Planes, Trains, and Irish Artists

Often I meet such bizarre people while traveling in moving vehicles that I am sometimes worried about traveling next to people who might be crazy.

But it didn't occur to me to be worried about the plane, until I actually got onto the plane and realized I was in a middle seat. But the guy sitting next to me appeared perfectly reasonable, and was very nice. He was an Irish artist studying in Vancouver, and he kept me laughing the whole time. Which is quite remarkable, really, considering it's about an 11 hour flight. Okay, maybe not really 11 hours, but it was quite long.

We sat in between two engineers going to Copenhagen to present about their plastics used for making wind turbines. Which according to these engineers, are the best in the world. One of them had a "World's Worst Cars" book, in which is documented the world's worst cars. He shared several of them with me. I also started and finished Ella Minnow Pea, which was quite delightful and should be read by you if you haven't done so already. I love epistolary novels, and ones that explore the use of language are especially nice. Also, Mark Dunn is hilarious. Good stuff.

And then we got to Amsterdam, and found the train platform and the train ticket machine, and the train ticket office when our cards wouldn't work in the machine because they're American, and finally got on the train to the city, and then a tram, and finally to a street near the hotel, on which we met an American expatriate who told us which direction to go, and finally we made it to the Bicycle Hotel.