Mon, 18 Aug 2003

author Tim	location St. Pauli, Hamburg, Deutschland
posted 14:11 CEST 21/08/2003	section Europe2002/Europe/Danmark/Danmark 2 ( all photos )

End of Scandinavia ( No photos )
We drove into town to get some cash to pay for the night's accommodation, and returned to pay like the good people we are.
From there, we drove the remaining thrity or so kilometres to the Deutsch border. Now remember all the trouble I have had with my passport because I don't have stamps to show where I have been? I decided to do the right thing, so we pulled into the border crossing where I fudged my way with some Deutsch and discovered that to get a stamp in my passport I would have to go to the tiny border crossing about ten kilometres west! That's very strange, as surely about 99% of the traffic crossing the border uses the massive fast motorway.
Not wanting to upset Rosie, we got back in the van and drove stamp-less into Deutschland.
And thus endeth our tour of Scandinavia. We had a great time, and stretched our initial time estimate of three weeks to five, without minding a single bit. It was a fantastic place to see, so varied from north to south, country to country. I think we have taken enough ferry rides to last us a good long while, and spent enough cash to require us to keep a tight hold on the purse-strings from now on.
But we wouldn't have done anything different. Fantastic memories, we hope to re-live them at some time in the future, intending to return to brave a Scandinavian winter some day.

author Tim	location St. Pauli, Hamburg, Deutschland
posted 13:30 CEST 21/08/2003	section Europe2002/Europe/Danmark/Danmark 2 ( all photos )

Danish Castles ( 30 photos )
This morning the showers were good and hot, so we enjoyed those while possible (something you have to do while travelling - the next one could be days away).
Driving out of the city and electing not to find the Carlsberg brewery for a tour, we needed breakfast and had little to eat. Another service station fixed this problem with cheapo coffee-and-cake deals while we poured more of Kuwait's finest into Rosie. Which reminds me, they have a service station over here called Q8. Get it?
There are plenty of famous Danish castles, but we had chosen to restrict ourselves to just two. First on the list was Kronborg Slot in Helsingør, at the top of the island of Zealand, about an hour north from København. This is famous as the castle from Shakespeare's Hamlet, and in fact we had by only days missed the "Hamlet in Hamlet's castle" performance of said play. Nevermind, would have been in Danish anyway.
Instead, we wandered around the courtyard and looked in the places we could without shelling out for a ticket. This place was interesting, but not amazingly so. The moat and surroundings certianly were attractive, but we had a bigger fish to fry.
This was Frederiksborg Slot, half an hour or so south-west in Hillerød. This highly-impressive castle spread across three islands was not only fantastic in its own right, but seemingly every square inch of the walls in the endless series of rooms across four floors are plastered with paintings, forming the Museum of National History.
After wandering down the long approach road, through the beautiful grounds, past the symmetrical Baroque Garden and into the castle proper, we spent hours wandering, attempting to absorb it all but failing miserably. You could honestly spend about a month just in this place, looking at the furniture, maps, books, astronomical equipment (old, working model of the Copernican system).
Highlights included a special chair-lift for the king to be lowered from one level to another, built in 1680 or something and still apparently in working order, and the huge mural paintings in the great hall (and elsewhere), which I could have studied for a day or so each, and the ornate chapel with amazing old organ.
There was just so much to take in, with even the boring rooms having amazing roof murals and furniture worth more than the GDP of most countries.
I was also most impressed with the way visitors were treated - a few simple "please don't touch things", and strings across the chairs were all that came between us and priceless antiques. They also highly impressed me with their photographic policy - a simple "no flashes please". I am constantly amazed at the number of places which won't let you take photos of anything. Why? I'm not damaging anything, merely catching some light through my camera rather than my eyes. If I was planning on selling them then ok, I understand, but I can't afford to buy the offical guide book at every single place we go. Sorry, rant over now :) .
Needing some late lunch, we went back to a café in the grounds and had to revert to pointing at what we wanted (very rare here), but it arrived and we ate it happily.
From there, we needed to push south fast while Rosie still wanted to. We drove across the two remaining bridges (yes we had to pay those extortinate tolls on the way back too), before finding another caravan park which claimed to have gas but was conveniently located for a night's stop anyway, in the town of Åbenrå, imaginatively named Åbenrå Camping.
The only problem was that we had spent the last of our Danish cash paying the tolls, and had originally intended to get through to Deutschland that night where we could use euros. No matter, as the slightly strange man was happy for us to pay the next day. Very trusting for a caravan park owner. The place was nice enough, and we cooked an improvised meal with what little we had left in our cupboards, before retiring for the night.

author Tim	location St. Pauli, Hamburg, Deutschland
posted 12:40 CEST 21/08/2003	section Europe2002/Europe/Danmark/Danmark 2 ( all photos )

København ( 33 photos )
(Continued from Sverige 2).
Getting used to the Danish road signs again, we picked a random entrance into København (Copenhagen in English), and stumbled across exactly what we were looking for purely by luck - another Autocamper place, located just as conveniently as the one in Stockholm was, this time near Fisketorvet (old fish market, now modern shopping centre).
After chatting to the amusing attendant at the Autocamper for a while, he showed us where to get the bus into town. But after the walk around Stockholm, this was going to be nothing at all. So, map and GPS again in hand, we wandered off in search of the fabled free bikes you can use in the city for a small deposit. However, the combination of perfect hot weather, summer and Saturday meant that these were well-and-truly spoken for, leaving us on foot. No real problem, but would have been nice for a change.
We walked through an industrial area (in fact, looking back, much of the city has that feel) past the Hovedbanegården Central Station to the interestingly-named Wonderful Copenhagen tourist office. Lonely Planet describes this place as having long and fretful queues, but that didn't quite prepare us to have to push past people just to get in the door. After about thirty seconds, we decided to go it on our own.
Just next door is the famous Tivoli Gardens century-old amusement park, which we later found out has the world's oldest still-operating roller-coaster. Deciding to save our money and see the town instead, we pushed on to Rådhust-pladsen (Town-Hall Square). The Rådhus itself was closed, however.
This amazingly busy square had a noisy concert going on, and we decided that all our walking we were doing meant we were able to be naughty and have some KFC for lunch. After this, we spent most of the afternoon on Lonely Planet's København walking tour.
This took us first along Strøget, billed as the world's longest pedestrian mall. It's actually quite a few of them joined together, with roads in between, so I'm not sure if it really counts, but the locals didn't seem to care. There were so many people, so many shops (mostly selling "modern" things), all along these amazingly beautiful old cobbled streets lined with tall old buildings.
One interesting place we stopped in was The Amber Specialist. Amber seems to be a specialty here in the way you associate crystal with Waterford, but we were only interested in the fact that this shop had a huge model of Sydney Opera House made out of the stuff!
We stopped along strøget in between Gammel Torv (Old Square) and Nytorv (New Square) to eat some wonderful peaches bought from a fruit-seller, and admire the surrounding architecture. There is an impressive fountain in Gammel Torv which was drawing the crowds on such a hot day also.
We wandered down through plenty more squares, past plenty of statues and generally overloading the senses. This photo shows the inter-twined dragon's tails spire on top of the Børsen (Renaissance stock exchange building) on the left, and Christianborg Palace on Slotsholmen on the right.
A couple of hours was spent in the interesting diversion of the Guinness World Records Museum. Not too suprisingly, it focused heavily on Danish entries, but there was plenty enough to keep us entertained. A movie of 1.5 million dominoes being toppled (not actually the record, though) was less worrying than the movie of the fastest oyster eater.
The huge not-really-square square Kongens Nytorv has the interesting Nyhavn canal leading off from the far side. This was dug to allow merchants to bring their goods into the heart of town, but now holds plenty of people on its sidewalk cafés enjoying the weather. One previous occupant was Hans Christian Andersen, who's house we looked at from the outside. He is now a big tourist drawcard for the city, as is evident in every touristy shop we visited.
Through some back streets and along the docks, we sat down at one café where after fifteen minutes of waiting, a waiter actually came and cleared our table without taking our order. Needless to say, we got up quick smart and walked along. Sure, we may not be sixty with greying hair and diamonds hanging from everywhere, but we still have money to spend and it is annoying when people assume otherwise.
Not much further along, we walked past yet another fountain and into the cobbled square Amalienborg Plads, which is surrounded by four mansions forming Amalienborg Palace, home of the royal family. Once again, we had timed it right for the changing of the guard, although this was far less elaborate, you would have missed it if you didn't look hard.
North from there, we felt compelled to go and see the Little Mermaid statue, as it appears on every variant of tourist junk imaginable. It was built in 1918 or so under design from H.C.Anderson, and came to fame with the modern movie based on the same tale (or so I believe). In fact, it was the most disappointing tourist "attraction" we have ever bothered to walk a long way on a hot day for. About a metre high on a rock behind a concrete barrier with an oil refinery or something as a backdrop, we grabbed a snap just to say we had been there, skipped the queues of hundereds of people waiting to have their photo taken with it (geez people, see the real city), and sat down for a while. After resting our legs, we headed into town through Kastellet, an old castle surrounded by a moat in the middle of an attractive park in search of a cheap meal.
We came across a café in the right place which looked from the outside to not be too good, but the food was excellent and reasonably priced, so we stayed a while to rest. We noted with interest that the people on both sides of us were also Aussies. What a coincidence.
Looking into our guides for something to do for the night, and noting that København is famous for its jazz, we decided to go to the Copenhagen JazzHouse on Niels Hemmingsens Gade just off Strøget. This is the most famous jazz place here, and the night had a cheap cover charge with cheap-ish drinks. Perfect.
It wasn't open for a while when we arrived, so we watched the street musicians and people trying to ride an amusing back-to-front handle bars bike (you turn left, it goes right).
Eventually getting in, we spent a great few hours totally immersed in the great live jazz from some local unknowns, Tao Højhaard Organgrinder. The four piece had an organ (playing bass with pedals), drums, guitar and tenor sax, and each was a great musician. The drumer was especially entertaining and very good at his chosen "instrument".
When the band had finished at 12:30am or so, we pushed our way out through the crowds that had formed to go to the night-club that the place turned into at 1am, proudly wearing our daggy clothes (me shorts!) amongst all the dolled-up glamor of the clubbers. Pushing the "home, James" button on the GPS, we dragged our weary bodies back to the van. Still no bikes to be seen anywhere.

(customised)