Tag: travel

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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!

(Scroll down to see previous entries.)

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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.

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 on the meat on the open-faced sandwiches that are a Danish tradition. Pia shrieked in horror, in response to which I stood up, butter knife in hand, ready to take on the terrorist who had surely just burst into the house. Turns out that putting fried onions on whatever the meat was is perhaps akin to pouring chocolate sauce over a steak, or trying to eat soup with my fingers. It just goes to show you, no matter how many times you visit a country, even staying in the house of gracious hosts, you learn something new every time… and also make them wonder why in hell they ever invited you back.

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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Time to castle! Check, mate!

Even as I struggle to learn Portuguese, I’m often grateful that I don’t have to learn English as a new language. Most Portuguese know at least some English, but it’s mostly spoken English. Even native English speakers have a hard time with spelling and grammar. In Portuguese, “castle” is “castelo,” pronounced just like it’s spelled. But English speakers pronounce it “cassle,” like “hassle.” Which learning a new language definitely is. Anyway, here follows our visits to two unique German schlösser (castles in German, or what happens after one too many beers).

About 60 km south of Stuttgart is a town called Hechingen, which hosts a fancy German castle called Hohenzollern Castle, named for Herr Heinrich Henzollen’s ho.

From a distance, it looks very much like a castle. But the closer you get, the more you realize it looks very much like a castle.

This is what it looks like when they invite Satan over for brunch.

This is actually the third castle to be built on this spot. The first one was built in the early 11th century. It was completely destroyed in 1423 after a ten month siege by the pesky Swabians. I bet you’ve never heard of Swabia before, have you? It’s a region in Germany, I think it’s famous for inventing Q Tips.

In 1461 they completed the second castle, which was larger and swarthier, but eventually fell into disrepair, which was apparently a hole so deep they couldn’t pull it out. So they built this third and current one between 1846 and 1867, making it one of the most modern castles on that spot.

Like most castles, it has views to die for. Here Masi takes a break from all the sightseeing to enjoy the scenery. He lost his forearms in a horrific reaping accident, but we tried not to talk about it too much, especially when he attempted to count to eleven (he still has ten toes, but after that, he got a bit lost).

Fortunately for us, Hohenzollern Castle is renown for its healing properties, including miraculous limb regeneration. Unfortunately, he now has seven fingers and three thumbs, but at least he can count to ten now.

The last words of many a young soldier: “Is this thing load—“

It’s much safer to stand in front of swords as long as they’re affixed properly. The castle staff kindly set out a table for our lunch, but we’re kinda snobbish and just thought the whole thing was a bit pedestrian. I mean, c’mon, only three forks? Pssh. What do they think we are, peasants?

On the right is evidence that the olden Germans had some weird growth hormones in their beer. If you zoom in on the dates on this statue, it says Friedrich Wilhelm was born in 1786 but died in 1797, so this guy was only eleven years old when he posed for that statue! Hmm, I wonder how old Hitler really was… he did act like a toddler sometimes.

I wonder if men in untucked shirts and baseball caps would have had the same fearsome effect on any attackers.

In the end, my two handsome boys enjoyed the visit and even managed to hold those smiles for the fifteen or twenty seconds it took for me to figure out why the photo button on my iPhone wasn’t working. Ah, turn it over, dummy.

Next on the castle-y tour was Heidelberg Castle, perhaps named after someone named Delberg to whom everyone said “hi.”

Actually, the name Heidelberg is derived from the German words meaning heath and mountain, apparently because it was unwooded at the time so the Germans just sat on the hill eating Heath bars. Perhaps the trees knew what they were doing by staying away because the castle has been struck by lightning at least twice. The first castle structure was built before 1214 and was later expanded into two castles, but in 1537, a lightning bolt destroyed the upper castle. Then in 1764 another lightning bolt caused a fire which destroyed some of the rebuilt sections. Whoa! Someone up there wasn’t happy with those castles!

The castle has only been partially rebuilt, with some of it still in ruins. I thought the inside was just as interesting as the outside, although outside some of the buildings were impressive.

Like most castles, the views are spectacular, overlooking the city of Heidelberg. The city was largely spared bombing by the allies in WWII mostly due to its lack of strategic importance, and was occupied by the Americans at the end of the war. They of course also brought with them new McDonald’s and Burger King franchises, which resulted in the average Heidelbergian gaining about 10 kg (22 lbs.) during the first year of occupation.

Inside the castle they demonstrated their pharmaceutical prowess of yore in the Apothecary Museum. The jar on the right held just enough pills to get through the day if you had a headache.

On the left is either a beer-making machine, a pill-making machine, or, based on the picture to the far right, some sort of auto-erotic device. Yeah, you go first. In all the top pharmacies back then, opium was an important medication for things like headaches, concerns about where pimples might happen, and when you otherwise felt fine and wanted to party. I can only speculate on what they did with the container on the right. Google Translate had no idea what “pichurim” is, so I can only guess it was something so nasty they decided to just banish the entire concept, but this appropriately shaped container seems to have survived the whitewash. I’m hoping that dish isn’t filled with expired testicles removed after too many nights of auto-erotic machines and opium. That would be nuts.

Someone once told me that Germans like beer. This gigantic beer barrel is all the proof one needs. Unfortunately, Masi figured out a way to tap into it and had downed a number of mouthfuls before we could get to him.

After a last look at this interesting castle, we rode the funicular down to old town Heidelberg.

Old Town Heidelberg is very cute with some great old buildings (again, spared during WWII), and a fair amount of tourists (mostly made after WWII). We had a nice German lunch at an Italian restaurant, er– was it a nice Italian lunch at a German restaurant? …and otherwise enjoyed walking around the area.

The Germans seem a bit obsessed with bodily functions. Fortunately, no matter how much explosive diarrhea we had, it was always easy to find a sign pointing the way to go.

We settled in for the two hour drive– er, check that, I don’t know how many hours it took us because we encountered more than our fair share of jammed-up freeways as we made our way around the country.

Occasionally we would break out of the traffic jams and find a place to stop and see something interesting, in this case the Rhine Falls, known as the largest waterfall in Europe by average flow rate (the falls are actually in Switzerland, but I had some extra room). To be candid, it didn’t really seem all that impressive to us. Europe seems to be a little light on the waterfall flow rate department if this is the best they’ve got. The Rhine Falls are just the 23rd largest by flow rate in the world. Many Oregonians might be surprised to learn that the Willamette Falls in Oregon City is even more powerful, ranking 17th in the world, and no one there pays it much mind. There’s a small viewpoint on a busy highway where you will occasionally see a car stopped to view them. I guess everything is a little more exotic when it’s in a foreign country.

Ah, but they do have something the Americans don’t have, the need to speak multiple languages. In the gift shop they put up these little flags to show what they can speak on any given day. I tried some Swahili on them but was met with a blank stare, like I usually get when I speak Portuguese to a Portuguese.

A good percentage of Europeans are proficient at English. Except here I’m not sure who Off is, but I think it’s a little presumptuous of them to provide a suggestion like that. Does Off even know about this? Oh well, at least they care enough to offer some guidance, but a little more information would have been appreciated.

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Germany, where my grandson had a liter taste of adulthood.

This was the summer of the long family (and very welcomed) visit. My son Luke and my grandson Masi came to stay with me for about six weeks, which was a great help in alleviating some of my occasional loneliness. His wife Brooke was only able to make it for the last two weeks due to work obligations. We mostly spent the first part of the visit just hanging out at home and seeing a few more of the sights around the area, but we also booked a trip to Stuttgart, Germany. Luke wanted to see Germany, but he didn’t want to go to a big city, so Stuttgart filled the bill. Plus, the name “Stuttgart” comes from the Old High German term “Stuotgarten,” meaning “stud garden” or “stud farm.” Since we’re three generations of studs, Stuttgart seemed like a perfect fit. And no, I didn’t even make any of that up.

I mean, that’s three generations of studliness right there.

I took them on a tour of one of my regular walking routes; it’s hard to beat that scenery. We also found a bee farm. Since Luke & Brooke have been beekeepers in the past, they enjoyed seeing how the Portuguese do it. On a related note, I once asked my Portuguese teacher if couples ever called each other “mel,” because “mel” means “honey” in Portuguese. It’s only a three letter word, but no matter how I said it, she couldn’t understand what I was asking, I think mostly because it had no context and my accent probably made it sound like “mal,” which means “bad” …like my Portuguese. Anyway, after sorting out the question, she said “nâo,” which means “no” but rhymes with cow, and you have to plug your nose when you say it.

We walked all around Lisbon, and watched in amazement as a tower grew out of Luke’s head. We had to pry it off before he could get back in the car; it’s a good thing I had a crowbar in the trunk.

I had a brief conversation with Cristiano Ronaldo, but he declined to reveal what kind of underwear he wears. In fact, he seemed a little annoyed at the exchange, he just crossed his arms and stood still, staring at me.

That’s Troia in the background in the middle picture, an upscale resort just a short ferry ride from Setúbal. And Praça do Comércio is a must-stop for anyone who needs to stop when they get musty.

We also visited the World War II-era cannons I’d discovered with my good friend Per a while back. It was such an unexpected sight since Portugal was neutral during that war. Masi also learned that the Portuguese use many of the same swear words that Americans use. I don’t think they use “doggonit” or “shucks” though. And boy howdy, I can now say I’ve stared down the barrel of a gun and didn’t even flinch.

So off we went to Stuttgart via Lufthansa with these promotional-catalog-quality photos. That’s me playing the grumpy old man in the background. Do you suppose I could make a career out of that?

Later on they conked out, only to be jolted awake when I started screaming, “Oh my God, we’re going to crash!” I told the police at the gate that I have Alzheimers, so I barely got arrested.

Stuttgart is a nice enough city, but other than some museums, there wasn’t a ton to see there. According to TripAdvisor, the two top things to do there are The Mercedes Benz museum and the Porsche museum. Luke’s a car guy, but he knew Masi and I would enjoy either about as much as a hair follicle museum, so we basically used Stuttgart as a launching pad for a multitude of other cities and countries. Besides, we weren’t in the market for any studs from their numerous stud farms.

Both Luke and Masi are pretty strict rule followers, just like most Germans, so if the Germans want us to be gross, by gum we’ll be gross!

Exploring the wonders of science and technology at the Deutsches Museum in Munich.
A modern museum interior showcasing various military aircraft and missiles with visitors exploring the exhibits.
Exploring the Deutches Museum in Munich, showcasing impressive aircraft and military technology.
An exhibit featuring a space suit alongside a model of the vehicle it was designed for, showcasing the intricate design and technology of space exploration.
Exploring a high-tech space module at the Deutches Museum in Munich, showcasing the wonders of science and technology.
Inside the Deutches Museum in Munich, showcasing a fascinating collection of aircraft and aviation history.
A playful selfie taken from below a unique architectural feature, showcasing a spiraling structure above.
Exploring the Deutches Museum in Munich, featuring impressive aircraft and technology exhibits.

One of our expeditions from Stuttgart was to visit the Deutches Museum in Munich, which is the largest museum of science and technology in the world. Here are just 7 of the 1,823 or so pictures we took, I doubt anyone wants to see a bunch of museum pictures so I didn’t include any more than that here. But I did experiment with an AI feature for the first time by asking AI to provide captions. It did a serviceable job, if a little repetitious, but I couldn’t get it to tell any jokes. You’ll always be able to tell that Bald Sasquatch wasn’t written by AI because of all the alternative facts and other nonsense that somehow worm their way in, especially if I’m writing after a day of snorting mushrooms. Perhaps humor will be the only way we can distinguish between what’s human and what’s computer in the future! Dad jokes may save humanity!

For example, AI will probably never understand why any of these pictures are humorous. I love the store name “Item Shop.” I suppose if you asked them what they are selling, they’d only need to reply, “items,” even if they have something dropped off by “I don’t give a Fuchs Transporte.” And I cracked up at what people did to the chewing gum sign. Even though not all of them were fresh, many of them still tasted fine.

Driving on the Autobahn was fun for Luke, I think 190 km/hr (118 MPH) was about as fast as he went, but he probably went faster when I wasn’t looking or after the G forces made me pass out. I took the photo on the right simply to compliment the Germans (they love it when I compliment them) for their consideration and insight. Near the entrance in a large underground parking lot are these parking spaces with a sign indicating that they’re for women drivers only. Since women generally have to be hyper aware of their surroundings at all times, it’s a thoughtful thing to allow them to have a close place to park instead of wandering around a gloomy dimly-lit underground floor where rapists, neo-Nazis, or Ted Bundies might be lurking around every corner. The next thing we need to do is make sure women have double the public toilet capacity; I feel so sorry for them when I walk past a line of about 50 females and am able to stroll right into the men’s room. I think we need more female architects.

We had an authentic German meal at an authentic German restaurant (“Is this an authentic German restaurant?” I asked). But later Masi was a bit confused as to why a trash can needed a solar panel. I have to admit I didn’t have a good answer for him, but if he wanted to stick his hand in the slot to find out, that was his business.

We started Masi down the road to alcoholism by letting him imbibe his first (or so he says) beer while in Munich. As long as you’re with an adult, anyone aged 14 and up can legally enjoy a beer at a restaurant in Germany. We did kinda cheat since he was only 13, so we penciled a mustache on him, but damn if the kid didn’t down the whole glass, even wiping the foam off his fake mustache with the back of his hand at the end (of course, the mustache came off too, but the beer was already gone at that point). But truly, I think it’s kinda cool that Masi will always be able to say he had his first beer in Munich, Germany, with his dad and granddad. That’s something I hope he always remembers. I won’t, because I wasn’t driving and so had eight of them. Or ten, or something. I can beerly remember anything anymore, even without alcohol.

I should mention here that Germany has significantly higher per capita alcohol consumption than the U.S., but lower rates of alcoholism and alcohol-related health issues. Simply put, the German approach to beer works better than trying to keep anyone under 21 from having any.

I will say that it was a good way to keep him quiet on the drive home!

Luke was on a different-beer-a-day regímen at the restaurant across from our apartment. When in Germany, you gotsta have lotsa beer, I think it’s a law there.

Anyway, we had a good time during this portion of the trip. More cities and countries to come! But probably no more beer, I still have a headache.

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Coping with Häagen-Dazs

I’ve been reading online that Solo Travel is becoming a more and more popular trend (probably because everyone else seems to be so annoying these days). So I decided to try it out. Since I rarely bother with reading past the headlines, I loaded up my luggage with Solo cups and my favorite Hans Solo doll and set out on my first solo adventure. Unfortunately, I quickly learned that Solo cups make terrible underwear and that Hans Solo dolls are useless in real life except for pretend-shooting toe monsters in the hotel bathtubs.

By now you may be wondering what Häagen-Dazs has to do with solo travel, this blog, and elephants. We’ll start with the fact that, like many of the alternative facts proffered by Bald Sasquatch, Häagen-Dazs is a completely made up name. However, it was invented to sound Danish (and in fact was intended as a tribute to Denmark’s support of Jews during World War II, so now I can’t make fun of it). As a result of all my exhaustive research (which took me actual minutes), I figured my first solo venture should involve Danish things, so I put a Danish pastry topped with Häagen-Dazs ice cream on top of a small table made of Legos while wearing one of those Viking hats with horns that Vikings never actually wore, and called up the two greatest Danes I know, Pia and Per. I don’t know why you brought up elephants, I think you’re just trying to confuse me.

When Pia learned the specifics of my solo adventure, she rightfully became a little concerned and decided that perhaps Per should visit me posthaste to make sure I was right in the head. Later I mitigated her concern by showing her pictures of Per dressed up like this just to go to the grocery store. Touché, or as we say in the states, too shay.

Seriously, Per, being the good friend that he is, flew all the way in from Copenhagen for a long weekend just to keep me company as I adjust to living completely alone, except for the scary monsters that want to attack me but so far have been thwarted by anti-monster blankets.

Plus he’s even taller than me so the monsters really made themselves scarce during his visit.

The cool thing about this particular visit was that we discovered some things not too far away from where I live that I hadn’t seen before. For instance, I had been planning to go to Forte de São Filipe in Setúbal for some time but just hadn’t gotten around to it, but fortunately Per had a round tuit in his wallet so we ventured out to conquer the fort, as well as Setúbal.

However, before we even got there, Per asked about another small fort he had seen on Google Maps that was supposedly on the way to Setúbal. I scoffed and call him a dumb stupid idiot for even suggesting I didn’t already know of every fort and castle between Sesimbra and Setúbal, but he persisted, and so to humor him I drove to the coordinates on Google Maps.

So we turned onto a nondescript gravel road and promptly drove over a cliff and died.

OK, not really, but I know I had you going for a second, because that was written by a ghost writer. We did actually find an old fort that apparently no one pays any attention to because it was covered in graffiti and had more than a few fairly hazardous areas including loose guardrails, wobbly steps, and unexploded land mines. There was also no entrance fee, so I guess you get what you pay for.

I noticed the road to the fort continued on around a bend, so I decided to explore a little. To my surprise I stumbled upon an old World War II bunker/artillery battery that I had no idea Portugal even had. Portugal was neutral during WWII, but I suppose they didn’t want to be completely helpless in case someone like the evil Spaniards or Mayans decided to attack.

Like the fort, the place has been completely ignored except by taggers and one very confused old German soldier who hadn’t heard the war was over. Anyway, I took measurements of the gun barrel dimensions and as my summer project I’m going to see if I can build an artillery shell and scare the hell out of some tourists on Troia, which is a resort area just across the bay.

I have absolutely no idea what the writing in this photo means. I think it either might be a signal for aliens or the remnants of a lost Mayan civilization that somehow made its way across the Atlantic ocean. Or maybe it’s some kid’s Hot Wheels track.

There’s nothing here that a little paint and military-grade Viagra wouldn’t fix. I mean for the gun. Seriously. C’mon, man, I’m single now and trolling for babes, so stop with the Viagra jokes already.

After that heart-pounding discovery (there were stairs, after all), we went on to the Forte de São Filipe, which was interesting mostly because it’s an old fort, and old farts and old forts tend to attract one another.

As usual with most forts and castles, it offered up some stunning views, here of Setúbal and its environs. After we quenched our thirst at the outdoor restaurant, we set out to conquer Setúbal.

By conquering Setúbal I mean walking around the place and enjoying a delightful lunch at a family-owned restaurant that proved my adage that the more unremarkable a Portuguese restaurant looks from the outside the better the food probably is. And I have no idea what that statue is supposed to be.

We also visited the Palmela Castle which overlooks Setúbal and catered to our wildest cross-dressing and costume fantasies.

On another day we drove to Cabo da Roca, which is the westernmost point of all of continental Europe, and is where Almond Roca would have been invented if they had more almond trees nearby. The guy on the top left isn’t either Per or myself, but I figured if he was going to point his camera at me, I’d return the favor, leading to an old bald guy staredown that lasted for hours. He won because apparently he has a bigger bladder than I do.

On the way home we stopped in picturesque Cascais and then got caught in a Friday night traffic jam that added at least two hours to the drive, but at least we got a terrific view of the freeway.

But before long we were all nestled into my sweet home of Sesimbra, with its silvery moon, wonderful seafood restaurants, a beautiful stretch of beach named California Beach, which the locals swear that the state of California was named after, and a harbor featuring cleverly disguised submarines.

Once Per cleared me for a visit to Denmark with a good chance of not needing to call in the authorities, I booked my ticket and a month or so later began the journey of learning how to cope. I knew I’d be able to learn all the skills I’d need in order to live alone in the capital of everything coping-ness, aka Copenhagen. As the Danes already know, “hagen” means “the chin” in Danish, so Copenhagen essentially translates to “Coping after taking one on the chin.”

Besides, their royalty is bad ass.

But truly, what a great place to cope since Denmark routinely is in the top five or even first in so many important country metrics like health care quality, happiness, education… pretty much all quality-of-life metrics, mostly only competing with its Scandinavian brothers for the top spot. Copenhagen is the city every other city in the world should want to be when it grows up.

This was my second visit, so my gracious hosts took me ’round to places I hadn’t seen before, like the Kronborg Castle.

Kronborg is a very important Renaissance castle, with one of the reasons being that it is the setting for William Shakespeare’s play Hamlet, which I think is a story about a little pig.

So of course you can find all sorts of Shakespearean gift ideas, including this elephant condom with “To be or not to be” proudly displayed to ensure elephants think twice before doing whatever it is animals do to make baby animals. Anyway, it’s a great gift for the elephant owners in your life.

The castle is absolutely gorgeous and has been very well-maintained, although it could eventually need a good pressure washing which will cost millions of Danish kroner (they didn’t adopt the euro because they were already perfect), not only because it’s so large but because they can’t use any actual water pressure out of fear of damaging the old stone, so someone has to stand there all day just trickling a hose on one spot.

In case you’re wondering what the cannons were pointing at, across the water there is Sweden. An interesting piece of historical trivia is that Denmark and Sweden have fought more wars against each other than any other two countries in the world. The last one was in 1789, so now they just poke fun at each other with internet memes instead. But like two brothers, they can make fun of each other, but if an outsider tries to do the same, they’ll rush to the other’s defense. You don’t mess with that Viking blood!

Speaking of Viking blood, the Danes are known for their huge organs.

Inside, they were kind enough to offer up a free buffet, but I found the flavor to be rather like plastic.

So the story is that this legendary king, Holger the Dane, will awaken and rise up and do some serious smiting should Denmark ever need any smitissery. I was trying to look like him but only succeeded in looking like an old guy sneaking a nap while standing, which is something I’ve perfected of late.

A typical day in the life of a Danish King involved walking down this long hallway to get to the dinner table and then off to bed. It must have made for an exhausting day.

A diorama of four mannequins, with the two in front demonstrating what modern clothing would look like on today’s servants, as well as the significantly increased height due to today’s modern gravity.

Ever thoughtful, the Danes built a table with a mirror so you can take a selfie with the ceiling in the background without having to look up. I could’ve looked up, but would have probably cracked my head open after the fall.

The Danes hate it when you touch dusty windowsills.

This is the great room. You wouldn’t know it with us in the way of the photo, where it really only seems to be a pretty good room, but once we’re out of the picture you can see it’s actually really great.

You might be wondering what these are.

OK, I said that about the pictures of houses because I was wearing this hat I’d purchased at a huge open air market and as a result was being a bit of a dickhead, because I was supposed to be.

Now that I have that hat off, I can tell you that these are some of the houses in those pictures, which were taken from the air and were not Photoshopped or anything of the kind. The view from the ground is always a bit different than from the sky, especially if you’re falling without a parachute.

We decided to see the Cherry Blossoms, which bloom for just a short time every year and we were at the tail end of the bloomin’ season. Nearby was Grundtvig’s Church, which is one of the more famous churches in Copenhagen due to its unique design. It also has two organs, whereas most humans have about 78, so we win.

It’s a beautiful walk down the Path of Infinity to get to the blossoms. When we began our journey on foot, the blossoms were in full, glorious bloom. By the time we got there, half the blossoms had given up waiting and fallen to the ground.

While we were mildly disappointed at nature for not catering to our whims, Pia snagged herself a kindly groundskeeper and he drove her back to the car after doing some wheelies, making some jumps off a few ramps, and scaring the hell out of a few old people in wheelchairs, hooting that they were just rookies as he left them in his dust.

This sign, and you can double check me if you want, indicates that this is an area of the graveyard reserved for atheists. True story. I thought it was funny that I couldn’t see any gravestones, but then again, if there’s one group of people who couldn’t care less about what you do with their bodies after death, it’d be atheists.

Danes are so badass that they have signs directing you to London, which is 1,262 km (784 miles) away and would take you over 200 hours to walk, plus a ferry.

Speaking of badassery, in World War II the Danes, being very pragmatic, surrendered quickly in the face of a dominant German force, and then schemed to have the Germans allow them to govern themselves. Eventually that collapsed, especially in light of the ongoing underground resistance, which this museum documented for us. It’s amazing how many stories have come out of World War II.

This section of housing in Copenhagen consists of old houses whereby the owners have to adhere to specific aesthetic standards. If you paint it the right color, you’re in. I said, you’re in. Just don’t piss them off, that’s all I’m saying.

The first time I was there, my Danish friends took me to this wonderful restaurant downtown with a very special Easter menu. It actually was one of the best lunches I’ve ever had. This time, it was maybe a tick less gooder than the first time, but that may have had something to do with higher expectations as well as slightly fewer shots of schnapps. Everything tastes better with schnapps.

I gotta tell you, you can’t really see it here with these shots, but there were times when I sat in the car at a stop light or some such, watching the combination of all the bikers and walkers and friendly people, and it reminded me of a sort of utopia. I’m really not kidding. In fact, during my visit I discovered that I’d neglected to bring a sufficient quantity of pills to treat my glaucoma (I counted one a day, when I actually take two a day… boy, math is hard). Since it is utopia-like, Per simply got on the phone, was put through to a doctor, who understood the dilemma I was facing and so issued me a temporary social security number and a prescription, all done over the phone and entered into their system online. The next day we walked into the closest pharmacy, the pharmacist called up the record, and within minutes I had a bottle of 100 pills. On top of all that, they were pills she had never even prescribed before, and remember, I’m a complete foreigner. Maybe instead of tearing everything down in the USA, Mr. Trump, you ought to consider building systems like the Danes have… their lives are easier and they are happier and healthier as a result. I know it’s easier to destroy than build, but damn, there are people in the world doing this stuff right; everyone should be taking notes. That’s a Churchill we should be willing to die on.

You finally made it to the funny sign portion of this entry, which signals that it’s about ready to actually be the end. Sorry for the length, I would have made it shorter but I had too many words I had to use up.

Anyway, the first one on the left is from Portugal. The Portuguese are pretty straightforward, and “frango” is the word for “chicken” in Portuguese, and so here they’re offering some tasty chicken ass.

Not to be outdone, the Danes tell you where to go if your farts are really smelly in the middle picture.

I think the photo on the right speaks for itself.

Portugal welcomed me back with open arms and a beautiful sunset. I was glad to be home, but even more glad to be shown so much care and concern from two very nice and empathetic people. I still really haven’t taken a solo trip; for some reason sharing a travel experience with someone makes it so much more meaningful than seeing it all on my own. Maybe someday I’ll score the perfect travel partnering babe. Ha ha!

(Scroll down to see previous entries.)