
Don’t be fooled by his near PhD status — David Van Wagener is a rolling barrel of laughs, and his European Adventures YouTube videos are priceless gems of awesomeness (and the nerdy quad inside of me wants to make sure everyone out there experiences what I did when I first watched these videos. In the words of Bill S. Preston, Esq.,
Dude, it felt like I was really there man.)
When you combine a) has a wicked sense of humor, b) intellect, and c) the means and will to travel by power wheelchair, internationally, you have a recipe for some pretty transportive YouTube videos. And the dvanwage channel has that in spades. Right now he has three travel videos up: Europe Accessibility, European Adventures Pt I, and European Adventures Pt. II. These videos follow his trip last fall to Amsterdam, when he was asked to speak at a conference on new energy methods.
I love these videos because they’re authentic — he shows unreliable trams, what to do when your tram stop has steps, getting transferred into tiny European cars when you’re super tall (or relatively so when compared to the Dutch. ha), freezing his butt off on the transatlantic trip, and perhaps my favorite part, relating strange Dutch customs. I’ve yet to get my bony butt to Europe, so this is the closest I’ll be getting until I sell my grandma’s gold teeth for cash.