July 9th, 2024. Now, What Have We Learned?

I’ll be filling in details from this magnificent trip for a while, going back to photographs, re-editing, looking up details, looking at the geotag to understand where I was – and almost all of it has been beautiful, inspiring and wonderful. Exploring with George and Del and Ike and Max and Alex and Ana and the people we met throughout Belgium, Sweden, Norway and Denmark (sorry Iceland, you don’t really count this time) has been … needed.

But here are some things I’ve learned, because I’ll probably want to reference them when and if we do this again.

1. Fucking credit cards. Fucking watch. Fucking TAPPY things. Make sure they work. I do NOT know why there was angst about this, but it threw a huge wrench in the ability to just sit back and think “I know I’ve budgeted ENOUGH for this, now stop thinking about it”. I don’t know why my Discover card (the one that taps easily, beautifully, and without fail) failed. It worked once in Brussels and then refused to work anywhere else. Some sort of network error that no-one understood. I loaded my Capital One card to my google wallet. It worked (often) off my phone but refused to work on my watch. I added PayPal to my google wallet. It NEVER worked on my phone, worked off my watch for a while, and then was steadily declined. I used the chip on my Capital One card just fine for all transactions (though this caused a couple of additional dialogs and many a signature slip which every clerk seemed to never have seen before) except for at Swedish grocery stores. It worked fine in Belgian grocery stores, but in SWEDISH grocery stores it always triggered an alert  that caused confused clerks to call their managers, ID verification, ID verification again, frustration amongst the staff and a level of frustration amongst the people in the line behind me that Ana remarked upon as being “most unSwedish”.
   
2. Don’t be afraid to ask for the check, pour l’addition, för checken, for checken, et cetera. It seems as if America’s the only place concerned with table turnover and getting you the HELL out of their restaurant. Every other restaurant in every other country is happy to let you sit there forever.
   
3. Just buy the data. I don’t know how we’d have done this without an internet connection.
   
4. DON’T take your brother’s advice and try to install another SIM card. Because maybe your Samsung Galaxy 21 5G doesn’t HAVE a second SIM card tray. No, it doesn’t matter what the internet says. It doesn’t matter what the manual says. You take your case off, pop open the tray, and there is no second tray. And now you put it back together and put the case back on and your fingerprint scanner doesn’t work. And that causes all SORTS of problems with accessing your google wallet and password vault and may WELL have been at least 2/3 of the issues in point #1!
   
5. Don’t be afraid to drive. Ana offered. I didn’t accept. I regret not accepting. Driving in Sweden actually looks hellafun and the danger of moose attack seems to be quite overblown.
   
6. Take breaks. I found that every third or fourth day I needed a slow day. Partially because there was stuff at home that, no matter how well I’d tried to automate it all in advance, came off the rails, and partially because I got really sick – but mainly because I just needed down time from the mental stimuli. I need time to hang out. Sit and read. Enjoy the weather. Especially if the weather’s enjoyable.
   
7. Have people. I don’t know how I’d have done this without the above mentioned people. We needed guides. We needed a home base. We needed a local. And when I got sick, it was really good to have someone who had medicines and time and care. Whether it was my brother’s glee and giving me stuff that was AWFUL but he figured it’d help in the long run, or Ana’s joy at having someone to take care of, having someone who reminds you that you’re not ruining your vacation, but rather … I don’t know where I’m going with this. You’re appreciating the local microfauna? Exploring the possibilities of mucus in foreign lands? I don’t know. They Love me and miss me and sometimes getting to care for and support those you Love and miss is just as a good as taking them to find trolls. Maybe. I’m not sure about that. But we couldn’t have done this trip without the guidance and support of Alex and Del and Ana and George.
   
8. Don’t fly Play Airlines. I might revisit this one in the future – but sometimes budget is TOO budget. The seats are TOO small, the website TOO janky. I’d have to look at all the pricing again, and maybe flying with them again tomorrow will be better than it was on the way out – but even checking into our flight today was a huge pain in the ass. IF anyone asks, their phone number format for American phone numbers is 001xxxxxxxxxx. No, no spaces. No, the usual +1 doesn’t work. Anyone who codes Play’s website read this? I doubt it. But if you do – put your DAMNED format on your DAMNED website because trial and error is a long and stressful method of figuring out there’s no spaces, no parentheses, AND you use a weird country code format. Also, when you say ”check in is available 24 hours in advance of the flight” – make that work. We suspect your error was a conflict caused by using the same flight numbers for the same flight times in consecutive days, and we couldn’t check in for OUR flight till 19 hours in advace has something to do with that being roughly when the flight with our flight number on it for TODAY had just landed. Figure it out. Jeezoflip.
   
9. Danish television isn’t good. Bring an HDMI cable. ALWAYS bring an HDMI cable!!!