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Showing posts from September, 2010

Dollars to Danishes

There's no getting around it: this place is expensive. And it's expensive in a really bizarre way. Like at the supermarket, there's a $2 box of cereal next to an equally tasty $9 one. The thing is, $9 isn't an insane amount of money on its own... I mean, I've spent $9 before. In fact, $9 is totally okay to spend on a lot of things, like flourless chocolate tortes, Gap clearance jeans that happen to be in your size, and matinees of 3-D movies staring blue cats in love. There's nothing wrong with $9. Furthermore, there's nothing wrong with boxes of cereal. I like cereal, it's delicious, keeps well, and if we are to believe John Harvey Kellogg, limits the body's baser passions. (It's true: I don't want to watch Jersey Shore after a bowl of corn flakes.) Now, in the case of cereal, my choice is an easy one. I simply buy the $2 box and convince myself that I like it better. However, what am I to do when I don't have cheap alternatives and the

The Soul of a City

When we last left our intrepid travelers they had settled into a new apartment and went to IKEA. They followed this up by realizing you can't cook on a mattress and went back to IKEA the next day for pots, pans, replacement pillows (turns out Gosa Klätt actually wasn't the right call), bath mats, shower curtains, and all the 20 kroner accouterments that make a house a home... plus three extra things that they'll never use but thought they needed at the time. Now might be a good time to talk about the soul of the city. First the good news: it has one. I talked a lot of trash about Milan and one reason why it was so professionally terrible was it was soulless. But even if I feel it when it's gone, I'm still not sure what makes a city's soul. To investigate further, I listened to Empire State of Mind and watched full seasons of How I Met Your Mother. These works of art/entertainment are love letters to New York. They express appreciation for the things that are on

IKEA is Fresher Here

Spoiler Alert: Denmark is different than Italy. It's hard to believe we've been here for almost two weeks already, but it makes sense. We've shifted into living-mode, which is decidedly easier than traveling-mode, but you blow through days a whole lot quicker. This post finds me in our small Nørrebro apartment listening to Danish radio on the internet which oscillates between a vowelly word-soup and the very pop songs I was hoping on escaping. Katy Perry follows me everywhere. Two weeks is a little late to do a first impressions blog, but I'll do my best to remember those first few days. We arrived in Copenhagen a little frazzled since this time Sarah's bag had some things stolen from it. One could blame Italian baggage handlers, but we preferred to think it was a Robin Hood type of forced donation, and the money he/she got from selling the stolen goods will shortly go to getting orphans their gout vaccines. Still, we lugged our (slightly lighter) bags from very c

Italy in a Nutshell

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So I'm already a week out of Italy and I'm way behind. If I don't do some legendary condensing I might never catch up. So without further ado, I'm going to give myself 2-5 minutes to talk about each of the remaining Italian cities: Milan... ...was terrible. Our first meal was the tourist pit of despair. There was burnt/soggy pizza and raw pasta, and a 6 dollar Diet Coke, no ice. The whole meal was 5 Euros more than the heaven we had just come from. Also the streets were deserted and the hotel manager yelled at Sarah for being on the computer. I got him to apologize after, but we were just happy to get out of Milan alive. Cinque Terre Beautiful little towns tucked into cliffsides. We hiked a path connecting all of them together, stopping for food along the way. There was sand, beaches where you had to pay for an umbrella and a chair (but totally worth it), and a tunnel with music. Also, we made friends with an Israeli traveler and her Italian friend when I accidentally r