Roller Coasters

In Copenhagen I went to Tivoli Gardens. I thought Tivoli Gardens was a place with some nice gardens and a few amusement park rides. WRONG! Tivoli is a small amusement park with some flowers and a green space and a fountain. And guess what? They trick you. Tivoli Gardens. Makes you think you’re visiting a garden. There are two ticket price options. One ticket is just for entry, the other for entry and unlimited rides. I chose the cheaper of the two tickets, entry only, just to see those gardens. You can also buy tickets for rides individually if you want once you’re inside the park. So I get into the park and think to myself, “Stacy, you like roller coasters, this roller coaster looks fun. Let’s buy a ride ticket for it.” (Yes, I talk to myself sometimes like I’m two people. No I’m not crazy…I’M NOT!) I proceed to buy that ticket and get in line. Nope, no go. Get to the entrance…you need 3 ride tickets for the coaster. That is 75 DKK to ride a single ride! I just paid 95 DKK to get into this “garden!” Oh yeah, and the machine dispensed 2 receipts but no ticket. The lovely workers were kind enough to print me an actual ticket when I showed them…so that was nice. I then proceeded to sell that ticket to someone that needed one. Where am I going with this stupid ramble? Well, I didn’t get to ride that stupid roller coaster. I LOVE ROLLER COASTERS! Do you understand this? I could have ridden a new coaster in a country a world away and those bastards tricked me and I didn’t get to ride it! (Can you really justify that much money for a single roller coaster ride? Yeah, me neither.) So back to where I’m going with this…

The lovely "gardens"

I may not have physically been able to ride a roller coaster in Copenhagen but this entire trip I’ve sure been able to ride my own emotional roller coaster. It’s eye opening, retarded, strange, and I guess educational too. One minute I can be just ecstatic! I’m in Europe bitches! The Agent S. invasion is in full swing and I have my minions with me! (My minions are just my dreads, but every invasion needs minions to help invade…right?) I can conquer this land single handedly! Look at me go! Then I can be full of joy, like last night. I couldn’t believe just how full of joy my heart and soul were. This joy is different from my Viking conquering excitement. It’s probably the 2nd time in my life I’ve felt this amazing fulfilling sense of joy! The other time was when I held my first niece and rocked her to sleep for my sister. We were in a dark room and I was just rocking her and staring at her and I was overcome with this amazing sense of joy too. She was such an amazing tiny little creature. (I have been so happy with my other nieces and nephews too and I love them every bit as much…but this one experience was crazy. I think that it must be like what new mothers feel like when they see their babies for the first time.) So I’m sitting in my hostel after an amazing wander about Prague, I’m reflecting on all I’ve seen so far, and all I will get to see still, and I’m just SO HAPPY. Just amazingly at peace and joyful and happy! Then there’s this morning. I wake up, get ready and leave Prague behind. As I’m walking to the train station I start getting melancholy again. Every time I leave a city I get this feeling of sadness. It’s…hmmm…it’s sadness, yes. But it’s not that first major sadness fit I had in Copenhagen. I think melancholy is really what it is. I’ve met friends, I’ve starting learning the city, started learning the language, realized how much I haven’t seen, and it’s time to go. It makes me feel a little down and reflective of everything. It’s these moments I really wish Little Danny Moore was with me. Today seemed a little worse than the other times, I think because there was so much that I REALLY wanted to see; I wanted to see those drawings by the children of Terezin. Now I’ve been to two places where Jews were persecuted and murdered, and I haven’t made it to a museum honoring them yet. The museum was closed by the time I got back from Kutna Hora. I also never even had a moment to find myself a postcard to mail home. That is, oddly enough, killing me! Yeah…postcards schmostcards. But I was doing it to collect the stamps and postcards from each country. I also never found my Czech Repbulic patch for my Wreck this Journal. Grrrr…So that is lame. I have this journal I brought to get something from each country, and got nothing physical from Prague. But, I did “take only photographs and leave only footprints.”

So anyone in Praha still. Send me a postcard! I’ll give you my address! I’d even love it if you mailed a patch with it! Interestingly enough, I think I’m a bit more down today because of some bad CS experiences trying to find a couchsurfing host in Munich. I posted in the emergency couch section and got an offer from someone new to couchsurfing with no references, not verified, not vouched for. Being a stranger in a strange land I don’t know a thing about this person. I don’t even know if they are who they say they are. I replied and said I’d love to take them up on their offer if I could meet them first for coffee or beer or whatever. Just make sure that person is who they say they are and get a feel for them. I trust my instincts. If I felt comfortable with them, I’d stay with them. I tried to make sure I was very polite in my reply, because someone was kind enough to reply to me. I knew I would probably offend them, but I tried very hard not to. Well apparently, the whole Emergency Couch thread can see our communication. A number of people with the exception of one, including the host, wrote just horribly mean messages to me. Many of them mocked paranoid Americans, they were rude to me, and they were basically ignorant rude people. So already, my experience with Munich has been negative.