With apologies to Ms. Smart for the delay in my reporting, here are my reflections on this summer's big trip.


DESTINATIONS: Warsaw and Lublin, Poland ... Stockholm, Sweden ... Copenhagen, Denmark ... Berlin, Germany

FAVORITE CITY: Stockholm

LEAST FAVORITE: Copenhagen (REALLY expensive)

BEST MUSEUM: Majdanek Concentration Camp outside Lublin (very rough to tour)

WORST MUSEUM: the Swedish Treasury Museum (we were the ONLY ones there!)

BEST PARK: the cemetery where Søren Kirkegaard is buried in Copenhagen

BEST FOOD: Banja Luka, a Serbian joint in Warsaw

WORST: Shanghai Gate, a Chinese joint in Copenhagen

BEST DRINK: Danish beer

WORST: Polish water ("Mmmm ... you can really taste the cadmium.")

NICEST PEOPLE: the Swedes

MOST ATTRACTIVE WOMEN: tie between the Poles and the Swedes

MOST TRANSCENDENT MOMENT: tie between the open air Chopin concert in Warsaw, and just sitting on a bench under a tree at twilight in Stockholm's old city

BIGGEST WTF?: they call it "Roosters", but Poland has Hooters!

"COOLEST" PLACE: the Absolut Ice Bar in Stockholm (the whole bar is made of ice!)

FUNNIEST EURO-SIGN: "no breakdancing" on the Berlin metro

GREATEST MOMENT OF ENVY: tie between Sweden's trains and Copenhagen's vast bike culture

MOST ANNOYING PART OF TRIP: my friend Brad ALWAYS asking for ice!

BIGGEST A-HA!: Berlin IS New York; they feel exactly the same

BIGGEST "OOPS": a guy on the train from Warsaw to Gdansk yelled at me for putting my feet on the seat

BIGGEST "YES!": my bottle of absinthe cleared through customs with no problem

BEST LAUGH: finding an anti-Bush, anti-war rally advert from '03 still posted in Warsaw

BIGGEST REGRET: I didn't ride a bike in Copenhagen, and I didn't appear in a fetish porno movie in Berlin


That's it! I had a blast-and-a-half, and am already looking forward to the next adventure ... which looks to be Geneva, Zurich, Munich, and Stuttgart next Spring. After that it's got to be Japan and Vietnam.

Photo: yours truly in the rebuilt portion of Warsaw's old city