7 Times Proof That We've Really Been To Europe

1. Here's me enjoying a nice cold beer in a street café in Amsterdam.

2. This is me in Prague. Note the Charles Bridge and Prague Castle in the background.
3. Definitely me having a German beer in front of a German tree in a German Forest.

4. Here you see me in front of the door that leads into the house Freddy Mercury used to live in. The adress is: 1 Logan Place, London.
5. London again. And no, I don't know anything about the horse's head or where the rest of it is.
6. Last but not least. And I still believe this monument (which interestingly is situated in a place named Square of Peace) symbolizes both the male and female outer sexual organs, showing either one depending on the angle of view.7. I let you figure out yourself which angle is represented in the above picture.

Going Through Costums

Remember the little pieces of paper you have to fill out when entering a certain country on the North-American continent? And the 5 or 6 questions you better answer NO to, cause if there's only one YES among your answers, nobody will be held accountable of what's gonna happen to you or your stuff.
Why am I mentioning this?

Because for some unfathomable reason we happened to check YES for one of the questions.
Do not ask me why, but if we hadn't, I couldn't now tell you about it, could I?

It was the "Did you bring meat or fruit" question. We checked it, I think, because we had left from our travel food in our carry-ons a banana and an apple.

And the costums guy said: "So, what did you bring?"
"I have a banana and an apple" my wife said.
I heard myself add: "And I have a salami."
(Why did I say that? No idea.)

The guy took a red magic marker and wrote APPLE, SALAMI on the paper, gave it to us and told us to give it to next guy after baggage retrieval.

While waiting for our bags we saw a woman with a dog. The dog sniffed the bags of travellers for stuff. Observe: He only got hits from bags sitting on the floor! (He sniffed my wife twice, first time standing, no apple detected, a little later she was sitting on the floor, dog came round again, found the apple.)
When we finally had our bags and showed the paper to the next guy (miles away of course, and now you have to pay 2 bucks for a baggage cart at TORONTO airport - FUCK YOU TORONTO AIRPORT, it is PART OF YOUR JOB to provide CARTS for FREE), he pointed us to a small corridor.
There a third guy confiscated our apple and my salami.
(Asking, talking etc didn't help.)

He didn't put them into a dangerous stuff box or something. He just dumped them in the next garbage can. A perfectly good Hungarian salami. A perfectly good apple.
F U. F ME.

(I bet he took both out after we were gone and ate both himself. The garbage can looked suspiciously clean.)

Then he insisted on x-raying our bags again, as if we had only shown him our apple and salami so they wouldn't find all the other cool stuff we were smuggling. (I should have picked up our salami again from the trash while he was busy with that.)

The he found my German mustard.
"It's mustard" I said.
"Are your sure it's not dairy?"
"Just German mustard."
He wasn't convinced, he actually opened up my mustard and tasted it. When he understood it was no dairy, we were allowed to put it back in the bag and move on.

Later that day I bought two Hungarian salamis in a supermarket.

What do we learn from this?

10 things:
1. Do not be honest.
2. Lie.
3. Don't tell em what's in your bag.
4. If you tell em they will take it.
5. So just lie.
6. Toronto airport service SUCKS MONKEY BALLS.
7. Never answer YES to the questions.
8. Always LIE.
9. Keep your bags elevated from the floor.
10. Just don't tell them.

Food and Entertainment

This morning, for some weird reason I woke up feeling like I've partied last night. But I didn't. Must still be jetlag. It's pretty cool to wake up at 5:30 or 6 AM completely awake and ready for the day. But it sucks to be dead-tired at 9 PM, too.
As stated before, we made it back to BF. The snow is gone (except some tiny rests), the lakes are not frozen anymore (except a few bits). It smells like lakes again (it didn't in the winter), too, old seaweed etc, like in one of those pure-air-holiday-villages at, let's say, the Baltic Sea.
Some first bugs are out.

We did our traveling back mostly with Austrian Airlines. They advertise claiming to be a Gourmet Restaurant above the clouds. And they're right! The flight attendants put on aprons when serving food, and the food is very very good. After the old question "pasta or chicken?" you can expect something really delicious on this airline, and the real thing, not the typical light-yellow mush or old wet cardboard they serve other-where.
I had the chicken and it was very good, it came with awesome potatoes. And later they served a selection of warm bread and rolls, with typical Austrian sausages and cheese and butter from Tirol, very good.
Unfortunately entertainment-wise Austrian can't compete. The plane still had the old big screens every 10 meters in the aisles. They showed the same old movie twice ("The boys are back" or so, with Clive Owen). Even the little 1 hour Air Canada flight to our almost-final destination had flatscreens on the seat in front of you, and you could select your entertainment yourself (from new movies, like "Shutter Island"). Well, Austrian, learn the entertainment from Air Canada, but don't learn from them about food!

I must go have breakfast now.

Oh, BF

We're back from Europe.
And tired. I guess our brains think it's 2 in the morning already.

Tomorrow we'll go back to work.