Fox Life

It’s 1:26 AM and we’re home on a Friday night. I would’ve thought that 1:26 AM would be a fine time to be at home, all hygge and happy, and yet for our neighbors one floor down, there seems to be something distasteful about a quiet night at this hour. And so I enjoy what appears to be a mix of polka, Louis Armstrong, and the voices of alcohol-lubed Danish youth creeping through the floorboards. Now they’re laughing. I know it would take a particularly virulent kind of crank to get mad at other people for laughter, but I think laughter has to be one of the least pleasant things when you’re not in on the joke. There’s nothing like hearing a group of people at the table next to you in your quirky little coffeehouse cracking up to make you realize just how joyless your life is, and how much duller your companions are by comparison. Make no mistake: laughter, music, and good times are all fine things, as long as you are the direct cause of each of them. Surely these strangers in apartment ...

While in Berlin, Sarah and I took a free walking tour. The tour guide stopped at a car park. About 8 meters below us, Adolph Hitler shot himself 65 years ago. And right after his guards found his body in the bunker, they all lit up a cigarette. Apparently, Hitler hated the smell of smoke, so all the soldiers were prevented from smoking in his presence. But with him dead, and the war going as badly as it was, a cigarette must've seemed like a pretty good idea. Berlin's a weird place. There's no way to reconcile its oppressive, fascist past with its fun, vibrant present. It gets even weirder when you layer in a second oppressive regime on top of it, so walking around you can't help but bump into the austere concrete slabs of the holocaust memorial, a fake military checkpoint with fake US and East German soldiers posing for photos, and the most delicious and cheapest pastries and roasted bratwurst imaginable. The experience is like watching TVs that are playing "Schin...

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 ...

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...

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...

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...

Another few days later it’s time for another blog. We’ve left Lake Garda behind along with its pristine waters, verdant meadows, and (allegedly) topless beaches. Next is Milan. Everything I know about Milan comes from some vague associations with the fashion industry and an abiding respect for the Pepperidge Farms cookie. I can therefore expect to find women wearing ridiculously uncomfortable shoes and a dark or mint chocolate filling whenever two identical things are near each other… possibly between uncomfortable pairs of shoes. If you ever want to see if a woman is a tourist or not, check the shoes. From what I can tell, no self-respecting Italiana would ever embarrass her country by wearing something as pedestrian as a sneaker. It simply isn’t done. But more on Lake Garda. We took the train from Venice to Desenzano, then a bus from Desenzano to Salo’. Of course, in keeping with the rest of the trip, our hotel was cheap by virtue of the fact that it wasn’t exactly in Salo’. It was ...