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in Frankfurt. Not as ugly as they saidWe had a plan. We reckon that it was as well-considered and reasonable as possible, given the scope and nature of the project. Traveling around the world, and in the way that we are doing it, requires management of many variables, some of which are definitely going to be a surprise when they arise. We knew that there would be countries that would be cheaper than others and we set our budget to take this into proper account. We also knew that Europe would be up with the most expensive places and that countries like Vietnam and India should be a help. All of that and it was still just a bit of a surprise to hit Denmark.
The budget has been tracking along pretty well. No major dramas. Carpet-related dilemmas were neatly quarantined in a new budget category without major damage to the operating budget and there was a skillful negotiation of the dangers of those Turkish lights. We were not able to go overland through Pakistan and Iran into Turkey and this required a longer than expected flight but this was managed within the budget. And when we hit Europe things continued to flow smoothly. Eastern and Central
Old and New
OK. So which will stand the test of time? Frankfurt Europe certainly moved expenditure up a level from Turkey but we were able to accommodate the increases by self-catering for some of the time and, of course, it was pleasing that the cost of alcohol was pretty good in most places. And then Denmark.
There were signs of course. Accommodation searches indicated that it was going to cost us more than it had to find places to sleep. But again skillful management was applied. Pat was able to locate some holiday lets that could provide a base for movement around for a price of about $A100 per night. This would allow us to avoid eating out and to maintain some control. Not too much of a problem.
Set off across the bridge from Nyborg towards Copenhagen. Sure to be a toll. It is after all a bridge of about 18km. Yes there is a toll - $A50 and then another lot to come home. We were able to get a deduction on the return trip so that it only cost $A40 each way. Ouch! On to Copenhagen.
Walking doesn't cost money but, eventually, you have to eat. We found a table under one of the many, many
Couldn't Fit
the stairs inside the building so had to pop them outside. Frankfurt near the river. umbrellas in one of the many, many streets with same. The menu was quoting prices a little lower than some of the others so we sat down and ordered the local specialty - smoerrebroed - supposed to be a large, open sandwhich that is reported to be the best lunch you can get in Denmark. Feeling luxurious in the sun so we had a small beer each.
Now I don't consider myself a food whinger. I eat what I am given and, if it is good, that's good. If not, then I know next time. Well next time I order smoerrebroed I will want to see one or get a very clear estimate of weight. On this occasion I ordered a smoerrebroed with prawns, mayo and dill. I shouldn't complain really. I received precisely that. There was bread - one half of one piece of one thin slice; there were prawns - 10 little school prawns; there was dill - one sprig; and a slop of mayonaisse. Pat also had smoerrebroed. She had one with smoked salmon. Again, that is precisely what she got. The other half of my slice of skinny white bread and a couple of slices
Last Photo
for a while. of smoked salmon. Nothing else. No dill, no piece of lettuce and absolutely no butter. All of this, plus the beers of course, for the princely sum of 232 Danish kroner (divide that by 4.2 to get $A).
Did we leave a tip? Not likely. If you charge like that for that amount of food there is no need for additional customer supplementation of wait-staff wages.
Luckily, food in the shops and supermarkets is not quite that savagely expensive or as lousy value for money. But we have been surprised at the relatively poor quality of fruit and vegetables available. It is possible to buy fruit at prices that are not too bad, relative to Australia, or maybe that should be Darwin, but the quality is not so good. All of the fruit we have bought has turned out to be pretty badly bruised or has started to go off within a day or so of purchase. Canned or frozen food vegetables is a much better deal and, given that frozen food has been found to have a higher nutritional value than a lot of fresh food, this is a good bet. Having a fridge in the accommodation
New Hotel
nice enough but there was a minor downside... is coming handy there.
And while I am having a bit of a whinge there is another thing - shop opening hours. We arrived in Denmark on Saturday afternoon having driven up from Hannover. Found the place we rented for a week with no problem, Tomtom having been restored to a position of power following the Hanoverian problems (more on that in a moment), and decided on a quick run to the supermarket to pick up some food for dinner. Spotted a Lidl and figured that would be a reasonable option. Decided to have a quick look at Nyborg first. Only spent an hour but that was enough. Came back at 1705 and Lidl was closed. On a Saturday arvo. When we needed food. Searched around for a while, didn't feel like a restaurant, dismissed the local Maccas as a bad choice and eventually gave up and went home to option 5 - rice, canned beans and chilli with a bottle of 'dry Furmint' Tokaj wine with an aperetif of 'Late Harvest'. Life is tough on the road.
The real issue was that, if the shops shut at 5.00 on a Saturday, do they open at all on
Hameln Houses
typical of most of the town and of the others in this area of Lower Saxony Sunday? Lidl doesn't. We didn't worry too much. Thought that we should find something in Copenhagen. Found a few 7/11s open but they didn't have much that we were all that interested in. Seems that people that shop at these places aren't looking for much. We had given up and were resigned to beans and rice again - not that this would have been a bad thing - but we found a store open in the centre of Nyborg. We only found it by chance. Were hunting for a car park near a cash machine and spotted 50 or so bikes parked on the street. A sure sign. The shop was chocka with people all doing what we wanted to. We still had beans, rice and chilli but at least now we did that by choice. That is, after all, the key to happiness isn't it?
Now that we are without our traveling statistician and oracle on all things numerical with Tony having to take up his duties as an Opa, I am not absolutely sure where this information comes from but it is said (by someone?) that the Danes rate as the happiest people with their lot in
Motorway
It isn't always fast. This one added 2 hours to the trip. We had another delay for about 30 minutes while people on our side of the motorway drove slowly past an accident on the other. the world. I don't know the relationship between average weekly earnings and the cost of living at the moment but there are things that you can observe.
One of the first things that strikes you is that they are a fit bunch. It could have something to do with all of the bike riding or maybe the price of junk food is too high to feed on all of the time but there aren't that many people who seem to be overweight. I have had my doubts about the allegation that Australians are the most overweight or obese people in the world. A few of the countries that we have traveled through look to be in the running but there is no doubt in my mind that the Danes would leave Australians looking fat and sloppy.
We have been camped in a house about 80 meters from a beach - I will come back to that later - and there is a constant stream of people moving back and forward for swimming, boating, walking and any other active pursuit you could name. Very active people.
Of course they have the time for it. I was woken the
Pied Piper
Happier with shops than rats but you can't really tell it is Hameln I guess. other morning at 2.35am to be told that the light in the sky was very strange. You see, in this part of the world in this season, the sun is normally well and truly up by the time we normally surface. My informant hadn't seen 2.35 for a while. It was actually that nice period just prior to dawn. In other places - like Darwin for instance - it happens at about 5.30am during most of the year.
It is the birds I feel for. They are still on the job at 22.30 and have to back in the air at 3.00. Poor little buggers. For people there is a lot to be said for these long days. You can have an evening meal. Take your time over it and then go out for a nice long walk along the beach, play games etc. Whatever you do get up to though it is important that you get yourself nice and tired. So tired in fact that you break the habit of many years of waking up that little bit before dawn. In this country, if you don't sleep in then I suppose you must simply die for lack of
Nice Place to Work
but you would have to work in Nyborg. You do get just a bit of an impression that it might not be a very lively place. sleep within a season or so.
Nyborg isn't the subject of enthusiastic write-ups in the guide books. We picked it because it was close-ish to a major highway, on the coast and in striking distance of most other places we might want to visit. As it turns out most of Denmark seems to meet those criteria. There is no place more than 50km from the coast. Makes NZ with its 100km positively fat by comparison. The road system seems pretty good and it is easy to get around.
The beach here is supposed to be one of the best in Denmark. It is nice. A little skinny, a little rocky, there is some sand but there is no surf. It is still a beach... I guess. We have walked its length a few times and toddled out along the many piers that are built every 50 metres or so. They seem to be there to allow people to launch boats, and themselves, a fair way out from the beach. It is all pretty shallow but the water is very clear and clean.
We only stayed in Frankfurt for a couple of days. Just enough time to deliver
Nyborg Beach Babe
but not in typical attire. Locals get the kit off at this time of year - some more than others. Trish and Tony to the airport, get thrown out of our hotel - probably the noise I think even though the hotel reckoned it was because we didn't have a booking for the second night - and have a bit of a look around. Walked around the city, which is actually better than many and gives the lie to those who see it as an industrial, commercial wasteland. Even visited the Staedl Gallery for a Caravaggio in Holland exhibition.
It was very wet in Austria as we moved through to Germany. Spotted that there were considerable floods in a couple of towns. The forecast said that it would continue to rain across most of Central and Eastern Europe for the next week or so. Decision time. Head north. Scandinavia looks pretty good and rain-free.
Stopped off in a little place between Hannover and Hameln for a couple of nights. Tomtom led us nicely to a very nice little suburb of Hannover. Lovely house in a nice street but didn't look a lot like a hotel and definitely no reservation for us. GIGO in operation. The address we had been given for the pub made out that it was
Clear Water
but a lot of jelly fish. Well over a meter deep here in Hannover. Better address I suppose than Wennigsen but that was, in fact, where the hotel was situated. It was a better option anyway. We weren't terribly interested in another large city and were more interested in having a look at Hameln.
Hameln is the place of Pied Piper fame. I can't recall ever thinking too much about this story but I suppose it was just another fairy tale. But something could actually have happened here. Too long a story to tell and there are many different stories. They range from a paedophile stealing all of the kids to a mass migration of most of the younger people to another country probably after some kind of plague or other disaster.
The history of Hameln was actually blown away by the sales that were on in the surprisingly large number of shops in the place. The current clothes are getting pretty boring so we took the chance to refresh a little.
There isn't a lot of difference between northern Germany and Denmark, but there are some. The motorways are slightly different in construction, for instance. Not so much hot mix used. No Euros of course. Now into the
Signs
Will have to do a post on these one day. This bloke had collected some good ones. Danish kroner at 4.2 to the $A1. Colourful money. The standard house styles are a little different almost as soon as you cross the border. Where German farmers seem to live primarily in villages near their farms, the Danes seem to live on their farms a little more often. The country is perhaps a little drier and maybe a little less fertile. Where in Germany you see very little livestock in the fields, in Denmark it is much more common. And the design of churches may have provided the inspiration for Leggo - but that is just an 'in-car' theory and may not have any substance.
It is likely that we will come back through Denmark on our way down to Frankfurt and after moving through Sweden, Norway and possibly Finland but we will see how that goes. The Frankfurt trip is necessary to drop off the vehicle we have leased and to catch a plane back to Australia. We are going back for a month or 6 weeks to organise the shift of our gear from the NT to Qld and then to store it in Qld. A completely unforeseen event and unfortunate but, nevertheless, the budget should
Copenhagen
Plenty of churches about here. These ones in direct competition. handle it. Only those Danish prices that are providing some difficulty.
We are, of course, back to travelling alone now. The last 4 months with our travelling companions, Trish and Tony, have been a time we will never forget. During the time they were with us we travelled through Malaysia, India, Turkey, Czech Republic, Slovenia, Croatia, Montenegro, Bosnia-Hercegovina, Serbia, Hungary, Slovakia, Austria and Germany. Many different cultures, different modes of travel, with sometimes dramatic changes in food and climate. Along the way two of us received instruction in how to play - and occasionally win - at bridge, all of us benefited from the statistical information available on all manner of things, wine and beer were sampled in every country - at least where it was sold - plans were hatched, followed or discarded and we were able to work out ways of operating that gave each other enough space to relieve any tensions that developed as we searched for accommodation, streets, castles or whatever. It was a time to remember but now, for them, it is back to other duties. For us, on on.
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