Fighting the customs with mikado

The last things on friday went as I expected unconsciously. I had to leave out one third of the things I wanted to pack. I didn’t had the time to visit some of the people I wanted to bring a visit. And I got on the train on time.

I said goodbye to the cats and my mother. Then my two little brothers went with me to Amsterdam. We ate something, my father joined and we drank the favorite station beverage, chocolate with whipped cream. My father told about how his parents influenced his choice to work or study when he finished high school. As both his parents tried but couldn’t go to study they both encouraged him to study, so he did.

The day before I had a drink with two colleagues at Mediamatic about this topic. One of them was told by her parents to go work at the farm. Then I realised I didn’t know how my parents were influenced by their parents.

Two friends from HKU joined and all waved me out as I left with the night train to Copenhagen. It was funny to notice the large ammounts of snow as we went more to the east. The last week there had been some snow in Alkmaar but in Amsterdam for example you didn’t see any snow. I thought of these people living and working in Amsterdam didn’t know that there was snow in the rest of the country. And I heared that it was minus 19 degrees in Maastricht. Together with the snow we saw when we past Arnhem I realized I didn’t know that the rest of the country had that much snow :)

At Emmerich we got the first customs check. Later at the border of Denmark (at 6.45 a.m….) we got the second. And somewhere half in Denmark we got a third, narcotics this time.

I talked with my roommates and neighbours, we played with the chopstick mikado. Very interesting to play mikado on a train.

One girl was going to study in Sweden as well, now for one week and later for three months. Another guy – Emil, yes as Emil from Astrid Lindgren ;) – from Sweden just came back from a tour through Europe. He planned on traveling to 50 countries before he turned 50. He was at 37 (countries) now, Belgium being the latest addition, Latin America probably being the next.

A guy from Århus, Denmark, joined in Düsseldorf. He was working at energy labels for almost every electrical machine, work for which he traveled to Brussels every month. In Denmark we had a lot of fun with two little girls from Thailand. One was busy with asking us “what are you doing?”, “why are you there?” all the time. With Emil I told them the story of the Rumpnissar in Ronja Rövardotter, saying “Voffor gör di på detta viset?” until it drives you crazy.

And then came Sweden..

Tags: astrid lindgren, denmark, goodbye, influence, play, power distance, snow, train, traveling, voffor, world view

Categories: a cultural journey, an intellectual journey