Denmark & Poland

And we're back... Sorry for the delay. We were waiting for our Guest Noodle to post about Iceland, but apparently he has been held up by work or something like that. But he's promised to deliver a masterpiece in just a few more days.

In the meantime...Copenhagen! While cheaper than Iceland (what isn't?), our budget only allowed for a few precious days in this cutest of Scandinavian cities. We spent our time there walking around the winding streets and oggling all the cute Danish people on their bikes. Their style was awesome - the girls in flippy, tiered skirts and low-slung belts (same as LA), but worn with black leggings without feet. (Have the feetless leggings hit LA yet? Noodles love them.) The boys were not as cute in those uber-Euro long shorts (um, they're capri pants, ok) and sandals. But the real style stars were
"babies as accessories". Everywhere you looked there was another adoreable couple pushing their adoreable baby in an expensive Apple Paltrow Martin stroller. We wished we had Ella Grace and Jill Madison with us to blend in with the crowd. And finally, the inexplicable, but endlessly fascinating Danish fashion statement: the mini-sailor hat. I think we were in Copenhagen the weekend that either high school kids or college kids (you know you're getting old when you can't tell the difference anymore) were graduating. All around the city, at all hours of the day, hordes of drunk kids were riding around in open-sided trucks decorated with tree branches, singing and shouting and blasting air horns. And they all wore small, white sailor hats perched on top of their blond heads (or, in the case of the not insignificant Mulsim Danish population, on top of their head scarf). Snoop Dogg was in town for a show as well and we hoped he'd be wearing a sailor hat too.

We took a day trip from Copenhagen north to a few towns to visit the world famous Louisiana Museum of Modern Kunst (er, Art), and the castle where "Hamlet" was set. The castle was kind of boring, but oh my god, the museum was AMAZING! Set on the grounds of an old Danish estate, the museum's stunning galleries and extensive sculpture garden overlook the narrow causeway separating Denmark and Sweden so, as if the art were not enough, the views are amazing. To give credit where credit is due, we went out of our way to go to the museum on a tip from Jen's Mom who visited the Louisiana 35 years earlier when she was backbacking through Europe, and who still remembers it as one of the highlights of her trip. And as Jen sat on the museum's lawn, next to its famous Henry Moore sculpture, looking out at the blue waters of Scandinavia, and the numerous sailboats in the channel and Sweden in the distance, and thinking about the strange twists and turns of life that lead her to be sitting in exactly the same place her Mom did when she was 29 and looking out at this same view, she looked down at her picnic lunch and realized she was thinking the same thing her Mom did so many years before: Why can't these Europeans embrace the peanut butter? We LOVED the Louisiana and if you are ever nearby, peanut butter or not, you must go.

On our walk back to our way overpriced (and disgusting) youth hostel in Helsingor, we stopped at a middle eastern joint to share a dinner. The friendly man who served us wanted to know if we were American. Our gut reaction was to say we're Canadian, 'from the Okanagen...you know in BC' (shout out to Rebecca), but he had a nice face, so we told him the truth. Turns out he was an Iranian who had immigrated to Denmark and was now living in Irvine. He chatted us up for a bit and then told us that we were eating in his brother's place and that dinner was on him. So nice! So we told him we'd catch him later on the 405 someday and headed back to Copenhagen to catch our Polferrie to Swinoujscie, Poland (Where? Yeah, we know. Trust us, ignorance is bliss on this one.)

So the all-night Polferrie was actually pretty nice. At first we were worried since to catch the Polferrie we had to consult a "fartplan" (the Danish word for timetable...doesn't bode well, does it?), but with a quiet private room and a little Ambien, the trip was a breeze. Swinoujscie (or "Swishy" as we called it because how are you ever supposed to pronounce this word?) was like the Polish Del Boca Vista, or Del Polka Vista, as we ended up calling it. We were by far the youngest people in the town...by about 45 years...and at the end of our enforced 12 hours there (waiting to catch the train to Warsaw), we were ready to kill ourselves. Worst of all, what should have been the real highlight of Swishy, the "Alf Zone", an internet cafe raved about in Let's Go and decorated entirely as an homage to '80s TV icon, Alf, was CLOSED! Permanently! Unfortunately, we didn't discover this until we had walked 3 miles through the Del Polka Vista hood to get to the bolted up "Alf Zone". And just like Swishy to kick us while we're down, after trudging back to our hotel room and submitting to the banality of Polish TV, what should be airing in all his wise-cracking, Polish-dubbed glory? Of course, Alf. Aagh, these pretzels are making me thirsty! Buh-bye, Swishy.

We then moved on to Warsaw en route to Krakow. Warsaw was actually cooler than we'd expected. The old town is well-restored and picturesque, and the more modern commercial district has lots of cool coffee places and decent looking shoping and restaurants. The famous former Jewish Ghetto of Warsaw was much less remarkable to visit than its storied history. The Nazis completely razed the ghetto during the war and although the Poles seem intensely interested in meticulously restoring other historical areas in Warsaw, the Ghetto was allowed to sink into communist, concrete square-building oblivion, so there's really nothing to see except for a few small monuments to the ghetto's former occupants and the ultimately unsuccessful uprising they tried to mount to save their lives there.

Now we're in Krakow. Just arrived but it looks good so far. Castles, fire-breathing dragons, and a town that Let's Go consistently writes is "mostly untouched by the ravages of WWII". Well, at least as far as the buildings are concerned...

More soon.