Journey beginnings - part 5: Europe

London was an expensive mess. Apparently there was some sort of terrorist threat there while we were trying to land, so they closed the whole bloody airport for 2 hours. We spend an hour circling before they let us land. then once we were on the ground, there were planes everywhere and nowhere to park them. So we spend another hour sitting in some corner of the airfield. When they finally let us off the plane, I spent 45 minutes wandering around in a maze of underground tunnels, hopping on a tube here and a tube there, trying to get to the shuttle. Around 11:00 pm I finally emerged into the open air, only to find that the last shuttles, busses and trains had already left. So I had to take a taxi to my 'airport hotel', which was apparently a mile outside the 'airport boundary'. That made the cab fare a standard £48! That's more than it would cost me to take a 2 hour cab ride halfway across the country once in Israel. So I missed the friend I was supposed to meet in London. And, since my flight left at 7:30am, I got to spend a grand total of 5 hours in the hotel, which also cost me £65. Argh.
The trip to Sweden was smooth, except that they lost 3 of my 4 bags. Actually, this worked out okay because they shipped them to my friend's parents' house down by Copenhagen a couple of days later. We spent a day in Uppsala (where my friend lives), a day in Stockholm, and a day near Båstad on the beach on an island national park (I have no idea of the name, but it was very nice). All in all a nice trip, though I think my enthusiasm was a bit subtle because of jetlag, and which I think resulted in the impression that I was bored, even though I had a great time.
Next I took the train to Copenhagen, dropped my pile of luggage at the airport and promptly got lost downtown. I spent the afternoon milling about in an amazing crowd on a crazy walking, shopping street downtown. I'm not sure if it was unusually full because it was Saturday, and the weather was beautiful, but it was completely jammed. I was most impressed with the number of bicycles around. Actually, I guess I was really impressed that there were roads for cars, roads for bikes, and roads for pedestrians. Seems entirely civilized to me.
On to Israel from there (by way of London, of course).