Gulliver’s Travels

Friday, 26 June

I’m sure I still have particles of black powder embedded in the left side of my face due to firing volleys at Waterloo.

With about a week of driving on the right hand side of the road, I’m almost getting used to it. I still use the phrases ‘Look Left and Live!’ (as that’s where the traffic is coming from) and ‘Right is Right’ (to remind myself that I have to drive on the right). So far things have been OK. It should be interesting when we get back to the UK and have to go around roundabout in a clockwise direction.

We couldn’t believe the amount of cyclists and the amount of bike paths in Belgium. I think they even have right of way on roundabouts. Germany, so far, is also supportive of bikes but not the extent of Belgium. So few wear helmets which seems crazy but that could because they don’t cycle on the roads and stay on the paths.

I think it’s an unwritten rule that whilst driving, campervan owners will wave to other campervan owners and never to caravan owners. I think this is also the reverse rule for caravan owners as none of those bastards have waved back yet. I have noted that very few Germans Motorhome drivers wave regardless. Do campervan owners look down upon caravan owners as they don’t have the dedication to the travelling cause to own a campervan and just hitch up their caravan to the family car? Maybe caravan owners think that the pretentious gits who own campervans need to get a life?

Whatever the case, I like campervans as you can stop in any weather, step into the back and have a coffee or a kip without having to brave the elements and have the greater flexibility to park for the night where I can get away with. Drawbacks include driving around tiny little streets when visiting tiny little towns and if something needs fixing or maintaining, it all needs to be handed over to the mechanic. Caravan owners have the flexibility to drop their home off at a caravan site and drive into a town and park in overhead parking structures.

Trucks in Germany seem to be limited to 90km/hour on the highway which means I can overtake them. Quite a different experience when previously it felt that they were blowing me off the road when they hurdled past. The lack of hills and lots of autobahns so far has been a Godsend although you have to actually leave the main roads to see the interesting towns with all those interesting shops that Dee is pining for.

Dee and I have finally worked out the ratio of 1:1 for driving and seeing interesting towns. If we leave at 9.30 and get to our finished point by 3pm so Dee can have her afternoon kip, we should have half an hour for lunch, 2.5 hours for driving and 2.5 hours for wandering through the streets and shops of whatever place strikes her fancy, as long as she gives me enough time to decelerate, not cause an accident and turn off.

One of the places we pulled up in had a ‘Miniature Land’ that Dee and Gene loved. About 20 towns in the local area had miniatures made of them with homes and businesses abound. There was even a factory of tiny wind turbines. Of note was the abundance of beach scenes where people were having sex in the dunes or a guy was running off with a woman’s bikini top. Lots of scenes of people doing first aid and CPR in various forms of accidents were also there.

Last night we were looking at maps and looking at the GPS and making the battle plan for the following day’s drive. The GPS told us we were in one spot and on the map we thought we further along. What had occurred was the town we thought we were at and the town we were actually at had very, very similar names but the tiny little inbred town we were at didn’t show up on the map.

Hopefully, we’ll be in Copenhagen by Sunday and into Norway and Sweden by the start of the week.

As we have already completed over 5,000km, I’m looking for a mechanic to do a minor service on Springy. I thought I found one yesterday but since he wasn’t interested in my business unless I spoke German, I’ll have to look for one in Sweden/Norway next week. And our fridge is playing silly buggers with us. We normally use the gas setting for cooling the fridge when parked but currently it’s not cooling as it was before. There’s still gas in the bottle and the pilot light is burning but it isn’t cooling the fridge. I just looked at the outside vent to see if there was any blockage to restrict the flow of air but it looks OK, even if it’s warm. We’ll probably have to see a campervan specialist next week for that.

Tonight (Friday) we went to a Greek restaurant next door to where we’re parked. Perhaps only in Germany will you get sauerkraut and a roast potato as part of your salad in your Greek meal.
J

One of the problems with a whirlwind visit over Europe is getting a grasp of the language of the country you’re in. My knowledge of the German language is limited to my grade 8 German classes 30 years ago, Hogan’s Heroes and Inspector Rex on the SBS…..

I googled up the sunrise and sunset of the most northern town that we’ll be in and there’ll be about 21 ½ hours of sunlight in the day. We’ll miss the summer solstice and the day where the sun never goes down but this is still awesome.

Saturday, 27 June 15

From Bremen we travelled northish to Flensburg, a large city on the Danish/German border. See saw a caravan and campervan repair shop near where we parked and wished it was open for our fridge to be looked at but they aren’t open on Saturdays. Tomorrow was planned to end up in Copenhagen until Dee asked where her purse was. After a quick search of Springy (that’s all that’s required) we realised Dee had left it in Wacken, a small town in the middle of nowhere where we had lunch that day. The bonus of this 3 hour return journey is that we will come back to Flensburg tomorrow afternoon and hopefully see the campervan people on Monday morning.

Sunday, 28 June

The drive to Wacken was easy since there we no trucks on the road, maybe because it was a Sunday and nothing is open to deliver to. It’s quite a civilised thing to occur and pretty foreign to me where shops are open 24/7.

We figured we would be back in the carpark next to the shut supermarket by lunch, so we decided to go to visit the Schloss Gottorf Landes Museen as we saw signs for it when driving backwards and forwards from Wacken to Flensburg. It’s a great place to visit with Bog bodies, a Viking ship, Neolithic tool making demonstrations and art throughout the ages with the downside that the family ticket had to be shown at each area which became a pain if someone needs to go to the toilet or people want to see different things (which isn’t possible). Trying to translate the info into English was half the fun.

I had hoped to visit the Hedeby Museum but we ran out of time in the afternoon. It looks great but it probably isn’t possible tomorrow with trying to get the fridge fixed and a 3 hour drive to Copenhagen.

Monday, 29 June

The intended business we had hoped would fix our fridge only sold camper vans but gave us an address of a business that could. They were awesome and after about an hour we were on our way to Denmark. It was a fair drive to reach Copenhagen and we did miss the original Lego Land ( due to not knowing it was there until we had past it) and nifty Viking village that was too far off the beaten track.

Tomorrow we’re off to visit the sites of Copenhagen. It should be fun and incorporate a barge bride around the city to see the main tourist sights. Wednesday we have booked Springy in for a service before we leave Denmark. The poor guy has done 7,00km since since his last service and that was about a month and a half ago.

I had hoped that Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Finland would all use the same Kroner but unfortunately, it’s not the case so I have to be careful not to accumulate too much cash in each country.