Denmark 2017

The cruise was great. Yet just part of the story. What could be better? Well we found better, or let us say same same but different in the better world of better. Six weeks in Ringkøbing. Clearly my spellcheck is going to struggle with this narrative. An o that is an ø; perhaps on the web the o will not have a line through it; like in space no one can hear you scream. It is not just the o/ø but that ae thing such as  that slightly, actually, sends my brain cells into a tizzy. The Danes manage to have 29 letters in their alphabet (since 1948, which started a year after my birth, giving me plenty of time to learn it. But I didn’t). I was going to paraphrase the Wikipedia article on this but I got confused after the first line, so I won’t. but of course, you can, see; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danish_and_Norwegian_alphabet.

What have I learned about the Danes? They fly their flag even more than the Yanks. Our fantastic host, Erik told us why, but I forget. Like Australia is to New Zealand (you know the jokes and thoughts of each toward the other) the Danes are to the Swedes. Again, I forget why. So, we’ll forget what I have learned so far in my first two weeks here and go on with the being here part.

In our jump into the deep end mentality we drove to our new home with just one stop to change drivers. Erik and his wife Bente collected us from the cruise ship; which we have already written extensively about and made a video of (and who wants to hear about someone else’s wonderful time on a cruise? Most likely no one), gave us the keys and drove off hoping we were on the correct side of the highway; opposite to Australia, the same as the USA, different from some other countries we were in earlier this year but not like living in China where folks drive on whichever side of the road they feel least impeded on.

We have found routine rather quickly. What we have changed about travel is to stay longer. Really quite a simple idea. After doing round-the-world trips for twelve years, going from New York to Australia at least once a year, sometimes twice and stopping in cities for three or four days so we could be back in Australia for a couple of months before returning to teaching gave little perspective on places visited. We continued our mad dash of the planet when we lived in China for three years. At least we stayed in one foreign place for an extended time but as soon as there was a school break, even just a few days, off we were. We were spending more time planning than experiencing. Narda did, I just stayed south of La La Land in my mind and threw some clothes and camera equipment into a bag and I was ready to go wherever Narda thought we should go to. Of course, she would repack my stuff. Then we started doing slightly longer stays mainly booking Airbnb places. This year was so different. We did our first house exchange this year for five weeks in Holland now in Denmark for six weeks. We have Berlin next year and chasing other places. India we are not doing house exchange because we could not find any but we are spending three months with a week or so in each place we go to.

House exchanges gives us the feeling we live there and are not just passing tourists. We spent a month in Washington D.C. at the end of last year and that was like living there, and a few weeks in Cambodia earlier this year which for some odd reason we still felt like foreigners in, even after a few weeks. So here we are at home. We don’t speak the local language or understand the signs but that is fine. We can ride our bikes into places that probably say ‘piss off’ but how would we know?

We joined the local gym. Cheaper than in Australia, about $30/month USD. The gym overlooks the local fjord which is really another word for a bit mother of a lake, some glacier caper. Well as one who always needs to learn, Google tells us; ‘A fjord is formed when a glacier retreats, after carving its typical U-shaped valley, and the sea fills the resulting valley floor. This forms a narrow, steep sided inlet (sometimes deeper than 1300 metres) connected to the sea.’

Here is a map of Denmark pinched from the internet – the © credit is on the map – we just scribbled a bit on it. Jutland is the island – there are three islands that make up Denmark.

Italics below are Narda’s notes – not-italics are Terrell’s notes

August 14, Monday

Ringkøbing

We left the ship at 8.30, it was all really efficient and orderly. Picked up our suitcase, and then met Erik and Bente, who drove us around Copenhagen. Had a coffee with them at the beach, then started our long drive to Ringkøbing. It was actually quite easy. A great car, a Citroen van, easy to drive, and the roads are pretty much all freeways. We arrived there at about 3pm.

It’s an amazing house, full of lovely decoration, art and lots of room. We walked to the super market nearby and tried to negotiate finding it, and feeling pretty tired, but all was well, we had soup and a salad, and slept really well.

Gathered these flowers for Mabel’s birthday xxxxx

Driving to Ringkøbing

We love driving in foreign countries, firstly sorting out which side of the road to go on, then diving in traffic. Narda was the first driver getting us out of Copenhagen. I got to navigate and take photos and video and look bewildered; it is a challenging task but I do it well, the looking bewildered part.  We changed drivers after crossing The Great Belt Fixed link which cost 240.00 DKK ($36.40). We made a little youtube video of it https://youtu.be/_ZCyDnWiIVQ – I stuffed up with the lighting on my camera so everything turned out bluer than it actually was at the start of this trip.

It was exciting to drive across a whole country in only about four hours (should be three but we stop), considering how far it is across Australia. We drove up to the house on the cobblestone street and saw our host’s name, opened the door and were happy to be home for six weeks.

At the end of the street was the harbour.

As often is the case, the first shopping excursion is a challenge. I am looking for low-carb, (organic if I can get away with it) animal-free, stuff. When everything looks unfamiliar and is in a language that neither Narda nor I would ever hope to understand, we just go around appearing confused. The Super Brugsen was just a ten-minute walk and feeling good; after all we had just spent a couple of weeks lying about on a huge cruise liner, so we were far from tired, we were in a shopping mood. We had asked where was the Aldi store but got lost on the way and Brugsen seemed like a normal supermarket from the outside. Of course, after fifteen minutes of not figuring out where what we wanted was hiding, we left with a bottle of milk a sweet potato, some seeds for my breakfast, as well as what appeared to be normal soup (to me normal is vegetarian, to Narda normal is meat – in this instance we believed it was my normal, but who knows what gets sneaked in to a package with foreign script); we declared never to return to this place. Now writing this, two-months later, I can say that is not true and we shopped there often and found all that we needed. We found food in the back of our home too. Firstly, a large apple tree, pineapple apples we later found out, and oh so good, then in the greenhouse ripened cherry tomatoes, cucumbers and grapes, and in the garden zucchini for my zucchini spaghetti low-carb meals.

The apple tree produced so many apples that we were putting out five – eight bags a day for people to take – and they did. The original sign left for us to put out, in Danish, got rained on, then sort of blew down the street, no worries, Narda made a new one, in English. I suppose the word ‘free’ is understandable in all languages. There are mainly German tourists as Germany is only a bit down the road, and being a land-locked country, they liked the waters of Ringkøbing.

August 15, Tuesday

Today we spent the whole day on bikes, basically exploring all the supermarkets we could find. It was fun. Sitting in the lounge now, just about to get dinner ready, listening to the rain. Had a great day. Terrell is still feeling a bit fluey, hopefully better tomorrow.

• Up at 6:30 about eight hours sleep
• rode bikes to Aldi, Netto
• home took nap half an hour still have a cold
• rode bikes to Kvickly found tofu and to Lidl
• watered garden
• rain in evening

As Narda pointed out we rode bikes and went shopping. As is often the case, after watering the garden, it rained. I love shopping for food, reading labels, looking for those nasty things companies sneak into their food, but I was thwarted. I like shopping in foreign food stores and finding things not common in Australia, but not being able to read labels sucks. Nevertheless, we soldiered on to Aldi, Lidl, Netto, and what would come to be our favourite supermarket, Kvickly. Two reasons for Kvickly being our choice: we had a fifteen-minute bike ride there going through a bit of a forest if we wanted to and they had lots of stuff, sorted for fussy people like me, even a vegan section.

In the afternoon we rode around the fjord; not around it, but for half an hour one way then back to check on our shopping.

August 16, Wednesday

Today, another big bike riding day. We headed out of town, reaching the village of Velling, where we had coffee. They also had a beautiful cemetery full of hedges and little miniature gardens.

Terrell’s bike was hard going, but after visiting the bike shop and filling the tyres we realised that this was the problem. Last night the town criers (we were later told they were not ‘criers’ but ‘night watchmen’) came by again this time accompanied by a trail of tourists. Terrell had quite an extensive conversation with them. (see our youtube video @ https://youtu.be/vzaPX1oC6cY)

Narda started posting on her Facebook page ‘Why Denmark is the happiest country’. Sorry but you will need to read to the end of this to read that.

August 17, Thursday

Quiet day, a bike ride this morning, discovered a large interesting industrial complex called Vesta, where they make some strange looking things; parts of wind turbines. Also went into town and found a nice pair of sandals for India. Rieka Stress free. So far comfy. Paid About $70USD. August 18, Friday

A marathon bike ride today to Sondervig. It was a great ride, we followed the highway north/west, and arrived at this little town, a beach town with lots of outlet stores. Also has some beautiful old places with thatched rooves and many holiday houses.

We took a little walk through the supermarket, as we do in every new place. Gotta first check out the groceries! I resisted buying a GIANT chocolate meringue, but I keep thinking about it, so I might have to return sometime and eat it. Otherwise it will become an obsession. Like an unrequited sugar craving.

We returned by heading down the coast a little way, and then crossing the Bagges Daemning (the a and the e are joined) which is a little pedestrian bridge across the Ringkøbing Fjord, and a short cut back to Ringkøbing.

This was one of the recommended trips from our Danes; they said about 1 ½ hours, we took from 9.45 until 1.30. Oh well!

We saw a very spectacular display of wind surfing with kites. There seemed to be a festival of some kind, about 50 people in the water, sailing/surfing.

See our 2:36 (that is two minutes and thirty six seconds) clip of this at https://youtu.be/ZC7NbrTXHcA

August 19, Saturday

Today we saw a nice band playing some Beatles and other stuff in the town square. Lots of tourists, it’s a popular town.

We also checked out a suitcase which we might buy to replace Terrell’s. A bit bigger, but lightweight. Make these long trip a bit more flexible in packing….especially packing for going home. And Terrell bought his first ever watch, pretty groovy one.

In the evenings we’ve started watching The Mentalist, which is good. Finally figured out the TV thing, just plugged the computer into the HDMI port. We can use the hard drive now, or directly use Netflix.

We carry our HDMI cable on every trip, it didn’t work on the cruise ship so we did not watch TV except for the one channel that showed where we were – usually just a view of water. In Cambodia, Holland, The States earlier this year the cable worked each place and we would unwind from our day of exploring watching some gruesome series on Netflix. I would double dip my time by dabbling in Photoshop, Premiere, After Effects, and other mind-numbing practices. And of course, I would check social media to see if any of my five followers on Twitter etc. liked something I had tossed up. HDMI also assisted with our watching YouTube to see what The Late Show with Stephen Colbert was doing to get our daily fix on the States politically. We did get CNN and BBC news but nothing locally or on Denmark so for six-weeks we had no idea of anything happening around us; kind of a nice way to live in la la land, and the news we saw, usually something stupid going on in the States, was far removed from us. Maybe this will be in Narda’s top reasons why the Danes are so happy, they don’t pay attention to the news. Though I am sure it is just us wandering folks who land upon their shores and have no idea what the papers or TV shows are saying.

August 20, Sunday

Another day of exploring the areas around here. This time we took the car, and drove north. First to Struer, where we found a caravan sales place. Of course, we had to look. We found the prices were much lower than in Australia. For the same money as we spent we could buy a nearly new caravan here, with toilet shower, weighing a lot less, about the same size for 80,000 DKK which is $15,000 AUD (about $12,600 USD)

This one, with toilet/shower; 39,990 DKK , about $8,000 AUD

We drove on to Humlum. That’s a place you need to have coffee in, just because of the name! Actually, we went all out and had lunch. Blew our budget for the day, but right now we’re pretty ahead with it. I had a beef patty garnished with beetroot, capers, and raw egg yoke. Yum!

On the road again, we followed some sidies, getting a little lost, and then headed southwards along the coastal road between Nussum Bedning, another fjord, and the North Sea. Reminded us a bit of Coorong country (South Australia). We stopped at a place; to our right were really high sand dunes, actually one gigantic long one, like a dyke. When we got to the top we were nearly blown over by the gale.

Watching our little clip at https://youtu.be/vzaPX1oC6cY shows some of this trip along the coast.

August 21-24, Monday-Thursday

Had a few quiet days. The weather has been pleasant, though some days really windy. Yesterday (Wednesday) was warm and sunny, no wind, all day. We’ve been bike riding each day. Often in the morning , we spend some computer time, blogging and making a movie about the cruise. And some reading. Then we ride to various stores to get stuff for dinner. Either Aldi, Netto, Kvickly (I think our favourite) and Lidl. We bought a few useful things, a cool little clock with projection onto the ceiling, and a key security box where we can put a key to let the next house sitters in, back in Adelaide.

The bike rides are the best. I have Bente’s bike, it’s a strong step through, nice to ride, gears and a hand brake and foot brake. Sometimes we take some sandwiches. One time on the way home from Kvickly we were so hungry we both felt a bit ill, so we stopped (to get out of the strong wind) at the petrol station on our way home and found a table at the back, meant for gamblers (horse racing and lotto stuff) and ate our sandwich. We did buy their machine coffee which was crap, but it did the trick. Then we headed back to Kvickly to spend more money.

Our budget, so far has been way under, even with these purchases. We are averaging $30 USD for food per day. (Which I must note is less than we spend in Adelaide)

And I will add I am doing well with my low-carb vegetarian diet.

Near the Ringkøbing Harbour is this statue;

[The 3.5-metre-tall bronze sculpture was made in 2002 and depicts a huge fat woman from the west, sitting on the shoulders of a starved African boy. The woman is holding a pair of scales as a symbol of justice, but her eyes are closed to show that justice is degenerating into self-righteousness and unwillingness to see the obvious injustice.
The sculpture intended to send out a message to the rich part of the world, and seems to create focus on our obesity due to over consumption while people in the third world are dying of hunger. Due to the imbalanced distribution of the resources in the world, the most people in the western countries are living comfortably, they are oppressing the poor people by means of an unjust world trade. The rich countries are by means of tariff barriers and subsidies keeping the poor countries out of the markets of the West.
On the sculpture there is an inscription, which states: “I’m sitting on the back of a man. He is sinking under the burden. I would do anything to help him. Except stepping down from his back.” – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survival_of_the_Fattest_(sculpture)]

Friday Aug 25, 2017

Today we decided to leave Ringkøbing and explore some towns to the south of us. We headed to Ribe, stopping at a road house on the way for some lunch. We actually did not go through Ribe, but continued on to the island of Mando, which is a world heritage sanctuary for migrating birds. Since access to the island depends on the tides, we thought it might be fun to take the giant tractor style tourist bus through the receding tide, but we missed it. So hopefully we’ll return.

Then off again to the next island, Romo. This time we were successful. The causeway across to the island is ‘tide proof’ so we headed off to the next island, Sylt (Queen of the North Sea). This one has a waterproof causeway. We found ourselves in a little harbour town, Havnby, and low and behold, a large ferry was about to leave. It does not take us much go off script, so we bought tickets and were on our way……to Germany! It took a few clues….they wanted Euros, and they spoke German…..for us to figure this out. https://www.syltfaehre.de/home/ (BTW we did not pay the full price as we got pension discount, and nicely so, the woman at the counter didn’t believe I was 70, so I should my driver’s license – aren’t people nice?)

So, there we were. There was a large blue bus leaving the harbour in Sylt, so we boarded it and went on a random bus ride to Kampen. Very nice….a sandy walk to the top of the dunes and we could see the whole island. Then coffee, and back to the harbour to catch the next ferry back to Romo. Lovely trip! On the way back we ate pizza and pasta at Mamma Mia, a nice little local joint, in Ribe.

The drive back was late, bit dark, way past our bedtime.

This is our way of having a coffee break along the highway, note our groovy car:

We put together a short slideshow of Romo and Sylt HERE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gMm6aDG4KfE

Sat, August 26, 2017

A local day. At lunch time we wandered over to the town square, had a nice lunch at the hotel, outdoors, and watched the Ringkøbing Big Band. Reminded me of my Big Band days, which I miss from time to time. There was also a really cool Flamenco band with a dancer. Fun!

Their music is the background to much of our video – actually a couple of videos as it was that good and I am trying to stay away from copyright music https://youtu.be/vzaPX1oC6cY

Sun, August 27, 2017

We rode to No. A beautiful bike path, took us about an hour. The weather was perfect, the scenery was perfect and we loved it.  Terrell made an entertaining little video about it, which sort of went viral in Lithuania, Russia, Belarus, and some other place. Over 10,000 plays. Huh. Who knew?

10,133 views to be exact with the largest numbers from (YouTube Analytics) – and this was all done in one night. There have been no views since. Usually I get 3 to a dozen views though years ago before everyone jumped onto YouTube I would get a lot.

No (two minute video)  – https://youtu.be/YAjNZ4QxPpk

Mon, Aug 28, 2017

Rang Helena for her b’day in the morning. We discovered the gym. I have developed a sore back, low back, so I’m hoping that building some core strength again will help it.

Best gym ever. That is Narda riding out to sea above. We used it for 26 of 30 mornings for September. A healthy routine, we would make a pot of coffee, eat an apple as we rode our bikes, then a good workout and coffee at the table where we sat and watched a family of swans. We watched a YouTube video to learn more about swans; they do the family thing together, couple of adults and four kids. We were told they have been in the fjord in front of the gym for the past two years. At the beginning the babies rode around on their mother’s back, now the cygnets are almost as big as the parents yet still brown while the parents are white. A woman we met at the gym, Bente Jensen, gave us photos of ‘our swans’, there is a fourth but he/she was probably over at the gym looking for Narda and me. Bente came to the railroad station to see us off at the end of our trip, 30 September, and told us the four cygnets and their parents were flying back and forth in front of the gym. I believe it was their first big flying lessons. We had planned to go to the gym on our last day but packing and cleaning took longer than we had imagined so we missed this.

Back here in Adelaide we do gym twice a week and there are no swans, though on our morning walks we do see kangaroos and koalas but we miss our swans.

Tues, Aug 29, 2017

Gym again in the morning, then a nice drive north via Sondervig to Hvide Sande. We discovered a little harbour there with large fishing boats, and sat on the back of the car with the back door up and had our little picnic. Also bought Terrell a nice jacket for India. Checked out the beach where kids were learning to water ski with a frame of pulleys instead of a ski boat. Also lots of kite surfing and wind surfing. Nice to watch.

Wed, Aug 30, 2017

Today a home day, sorted RAA for Erik and Bente, rang Stu, rang Janie, read lots. Went to the gym. My back is definitely getting better. No pain pills today.

Thurs, Aug 31, 2017

Day at home, bit of rain. Went to the gym in the morning (day4)

Below is a view out of our lounge window, so cool.

The Ringkobing museum is well worth the visit

September 09

Drove to Ribe for the day. The oldest something, town I think, in Denmark. We made a bit of a clip and threw it up over at https://youtu.be/G_jW2pt1QFk. We had a great lunch sitting along the main street that is like 500-hundred years old, we didn’t feel quite so old in comparison. There are a lot of images in the clip so we will not post anymore here.

We saw this nest in Ribe, apparently a European white stork is one of the historic inhabitants of the town, choosing to build nests atop chimneys. Certain times of the year the street is full of people starring up at this when the stork is doing a one-act play or whatever it is storks do up there.

Sep 13, 2017

Today we visited the Viking museum at the bottom end of the Ringkøbing Fjord. By the way, fjord means ‘created by a glacier’. It was rainy the whole time but we got an English-speaking guide, we were the only ones on the tour, and it was really very interesting. He told us that the ‘Viking’ period began in the 700’s. They had their gods, some of which were the source of the days of the week names…Friday and Thursday.

This was groovy. See our clip on this @ https://youtu.be/CzHENrtLy_A. It was a rainy day, one of the few in this travel cycle, none on our two-week cruise, and maybe two or three the whole in Denmark. This was one of them. Our guide gave us an hour and a half tour. This was all part of a one-hundred-krone ($16 USD) museum pass we had for the week. We did get to about six museums out of ten or so (some closed at the end of August). The Viking museum was our favourite. We learned heaps of stuff, like that people would get the choice of becoming a Christian when the Vikings invaded a town. If they agreed they would get baptised then killed, so they won’t sin again and could get into heaven. Makes sense I guess. Watch our clip to become hip to the Viking trip.

Bork Harbour

After that we had a coffee in a small harbour, and found this in the gift shop window, which I might try to copy!!?

What Narda means with ‘to copy’ is to do it in a wood cut out in our shed back in Adelaide.

Below – self driving lawn mower. We love this idea, just toss it in the yard and go to the patio and have a beer while it does the job. Of course, to get one that will rake up after itself would be our ultimate one. We saw these quite often. I believe the Danes have the biggest lawns. We saw large lawns in the States, especially in the south, but lawns in Jutland (the island we are on – see map at top) are larger. These things just go until they run out of petrol or someone pushes a button somewhere. They jig zag so the lawn doesn’t have that nice tidy orderly row after row of straight lines but who cares. They have a sensor that tells them when they are near an obstacle, like a road, shipping lane, airport runway, beer cans, a human laying in the gutter…

Sept 14

Today a very pleasant bike ride to the forest out west, where we found a nice ‘camping’. Sat in the little tourist lounge, had our coffee, and then continued on through the forest trails.

We found some lovely wetlands, and this hand operated punt. A bunch of school kids and their teacher. The wetlands near Skjern are really nice, lots of bird watchers, and photo ops.

Sept 15

Another drive out to museums, we have to use up the pass. They were all closed, but we enjoyed the drive.

This was a small harbour going into Stadil Fjord or Vest Stadil Fjord, these fjords sometimes look similar to us foreigners. We talked to a bloke, who used to fish here, but he seemed close to a hundred, and doesn’t do it anymore. Of course others look old to us and we look old to others. For example, on my 70^th birthday Narda’s grand daughter at age 5 said I was almost a hundred, so there you go. Here is a bit of a more localized map to show where we are. We rode to places like Søndervig, No, Hee and anywhere else within 10 kilometres or a bit more which of course to most bike riders is a pathetic effort but we are elderly (according to the news ‘an elderly person in their sixties…’) and to our credit there is sometimes a very strong wind so one way is fine but the other is a struggle.

Sept 16

A home day, but we ventured out to check up on some activity near the library. It turned out to be an exhibition/promotion of all electric cars. We talked to a friendly fellow about it all. He said that the cars have a range of approx. 300km, which makes them suitable for a 2^nd car. He offered to let us drive one….but we declined. He said that Denmark uses no fossil fuel, all clean energy. The cars could be recharged off peak at night, using the wind generated energy. Pretty nice.

Dad died 3 years ago today

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sept 17

Went to another museum commemoration the life of a priest, quite famous at the time, who was murdered by the Nazis because of his outspoken anti-Nazi views.

Kaj Munks Præstegård The place was originally built in 1330. Kaj Munk started living here in 1924 and in 1944 the Nazis killed him. It is well worth the visit and though not in English a lot can be understood by looking at photos and even making up your own story – we did.

Below is a Google translate from the Danish page – http://www.levendehistorie.dk/Forside-10

“The priest yard formed the frame of Kaj Munk's most active year. This was where Kaj Munk's pen filled the paper with plays, poems, letters, sermons and articles.

This was where he was finally picked up by his robbers a dark January 1944 because he had spoken the truth to a regime hidden under lies and terror.

Today, Kaj Munk’s versatile life is communicated and works in the beautiful frames that the priesthood and nature make up. The priest yard is also a gathering place for various cultural activities.“

Sept 18

Quiet day ending in a memorable sunset!!!!

While we were there, we chatted to some locals, Nils, who works for Nestas (the wind turbine company), and Rita and Stij, our neighbours and friends of Bente and Erik. Nice chat in a glorious place!

There are a lot of differences about whether windmills are good or bad. Their first windmills were built in the 1970s. “Denmark is now the leading country in the world for wind power. In the year 2014, Denmark set a world record for windmill production. The country now enjoys around 40 percent of its total electricity from this one clean energy source, alone” https://www.alternet.org/environment/5-countries-leading-way-fossil-fuel-free-future. But… locals are upset with so many windmills in their view. Some whom we spoke with said they were quite unhappy with them. Apparently, many windmills will be shoved into the North Sea not far from the coast and will ‘ruin the view’ and if they are too close they can be heard. Narda and I felt good about seeing windmills, they give hope for the future but not living near any or having them block our view our opinions are not valid perhaps. We see them in South Australia, large windmill farms, though they are in the country and we surely do not see them around Adelaide or along the beaches which I suppose would be a bummer.

Sept 19

Today we went on our train adventure. We bought a pass for the day last week, and took the train from Ringkøbing station. Our first mistake was that we misread the timetable and missed the train we thought we’d be on. Not to worry, so rather than waiting, which we are both notoriously bad at, we caught the next train to reconnect back to our Holstebro original itinerary to Aarhus. (I think that is a sentence?) We chatted with a friendly Dane, who was studying occupational therapy (said that the Aussies where ahead in this field), and who mapped out the next bit of our trip using his computer, (and who was actually from Slovenia, and who we also met again later as we left Ringkøbing, and who we found out rides penny farthing bikes!) So off we got in Holstebro (which means Holste bridge)…and according to our source, is  sometimes called Holstebronx by some young ones.

“The town arose at a ford by the creek, and later a bridge was erected. The name probably derives from holdested ved broen (lit, “a resting place by the bridge”).

Holstebro was first mentioned in a letter from Bishop Thyge of Ribe in 1274. A large fire in 1552 destroyed many of the town’s old buildings.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holstebro

Copenhagen bound, but OK. Well….NOT OK. We met our first unfriendly Dane. The ticket collector scolded us that we could not use our day pass, as the benefits did not extend to this particular train service.  We tried to look dumb, cute and helpless, (I tried to look old and was quite successful at it) but this did not work. She said we would have to pay 700 DKK!!!!!! I told her politely that this was not going to happen, and she said she would see what she could do. She returned and said that 140 DKK would be alright. Hmmm. Not sure what happened there. Anyway after pleading poverty and trying it on we gave up and paid up. Then came another drama. She walked through the doorway where there were 3 middle eastern guys who clearly had no tickets. She actually started to shout at them, telling them they should leave Denmark. Another kindly Danish girl tried to intervene, and also got shouted at. Blimey. She gave them each a fine, and they screwed them up and threw them on the ground. A bit of excitement on the Copenhagen train.

We arrived in Aarhus, it’s a nice city. We ate a pretty good buffet lunch, served by a Danish girl with a Queensland accent, and she had only lived there 6 months. Ha. Nice person. Then we walked a long way to what we thought was going to be the old town, but was really an open air museum. It was raining by then, so gave the museum a pass, and had some expensive coffee instead, riding the local bus back to the train station. On the way home we got off in Silkkeborg, a real shopping town where we bought Helena a clock with the ceiling projection. …for her birthday.

On the way back Terrell got ‘befriended‘ by some drunk long haired guys, who were intent on proving that their hair was longer then his. Not sure who won that one; I walked on ahead.

Nice day.

Sept 20-25

Last days in Ringkøbing

We still diligently went to the gym each morning, always bringing our coffee in the thermos for after our exercise when we would sit by the window and watch the swans. Who we discovered has a family, 2 white adults and 4 brown cygnets, almost the size of their parents. Fun to watch them each day.

We also spent mornings planning our trip to India, so far we have the hotels booked until Pune. No trains yet. On Thursday we drove to Herning to see the camera history museum, quite interesting; after we returned to Sham Pizza place and bought a take away pizza.

On Sunday night we were invited to Rita’s place for dinner with her and Stij. Nice couple, great food. They are friends of Bente and Erik. She has a lovely house, all organic with thick timber beams. She writes children’s stories and gave me one of her books.  The illustrations are amazing.

We washed the car, and cleaned the house and then on the Monday Bente, a woman whom we met at the gym came by. She brought a yummy apple crumble and some examples of her great photography. Peter, our next door neighbour, drove us to the train. On the last day Bente also saw us off the on the train. A very friendly person.

The train ride to Copenhagen was pleasant. We sat with a woman from Lithuania who seemed lost so we took her under our wing a bit; she got a bit weepy; not sure what her story was, we only had a few words of German in common.

Sept 27

After our arrival in Copenhagen train station, we had a nice Indian buffet meal, then caught the 2A bus to the apartment. I slept well, Terrell a bit restless, and in the morning we rented 2 bikes and rode into the city.

We spent a very enjoyable day exploring the area called Christiania, which was a ‘free town’ back in the 70’s where hippies settled, living in derelict buildings and building their own cottages and trailers, in their own way. Also growing their own whatever. It is still settled that way, though it has become a tourist destination. They openly sell marijuana; and the authorities seem to turn a blind eye, as it is illegal in Denmark. Interesting place. Folks trying to buy property there now, simply cannot. Not so long ago, a friendly lady told us that they tried to evict people, but the residents got together and bought the whole property for 65,000,000 Kroner, which is a bargain. So they can stay.

Riding through the outer areas of Christiania

Why You Need To Visit Denmark’s Hippie Commune Before You Die

The self-governing town of Christiania has seen its share of ups and downs, but it’s still a place unlike any other in the world.

Groovy pink bike, a rental.

OK so I did the 60’s in Haight-Ashbury, San Francisco – lived in communes, grew my hair to my waist – did all the things that young people did in such a place…. but Christiania is cool too.

Picnic lunch on the harbour

This guy was from Serbia, gave us his card in case we make it to Belgrade.

We did a lot in three days. One day we did a day pass on the metro, bus and taxi boat. We went and saw the mermaid trip from Hans Christian Andersen’s book, and we had coffee at McDonalds where he used to live upstairs from and wrote in a shop below where we now drink coffee. The boat was good, up and down the river, and we took some random buses as we do wherever we go. We climbed to the top of a tower, went to museums, took pictures, and basically hung out in this cool city.

We did not want to leave Denmark but here we are back in Adelaide trying to sort out the trains in India. What a mess, not the house, but the trains! Three days trying to book trains as it is recommended to book three months in advance. We will be there from Mid-January until mid-April. It is good being back home amongst all my crap. Someday I will declutter but for now I am enjoying being surrounded by 70-years of stuff. Next month we will pack the caravan and go off to Sydney then Melbourne to see my son. We are happy to be seeing the grandchildren. Life is good. If we didn’t see you on this trip or the one before or before that we’ll catch up with you soon. Cheers.

Thanks for waiting – or wading (?) through this so here is what you have been waiting for – Narda’s ‘

Ringkøbing, the happiest town in the happiest country.

Every day, or every day I feel like it, I will list another reason. This is my plan in Ringkøbing, Denmark.

• #1. The Town Criers came by every evening to check on our well being and safety
• #2. The lawns are mowed by robots.
• #3. There is always somewhere to sit and rest.’

• #4. Vodka, wine and other good stuff is randomly mixed with groceries
• #5. Folks, especially those in our age group, smile and nod at you.
• #6. Water, water everywhere.
• #7. People don’t double lock their bikes.
• #8. It is soooo tidy.
• #9. It is soooo quiet.
• #10. The garbos neatly re-line your garbage bin when they’ve taken the garbage.
• #11. There are many, many wind farms
• #12. You don’t HAVE to wear bike helmets.

• #13. Danish Blue is one of the cheapest cheeses.
• #14. It looks like Holland.
• #15. Everything is so well designed.
• #16. Every three days there’s a concert in the church.
• #17. Everyone trusts everyone. This is part of the culture. It is assumed that you are doing the right thing and have the best of intentions. How lovely.
• # 18. There is much more, for example free, single tier medical, the same for all, and free education; again the same opportunity for all.. This takes out the huge gap between rich and poor. The well-to-do may pay some more tax, not that much more really, and you get to have a good standard of living. Everyone.

Our YouTube the clips for this trip are at http://youtube.com/neuage09 are more specifically below:

• A day in the great town of No – https://youtu.be/YAjNZ4QxPpk
• Narda conducts windmills https://youtu.be/qLAbMS1G-sM
• Hjerl Hede Open Air Museum https://youtu.be/bp6c9f8iPF
• Ribe https://youtu.be/G_jW2pt1QFk
• Vikings – Bork VikingGehavn https://youtu.be/CzHENrtLy_A
• Exploration of Ringkøbing https://youtu.be/vzaPX1oC6cY
• wind surfing https://youtu.be/ZC7NbrTXHcA
• Romo Island and Sylt Germany slideshow https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gMm6aDG4KfE
• Fjords, Skjern River Delta, Lighthouse, Hvide Sande, Mushroom collecting https://youtu.be/1l2kNZO3pN0
• Over the bridge to Jutland – The Great Belt Fixed link – https://youtu.be/_ZCyDnWiIVQ
• A few days in Copenhagen – https://youtu.be/ewWPTSoidFA
• Hjerl Hedes Open Air Museum, structures brought to one place from centuries of Danish life – https://youtu.be/bp6c9f8iPF4
• Narda conducts windmills in concert – https://youtu.be/qLAbMS1G-sM

I have used a lot of photos from this trip in my writing as background and they can be viewed at: Google +  https://plus.google.com/u/0/collection/E_6JaB or Twitter https://twitter.com/neuage, Pinterest https://www.pinterest.com/neuage/picture-poems-by-terrell-neuage/, Flickr https://www.flickr.com/photos/neuage,  Tumblr http://neuage.tumblr.com/ Instagram https://www.instagram.com/tneuage/  and various other trendy places

And of course, I add to them often. My e-books are at http://neuage.org/e-books/

Our next ‘big’ trip overseas is three months in India

before then we will be in our caravan bopping around Australia

cruise

Cruise

Norwegian Getaway 70^th birthday cruise

the video for this blog is at  (https://youtu.be/ZdShBQ21o20)

If you want a clear concise reading, read what is written in italics – which is from Narda’s blogs; if you want to sludge through my verbiage then read the rest too.
Day One 05 August Copenhagen

I have always been restless. We have always been restless. I can speak for Narda too. After twelve years living away from Australia and traveling a lot during that period we could have easily settled once back in Adelaide. Our first year back, 2015, we tried to nest, working on our new house in a trendy eco-friendly village but after having renovating three houses in the States each a hundred years old we realised new was not us and so we moved to Vista, half an hour further out from downtown, into an older place. We spent months gutting and re-doing our house and creating a home. We still were focused on going elsewhere. We got a caravan and did some exploring but that was not enough. Early 2016 we were back doing international stuff; Cambodia and Thailand, and by the end we were on a four-month trip, November 2016 – April 2017: the States, Holland, Cambodia. We got back to Adelaide and a few weeks later went out with the caravan and planning next trips. Now we are on this one past the mid-point of  2017 doing a cruise around the Baltic then six weeks in Ringkøbing, Denmark where we will live like a local though we no doubt will do trips within trips as we explore this part of our life. For me, this part of our life is me becoming a seventy-year-old. It seems just a few years ago I was wandering the States from age 16 – to my mid-thirties when I became an Australian-bound single parent and except for a few trips back to New York with my children in tow I did little travel. Then I met Narda and we have just been going, except for 2015, and going.

So, we got to Copenhagen in an alternative state. Not the type of alternative state that I existed in while traveling on many different levels back in the late 1960s and early 1970s but in the alternative state to being awake and feeling alive. After a few hours in Dubai wandering like zombies through the airport after little sleep on the fifteen-hour flight. The flight from Dubai to Copenhagen was better, we were on one of those new double decker setups and got a seat in the first row. It was originally for business class but now that the whole plane is economy there is no business section but the seats are more spread out and more comfortable. Our wonderful host, Erik and Bi Bi, met us at the airport, they had a sign with an Australian and a Denmark flag on it, but we were easily spotted and they got us to their flat in downtown Copenhagen which is our home at the start of our trip and for four days at the end. After our cruise, we have their home in Ringkøbing for six weeks and they have our home in Adelaide during that time.

August 4, Friday from Narda’s blog

Arrived in Dubai at 5.15am. Slept a few hours, maybe 4 or 5, which helped to break up the trip. The next plane we boarded was amazing. A double decker Airbus. We had 2 seats together on the upper level, seats 34a and B. They were really roomy and so we slept a bit more. The transit stop in Dubai was pretty difficult. We were really wiped out, and the airport was so crowed; we could hardly find seats anywhere.

We got into Copenhagen at 1pm and were met by Erik and his daughter Bibi. They were great. First we took the metro with them to their apartment, where we left our stuff. They showed us the iconic harbour of Copenhagen and we had a nice chat, walk and some drinks.

They left and we set out for dinner. We found a nice place nearby, near the sea, and waited for 45 minutes for a bowl of soup. The soup, when it finally came was yummy, but we were so tired by then, it was difficult. Still we hit the bed and slept. Both had a good night.

Leaving our stuff in our new flat Eric and Bi Bi gave us a tour of Copenhagen and then we found our way back via the metro to our flat by ourselves, becoming lost only a couple of times.

 

Amazing to us we were still upright at nine pm, having gone for a couple of days with a few hours of uncomfortable sleep somewhere between Adelaide and Copenhagen. That was our extended Friday which had more than thirty hours in it; such is international travel.

I often take photos of airlines I have never heard of and the first plane at Copenhagen Airport we saw was WOW airline, https://wowair.com/, Air Iceland – sounds like our kind of airline

We were up at 5:30. We have lost the ability to sleep. We dragged ourselves, muttering incoherently, to the nearest metro station and off at another station where we wandered aimlessly for way too long in search of Bus # 25 to get our sorry asses to the cruise port. We walked and walked, dragging all our crap with us. No one seemed to know where Bus # 25 did its thing. We even stopped a city bus and asked the driver who did not know. Of course, because we are now on our boat it is obvious we found someone to guide us to Bus #25. Not having done this cruise capper before we were amazed by the size of this boat, which we have been told not to call a boat because it is a ship. People are so thingy about stuff, aren’t they?

Seeing the ship for the first time was so amazing. Getting on was more amazing. In the Copenhagen Harbour, I took a zillion plus photos and images – see our video clip about this cruise – video here – https://youtu.be/ZdShBQ21o20

Check in time we were told was between noon and three with departure at five. We were checked in by 11:30 in our acting like little children just shaking with excitement. Our room was not ready so we ate and ate and then ate some more. Holy guacamole! I, we, have never seen such a large spread of so much good food. Like a city block worth of food. This was the Garden Buffet Café or some such name. Exercise is good. We walk around the buffet. We did go to the gym too and stretched and lifted a bit then went and ate some more. There were hundreds of dishes to choose from – and we did; except for meat stuff I tried it all, Narda tried the meats and reported back, yum.

We went to a life-boat/what happens if we sink, type of drill at six pm. There were lots of announcements in lots of languages and when the alarms sounded we slowly made our way to where our section of 3500+ passengers were lounging about. People were not too serious, of course the crew were – and they were a bit annoyed at us for not paying attention. Several children, and being school holidays – the place had an infestation of them, were chatting and laughing and rolling about as children do; but our mindful Narda went over to them and in her best school-teacher fashion brought them to heel. A couple gave her a bit of a stink eye but at the end she went over to them and thanked them for behaving. Once a teacher – is there a continuation of that line?

We attended the evening’s orientation which highlighted various performances for the next nine days. We figured maybe we would see one, two at the most. By the end of the trip we had seen them all. Then we went back to the buffet and ate heaps more and managed to get back our room about ten-pm. We love our room with a balcony, sofa, desk, bathroom and of course a comfy bed.

August 5, Saturday

Woke up early, but feeling pretty good. We managed to put together a breakfast, continental style, a couple of rolls, some yogurt, and a glass of Berocca. Then we headed for the local grocery and marvelled at the stuff….all good. Our credit card was not accepted, luckily we had some Euros which they took.

Then off to the cruise terminal. Again our credit card was declined; annoying. Still we got ourselves from the metro, then onto bus number 25, and arrived at the port.  Beautiful ship. The Norwegian Getaway. Fantastic. We have spent a lot of time today at the buffet, the food is amazing. And our room is lovely too. I think we won’t want to leave here!!!!! Bloody nice life!

Day Two. Sunday, 06 August, Warnemunde, Germany

Day Two. Sunday, 06 August, Warnemunde, Germany

August 6, Sunday

OK, talk about a weird day. We woke at 5.30, at least Terrell woke and woke me up. Daylight of course, as we are in the higher latitudes. So we are sitting on the balcony taking photos (he is) of dark seas, misty horizons and the occasional ferry. The we had breakfast number 1. Bacon and eggs for me. Then back to the cabin for a shower, watched our ship come into Rostock, Germany.

It was very interesting watching the manoeuvres of two other cruise ships who came after us. They had to go right into the port to find room to make a 360 turn, and then head back to park. They all seem to be equipped with side parking thrusts. (been handy in a car).

Then back to the Garden Buffet for breakfast number 2. This time some bread and cheese and salmon mousse. It’s exhausting, all this eating, so we went back to the cabin for a nap. I slept 3 hours. Bit jet lagged I guess. Another meal and now I’m writing this.

I think I can become addicted to cruising. Wasn’t sure, but now I am. It’s a lovely life. Last night we watched the ‘Duelling pianos” Two guys singing all the songs everyone knows. Really well done. Both guys played really well and one especially had an amazing voice. The average age of the audience was about 72+ but an enthusiastic group.

We were up early, probably about 5:30 am and went on to the balcony. It was a bright sunny day already. Our room has blackout curtains making sleep easy unless one is too excited to sleep. We were soon at the buffet; our go to place for incredible comfort. Then back to our room for a lay down so we could wake up in real time. Today is a ‘sea day’ meaning there is no port stop from when we left Copenhagen last night until we get to our next port, Germany, tomorrow.

Wow, Narda is snoring, three hours after laying down for a mid-morning nap, she must have been tired.

So here I am writing in our dark cabin. The curtains are closed blocking out all light because Narda is asleep. She has been asleep since 9:30 this morning and it is now 12:15. I slept from 9:30 until 10:30 then I was anxious to play in Photoshop with photos we took last night. Our sleep patterns are all over the shop. Three days ago was the flight from Adelaide to Dubai. Twelve hours with Dubai arrival being at 5 am. Wow were we feeling under slept. Hey folks, I am old, I need blocks of comfortable sleep. Not to worry soon we were on a double decker plane to Copenhagen. More leg room and just a great new plane with Emirates.  The flight was only six-hours. There was confusion due to the fact I was not getting my vegetarian meals. We ordered it months ago. We have not had this happen since we left Australia in 2002 to take on the States. And I did not have this happen for the decades before. Of course, I let everyone know this and the wonderful cabin crew rushed around trying to please me. Of course, this is natural; I am a Leo, I was adopted; Narda suggested I could take it easy on one of my attention-seeking behavours but that is just nonsense. I was well served and I was assured this would not happen again as they put in for our return flights to Australia in a couple of months that I was this old, needy, special, dude. What I liked especially was their music selection which was good as we did not find any movies worth watching. They had all these albums of the 1960s and early 1970s. I fell to sleep at some point listening to Janis Joplin and got caught up with all the Dylan albums I had not heard for weeks. My friend Daniel complained once late 1970s that I was stuck in the 1960s and it was time for me to progress. I still don’t know what he meant.

Having a long morning nap and a second or was it a third? breakfast, extended our day. Like having two days in one.

We spent the rest of the day wandering around the ship. We even played a game of shuffle board; Narda had never heard of it and I played once at some Bible Camp my parents would send me, kicking and screaming, to each summer when I was staggering through adolescents in the Catskills. It was an exciting game and after many attempts we each got a thingy on a seven so we decided never to play again as we had tied. There is so much to do. I did go swimming for a few minutes. The pool was good. I wanted to sit in the spa but they had a sign warning people with cardiac trips (like an implanted defibrillator/pacemaker), diabetes, and a couple of other things I share with the infirmed – Narda was strongly opposed to me going in, so I didn’t. I thought of sneaking out and going in but our overpriced insurance would not cover me if I had ‘an incident’. Stuff them all I still enjoy myself. We both went to the fitness area and tossed about some weights. I went most days but my sidekick went just this first day. There is a large casino area which we gave a miss to. It seems such a waste of time to give more money to this company, sitting in front of a pokie like an idiot waiting for a possible coin to fall when some several childish characters line up on the machine. But people do. And they have the roulette tables with more people doing that instead of eating at the buffet or looking at the world outside passing by.

By four pm we thought we should go for a walk. Not having any idea what the procedure was and not signing up for any tours today we found our way to gangplank shuffled off and to our delight discovered there was nothing to it. We could just walk out into the street. Because we had already gone through customs in Denmark, only Russia required us to go through passport control of the several cities we would stop at. I bought a fridge magnet and we walked around the town.

As there was a safety drill at six pm, and we had already suffered through one, we walked for a couple of hours before hunger got the best of us and we were back in the buffet line.

In the evening; already forgot what we did for the afternoon, this is what we call retirement, we gave the buffet a miss with the thought that eating in a restaurant environment would give us a more adventurous feeling to ourselves. The buffet is our comfort zone and they say to challenge yourself by doing something different. We went to the Tropicana where there was a Jamaica like trio of dudes doing the golden oldies routine with a few recent songs such as ‘YMCA’ tossed in. White tablecloth, waiters, the whole shebang. I got some veggie pasta thingy and Narda lasagne with dead cow. The food was not as good as the buffet and I am not used to having someone fuss over us, obviously for tips, but it is a complimentary restaurant for our cruise so outside of 18% on Narda’s overprice glass of wine it was a cheap date. What amused me was seeing a lot of children; like about 5 – 11 years old, dancing to the ‘YMCA’ song and singing along and doing the hand motions. I wondered if they knew it was a song about men picking up men in Greenwich Village, NYC, at the Y (Young Men’s Christian Association) for sex. If I see them again I suppose it is my duty to inform them so.

I also am amused at the buffet counter(s) watching children choose what to eat. I find it amazing that the common fare for adolescents, with hundreds of things to choose from is hotdog and chips. No matter the nationality. I watched in parental horror a Japanese, maybe 18 years old, alternating between a mouth full of ice cream and chips. He had an ice cream cone in one hand and every other bite was a handful of chips. Another favourite was watching a nine or so year old in front of a large cake with a lot of icing, he had already had a slice of pizza on his plate. He would set down his pizza, look around, look at the cake, then pick up his plate of pizza. Finally, he quickly ate his slice of pizza then took a rather enormous slice of cake. We figured his mother probably said he had to eat his meal before dessert. The child was already considerably over weight. No doubt someone looking at his would remark that we spend a lot of time cruising the food – and rapidly going back for more. In our defense I will say, we take small amounts each time. For me this is all quite a challenge. For two years I have been on a strict diet of low carb crap to curtail my diabetes so I can carry less medication with me as it takes up too much room in our suitcase. Then add the vegetarian caper (fifty or so years of) and I have a rather bland diet. Can you believe I even brought enough dry kale and protein powder for two months? And I brought a container of my special low-carb cookies and bread I made a few weeks ago. I need to eat some of it or I will have to give the bread and cookies the toss in a few days or they will have some white and green growth on them. (I did finally give them a toss – not over board but in the trash as they did turn green and white) Bottom line, I have ‘sampled’ the mac and cheese (in the past my favourite food in the world), the corn and cheese thingy, one slice of German fudge cake, and a few things I have stayed clear of for years; more than once. Today or early tomorrow, perhaps soon after, I will work back toward the low carb diet. Narda is fine. She will eat anything if it is dead. She can have the wine and beer too. I don’t even drink alcohol but that is due to a shot liver from too many years of too much good time and not enough constraint time.

There are ‘professional photographers’ roaming all over. Always wanting to take people’s photos in front of a green screen – hey I do that at home, and I have a new camera (Nikon D7500) so I am not interested but they sure ask a lot.  [The camera was from Narda for my birthday, oh so was the cruise – can’t wait to see what she will get me if get to 71]. However, we found machine that took a photo for free and we could Facebook or email it so this was the result. This is a real money making boat – but we managed not to spend any more than what we have for whatever free money we got for signing on to this cruise. We didn’t even have to pay the 18% tip. We had $350 to spend and we spent it on Narda’s daily wine at $10 a shot, some laundry as Narda was tired of doing ‘the smalls’ in the toilet basin; something about it not being classy. What? Saving money is classy to me. Then there was my birthday meal in a ‘specialty restaurant’, a couple of not-included for free Broadway performances and I got a fridge magnet. The only other expense was Narda’s new watch – well that put us way over budget, but hey, we are on holiday. She is very happy with her new watch so be sure to notice it when you see her.

We have been doing the free shows but are signing up for some comedy wine show where they provide wine – how embarrassing I will ask for soda water at a wine show. One free show we watched was ‘duelling pianos’. They were quite good and people put in requests. I asked for ‘She belongs to me’ by Dylan, never did hear the song. They seemed to like songs by Elton John and the like.

We set sail at ten pm. Heaps of people lined the shore waving and yelling so lots of people, including Narda, yelled and waved back. I am not sure whether the town was happy to see us leave or wanted everyone to return and spend money. I had bought a fridge magnet so no doubt that is what everyone on shore was so excited about.

August 7, Monday

Today we are at sea all day. This morning we took a walk around the ship for some ‘exercise’. Met some girls our age, one of them was our neighbour. They are very interested in a house exchange. Who knows! Last night we took a walk around Warnemunde. Lovely little town, the port of Berlin.

Day Three – 7 August Monday – At Sea – we think

We did our walk like we do back at home though there were no kangaroos along the way but walking around the boat is good fun. Of course, we made a few detours to the Garden Café Buffet before getting to the jogging track which with eight laps the sign says equals a mile. OK we made it to five and tomorrow we plan to walk before eating.

Lunch was some to-do at a Spanish Restaurant Buffet – which was kind of alright but not as good as our blocks of regular food buffet. Now I am at the main outdoor entertainment area where there was a soul-rock band and now some loud mouth DJ doing dance contests or some crazy thing with folks. I found a sheltered place to write, play in Photoshop, and Narda is in the midst of people cheering and stuff. She said it was a ‘hairy-leg for dudes contest’. See photo below.

It is a lively area with the swimming pool, main stage, and today being a sea day; we left last night at ten and get to Tallinn tomorrow morning, everyone is just everywhere. We spoke to our boat-neighbour who we ran into on our walk this morning about house exchanges. They are from England and I think one of them has a house in Spain so we are hoping we can get some more home exchanges on this trip. We have one for Berlin next September and need a couple more of a month each to make flying to this area worthwhile. This is what retirement is about; forgetting what happened the day before and planning for the next trip. Saying that I remember what we did yesterday afternoon, we went into Warnemünde for a wander. A nice seaside town. A lot of people had gone for a tour to Berlin and other German like towns but we wanted to immerse ourselves into the cruise experience, sleep and eat, and we did not think we could just walk off the boat whenever we wanted to. But by five pm we were a tad bit bored and wanted to go out. It was all very easy, just showed our room card and went for a couple of hours walk. There were two other large ships behind us and hoped the people aboard were not envious of our larger and newer vessel.

Day Four, Tuesday about August 8 or so, Tallinn, Estonia

Not sure what we were going to do; book a tour, take a hop-on-hop-off bus, or walk to town. After another lengthy lots of food brekkie – though I kind of did a diet compliant almost with egg over avocado over toast with a lot of hollandaise sauce – I didn’t eat the high carb toast – and fruit and some muesli. We made the decision to walk into town which we were told was only about twenty-minutes. Narda had a bit of a sore foot so we did toy with the hop-on-hop-off bus parked at the end of the pier but we didn’t. Then right away we saw the bike-rental shop and we were home and hosed. The bikes were great and not expensive; we paid nine euros each at the end for four hours.

August 8, Tuesday

Today a wonderful day in Tallinn. We rent a couple of great bikes, and headed off on our own.

All the cruise people went to the old town, but we decided to check out a residential area to the right of the old part. We found a great little local coffee shop and sat outside drinking coffee (2 cups for EU3) The we worked our way back to the Old Town, which is surrounded by a very old thick wall.

Day Four, Tuesday about August 8 or so, Tallinn, Estonia

It’s just a beautiful cobbled city. We stepped into a lovely little chapel, and then rode on to the market square. There was a funny incident there. We saw a few young lads looking for customers on the rickshaws. Then suddenly they high tailed it, at a dangerous speed out of the market square. We tut tutted them ‘how dangerous’, and the girls standing in front of one of the restaurants said they are running away from the police. And sure enough, a couple of cops in a car came cruising through the square. They didn’t see any problems and continued on their way. A few minutes later the boys reappeared and continued their soliciting. It happened twice. So funny.

We got a map and were off, riding past all the people lined up at the buses for their tours so they could obediently follow the guide with their umbrella or sign in the air. Some were walking into town, others were lined up at the hop-on-hop-off bus. We proudly rode past them all. We decided not to go to the old town right away but went off into the burbs to live like a local. Stopping at a local wonderful café for coffee for only a euro and a half we enjoyed the beginning of a wonderful day we would be having. There was barely a cloud in the sky at about 19 degrees centigrade. The only thing that separated us from the locals was we had no idea what they were saying in their Estonia-speak and we were drawing lines on our tourist map of all the places we would go. We did not look at the map again for the day so that was a bit of waste though fun planning. Tallinn is quite flat so riding around is easy. People seemed friendly or amused by us – difficult to tell whether people are smiling because they think we are cool or because we are some daft tourists.  Nevertheless, we managed to negotiate the place and not get run over. We found our way into the walled town and like all European cities it was old and cool. Built in the 1200s.

According to Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tallinn), Tallinn was first mentioned in 1219, received city rights in 1248, but the earliest human settlements date back 5,000 years. The initial claim over the land was laid by the Danes in 1219. Tallinn’s Old Town is one of the best preserved medieval cities in Europe.

After taking lots of photos and looking inside (free) churches which we were figured were as trendy as the expensive tourist ones we found a fantastic café. The tofu stack in the front is mine the smoking gelato marzipan apple crumble Tallinn style is Narda’s. https://revalcafe.ee/ Reval Café.

Later we stopped at a really lovely café for ‘lunch’. Mine was apple pie and cream, (I did order what Terrell described, but this is what I got)…… but on a plate of dry ice. Smoking everywhere.

After dinner we saw a great show “Burn the floor”. A troupe of 12 dancers, a singer and to drummers  with a Latin style dance routine. High energy and really skilled. Great fun.

We got back to the boat at 3:30 pm, found the food buffet place; hard to miss, it covers a large area of the fifteenth floor, and lucky us we are on the fourteenth floor so it is not much of a journey to the food trough. We have decided to do all the shows, most of which are free, and tonight’s was ‘Burn the Floor’. It was a full Broadway dance musical. Amazing to us. The only down side was we were told not to take pics. OK I snuck in a few. There were sixteen or so dancers. Really amazing. We read their profiles after the show and everyone was some variation of a national or world champion dancer at some point. I believe they were in their twenties. How else could they have so much constant energy and be so athletic? And their skimpy outfits. Wow, where we ever like that? Back to the gym for me. Actually, I have been the gym a couple of days so far, but my body is not quite on par with twenty-year-old professional dancers. Tomorrow I will be 70, I suppose that is an excuse. That and the buffet line and other restaurants dotted around the place. See our video of the tour for their performance on the last night of the tour – toward the end of our video if you get weary watching.

My big goal for today was not to eat mac and cheese and not to take any more sunset pictures. I managed not to eat any mac and cheese so that was a proud moment in my low-carb struggle on a ship with so much wonderful food. I caved when it came to the sunset pictures and though I limited myself to only a few dozen I knew I was on my way to a reduction of my sunset picture obsession(s).

OK one more – of hundreds – oh and I have videos too (of sunsets) and of course time delay

Day Five, Thursday, 9^th of August. One day to go to being 70; St. Petersburg, Russia – Day 1

All those times I thought I won’t make it to 70. I used to believe I would never get to thirty. I was pushing the boundaries of what my body could ingest back in the 1970s and I thought well if I make it to 30 that would be an achievement. Yesterday I had a moment in the afternoon while eating when I felt faint and I thought I was going to have a heart problem and we returned to our room. Narda was taking my pulse and saying we should go down to the emergency room but after half an hour I seemed to start feeling whatever feeling normal for an old person is.

I was up at 6 something this morning, Narda was trying the sleeping in routine but my phone alarm went off with Dylan’s ‘Tangled Up in Blue‘, at seven so we dragged our sorry asses down to brekky and off the boat by 7:30. Low and behold there was a glitch in the Russian Immigration computer system, who would believe that? Oops, no photos; that is just so unfair, me, a Yank, first time in Russia and they’re trying to say not to take pics. Well stuff them, I took heaps. Videos too. Sorry – couldn’t resist embedding us into the door. The rest is real news though and an actual photo taken in a restricted zone – whoopee.

And it took us two hours to get through to our waiting tour guide who told us she had been waiting, and that all the rest were already on the bus. She was the archetype Russian keeping us in line all day. She reminded us a few times that the most important rule was to follow the rules. We were marched through Catherine’s shack,

 

 

some palace park fountain thingy,

rushed through lunch and I have already forgotten the day, except for the metro ride which was the only non-tourist, live-like-a-local thing we did. There is a good segment of this on our video at https://youtu.be/ZdShBQ21o20

Narda tried to stage a coup – by getting several passengers together to say we wanted a longer lunch period but at the end of the day we got rushed through everything.

August 9, Wednesday

Today, St Petersburg. We left early, got stuck in a passport queue for an hour and a half (some computer malfunction!) and embarked on a fairly intense sightseeing tour of the tourist attractions of St Petersburg. First the Palace of Catherine. Lot of rooms with gold gilt, and mirrors and art.

Many tourists there, so there was quite a bit of waiting in lines, but definitely worth a look. After that we went to Peterhof, and ornate garden with fountains, canals and lovely gardens. We had lunch at this bus place, bought a couple of salads ($5 ea) and a beer ($3).  No too bad. Later in the day we rode the Metro. Beautiful subway station, lots of decoration and art. Enjoyed this very much.

Tonight we had a shower, ate a nice buffet meal, and now we’re just chillin. It’s 8pm, and I’m ready for bed. Finished “Mosquito Coast’ by Paul Theroux, last night. Hard act to follow!

We were happy to be back in the buffet. After dinner, we roamed about. This ship is so large. There is a library though usually full, lots of areas to hangout in, plus the whole upper deck, half of which is for children so we avoid that area. We did not engage in any of the many activities such as ‘movie scores music trivia’, ‘country line dancing’, ‘Latin Rhythms with their DJ’, the video concerts shown on their big screen, and many other game, dances, music stuff. It is fun just to wander about and soak up the atmosphere. Being an American ship (the Norwegian part seems to be the company or driver, not sure how that works out) it was more American than European I think though of course there were people from everywhere. This was the first time this ship had done the Baltic area, usually hanging out in Florida. The entertainment was predominantly American. We loved to sit on our balcony and watch the evening sea.

Day 6, Thursday 10^th – I am 70 – St. Petersburg, Russia – Day 2

Wow! Woke up this morning in Russia, day 2. That was the backdrop. 70-years old today. So what? Heaps of people, and some animals do that. But in my little self-centred world, what a thing. The 60’s was my favourite decade – the 1960s. Amazed I survived that, never thought I would make it to 20, then 30, surely not to 40. My son, Leigh only got to 20 before ending his. Perhaps my own 60s was my best. Who knows? Bottom line; I made it thus far. Still got most of my hair and only a bit has turned grey. I have shit wrong with me but that is normal, I think (heart disease, liver disease, diabetes, stuff like that), but damn don’t I feel great. Maybe not drinking any alcohol since 2005, no drugs since the 1970s, no cigarettes, going to the gym for decades, walking heaps, getting rid of the hep C virus – thanks to the wonders of new drugs, my stents (5), implant, low carb diet for past two years (well we strayed from that on this cruise a bit), no sugar (strayed a bit from that one too), good thoughts and all, and of course the one that makes me glow and still young(ish), Narda. Have I found a way to slow down the aging progress or will it hit me next week?

When we got back after our run amok through Russia there was a birthday cupcake and a card for me. How cool is that? They were not sure what language I spoke so they listed heaps. Lucky gibberish was not on the list.

Today, we did the St. Petersburg Day Two tour crawl. Back to that in a moment because we were talking about me. I am a Leo. I was adopted. I had a bit of a rough trot for the first couple of decades, and later as a single parent but that is all so far behind – though I retained the attention behaviour one does being a Leo and being adopted. The dozen people on our tour wished me happy stuff, even sang to me in Russian, Spanish, and Chinese. And Narda’s grandchildren, age 3 and 5 sang to me on Facebook. In the evening we went out to dinner on the boat to an Italian restaurant. It was our first pay-to-eat dinner. There are several white-table-cloth waiter serviced complimentary places and of course the buffet that is so superb but we actually booked the Italian one and it cost us some sixty bucks but hey, it was my birthday. I had a card in our room signed by the captain – I believe it was a true signature and not a printed one; a birthday cupcake in my room and at dinner we were given a birthday cake and the wine too. Of course, I didn’t drink the wine but Narda did. Drinks are expensive. A beer or a small glass with a bit of wine in it is ten dollars. So we saved about twenty bucks because we didn’t pay for the dessert either. I did eat quite a big chunk and I am sure my body will forgive me in a few days. The Indian waiter offered to sing me happy birthday but I said we were OK. In the evening we saw some singer from the UK, Rob Acre-something. I guess for those into that kind of singing it was OK. He was good – did Stevie Wonder songs and rambled on about his own self a bit, kind of boring.

I made a little clip (two minutes) of the Russian tour guide singing happy birthday to me in Russian, The New Jersey family in Spanish, and a Chinese family in whatever they sing in and Narda’s grandchildren sent me a clip on Facebook which was the best of all. https://yo utu.be/odkR5yaIGBM My son, Sacha, said he made a clip too – but I haven’t seen it yet. Hey Sacha where is it?

St. Petersburg – I will grab Narda’s notes, as they will be better than mine. I was too busy turning seventy and being in awe of the fact I got this far in life.

August 10, Thursday from Narda’s blog…        

Today Terrell turns 70!!!

Second day of our tour in St Petersburg. We started the day with a canal tour for an hour.

We booked a nice meal at the Italian Restaurant in the ship. They brought us a small cake, a card form the captain, and then another cake at the end of the meal, and a free glass of wine. All very pleasant. A nice waiter from Mumbai! Then strolled on to the centre area, and watched the small band play rock and roll; we even did a little dancing!

We took a boat road during the day – there is more in the video – I forgot to put it above for today but here is a photo of that boat ride,

By this time, the Russian guide was getting pretty irritating. She talked nonstop about the 18^th century history of the czars, interacted very little with us, threatened that we would lose our lunch break if we strayed from the group or caused it to run late in any way. The afternoon at the Hermitage Museum was exhausting, though incredibly beautiful.

On the trip we met a nice couple from Jersey. The guy, Alfredo, would be independent and got lost, or ran late a number of times. The Russian guide was very frustrated with him. I told her that she would always remember this tour group as the “Where is Alfredo” tour. She actually laughed.

Two hours trailing this woman was too much. Actually had to wear these head pieces, she had a microphone, so she could call us back to heal anytime. Blimey! The Church of the Saviour on Spilled Blood is another amazing church, full of spectacular walls and art work.

My impressions, to be brief; would love to have spent more time here. Would have loved to have gotten away from our guide – she made me a bit funny in the head. If someone was into history and religion and art the tour would have been good. I had no idea what she was on about most of the time. She took for granted we knew stuff like she would say, ‘as you would remember about Catherine…. As you would recall about St. Paul…. As I told you earlier about Alexander… Really, she thought we knew shit. None of us did. We all just wanted to take photos and wander around and see how ordinary people lived. The palaces and cathedrals were amazing but we didn’t need to know every grubby detail about every painting, every Russian hero. She surely did not speak well of Germans – I suppose because they dropped a few bombs here and there. She was a real commie, often injecting in her own world view and telling us how much better Russia was before it fell to pieces. Narda asked her some questions about life before the fall of the Soviet Union and she said life was easier then; they all had free education and medical,  that now there is much more distance between the rich and the poor. Interesting.

And we walked and walked. Way too often, she would say, ‘you have three minutes to take pictures then we have to go, we are behind schedule’. The Jersey family really annoyed her because they would wander off and we would spend time looking for them. I have taken so many photos and so has Narda. We will try to make albums of specifics as they are worth looking at.  St. Petersburg looks like a really cool place and one to be left alone in though I believe there are a lot of steps to go through to do that.

Day 7 Friday 11^th – Helsinki, Finland

Walked around

Today we are in Helsinki.

An anti-tour day! Set out with no plans. The best way. After waiting for a little time at the tram stop, we changed our minds and walked into town. We hung about at a pleasant flea market, had a coffee and then continued our walk. Bought some floor and 96c beer at the Aldi down the road, and caught the tram back to the harbour.

Upon our return we tried to take a nap, but I finished up reading for a while. Terrell went off to the gym and a swim, and then we headed to our dinner show, which was a dinner and a show, “Cirque Dreams and Steam”. The dinner was great, really good food. We sat at a table with an English couple who lived ½ year in Spain, and a young German couple. The show was great too, speccie circus stuff with unusual costuming.

This cruising suits us. It is just so relaxing and fun. We do whatever we feel like, when we feel like it. Fantastic.

As Narda mentioned above we went to see “Cirque Dreams and Steam”. A fantastic show. There is some of this performance in our video of this cruise. https://goo.gl/5V1q9i.  We were told not to take videos so I took 8 pictures per second which the Nikon D7500 we bought for this trip does. I recorded some of their music too but no one saw that so don’t tell on me.

Here are a few images of hundreds:

Day 8, Saturday, 12, August, Stockholm, Sweden

Here we are in Stockholm. The approach to the city is a long sail though many islands.

We arrived in Stockholm about an hour late, so tours were thrown in a bit of a tizzy. We were held in the theatre for a time, so that they could dismiss us in an orderly fashion. After waiting too long we gave up and went outside, and hopped straight onto the Hop on Hop off bus. It took us to the old town first where we got off and walked down a lovely narrow street, full of tourists.

We enjoyed a coffee and learned our first Swedish word “tuk” which means thankyou. Don’t know about the spelling J The we walked to a nice market area where there was a Korean Festival. Back on the Hop on Hop off bus, where despite assurances to the contrary, our round the city loop took 2 ½ hours! Making us latish…to get back on board. Panic. We got off the bus thinking a quicker way was in the other direction, but it was not so. Finally we boarded the green line hop on Hop off bus, the conductor was an Aussie who kindly told us “we’ll get you there”. It turned out that this double decker bus, a two story one, was making the run to the ship, with us and 3 young girls as a mercy dash. The driver, a Swede, was so sweet, and reassured us that we were going straight there, no stops. He exceeded the speed limits and actually ran a red light. We have him our remaining Kroners in gratitude. A nail biting ride. We will not do this again.

So back on board, all relaxed again, we ate a decent meal and I slept for an hour and a bit. The evening show was amazing, the best yet! It was the story, with lots of great live music, of the owner of Sun records, who is credited to be the ‘father of rock and roll’ and in the 50’s hosted Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, some other guys and Jerry Lee Lewis. They were actually in his studio recording all together. Great story and such great playing/music.

We were up and on the balcony taking photos – well I was, at six am. Then breakfast while watching the many islands going into Stockholm. We were herded into the large Gateway Theatre to find out when our hop-on-hop off bus would deliver us to a day of excitement and wonderment. OK we got into port an hour later than planned, then we had to wait for buses. The theatre was full and no one wanted to wait. Narda thought she had insider information as someone told her that the first rows would go to the first buses – I thought we should sit in the last rows as they were closest to the door. Much to our low-waiting skills they chose the back rows first to go to the hop-on-hop-off bus. After a long wait we stood up and went outside. The announcer in the front who was trying to keep us all in control said we should stay inside until our row was called as it was running outside. We were soon off the boat and the rain was actually a few drops. Lucky we did as the hop-on-hop-off bus was there and by the time it filled there was a huge line waiting for another one to arrive. As Narda often points out we should never follow the crowd and once again we were on our way looking at those who were not.

The bus, we were told, would take an hour and a half to make the run through Stockholm, which would get us back before noon, long before the four-pm departure of little boat. We got off in the old town quarters and walked a few blocks of tourist infested streets, settling in for coffee in a groovy, narrow, street. After walking a bit more we thought it was time to get back on a bus and be early back on the boat. After more than an hour, and feeling quite lost, we asked which way to get back the quickest and the non-English speaking driver indicated we should stay on the bus and in 45-minutes we would be to our home, this would get us there at about one pm – cutting our time a bit short. After more than an hour we felt we were going the wrong direction and asking one of the people collecting money on the bus how to get back quicker she said we should get off and go to another stop and get the bus. We even followed her off the bus and rushed to the stop she pointed out. We asked again at the bus stop and were told we were at the wrong stop. It was now after two and we were to be on the boat by three for a four-pm departure. Someone told us it would take two hours – which means our home would be sailing the high seas before we got there. The traffic was intense as any downtown in a major city would be in the afternoon. We tried to get a taxi and there were none. Being in a full-on panic mode we started jogging back to where we got off the bus. When we saw a hop-on-hop-off bus that was red, the same colour as ours; there are two companies in Stockholm doing this and we were told one was ours and the other a different company that we could not ride with, we ran the last two blocks – even crossing a busy road, not at a pedestrian crossing. There were only four people on the bus and we saw it was the wrong bus company but in one of those divine-heroic moments someone said we could get on that bus and it would take us to our dock. We think he sounded Australian – he told the driver in Danish to take us. By now it was 2:40, we were in the centre of town, the dock we wanted seemed forever away, and we were both sweating and quite upset. If you do not return in time for a departure cruise ships leave and it is the passenger’s responsibility to find their way to the next port, which for us was Copenhagen, meaning we would miss out on a whole day at sea. When the bus was on the way Narda went to the driver to confirm we were headed to our dock and he said not to worry we would get there in time. The four girls on the bus were also going to the same boat – OK, ship, and told us that they too were in a panic and that they tried to get onto the hop-on-hop-off bus earlier but it was full and they saw this one and could get on. To end this story, which writing this now a couple of days later, I still feel surges of panic about, the bus did not stop for anyone and drove us straight to the ship which we got to at three, we realised we had until 3:30 but still, when being stuck in the centre of a major city in a traffic jam and being told it would take two hours to get to where we needed to be in one hour is not a good feeling. By the time we got aboard, and sitting in the Garden Café, with plates full of carbs we were still a bit shaky but happy as the ship began to sail out of Stockholm Harbour with us once again stuffing our faces with food. We have not much to say that would be good about the red hop-on-hop-off bus; their WIFI did not work, they got us lost – but the green hop-on-hop-off bus saved our sorry asses for sure – and they had WIFI, which meant I could separate myself from our panic and post photos of us on several social places, giving our family and friends (all five of them) the sense that life was going great for us. The driver even had to call ahead and say we were going into the other buses spaces so to deliver us. If we had not been given this bus ride we would have to had stay in Stockholm, which most people would think was fine, and fly to Copenhagen. OK so no one would feel sorry for us. But we did.

What a great evening. Sailing – sitting on our balcony; the ability to change clothes, which we would have not had if the ship had sailed without us and with all our possessions – and of course having my laptop, the ability to sooth my shredded nerves with Photoshop, and being full and prepared to attend the evening’s performance we were signed up for; ‘The Million Dollar Quartet’.  ‘Million Dollar Quartet’ is a recording of an impromptu jam session involving Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, and Johnny Cash made on December 4, 1956, at the Sun Record Studios in Memphis, Tennessee. The person playing Jerry Lee Lewis was great and hilarious as well as musically amazing, as were the other three musicians. See https://youtu.be/vKpg3PkGlZs for the original video of this moment in history.

We sat on our balcony after that watching the sun set and feeling happy to be where we were.

Day 9, Sunday 13^{th @ Sea}

Our last day of the course was at sea, from Stockholm to Copenhagen. We got caught up with some computer stuff, I read for a while. At 12.30 we saw “Wine lovers, the musical” where we had a nice lunch and 6 glasses of wine to taste. It was nice. I sat next to a single girl from Atlanta named Megan. In the afternoon I packed the 2 main suitcases. Dinner at the Garden Café, then watched the Finale show in the main theatre, which was great.

And there I am at a wine lovers bash and I don’t drink wine. Also, the appetizer and the main course are parts of animal carcasses. I wanted to say I am on a low-carb diet, no sugar, and could you please be sure my food is organic, but I didn’t; don’t want to sound strange. I did say no wine for me and no meat and no sugar. I am sure there was some eye-rolling going on but I didn’t look.  It was a bit of a funny and an entertaining show.

Day 10, Monday 14^th and all over – Copenhagen to Ringkøbing Denmark

Ringkøbing is a town in Ringkøbing-Skjern municipality in Region Midtjylland on the west coast of the Jutland peninsula in west Denmark. It has a population of 9,717.

August 14, Monday

Ringkobing

We left the ship at 8.30, it was all really efficient and orderly. Picked up our suitcase, and were then met by Erik and Bente, who generously drove us around Copenhagen. We saw the Royal Palace and some other beautiful buildings, which we will return to at the end of the trip. Had a coffee with them at the beach, then started our long drive to Ringkobing. It was actually quite easy. A great car, a Citroen van, easy to drive, and the roads are pretty much all freeways. We arrived there at about 3pm.

More stuff: http://neuage.org/e-books/new_for_2017addphotos.htm And my textual imagery is at several sites as I do them: https://www.flickr.com/photos/neuage/ ~ https://youpic.com/photographer/neuage/ ~ https://twitter.com/neuage ~ https://plus.google.com/u/0/collection/E_6JaB and of course on my twitter page: https://twitter.com/neuage And other stuff I do (such as video stories for children and maybe grownups) is at http://neuage.org As every breath is a creative moment, the possible start of a new universe, I only reproduce a few – the rest of my creative breathing time is filled with travel, study (always learning something), Narda, and sleep.