Goodbye Finland, Hello Estonia!

Monday, 13 July

Dee has officially called Finland ‘boring’. With their relative low population over a fairly broad area, there isn’t much to see in regards to museums, or attractions that are attractive to us. There is also a shocking low level of op shops for Dee to ferret around in. And apparently there are too many trees.

I like the place even if I can’t figure out any of the words now. But the place is different with enough ‘normal’ things to make it not feel alien. Although, having poker machines in petrol stations is just weird…

Dee is missing 2 main things from the Northern part of our journey:

1.       1. Travelling the back roads to get from point A to B. In the UK you could do that but here it’s not really feasible and/or possible. Myself, I enjoy the open road and not go through the gears every minute but that’s only because I’m doing the driving.

2.       2. The lack of traditional craft to be seen. Dee was hoping for seeing people making traditional art and craft for the various countries we travel through. I can understand that but I think it’s hard to expect to easily find them.

I think it’s pretty hard to find ‘traditional’ or ‘cultural’ centres now. There has been a massive global change to cultures over the last 100 years. There’s a reason why we use tractors instead of sickles and buy clothes from China instead of hand looming and sewing our clothes.

We realised when we were having a traditional Nepalese meal in Finland a family moving to another country has at least the option of opening a restaurant of their home country. I can’t think of too many ‘Australian’ meals that justify a whole menu if we moved anywhere. It’s like we’re too multi-cultural….

Tuesday, 14 July

I just realised that it’s the first time in many years I didn’t have to worry about the end of Financial Year. I was only made aware of it when I received an email from the ATO. Weird.

After a short drive, we were in Helsinki before lunch. We decide that we would try to have a break from each other. Gene wanted internet time at a library, Dee wanted to go shopping and I wanted to visit the island fortress. After I dropped the girls off in the city, I went looking for my island but I couldn’t find the bridge to get there, so I went and parked where I could. 

When I stepped out of Springy, I heard ‘Highway to Hell’ booming from a large stage nearby. I thought it was some concert but it was the 15^th International Gymnastics competition with 55 countries attending. After lunch I filled in the time watching a male Austrian Skipping troupe, an USA team doing ‘Oh Mickey, you’re so fine’ in 80’s hypercolour clothing and a Swedish group juggling large balls. It was quite entertaining, especially with the old American ladies behind me going ‘Oh My God!’ every time something gymnastically occurs.

At 3pm I picked up the girls. Their day didn’t go as planned either as Gene was only able to get 15 minutes of internet time at the library and didn’t want to be abandoned by Dee, so Dee had to drag Gene around which sucked some of the fun of the ‘gathering’ experience of shopping.

We followed the GPS to the port to discover it was the wrong port for our ship, so we quickly found that companies port. We then found out it was the wrong port for the destination we wanted. We needed Tallinn and this port serviced Stockholm. We made the ferry with just enough time but not enough to stop Dee from stressing. The trip over was fantastic, the sea being so smooth (thank you Neptune and Poseidon). Dee had a bit of a claustrophobic episode trying to get to Springy as all the trucks on our deck were all squeezed in together making a rather tight maze.

We found the camping site, a refurbished, falling-down volleyball court, and after looking at what Tallinn could offer us tourists, we’ve decided to stay another day.

Apparently, there is multitude of traditional craft shops here for Dee.

J

The land of the midnight mosquitoes

Saturday, 11 July

Our final day in Sweden was great.

We stopped at one of the towns where it seemed Antik and Loppis (antique and flea market) signs were more prevalent than street signs. At the end of the day we bought a little wooden fishing rod, a trivet, horseshoe nails, a headlamp that soon will be steam punked, a couple of free ties and acquired some boar’s bristles for shoe making. One of the places also had a ‘museum’ of old stuff which was fantastic. A threshing flail, wooden shovels, snow sleds, amazingly short Lapland spears for bear hunting, nifty, wooden carrying devices to be placed on your shoulder, a bicycle for the ice (that Gene named an ‘ice-ycle’*badoom – tish!*) and lots of things from the day of yore. We also read that Hitler was dead.

One of the things we have noticed in Sweden is a healthy appreciation for older cars. On the weekends we’ve been here, the highways have been filled with convoys of classic cars, mainly American from the 50s to the 70s. It’s a welcome distraction. They go well with the Swedish Rockabilly CD I bought.

We’ve travelled further north than any Barnes (or Sutton on Dee’s side) we know of, about 100km from the Arctic Circle. We stopped at the town of Tore, the most northern town on our travels, to pick up milk, morning tea and cider and take the opportunity of a photo of us with a the town’s name in the background. Finding the town’s name on something was the hardest part of the visit (not including making verbal comments about the lack of DNA variety in the area).

Just before we crossed the border to Finland, we saw a bi-plane on the side of the road and decided to visit. It was a military disposal shop but the owner and his friend has a passion of making things out of wood. The Bi-plane, ET and flying saucer, a WW1 tank, Captain Jack Sparrow, a US jeep and Snoopy flying his Sopwith kennel were all made of wood. We also bought a pair of rubber goggles (we’re thinking Minion or Steam punk for Gene), a ladle so I can properly serve the thin gruel I cook for the girls and a metal whistle. 2 quick blasts indicate that I’m now annoying Dee.
J

We crossed over to Finland without any fanfare and stopped at the first petrol station to check out the fuel prices and enjoy a morning tea. The changes from one country to another were quite profound (or I was just looking for them). First up, the people looked different. Gone were the commonly seen blond and tanned Swedes. Now we saw a far more dark-haired and paler population with more ‘elfin’ facial features. Seeing them instantly reminded me of 2 brother whose father is Finnish and a friend who may have Finnish ancestry. I’ll check that up later….

They also have fennel doughnuts.

Basically, Finland is a marsh (although a very beautiful one). Where there aren’t forests, you have lakes, rivers and fields so heavily engineered with drainage canals they are rarely more than 50m wide without being separated by a deep ditch. The roads are also a fair bit higher than the normal land, so I’m not keen on pulling off onto anything that isn’t bitumen. It’s also the home to a billion billion mosquitoes.

Entering Finland in the afternoon did 2 things I wasn’t expecting: 1. The GPS took the initiative and thought to change the screen settings to ‘night’ which made it very hard to read (I think it’s also ironic as the sun doesn’t set until after 11 and it’s still light at midnight) and, 2. We changed time zones again bringing us an hour closer to Australia (only 7 hours now).

Unfortunately, the camping site we were planning on stopping at was full for campervans and caravans, so we parked in the large lot right next to the site and the Gulf of Bothnia. We enjoyed a dinner at the health resort across the road, making fun comments about the Tin Tin movie on the TV (TV!TV!TV! ), the users of the pool and sauna viewed through the window and the teenage boys who were dressed like some Justin Bieber fan club.

Sunday, 12 July

As today is Sunday, most interesting places are closed but we found some farm that did coffee. We saw the normal farm animals of horses, chickens, sheep, rabbits, a goat and a pig. We also succumbed and bought some hand spun wool to make nalbind goodness out of in some point in the future.

Looking at my handy-dandy excel program that I use to account for our fuel and budget, I realised we are now 54% through our entire trip and halfway through our journey with Springy. I’m now making cunning plans for the eventual sale of Springy, probably on Gumtree. I’m also thinking of creating a Youtube clip on the various workings of Springy to make people as aware as they can be prior to us coming to London as we have only a few days to sell her before leaving for New York. All I need is a video camera……..

We’re now resting at Majoniemi, a lake-side camping site in the middle of nowhere. Far too many horror movies have been set in places like this………

The afternoon was spent trying to fix one of the side blinds. We successfully reattached the mechanism as it was falling off but we couldn’t make the mosquito netting roll back up again. Only a half punch of my man card today. I tried to make up for it by taping up the gaps around the fridge and seeing if I can also fix the back door’s lock (success on the former but not on the latter).

Tomorrow we are heading south, halfway to Helsinki. Hopefully, the antique shops will be open along the way to appease Dee.

The value of a good map

Now that we have seen the main cities in the North, we moved on to Uppsala, a city with some amazing burial mounds that have been used for political purposes for millenia. What surprised me was the lack of finds there as they bodies were cremated then buried, so there's bugger all for people to dig up.

The museum was interesting but slightly annoying as it bounced between facts, legends, lore and hyperbole. They had a line line that you read from the modern time back to ancient. That wasn't bad I think they went in the wrong direction. The display talks about certain events and things being rescinded that leave you a bit perplexed until you move onto the next panel and they talk about the event or law that was brought in, linking it to the previous.

The artifacts were amazing. Again, looking at the original items that I've seen in reference books and reproductions worn or used at re-enactment events was awesome.

Moving north is more of an opportunity to see the land, sea and rivers with the towns scattered along the way. The most rememberable one is the locality of Soderhamn (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S%C3%B6derhamn). We had done our homework the previous day and looked at what we wanted to see on the free map of the area with the numbered points of interest. Prudently, we visited the Information office first as none of the places had addresses and not all the streets on the map were named.

The lady at the office was lovely and after a minute of talking to her, very apologetic. Each tourist spot was numbered and a number was indicated on the map but they didn't match. We eventually had all 3 addresses and we were off. the lady was going to have a bit of a chat with the printers as thousands of tourist maps that have been distributed throughout the region we disturbingly incorrect.

The first place was the town's museum which was closed until August (it would have been good if the information lady had that bit of information). The second place was an ecological, sustainable center about 15 minutes out of town. After driving up and down the long, country road a few times, we figured we had been given the wrong address. We then looked for the third place, a 12th century Church in the town of Trono, about 20 minutes on the other side of the region. Amazingly, it was still there but we couldn't find the folk museum that was supposed to be there as well.

That night we stayed at the town of Timra with a cunning plan to visit an op shop at 11am the following morning and then head north again. We do need to start noting which days these shops are open during the slow season as it was open only on Saturdays and it was a Thursday. Luckily, we found a great little antik (antique) shop where Dee found a fabulous cape and hat and a few English language books were found.

Sweden has a fairly open policy about being able to park for the nights in the rastplats (rest places) but the 2 that we had hoped to stay at had camping prohibited (including camper vans!!). Se we continued to Umea and we've staying at a camping ground.

Currently, I'm sweating in the laundry room, waiting for our washing to dry at 11pm. I had to book for the use of a washing machine and the only one free was from 2200 to 0100 hours.............

Tomorrow, we should be in Lulea, our final Swedish stop, and into Finland the most northern part of our journey. From there, it's all downhill.
:)

Stockholm Syndrome

Stockholm Syndrome

06 Jul

After we realised it should take 3 days to travel from Oslo to Stockholm but had accidentally booked the Stockholm campsite for the 2^nd night we made a long trip across Sweden. We had tried to move our reservation forwards one day but they were fully booked. We made it with heaps of time to spare and had a great dinner at a bar/restaurant called Stage. We were at first concerned about being too hot but the outside dining area where we were sitting was almost a wind tunnel. This must be a common occurrence as the tables had blankets for the patrons not suitably prepared for the wind chill.

Dee had a bit of an upset stomach earlier on the previous morning and it was still there the morning in Stockholm, so she wisely decided to rest for the day and go on a bread and water diet to get better.

For PT I decided to walk/run the rough path we were thinking of taking when exploring after breakfast. Unfortunately, I took a left turn at Ablerque and the session took an extra half hour to get home. When I came home, Dee had decided to rest so I took Gene out into the drizzle to explore the city. The cunning plan was to be back by 2pm to check out, re-fill one of the gas bottles, buy a few odds and ends for Springy and position ourselves just outside of Uppsala for our visit there the following day.

Even with the rain, Stockholm was amazing. We ended up walking on 6 of the 14 islands that Stockholm is built on. We headed for the old part of the city which has the Royal Palace, stopping like vagrants under one of the bridges to rest Gene’s sore legs (just to the old city was 2.5km). After an obscenely expensive morning tea of 2 hot drinks and a slice of cake for $23, we strolled the old city and looked at all the bits of the Royal Palace we could get into for free. The Chapel’s sculptures and paintings were amazing in their detail. We also peeked at the Throne Room but didn’t go past the ribbon barrier that required payment.

We strolled the city, getting slightly misplaced but having a good time. 

I saw a gentleman that reminded me of someone and he looked at me likewise. I finally said hello and it was Simon, a fellow Napoleonic re-enactor, who was with his wife seeing the sights after participating in Waterloo 3 weeks ago. Small world!

After having a fulsome lunch that cost slightly more than morning tea, we made the long looping trudge back home, just in time to pack up Springy and go looking for the a gas bottle refill. That happened reasonably easily and cheaply which is a massive relief as I was worried that I wouldn’t be able to find a place that refills ‘swap and go’ bottles. As we left, I spotted the same type of shop I was planning to go to but it right there, so I went to gather the required bits for Springy’s makeover. It was a bit difficult as nothing was in English but I persevered. I was away so long I received text messages from the girls wondering where I was. After visiting another shop for some groceries, we were off and slowly left Stockholm with its peak hour traffic.

After making dinner, I fixed the passenger side door as it was becoming recalcitrant and repaired the door of our hidey hole at the back where we keep our fold up chairs and water hose. Ever since we bought Springy that door has been an issue, mainly with one of the catches not catching. We tried to sort it out with professionals but it was only a temporary thing. When I looked in the afternoon, the metal strip that held the hinges for the door had started to pull away as the catch wasn’t supporting the door. It’s a bit like having a sore back because you have a gamy ankle. Hopefully I’ve sorted it all out. I replaced the shorted screws that failed on the metal strip with longer ones (I just have to find someone with an angle grinder to cut the tips off as they are poking through) and I made a new right angled bracket for the catch from a metal cigar  case I picked up a couple of weeks ago. After a bit of hammering, folding and screwing, it’s doing the job well. It’s something that McGyver would be proud of.

J

We are also the proud owners of some convex mirrors to put on our side mirrors to cover the blind spots. We’ll have Springy running wonderfully just in time to sell her.

Pre-Stockholm Syndrome by Gene

Hey guys, Gene here.

I’ll pick off where my dad left off. While dad went off and saw some boring thousand-year-old Viking ships *snore* mum and I stayed in Springy in the car park. It was an amazing experience! There were painted lines on the concrete and the occasional dog walker. And now and then, I kid you not, a CAR PARKED! We were both very excited but very sad to leave when dad finished looking at some boring education.

After that we stopped in a caravan park with a put-put course and disappointing slow wifi. I spend the better part of an hour trying to listen to a song on Youtube as ‘research’ for one of my stories. We later devoured a pizza so big that we still had leftovers that served as lunch for the next day. Mum later successfully perved on a van of guy who were parked next to us. (I was of course too busy reading)

We drove to a place called Karlstad that was riddled with dead ends and traffic jams. With the intent of finding a caravan park, we braved the terrors of the tiny roads, only to be let down by a festival that was occurring right where we had intended to park .So we instead stayed in park just off the side of the road. We had dinner in a restraint owned by a Greek guy who boasted about his food (he’s Greek, what did you except!?)

That was yesterday. Today we saw a sculpture by the famous Picasso. It  was basically a pole of concrete with differing swirls of black and white created by pebbles and plaster. There were also faces jutting out of its side, depending on which angle you viewed it on. I’m sure there was some sort artistic symbolism there, but I didn’t see it. Do you know that most famous artists didn’t make their sculptures themselves? Most of the time they create a small model of what they want and give it to somebody else, who does it for them. There even was one account of a man telling his helper what he wanted over the phone! Kinda ruins the image of your heroes, doesn’t it? Either way, it was still an impressive piece of art.

We are now at Stockholm (syndrome).  Tomorrow we are off to the old city of Uppsala. Dad is very exited because OLD STUFF. Mum is in dire need of a new book, and I’m working on a Markiplayer cosplay, so everything is turning out great.

Until next time, faithful readers.

(And unfaithful one as well. You bastards.)

Gene.

Into the land of Ikea and Abba.

Wednesday, 01 Jul

With a successful morning routine completed by 7.15am we were off for a 7.30am service for Springy. Things came to an abrupt stop when we realised the gates to the camping site were locked until 8am. Bugger. Luckily, someone opened them at 7.45 and we were off!

After a successful service, we crossed over to Sweden by tunnel and bridge. Once into the land of horned Vikings, Abba and Ikea we headed north, our first stop was…. Ikea! Not surpringly to me, it looked just like the Ikeas in Australia, much to the disappointment of Dee.  

The end of our travelling day was in the city of Halstad. A very nice place with cobble stoned streets in the central market area and very little signage that I shouldn’t be driving there. After accidentally finding the town’s information office (no signage or street signs and only found because we were window shopping and it looked like an information place) we did some basic grocery shopping, Dee bought another pair of pants and I bought myself one of those vests with a hundred pockets (well, a dozen) so I can be an intrepid explorer and carry stuff without lugging around my backpack everywhere.

I think I’m trying to become the stereotypical foreign tourist………

Sweden felt so different. I didn’t expect the flatness, the wheat fields or the clear blue sky that just seemed to stretch on. Maybe I was expecting the fjords straight up. It also was wonderfully warm without being too much so. It must be a recent change of weather though as we saw enough people looking lobster red by the end of the day. As we are a pale blue family almost pathologically afraid of the sun, we found it amazing, almost shocked, by the lack of sun safety by most of the people we saw.

We finally found our place for the night, even with the hindrance of the local map provided by the ‘Where’s Wally’ information Office. It’s a beautiful stony beach actively used by the locals with views to Denmark and the North Sea.

Thursday, 02 Jul

With clear day and non-early start, I went for a short walk/run and finished off with a 100 situps and a few pushups. The girls were so impressed they joined in and did a few situps themselves, just to prove to me they could.

One thing that is seriously lacking in Europe is the lack of op / charity shops and Dee has been showing severe withdrawal symptoms. In the UK you could find 4-5 in the main streets of any town. As I was driving through one town looking for a place to have morning tea, I saw the red cross and a large banner proclaiming it to be a second hand shop. We quickly changed plans for morning tea and headed in. Unfortunately, we were early by 20 minutes, so we had a coffee and biscuit and waited. Well, I did anyway. Dee was anxious, making plans to finish her coffee later as she saw people entering the building before the official time. Someone may be buying THAT THING that she was destined to buy. There were other people waiting outside, circling, circling, waiting for the first drop of blood to hit the water to trigger an uncontrollable feeding frenzy. Well, that’s what it looked like to me anyway. It must be pension day or something as there were quite a few elderly shoppers eyeing each other off, making sure they have a good position. The workers brought out a rack of clothes and a trolley of books, hoping to sate the mob’s desire but I think it had the opposite effect. We did walk out with a few nice things and Dee was riding high on a wave of purchasing pleasure without having to worry about buyer’s guilt.

We’ve stopped for the night at the town of Henan on the island of Orust. We’re staying in the town’s yacht club’s car park. There were already half a dozen camper vans by the time we arrived, the owners already in deck chairs soaking up the sun, their hard, wrinkled skin browning and becoming more corrugated. Not a smiling face amongst these miserable bastards. We went for a walk to get some cash, look at craft shops and finding a library that had free internet.

Ever since I started Dark Age re-enacting I’ve had numerous people ask me if it’s because of my Swedish heritage. The funny thing is that I’m Irish/Cornish and unless something happened one night with one of my many grandmothers down through the ages, I don’t knowingly have any Swedish blood. Now that I’m in Sweden, the Swedish don’t believe I’m not Swedish…….. And when I speak to them, they don’t believe I’m Australian because I’m too well spoken.

Off to Oslo tomorrow to see fjords and some Viking stuff.

Friday, 03 Jul

After annoying the owners of the yacht club by parking during the ‘night’ near a 3 point power point (because we have one) and not near the 5 point power points (because we don’t) as the guy who took our parking money said it was OK, we started preparing for our drive to Oslo.

The fridge started to tick after I came back from PT which is a good indication the gas bottle is now empty. I hooked up the second bottle so everything is fine for the next 2-3 weeks. The problem we now have is we can’t ‘swap and go’ the gas bottles as Calgor gas only supplies to the UK and not to Europe. We were told this wasn’t the case when we first entered into the contract with them but you can’t easily get gas anywhere else in the UK now. I’m hoping to find a gas company that is willing to fill our bottle instead of having to buy a European one. Not only is this a cost issue but we have to figure out where to store the third empty bottle.

We noticed that Springy was making those weird lurching actions when accelerating again, so we pulled over and replaced the fuel filter (man card stamped) with the spare we bought when we replaced the original filter. We must have picked up a cruddy tank of fuel in the previous afternoon. A side visit in Stockholm next week may be on the cards to get a few more spare filters.

Morning tea was at a Rastaplaz / Information area where they found a whale’s skeleton up on the top of a hill. They believe it was over 14,000 years old and the sea level was about 90m above where we were. There must have been some serious geological activity occurring to raise the ocean floor that high (or some Noah induced flood action).

We lunched in the car park of the University of Oslo as a Wikipedia search (if it’s good enough for politicians…) said 3 Viking ships were on display there. It was actually 15 minutes down the road…

The Viking Skips Huset in Oslo was amazing. It houses 3 found funeral Viking ships with many of their items found with them, such as carts, cooking equipment and chests. Again, this is the original artifacts that I’ve read in books or seen on the internet.

We’ll have another quick look around Oslo tomorrow and head east towards Stockholm, hopefully being there by Monday afternoon.

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.