EuRoad Trip 2018: Game Over

Our grand European road trip was drawing to a close. We only had a few hours left before we needed to take my parents to the airport in Copenhagen.

While I was picking up my crap in the hotel room I noticed there was even a bit of Scandinavian wit under the bed. So, so funny.

We'd already thoroughly explored the whole damn town and there wasn't much left to see. Luckily Atlas Obscura had a good idea: Rundetårn!

Rundetårn is Europe's oldest observatory, built in 1642- the same year as Galileo's death. According to Atlas “the tower originally contained a planetarium showing two versions of the solar system: the Galileo-approved, heliocentric model and Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe’s geocentric interpretation.”

The observatory is connected to Trinitatis Church in order to, you know, let the Jesus in.

Rundetårn is Danish for "round tower", and I'd say that was some A+ naming work. Not only was the thing one giant spiral but instead of stairs is was one big ramp. The scientific instruments they used were so heavy that they need a horse and cart to wheel it all up to the top. Pretty smart. 

I guess every year there is a unicycle race to the top.

This was a clockwork planetarium that showed the planets' movements.

We dropped my parents off at the airport and hit the road. We needed to get all the way to Berlin by the end of the day.

Our last stop in Denmark was in the little ferry town of Gedser. Fun Gedser ferry fact: Gedser was the first place the Germans landed in 1940 during the occupation of Denmark. They simply loaded up the ferry with soldiers and took it the opposite direction.

We had a bit of time to kill while we waited for our last boat.

We ate at a quaint little pub called Havnekroen.

We both went with fiskefilet m/ pomfritter, partly because fish and chips sounded awesome in the little seaside town, and partly because that was the only thing on the menu I could read.

Did a little bit of luggage management. Most people don't realize that when I bring them something from another country it was likely wrapped up in my dirty underwear for padding.

We hit the open seas with the rental car in the cargo hold one last time.

There were many exotic treasures for sale on board.

Speaking of hidden treasures, I was about to attempt to smuggle a can of bear meat back to US in my luggage. Don't see what could go wrong with that.

Goodbye beautiful Denmark!

When we started this trip out of Berlin what must have been about 3 years ago, I messed around with the Autobahn a little bit. Did a bit of zooming. Well the rental had served us loyally and I decided it was time to see if I could make the wheels come off.

I was turning a lot of heads with my Czech stationwagon barreling down the highway at 145 mph. While the speed limit on open stretches of road was infinity it would drop to nothing everytime we crossed a bridge. Abruptly slowing down all the time got to be annoying and seemed less safe than just letting me continue on my rocket ship journey to Berlin.

I'm flashy (uh), double takes when you walk past me

Nasty, don't be scared boo, go 'head and ask me

I drive fastly, call me Jeff Gord-on in the

Black SS with the naviga-tion.

We had a little time before our flight out of Berlin's Schönefeld Airport so we did what I assume a Berliner would do: eat some meats and cheeses and drink a beer on a bench outside.

They were selling Happy Socks in the airport. I may have like 40 pairs of these.

Here's the thing about flying from Berlin to the US: everyone knows that the fastest way to get there is by flying the opposite direction to Moscow then hanging out at the airport for hours and hours. So that's what we did.

Russia hosted the World Cup this year and so Zabivaka the space dog thing mascot was there to greet us at the airport in Moscow.

We used our Priority Pass powers to get into the "Jazz" business lounge and kill some time. I know when I think "Moscow" I can't help but think "Jazz".

Cool, comrade daddy-o.

I was excited because I thought maybe they'd have caviar, which I'd had my first real taste of yesterday over ice cream. They did have it but it wasn't free. This deeply saddened me.

We had some more fun times with Aeroflot.

This was like halfway between ice cream and cheese.

The flight attendants had pretty cool hats.

There was a New York layover.

1200 hours later we made it back to historic St. Louis, Missouri.