Tuesday, three meals, three countries!

We are back in Brussels now, and have emptied the car into Clare’s flat. Washing is on and everything is airing out. It’s hard to believe that we’re back.

This morning we left Hamburg early, we wanted to set off before rush hour, so we packed up and had breakfast and were on the road by 7:45. We drove to Mastricht in the Netherlands…the first time I’d set foot in that country, and we had a good walk around. It is a very pretty city–Clare says it is the best one in the Netherlands, but she hasnt been to all of them, so I’m not sure how much of an expert she is. There are plenty of cafes, and we found one just over a bridge that had good apple cake. By now we’ve tried apple cake in every country we went to! Kind of a fun thing to do.

Our return to Brussels didn’t take as long as we’d thought. The sun was shining, and the traffic was calm because apparently everyone closes up shop and goes on holiday in August. We were back here by mid afternoon. We washed EVERYTHING and sorted through the camping equipment before taking a break to go for pizza down the street.

Tomorrow we take it easy, and get the rest of the cleaning up finished…we may go on some Belgium adventures after that.

Sunny Monday in Hamburg…until now

We have seen a lot today, and it has been a lovely sunny day up until the sudden torrential downpour that has brought us scurrying to Starbucks.

Our walking tour started at the tourist information office near the hostel. Unfortunately the lady there just circled large sections on the map and said to go there…by train or walking. Not very guidey! Lucky for us, Captain got a text from her very guidey mother who told us lots of good places to see.

We went in a tunnel under the water. It was a pretty deep tunnel, with stairs and elevators. There was even an elevator for cars. This tunnel was built in the early 1900s, and was probably used for bringing goods from the port over to the mainland. I’d know more if I could understand German.

There was not much to do on the other side, but there was a good viewpoint to see the boats and the harbor.

There’s a lot of water here, presumably there were storehouses for shipping goods. Now they look like business buildings.

We are realizing now that we are back in a big city, we see garbage overflowing…we didnt see this in Scandinavia.

There’s lots of graffiti too

On our walk we learned that Hamburg won an award this year for being green. So, despite the garbage, they are doing lots for the environment. They also have public access to the shores of their in-town lake. We walked around parts of the lake

We stopped at a cafe on a dock right beside a sailing school, and watched the novice sailors try not to capsize their boat….

….while we ate apple cake and tried to trap the wasps under ashtrays.

Our next adventure had us suddenly at the St. Nicolai’s church memorial. This church was badly bombed by the Allies during the war, but the steeple still stands as it was used as a landmark for other bombing campaigns.

We went up the towering elevator, and could look out in all directions over the city, and compare the present day view to photographs taken from the same vantage point just after the bombing. It was amazing to see the level of destruction, and it was also good that the text (in German and English) gave a balanced perspective on WWII…not just about how the Allies bombed Hamburg.

The partial footprint and walls of the church are still standing, much like Coventry Cathedral still stands as a memorial.

While up in the tower, Captain practiced her gargoyle impression

We continued to Deichstrasse (one of the guidey suggestions) and had a good look around. It was very cute, but seriously lacking in Canadian flags!

It was at around this time that Captain commented on how we have had a rain free day! We rounded a corner and saw very large black clouds on the horizon. We got to Starbucks just in time to stay dry.

We depart for Brussels in the morning, and will do day trips from there after we get stuff like the tent, stove, car etc cleaned up! It will be good to be done the massive driving days.

Sunday, 8000 km, and the quest for a hamburger in Hamburg!

Hello from Hamburg. We’re in a Starbucks because it is raining, and they have free wifi and our hostel doesn’t. In Germany there seems to be very little commercial activity on Sundays, so finding a hamburger tonight might be a real challenge.

We left this morning, and had to do a bit of a backtrack to Esbjerg to get Captain an inhaler. She finished hers last night rather suddenly. They really should have a “you’re running out” warning. Anyway, to find an open Apotek on a Sunday we needed to go to another town. It was early in the morning so everyone was sleeping or at church, and it was raining, so they werent out for a Sunday stroll. We were able to get great parking and get back on the road quickly. Three cheers for the Danish medical system once more! Clare is feeling so much better, and is breathing without wheezing. Hills are not much of a problem anymore, but at night she coughs still.

On the way to Hamburg we stopped at Flensburg to have a sandwich, a cup of tea, a nap and a bit of an explore.
There was not much going on, but the rain was not heavy, so we had a good walk around the main shopping street and saw the church.

The rain was very heavy, as was the traffic heading to Hamburg.
We had a traffic jam for about half an hour. We thought maybe someone had an accident from speeding in the rain, but maybe not. We never saw an accident.

Our hostel is not too far from the center of town.
It has over 300 beds in it, and was full for the past two days…not sure what was going on in Hamburg then!
It is not like the Scandinavian hostels…geared much more towards youth. Kitchen access is restricted (have to leave your locker key as a deposit so they know who is making messes) and they have no oven or fridge! We think they want to force you to eat in their restaurant…hence our quest for the hamburger…we don’t want to eat at the hostel.

On our quest we found a store selling primarily rubber ducks of all sorts

Some are not so acceptable…

We ran into a loppis….and we went in, but we should know better by now! They are called Floh markts here, like flea market…and it was worse than a Sami loppis…considering the available resources in Hamburg.

There was also a market with international food available…Italian pizza
French crepes
and Danish hotdogs!

(what do you think of that Tine?).

A crowd had gathered near the town hall to hear Wisecraecker, a German band which according to our internet research is moderately famous (“they look like a bunch of boys in black t-shirts and wooly hats trying to be cool”, says Captain).
The crowd was dancing along, and seemed to be enjoying themselves.

We walked by some very expensive shops, and have not yet found the affordable area of town. The rain picked up, and we found ourselves conveniently at a Starbucks, and are making full use of their comfy chairs and free wifi.
We may be back here again tomorrow!

Here is our hamburger, in Hamburg

Saturday, on a tractor across the sea

We went to a Wadden island today! It was the island of Mando, and we had to go across at low tide since that’s when there’s a road. Tide was low enough between 10:30 am and 1:30 pm today. We were not brave enough to drive across ourselves….and we were not stupid enough to bike or walk across like some…instead, we took the Mando bus along with lots of other tourists. The bus is not really a bus, it’s like a double decker hay ride pulled by a tractor. There were seats below and benches above.

The ride took about half an hour to get to the island. To both sides we could see salt marshes, and lots of birds. There were sheep on the salt marsh too. Clare tells me that the sheep will be salty when they are eaten because of all the salt consumed during their life….I’m not so sure.

The road really is a road, gravel and stones a little elevated from the marsh. When the tide comes in the water is 170 cm over road level, so it’s hard to believe that the road stays put, with all the water running over it twice daily.

On our return journey we saw the tide rushing in. Lucky for us the tractor has big powerful wheels!

While on the island there was not much to do except walk and explore. I wandered out onto the mud, out to a beached sailboat.

We walked through the grass and over sand dunes, natural barriers from the tide.

There are very high dykes to protect the island and Ribe from the waters. The island had several loppises happening in garages…not as bad as the Sami loppis, but pretty close!

The island has a refurbished an old fashioned windmill, but that was closed and not working today.

The church was full of people having a signlanguage tour, so we stayed out. We went to the cafe to pass some time and enjoy hot chocolate until the tractor bus was ready to go back.

One little boy on the ride back was very excited that he knew the word tractor. He didn’t know many other words. He must have repeated “tractor” over 30 times. It was so exciting that he fell asleep half way across. His father told us that last year one of the tractors tipped over in the incoming tide and people were stranded there. This was particularly worrisome when the driver suddenly stopped and said something Danish and a huge crowd of people got out and started picking plants from the seabed in the marsh. The boy’s father explained that the plant was used in making Danish schnapps or something, but he didn’t know the name in English. I didn’t know that they could pick plants from a wildlife refuge and protected environment, but they pulled them up, roots and all by the bagful.

Upon our return, we stopped in at the Wadden sea center where we learned all about salt marshes (in Danish) and saw taxidermied birds, seals, and a sheep. I found out that it was lugworms that made the funny “poop trails” coming out of the holes in the sea bed.

There was an interesting animation that explained about them.

We explored downtown Ribe once more in the sunshine, taking photos that we probably took yesterday.

The little cobbled streets are so charming, that everywhere you look could be a postcard.

Some of the buildings are not exactly squared and leveled.

This is the smallest house in Ribe.

This is the hill under which all of the plague victims are buried. Apparently they are only 40cm under the grass!

We saw a new monument today, it is the record of the river height during floods. It was remarkable to see how much higher it was during each time period. The highest level was from the 1634 flood that wiped out most of the town.

We have learned a lot here in Ribe, and we have enjoyed our peaceful stay at the hostel. We have a roommate now, who has decided that 8pm is bed time. Too bad for her….we’re still up…but we’re being peaceful and knitting…not having a wild drunken party like our neighbours had last night!

Tomorrow morning we are off to Hamburg.

Friday with the Vikings

This morning our first mission was to make breakfast then explore the local hospital. Captain has had a really bad chest cough for two weeks. It was aggravating her asthma and just not getting better. After a crazy coughing fit last night, it was decided that we’d see what the Danish medical system is all about.

Our hostel was very good, and got us information for the local hospital/doctors offices/clinic (not quite sure what it was). We went there shortly after 10, and were able to get an appointment for 11:20. Of course before the appointment we went for a very brisk walk through the town, getting Clare’s lungs good and crackley and not using her inhaler… she said her mom would totally approve, and then we went back so she could see the doctor. Within 20 minutes she was back out, giving me the thumbs up. Diagnosis:walking pneumonia (and she thought I was making up the disease when I told her about it earlier). She has medicine now, and we’re taking things slowly. We saw a Viking in the apotek (drug store)….this is kind of a strange town! We have hostels booked for the rest of our adventures, so we will be out of a damp and flooding tent. All in all we are thoroughly impressed with the efficiency of the medical system here, and glad we got Clare the help she needed.

After making lunch we headed to the Viking Center, just outside of town.

It is a really strange place. It is like the Skansen or Upper Canada village, in that there are people in period dress doing things that would happen in a Viking town….but the strange thing is that some of these people stay overnight in the tents and live as vikings all summer! Some of the people are employed to teach traditional crafts and trades…some are students…others are “holiday Vikings”.

We saw a great display of falconry, with an owl and a Harris hawk…they flew right over our heads without making a sound. They are pretty amazing birds. The little kids got to try holding the big leather glove with the tiny bit of meat, and looked rather horrified as the birds swooped down at them.

We saw a blacksmith, stables, gardens, tablet weaving, silversmithing to make coins and rings, button making with horns and antlers, and lots of people whittling or sewing as they sat and chatted. One group explained that they needed new dresses, so they were playing “pimp my dress” by sewing new things on it. I think they were holiday Vikings. To our dismay the souvenir shop had lots of things that were made in China, not by the local Vikings.

Unfortunately the Viking center had been flooded with all the recent rain, so some animals were stuck in far corners of their fields, and the rivers had swollen to cover paths, and almost submerge the dock by the small Viking boat.

These Vikings walk around barefoot most of the time, so they didn’t seem to mind. They also don’t call themselves Viking, but rather “wykings”, so maybe all of us English speakers have been saying it wrong.

After a little break we went to see the Ribe Cathedral, an see how high the flood waters had come during a huge flood in the 1630s. The water was as high as Captain! It would be over my head.

We climbed up the tower, 287 allegedly, but Clare was counting each one and said that there were less than that.

The view from the tower was spectacular, specially because it wasn’t raining! We could see the island that we’re driving to tomorrow at low tide. I think it will be really cool to drive to an island! From the height of the tower it was also evident that the flooding this year is pretty bad, lots of fields are affected.

Thursday, to Rainy Ribe

We haven’t turned into bog people yet! Despite a clear and sunny weather forecast we were hit with another rainy night.

Our gear is dry except the tent, and we expect that if we find a dry windy part of Denmark that it will dry in no time at all. Otherwise we’ll try to camp in the car.

Benefits of rainy camping: bakery breakfast, no dishes to clean up, no mosquitos, no lines at the showers, the car looks a lot cleaner…at least on the outside…we might be forced to actually relax and sit inside reading and knitting.

A quick stop at the bakery and we were feeling a bit better about things. We went to the museum in Silkeborg to see the Tollund man…there was a bog girl there too, but really all you could see was her hair and that she was wrapped up in fur. The Tollund man was very well preserved, much like the bog body we saw yesterday. This one even has stubble on his chin.

The rest of the museum is nothing spectacular.

It was in Danish…so we made up a few facts in each room and moved on rather rapidly. They had strange mannequins in period dress(sort of) in period rooms….

there were also collections of miscellaneous glassware and pottery, flint arrowheads, chain mail and an old bicycle.

The special limited-time-only exhibit about steam boats was another treat. There were lots of taxidermied birds and a background of jazz music.

Yesterday’s museum definitely out-museumed this one! We did find a cafe here and enjoyed a piece of apple cake before braving the rain again.

We stopped in at the tourist information center, and got the weather forecast. It appears that everywhere nearby is rainy, except the north west of Denmark!

Looks like we’ll be wet wherever we go….so we headed to Ribe to check out their hostel.

On the way we took a coastal road on a fjord and saw some kite surfers. It wasn’t raining at the time, so we had a lunch break and a bit of a tent drying session.

At least we will have a camping option if things clear up. There is a lot of agriculture around here, and we are pretty sure we smelled a pig farm along the ride…glad we didn’t stop there for lunch.

In Ribe, it is VERY expensive to camp! We ended up going to the hostel instead, and are both staying here in the dorm for the same price as we would have been camping in the rain. We even got wifi included and the Ribepas, so we get discounts tomorrow too…even better, the weather is supposed to improve in the morning, so we will be recharged and ready to go.

We think it is so great here that we’re planning on staying 2 nights! We have an 8 bed dorm to ourselves!

Tonight we will walk into town and follow the night watchman as he sings through the streets. Tomorrow there are so many things to do. Ribe is the oldest city in Denmark, and home to lots of Viking exhibits to see and cultural history to experience. We may even go to the Wadden islands!

It is dark at 9:30 pm…tent is in the car, so no photo will be taken of the tent…here’s Ribe at 10:30 pm

And here’s the night watchman we followed

He gave a great free tour of the old town in Danish and English.

Windy Wednesday

We left Tine’s place this morning, setting off for Arhus to see the bog man.

Thanks so much Tine and Henrik for the warm welcome and hospitality.

Our first stop was to get propane gas at a huge camping store, but it seems that Denmark is not a place to buy propane either!

If camping with a Coleman stove be sure to bring enough fuel with you as it is impossible to buy in Sweden, Norway or Denmark.

Next we drove along the coast and stopped at a Vaffel Huset for an ice-cream cone by the sea.

It is so windy today! On the wind is the scent of agriculture…rather stinky…but when we got to the coast we could smell the sea.

It was so windy that a family was struggling to hang onto their kite…and we got sandblasted while we tried to build a castle.

Our true mission of the day was to find the museum south of Arhus, so we programmed Serge the satnav and took off.

It was a bit of a trick finding the place, and when we arrived we were hungry and tired, so we had a sandwich and a nap, then entered the huge museum that covered from the stone age to Viking times in the area.

We really enjoyed seeing the bog man and learning about the forensic processes involved in discovering his last meal, or the cause of his death, and the circumstances in which he lived. He really was well preserved, and his skin had turned to leather under the bog for so long. He’s a bit mummy like in appearance, but not regally laid out like the Egyptians were. He was kinda squashed.

In the Viking exhibits we followed a particular character’s life and adventures by using a token with a computer chip in it that triggered a rather long speech when you waved it in front of the sensor at each station. Unfortunately I never found out what happened to my guy because the chip was kinda finicky and the museum was closing soon. Captain had much more success….her guy got all the way to York and settled there.

The next mission was to get dinner ingredients and find a reasonable campsite.

We did not get svine bouillon, but we did pick up the fixings for fajitas and set the satnav for campsites in the area. We headed away from the shore, since seaside campsites would be expensive….we found ourselves in the “hilly” area of Denmark.

It’s not all that hilly, but these things are relative.

The first two campsites that we found were pretty fancy, and exclusive, and charged upward of 200 DKK for our small tent, plus the cost of showers. We lucked into one nearby that was very reasonable…everything included, showers, hot water, Internet and a great lounge area with a tv just in case it gets really rainy, a swimming pool area with a big waterside, a playground and a jumping pillow, all for 200 DKK AND it is almost empty! We figure that this is a place that caravans will book into for the summer, set up, then come down for the weekend. There are no other tents in sight. The ground is nice and flat, and hopefully we’ll have a nice quiet night.

We cooked up our fajitas and got the tent up with only sprinkles of rain. It was a lovely sunny day all day until this point! We’re confident that the rain, if it comes, will be gone soon and the wind will dry everything quickly.

Tomorrow the plan is to climb up the tallest hill in Denmark, then go to Silkeborg to see another bog man, and then head to the west coast to continue our adventures.