Friends in faraway places

The customs guy looked at my passport and back at me. “You’re from Canada, on your way home from Stockholm?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Home, as in Canada?”

“No, home to Budapest.”

He scrunched his brow. “So, what is the purpose of your,” he looked down at my customs form, “one-day visit to the UK?”

“I’m visiting a hometown friend.”

He looked at my passport again. “London?”

“Yes, London, Canada. We’re hanging out here in the bigger London.”

He waved me through after a few more routine questions and that prompted more routine answers from me. The second leg of my journey began.

Beautiful Stockholm at night.

Beautiful Stockholm in the day.

The journey ultimately kicked off a few days earlier, with my arrival to Stockholm. Alek – of past bro-mantic adventures in Rome and Vienna – was already there. He was looking around town, getting chummy with the hotel staff, finding bars – important groundwork.

Our timing could not have been better. It was the first spring weekend in city. Swedes, like Canadians on the first day of great spring weather, had donned their short sleeves and skirts, took to their bikes, flocked to the bar patios, and stubbornly stayed out as long as they could before the post-sunset hypothermia set in.

The vibes in Stockholm were amazing. The city, already beautiful in its own right, was made friendly and cheerful by this sunny, blue-skied weather. We hit the patios, visited museums, wandered the streets and the waterfront, and went clubbing. We saw a shipwrecked ship in a museum (the Vasa), ate salmon, and decided Stockholm was a damn fine place.

That is an old timey Swedish warship inside a museum.

The visit finished quicker than it should have and Alek and I parted ways. He went north for where his flight would take him back to family in Warsaw. I went south, way out of the city to an airport that would take me to London.

Good weather, good beer, good times, good friends.

I boarded the plane to meet my confused customs official at Stanstead and Nina, my London buddy from another London.

This might sound like the lunatic-y long way around to Budapest, but it was only a little more expensive to catch a later flight in Stockholm for London, crash on a couch, and take a flight the next day to Budapest. Otherwise, I would have to catch an earlier direct flight to Budapest from Sweden.

I couldn’t turn down an opportunity like that!

This was the second time I passed through London and saw Nina. The first London visit was over a year ago.

The night I arrived we hit the bars of East London, stayed until the lights came on in the bar and the Underground closed.

We turned down the chance to ride London’s new rentable Boris Bikes on the treacherous streets of London with some friends, opting for a long, winding double-decker bus ride home.

Nina and a new friend at the British Museum.

The next day we had brunch, hit the British Museum, saw mummies, Greek ruins and Assyrian antiquities, before rushing to the train that would take me to the airport for my flight back to Budapest.

The London visit was brief, just one day. Throughout the trip, I spent 6.5 hours in the air. I pushed through 4 different airports. I read a whole book while waiting, queuing, taxiing and flying. Why?

Seeing friends from home is a bit like visiting home, even if you’re in a strange place, it's a rare, priceless feeling.

Seeing old stuff with old friends at the British Museum.