Day 44
Location 11: Aarhus
Dec. 14, 2022
Today marked a first not only for my trip, but also for my life: I experienced a RyanAir flight.
Despite RyanAir's reviews having the vibe of a restaurant where the owner responds to complaints with things like "well you came on a BUSY night so have patience. 1 hour is NOT LONG to wait for food. Also you SMELLED bad so take shower ok", my initial experience was fully satisfactory: security was fast, I earned a free upgrade to premium seating, and we boarded the flight straight from the tarmac. It felt like I was flyin' first class, up in the sky.
Then reality set in. My friend Dave sent me unnecessary (and unprompted, mind you) RyanAir cautionary tales. The wings of the plane were too cold (didn't know that could happen) so person sprayed them with hot water. I suppose he didn't do too good of a job though because he was replaced by a terrifying robot spray cannon. Then, a panel closed on its own which doesn't sound bad, but made me feel like William Shatner watching a gremlin mock me with a dance at 10,000 feet. We made it, though, and it was overall a good time.
Here's Dave's DMs and me declining his offer to read see poorly executed RyanAir disasters:
Oh shoot, I forgot to tell you how I ended up in Aarhus, Denmark. In Budapest, I met Romain, Will, and Kayla who kindly invited me to come to visit and stay with them. Unbeknownst to me, there was a fourth friend waiting for me at their apartment in Aarhus–an old friend from my high school!
Left: Jack Lavin, my friend from high school | Right: the actual Jack Lavin, my friend from high school
Not actually. But we all agreed this guy Michiel (left)–who is one of the most fun, nicest, and naturally suave people I've ever met–looked a lot like my friend Jack Lavin.
After arriving, we immediately went to build a snowman. In classic snowman fashion, we equipped him a button nose, two eyes made of coal, and huge tits.
Crafting the world's hottest snowman worked up quite the appetite, so I offered to cook dinner for the house. There's like 3 meals I can make really well and one is a breaded chicken cutlet recipe I learned in 7th-grade Home Ec with Mrs. Brown. I loved Mrs. Brown because her sister was married to my favorite author at the time: Daniel Handler (aka Lemony Snicket, the author of A Series of Unfortunate Events). I also hated Mrs. Brown because she was a total bitch. She gave me an F on my sewing project. A fucking F! In 7th grade Home Ec. And I had worked hard on it. Okay, I'm getting kinda mad so let's move on.
Dinner was great and after we went to a club where Michiel suggested we go to McDonald's. Here's a few interesting findings from our trip to McDonald's:
In Australia, they call McDonald's "Mackers". Even the restaurant signs and commercials refer to themselves as "Mackers", never "McDonald's".
This brings the Official McDonald's Counter of Dylan's Trip to 3 and marks the 2nd time a trip to McDonald's has been suggested by someone other than an American.
Previously, in Munich I confirmed the Pulp Fiction "royale with cheese" thing as true. In Denmark, I must issue a retraction. Despite their use of the metric system, a Quarter Pounder is called just that.
We started lighting a fry and treating it like a joint. We passed it around and lit it and pretended to puff it. At some point, the pretend puffs started to produce not-pretend smoke. We're not sure what was going on, but it was 100% less healthy than smoking actual tobacco or marijuana.
