Our tour took us through the desert in a pickup truck. All we had to do was sit in the back and admire the views. At first it was a little bit disorienting because I literally have never sat in the back of a pickup truck before. I’d seen it many times in movies and what not, but that was it – especially from news clips where insurgents in Iraq or Afghanistan would do it, so it was pretty hard to not compare my experience with that.

Along the way, we stopped by some old carvings on the rocks (so called petroglypths) from the Thamud, an ancient civilization that existed around 8th century BCE.

We hiked around the desert a little bit.

Then we stayed in the desert for the sunset. I normally don’t pay attention to the sunset, but it was pretty amazing to see how fast the sun actually set.

Once the sun touched the horizon, 30 seconds later, it was gone.

For dinner, the staff at the camp prepared a feast for us – zarb, they called it. It’s similar to the chicken/lamb on rice meals we had in the previous days, but this one was cooked underground inside a barrel. This was the best meal in Jordan by far!

That night, we stayed in a camp in the desert. The best part about it was being able to see stars without all the light pollution in the city, and hanging out with the rest of the tour group around a campfire.

The worst part of it was the actual camping. There was some running water, but no hot water. To make it worse, we had to leave the next morning at 04:00 because we had a couple hours drive back through the Israeli border in time before it closed (what kind of border crossing closes during the day?).

The desert was our last destination in Jordan, before we went back into Israel/Palestine (not to take sides here…), to visit the Dead Sea and Tel Aviv.

More photos of Wadi Rum here

Strasbourg

Strasbourg is in the historic region of Alsace-Lorraine. The unique thing about Alsace-Lorraine is that in the span of 100 years it has flipped back and forth multiple times between France and Germany as a result of three wars (the Franco-Prussian War, World War I, and World War II). As a result, the city shares cultures from both countries. This is super evident in a part of town called Petite France, most notably the timber framing around each building. The local dialect Alsatian, also has Germanic origins.

It’s also the home of the European Parliament. This is where over 700 democratically elected Members of European Parliament pass legislation.

Thus far, in France, I had been speaking my very limited French here and there whenever I needed it. As we waited for the tour, a Middle Eastern fellow struck up a conversation with me in French, kind of just asking us where we were from etc. It was kind of weird, but we went along with it anyway – it didn’t seem like he was a pickpocket or anything. I managed to get pretty far in the conversation in French actually, which surprised me quite a bit. He told me that he had moved to France from Afghanistan after working there as part of the local security forces, and even showed me his old Afghan ID, and a bomb scar he had.

The conversation got super weird when he started asking about our yearly salary, and it seemed like he was asking us for money (but it’s possible some of that was lost in translation). At that point, we totally understood why he started the conversation in the first place. We basically told him that we’re not that well off either and he tried to give ME money, and I still don’t understand what was going on there. When the tour started, it seemed like he was still staying within our general vicinity, which made it even weirder. Eventually he picked up on that and left us alone. We even checked if he followed us back to our car (just in case).

Strasbourg appears pretty proud of their cuisine – even their postcards have pictures of recipes of different Alsatian dishes. One that we had was called Flammekueche (in German it’s Flammkuchen, so it’s easy to see the German influence in the language here, at least in this word). I think the closest analogue that English speakers would know would be a flatbread pizza, but with more French style ingredients like fromage blanc, and uses crème fraîche as a base as opposed to tomatoes.

From Strasbourg, we began our journey to Switzerland. At the border, we bought our vignette (it’s a required sticker on the car for driving in the country). I spoke to the lady in German and I got a nice feeling speaking and listening to a language that I understood again.

Habsburg Castle

Our first destination in Switzerland was the Habsburg Castle. This is where the House of Habsburg began. This is THE Habsburgs that wielded enourmous power in Europe for centuries, most notably the Holy Roman Empire, and the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

The castle looks quite modest compared to other European castles like Neuschwanstein, but this is because it was originally constructed almost 1000 years ago.

Zürich

As we drove through Switzerland, we expected mountain passes full of snow, but there were actually very few mountains along that route! We probaly would have seen some in Zürich itself, but too bad it was nighttime.

We arrived in Zürich just in time for a fondue and raclette dinner, because that’s what the stereotypes say. Of all places we found though, we found the most touristy one. I’m pretty sure everybody in there was a tourist.

As we were chatting while eating, I was trolling my friend, saying he comes from China even though he’s actually from Taiwan, since Taiwanese people stereotypically like to assert that Taiwan is not the same as China. A lady at our neighbouring table heard us and actually confronted us about it. She seemed so pissed off! She seemed fine once we told her we were just messing around, and that I’m from Hong Kong (people from there generally side with Taiwan). But imagine travelling all the way to Switzerland and hearing someone trashtalking your country!

This concludes our fourth day. Stay tuned for day five!

• Strasbourg
• Habsburg Castle
• Zürich

Stockholm used to be just an island, and since Stockholm has expanded outside of the island, the island portion has become the old town, known as Gamla Stan.

Some buildings in the old town have fake windows, because glass was expensive back then (3rd floor middle window).

There’s a random piece of Viking runestone on the corner of a building. And it’s protected by a cannon barrel on the street corner…

The Scandanavian countries really like their royal guards…

H&M sells home products in Sweden! I haven’t seen that anywhere else.

At our hostel, we met some awesome people and went on a bike tour with some of them, guided by a local Swedish fellow. He took us to the top of a hill overlooking the river and Gamla Stan.

Welcome to Earth!!

Our guide showed us this cool snack. It’s herring with cucumber and onions on flatbread.

This is an indoor bike tunnel going under a bridge!!

This was part of the common area at our hostel. They did a good job with that antique look and they even made us take our shoes off when inside.

At the Stockholm Royal Armoury, they showed off a bunch of carriages. Since we are nerdy engineers, we spent a while analyzing how its suspensions worked.

I heard Swedish meatballs are famous.

The Vasa Museum was probably the most incredible attraction. The Vasa was a Swedish warship that sank on its maiden voyage. It was supposed to be a symbol of Swedish military might at the time, but it sank because it was too top-heavy due to the many cannons it had on board and not enough width to counter the tipping of the ship from its weight. It was later discovered that the ship was very well preserved and now it is on display.

What is more Swedish than going to Ikea and eating meatballs? There is a free shuttle that goes to Ikea too!

The best part of the trip was meeting a bunch of cool people in our hostel room! We had a room of 8 and every single person was fun to hang out with as opposed to normally I don’t get to talk to everybody. This time, the 8 of us got to chill in the room having beers and stuff. One of them was from Kentucky who was currently living in Alabama – of course all the America jokes were directed at her. Another was from Australia who had just finished his contract with the ANZAC navy after serving in Afghanistan and Iraq – he was quite open in talking about his experiences and I learned a ton from him! I also learned a nice trick to cooking pasta from one of the Italians: always salt the water before cooking the pasta! He even said that people thought he was crazy when they saw him salting the water. I also got some good hookups in Shanghai from our Chinese roommate – awesome when I decide to go there! It was amazing how well we all clicked and definitely an unforgettable experience in my travels.

That’s it for Stockholm!

Photo album: Stockholm