Am I Corn or Kale?

No matter how wonderfully connected the modern age has allowed us to be, it’s been impossible to convey every single fun, awkward, or pseudo-tragic moment of our trip through this blog. We hope it was not too much of a drag to read, and that the pictures turned out at least OK (it‘s hard for us to tell because our netbook‘s screen is not that much bigger than the camera display!).

As a celebratory farewell (technically, homecoming), we put together a collection of silly signs we’ve encountered throughout our journey, accompanied by the eventual comments or quasi-funny one-liners. Don’t expect anything too special — some of our favorite signs went by too quickly to be properly registered, but perhaps we could work on hand-drawn renditions of the “yield to explosive children playing” sign we saw in Slovenia, or the “troll crossing” one in Norway.

***
Thailand had no lack of good signage.

The owners of this establishment must have thought the different colors would be sufficient to distinguish between these two services, but we couldn’t help but conjure the mental picture of a digital “Internet Massage”.

Mom is mad about something.

Deer have a good evacuation plan in case of fire and logging. Humans are more concerned about water.

We wrote about the elephant dung paper factory a while ago, but I don’t think we included this fine sign on the post. Sadly, we never made it to the demonstration.

At first, it looks like the (mis)spelling will be the star of the sign we found in our bungalow‘s bathroom, but there’s more to it.

Not sure about this one, either.

Keep track of your belongings or they will end up with a different species.

The two bathroom doors below were side by side, making us wonder what could possibly be so different about a monk’s hygiene or human condition.

Europe’s signs were more low-key, but we were impressed to see that bike paths are fully integrated into Budapest’s transit system.

Sitting on the edge of a castle tower in Slovenia might lead to being shot in the leg and face by a nail gun.

Slovenian girls wear funny bows in their hair, in a nice example of gender/age stereotyping.

We saw this sign in construction zones all over the old continent, so Europeans must not think much of Robocop being a member of the terrorist organization that plotted the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and thus kickstarted World War I, the Black Hand.

Czech political cartoonists are certainly not honeymooning the country’s politicians.

This failure of a sign is what Copenhagen boat tours can offer to their customers in substitution for the Little Mermaid statue.

We found the name of this Norwegian coffee shop to be wittily worldly.

***

That’s it. We are very grateful for our families and friends who have helped us put ourselves through so many awesome situations and experiences, as well as the friends we made along the way. There is no point typing about the impact this trip has had in our lives because the whole thing is not even close to sinking in, and most importantly, talking is still a preferred method of communication.

An addendum: we kept a fairly accurate record of our expenses throughout the trip, so if anyone is curious/interested about how much cash you’d need to save for an extended trip, we’d love to chat about that too. During our research we found that to be the unanswerable question that every traveler asks when preparing for such adventure. Of course, there are endless variables that affect traveling expenses, out of which we will be enthusiastically promoting CouchSurfing and sandwich-making.

At last, a list. These were the TOP 5 travel items we could not have done without, and why:

1) wool socks — they work magically well when it’s hot, cold, wet… you name it. Feet are very important, and treating them well is the best idea.

2) tiny umbrella — we once read an article that proselytized against bringing an umbrella,  claiming that “if it’s raining, stay inside”. If we had heeded to this advice, we would have not gone outside for a good 3-week block of our European trek… not to mention that umbrellas work as sunbreakers too; we used them on the beach in Thailand to protect ourselves from the scorching 100-plus-degree, noon sun.

3) packing cubes — when taking your life on the road with you, it’s good to keep your basic belongings compartimentalized and packing cubes allow you to pack and unpack swiftly; most importantly, you won’t have to spend much time searching for that one item you shoved deep into your bag should you need it in the midst of a busy, shady train station.

4) bandana — because it serves multiple purposes, from picnic cloth to napkin to mud wiper. I would have had to throw away my shoes halfway through our journey if it wasn’t for one of those.

5) netbook — without it CouchSurfing, putting together train schedules, and adequately changing our plans due to the volcano would have been respectively difficult, horrible, and impossible. The added, albeit unfortunate bonus is that my MacBook’s HD decided to die two days after our return, so the netbook has been promoted to main computer status for the time being.

On that note, we are signing off.

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