ridiculous cheese counter
Brandon is state side. Collin got rained on.
75 degree - moderate heat warning
Finland isn’t technically nordic
Royal Dutch Airlines
Too much plane
Downtown Oslo–pretty great
It was a gigantic boat
There’s no nighttime
Copenhaggen…is awesome
Statues of dudes on horses
Southern Sweden - disgustingly beautiful
The ridiculous cheese counter
Stockholm- 1 billion islands
Amazon who??
Ferry back to Finland
Pickled herring enthusiast
Collin’s Haiku:
Laces tug too tight,
Comfort lost in aisle five—
Dream shoes dodge again.
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A VERY ROUGH TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE
PROVIDED BY OTTER.AI
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
podcast, 300th episode, Missouri weather, travel experiences, Royal Dutch Airlines, Air France, Charles de Gaulle airport, passport control, Oslo transportation, Copenhagen, Swedish licorice, Stockholm Vasa Museum, Helsinki, Estonia, pickled herring., travel fatigue, European buffet, cheese section, fish soup, Denmark, jet lag, walking distance, cobblestones, recovery, Danish television, clay tennis court, pickleball, haiku, shoes, volleyball practice
SPEAKERS
Collin, Brandon
Collin 00:04
Colin, welcome to Oh brother, a podcast where we try to figure it all out with your hosts, Brandon and Collin on this week's show, ridiculous cheese counter, Ahoy, ahoy.
Brandon 00:21
How's it going? Oh, man, sleep deprived still, but it's fine. Hi, how are you? I'm
Collin 00:27
so sorry. I will say Happy 300th episode. Oh,
00:32
let's go 300
Collin 00:36
episodes. I i For a minute I thought, I should, I need to, because we're recording this, ladies and gentlemen, a little late, and I thought I should release, just like a back catalog episode, but that would have messed up with our numbering, and true, I couldn't abide that, especially it's fair. I just, I was like, no, like, our 300th episode can't be a back catalog one i That's not, that's true. So, yeah, that's what. Anyway, I Stein, so we're, we're doing that. It's, it's weird, it's, it's not to always talk about the weather, but my goodness, we were supposed to have like, five days of dry, hot Missouri summer, and we had thunderstorms basically all day today. Oh, do you all day? It was so bad last night that we were sending out flood warnings for our area. Whoa. And this morning alone, we got like another inch of rain. And did the radar at all? Did the weather forecast at all for the past two weeks say, call for this? No, no, no. When did it change? Like, four hours before it actually happened. And so we had a bunch of friends who were farmers, and this was the week that they were going to do with, like, they were dealing with hay and stuff and things, yeah and nope, nope. Couldn't do that because lots of rain, and they are not, they're not happy, folks,
Brandon 02:04
yeah, that's crazy, yeah, holy cow.
Collin 02:07
Thought that was, that was pretty intense. It was, it was cut like, this morning. I was like, No, it's, it's really coming down. And it was like, No, it's like, really, really coming down. Oh my
Brandon 02:20
gosh. Louise, yeah, so we just had, it's just mega, mega hot down here, yeah, like, came back the wrong week, really?
Collin 02:29
I know, yeah, this was planning on your part. I know what you were thinking.
Brandon 02:35
I know. On in Helsinki, they had a moderate heat warning. Oh, so 75 degrees, dang it, yeah. Where's that at? Where's that at, right? That's because the Nordic people haven't invented the fan yet. That's kind of how this works, right? Yeah,
Collin 02:59
they really, well, they really nailed the sweater, right? They nailed, yeah, it's really hammered that one down, yes.
Brandon 03:05
But then, like, as far as, like, oh, how do we move other air inside a building to that? That's why, that's why I know that. I know that Finland isn't, like, Nordic, per se, but like, I think this is why all a lot of buildings, well, they're not, it's like a different like, it's like, not technically skin, you know what? I mean. So, yeah, but they're like, all buddy buddies. It's fine anyway. I think this is why they have such a sleek design esthetic. Because they're like, air ducts, nah. We don't need that
Collin 03:39
to account for those we don't need space for dogs,
03:44
and moving air makes the design sleeker.
Collin 03:47
Guess, is actually a really, really good point in that when you don't have to accommodate extra square footage for ductwork in your ceilings or in the sides of your house
03:58
can be much nicer. Changes what you can do
Collin 04:01
architecturally,
Brandon 04:01
yeah, now also, is it only summer and warm for like three months out of the year? Yes. So, you know,
Collin 04:10
so would they invest a lot of time and nailing that down all? No, not
04:15
really, no. It's, you know, oh my goodness.
Collin 04:23
Well, so you're, you are our international correspondent, Oh, yes. And so I'm eagerly, I want to hear, how was this travel experience for you, because you've been overseas quite a lot over the last several years. So yeah, this one was Yeah, so a
04:43
lot, but like, a couple times,
Collin 04:46
which is more than most, I mean,
Brandon 04:49
yes, so fair, yeah, it was pretty good, right? I will say, first of all, we have two new airlines. So. Talk about here, what, right? Oh, yeah. So I flew for the first time ever, the Royal Dutch Airlines. Ooh, yo. Pretty good stuff, right? Not too bad. Not too bad. Good. Good times there. I also, on the way back, we flew Air France, right? I hear that's a pretty
Collin 05:21
good one. It's a good one, right?
Brandon 05:24
You'll, you'll not be surprised if the food on that flight was excellent, right?
Collin 05:29
Of course,
Brandon 05:31
on both of them, it was really good, right? It was really nice. So it was good. The flights were good. I feel like, on the way home, like, I think I was just so tired, right? Like that. The the flight on the way home, I was just like, I was over it. It was so done, really, that extra because we flew from like, we had to fly to Paris. We had to fly out of Charles de Gaulle, which is, oh my dear goodness, holy cow,
06:01
that airport is immense. I think it may be, excuse me, it may be the largest airport
Brandon 06:10
period, right? It's, it's, right? So our, our terminal change wasn't too bad we took the bus. It was like we had to write a bus to get to the correct terminal spot. So big it is, right? That's but, like, I don't know, just after being gone and all that stuff, being kind of tired already, the extra time that it takes to fly from Paris to Atlanta was just too much, right? Because it's like, oh,
06:36
a little over eight hours that way. That's too long, right? Yeah, because, like, going over there we are, a flight went routed from Atlanta through
Brandon 06:48
Amsterdam, and that's just close enough. It's like, seven hours or so. You're like, okay, that's fine, right? It's not bad. Once it goes over that you're like, it's too much playing, too much, too much planing. I can't deal with that. So, like, I was dying all the way back home just for that extra like, a little hour or so of flight. Times too much that. But it's fine. Yeah, it's fine. It survived. I just, and it's a good thing we didn't fly back through Amsterdam on the way home, because apparently the day we were flying home was some sort of Dutch national holiday. So, you know, who knows what could have been happening? There nothing, nothing happening that day, exactly. It could have been all I will say. Also on the way over there, the line that I had to stand in for passport control, like immigration line at Amsterdam, I think that may be the longest line I've ever seen to get anywhere. I don't know if just like, the time of day that we flew in just happened to be, like several planes arriving at simultaneously, right? But like, oh my,
Collin 08:14
it's not the, not the most confidence boosting thing, where you can't really see what people are lining up for. But you know, you also have to be in that line. Yeah,
Brandon 08:23
you have to be in this line. And the thing that made it the most maddening, right? Because it was this. It was just like in the middle of the airport. This line started in the middle of the airport, and you can see it went up to the the immigration deal. But then once it got up there, it started doing the twisty, roundy squiggly through the yeah thing, right? Yeah. So there was a huge line to get to that which, and that makes it long, so all the way you're staring, once you get close to the end, right, the problem really hit you in the face. It made it even more annoying, because you could see all of these brand new passport scanner machines. Oh, right, yeah. And they weren't hooked up yet. They were covered, right? Those are the ones like, the new ones where you just like so they're getting a ton of new things to make this go faster. Sure, haven't done it yet, right? So the new machines are just like, you just stick your passport on there. It scans your face. Hello, done. That's all you do. Boom, and so, and then, like, you might have to, like, go to a passport agent. He just, like, double checks in there, but it's just like, look at you. And he just, like, waved you on. Like, yeah. Like, I think the guy in Paris, I don't even think he said anything. I think he just looked at it and went, he's like, waved his hand. Like, okay, I guess I'm good, whatever. But the fact that there are these dozens of machines here, you saw the future becoming red. Key to be used, just not right now.
Collin 10:05
This is problematic. I am reminded of my my blitzkrieg trip through Oklahoma the week before they turned on the bill you later scan service. Oh yeah, and where I was frantically having to pay many, many IOUs quarters. Yeah, 40 and quarters, while in just a week's time, had my trip been delayed one more time, I would have just been able to glide right on through and not have any I can just seeing the future right there, seeing all the convenience just there, wasted, wasted on you, and
Brandon 10:48
that, that one, all that was like, the terminal that we had to get to was like classic travel mode moment where you're like, it is the exact opposite end of the thing, where we have to go, but in between me and this super far away terminal, right, is this giant line, and they're kept, like, pulling people out. They just kept yelling boarding times. Like, if your boarding time starts here, come to this line, and we just have to wait. We're just, like, counting down to where
Collin 11:21
that gives me so much anxiety, because I don't even what that's, yeah, I don't like
Brandon 11:27
that. Pretty nuts anyway, so that was great, sure, yeah, that airport was, it was like sprinting to the plane, like, Oh, that was a goofy but, like,
Collin 11:47
but everybody, everybody arrived and had all their stuff and everything like
Brandon 11:51
that. No, they did not have all their stuff. Oh, no, no. So the group where, because this is like a school trip, right? So, like, all these people, right? So that that none of the people that checked bags in our group, none of the bags made it to Oslo, none. Oh, no. So, like, I don't know what happened exactly, because, like, there was so when we came home, right, there was very clear signage about you get here, you go through customs, like you pick your bag up, and then you recheck your bag for your other flight, right, right. You're making that hand
Collin 12:37
off at the border or whatever, like you have to have, yeah, your
Brandon 12:41
bag, yeah. But on the way over there, no such signage existed. Oh, and I don't know when if, I don't know if that was supposed to happen on the way over there, because we never passed anything like that. Or if we did, we were just so focused on running that we're late to the plane that, like, you know, whatever. So, like, I don't exactly know what happened there, but I didn't check a bag. So,
Collin 13:16
good call. Yet again. Yeah. Good call. That was good, good plan. How did all that end up working out? I mean, for the
Brandon 13:26
because you spent a lot of time packing and repacking, making sure you had all the right stuff. Like, did you pull it off? Or you think, yeah, did okay, yeah, we're good, right? Except for, except for, it was a the weather forecast for Northern Europe was also a lie, and it was definitely warmer than it suggested it should be. I was like, Oh, dang it not like hot, hot, but it was like, in 70s and like, mid 70s, like I said, like 75 like, that's not quite what I was expecting. Sure, bad. It was just like, that's changed, right? Yeah, just enough, just to be like, Oh, that's annoying. Or like, I could have whatever. So I was like, I should have just brought some shorts, because it wasn't supposed to be warm enough for that. So I was like, Yeah, I can do that. Can have to worry about it. But then whatever, anyway, turns out, turns out, it was fine. I survived just the last day. It was a little bit warm, but it's fine. So, yeah, none of the people's bags got there. So that was so what weird problem? Like, did they ever get reunited with the bag? Yeah, they did, like, the next day the net. Well, it was weird because, like, quite quickly, most of them were discovered right and rounded up and wrangled. But there was like, two people's bags that were just like, where are they? And like, one girl, like her bag was like, going back to New York, like, oh. What? No, that's not, oh no, which was all, it was all kinds of weird. So, you know the, yeah, there was a there was a problem, right? It was slight, it was slight problem, right? Exacerbated by the fact that we weren't really staying in Oslo that long anyway, because, like, after like, two days, we were gonna take the ferry to Denmark. So like, if the bags weren't there, then then, like, they're like, no, we'll send them to Oslo, yeah, but we'll be gone. So like,
Collin 15:36
yeah, don't, don't do that, because I'm not going to be
Brandon 15:39
here. Yeah, it was weird. It was weird, but, you know, they eventually got sorted out. Most people got theirs next day. But then there was one girl who didn't get hers for a while, but it was right, it was fine, good. Okay, anyway, yeah, Oslo, pretty great. I would say downtown Oslo with, like, the harbor and stuff, quite gorgeous, right? Lots of cool stuff going on there. Got to see a lot of the that part. Just kind of walked around a lot. Went to, like the royal gardening thing, which is over on the west side of town there, like this stuff. It was pretty cool. Just kind of like, hung out a lot in the harbor and just kind of explored the downtown thing, right? I will say that the Oslo transportation network, right? Like their subway terminal, tram thing, probably the least intuitive thing I've ever seen in my entire life, right? I don't know what they're doing, but like, we were, our hotel was not, it was like, outside the city center thing. So we had to, it was like, quite far away. So we were just like hanging out, wandering around, doing stuff, and so we had to take the metro to the hotel stop, right? That's fine. It's a normal thing. The line is not labeled in any sort of meaningful way for you to be able to tell where the heck the stations are. Oh, no. So we're just like walking around, right? You can't find it. So, like, we had the thing and there was, like, a pin, right? They like, pinned the station on our, like, on the Google Maps, right? They're like, Oh, the station's here, nice. So you, like, wander around. You go over there, like, what? Where is it? Like? There's no sign. There's no, like, what, you know, like in New York, there's like, these big signs that just say, like, station here, and then there's like, a very clear area where you go down into
Collin 17:52
the subway. That's what people do to Yeah. So you know where right are,
Brandon 17:56
yeah, this one like, I think one of the stations, I think one of the entryways was like under construction, so it was like, closed, right? So we were trying to find this other one, and it like, when you're walking by it, it doesn't look like it exists, because there's no signage that indicates that it is a like, Metro tunnel, right? Oh, because it turns out, when we finally found it, the way that it was set up is the road. There's a road that you're walking on, right, okay, and the road is like going uphill, yeah. But cut into the hill is a doorway. Oh, that is this particular station entrance, and there's like a little sign above the door, but like, if you're not, if you're walking past on the intersecting road, you cannot see this at all. So
Collin 18:56
this really is like a nine and three quarter sites. It is like a secret entrance, like the Metro tunnel, right? Like, I don't like that
Brandon 19:06
at all, yeah, it's real confusing. And then, like, once, we finally, it took us forever, right, a stupidly long amount of time, right, to find this location, sure, because, like, on the map, I was like, we're walking over the subway track. Like, where, What in the world's going on? Yeah, it didn't stop under even, even earlier, when we were, like, with a person, they were like, yeah, if you could, if you look up this way, you can see the building for the the main terminal building. But, like, I never really saw that. It's not clear, not
Collin 19:44
what is not true.
Brandon 19:46
Yeah, it's like, not super clear what you're looking at, right? Interesting. So I would say Oslo, mass transit. So. A little suspect, right? Once we got on the thing, once we wound down, like, way further underground than I thought, we were going, like, it was, it just like, kept going down. It's like, down and down. And
Collin 20:13
also slightly disturbing,
Brandon 20:15
yeah, because it was like, do we keep going? What is going on? And then, oh no, we had to make sure we got on the branch line right, because there is like a loop that just sort of goes all the way around. But we needed the one that went off on the branch to go up a little bit outside of the center to connect to the to get to the station that was closest to our hotel, a little jaunt over there. Yeah. So we were trying to make sure we were on the branch line. But like, the signage, not the clearest, right? We're just like, we just looked at thinking, like, Okay, we need this train. Okay, fine, just gonna go for it. Eventually we discovered it. We made it back, right? So it was fine, but it was just like, this is the wackiest, most confusing thing, and really exacerbated by the fact that other cities we went to like, there is, like, exceptionally clear signage about the location of all of these things that made it even more annoying
Collin 21:18
when you're you find the one that's like, Oh no, this actually is not, this is not user friendly. Like, yeah, yeah. Like,
Brandon 21:27
when you go to another city and you're like, Oh, this is so clearly delineating,
Collin 21:31
see how they Yeah.
Brandon 21:38
Oh, that was pretty cool. Anyway, so we had a good time in Norway, right? It's fun. Then we did. We did get to take ferry boat part one. I was very happy when I saw this photo come across. So again, like I wasn't really sure what to expect here. This is a gigantic ship, right? Like it's enormous. So that's red, so we had our cabin, however, not gigantic, little teeny, right? It's pretty great.
Collin 22:18
Oh, she got to stay on this ferry.
Brandon 22:20
That's an overnight ferry. It takes like 1213, hours to go from Oslo to Copenhagen. Okay, it's very long. So is it on the boat overnight? So we had a cabin all the way down in steered right, lovely. I mean, it was a nice cabin. It was very clean and it was very clean and everything, but it was just, like, exceptionally tiny, right? Bunk bed action going on there. What, awesome. Yeah, yeah, pretty great. I'll see if I can. I have 70,000 pictures here. I don't know if they able to find the one to send to you right now, but, like, it was pretty Teensy. But other than that, it was cool, like a lot of people, there was just, like, billions of people on this boat. I guess they just like, do this for fun sometimes, right? People just go on the ferry, and some people just like, go on the ferry and then like, come back. It's like, make it a weekend, because there's like restaurants and like stuff on the boat, right? Yeah, so, and most important to Europeans, I discovered the duty free shop. That's where all the funds going down. These people are loading up
Collin 23:37
on the boat. Okay, I get that's great, because I only think of, I only associate duty free zones in airports, not on boats. Yeah, I
Brandon 23:47
do, uh, the duty free shop on these boats is immense, right? E mince, so they were going to town, right? Going to town. There's our room, found it. Oh, the other thing that we did in Norway, the coolest thing that we did in Oslo was we went to, like, the big open air Nordic Museum, where they have a bunch of, like, ancient buildings and, like a big stave church thing, right? Very nice. That was cool. Yeah. Anyway, there's our little cabin. See, that is a and and tiny Susan for scale. That was pretty much it. That's fantastic, yeah, but so yeah, there was lots of like, other things to do that people did. There was like an arcade in there. The kids play that. There was like, pools and hot tubs and stuff all over the place, but, oh, or you could just sit on the back deck, on the top deck the whole time, which is what I did now on this one. Why not? It did get I will tell you this one. This night, it was quite chilly up there on the ship. Yeah, I was to not be deterred, however, because was awesome. The other thing that I did not I knew about this, I failed to take this into account, is that this is summertime in the high northern latitudes, so like, nighttime doesn't really exists, right? This is not a thing that happens, right? Yeah, right. There's no night time. There's, like, we've watched the sunset at like, 1030 11 o'clock, yeah, that's and then, like, it doesn't really go away. It sort of like, goes under the horizon for a few hours, sure,
Collin 25:44
and then it pops back up again. It's still kind of like that twilight time for just Yeah, it's not like
Brandon 25:48
dark, you know. So that also didn't help with our like, oh, I need to go to bed now choices, because you'd be like, Oh, it's still light. It's Oh, oh no,
Collin 26:04
oops. It's also still light now, and it's Oopsie daisy.
Brandon 26:13
So that was slightly problematic, but the boat arrive was really cool. I really liked it, right? So that was fun times next day, we got to Copenhagen, right? And I spoilers for the tier review list here, Copenhagen is awesome.
Collin 26:35
Okay, okay, it's fine.
Brandon 26:41
Now part of this could be slightly biased against the fact that, like, our hotel was just like, on some random street in Copenhagen. It was, like, real close to the like, train station, like the massive
Collin 26:57
central train station, yeah, well, as a different feel then, doesn't it like, it's like, you're not, yeah, you're not. I guess you're really in the city, not necessarily visiting it, or kind of, you know, the far flung part of it, yeah,
Brandon 27:09
you're not, like outside, because the one in Oslo was, like, out. It was outside of the city center. It was kind of near the freeway, just like in some random like, it's like a newer area, it's like a business park kind of deal where there's like warehouses and like stuff like that going in. You know, this one is just like some random building right in the middle of going and it was so, yeah, heavily biased on hotel location, but it was great because you could just, like, walk everywhere. Oh, cool. And we did, like, a lot. There was a lot of walking happening in Copenhagen. The one problem with walking in Copenhagen, it is, like, predominantly cobblestones everywhere. I don't know how these Danish people ride these bikes all over the place. I don't know how they're not like shaken to bits.
Collin 28:02
I mean, have you seen the Perry Roubaix?
Brandon 28:05
That's true. That's true. But they're just, like, riding bikes everywhere. They're also not going
Collin 28:10
when they're in town, though, they're not going super fast. It looks pretty jarring, like when you they're going Bum Bum,
Brandon 28:18
bum bum. Yeah, and they have their own there's, like, very wonderful bike infrastructure, like whole bike lanes, with whole bike lanes, stop lights, sure. And the bike lane gets its own crosswalk, right? It's very lovely. But, like, there are a lot of cobblestones. And I saw a lot of people riding on like, random side street cobblestones, and yeah, my goodness, a lot of them are on, like, the city style bikes, right? The big, upright, Fat Tire building. A lot of a lot of them were not. There's a lot of people just on, like, bike bikes, like race bikes, or, like, so much dudes on, like, fixed gear bikes. Like, you're dead. How are you alive right
Collin 28:59
now? How is your spine. No, that bike is
Brandon 29:01
cool. Your spleen is in pieces, I imagine, but
Brandon 29:10
it's very cool. Yeah, so Copenhagen rocks, and the part we were in was, like the major, like, center area, right? It's like, where all the like, really old buildings. And so far, so it's like, very, it's got that very, like old world, European capital vibe, sure that you want in your life, right? Like, ah, these buildings are like, very Beaux Arts style, like, very Napoleon the Third Era. You know what I mean? Like, it's all this very cool stuff, gorgeous, right everywhere. It's just pretty. So I like Copenhagen, and it was really easy. We walked like so much, and you could walk like so far, and it made me really mad, because you're like, how easy it is to walk around Copenhagen, knowing that I cannot walk across the town that I live in because I. There's no sidewalks, right? But I could walk, like, I could very easily walk in 30 minutes, like, an insane distance, to get, like, really far away from my hotel, to find, like, other cool stuff, right? And maybe grumpy that I can't do that. So we just spent a lot of time in Copenhagen, just wandering around like we had stuff to do. But we did end up we went to the National Museum, right? Cool, because it turns out, if you register your school at the National Museum, you get in for free. So our school is now registered with the National Museum of Copenhagen. Okay,
Collin 30:40
other than free admission, does that get you anything? Like, once you're back? Like, I
Brandon 30:46
don't know. I think they, like, send you stuff, right, or whatever. I don't know if that's my friend, she did it, but, like, okay, yeah, it was cool. So we got to see, like, a really sweet Viking exhibit they had, plus, just like, all the rest of their collection, right? A little
Collin 31:02
bit redundant to say sweet and Viking in the same sentence. It says, you know, it's fine. It
Brandon 31:10
was really cool. And then they had, like, it is kind of weird to be in the museum in Copenhagen, and then, like, turn a corner and there's like, Ah, this is the section about the American Plains Indian Well, hey, hey, wait a minute,
Collin 31:29
that looks familiar. They had
Brandon 31:31
like, one of the other sections, like collections by like, a region. So they have a loss like that. There's like, the American, like indigenous stuff. And then they have like Chinese and Japanese, like Asian. And then on the top floor, they have like, an enormous section about, like, Greenland and the Arctic, because, you know, Denmark and so I they had like, all kinds of, like, really cool, like, Inuit stuff up there, like different clothing based on region, like, regional styles of clothing, and about 20,000 kayaks in rafting. Pretty sweet. That's, yeah, it's pretty cool. So that was fun. We did not go into some of the other people did. I didn't go into they have, like, the Tivoli Gardens, like a super old, like, amusement park thing, right? That's allegedly pretty sweet. And people go there a lot. We didn't make it in there, but some of the people decided to go. So they said it was good fun, just like lots of really old, like cool, like fair rides and stuff like that. We did go to the shopping district because of one of the girls did not have her suitcase yet. So, you know, she just went to go buy, like, you know, a shirt and, like, some pants and stuff. So we wandered around the shopping district, and it's like, a really interesting combination of like, super there's like, some of the like, really old, like, Danish department stores, right? And then there's, like, really swanky stores, like Hermes and like, yeah, these things. And then they have, like, all of they have, like, a lot of local stores and like secondhand shops, like nearby so it's a very interesting it's just like, all the shopping you want is here, like, low to high, all here go. That's kind of interesting. So the side streets are like, where all the cool stuff's at, including the used Danish bookstore. That's right, that's right, oh no, oh yes, that was a highlight. Like, it was kind of raining, a little bit like sprinkling, and then some of the girls were in shopping, and so we were just wandering down the street, and I was like, Oh, I am going in this. Yeah, I would do that.
Collin 33:57
It's so cool, even if you're not gonna buy anything. Like, what kind of books do you find in a bookstore like that? Like, I don't know
Brandon 34:04
exactly all the cool kinds. That's what you got. The one that I brought home with me. It's a book about as near as I can work out from the Danish title here is, it's a book about fishing life on the Danish islands, right? Was published by the National Museum in the 1980s small it's small paperback, right? So I brought that as Susan bought a children's book about animal noises in Danish. Yes, obviously, obviously. Okay, yeah, nice. Yes, that's the best souvenir, random used Danish book. Absolutely, that's what that's what we say. That's what you say, right? So, it was cool. And we just like, Yeah, we just wandered around. Got slightly lost, found the Christian Berg Palace thing, which is awesome and enormous and cool. Yeah, so that was pretty much it. We spent a lot of time wandering around COVID. We did some stuff. We did some like, toury things. Then we sort of like wandered about, and then we ate supper, and then we wandered about again, because, you know, it was totally not dark, and I swell, hard to see some of it in nighttime. So, like the big square with, like the big city hall building, and nighttime is cool. It's kind of strolled about, sure, you know, that was pretty much what we did there. I like it. It was also walked by the didn't use it, but saw the beautifully signed metro station stops right with the big, giant red M clearly delineating where the stops were
35:55
looking at.
Brandon 35:59
You know, you know, not that, not that, that would be a problem for anything, right? No. Also learned that Copenhagen is, this is the city to be in if you like statues of dudes on horses.
36:14
Oh, my goodness, is Copenhagen the place for you? Right? It's just, that's the thing, right? Just statues of guys on horses all over the place. That's
Collin 36:36
my question. I know here. I have heard tell that there is a system to whether there was one foot up or down or both up on the horse, to tell what had happened and how that like the what that person did is that, is that code still over there in Copenhagen too?
Brandon 36:52
No, if it is, I haven't cracked it, right? I have no idea, fair. I just know that there's 87,000 people on horses there. So, like, I don't really know 100% about what's going on there. Like, I don't okay, that's okay. God, there's just so many. There's so many. And sometimes you're like, there's no that, no, no, that's same one. Oh, I've seen that before. Okay, hold on, means I'm here
Collin 37:24
orientate yourself of a horse
Brandon 37:26
statue. Actually, it is kind of handy, because Copenhagen has basically said there shall be in this district, there shall be no new construction, right? You can renovate buildings. You can do love but there will be no new construction in this area. Gotcha. So like, all of the new, like, high rise stuff or whatever, and like that, that kind of stuff is, like on the outsides of the city, in the center, by, like, from, like the port all the way through, like all this stuff. It's just there's no new construction. So actually, some of the towers, like the Christian Berg Palace tower and like the city hall tower, you can just look at the tower and be like, oh, I need to go that way.
Collin 38:12
Oh, okay, that's so low.
Brandon 38:14
It's super handy to hurry once you discover, like, once you kind of look at the towers, because, like, the City Hall Square, there's like, three big towers, and then like, off to the, you know, one side there's, like the palace tower. And it's like, different looking. Once you kind of figure out which tower goes, where you're good to go, right? Yeah, you can be like, oh, I need to go that way. Oh, I need to go that way. So it's navigating comes pretty good, right? I feel like, I don't know it's also, it also definitely helps that, uh, Copenhagen is very flat area as well, okay, right? Whereas all the other ones are much Hillier, like COVID, is a very flat area. So like, walking around and biking around is, is definitely easier, right? There's not like, massive gradients or anything like that. So you can just walk around. You can see the tower, like, Oh, I gotta go over there. I gotta go over here. This thing's over there. Like, you can kind of, like, very quickly, kind of got a good sense about where I was going. Like, I didn't really feel that way in any of the other places we went, but Copenhagen, it was, like, very intuitive to figure out where you were. Yeah,
Collin 39:44
especially when there's when you have those big landmarks all over the place, like it just, man, it makes it really comforting, because you can really orientate yourself, like, pretty quickly in the new areas. Basically what you're talking about, you're just like, Ah, look, there's the thing, okay, yeah, I go west, or whatever. Yeah. Like. Okay, then you can kind of figure out, like, you know, like, oh, the
Brandon 40:04
first day we took this one route, we walked around so, like, Okay, I got some major landmarks. So now I kind of know where we are. I know that to get to my hotel, I have to go towards this thing, and then I have to go over. And it was like, okay, boom, no problem. So pretty quickly we could get a big section of central Copenhagen kind of mentally mapped out. So that was just also very nice. We're just like, oh, well, we saw this thing. We want to go visit that later. We have time. Okay, do to do, to do, right? Go on. So it was also nice that we had a lot of time at Copenhagen, just like, be right, sure we, like, did a couple things, went a couple places, and then they were just like, oh, you can just, you know, like, a lot of the afternoons were just like, could do whatever you want. So, like, you could definitely do the sit in the outdoor cafe and eat a sandwich and vibe thing for a while, which is awesome, right? Just, you know, just case you're curious,
Collin 41:04
okay, well, the outdoor I mean, you can't beat a European outdoor cafe. What are you talking about? Yeah,
Brandon 41:10
you really can't. It's pretty great. Also, right? A side note here, like, right? Like, Norwegian, Danish and Swedish are all kind of similar languages, right? They, they're, you know, close enough that people can understand each other. But it is kind of interesting, how many interactions you can have without speaking at all to anybody, right? Like, it's kind of great. There's not like, lot of talking happening, not a lot of like, like, the Danes are pretty, like, chill, and they're not like, big, loud, boisterous people. And, you know, they're just kind of like, vibing and doing their own thing. So, like, you can, even though, like, obviously, I don't know any Danish at all. I can say like, thank you. Boom, very helpful. You say like, hello, thank you. If that's all you got. So I really need because there you can do a whole lot without speaking like, pretty great, right when you, when you wander into Danish 711 looking for a little snack, which spoilers. They're way better in there, just so you know, like, just like super fresh sandwiches and pastries in the seven
Brandon 42:37
WHAT THE HECK get out like? I Oh, nice. It's pretty great. So, like, you don't really need lots of Danish. And it's also interesting, right? That these languages are interesting because, like, sometimes you can look at a word and you can very clearly understand what it is, right? Ah, yeah. And because some of it is, like, related to, like, Anglo Saxon, enough that you made its way to English that some words you can look at and you know, like, okay, I get what that means, sure. And at the exact same time, other words you look at you go, what sound could that possibly make? Right? Like, on the same sign. Sometimes like, what
Collin 43:34
is, how does Never mind?
Brandon 43:36
Yeah, it's a very interesting observation. I'm just like, oh. Because sometimes you're like, Oh, that makes sense. I can I think I know what that means. And other times you go, what into the world,
Collin 43:50
yeah. And I've also seen it too. Of this is gonna be weird to describe, but just sometimes, just the shape of the word, I don't know, like, that may sound weird. Oh no, no. I totally understand what you're talking about. Yeah. You're just like, I have no idea what this I like, oh. Or you go, yeah, I don't know any of those letters, of those sounds, but it looks like it might be this one.
Brandon 44:11
Aha, yeah, yeah. It's yeah, pretty much. And so it's great. I don't know. It's just a really cool city, like, there's all kinds of interesting stuff. Like, you could definitely just like, go, oh, well, like, we were walking back one time, or, like, what is this thing? And we were just like, went around the corner, bang, giant flower garden, just chilling. What behind this building. You just go in benches everywhere, hang out big like, what, what is that's cool. Yeah, right. And so you just kind of find stuff like that all over the place. That all over the place. It was really neat. So, yeah, spoilers, but I really like Copenhagen.
Collin 44:49
Okay,
Brandon 44:51
liking this. Copenhagen was awesome. Then we did have to drive from Copenhagen to Stockholm. Yeah. Which is not a short drive, oh, this is like seven hours of driving. Oh, right, so
Collin 45:09
was it a bus? What did
Brandon 45:10
yeah, it was like a bus, yeah? It was like a bus thing, right? No, I drove No, just kidding, but it was cool. We drove over that, like, super, mega, giant bridge thing, right? That was really cool. Exciting. Southern Sweden is disgustingly beautiful. That's not even, man, it's not even cool. How gorgeous it is that with all the like farms and little cute farmhouses and rolling wheat barley fields acting and happening interspersed with pine forest. Yeah, you can look at that and go, Ah, yes, I see why Swedish people immigrated to Minnesota. This makes sense.
Collin 45:54
Wait a minute. I also have seen this before, yeah, but it's
Brandon 45:59
it's better in Sweden, we made a couple stops, you know, as you do, like, we had to stop for lunch, so we just went to a random grocery store. And now I'm can never go to a grocery store again without being mad, because, like, we just have to stuff, like a random grocery store on the side of the highway. And, like, it was amazing. What? Yes, I know it's annoying. Yes, it was very annoying. It was great in there. It's amazing. So much stuff. The cheese counter was ridiculous, illegal. How good that was. I got some pastries and coffee and some licorice. Side goal completed. Swedish licorice acquired. The rumors are true. It is far superior to any other licorice you've ever had in your entire Oh no. Oh yeah.
Collin 46:56
What is what makes it so good? I
Brandon 46:59
don't know, but like, when you have, like, licorice, licorice in the states, like it's you mostly people get Twizzlers, right? Which is just like, red sugar, yeah, you can buy the black stuff here, but it's not good, right? It just tastes like gross. But the normal black licorice that I got there, it's got picked up some random bag in the candy aisle. It was so good.
47:26
Oh no, oh no. I'm sad, right? So the rumors are true. Swedish licorice is far superior
Brandon 47:38
to anything we also stopped at a place called grenna, right? So, Greta is famous for one thing and one thing, well, two things, I guess there's like a big lake there. There's like this massive lake in the middle of Sweden. It's a huge glacier fissure in the granite, and it's enormous, right? And a little town on it is called grana. And I guess a lot of people go to grana, like Swedish people all the time. There's a really pretty and they like, go there. It's like a touristy thing. One whole entire street in grana is is dedicated to candy making. That's like the thing
Collin 48:21
here. Okay, yeah.
Brandon 48:25
So went to this, like, candy store thing and, like, watched him make the little candies and the little they can make them all in this big thing, right? And they like, do the thing where they, like, roll them out and cut them up into little deals, right, sure, but it's pretty sweet. Like, literally, it's called, I forgot the name. Hold on. I think it's like, have it saved here. But yeah, they make all the the polka, polka, Jana or whatever. My Swedish is, uh, quite poor, amazing, but, yeah, they like, make all this candy and, uh, allegedly, according to them,
49:14
they were the first, like, store to make the candy, right? This lady, oh, in, like, the 1800s right? She was
Brandon 49:40
like, you know, it's not kind of economic bad times in Sweden, right? And, you know, she was not doing great and blah blah. And she just, like, was trying to make something. Her daughter was, like, sick, and so she was trying to make something to make her feel better. And she made this like thing, and it's like, peppermint and vinegar and like, sugar and blah, blah, blah. And. And so, like, it started to be, like, people were like, Oh no, this is tasty, right? Bolts is good, yeah. And so they she's like, she had to get, like, special permission from the government to run a store, because, like, in this time in Sweden, like, women were not allowed to run a thing, right? And so like, Oh, she, like, made it for, like, the mayor and the king or whatever. And they're like, oh, yeah, no, that's good. You should sell that.
Collin 50:33
It's actually amazing.
Brandon 50:35
It's actually really good. So they have been, like, making these candies, right? So they're, like, super famous for candies making. So we stopped there loaded up, right? So I have many bags of Swedish candy here. There's like, little hard candies, like the ones that they're like, the original ones are like the red and white, like pepperminty things, right? They taste way better than, like, the aphrodisiac find here, right, obviously, but, and then they just make, like, 20 bazillion flavors of that kind of stuff. All they also make fudge and caramels. We also got some caramels because, ah,
51:13
you know, why not? Yeah, so we loaded down on Swedish candy. It's excellent. So that was fun. And then finished all the way driving to Stockholm, right, chowing down on Swedish candies, right? So much so that, like,
Brandon 51:31
when that, you know, when you come in back to the States, and the customs lady was like, so you got any, like, food or alcohol? I was like, No, it's got a bunch of candy. She was like, Oh, sweet. That's nice. There you go. Yeah. She was like, You're good, you're good. That's the right choice. Give me something. I was kidding. That's fantastic. Bring in. I was gonna say something else. I skipped over. I can't remember what it was now, draft. I wonder what it could have been. I don't know Anyway, um, so yeah, Stockholm, next on the list of Reno Sure, right? Stockholm, pretty cool, not very easy to walk about Stockholm, right? It's much Hillier, right? And I guess I didn't really realize it's like a whole bunch of billion islands all, like, stuck together, right, like, right in the middle of everything. There's all kinds of like crazy. There's, like, lots of islands in Stockholm. So it's not necessarily the easiest to navigate. I guess I never would have put that together. Yeah, it's, it's, I didn't really either. It's very, it's hard to walk around there, right? And again, our hotel was, like, very far away. Our hotel was actually by the soccer stadium. Oh, so it's really cool, it's really swanky, but like, it was also kind of far away from everything. There's like, several different islands over here and like all kinds of stuff, right? So we did lots of stuff there. We did several museum things. But the coolest museum that we went to was we went to something called the Vasa Museum, which is like this ship from like 1682 that sank in the harbor. Yeah, the king was building this big ship, right? And he was like, No, you should build it bigger. And they're like, sir, it can't be bigger. And he's like, yes, it can. They're like, okay, yes, we'll build it bigger, right? Yeah, this is, you could see how well this is going. So the ship, basically, they took it out of the port. They, started sailing it around, and it like immediately sank, oh no, like meaty Oh no. And it just and then it was just down there in the harbor until, like, the 1950s and they pulled it up. The whole thing, almost, almost the whole thing is now up and in this museum that's and so this whole museum is dedicated to this one ship that is incredibly huge and enormous, right? It's the biggest thing ever.
Collin 54:44
So they got it, they got it all up, mostly in one piece. You said
Brandon 54:48
it's, yeah, yeah. There's only some pieces that are missing. Wow, right? So, and it's in this giant Museum. You. Hmm, right. So I sent you some pictures here. Basically what happened is, there is this ship has two gun deck, right? Originally it was supposed to have one gun deck, and the king was like, Wouldn't it be great and cool if there was two gun decks? And so they just, like, made the ship taller
Collin 55:24
and not wider, that, you know what? So I, I'm tracking with where the error may have come in. Yeah, yeah.
Brandon 55:33
So basically, by the time it got in the water, and like, a little bit of wind came, water was coming in the bottom gun ports. Yeah, and it just like,
Collin 55:46
ladies, what we're learning about here is the importance of displacement in boats, and just gotta spread that out, yeah,
Brandon 55:57
and it couldn't carry the correct amount of ballast because it was already too heavy, right, right? And it's so tall, like the back, the back the end, right? Like the stern is so tall, yeah,
Collin 56:10
looking at these
Brandon 56:11
photos, it's insane. It's insanely big. And, like, it's so huge. They were like, Oh, yes. And they have, like, recreation, because this whole thing was, when it was do, it was painted, like it was all painted, the whole thing. So they have around the thing, like, what it looked like, completely painted. That's crazy. It's nuts, right? And then it sank immediately.
Collin 56:44
Then it just the
Brandon 56:46
lesson in hubris, children. That's what's happening. Yeah, right now, yeah, do you hear that hubris? Oh yeah, it was crazy. Wow. So yeah, that was pretty neat. That was the best thing about sweet we went to a couple of the museum, another open air museum there, because we had a lot of free time. And so Susan and I and one of the kids went to, like, another big open air museum. Had a lot of, like, Swedish historical buildings, plus bonus Swedish wild animals in a section right, like, turned a corner and there's just like a harbor seal, like swimming around this tank, like, what, okay, cool. That's nifty. There's a moose in there. Like, what, okay, neat. Okay, right. That was cool. And then we just sort of walked around later, the kind of older central part, not the I don't remember what the neighborhood's called, but like we walked around up there, we had to go on a mission because one of the girls lost her earbuds somewhere. So we went on a mission to a random electronic store in Stockholm right found that, did we stop at a 711 in Stockholm and get snacks and eat them in the park? Yes. Yes, we did, right? Did we get super delicious chocolate croissants? Absolutely,
Collin 58:32
well, you might as well
Brandon 58:35
listen. You gotta get also the other rumors are true. Okay? European Fanta, far superior,
Collin 58:43
really? Oh, it's so good, interesting.
Brandon 58:47
Yeah, it's amazing. Yeah, we sat in a little park, right? And the best thing about sitting in random Park is you have to, like, whip your phone out and figure out, who is this statue in the park here? Who is this guy? What's up with this dude?
59:02
Might you be That's great.
Brandon 59:14
Yeah, do some of that. The girls also were, like, on a mission for Swedish meatballs that was high on the list, so they they went and found those. Okay, again, took some more time to eat in a random outdoor cafe. Did you go?
Collin 59:35
Did you go shopping at IKEA at any point? Did you
Brandon 59:39
we did not. There was. We saw a lot of them. We saw the IKEA distribution center. Ah, okay, it is. We also saw the Husqvarna center. I Okay, yes, it's that was massive. Once Amazon, who this building? Who. So big. Oh, my days, it was gigantic. So, yeah, yeah, that's fantastic. It was pretty great. We also, while we were wandering around, like, because we had much time, it was all those things where, like, you've got this many all the time. We need to meet back here and get on the bus at this time. So whatever. So we went, Susan, I went to eat, and we did. We visited a Swedish bookstore. Yeah, there you go. It was nice. It was good. It was nice bookstore. But I didn't buy anything in that one. Susan did though they had one of, one of her favorite authors is Swedish, and they had his book in there, and so she scooped that up, so she has a copy in Swedish of one of his books. Now,
Collin 1:00:51
did she, did she spot
Brandon 1:00:53
him? She did not. She was thinking about him, though, but she did see the book. She found the book in there. She got, well, that's pretty special. That's pretty good. Yeah, they're just sitting. We're sitting at this random restaurant. There's like, a sandwich shop, you know, like, do I want a mortadella sandwich and a coffee? Yes, I do pastries. Now, obviously, we're just sitting a thing. And they're like, there's books over there. We go, Hey, can we go check that out? Whatever. Let's do this. Let's do this. So, so that was fun. So, yeah, pretty cool. I so I like Stockholm a lot. It's really pretty it is much more difficult to navigate, however, because it is like a billion different islands nearby each other. So like getting across the city much more difficult just because of how it's set out, right? Sure, now it is set out this way, you know, to stop the Russians invading and things like this. But like, you and your you know? So, I mean, it makes sense, but, like, it's really cool. It's really nice. I liked it, so it's fun after Stockholm. Boat part two. Oh yeah. Boat Part Two from Stockholm to Helsinki, right? Lar long boat crossing, more overnight boating, right? So that was cool. Apparently. I don't exactly know why, but this boat route is required to stop at, like, a certain Island whose name I can't remember now, just because it's like, way out in the thing, and you have to, like, I don't remember where that was, but the it's like, not straightfor, I did not know that the coast of Sweden was just so destroyed and Like, just so many like, inlets and like little things, right? So it was a very interesting, yeah, you like goes, basically going between all these, like islands the whole time. But the ferry had to go stop at some little island, which name I can no longer remember, but we had to make a little stop there. But it's fine. We stopped there, like midnight something, but it was still light outside. Okay, fair. Oh, it's the Mary harm Island, yeah, I think it's just, I don't remember why it has to do there, but it does have to stop at Mary hom just to, you know, people go back and forth. I think it's the only way to get there. So, like, the boat is required to stop there, just in case anybody needs, just in case get off, right. So anyway, cross the rest of the Baltic to Helsinki, right? Helsinki is pretty cool. It was also a little more walkable, right, except for our hotel. There was a lot of construction around it, so we had to, like, big walkie detour to get around. So that was kind of annoying, but we saw some cool stuff. Here we went to the, like, Helsinki city museum because it was free. And we're like, Okay, we'll go in there. Free is always nice. Free is always nice. Got to see some cool stuff about Helsinki history. And there's a whole cool part about their like, recycling stuff, because they're, like, big into that, right, as all these countries are, obviously. But like, Sure, it's kind of big deal. We saw a bunch of cool stuff. There we went to like, the market deal, right? Were there reindeer hot dogs for sale somewhere? Yes, did I eat one?
Collin 1:04:54
Yes, I was gonna ask.
Brandon 1:04:59
Nope. Ah, pretty good. Damaged, like, the Central Market deal, like, it was kind of cool, right? Kind of wandered around Helsinki a lot. We found one of the like, they have a bunch of like, so the finish are, of course, all about the saunas, right? And there's just, like, public saunas on, like, all the beaches, sure, they're just like, there, like, boom. So we went to one of the beaches and hung out for a while, like, did we sauna in the public sauna? No, I did not. But I thought about swimming in the Baltic, but it was like, mega cold, but, like, the water temperature is like 60 degrees. And I was like, That would be cool. But also, also, that's pretty cool,
Collin 1:05:49
chilly.
Brandon 1:05:51
So that was they did have the our boat, our hotel is, like, right on the harbor here, though, and the icebreaker ships were in the dock getting worked on. Oh, cool. So they have these big icebreaker ships that just like, roam around in the winter in the harbors in the southern coast and just like, bust up all the ice. Okay, just pretty cool. So we got to see the icebreaker ships. That was fun. Good times. That's very cool. Yeah, that
Collin 1:06:26
was pretty awesome. Yeah, how massive those things?
Brandon 1:06:29
Very, like, very, I can't remember, like, yeah, they're big. They're just hanging out. They're not as big as I thought they would be, right? But, like, they are pretty good size, hanging out. There's one right there, bloop doing its thing. So that's pretty good times. We just kind of did a little quick tour of Helsinki, right? Saw some cool stuff. We saw, like The Rock Church thing. It's like, this really interesting church they have. It's like carved into the side of the rock, and then the roof and the inside is like made of copper. So allegedly, the acoustics are absolutely stellar in this building. Interesting. So into that I just kind of wandered about, you know, doing stuff. By this time, very tired humans, so and then the last day, we basically just had like,
1:07:41
like a day trip to Estonia. So get up another ferry over to Estonia. It's much shorter rides, like maybe two hours, right, sure.
Brandon 1:07:58
But over there, kind of went to, we went to the royal palace, right? And saw the gardens. And, like, the president, the president's house in Estonia is just like, right in the middle of a garden. It's just like, oh, there it is. Oh, what? It's very cool, right? And then there's a big like the old palace is there. We also got to see the tallest building in all of Estonia, which is a super old TV tower that was built to broadcast the 1980 Soviet Olympics. Hyper specific, yeah, yeah, that's how they built it. You know, it's a very Soviet thing. This is very, this is the first time I've ever seen Soviet architecture in person. Oh, right, oh, right, sure. Drive around, drive around, and all of a sudden you're like, Okay, kind of old building, old building that's a big square apart. Oh, oh, oh right, oh no, oh yeah. Look at that. So it's very interesting, right? Is the first time I ever seen Soviet architecture in real life, in person. And and, how does it all be feeling? Yeah, kind of odd, right? You're like, hmm, yeah, oh, here we go, like, the tower is cool. But also, you know, like, Oh, here's all these Soviet apartment buildings people are still living in because Estonia has had to deal with the downfall and the fallout of being a former Soviet Socialist Republic and right, trying to forge national identity by be after being taken over by the Germans, like eight times, and then the Soviets and the Russians like several times, and like, yeah, the Polish one that. Time.
Collin 1:10:01
Like, Where'd they come from? It doesn't, right? Who knows?
Brandon 1:10:04
That's a very old one, right? Like, the Polish Lithuanian kingdom, or whatever they're like, Nah, we're gonna take over the rest of the Baltic too. Like, hey. So Estonia is very interesting in that, like, it is, like, what is the national identity of Estonia? Like, I was not there long enough to really get a good vibe. Like the all the other ones is, like, very clear, right? Like Denmark, you know, you could tell exactly what's happening, right, right? Like the Danish people are, like, a very certain way. Like the Swedish people have a very certain thing going on. Like Estonia, it was weird, you know, it's very interesting. Like, it's this very interesting mix of lots of different things, because there's been lots of different people in charge of Estonia, sure. So, like, like, what is happening? Like, even, like, the royal gardens, in the Royal Palace, in the President's House. It's like, this is built by the Russians, in the style of the French like to do, right? Like, it's like, yeah, what is, what is going on? Yeah, I did love, I did learn that Estonia is do love their parks and gardens, gardening spaces, really. I did learn that the park we were in one, like, there was some sort of contest between all of the Baltic states for, like, who had the most beautiful park, and Estonia won that. So, oh, there you go. They love their outdoor park places. Apparently they go, and then we did go briefly to, like, the Old Town, Talon, right? The super old town, the, like, medieval Walled City, Old Town. Oh, yeah, yeah, it's kind of cool in there, right? It's very weird. It's also weird because there's like, whole bunch of like restaurants in there, and like touristy stuff, and then like on like one cross Avenue, right? And then if you like, go a block over, there's like, nothing, there's something you're wandering about. There's lots of cool stuff in there, and there's lots of cool like restaurants, like little stores and stuff like that, right? But, like, there's not a lot else over there,
Collin 1:12:28
interesting.
Brandon 1:12:29
There was a cool store. There is a cool restaurant that we didn't have time to eat at. I really wanted to, but it was, like, it was like, some American dude that moved there, and it's like, Lord of the Rings. It's themed like the whole thing.
Collin 1:12:41
Yes, the
Brandon 1:12:43
medieval Tavern is a popular, like, restaurant vibe in this place, because it's like very kind of, like old, you know, stuff and like, one of them, one of the restaurants is, like, there's not even lights in there. It's like all candles, like, it's just like, straight up Skyrim in in there, I guess, oh my goodness, that's like their stick survived whatever. Again, with the a lot of the other people went to go eat, and we didn't have that much time. And, you know, Susan and I were on the mission. We had to go on the hunt for the Christmas ornaments, right? Because I had to complete the set, because it's what Susan was trying to get a Christmas order from every country we were in. Oh, hardest one to find was Estonia, right? Yeah, yeah. Well, they had some ornaments, but they were, like, large, like, that won't go in a suitcase. That's a big round. That's a Christmas ball. That is not as unacceptable. Yeah, it's not making it back with us at all. Not gonna make it back. Yeah? We need flatter. So we ate at a random, okay, again, of all things to find on a random side street in this medieval city, there is a French bistro, you know, so like, when you don't have a lot of time, you just want to hang out and you want to vibe, yeah, do you want a pistachio croissant? Yes? Turns out Yes is the answer Yes, right? Yeah, that's what you want. Pretty solid one to go
Collin 1:14:27
with some
Brandon 1:14:29
Susan ordered the chocolate Eclair, and she declared it the best dessert of the entire trip. So wow, there you go. High praise. Yeah. High praise. And then after that, was ferry back to Finland for early rising, after your quick nap, to go catch a flight from Helsinki airport and come back home on your and your
Collin 1:14:58
too much plane trip,
Brandon 1:14:59
too much. Plane trip. That's right. Other important things that we learned on this trip, I remember what I was going to tell you earlier. Oh, just right. The important, one important takeaway here is that Northern Europe is gorgeous, okay, Denmark is awesome, however, right? We talked briefly about food action, right? So, yes, food great. Okay, lots of exciting things as unsurprising, large amounts of fish available everywhere.
Collin 1:15:29
Saw that one coming, right, especially on
Brandon 1:15:31
like the like some of the hotels, like breakfasts, right? Lots of fish everywhere, right? So it turns out, Susan and I learned something about ourselves on this trip, right? Oh, Susan and I, I am now officially a pickled herring enjoyer, right? That's Oh, I didn't
Collin 1:15:54
think that's where that was
Brandon 1:15:55
headed. Okay, yeah, that happened. That happened. There you go, covering myself. Prize, prize. And pickled herring enthusiast, right? Okay, not to mention the extreme copious amounts of just like excellent bread, just on display at all times, right? One thing you put on this bread is pickled herring. No, right there, just right there. This is, uh, way too much at breakfast buffets at the hotel sometimes. But you know what? It's fine. Everything's fine. It's fine. Lots of, lots of, yeah, lots of that, lots of and just like, salmon everywhere, like, all over the place. Just like everywhere you go. Like, Oh, would you like some cold smoked salmon? Why? Yes, I believe I would like some more of that. Thank you. Yes, absolutely. I just want that on a big fat piece of dark bread. Yeah, yes, yes, I do, of course, have to but, but the real surprise here, the real surprise on this whole trip, yes, I am a pickled herring guy. I guess I didn't see that coming. I you know, but you know, gotta roll with it.
Collin 1:17:10
When you travel the world, you never come back the same person you were. Yeah?
Brandon 1:17:14
They go say, Yeah, you gotta find some I pickled herring.
Collin 1:17:20
I guess, yeah. Now you're going to be that guy who's just always talking about pickled herring here in the States, and it doesn't, probably not all the time. I don't know. It doesn't match. Well, whenever I was over the country, is that pickle hearing? Let me tell you, man, let me tell you, that pickle herring in Sweden, yeah. Years from now, years from now, yeah. Man, that's gonna be annoying.
1:17:45
Just one more thing for
Collin 1:17:47
me to annoy you with. Yes, perfect. It's just the Define your new thing that you're gonna use to find your entire personality around
1:17:56
one. This is pretty good, but some pickled herring would make it
1:18:10
better. Oh,
Collin 1:18:11
that's I look forward to this.
1:18:14
Oh, yeah, I'm bringing this Thanksgiving.
Collin 1:18:18
No, yeah, man, it's just another thing in your arsenal for your no turkey day of Yeah, I swear, if you start having pickled hair, you got thick. Oh,
1:18:27
man, I wasn't until you said that.
1:18:36
But now
Collin 1:18:38
you almost have to right.
Brandon 1:18:40
Almost have to right. It's always interesting to, like, see what a career situation like that, like the hotel breakfast thing. Like, what are other what are these other people eating? Like, what are they doing? Like, how do they do this? Yeah, right. It's very clear that a lot of English people come because there are beans and available at breakfast. I don't know if that's a Nordic thing as well, or if there's, like, so many British people come, they're just like, Yeah, throw it on there. It's fine, yeah? Like scrambled eggs and beans, whatever. Like, the vibe seems to be also right. Go up to bread station. Cut your bread piece, whatever. Butter it. Maybe, maybe not. Butter it. The other thing available at all breakfasts are like, like, deli meat, right? Like cold like meats, like ham or turkey or salami and stuff, or pastrami or whatever, sure, and people just like, or the cold salmon, they just like, get the bread and either put on, like, cold meat and some random cheese stuff and just eat it like that, right? That sounds, I think that sounds good. I like, is good. That's what I started doing. I was like, watching people, right? Or they do it with the, like, some like, like, Mayo, like aioli. And then. Like the salmon, and then they throw on some, like onions or like cucumbers, and just eat that. Sure, like, Okay, I'm now, I'm understanding. I'm picking up this.
Collin 1:20:11
I'm rocking this absolutely.
Brandon 1:20:13
It's kind of like I look at other people who you do. How are you eating that? Also, the other thing that was on every single hotel breakfast. Thing that is not this very interesting was, uh, hard boiled eggs. Every, really, yeah, every, every place had them. Ah, hard boiled eggs forever. It was interesting, right? It's all over the place. Some of them even have hard and soft boiled egg, which was interesting. But you definitely don't want to get those mixed up if you were, like, really wanting one. You were, like, really wanting one, get the other one.
Collin 1:20:44
Yeah. I mean, I panic enough when I'm making them that I'm gonna make I can't imagine have a 5050, toss up of yeah, when I'm reaching my
Brandon 1:20:53
hand, yeah, yeah. So it was very interesting just trying to watch, like, what are you doing? Also, again, very European, like part of the dessert section of the buffet sometimes was the cheese
Collin 1:21:06
deal, like, oh yeah, oh yes. And
Brandon 1:21:11
now cheese, oh which, you know, obviously, yeah, right, it's good. But yeah, that's the other interesting thing is, like, what are these people eating? Like, how are they doing? So we didn't eat lots of good food, not just the hotel. Other places. Had some really good fish soup, right? That was really good. Had the old, apparently, Denmark. They just like open face sandwiches. They're like, two pieces of bread is too much. One though, with tons of stuff on it. Yes, that's what we want. I like that. It was good, as I had in my little outdoor cafe experience time. It's very handy. So, yeah, it was good. It was good times. But man, was I wrecked yesterday, and after getting
Collin 1:22:01
I know I'd be really recovering for a while.
Brandon 1:22:06
Man, yeah, that coming back, right? You lose all those hours, right? Because it also didn't help that when we ended in Finland, that's eight hours ahead, yeah, hard. So you got back, that's hard. We had to get up super early. Are you just flying back into getting any land? And it's only like you've been up forever, and then it's like noon. You're like, Oh my goodness. What is happening? Yeah.
1:22:35
No.
1:22:38
This was not, not good.
Collin 1:22:43
Hopefully you can get, oh yeah, hot, back up.
Brandon 1:22:46
That's the goal, right? Today was better than yesterday. Yesterday, I started strong, but man, really fading at the end yesterday. Just like, also all that, like being up and all that stuff and all the blah blah. Like, not necessarily sleeping the best all the time there, because, like, Sure, go to bed late because it's light. So I'm like, Oh, I'm gonna go explore some more. We're gonna go do stuff. And it's like, Oh, I gotta get up early. Oh, no.
Collin 1:23:11
Why did I do this? But also, I mean, you're in a new place like you, of course, you're going to want to eke out, make the most of every day. And, like, it's exciting and there's a lot going on. So that's also hard, because you're also, you're also for that, you're running on some a lot of adrenaline for good travel time, too. So
Brandon 1:23:31
yeah, well, yeah, especially when you're like, oh, you know, we have all this free time, like, I could go sit in the hotel room and attempt to watch Danish television. Why would you do that? I mean, I did a little bit like, late at night when I was, like, getting ready for bed, right? Throw it on, just see what on earth is happening. Like, I could sit in the hotel and watch lots of Danish television, or we could go wandering around Denmark, which is what we did. We walked so much. Susan has estimated our total walking distance for 10 days. This is including just like pacing around the boat and like running through the airport, right? Well, yeah, and, and I know that, like, a lot of times after dinner, we would go out, just her and I, or sometimes some other people, like one night in Denmark, we just all went out. We're like, we're going walk. We're just gonna go see what's over there, right? It was literally one of those, like, I wonder what's over that way. Let's go right? She has estimated that we walk almost 75 miles. Oh,
Collin 1:24:47
oh no, that'll
Brandon 1:24:52
that'll do, and the large amount of that on cobblestones right. Aforementioned. And so all of your ankles need to, like, cover
Collin 1:25:05
all of your supportive muscles here are really wrecked as we're fatigued, yes, yeah, over, worn out, worn
Brandon 1:25:17
out, broken. That's really broken. Nice stabilizer muscles. Yeah, so it's good to come back home and it's 1000 degrees. You're like, yep, not going outside now, staying in here, going anywhere,
Collin 1:25:37
well, gives you time to recover, right? Like breathe. Haven't attempted to
Brandon 1:25:41
do laundry yet. I threw it all in a hamper. I'm sort of looking at
Collin 1:25:45
it like That's step one. I
Brandon 1:25:47
mean, yeah, I got the suitcase. Admin, yeah, yeah, good. Well, I'm glad,
Collin 1:25:52
glad it was good. Had your safe sound back home, recovering, probably already thinking of the next one that you're gonna go on,
Brandon 1:26:01
maybe not yet after that last plane ride like maybe no more planes. Yeah, not gonna look any planes for a little bit, right? But do you have to read about ships for next time? Yes,
Collin 1:26:14
yes, we will get here, pick right back up where we were and we'll get dive into ships. I do, I do have a haiku to round us out, hey, because I know, I know is my week, and I know, I know you'll have some marvelous haikus coming from your experience on. I don't know about marvelous, but there may be some boats and and such. So I'll, I will. I'll round us out here with reaching what seems like forever and a day ago, back into the fall of history, oh yes, as in, in the timeline. Here just the episode that came out last week, though. So it's all little topsy turvy here, but here's, here's my Haiku to round us out. Laces, tug too tight, comfort, lost in Aisle Five. Dream shoes, dodge again.
1:27:17
Yes, so good.
Collin 1:27:20
Where, where are, where are the shoes? Where are the shoes? People
Brandon 1:27:26
have any shoes yet? We did. We did procure some shoes. Okay, did? I
Collin 1:27:31
ended up going with a size five women's okay shoe with just basically, like a court shoe. Of like, it's kind of supposed to be general, like, either kind of, like a basketball shoe. It's not really a running shoe, though. It's meant to be a little grippy, and that kind of stuff, sporty shoes, sporty shoe, and it's great. She likes it a lot, and has been wearing it. And volleyball practice has been going very well. That's important. Yes, yeah, all because of the shoe. Obviously, clearly, it makes a difference, right? If Jordan, Michael Jordan, taught me anything, it's all in the shoe. Yeah, yeah, but I continue to believe in my life, but yes, so we have, we have shoes, and she's enjoying them, and they're licensed over golf game, perfect. We met everything
Brandon 1:28:20
that doesn't remind me. One last thing, yeah, one last surprise thing, right? Sure. So random, random Park in Tallinn, Estonia, right? Walking by Clay tennis courts, yeah, just in the city park. Okay, that's real cool. Yeah, I was like, double cake. And I think I was only one to notice, because everyone's like, look at the flowers and these beautiful trees and like the path, the path. I was like, that's a clay tennis court. What? That's why there was lots of people playing tennis. Oh, not pickleball, tennis. Oh,
Collin 1:29:00
they have not been infected yet. That's
1:29:02
good. Stay strong.
Collin 1:29:04
I think, I think the European heritage will stick. That will stick with
Brandon 1:29:09
tennis. I really feel like it probably will. I feel like there'll be some pickleball, but, like, not in the park, right? We'll put it in, like,
Collin 1:29:19
a thing like a thing like that,
Brandon 1:29:23
yeah, I was, like, all the extra red that is a clay tennis court right there, there's your own holy cow. So that was, it was a shocker, yeah, I forgot
Collin 1:29:35
about that. And also,
Brandon 1:29:38
and also, a surprise clay tennis court. Parents, all right, and now, now,
Collin 1:29:44
very nice. Well, we will, we will pick up our reading and continue this on again, but indeed glad you're home safe.
Brandon 1:29:54
Alrighty. Love you. Love you too. Bye, bye. You.