanting “Death to Consumerism!” while being harassed by big-bellied people deriding them for being woke and smelling like patchouli. And you’d still have to wait in line for three hours to get your food.

Yes, Denmarkian efficiency is a sight to behold because nothing like that would happen in Denmark. Plain ol’ efficiency is quiet and unseen. As I write this, Donald Trump is making fun of Greenland being protected by two dog sleds. Based on what I’ve seen, those two dog sleds could probably take out a few battalions of US marines.

In addition to selling pretty boxes of candy with “Godt Nytar 2026” (which translates to: “God, I’m tired, is it 2026 yet?”) I’ve found the Danes to be both fastidious and traditional when it comes to eating. First of all, I learned that my ever-polite hosts were always a bit flummoxed when I woke up in the morning and served myself breakfast, like granola or whatever. They bit their tongues during my first three visits, but by the fourth they’d had enough and in the morning they burst into my bedroom, duct taped my mouth shut and my hands to the bed and told me I couldn’t come out until breakfast was ready. Obviously I jest, but I did feel bad about not knowing that especially since I think it’s a wonderful idea.

Anyway, it turns out they always eat breakfast together, and can’t even imagine this lone wolf strategy. My whole life I’ve just gotten up and made myself breakfast. In fact, in my childhood it was always a race to see how early one could get up after Mom’s weekly grocery shopping in order to be the first to attack the only box of Cap’n Crunch cereal, because after that all we had was Cheerios and store-brand corn flakes that tasted like used Dr. Scholl’s foot pads. But it turns out in Denmark I was inadvertently making a big faux pas that kept my hosts up all night tossing and turning. In other words, I was mucking up the gears of both efficiency and tradition, and that may be a capital offense in Denmark.

The second time I created distress (there were probably twenty or eighty others, but they’re ever so polite and reluctant to whack me upside the head except for the most egregious of transgressions), I was putting some fried onions or something on the meat on the open-faced sandwiches that are a Danish tradition. When my gracious hostess saw this, she shrieked in horror (that is if you define “shrieked” as “patiently explained”). Turns out that putting whatever I put on whatever the meat was is perhaps akin to pouring chocolate sauce over a steak, or putting M&M’s in your Dom Perignon. It just goes to show you, no matter how many times you visit a country, even staying in the house of civilized hosts, you learn something new every time… and also sometimes wonder why in hell they ever invite you back. Since Americans tend to free-for-all their traditions, proper or acceptable etiquette can vary from house to house. But I kinda like the national traditions I’ve seen here, I just imagine it takes hundreds of years to really lock into place, which is part of the charm.

Near where they live is a lake called Furesø, with a smaller one named Farum Lake next to it. Furesø is the deepest lake in Denmark, going all the way down to the bottom. “Farum” is what an ancient Sámi answered when someone asked how deep the smaller lake went.

For New Years Eve we went to a fine restaurant where they served foods even I couldn’t screw up. The two major things about New Year’s Eve in Denmark is that the King makes a televised speech with about two million Danes watching, which is over a third of their population. While that’s impressive, the 2025 Super Bowl in the US had over 36% viewership, so the King’s gotta hire some cheerleaders or something to jazz up those ratings. “Yaaaaay King!” they’d squeal with their pom poms pomming and boobies boobing after he makes a particularly poignant observation. The other thing was that every single Dane, apparently, went out and purchased firecrackers and fireworks, so for two solid days one could hear nothing but pop-pop-pop! and see various fireworks jet up into the sky, only occasionally burning down buildings or setting people’s hair on fire. It was like living in a microwave with a never-ending supply of microwave popcorn being cooked.

Other than surviving the quasi military bombardment, one of the sights we decided to see was to visit the town of Malmö in Sweden. Malmö is the third largest city in Sweden, which might be worth remembering if you ever join a Professional Championship Trivia contest. Malmö used to be a bigger city, but the Vikings wiped part of it out by creating a flood, so ever since then that area is called Malnömö.

Malmö is connected to Denmark via the Öresund Bridge, which starts in Denmark and ends up in Sweden, unless you’re going the other way. You do have to rapidly change into Swedish clothes right after you cross the border, because Sweden and Denmark have made war against each other more than any two countries in the world, so the last thing you want to do is parade around looking Danish. To be safe, it’s also better to bring donuts rather than danishes.

Malmö is pretty flat and without a lot of tall buildings, so this impressive one called The Turning Torso really stands out. The Turning Torso has 54 floors, with apartments, office space, and conference rooms. It’s considered to be one of the world’s most prominent skyscrapers and has won multiple international awards, including placing second in the prestigious Twistiest Building in the World competition.

This one always gets first prize, the bastards.

While these photos make it look like Pia and Per are turning round and round at the foot of the building, and while the building itself also looks like it turns, only the world turns. And As the World Turns, these are the Days of our Lives.

After the Sept. 11 attacks, the US government quietly moved the World Trade Center to Malmö in order to protect it from further attacks, mostly because no one’s ever heard of Malmö. Note the anti-skyscraper design for protection, too. Genius!

Actually lots of people have heard of Malmö, including many of the ones who live there. They do have an old town/town square area that’s charming, quaint, and old. I felt like I was on vacation again, or maybe I just felt at home because I’m also charming, quaint, and old. Well at least quaint and old. Ok, just old.

Their telephone system is a little behind the times though.

They do have a very old pharmacy, called the Apoteket Lejonet (The Lion), dating all the way back to 1571. But it can’t compete in the old-age competition with the Officina Profumo-Farmaceutica di Santa Maria Novella in Florence, Italy, which began in 1221 AD (i.e. 1221 After Der Christ). Although if you want to nitpick, after its founding, the Officina Profumo-Farmaceutica di Santa Maria Novella only serviced a bunch of monkeys for decades– er, what? Oh, monks. Sorry ’bout that. But anyway it didn’t open its doors to the public until 1612, so the Lejonet kinda beats the Officina Profumo-Farmaceutica di Santa Maria Novella on that score. And anyway, it’s remarkably beautiful and is the oldest one in Sweden, although they don’t sell Mandrake anymore and I refuse to take aspirin that’s 450 years old, so I’m not sure what good all that age does. I’m pretty certain they had a lot of expired medicines there, I’m sure just like the Officina Profumo-Farmaceutica di Santa Maria Novella, which in British English is spelled: the Officina Profumo-Farmaceutica di Santa Maria Novella.

European countries have a fair amount of whimsical art, but it often gets ruined by goofy-looking American tourists. At least I can now say I played in a heavy metal band.

I enjoyed a laugh at the expense of the Brits after seeing the “Taste of Britain” sign by joking, “Man, it must be a really small store.” Because, you know, the cuisine of our British friends is often mocked, which can hardly be blamed when you regularly eat something called Spotted Dick. Anyway, turns out it really was in fact a small store, so I was able to laugh twice at the joke, meaning I really got my money’s worth. Pia was just happy to find some striped mustard, or whatever that is.

For all those Americans who wonder if Costcos around the world are the same, here’s photographic evidence that in fact, yes, they pretty much are, even in Sweden. The price of that famous hot dog/drink combo is the equivalent of US$2.15, so yeah, it’s hard to avoid Americana pretty much anywhere in Europe.

As I put this entry together, I suddenly remembered that in 2025 I had made a whole other visit to Copenhagen and had failed to create an entry for it. After all, I have been there four times, so maybe I was thinking it was a bit redundant. But’s a fabulous city and deserves all the acknowledgement and kudos it can get. However, in the interest of keeping your toilet-time reading resulting in only semi-deep impressions on your outer bum, I’ll limit the commentary some… even though I just proved that I might be incapable of that. But pedal on! Because a city with lots of bike riding has got to be wheelie wheelie great.

You can’t go anywhere in Denmark without being close to the sea. Øresund, or “The Sound” in English, is enjoyable to walk near in order to see lots of Danish architecture as well as government buildings, and if you’re lucky, occasional sightings of Per and Pia trying to lift up a house.

The famous Tivoli amusement park is right downtown, not far from Rådhuspladsen, or City Hall Square, which has lots of interesting things to see. Here they proudly display The Dannebrog, the Danish flag, which is the world’s oldest continuously used national flag, dating back to 1219, which my calculator says is a freakin’ long time ago.

Tivoli opened in 1843 and is the second-oldest operating amusement park in the world, after Dyrehavsbakken, which is also in Denmark and also got a write up here in Bald Sasquatch.

Tivoli is the second-most popular seasonal amusement park in the world after Europa-Park, which, in a bizarre coincidence, is the most popular seasonal amusement park in the world just ahead of Tivoli.

Inside Tivoli park we had to test out this brazen advertising claim made by the Gasoline Grill (not really the most appetizing name for a restaurant) and its world famous cheeseburger, “voted as one of the best burgers in the world.”

I couldn’t find the asterisk on the sign, but it needs one, surely pointing to: “Of course, we only collected one vote and it was from the mother of the owner.”

The burger wasn’t bad, mind you, but one of the best burgers in the world?

That’s just a bunch of horse patootie right there.

But this definitely isn’t. These small gold squares, officially called Stolpersteine (German for stumbling stones), are small brass plaques embedded in the pavement in front of houses where victims of Nazi persecution last lived freely. Each stone bears the name, birth year, and fate (deportation and death, if known) of an individual.

There are over 100,000 Stolpersteine across Europe, and I think is a wonderful idea, because damn if we aren’t already seeing too much collective amnesia about unspeakable tragedies that happened less than 90 years ago, risking their repeat all over again.

One fascinating exhibit they had nearby was this World Clock. It’s a clock designed to last for thousands of years, and in fact one of the clock’s gears makes a complete rotation only every 25,753 years. Since the clock was started in 1955, that will mean only the people in the year 23,798 will be able to see that thing complete its rotation. I mean, my word, the song “In the Year 2525” only got to the year 9595, and that was ridiculous and didn’t sound fun at all. I really think in an additional 14,200 years later than that humans will either be long gone or look like worms with big bulbous heads. But they will still have a clock.

Speaking of time, which I’m almost out of (“Thank God!” exclaims a chorus of readers) the Town Hall also has the Town Hall Tower Clock, which famously chimes in the new year every year, except I suppose the ones that don’t actually have a New Year’s Eve, which I think is every 99 or 14,243 years or something like that.

So off I went to Budapest next, in freezing weather and all. And now you know how they de-ice planes, which turned out not to be necessary because I was on the plane:

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What the Helsinki am I doing in Finland?

After visiting every other Nordic country –and being impressed by each one of them– I knew I couldn’t leave out Finland because I really didn’t want to hurt its feelings. Besides, Finland is routinely rated as the happiest country in the world, so I hoped to find out what that was all about.

Turns out there are kiosks that give out free donuts on nearly every street corner, almost everyone gives random hugs to strangers, and unicorns gaily prance around town while pooping delicious flavors of unicorn yogurt.

No wonder they’re so happy.

Okay, I may have exaggerated a couple or all of those, but what I did find was a very pleasant city, and like every Nordic city I’ve been to, absolutely spotless with no litter or graffiti or bloody corpses on the street. It has a population similar in size to Oklahoma City or Denver, with just about 700,000 people living in the city itself, and 1.6 million in the metropolitan area. But somehow it feels smaller than Denver, at least in the downtown area, where I was able to walk throughout most of it without suffering from exhaustion. Although I’ll admit that traveling alone allowed me to take a nap whenever the hell I wanted anyway.

Helsinki (pronounced Helsinki) is right on the gulf of Finland, which connects to the Baltic Sea. It has a “warm” season that lasts for about 3 months, from June to early September, with an average daily high temperature of a roasting 16.6 degrees celsius (62°F), although in July the massive heat waves can break Finnish thermometers when they reach a hellish 21 degrees celsius (70°F).

I took a boat tour around the harbor, but to be honest it wasn’t overly exciting. Since it was a “Hop on Hop off” boat tour, I assumed we’d be hopping off occasionally to see one site or another, but alas, it just puttered around the harbor with a loudspeaker describing some of the history and the buildings. I got just as much enjoyment out of chatting with two ladies from Washington DC for much of the voyage.

The port area where I boarded the ship was pleasant and, again, very clean. But there weren’t many real old and historical buildings that I could see in the city, especially compared to most of the other European cities I’ve visited. Helsinki isn’t a city built on tourism, which actually made it nice to get around; nothing was overly crowded.

Of course I had to get a sample from the food kiosks at the harbor, and when I saw a kiosk that had reindeer hot dogs, well, I just couldn’t resist taking a bit out of ol’ Rudolph. It wasn’t too bad, but I have to say that pigs make a better hot dog. Fat Pete might be tasty too, I dunno.

So I mostly just wandered around, not taking as many photographs as usual just because Helsinki is more of a collectively nice place, without many must-see monuments or historical buildings. Overall it’s a very hospitable place; I daresay it might be one of the most pleasant, calm, and safe cities I’ve ever been to.

One of the popular tourist sites is the Temppeliaukio Church (pronounced Temp— oh, forget it). It’s also known as the Church of the Rock for some reason.

The church appeared to be closed, so I snuck in through a service door and snapped this photo before I was kicked out. At least I was able to uncover the mystery as to why they call it Church of the Rock. That huge threatening statue with those enormous muscles and sexy black under/outerwear nearly made me want to get all prostrated. You da man Dwayne!

Another popular tourist site is the Sibelius Monument, which looks a bit like a bunch of metal wasps made a nest, or maybe a huge pipe organ that got scrunched in a compacter. (I wasn’t unhappy while taking that selfie, by the way, I was just trying to imitate the expression of that silver bust, who apparently didn’t like the artwork.)The material of the work is acid-resistant steel and it is 8.5m high; with a length of 10.5m and a depth of 6.5m. There are over 600 pipes, and the whole thing weighs 24 tons (I’m not sure if anyone has ever picked it up to double check that, but I’ll take their word for it).

The Finns seem to like squared-off architecture, to me it looks like something from a 1920’s-era sci-fi movie depicting what it might be like in the distant future. In 1939, Finland fought the USSR in what is called the Winter War, which was eventually won by the Soviets, causing Finland to align with Nazi Germany as a sort of “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” deal. Eventually the Soviets were cast out of Finland by the League of Nations (not sure why the current United Nations doesn’t wield that same power), but Russia was allowed to keep over 12% of what was formerly Finland. I’m guessing Ukraine may end up with a similar experience. For decades after the war, the pragmatic Finns did their best to keep the Soviets relatively happy with them, knowing that the Russians were sons of bitches and might invade again under any pretext. I guess they haven’t changed at all. But after the Cold War, in 1995, Finland became a member of the European Union. In 2023, following the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Finland joined NATO. It’s now one of the EU’s most important buffers against Russia’s age-old aggressive tendencies. Damn Ruskies. You’ve already got the largest country by area in the world, in fact, almost double that of the second largest, Canada. So what the hell’s wrong with you?

I never thought I’d say this about any city, but one of my favorite places to visit was the public library. It was impressive enough from the outside, but once I got inside, I couldn’t stop smiling at the way the Finns use their public spaces for the betterment of all of their citizens.

Right outside the library were courts for soccer and basketball, with a decided emphasis on everyone being welcome, confirmed by signs pointing out that bullying and discrimination were not allowed. I watched a mixture of players good and bad, all playing together with good humor and sportsmanship. It was downright heartwarming to watch.

They also had a band playing, adding to the festive atmosphere. The fact that they kinda sucked made it all the more quaint.

Once inside, the library had multiple floors with all sorts of things to do, from renting guitars to a line of sewing machines to computers to game rooms and more. I think they even had books somewhere. Lots of people lounged while reading or studying, I honestly couldn’t help having the cockles of my heart all warmed up as I took in the utopia-esque feel of the whole thing.

On the top floor there were indeed plenty of books as well as a cafe, and a balcony where you could watch the games and gaze out upon the beautiful city. I think my stupid little grin kinda fit right in with the ever-happy Finns.

As with all the Nordic countries, most of the time the Finns led with their native language when speaking to me, but as soon as I opened my mouth they would immediately switch to perfect English.

One way they keep the sidewalks clean is by using cleaning robots, which wander the streeets sucking up whatever detritus they can find. In a lot of countries I think that little guy would get stolen in a heartbeat, but apparently not in Finland.

Originally, I was a bit apprehensive about traveling alone, since I’ve always enjoyed sharing the travel experience with another person. But it turns out that I had a great time anyway. I mean, I could do what I wanted when I wanted, including even trying out a movie theatre. And check out that monster row of candies! The whole multiplex was quite an impressive set-up. One of the other benefits of traveling alone is you can do really stupid things and no one knows. When the movie started, it began with an animated short, which I thought was cute, kind of like they used to do in the United States when Bugs Bunny cartoons ran before the films. But this particular short kept going on a bit longer than I expected. After a while, I realized that it warn’t no short; somehow I’d ended up in the wrong damn theatre. Since I was knee-deep into the film already, I decided just to stay and watch the whole thing. It was actually reasonably entertaining despite being a movie I surely would’ve never seen otherwise. The next night I tried to do it again and successfully entered the correct theatre. Such is the fun and excitement you can get from doing even mundane things in another country!

They even brought a little bit of Portugal to Helsinki. In Portuguese, “fazer” means “to do” or “to make” (among other things, it’s a very common verb used for just about everything it seems, apparently even fazering it’s way into Finland). And I thought that was quite the limo just for taking people to see rocks and crystals. What? Oh. Maybe not. While I figure it all out, I’ll keep you abreast of any developments.

No trip I make to a foreign city would be complete without a collection of funny signs. From left to right, they get right to the point with the beer sign, that’s pretty much all that needs to be said. I was really tempted to go into the MyFlow store because at my age, flow is always a concern and I thought maybe they could help. Truthfully, I have no idea what they were actually selling. And in fact on the next sign I’m also not sure whether they’re promoting crack or tacos. Either way, they’re saying crack is a good thing? And lastly, I couldn’t help but be amused at the “secondhand vintage coffee” sign. Like, it was pre-drunk? Or worse? And all those lips on that pink background makes it look like a sex shop. Who knows, maybe secondhand lunch is some sort of sexplay for some Finns? Still, I don’t think I’ll ever be up for a reloved lunch.

When it was time to leave that fair city, I took a train by my own big boy self to the airport. I’m far from being a master of public transportation, so it was with a small sigh of relief when I actually arrived at the correct airport with plenty of time to spare.

As I gazed out upon the landscape during the ride I realized that if I had to do it all over again, I would rent a car and explore the gorgeous forests and other scenery outside of Helsinki. Helsinki really doesn’t need much more than a few days to see most of the things worth seeing, but I have a feeling the true gem of Finland is all the nature surrounding it. I doubt I’ll go back just to see that, but I’m very happy that I was able to add Finland to my list of visited countries.

As to their #1 happiness ranking, while visiting, I could understand why the Finnish people are so content. The government is designed to take care of all its citizens, maybe as epitomized by that awesome library. Additionally, their culture fosters a deep connection to nature, characterized by egalitarianism, honesty, and self-sufficiency.

I even noticed that many people walking the sidewalks, even alone, often had just a small hint of a smile on their lips. I have to think maybe they just don’t have the usual undercurrent of stress I see in the hubbub of other cities. They don’t have to worry about huge medical bills if something goes wrong with their health, and they’re less worried about the future since Finland takes good care of its elderly through a public system that provides a wide range of services based on individual needs, with the goal of enabling older people to live at home for as long as possible. They even have a family foster care program, where an older person lives with a foster family in a more home-like environment!

My takeway is that Finland focuses on being kind and helpful as a country, and that’s largely what makes them a happy people. In a world full of rage and extremist opinions, it’s nice to know there is an oasis of a country out there that prioritizes basic kindness and concern for all its citizens. Actually all the Nordic countries do a good job with that. Is it the cold, or maybe the long winters that do it? If that were the case, Russia would be a helluva lot nicer than it is.

Ultimately, it’d be truly marvelous to hear a little more kindness coming out of all politicians’ mouths nowadays, you know?

OK, I’m Finnished.

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Let’s go get drunk in Porto!

At long last, we three boys were rescued from an overdose of testosterone when Brooke, Luke’s wife and Masi’s mother and my daughter-in-law (that’s a lot of things to be for just one person!), finally arrived from the states. She promptly told us we were washing the dishes all wrong, took over the TV watching schedule, loudly told us which turns to make in the car even in places she’d never been before, and made us stop playing beer pong with Masi. Which was a bummer because we were making good money off of him.

Nah, I’m just kiddin’, she’s a sweetheart.

But after being with us for a while, she did ask me where the best place in Portugal was to get drunk (that’s exactly what she was saying in the picture there), to which there is an easy answer: Porto, where Port Wine and Portly people were invented.

Okay, she might not have phrased it that way, or even hinted at it, but I sometimes endeavor to not let the truth get in the way of a good story.

But we did go to Porto.

On the drive up from Lisbon we stopped in a town of about 50,000 residents named Pombal (to be clear, just the town is called Pombal, not all 50,000 residents), famous for giving Portugal the Marquis de Pombal. Marky, as some liked to call him, was a Portuguese leader in the 1700s. He is widely credited for being the driving force behind pulling Lisbon out from under the destruction caused by the November 1, 1755 earthquake and resulting tsunami, which had wiped out two-thirds of Lisbon. Since November 1st was a holy day, thousands of candles had been lit in celebration. Unfortunately, many of them fell over during the quake, which ignited all sorts of fires, resulting in even more destruction.

So first you get a quake, and then a bunch of fires, and then a tsunami rolls through the city. It was a disaster of Biblical proportions and sent Lisbon to the sidelines for centuries. It also resulted in most Portuguese abandoning the idea that God controls anything. Ever since, the Catholic church has been rendered essentially powerless within Portuguese politics. I guess it’s not a good idea to mess with the Portuguese. They’ll even give God a hard time if he annoys them.

At the time, Lisbon was one of the world’s top two or three cities. It’s really only been recently –just a short couple of centuries later– where it’s once again making its mark as a beautiful and important city. It’s now often nominated as the best tourist destination in the world, as well as the one with the most Lisbians living in it.

Pombal also features the 12th century Pombal Castle, with the usual awesome castle views as well as a charming young staffer who actually laughed at some of my jokes, so the whole thing now gets a five star rating from me.

We also made a brief stop in Coimbra, the fourth largest city in Portugal and home of the University of Coimbra, the oldest university in Portugal and one of the oldest universities in continuous operation in the world. I don’t know what you were doing in 1290, but to think about how long ago that was, 1290 is the same number of years away from 2025 as 2025 is to the year 2760. The song “In the Year 2525” seemed rather farfetched year-wise when it came out. Not so much when you think of it that way, eh?

Like Lisbon and Porto, Coimbra is a fairly hilly city, which makes for some great views of the non-hilly parts. Actually this might’ve been taken at the Pombal Castle, I’m not sure. Ach, quit whining and just enjoy the view.

Once we got to Porto we took these two photos to help those who are reading this while wearing 3D glasses.

Being a veteran visitor to Porto, I knew that the Livraria Lello (Lello Bookstore- click on that link if you want to see pictures of the inside, because we didn’t take any) would probably be busy, but lordy, I didn’t think it’d be that busy. I’ve been inside it before, and it is impressive, with a gorgeous red-carpeted spiral staircase, intricately carved wooden panels, a beautiful stained-glass skylight, and, not surprisingly, a bunch of books. It’s also famous for being an inspiration for J.K. Rowling and her Harry Potter stories, but she snorts derisively when asked about that. Well, maybe not snorts, but she does say it’s a misconception.

Since we were all so hopped up on the idea of seeing some books, we stopped into another store that happened to have them. They were only for decoration, actually, which was good because one of the ones on the top shelf really caught my eye. I mean, literally, my eye had popped out and… okay, sorry, nothing eye-popping to see here.

Luke’s camera takes these uber-wide shots so they sorta have to be placed here one at a time, but that works well for Porto because the panoramas do it far more justice than the narrowamas. Porto is a tale of two shores, with the Douro River creating both by running right through the city after its journey through the Douro Valley. The Douro River originates in Spain, and flows roughly 897 kilometers (about 557 miles, or 1.96 million cubits) during its journey to the Atlantic.

On one side is the main part of the city, with lots of tourist shops, restaurants, and historic buildings. On the other side, port and wine tasting shops dominate. Porto is sometimes referred to as the “city of six bridges.” This bridge is one of them. Duh. Which in Portuguese is pronounced Douro.

The city of Porto has a population of around 250,000, but perhaps more like a billion during tourist season. I mean, there were a lot of frickin’ tourists, more than I remember seeing the last time I was there in the summer. I actually walked around rather smugly because I have a long-term Portuguese residence card and so technically am not really a tourist, so I can give all the tourists the evil eye when I walk around the city. Because, you know, the damn tourists are ruining everything. My family doesn’t count because they’re family.

One funny little anecdote from the trip was when we first arrived in Porto, we struggled to find the short term rental house because sometimes housing numbers in Portugal go from 12 to 543 to 138 to B. Heck, on my street in Azoia there aren’t even any numbers, which often makes deliveries something of an adventure. Anyway, we looked like a gaggle of lost puppies, so an old Portuguese woman came out to see if she could help. After she ended up being almost as befuddled as we were, another elderly woman came out to try and help as well. The gaggle was growing but it was still not finding. After a while, a college-aged student, who spoke excellent English, strolled over and there we were, all seven of us, wandering up and down the block looking for a house. We finally found it mostly by process of elimination, but the help was so kind and very appreciated. You gotta love the Portuguese.

This was what we looked like after finding the house. Or maybe this was after all the port tasting, I’m not sure.

Behind Luke and Brooke is a statue of a guy pointing toward the direction he wants all the tourists to go.

Like Lisbon, Porto is home to a myriad of old buildings and even older hills. I tend to think of Porto as “Lisbon lite.” Of course, you expend just as many calories walking up and down the hills of either, so it’s not that kind of lite. Still, that might not be a bad name for a beer.

After all that walking around we needed to refill our tanks, so we stopped at the first Portuguese-themed restaurant we could find. Oh, well, at least it was the most impressive building to house a McDonalds that I’ve ever seen, but they still featured the same 15,000 calorie meals. Did you know McDonalds has about 44,000 restaurants around the world? It is estimated that 1.3 to 1.6 million calories of food are served per McDonald’s restaurant per day, which means that over 70 billion calories a day are served by McDonalds alone. If you put a piece of paper down and stacked all those calories on top of it, do you know how high the stack would go? Actually, you’d still only have a blank piece of paper because calories are units of energy and not physical objects.

(This blog is like the Swiss army knife of travel blogs: you got your travel photos, your trivia, your math, your history, and your science lessons, all wrapped up with a bow made of Dad jokes. And all for free!)

On the main walkway in a bustling and touristy part of the city is this ledge without any kind of railing or warning, just Darwin’s theory ready to pounce. I marveled at it because just about anyone could fall right off and break at least one bone or twelve. You can see the hubcap down there, I assume it was the only remaining evidence of some poor soul who took a wrong turn. The rest of the car has probably floated to the Atlantic by now. It was also interesting to see all these fish swimming in front of some sort of outlet that might have even been a sewer, I’m not sure. I just know I wouldn’t want to eat any of them until I knew for sure what they were swimming in.

Porto is the city that gave Portugal its name, and actually had that name from very early on, like 200 BC. (Hey, using the same calculation as the 1290 university thing results in the year 4250. Wow!) The Porto metropolitan area is home to over 1,700,000 people, making it the 13th most populous urban area in the EU. Since the city itself has only 250,000 people, if you have any amount of math skills at all you can calculate that the surrounding area is chock full of people, but you’d never know that by just driving around. (A “chock” is like a million or more things. Or something.) Unlike these gaudy American tourists, the Portuguese are pretty adept at keeping a low profile.

We took this as a sign from God that it was time to go port tasting. He sent a stream of light pointing right up the hill where one of the restaurants was.

And nobody was happier about that than Masi. After downing his first full beer in Germany, he was primed and pumped to see what all this wine and port stuff was all about.

It didn’t take him very long to find out.

Facial expressions: like mother, like son! Actually, that was Brooke after more than a few port tastings. Like me, she began to laugh at everything. Masi just kept on drinking.

This was just one of the many tastings offered to us that afternoon. Brooke and I ended up giggling most of the rest of the day, while Masi staggered around trying to sneak in naps when he could, and Luke just looked at us like we were pathetic rookie drinkers. But we had a good time!

And so the sun set on another great adventure in Europe with my family. We will all remember it forever, except for maybe the last part of that afternoon after the port tasting.

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A Day Trip Mostly for the Statistical Accumulation of Countries Visited

Well that’s a rousing title, eh? Just makes you want to dig right in, right? So great, now I’m gonna have to be really entertaining just to keep you from nodding off and dipping your nose into your coffee. Who comes up with these stupid titles anyway?

So did you hear the one about… no, just kiddin’. I like my written humor to be subtle so you almost don’t notice it, because even if it isn’t there I can claim you just didn’t notice it. In any case, my son, grandson, and I decided to drive a loop from Stuttgart to Switzerland to Liechtenstein to Austria and back again. Four countries in one day is nothing to sneeze at, even if they lacked any kind of gotcha moment or monument or monofilament… or monoblob, which actually is a thing.

Zurich

The only thing I really knew about Zurich was that they zur ar rich there. “Ge neva get better jokes,” he said. We thought about going to Geneva, but figured there’d too many conventions, because I guess they’re famous for conventions. In any case, none of us had ever been to the land of the Swiss, but as we expected, it was full of holes. I know, another cheesy joke. They’ll get better, I hope.

And by holes, I mean things like this neverending tunnel. Truly. I mean, we watched the entire movie, The Neverending Story, while driving through that tunnel. Masi started growing beard hair while we drove through that tunnel. One of my body parts fell off my aging body while we drove through that tunnel and I never could find it. I asked the car rental company to send it to me if they ran across it, but I haven’t heard back from them yet.

After we finally made it to Zurich, I overheard an American tourist couple, who, after seeing Masi, looked down at their map of Europe quizzically. Then she whacked her husband on the shoulder while saying, “I told you to take a left, now we’re in Portugal you idiot!” It was then that I really appreciated my single status. Plus now I figure it’s a good time to use this beer photo.

So Zurich is a nice city; but we were there on a Sunday which meant it was fairly quiet and many of the shops were closed. That didn’t bother us because, well, you know, we’re all males. Apparently there are a bunch of museums and galleries too, but we didn’t actually know if they were open on Sunday because we were there just to step foot in another country, and that’s pretty much it. It’s easy to achieve your goals if you don’t set them too high.

Zurich is Switzerland’s largest city, and is a hub for all the major transportation systems. Both the Zurich Airport and Zurich’s main railway station are the largest and busiest in the country.

Not only that, but they have the largest pink T-shirt with the number 9 on it inside a train station… get this… in the world. I looked for a Guiness World Record plaque for same, but Guiness must’ve been too busy measuring the longest distance pulled by a horse while on fire. And I’m honestly not making that up. They also have one for the farthest toss of a washing machine (also 100% true), probably set by a guy who told his wife they didn’t need to call a repairman, and eight hours and two feet of water later, the washing machine was seen hurtling through the air.

Zurich has been permanently settled for over 2,000 years, or almost the combined age of the last two US presidents. The Swiss speak German, although there are lots of Swiss dialects, and boy, those are the ones that really confuse me. Well, besides the German.

Despite its neutrality, Zurich was accidentally bombed during World War II, and there were some dogfights as well. With planes, not dogs. There was some suspicion from the Swiss side that the Allies “accidentally” bombed Switzerland to cajole them into stopping their relationship with the Germans, but somehow bombing never seems to cajole anything. Kaboom maybe, but not cajole.

Here again in the main train terminal, I thought this was interesting in that Americans say, “Gesundheit” when someone sneezes, which I think in German means, “your snot is showing.” Ok, to be serious, it actually means “health,” even though in my childhood someone told me it meant, “God bless you,” which was needed because rumor had it demons could sneak into your body when you sneezed, which is why they wanted God to intervene. Which made me wonder, I’m not sure what’s worse than demons, so what exactly sneaks in when you fart?

Anyway, according to this advertisement, they really say “Sprudein vor Freude!” which may mean “Sparkling with joy.” So if you’re facing a sneezer, you’re now sparkling with all the joyous sneezy bits, and I guess their product will happily help desparkle before you become seriously de-joyed. Of course, maybe she’s not sneezing at all, but drowning. It’s hard to figure out all this different language stuff.

As you can see, Zurich is a pretty city with old buildings and lots of plus signs, since they’re really into banking. Indeed, Switzerland is chock full of powerful banks. A while ago, Zurich was ranked 9th among the “World’s 10 Most Powerful Cities,” and in the 2017 Global Financial Centres Index, Zurich was ranked as having the 11th most competitive financial center in the world, and the second most competitive in Europe after London. We voted it the best city in Switzerland we’d ever been to.

So it kinda bummed me out that we were there on a Sunday, and all the banks were closed. Because there I was, stuck with two pockets stuffed full of Euro coins ready to use to open up my first Swiss bank account. Which made me look a little bit like this woman. Okay, shut up, I’m not fat shaming, she just provided some graphical insight for my joke. If it still upsets you, well, all I can do is thiiiigh… But seriously, if she were a balloon, it’d just be a picture of a street because she’d be up in the sky dodging airliners. If she were a chicken, they’d need an entire KFC bucket for just one of the thighs. Aw, she’s actually a very pretty woman, much better looking than even the cutest chicken.

Otherwise, we spent the rest of our time making fun of their signs. Clockwise, I’m thinking fock.com is a porn site for bad spellers. Headsquarter must be a casino because I think they’re already calling heads on a flipped quarter. I took a picture with Heidi, which was the name of an old girlfriend I now wish I’d never broken up with, plus she didn’t look like that cow at all. Kalte Lust shows some spanking paddles in their logo so the rest is up to your imagination. But if you’re thinking of going through the previously mentioned door, you might consider getting your anus hair styled first. In fact, 33 euros is the best price I’ve ever seen for that.

On the way to Austria and Liechtenstein, we took a side trip off the freeway to have some lunch. Little did we know we’d encounter some of the most beautiful scenery of the whole expedition while there. These photos were taken around a little town called Amden, in Switzerland. We had lunch in one of the few places that was open, it was kinda lousy, but y’know, I can’t taste the food anymore while I can still gaze at this scenery anytime I want, so it’s all good. We went up and up a winding road without knowing where the hell we were going, but it was all worth it for these awesome views. Of course, when we came down I think we ended up in Italy, but that doesn’t count here because we’re still not sure of it.

Austria

After the whirlwind tour of Zurich, we hopped into the rental car (the change in my pockets clinking like a hundred loose screws inside a dryer) and made our way toward Austria and Liechtenstein. And just in case you don’t believe we actually entered Austria, here’s proof from our rental car, because, as we all know, AirPlay never lies.

We didn’t really give a Fuchsberg where exactly we were, we were just there for the pushpin in our “Countries We’ve Been To” map. Maybe Fuchsberg is in Italy.

But the rewards from the highway were more than gratifying. While driving through these mountains, we merrily belted out, “THE HILLS ARE ALIIIIIVE, WITH THE SOUND OF MUS–” By “we,” I mean “I,” and yeah, that’s all I could get out before Rage Against the Machine was pumped up to full volume. Sorry, Julie.

The drive through Austria, short as it was, provided beautiful vistas that might only have been more impressive had they been they covered in snow. But then we might’ve ended up with one wheel up in a ditch, cursing the snow like it was snot from a demon who had snuck into our bodies during a fart.

But truly, Austria is a country with almost as much natural beauty as Catherine Zeta Jones in Zorro, or the “most beautiful young girl in the world,” or my late wife Dolly. That’s almost. Honestly, I’d give up the memory of every view I’ve ever seen, and pretty much everything else, just to see Dolly alive again. She still makes me smile when I look at pictures of her, which is an amazing gift she left for me. Her smile could light up a room, and even the photo of one still melts me inside.

Liechtenstein

This is about all we got from Liechtenstein. After taking this picture, I looked up only to realize we’d already made it all the way across the country.

So, we returned to Stuttgart, with memories of scenery and funny signs and– okay, I’m joking, we actually took loads of pictures of Liechtenstein:

That is if you call six pictures a load, with four of them being of the same two things. We stood around downtown Schaan, Liechtenstein’s biggest “city” with about 6,000 residents, looking like the crew in Star Trek IV loitering aimlessly in San Francisco wondering what to do next. Since Liechtenstein is landlocked, we couldn’t even ask anyone if they knew where any nuclear wessels were.

Liechtenstein is Europe’s fourth-smallest country, with an area of just over 160 square km (62 square miles). To put that into perspective, Rhode Island, the US’s smallest state, is 25 times larger than Liechtenstein. In fact, Washington, D.C is about the same size as Liechtenstein. But Liechtenstein (I just like saying Liechtenstein for some reason) does boast a whopping population of about 40,000 Liechtensteiners. Liechtenstein is also one of the few countries in the world with no debt. In fact, Liechtenstein has one of the highest gross domestic products per person in the world. Maybe every country should only consist of 40,000 people. Like Liechtenstein.

As a final note, that part of Europe seems hell bent on extracting money from those with weak bladders, even to the point of selling WC (Water Closet, aka toilet, aka shitter) access cards in vending machines. They must do a booming business with the Shitter Cards because there are more of them inside that machine than anything, even counting all the M&Ms.

Since we travel on a budget, Luke figured out his own way around that system.

On the flight back, we could see some of the fires that were plaguing Portugal at the time. So here’s a genius idea: it seems like the airlines could help put out the fires by having passengers buy a bunch of drinks (they would probably be tax deductible for Americans) and convert it all to urine if there’s time, if not, just pour the leftovers down the sinks, and then fly directly over the fires and have each airliner dump their whole waste tank over the area. That’s even a very environmentally friendly plan because it would make the planes lighter, saving on fuel. Plus, it would all be colored blue so people on the ground would know who to thank.

Of course, I hope the “dump waste” button isn’t anywhere near the “dump fuel” button, but otherwise, I’ll accept the Nobel Peace Prize for this idea anytime. My plan would’ve put out 8 fires already.

(I remind myself sometimes of Michael Keaton’s character in Night Shift: “Wanna know why I carry this tape recorder? To tape things. See, I’m an idea man, Chuck. I get ideas coming at me all day. I can’t control ’em. I can’t even fight ’em if I want to. You know, ‘AHHH!’ So I say ’em in here, and that way I never forget ’em. You see what I’m sayin’? Stand back! This is Bill. Idea to eliminate garbage. Edible paper. You eat it, it’s gone! You eat it, it’s outta there! No more garbage!”)

Exit here, please. I guess twice because you can never ausfahrt just once.

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There are bad museums and there are good museums, and then there’s Dachau.

The museums I’ve visited in Europe have largely been interesting and informative. While I don’t always seek them out, if there’s a decent-sounding one nearby I’ll generally venture into it.

Since I was staying in Stuttgart with my son and grandson, the Museum am Löwentor (the Natural History Museum of Stuttgart) sounded like it had promise, plus it was comparatively close to where we were stayring. So with promises of dinosaur memorabilia and some relatively decent traveler reviews dancing in our heads, we decided to give it a shot. Unfortunately, we probably would’ve been better off downing a shot or two instead.

It’s not that it was horrible, but it was definitely geared toward kids younger than Masi’s thirteen years. Okay, we got a couple of cute selfies out of it, but you have to admit, neither of them are very realistic. I’ve rarely seen sharks burst through tables, and dinosaurs are extinct. Finito. Dead-o. Gone forever. And no amount of Jurassic Park movies will ever change that. Also, why didn’t that dino just go through the glass door? Big dummy.

Many of the exhibits were just dioramas; no actual dinosaur bones or the like. In addition, almost all the written material was in German, so we just kind of wandered around for 30-45 minutes, shrugged, and left.

Truth be told, the most fun Masi had there was finding this play structure and climbing around while chatting up some cute German girls. I don’t think he got a date, but he probably bragged about drinking beer with his dad and grandpa.

Fortunately, our faith in the whole museum experience thing was restored after a visit to the Sinsheim Technology Museum, just about an hour south of Frankfurt. I mean, all we had to read was that it has a U Boat and a Concorde and that you can go inside of both, and we were sold. Besides, I needed to get the taste of that previous museum out of my mouth. I’d accidentally licked one of the exhibits, you see.

The Sinsheim museum features an extensive collection of military vehicles, mostly from WWII. Luke made sure to emphasize his neutrality by wearing a hoodie with a Swiss flag. It must’ve worked because none of us got shot at while we were there.

In the last photo you can see that they have so many vehicles they just keep a bunch of them sitting outdoors. If that had been in Russia I think they would’ve already taken them away and put them into service just to see them get blown up by the Ukranians almost immediately.

The museum also features the world’s fastest tractor.

They also have the world’s coolest looking car failure that could go 88 miles per hour (142 km/h) within the length of a movie screen. In real life, the DeLorean DMC-12’s dashboard only went up to 85 mph, even though it could go faster. Great Scott!

I don’t think Masi understood any of those references.

But he started acting up so we made him do some training. Push harder, kid!

It isn’t often you get to see an authentic U17 submarine outside its normal habitat. Apparently it’s still fully functional, but now the poor sub can only look to the rain to get wet. Unless maybe she see’s a real hunky battleship lumbering by.

Masi disappears into the bowel of the beast. Truth be told, it didn’t feel all that claustrophobic, unless of course you envisioned yourself trapped in it underwater for days at a time with 22 other stinky sailors. The sub was in service from 1973 to 2010, so while the term “U Boat” conjures up things like Das Boot and WWII, this was more modern than that and had no blood on its ha– er, rudder.

Sometimes it’s just easier to take pictures of the provided information, but that can also screw up my made-up stories too. It’s a delicate balance, this game I play.

And this was a real racetrack, honest. Really. No I mean it. Why you lookin’ at me like that?

They had old classic cars galore.

And race cars as well, both old and new, and everything in between.

Some of us cared more about those things than others.

Do you know what happens when you sample a little too much of the wares from a beer truck?

Yeah, that’s right, you crash and burn your tank. Don’t get tanked in your tank is what I always say.

However, it’s okay to drink away if you’re driving a train. It’s not like you can make a wrong turn or anything, and based just on the size of that beast, you’re gonna win any confrontation you have with just about anything stupid enough to be in front of you. That’s why many big trains like that have huge minibars in their locomotives. And that’s why they go chug-a chug-a chug-a.

One of the highlights of the museum was of course the Concorde and the Russian Tupolev Tu-144. Since the Russians lost the space race, I think they were doubly motivated to be the first to put a supersonic airliner into the air. They won that contest, getting the Tupolev to go airborne on December 31, 1968, albeit with lots of duct tape showing as well as a few screws plummeting to the ground and in one case, killing a cow. On March 2, 1969, Air France gamely crossed the line in second place. Isn’t it kinda funny that oftentimes countries act like little kids, competing for some nonsensical prestige that no one cares about only a handful of years later?

I think that’s a pretty typical reaction anyone would have if they saw that the pilot of a supersonic airliner was thirteen years old.

The exhibit was really mostly just a big empty shell, not unlike most airliners (except for the lack of seats), and the fact that it felt fast even while stationary. When it was in service, it could fly from London to New York in 3-1/2 hours, achieving speeds of twice the speed of sound. Meaning you could fart aloud to your heart’s content but the plane would outrun the noise. It made watching movies difficult, however, which is why they mostly offered up silent films.

A pretty majestic piece of machinery, that. Unfortunately, both the Concorde and the Tupolev suffered some crashes as well as a lack of financial viability… and so humanity’s march to the future did a U-turn, and we ended up back to the future with ever more shrinking and uncomfortable seats besides.

Dachau

Now this entry takes a decidedly more serious and somber turn. If you’ll recall a while ago I dedicated a whole entry to Auschwitz-Birkenau. After visiting that, I really wasn’t looking to see another example of man’s inhumanity to man, but I think it’s important that everyone understands what really can happen when hate is used as a cornerstone of a dictator’s message, so to me it was a must-see for my son and grandson. The fact that people are so gullible and so easy to coerce into hatred is still evident to this day, and that’s why it’s so freakin’ scary.

Dachau is less iconic and doesn’t have as many of the old structures still standing like Auschwitz-Birkenau.

But that doesn’t make it any less sobering of a site. Dachau was one of the first concentration camps built by Nazi Germany, opening on 22 March 1933. Unlike Auschwitz, it wasn’t purely an extermination camp, it was originally intended mostly to hold political prisoners. In 1935 it added Jehovah’s Witnesses, homosexuals and emigrants, and eventually Jews and any other undesirables from all over Europe.

Most of the deaths in Dachau were as a result of inhumane living conditions, leading to disease and starvation, with some torture thrown in for good measure. These ovens were used to cremate the bodies. At least 40,000 people died in Dachau, but the exact number will never be known.

This is the building that housed the ovens.

These grounds used to be lined with wooden barracks. The number of prisoners incarcerated in Dachau between 1933 and 1945 exceeded 200,000 people.

I dunno, but if I were an alien species and I visited earth and learned all about it, I think I’d put a “Do Not Enter” message around our entire solar system. Also, political events around the world lately seem to be screaming, “We do not remember or learn anything from the past!”

While visiting a notorious concentation camp doesn’t really make it the highlight of any trip, I think it’s very important that people learn and remember. It was not so long ago. The people who committed these atrocities were people just like you and me. It still amazes me that one man can manipulate so many people with lies and hate, despite all the evidence we have that it always leads to disaster. I can understand how it might happen the first time, but to see it maybe happen again? Blows my frickin’ mind.

We can make memorials, but we can’t ever forget that the people here were mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers, with people who loved them. The senselessness of it all can be staggering to the normal mind. So when any politician acts gleeful at the idea of opening up harsh prisons, or touts the death penalty, especially not as deterrent but as penalty, or vilifies and even prosecutes anyone who opposes him, those who support said politician would do well to remember that the people who are bothered by all of that are often bothered because they understand history. It’s not always about what is happening, but what history tells us always happens when we allow people to have too much power or wealth. That’s just a fact.

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Leggo my, er, Lego!

We interrupt the entries on my latest travels with a visit to a Lego exhibition in Lisbon… I just had to post this right away for my grandson Masi!

In regards to the headline, anyone who hasn’t lived in the states probably won’t understand the reference. It’s based on a TV commercial which first aired all the way back in 1972, so you might also have to be as old as dirt, like me. Anyway, it’s from a commercial whereby two people fight over a frozen waffle. As if a frozen waffle would be worth fighting for, sheesh, they really are kinda nasty. But Leggo my Eggo was an effective slogan; it certainly stuck with me after all these years. Fittingly, I found a photo of an Eggo made out of Lego on the internet as well. The Lego version might even taste better than the real thing.

Anyway, I saw a news item about “Europe’s largest display of Lego,” and knew I had to be a proxy for my grandson, who loves Lego. (I understand they prefer “Lego” for both singular and plural. They also want you LEGO in all caps but I say to hell with that, they’re getting enough free advertising here as it is. It would feel like I’m shouting LEEEEEGOOOOO! every time I use the word, so I’m settling for Capitalization Only.)

The exhibit wasn’t quite what I expected, it was more or less just a big warehouse with a lot of glass cases holding various Lego creations. There were apparently 1,000 different constructs, but I only took photos of about 950 of them. Here follows the top 895 (just kiddin’. It’s definitely under 800).

The Leaning Tower of Pisa was pretty cool, and I even got to take that stupid and overdone “I’m holding it up” selfie everyone takes at the real thing. Yep, looks just as corny with Lego.

The Great Wall of China was impressive simply due to its sheer size. It might’ve taken them almost as long to build this as the real thing! Well, maybe not, because the real thing took 2,500 years or so. It might have seemed that long to the Lego builders though.

I kinda wish my eyes were like this, it’d be great if my ophthalmologist could just move a few Lego pieces around to give me better eyesight! We’d all be better off if we were made out of Lego!

Colors were used to great effect with some of the constructs. The entire exhibit apparently had about 10 million pieces in it, or just a few more than my grandson Masi has.

The Titanic looks a lot better built out of Lego than it does now, that’s for sure!

Is today Wednesday? No, but she sure is.

My boys used to play with Transformers all the time when they were kids. I guess I didn’t get them enough yellow Lego so they could make their own. I do think they enjoyed destroying their creations more than making them, but holy hellfire would rain down upon them if I stepped on a piece in my bare feet.

The entire exhibit occupied about 2,000 square meters, just enough to fit New York City into.

Every single thing you see in these table games is Lego. Almost makes me wonder if you could play ’em.

Animated characters were well represented.

As were Bridges.

Some of the creatures were fascinating, even the little guys.

Orthanc. And you’re welcome.

The attention to detail as well as the massive size of these Twin Towers was very impressive.

But I honestly couldn’t figure out why they had this demolition thing as part of it, as if this was after the 9/11 attack, especially with all those emergency vehicles. Maybe they felt that a Lego plane crashing into one would be in poor taste (well duh), so they opted for a sort of partial preview or something?

Some of the landscapes, whether Star Wars themed or amusement parks, were also impressive due to their immensity and attention to detail. Some of those make the bottom of my feet hurt just looking at ’em.

Race tracks and train tracks. The Four Seasons one was kinda cute, even though it didn’t look like a hotel at all.

Even though these don’t look complicated, think about all the work it would have taken to get all the proportions just right much less all the expressions. Well done!

Here you have one of the most beautiful creations known to man, as well as the Venus de Milo. I will say that it’s not often you get to see boobs made out of Lego.

Okay, well, there’s always someone. She really puts the hooters in shooters (they look like bazoomb- er, bazookas). This wasn’t in the exhibit btw, I was just keeping you abreast of Lego developments.

I thought I felt the force for a moment there, but I think it was just gas.

Fictional superheroes and supervillains and cute little aliens were well represented.

Always bring Lego when you go on a hike or a remote camping trip so you can build a lantern or a radio. Even gramophones are a good idea because they don’t use electricity.

The airport was pretty impressive. I think maybe they ought to use Lego to upgrade the Lisbon airport, which is consistently rated among the worst in the world.

I have no idea what this represents, Jurrassic Park maybe?

Of course Harry Potter’s world appeared as if by magic.

These prove that Lego can be used as educational tools too… check mate!

Highlights of he western world in Lego. Apparently the Eiffel Tower is now in Spain, and the White House is in the Gulf of Mexico. Yeah, I said Mexico, not the Gulf of America. Sheesh.

I particularly liked these movie posters, proving that you don’t have to go 3D to create some amazing things with Lego. I think it would be cool to make these and put them in a frame with glass and mount them in your TV/entertainment room!

Liberty and even freedom of speech is currently under assault in the USA, so let’s hope this Lego statue and what it represents doesn’t end up becoming a real-life comparison to the actual statue.

Created with Lens Buddy
Created with Lens Buddy
Created with Lens Buddy
Created with Lens Buddy
Created with Lens Buddy
Created with Lens Buddy
Created with Lens Buddy
Created with Lens Buddy
Created with Lens Buddy
Created with Lens Buddy

Obviously, these selfies were all created by Lens Buddy. Lens Buddy is an app that lets you control lots of things when taking selfies, so I used it here. Now I’m kinda bummed about the program, do they really need to put “Created with Lens Buddy” on every photo for the free advertising? I even resaved them as .jpgs but sure enough, “Created with Lens Buddy” still snuck through via some stupid algorithm, the words don’t even show up in my local apps, the sneaks. While this initially soured me on the program, I realized that maybe I’m using a free version, in which case I do kinda get it, because us angels are forgiving like that.

Anyway, these selfies didn’t have anything to do with Lego, but it was a good way for them to get five more euros out of your wallet. Which they needed to do, based on the number of visitors that were there when I was. Like about three. There were also a handful of families in the children’s play area where you could build whatever you wanted with lots of Lego, but I was expecting there might be a little bit of a crowd or something before I arrived, but no. In fact, not one other person came into the selfie area when I was in it. Which I was glad for because I looked pretty stupid in a lot of the poses I tried.

In the end I hope this gives Masi and maybe a few other people some ideas as to what they could create with their cornucopia of Lego. I’m generally happy making a box that doesn’t fall apart in a slight breeze.

Created with Lens Buddy.

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