EuroTrip, Take 2

Some events and characters have been dramatized for effect.

Act 1, Scene 1 – Open on a haggard, hung over, smelly-looking girl with her face glued to the window of a 767.  She’s obviously been wearing the same clothes for days, clothes that belong in a much warmer, dustier place.  She’s staring out at whatever windmill-speckled ocean shore borders Denmark (who knows which ocean, she’s tired and doesn’t really care at this point).  Her face, though lined with exhaustion, is lit up in eager anticipation of soaking up the First World and eating everything.  Everything.  She’s practically bouncing in her seat.

Stacey’s voiceover (SV): “Haha. Africa, you silly continent.  You’ve been around the longest and you’re still a mess.  Ya know, you’re just a few hours in a plane from the Western World.  Just saying, ya might wanna pop on over here for a few pointers… and some sushi.  SUSHI!”

Captain, on the overhead:  “Flight attendants, prepare for landing.”

SV: “Yeah! Land this thing!”

Cut to baggage claim area.

Baggage claim attendant:  “Sorry, ma’am, you’re bag has been lost, maybe in Kenya, where the most incompetent and mean-spirited airport attendants in the business work.  If it turns up, we’ll let you know.”

Stacey, eyes glowing red with anger: “Damn you, KENYA!!!!!!!”

Outside baggage claim, Stacey’s parents and sister wait, looking at their watches, worried that their daughter might still be stuck in the black hole that is the Kenya International Airport, where family vacations go to die.  But, wait.  Is that…? That dirty, cracked out, underdressed hobo in sandals looks a lot like…Stacey!!!

A touching, long-awaited, well-earned, tear-streaked family reunion commences.

Scene 2 – Denmark

Montage!

Begins with a smiling American family riding around a foreign city on white bikes with baskets in the front.  The bike lanes are wider than the car lanes and the whole city seems to be on bikes too.  The sky is bright, the trees are tall and full, everything is old-looking and made of stone, and the canals are full of colorful boats.  Castles surrounded by beautiful parks pass by, dogs run without leashes.  It’s 10PM and it’s still bright and sunny!

Cut to a theme park, I forget the name but Disneyland is based off of it.  Two sisters are on a rollercoaster.  A rollercoaster!!! I wasn’t expecting this!  Cut to all-you-can-eat-sushi night!  Cut to another theme park ride involving spinning and high speeds.  Cut to Stacey making a face like she’s really about to puke.  Like really.

Cut to eating steaks and Stacey feeling really uncomfortable with how much things cost.  Cut to feeding swans, pictures at the famous Little Mermaid statue, eating hot dogs in a cobblestone square, trapped on one side of the street because of a marathon, a street market of organic, sustainable products.

Cut to family drinking canned Carlsberg beers sitting next to the canal and laughing about European’s obsession with their crazy dogs.  Stacey is amazed that more than the three types of Carlsberg found in Malawi aren’t the only types of Carlsberg.  Callie, the sister, explains about the Danish concept of “getting hoogily,” which essentially means spending hours at a meal with your friends feeling comfortable and chatty.  She also explains that the healthcare is free, kids are paid to go to school, minimum wage is a million dollars, and the workday ends obscenely early.

Cut to family driving sadly away from Denmark.  Stacey makes a mental note to live there for real one day… It’s the greatest country in the world after America (duh).

Scene 3 – Berlin

This writing style is taking too long.  Berlin was great, but paled in comparison to Copenhagan.  I really fell in love with that place and their hoogily culture.  In Berlin we replaced my Berkinstocks that were lost with my luggage.  I got an upgraded version from the pair I had, and they were genuine German, so I felt super duper.  And I was clean and wearing new clothes and eating bagels with cream cheese and lox.  I was quite the happy camper.

In Berlin we drank German beer from a corner shop, went to a beer garden and ate sausages, saw some castle gardens, I ate a lot of cheese and salami and shopped at H&M, the ultimate one-stop Peace Crops clothes shop.  All the cheap yet fashionable clothes (and cleaner than anything I own) I bought there came back to Africa with me to die.  None of them will last past this year, which cuts down on what I need to pack out!  We saw pieces of the Berlin wall, one section of which was graffiti’ed with “Next Wall to Fall, Wall Street.”  We saw the sights, ran through the crazy Holocaust memorial, and I got to eat some Chinese food.  Great success! 

Scene 4 – Prague

Pan up from a dinner table covered with mostly finished glasses of beer, mostly eaten plates of fried cheese, meat with gravy, mashed potatoes, dumplings, and schnitzel to the family slouching in their chairs with the top buttons of their pants undone, looking as if they’re about to puke. 

Dad: “Ya know, Prague is the number one city for microbreweries in the world, second is San Diego (or something).  Most of these little restaurants brew their own beer in back.”

Stacey:  “And we will try all of them…”

Cue weird accordion background music.

With a beer in one hand and a fried doughy sugary thing in the other while waiting for the clock show to start, Prague easily takes the number 2 spot on the trip.  We cram onto the tram up to the castle and see castle things, I indulge in Prague’s famous hot chocolate, and we end up at an outdoor café on the river drinking beer and eating a cheese plate.  Cheese!  Castles and history are cool and stuff, but I’m definitely there for the food.  The Charles Bridge was a bridge with beggars on it.  People beg differently there, bent down on their knees and elbows with their heads down.  It’s a very degrading position and probably really painful and embarrassing for the beggar to have to sit like that for hours.  I actually kind of appreciated it.  If you’re going to choose to beg, it should be humiliating, and not obnoxious and in-your-face to those you’re begging from.  Beggars in America and here in Malawi just make people feel uncomfortable and upset and objectified.  Not a mood that usually puts me in a giving spirit.

Anyway, Dad took me on the Prague Ghost Tour, which was cheesy (cheese!) and adorable and not scary at all.  But the Jewish graveyard with all the graves stacked on top of each other was cool. 

I think I’m forgetting something we did in Prague… Is that where we ate ice cream (ice cream!) and Callie and I went to the underground absinth bar that, to our surprise, doubled as a marijuana café?  I think so.  Damn, absinth is NOT good.

Scene 5 – Vienna

Outside an old cathedral there is a street fair celebrating some type of new seasonal beer.  There are wine tasting booths, a marching band, chocolate stands, and most importantly, massive amounts of fried food.  Vienna was a CLOSE third behind Prague.  I’m gonna go ahead and say it was tied.  I get tipsy off of wine and we all split beers, schnitzel, sausages, some oily potato and meat mash dealy.

Vienna is home to the restaurant that serves the largest schnitzel known to man.  We didn’t eat it, because we’ve been full for over a week, but we did stuff an impressive amount of other schnitzel into our mouths, and by “our mouths” I mean just me and Dad, really.

Vienna is also known for a bunch of stuff like opera and Mozart and other famous stuff like cappuccinos and tasty little cakes.  There’s so much famous stuff in Vienna we could have spent the whole trip there, and one day we probably will, but for our two nights there we opted for one of those hop-on hop-off busses.  It was a nice little breeze through the city, and I got to catch some z’s on my daddy’s shoulder.  I never get to do that anymore.  About half way through the day we had to make the biggest decision of our lives, buy evening tickets to see an opera or symphony or whatever or to see the famous Lipizzaner war horses perform.  We chose the horsies.  Duh.  They were super duper!  Also, right before the show we got famous Mozart-recommended cappuccinos, so I was straight wired and the horses were extra cool!  Apparently, these horses are specially bred and train for something like 12 years and are the best horses on the planet.  The performance was like a horsie dance.  They pranced around and marched in place and spun around each other.  They also did cool jumping karate kicking moves meant to take a person’s head off in war.  It was very exciting.

Finally, for my last big hurrah of the trip, Dad took me to the movies, something I’ve been craving since I got to Africa.  We got a huge tub of popcorn and settled into a terrible Johnny Depp movie, where he plays a vampire in the 70’s.  It deserved its terrible reviews, but I’ll still remember it until my mind starts to go mushy from Alzheimer’s. 

Director’s Cut

It was unbelievably good to see my family again.  And seeing them in Europe was the best way to do it.  Not only did I get a EuroTrip, but I got to be in the First World without the pain and confusion of going home to America.  It made leaving easier; I would have been a wreck if I was leaving San Diego again.  Also, it just made Europe that much better.  Ten days of Europe sandwiched between two years in Africa makes Europe so much more epic.  If you want the most bang for your European vacation-buck, first spend a whole lot of time somewhere that sucks. 

But it was also easier leaving this time because I knew what I was going back to.  Leaving for the unknown the first time almost killed me.  I was a mess, I was frantic, and I was panicked.  And I remember being angry at nothing specific.  But this time I got to appreciate, truly and undeniably appreciate the luxury of West and my family’s presence – every bite, every beer, every hug.  There was no rush and anxiety this time, not knowing what I was going to miss, frantically trying to hit all the bases.  This time, I knew what I needed and I was aware of the time limit.  And when the trip ended, I was sad and instantly homesick for my family and physically painfully aware that the 12 months ahead of me would not be with them.  But I expected it, I’d done this before.  I was still breathing and I knew I wasn’t boarding a plane destined for a black hole.  On the contrary, I had a dog and a cat waiting for me at home.  I had a best friend ready to meet me at the airport on the other side.  I had keys to a house that was mine and a stack of papers waiting for me to grade.  This assurance allowed me to just enjoy being with my family, eat good food, and drink good beer without panic – which is how those things SHOULD be enjoyed.  It was ten wonderful days far far from Malawi, but not so far that I had to miss it.