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So we’re in Hamburg (flashing back, telling a story with a point, even though it feels like I’m wandering, this is Part 2 of Singapore and counting).  We just booked it across Germany in a hurry to get to Finland where we are meeting up (and staying with) friends.  In Hamburg we buy ferry tickets to get us and our little French-plated Peugeot across Denmark.  The first ferry was from Fehmarn to Rodby.  We get to the port early and are the first car to load into the car transport bay on the boat.

Ferry launches and we’re cool with this.  Checking out the masses of jellyfish in the Fehmarn Belt.  Finding a sandwich.  Washing up in the washrooms.  You know the drill.  You’ve probably done this sort of things successfully a hundred times.  The ferry is about to arrive and we continue resting and enjoying the ride.  Announcements started a while back and continue to get a bit more frantic but the announcements are in French and with all the languages between the three of us, unfortunately French was not one of them.  We finish up our lounging, not in a race.  Sure wish those frantic, maybe a little angry, French announcements would stop.  We are the last of the passengers on the boat, starting to make our way to the car bay…wait, are they yelling “Peugeot” in that announcement.

Well, sure.  In hindsight you are all geniuses.  First car on would have to be first car off.  So we blocked the ENTIRE car transport bay from emptying.  Does that somehow justify us being rudely gestured at as we drove across the entire country of Denmark?  So when I close my eyes and picture Denmark, all I see are vulgar hand gestures hanging out of every single car that passed us.

Denmark (go ahead, close your eyes, you see it now too), Sweden, and finally to Finland and a chance to sleep in a bed and rest.  Then back again from Finland, to Sweden, to Denmark, to Germany, to the Netherlands, to Belgium (where we dropped Migros off at the train station for him to return to his fruit market in Switzerland), back to Calais, and on to England again to close our full circle.

So that’s how we roll.  That’s why I have applied for a job at Qatar University College of Law (and I have heard back from them with positive progress so far) and why I am at this moment working to get the American School of Doha apps started for the kiddos.