spring break in france means two glorious weeks of vacation from the craziness of teaching, but in absolutely no means does it mean relaxing. this is my last free two weeks in europe for the foreseeable future, and i have to take advantage of it while I can. i embark on a whirlwind 12 day trip to portugal, the uk, norway, poland and sweden, because when else am i going to have the chance to go to warsaw for the weekend? probably never. planning this trip, we frantically search the lowcost airline ryanair’s website for ridiculously cheap routes, and somehow find a fairly coherent itinerary that leaves us with no more than 48 hours in each city. short but sweet, considering our flight to poland cost approximately five dollars.
ryanair is the low cost airline par excellence, and even though they are extremely popular in europe, I have absolutely no idea how they manage to stay in business with five dollar flights. luckily, i was not a business major and I don’t particularly care, so I lean back in my seat and try to get some rest before the whirlwind trip. with ryanair, in addition to the crying babies, revving engines and coughing passengers, you have to deal with being a constant consumer. flight attendants are of all nationalities, and they are incessantly parading around the plane selling sandwiches, vodka, perfume, cigarettes, lottery tickets, and train passes in various accents. maybe this is how ryanair turns a profit – by selling cigarettes at 30 thousand feet to panicked europeans who will smoke them immediately after the cabin doors open. ryanair also has one bag policy, meaning that you carryon does not mean carryon plus handbag, only carryon that must, furthermore, fit in the weird size cage before you get on the plane. otherwise you must unpack in front of everyone and wear approximately half your suitcase on the plane; it is in these moments I am extremely glad I don’t carry a giant pocketbook with a million things I don’t need because I would most certainly have to chuck it all to make my five dollar flight.
first stop, portugal. do i speak portuguese? absolutely not. after five days all I know is ‘obrigada’ which means ‘thank you’ which at the very least is better than knowing ‘you are terrible and so is your entire family’ because I believe that when you are walking into a store with a giant northface backpack like a very american bull in a china shop it is best not to blatantly insult the locals. city number one is Porto, home of port wine and lots of cats. our couchsurfing host, miguel, picks us up from the airport and immediately makes us a three course meal for dinner, as if we were dear friends he hasn’t seen in years. in reality, we met him fifteen minutes ago, wandering around the arrivals gate looking for a man with a black puma sweatshirt. side note on couchsurfing, especially for my mom: couchsurfing is an extremely european invention that I cannot imagine would ever work in the states. even after two weeks, it still seems a little strange to me; i’m waiting for somebody to tell me theres a catch, terms and conditions I didn’t read but accepted anyway, that the premise of sleeping on someones pullout couch or spare room for free is too good to be true. but its not; the only cost to you being an awesomely written profile on their website, polite requests to stay at someones apartment, and small talk with your host when you return to their place, completely exhausted after a day of traveling or touristing or trying to speak portuguese.
miguel is our host in porto, and he regales us with tales of his travels to iran, photo albums of waterfalls in the portugese countryside, and his side project of multilingual rap songs. It is a lot to take in at once, but we have no idea, for next he takes us to a traditional portuguese folk dancing club, housed in a magnificent restored mansion that kept the gilded chandeliers and elegant winding staircase and fancy wallpaper. the DJ plays traditional portuguese folk songs, and no matter what he plays, every single dancer seems to know exactly what to do. It is an intricate, multi-person kaleidoscope of both young and old weaving in and out seamlessly, as if they all have the password and know the secret to being exquisite dancers and aren’t telling anyone else. i am absolutely terrified as i carefully cross the room, attaching myself to the wall and praying that no one will snatch me up and place me in the middle of this beautiful dance where everyone knows exactly what to do but me. i imagine the train wreck that would derail this entire operation if i had to dance, and never before have i wished so much that my hair was green paisley that blended seamlessly into the wallpaper, garden state style. thankfully, due to the sheer terror i'm sure was on my face at the prospect of organized dancing, a million times worse than the forced square dancing in high school gym class, i am spared from portuguese folk dancing and live to see another day. miguel brings us home and we trudge through his garden in the dark until there is a sharp crunching noise under my feet. uh oh. did I just step on a treasured possession? a portuguese traditional rock-flower that only appears once every seven years if the moon is full? i'm already deciding how difficult it would be to find a hostel at this time of night after miguel throws us out for violently destroying his great grandmothers garden gnome, a family heirloom passed down through generations. but he just laughs and says “don’t worry, you probably stepped on a snail.” what a relief. I did indeed step on a snail, for the evidence is smeared all over the sidewalk the next morning, the crime scene on the bottom of my birkenstocks.
in the morning, miguel picks oranges from his garden and we make them into juice using an old school juicer that wouldn’t be out of place as a prize on the price is right in the 1970s. we eat another five course meal, breakfast with homemade bread and kiwi-pineapple jam while miguel pulls a sitar out of nowhere and closes his eyes and picks out a melody that would probably win a grammy if he was performing it in a recording studio instead of the kitchen in his pajamas. i try not to laugh at the sheer ridiculousness of it all, especially when after breakfast, he shows us his chicken coop-turned-steam sauna and we play with his cat named khakis (car keys? i'm still not sure) he drives us to the city and buys us deep-fried cod and i am still picking the tiny bones out of my teeth in a valiant effort to not choke and die in portugal, since the only word i know is thank you. “miss, we regret to inform you that you have pierced your esophagus with tiny fish bone spears.” “…thank you…?”
we take a walking tour with andre, an interior design student who shows us gardens and where he buys 50 cent beer at university and the bookstore that inspired jk rowling for dumbledore's office. apparently rowling lived in porto for a few years with her portuguese husband and the winding staircase in the bookstore librera lello immediately recalls dumbledore's turning stairs. andre takes us down beautiful winding streets and up many staircases and through gardens so green you'd think you were in ireland if not for the fact that i'm still picking the goddamn cod bones out of my teeth. suddenly in a surprising show of athleticism i don't expect from an interior design major who drinks 50 cent beers every thursday, he scales a ten-foot iron link fence so fast i don't think it's real. "ha," i literally say out loud, fake bravado to hide the fact that i really hope he's just doing this to be funny, "showoff. unlock the gate." "no can do," he replies easily. "you've got to climb it. it's the only way around." JESUS. i think to all of the climbing experience i have (spoiler alert: it's zero) then to my athletic ability (i literally can't remember the last time i went for a run… which side of the atlantic are my sneakers on?) and the wall seems worse than boot camp naked while reciting the periodic table. through some act of god, i climb the fence - not without a life flashing before my eyes moment when i heave my leg over the top and wonder what the hell i am actually doing - and proceed to brag about it for the rest of the day as if i just ran the boston marathon and beat all the kenyons through beacon hill.
we meet miguel for dinner and he takes us to the ocean (no wait seriously, i know i climbed a fence today, and i'm badass now, but are you really going to make me fish for my dinner?) where we eat sardines and cod and squid in a hole-in-the-wall local place where the waitress speaks absolutely no english and puts an entire sardine on my plate - head and eyes and tail and how do i eat this? i grew up in new hampshire, i can open a lobster with the best of them, but this is an entire fish - and proceeds to cut it for me while making vaguely soothing noises as if i were two years old and she will then spear it with a fork and "airplane" it into my mouth. the sardines are delicious, and by the end of dinner she proudly looks at my plate - a disgusting graveyard of fish vertebrae and eyes and tails - and gives me a thumbs up. that much is universal.
whoever thought going from portugal to norway at the beginning of march was a good idea obviously wasn't thinking (us) or broke (also us). in norway, we immediately put on all of our clothes so it is impossible to cross our legs or walk like we are not ralphie in his red snowsuit from "a christmas story." we are supposed to meet our couchsurfing host rakel at the train station, at the bottom of her stairs with her black and white dog. but it is midnight, and she is exhausted, and texts us directions instead. easy enough, we think. we're good at adventures. bring it on! NOPE. we get off the train and she tells us to take the path with the trees until you come to a road and turn left… WHAT. first off, there's nothing remotely resembling a path, but there are a trillion trees because we are actually in the norwegian forest. it is midnight and everything is covered in a foot of snow and the "path" (very loose definition) is completely iced over, making every blind step in the dark carrying all of my possessions a slippery gamble for my life. obviously i fall down because my shoes are not ice picks and my tailbone absolutely hates me (you'd think all the cake and chocolate i eat would provide some semblance of padding in the off chance i ever go night walking in norway, but apparently not) so i take two advil every day for the rest of the trip because i'm 85 and need breakfast before my back pills. we finally arrive at rakel's apartment with a giant "beware of dog" sign on the door to find the friendliest dog i've ever met and go directly to bed, where i have constant nightmares of falling on my already bruised tailbone yet again and having to explain myself in norwegian to passing strangers while the theme song from deliverance plays on a constant loop.
in the morning, rakel makes us an ikea crackers breakfast and we get ready for our hike. she puts on underarmor and a giant one-piece snowsuit, as well as giant black combat boots that could withstand nuclear winter, and i am immediately unprepared. my birkenstocks and classy wool coat from h&m absolutely do not make the cut. rakel's friend tamam meets us, who i find out is a political refugee from syria (just add that to the list of the ridiculously bizarre things that are happening on this trip) and we start off. we pick up vegetables to barbecue at the supermarket, and i make tam am hold my hand the entire way to the hiking trail because the roads are ice and death. the conversation goes something like this. "hi, i'm kim, i teach english in france and i am completely unprepared for what is about to happen. you, i met you approximately 20 minutes ago, but we're going to have to hold hands all day long. i hope you're down with that, because you don't really have a choice." thankfully, tamam doesn't mind, and helps me skate through the backwoods of oslo relatively unscathed. the hiking is beautiful, and everything is clean and white with snow crunching under our feet. cross-country skiers pass us and so does a group of kindergarteners, looking like fluorescent pink and blue bubbles in their snowsuits, sliding along like baby penguins. we make a campfire and cook our meals in tinfoil and whittle branches to host hot dogs, which are a huge thing in scandinavia, who knew? i can't remember the last time i made a campfire outside of girl scout camp, and it is either incredibly peaceful, to be in the wilderness after hopping from city to city to city like cockroaches, or my brain has partially frozen, which is a very distinct possibility. i can no longer feel my feet, but i have eaten three hot dogs and some potatoes and grog (norwegian wassail spiked with red wine) so frostbite is merely an afterthought.
the next day we are off to poland, but rakel's apartment, if you haven't guessed it from the norwegian forests, is too far from the center of oslo to make our flight the next day. we wander around the supermarket in the train station, killing time by looking at meat in tubes (think bacon paste with a twist-off cap… or better yet, don't think of it…) because we're taking the 3:45am train. turns out the station closes at 1am, but the bus station does not, so we pack up and move camp to the bus station, where we play increasingly terrible games of would you rather until two men from the norwegian salvation army come around with chocolate rolls from the 7-11 across the street, and they are the most delicious things i have ever eaten at 2:30 am, every single halloween warning about taking candy from strangers (taking pastries from bearded norwegian men in a bus station?) immediately forgotten.
when does one day end and another begin if you don't sleep? these are the incredibly deep philosophical thoughts i write in my notebook as we are sitting in the norwegian airport, very much delirious, cracking up about bad children's tv in the 90s and characters from arthur and dust bunnies under the big comfy couch, effectively terrifying all the calm, collected europeans who can manage taking a flight at 7am after being up all night. we, as it is becoming very clear, cannot. poland is snowy and there are smoking lounges in the airport (are we in soviet russia? did we fly over the iron curtain?) and we cannot pronounce a single thing, because who in their right mind puts a g in between two z's and a k and calls it the name of a bus station? we pass the time making up complete bullshit about polish linguistics and why some vowels are crossed out and how do you really pronounce w, anyway? we are ten thousand percent exhausted, but power through poland, becoming catatonic eating pierogies in old town warsaw while the waitresses are dressed like german barmaids and don't understand why we are asleep sitting up at 8pm.
last stop is sweden, where we can breathe because we have two and a half days, rather than 18 hours, so we take luxurious showers (hygiene is something that did not happen in warsaw… never have i ever showered in poland) in a completely ikea-furnished apartment, obviously. we find out that ikea plays the political game, for sweden hates denmark so all the ikea things that go under beds and people step on constantly (bath mats, underbed storage, anything under two feet high, really) is named after a city in denmark, while all the fancy important things (beds, shelves, meatballs) are named after swedish cities because they're obviously letter. nice subliminal messaging, ikea. everyone in stockholm is ridiculously gorgeous it's unfair. the ferry operator walks by and we stare at him with our mouths open - he should be a sweater model in ll bean magazines, not wearing waders and driving a boat to old town. it is actually freezing in stockholm, and we continue our very chic trend of wearing every article of clothing we own because it is -17 celcius which is SO COLD in fahrenheit, if 0=32. we meet our couchsurfing host teresa at an english bar in sodermalm, stockholm's brooklyn, where we watch a stand-up comedy show of varying skill levels, but it is free, and i speak english, so it works. a very elderly man gets up on stage and holds up his hand like a puppet and starts mumbling schizophrenically at it in english? swedish? still unknown after a good ten minutes of trying to figure out if this guy is for real. after he finishes his set, he crosses in front of the state during every single comic that follows, because he's old and doesn't give a shit.
i return home via london with two hours between our plane landing and the departure of our night bus to paris. i slap on my trusty knee brace that got us through speedy gonzalez first-class airport security last time i was in london, and hope for the best. we try and buy bus tickets, but i am so exhausted i no longer understand english. "nine pounds," says the frazzled guy working the ticket counter, definitely counting down the seconds until he's on break. what? i see his mouth moving but haven't the foggiest idea what is coming out of it. name plate? what the hell is that? name piece? i show him my passport, confused, as he gets increasingly more pissed off because this american girl doesn't even understand her native language, and repeats increasingly loudly "nine pounds! nine pounds! nine pounds!" until i give up in distress and look at melissa, who is yelling "PAY HIM" and it finally gets through my head that yes, i do indeed need to pay for a bus ticket. the minutes tick by on the bus while we read british newspaper articles about people going to work in their pajamas and we take the scenic route, which would be much appreciated if we didn't need to be crossing the english channel approximately two hours from this exact moment, and we look at big ben and the london eye and westminster, a five-minute refresher course in case we forgot what london looked like back in november, all lit up at night.
we get off the bus and sprint, amazing race style, to the bus terminal, as our international megabus leaves in approximately four minutes. melissa is ahead of me, telling the bus driver to not leave without us, and i'm still wearing my knee brace, sprinting my best to keep up, all of my athleticism used up for the next ten years between this, the norwegian ice hiking and climbing gates in portugal. the bus driver takes pity on us and checks our passports and tells us that we should show up a half hour early next time - HA - and we celebrate our last victory, making it onto the bus approximately 1 minute past departure time, starving and sweaty and forever wearing eighteen layers of clothes. at 2am we disembark the bus for passport control and a run to the convenience store, where we are warned we have ten minutes before getting on the ferry to cross the english channel, so we grab granola bars and kinderbuenos (always good in stressful situations) and run back to the bus, another deadline just barely accomplished. the ferry is apparently a party boat, and it smells like a bad college party, for it seems every 18 year old in london wants to arrive in paris at 7:30am, completely wasted. we are so old, and collapse in plastic chairs and try to sleep while animal house rages on while we are crossing the english channel at 3:30 in the morning. i guess this is what happens when you buy international megabus tickets. finally, FINALLY, we arrive in paris, a welcome respite where everyone speaks a language i understand, with a knowledge that my bed (and not someone's couch) is a mere three hours away in bordeaux. the whirlwind european tour comes to an end, and so thankfully do the falling on ice nightmares and the pain in my tailbone, but the snow stains on my birkenstocks, the sleep-deprived inside jokes and hard-earned stamps on my passport remain.
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