According to officially gathered statistics, I am Belle (from Beauty and the Beast) on the Facebook “What Disney princess are you?” survey.

For the record, this means:

You’re an intellectual and pride yourself on it. You know that your mind will lead you to great things - and it will also lead you to a better understanding of those around you. Like, say, a beast.

I wouldn’t go as far as saying that either Belle or myself are intellectuals… but this is Disneyland (and Blogland) so I’ll just let that one slide.

Guillaume is Ariel, which has got me thinking about the troubled past of Copenhagen’s Little Mermaid statue. Since the 1950s, she’s been blasted off her rock with dynamite, painted numerous times, and even had her arm sawn off in a drunken amputation.

The first time she lost her head was a political/artistic act by Danish artist Jørgen Nash and the Bauhaus Situationniste group in the 1960s - but the culprits of the second decapitation remain a mystery, although her head was anonymously returned to a Copenhagen TV station on the promise of an unpaid reward.

This iconic though diminutive statue draws plenty of non-vandal crowds to Copenhagen harbour’s Churchill Park too, including yours truly… on one very cold, early December morning. It was just me, her, and a field mouse. One of those magical pre-breakfast moments.

The Little Mermaid is a story from the beloved Danish fairytale author, Hans Christian Andersen, written in 1836 and not a product of the late 1980s Disney imagination. The image of the mermaid is common in Slavic folk mythology, and there are elements of Andersen’s tale in Dvořák’s opera, Rusalka.

How’s that for your daily trivia fix?

European cities have the perfect remedy for the glum onset of winter and the Oh-No-vember blues… It’s called December. As the chill sets in, many set up a central outdoor ice-skating rink for the festive season and then the fun ensues!

Paris has two main rinks; the central, larger and far more popular at Hôtel de Ville, and a smaller one nestled between Montparnasse tower and train station.

Not eager to join the mile long queue at Hôtel de Ville, Guillaume and I just settled in on the side to watch the sophistry and stumblings of the mixed-ability skaters. The next day, earlier in the morning, we had more luck at Montparnasse. It didn’t seem to be the case at first, as from a distance we could just see a sizeable line snaking around the skating venue. As we got closer realised that the people weren’t waiting for skate hire, but… theatre tickets!?! We asked just to be sure, and couldn’t help but wrinkle our noses. I love theatre, don’t get me wrong, but with the ice-skating just there with no queue – time to reconsider priorities, I think!

So we had a great time on the ice. Who would have thought that circling repeatedly, dodging the crowd (him) and trying to avoid spectacular spills (me) could have been so much fun? I think it’s great when a city puts on a bit of a romantic show with an ice-skating rink because it’s usually at one of the city’s most picturesque spots.

In Paris, one can whirl around with the Hôtel de Ville as the backdrop, the lighting provided by an adjacent carousel. In Copenhagen, the main square Kongens Nytorv is dolled up for skaters, with Royal Danish Theatre and the equestrian statue of Christian V as onlookers. In Cologne, the venue is in the midst of the homely seasonal warmth of the Christmas markets. It provides such a buzz… even in damp, cold, rental boots and the knock-kneed awkwardness of a foal trying to learn to walk…

Comparatively confined for space, there weren’t any of these shenanigans going on in Paris. But this video is skating at its funniest – showy spunkrat Evgeni Plushenko doing his thing to Sex Bomb by Tom Jones. 10 points to the costuming department!

Do I have something to prove? Do I have a screw loose somewhere? Yes and no, because I can’t believe that many people my age are “settling down”, without hardly having shaken enough up to settle it all down comprehensively. I worry that if that was the case for me, somewhere along the line I would explode in volcanic proportions, but as that would probably occur somewhere in mid-life, then I would be all caught up with the regret of age for not doing it earlier, tied down by those responsibilities that I had set in place so early in my life, and who knows? Perhaps I would then bore those on the “backpacker trail” with stories of my own teenagers, who in turn (backpackers and my teenagers) would be equally traumatised for life. So, all in all, “getting it out of my system” is a general health strategy for personal and global-wellbeing.

Ok, that was all convoluted bollocks – please don’t interpret it as an ageist rant – for here is the real reason. There are some amazing people out there, but as people tend to get caught up in their own lives for various reasons, you’ve got to get out there to meet them.

That’s it, plain and simple.

Even during my two months of the “Eurolines Hotel du Wheels”, I met some amazing people. Filipino immigrants and Rwandan refugees waiting for late trains in early morning Copenhagen were willing to tell me their life stories and experiences in Denmark, in a most elaborate fashion. We were attempting to convey that we had known each other for years (with ears only for each other), just to prevent a young drunk who was quite obviously trying also to tell me his life story and a few things that I wasn’t interested to hear. Old Polish men who would sneak me some beer and sausage in the bus and tell me about their favourite things in Poland. People out there are willing to open their hearts or houses to a total stranger with a backpack, and that’s why I love to travel.

I must explain why Eurolines was my key to surviving my first year in Europe, although really it’s very simple.  Accomodation.  I thanked my lucky stars the day I found that Eurolines had a two month unlimited travel pass, night buses, and a low-season discount.  What seemed perfectly appealing did have its drawbacks though.  The accommodation was a bus seat (although being able to sleep quite compactly, I could crawl up in foetal position and get a good night’s sleep if I had both seats to myself), and “low-season” meant “middle of winter”, so it was quite chilly for the numerous 4 and 5am arrivals.  But what I would do is spend 5 nights in the bus, waking and wandering the cities to which I had been spirited overnight, and then a few nights in a hostel for a shower and a proper bed.  I loved it.  If I couldn’t get a ticket to somewhere, I’d just go elsewhere.  I think my itinerary read something like: Budapest – Amsterdam – Dublin (as there weren’t any tickets to Stockholm when I first wanted to go, I spent the weekend in Ireland instead) – Amsterdam – Stockholm – Copenhagen – Paris – Madrid (rest, relax… shower…) – Andorra (a day of skiing in the

Pyrenees, why not?) – Barcelona (more time…) – Frankfurt – Warsaw – Krakow (even more time…) –

Prague.

  I’ve overcome my initial attention-span deficit and I am now able to stay in a place for longer than three weeks without getting itchy feet.  Maybe I can stretch it to four weeks now… 

But no, I was recently able to stay in the one place for a year and a half – however, as it was Russia, the biggest country in the world, I could quite contently “trot” at my own pace for vast distances and through diverse cultural and geographic regions without having to deal with the bureaucratic visa rigmarole of leaving Russia’s borders.  But more about that later…