This was a non-event. Train stops on ferry. Everyone gets out. Wait. Get back on. I went outside to the panoramic deck. Dark and rainy. Not even lights in the distance. I visited the duty free store and got a bottle a Akavit (Danish schnapps.) It was my duty. (This will be fun to lug in the sprint to the next train.) Then had Bearnaise Schnitzel for dinner.

I found the conductor. He will see what he can do, but I should talk to the German conductor after the ferry. I would prefer to talk to this Danish conductor. He is happy and friendly. I am having trouble imagining the German conductor as happy and friendly.
The loudspeaker comes on and starts talking in Danish or German for long periods. This makes me nervous. Then it ends in English to let us know we are boarding the ferry and we can shop on board.
Psych!
I can’t do too much on the train. It is dark outside so I can’t watch scenery. I have no book. I can’t keep harassing the people sitting nearby. (I’ve got another German businessman.) So the journal starts getting entries that I will need to transcribe.
Do people read them in the order I write them or in the order they appear on the web? It would be a shame if you read it out of order. You spoil the ending. You know how this will turn out before me.
Stop that.

The loudspeaker just said that it looks like we will make the ferry. That means we will only be half an hour late. The night train to Paris will wait if it is a matter of minutes. I assume that is the same train to Brussels.

The conductor is hiding. I can’t find him. I would like to start swearing now, but nobody would appreciate it.
Will I now hit the German rail strike?

There is a problem. We’re heading back a bit. I hope I can make my connection now. But I’m starting to doubt it. They say the delay could be up to an hour.
I only have half an hour between trains in Hamburg.

The person across from me is working on a Macbook Pro. He is programming an internet game in Flash. Watching him, I’m starting to want to get back to programming. I’m not so far gone as to want to do work programming, but my own Random Earth application is starting to call to me.

Looks like I left Denmark just in time. The weather outside has turned sour. The type of weather I expect in London.

I caught my train, and in the end that is what is really important. No, really, my last day was nice and relaxing. In the morning I borrowed a computer and updated my blog. I phoned a few relatives to thank them for their kindness. Then I took the metro to Copenhagen. I put my luggage into storage for two hours, which cost the same as 24 hours, and it isn’t cheap. Then I phoned my godmother’s son and he gave me a brief tour of the city, focusing a lot on architecture. After a top at a café, he helped me collect my things and get me on the right train. Now I’m heading to Hamburg.
I’ve heard there is going to be a railway strike in Germany tomorrow, so hopefully I’ll be out of the country in time. But I also heard it won’t affect international trains, so I’m not too worried.
Denmark has been nice to me. The weather improved quite a bit. My cold now only bothers me when I’m lying down. I got to relive my childhood and drink Tuborg Squash, an orange pop drink. If you have the means, I highly recommend it. Weinerbrod was consumed. And I got to see the forest.
I really must come back.
In summer.

Tonight I went into town and met my cousin. We went for a walk along one of the five lakes, had dinner at a fancy restaurant, explored Copenhagen trying to find an ice cream store, and then back to her place to look at her vacation pictures. I would say it was all very romantic, but I’m not an inbred hillbilly. Still, it was nice to see her. It is the first dinner I’ve had in Denmark that I haven’t felt bloated at then end of. My relatives seem to want to fatten me up like a German child in a fairy tale.
This morning, the weather was beautiful so my uncle and I got on the Sundbus which took us across the sound to Sweden. Not just territorial waters, but Swedish soil. We had thought about going to Kullen, but that would have added a lot of driving time. Instead, I got to climb a civic monument that has taunted me for a long time, Kärnan. (It looked bigger the last time I was here.) There are 131 steps in the monument leading up to it. 44 steps outside the tower and 147 steps to the top. I don’t know why I count steps. I guess it makes the event of climbing feel more real and provable.
The view from the top isn’t that spectacular. Sweden isn’t as pretty as Denmark.

I worry about getting fat. I think I have a genetic predisposition towards it, and I’ve been doing my best to fight it. This stress fracture has meant I shouldn’t run. Luckily, I’ve been doing a lot of walking while touring Europe.
Until lately. All my relatives seem very insistent on feeding me lots of food. And I get to be chauffeured many places. So I’m starting to get nervous.
I convinced my uncle to take me to the forest again. We went further today, but I still don’t feel comfortable doing really long distances. If my ankle was trustworthy I would try to get to the forest in the morning and spend all day running.
I’ve dreamed about running in this forest.
I just can’t remember the routes my grandfather took when we were on horseback. Even if I did, twenty years of growth would have totally changed them. I’ll cherish the memories I do have.
I lost my first thing today. A spare battery fell out of my camera case, probably while I was running. the batteries like to be in pairs so I might was well have lost both.
I hope this is the biggest thing I lose.

In Helsingør stands Kronburg castle, the former summer residence of the royalty of Denmark. The English of Shakespeare’s time were smart and only visited Denmark in the summer. So they became under the impression that this was the capital of Denmark. They bastardized the name to Elsinor for some play.
We spent twenty minutes doing a surgical strike tour of the place. It’s a beautiful palace, but I only really saw the moats and the courtyard.
We left because we had an appointment to go sailing with an old friend of my mother’s. I’ve never met him before, but he had a thirty foot sailboat and was happy to take guests out on it. We motored out of Helsingør harbor, then tacked into the wind until we were in Swedish waters. Then we turned and tacked back into Danish waters. We were going about six knots doing so. I thought we would be able to get back to the harbor quickly because now the wind was at our back. I was wrong. The wind may have been behind us, but now the current was against us. I could have walked back faster than the two knots we were going.
The channel was also busy with many large ships. I’ve heard it is one of the most crowded shipping lanes in the world.
Of course we did eventually get back, although we had to cheat and turn on the motor.
In the evening we went to dinner with an old family friends. She is my godmother, and married to the brother of the sailor. It was great to see them. It has been too long. I even got to see their son. I remember playing with him when we were young. He was a fantastic artist who would draw little cartoons. He is now an architect. He designed part of the new Copenhagen opera house.
It is wonderful to be in a place with so may relatives and friends. I can see why having family nearby is important. It is an aspect of my life that has been lacking.

I learned this at a dinner party tonight when my uncle repeated in English what he had heard about, in Danish, in front of me yesterday.
My grandfather was very progressive. He had used geothermal energy to heat the farmhouse we visited him at. He applied to have a windmill to provide electricity, but he couldn’t get approval. The reason: It would be too loud.
The new owners of the property built a small lake, or large pond, in what used to be a horse pasture. They expanded even further with funding from the EU because they were returning wilderness to its natural state and would help frogs breed. They even built a nice log shelter on its shores. Built with trees my grandfather had planted. You could even sleep there if the weather was nice.
He brought a girl out to do just that, but neither could get any sleep. The frogs were croaking all night. The next evening he brought out a decibel measuring tool. The sound was louder than is safe for humans.
This is an example of irony.

I tried to relive my childhood today. And in parts I succeeded, but it is true that you can never go home again.
We drove out to what used to be my grandparent’s farm. My family used to go there for a month every summer. But that was back when my grandparent’s were alive. It has been twenty years since they owned the place, so I was expecting it to change. I just didn’t expect that much.
Where to begin? It’s no longer a place for horses. Two cows and three pigs call it home. What used to be guest houses are now self-contained homes. Scary attics have been transformed into fully furnished lit second stories. Three families now live there. The stables are gone and have been replaced with a party room. The corral is a memory. Many of the fruit trees are gone or moved. No more red currants. But the place is so much more open. Pastures fenced in for horses are now lawns for people to use. They are growing grapes for wine. The grassy courtyard is laid with cobblestone now. There is a pond stocked with carp and crayfish (helped paid for by the EU.)
It is almost totally different from what I remember. But these owners have put a lot of work into it and made a beautiful home.
After reminiscing over lost childhood, we proceeded to another old haunt. There is a forest nearby where we used to go horseback riding. I have great memories of that too. My uncle rode a bike while I jogged around.
It is beautifully green still, even this late in the season. The beech trees stand tall and imposing.
There was the swimming hold where I spent happy times. The swinging rope was still there. More likely a descendant. Across the way was an island. Long ago I had swam out to it with some others and totally terrified my mother while doing so. The lake is dark, you can’t see the muddy bottom, and the lilypads actually make it creepy.
Continuing on, we got to the other entrance, which was a small village. I remember walking around the roads of that village and seeing miniature horses. I didn’t expect that they would still be there, but right at the entrance there was a pasture with a pair. Different place, but same result.
Back to the forest, we came upon the tombs. When I last saw them they had been fenced up, but now they were open again. My mother called them viking tombs, but they were actually neolithic burial grounds. The mound still sounded hollow.
The next stretch I was looking forward to. I remember it as long and dark. It totally scared me as a child. Unfortunately, it looks like a lot of trees have been culled, because it was light and sunny.
I could easily have spent all day in the forest, trying to find all the old trails I used to horseback ride. But the sun doesn’t shine forever and I can still feel the occasional twinge from my ankle.

I left my relative and moved to my Aunt and Uncle’s yesterday. My grandmother’s niece is very nice, and very welcoming, but I didn’t know her at all before this week. So I’ve moved on to relations I’m more familiar with. I do plan to see her again though.
In the morning I had thought to go to Christiania, but I took a wrong turn and ended up back on Stroget, sipping hot chocolate and people watching. Still cloudy and rainy, so I didn’t have a lot of chances to interact with the locals.
In the afternoon I took the train out to the suburbs and my uncle picked me up. We drove to his house and I saw my aunt for the first time in twenty years. We spent the rest of the day having tea and talking. A while later my cousin arrived. She’s nearly my age and it has been just as long since I’ve seen her. It’s been nice to catch up with relations. This has been a big year for long lost relatives.
Today my uncle took me to the Experimetium. It’s like the Odyssium, but bigger and better. Unfortunately it has the same problem: Too many kids hogging the fun exhibits. The water area was especially cool, and I dearly wish I had a chance to try the lock system. But no. Little children like to play with plastic boats in water.
The highlight was the dark tour. It was an exhibit you had to pay more for. Essentially you are made blind and have to interact with the world this way. The area is pitch dark, so you can’t see. You’re given white canes and then an actual blind person guides you through a park, a house, a street and finally to a café where you can buy drinks. I barely recognized the currency with light, so I had to let my uncle pay.
A late lunch of steak tartar. My cousin arrived again and we had dinner. Oh, and there was tea with wienerbrod. I am thoroughly stuffed.
I got to reminisce with my cousin about our grandfather. We have different memories of him. She could see him often, but not for long. Whereas I lived with him for a month, once a year. However, our common memory is that he was scary. But he was such a force of personality. I miss him.

Danish woman are attractive. I want to meet some. The guide book I had on Copenhagen said the best club was Rust. It caters to an older crowd, so it sounded promising. My relative didn’t think there would be many people out tonight because it was windy and raining. At midnight I got up, dressed and walked there. It took about half an hour. It wasn’t bad to start, but the rain got heavier and heavier.
She was right, there weren’t many people there. But I think that had more to do with the locked gate than the weather. I wandered to a bar that I remembered being recommended, though not highly. A bar that features drinking more.
I found myself in my usual mode at bars where I don’t know anyone: Wallflower. When I was thinking of going though I talked to a girl. Woot! A Swede who learned English in Ireland. It was a weird mixture of accents. We talked for some time. When she and her friend were leaving some men nearby high-fived me. They thought I was going to get very lucky. Sorry.
Honestly though, Danes look better than Swedes.

My mother lied to me.
I’m staying with my grandmother’s niece (there might be a better way of saying that) in Copenhagen. She’s very nice and is spoiling me rotten. Before I came, I was told that she lived far away from the interesting parts of the city. Not true. She is dead center of the tourist maps. There is a huge church covered in all the guides outside my bedroom window. (I better watch what I wear when I open the curtains in the morning.) This place is great!
Today I did a walking tour of the area. I went to the Stroget (walking streets) and looked at the shops and statues there. I tried to do all the things I used to do the last time I was here, so I made sure to check out all the toy stores. (I don’t know if I like the direction that Lego is going.) Unfortunately Tivoli is closed for the season. I did walk around it. It is not as much fun.
I also did the tourist things. For instance, I found another civic monument to climb; The Round Tower. This is only 35m tall, and I was told there are no stairs. And it is mostly a spiral ramp, but at the top there are 58 steps. Looks like a fun/dangerous place for a skateboard. I took some pictures from the top, but they aren’t going to turn out well. The weather has been cloudy with occasional rain. All my pictures will be depressing.
When I was young and my mother was driving to Copenhagen (usually to take my sister and me to Tivoli) I remember driving past a canal with colored houses. We never stopped. Now as an adult, I know it to be Nyhavn. I can stop and look. But there isn’t much to see.
I saw the Gefion fountain. When I first saw it I didn’t know the myth it was portraying. Now I do, but it seems smaller.
I did the requisite tour of the Little Mermaid.

The ferry crossing from Germany to Denmark. I had a chance to have wienerbrod and I took it. It was disappointing. It should be warm.
I’m sitting next to two Brazilians. I preferred the company from Berlin to Hamburg: A friendly German businessman.
The weather outside is cloudy and windy. I dutifully took some pictures but they aren’t inspiring.

Yesterday, I loaned my camera to a trio of young women and asked them to take pictures while I was doing karaoke. While downloading the pictures to my iPod today I noticed they took several pictures of themselves too.
I´ll leave the description of those ones as an exercise for the reader.

The other day, at the German restaurant, I had schnitzel in the Hamburg style.
The receipt called it “Hamburger Schnitzel”. Technically correct, but I feel like I’ve eaten at McDonald’s.

The roommate of unknown origin is Spanish. He is in Berlin to run the marathon this weekend. He claims to have run one in 2:35. I guess there is always someone faster.
This train, for instance, is faster than any I’ve been on. It makes the 300km journey from Berlin to Hamburg in 90 minutes. You can see the turbulence. Leaves are blown away by it. I feel a little nauseous from the leaning in curves (or is it from looking at scenery go by) but I wish I could go this fast when commuting between cities in Canada.

Surprisingly, the Germans make a good quesadilla.

My sense of direction is getting mixed up. Upon leaving a museum I started walking home. Then I (luckily) stopped for a rest. (I don’t want to kill my ankle again.) I looked at the apartments across the street and noticed the satellite dishes were pointed the wrong way. They should be facing the equator. Crud! I’m the one pointed the wrong way.
Then I got back to the hostel and went for a wander without a map. It ended poorly.
I miss the gird system.
Subways don’t help either. You come out of them with no idea which way you are facing. Berlin’s metro is still much better than Paris’ labyrinth. Each station was a two part maze. One maze to actually find the station. Another maze to find your train in the station. Berlin has non-cryptic signs to help you out.
I met my friend for lunch. I know him as a world famous DJ, but he does have a regular job. So lunch was all he had time for. He works right next to Checkpoint Charlie, so after I saw him off, I checked it out in more detail. I saw the Topography of Terror presentation on the Nazis. Then the museum on the wall.
It was all very depressing.
After the same roommates for two nights, the Brazilians have been replaced with a Peruvian and a Colombian and one of unknown origin. I don’t feel I can trust them. Especially when I returned to the room to find the door open and only a sleeping person to protect our belongings.

Berlin seems to be a party city. After all the museums and sightseeing, the best reason to come here is to go clubbing. Unfortunately, the best clubbing is on the weekends. During the weekday, there isn’t as much to do. So Sunday is the worst time to start being in Berlin.
Mind you, I can’t totally blame my timing. My local friend recommended a club that I could go to. It doesn’t really start being interesting until 1:00 AM though. A combination of fear of bars and that I was falling asleep at midnight meant that I didn’t go.
I took it easier yesterday and used the metro for transportation. I ended up in Charlottenburg palace, now a museum. But I didn’t find any compelling reason to go inside. There were no masterpieces I had to see, and the Egyptian exhibit had moved away.
Instead I wandered the gardens. They were very nice. It was hard to get Japanese-free pictures though. They tended to swarm. I would have liked to see one get attacked by the swan he was trying to pet. All that happened was him getting nibbled on the shoe.

This evening in the bar there weren’t many people I knew. So I started talking with two Italian girls who barely knew any English. Gestures were used a lot. They weren’t having a good time at the place, but I hope I improved it a bit.
They fled the scene while I was getting a drink.

I got directions to a nearby German restaurant. The guy at reception tried to convince me more Germans eat at Thai or Chinese places and that is where I should go for authentic German cuisine. Nice try.
I took the wrong way.
By the time I realized I was on the wrong street and made it back to the hostel it was too late. I have a phone call at nine o’clock and I want to be German punctual for that.
After, I will make attempt two for dinner.

I got a phone card so I feel more connected now. I phoned my local acquaintance at the wrong time. I need to phone back at nine. I did phone my parents.
I didn’t do much today, but I did do a lot of walking. After spending an hour and a half nerding on the Internet I discovered, as I walked back to the hostel that my left ankle hurt. I’ll rest it for awhile, but it has no right to give out on me.
I went to the Guggenheim museum because it is free on Mondays. After looking at it, they need to start paying people to visit. It consists of two rooms, and the smaller one is a gift shop. At present they are exhibiting a contraption made of plywood that appears to mass produce grass.
I then walked to the Jewish memorial. 2711 stone blocks laid out in a grid pattern. It would be a fun place to play in. It might have even been a playground. I don’t recall anything marking it as a memorial (I didn’t look too hard.) Not even names on the blocks. If it was on grass or dirt instead of cobblestones it would be ideal for tag or hide-and-go-seek. I wish they had made it a maze as originally intended.
I walked around Tiergarten, then to the Reichstag. After waiting in line for 45 minutes I got to go to the globe on top. It’s probably prettier at night, but I was there then, so I didn’t want to wait.
My roommates for this night are three Brazilian men and a Taiwanese girl?! I was not aware these were mixed gender dorms.

In the middle of writing my journal last night I found I couldn’t keep my eyes open. I closed it and went to sleep. For awhile. It’s hard to sleep bolt upright in a chair. You can’t stretch out because the car is filled with people.
On the bike tour I found myself trying to keep my eyes open.
I left the train station and took a bus to my reserved hostel. However the 2007 travel guide I used incorrectly stated the address. Actually it stated it fine. It just didn’t know it was no longer two hostels but one. And I went to the wrong location.
I was early, but I could store my luggage. I then walked to the TV tower, (The East Berlin attempt at Germany’s highest structure. Built by Swedes.) and joined the Fat Tires bike tour. It was well worth it. You ride bikes through Berlin, stopping every several hundred meters to see a new historical monument. And we saw them all. Old history (Brandenburg gate), Nazi history (the carpark over Hitler’s bunker), Communist history (Checkpoint Charlie) and current history (The new Reichstag). The guide was interesting and had good anecdotes. We stopped for lunch in Tiergarten. (I tried a diesel, but not even Coke can disguise the taste of beer.) The tour was also affordable.
I still have to figure out what I am doing tomorrow.
This evening I hung out in the hostel café and spent time discussing politics, treatment of aboriginals, Euro as an oil currency and other things. I represented the Canadian view against an Australian and an American.
I’m going to bed now. Hopefully I can sleep myself better. My roommates are three pre-university Australian boys and a Brazilian man.

Some background: Escaliers is French for stairs. Specifically the ones you climb a step at a time, like on a staircase. Not an escalator, although they sound similar.
To climb the stairs to the Eiffel tower you get in the line marked as “Escaliers – Stairs”. It is a much shorter line than the elevators. Most of the people in front of me are young and fit.
Except for the couple directly before me. This couple is middle-aged and overweight. Their chubby right hands each hold a plastic cup filled with beer. His hair is styled as a mullet and covered by an NFL baseball cap. I suspect they are Americans. They look rather dumb, but that may be me projecting. Or maybe not.
They dutifully wait in line, although the male does make forays around to investigate what is going on. Some glimmer of suspicion may have crossed his mind. Eventually the woman asks and attendant if this is the line for the escalator?! The poor Frenchman must hear the word for stairs and agrees.
I did the right thing and let them know there wasn’t an escalator here. I robbed myself of some good entertainment.
Schadenfreude.