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Published: November 15th 2007
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Hamlet’s Haunt
Kronborg Castle in Helsingor As you will know we are playing catch-up with our blog so excuse us as you may be ambushed with our trivial adventures over the next few weeks.
Having now travelled through the main island of Jutland in Denmark, Norway, Finland and Sweden the only thing left for Scandinavia was to make our way back into Denmark, the Fyn and Zeeland islands, before our migration south.
Our first stop was Helsingor. It is one of Denmark’s most historic towns with entire streets of colour - washed buildings and a famous renaissance style castle, Kronberg. Originally build around 1425 by King Eric of Pomerania when he introduced the “Sound Dues”, fees paid to the Danish crown by all ships passing through the Baltic. It was Shakespeare more than anyone, who made the castle famous by using it as the setting for the tragedy Hamlet. So it is unofficially now known as Hamlets Castle, Elsinore. She was very impressive indeed.
The other legendary figure, Ogier the Dane, sits slumbering with his shield in the dark casements in the depths of Kronberg. Legend has it that if ever Denmark is threatened by a foreign enemy he will awaken and rise up
Grand Entrance!
Rob about to enter and seek Hamlet. to defend the fatherland. Must say though, with all that sleep he still looks like a grumpy bugger, check the pic.
From here the plan was to head into Copenhagen, however (don’t worry it’s not the dreaded version of however this time) we decided to go via Fredriksborg which was sort of on route. We saw a picture in one of the guide books of a very elegant looking chapel housed in a palace and reckoned it may be worth a squiz. Although we must say that we were a bit undecided as one of the guide books stated that it houses Denmark’s National History Museum and the most notable rooms are the Council Hall, Knights Hall and the chapel with its Compenius organ. Well that did not inspire much confidence in the place especially since we are not too big into museums but were we well shocked, especially Wendy. It was magnificent, so much detail, it was hard to take it all in. It was by far the best castle we have seen to date. Frederiksborg Castle is a magnificent Renaisance castle built in early 1600. The sprawling castle has a magnificent interior with gilded ceilings, full walled
Great Dane
The legendary figure of Kronborg castle is Ogier the Dane in the dark casements in the depth the castle tapestries, royal paintings, vaulted black marble chapel where apparently monarchs were once crowned and the even more impressive Baroque gardens. If we have too many pics of this place please excuse us as Wendy is still excited with it all.
So eventually to Copenhagen where we stayed at a campsite in grounds of an old moated fort complete with the guns. It was also only 10km from the city centre so made for an excellent location as we could cycle in every day. Denmark is sooo bicycle friendly that they even have separate bike lanes complete with its own set of robots (sorry more South Africanisms - traffic lights). Copenhagen would be a step back into civilisation for us so it was a few more historic statues/sights then sex, drugs and rock n roll, well not really but it was sex, hippies and booze(not in that order though). OK we have our parents’ attention now so let us explain. Our first trip in we lurked (even sounds more ominous now) around town to check it out and then we went to see the ‘The little Mermaid’ the bronze statue of the character in Hans Christian Andersen’s fairytale. The only
Wendy on top!
Kronberg again, Sweden is across the way problem was that there were 2000 other Japanese tourists doing the same thing so we scarpered outa there. We also visited the Geiffon fountain which was an impressive sight. So then first it was the booze, the famous Carlsberg brewery that was founded in 1847. We had to of course get a photie of the infamous elephants at the entrance and then it was the tour with the reward of beer, beer and more beer and at the end. So once a few jugs were down we headed back into town and by chance again ended up at the Erotica museum, so there’s the sex then. It was interesting to say the least and we had had another good day and an even more interesting time cycling back. The next day we headed back in and visited among other places Christiania - the alternative state. Yes the hippies. Previously an abandoned 19th century military barracks that in 1971 a group of alternative thinkers took it over and founded Christiana, a ‘Free State’ with woods, dirt roads, working shops, restaurants and funky houses - basically it retains the spirit of Woodstock. They have only 3 rules: no hard drugs, no cars
The Grand Palace
Frederiksborg, a renaissance Palace. and no weapons or fighting. So this basically means that they do not condemn the open sale of hashish and marijuana and aptly the main drag is called, “Pusher Street”. It has officially been called a social experiment by government however they are not funded by the system in any way.
After Copenhagen we headed for the island of Fyn and on our way stopped at an old Viking village called Trelleborg. This is an old abandoned Viking fortress some 1000 yrs old and was once a huge fortified camp that housed about 1000 vikings. One of the houses had been reconstructed and you could also see where the original houses once stood. It was quite good, but very windy.
“To Travel is to live” - Hans Christian Andersen
Our last stop on Denmark was Odense, home to the famous author, Mr HC Andersen himself. So after visiting a few churches we moved onto his museum which was attached to the house were he apparently grew up. The museum was quite informative about his life and as you will be aware he wrote many of the famous kid’s stories. His fairytales have been translated into more than 100
The Grand Palace again
Frederiksborg and still a renaissance Palace different languages today, what a feat. He was also well travelled as he spent a total of 9 years outside of Denmark. Goodness we have some catching up to do!
So that put and end to an incredible 8 weeks through Scandinavia, an extremely impressive place and also though extremely expensive, bread and crackers form here out. Wait a minute! Add wine and that is our staple diet.
We now had an even more epic journey ahead of us as we would be joining Robert’s family in, wait for it, southern Spain for 10 days timeshare. Good to get out of the van and see the famdamly however it was only 3,200 km away so start of the great trek south. What seemed like a good idea at the time all of a sudden didn’t seem that way anymore.
So to start our journey we headed into Germany and decided to spend the night in Bremen. It was also now the start of the rugby world cup(Oooh we all now know the outcome of that tournament and yes it will be brought up later) so we decided to cycle into the town and watch South Africa play
Samoa. The only place we could find the match televised was at an Irish Pub and they (Irish Pubs) soon became our nemesis as you will hear about at a later date. We locked our two bikes to a lamppost and headed in. South Africa won and we met an awesome French and German couple. When we left we noticed only one bike leaning against the lamppost and a big burly looking man approached us and said that he had found something on the floor, handed it to us and took off? He had handed us our lock which had been cut in half. Our other bike was about 20 metres away perched against a railing. We of course grab both bikes and then realised the guy who handed us the lock was the character trying to steal our bikes however he was long gone. Literally a few seconds later and they would have been history. Lucky or what!
So after that close shave we continued our epic journey into Spain.
Skal (cheers)
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