Water not included

Aarhus to Odense

Our Denmark summer had finally hit its stride, with up to 28 degrees C expected over the next few days, so its back to being warm again! 

Odense is famous as the birthplace of Hans Christian Andersen and we had booked tickets for the museum located in a very modern building in the old town. 

The museum follows his journey of writing his stories using audio descriptions that play depending on where you are standing. His fairy stories could be very dark, so it's no wonder Disney rewrote the ending of The Little Mermaid so as not to scare children! 

Some of the displays were quite clever and brought the stories to life, including the mattresses piled to the ceiling for the Princess and the Pea, and the use of mirrors and video effects for The Emperor’s New Clothes.

Afterwards we stopped at a café for lunch where K asked for a glass of what she thought was tap water, only to be charged $5 for it on the bill! Just another example of how Denmark impacts the hip pocket and the bank balance! 

To infinity and beyond

Esbjerg to Aarhus

We had thought a visit to Legoland in Billund would be worthwhile, but after some research we realised it wasn’t really our thing as it’s essentially an amusement park targeted at children. However as it was pretty much on our route we decided to drive by just to see what it was like from the outside. The first thing that struck us was how many and how big the car parks were, followed by the distance families had to walk from the car parks to the entrance. There were hordes of people with kids, which made sense as ot was also the last week of the Danish summer school holidays. We did a drive by, took some snaps through the car window and then headed on to the Viking Village in Jelling.

The museum exhibition explaining the history and importance of Jelling to the Vikings was very clever and informative. It covered the first king and the role of the village in the beginning of Christianity in Denmark, and used interactive displays and techniques we hadn't seen before. Museums have come a long way from static displays in glass cases!  

The village itself was quaint, the Viking areas were right in the middle of the current modern village so there was a mix of large artefacts and huge burial mounds from the first century, and a well kept church with the headstones of villagers who had only died recently.

K was most amused to discover we were visiting with some of the Australian Equestrian Team who were competing at the FEI World Championships just 40 minutes down the road at Henning.

Our next stop on the way to Aarhus for the night was the absolutely magnificent Infinite Bridge, a circular bridge built from the edge of the beach across the sea. Actually, it wasn't that great, it was just a circular walkway over the water that looked much better in the photos than in real life, you should always be careful with things you read on the internet ....

Aarhus is Denmark’s second largest city and we had a nice evening on the canal which runs through the city.

Hi, Hi Hi

Copenhagen to Esjberg

We caught the train to the airport to pick up our rental car and then headed north to check out Frederiksborg Slot ("castle" to us). Our Danish is coming along well, we can now say hello, which is pronounced "hi", goodbye which is "hi hi", and thank you ("tak"). See, learning another language isn’t that hard at all!

The grounds of Frederiksborg are large and manicured with a magnificent moat and impressive buildings, we wandered around the garden for a while but didn't enter the castle.

From there we drove for a few hours to Esbjerg on the western coast of Denmark, to visit the “Men by the Sea”, four big (9 metre high) sculptures of men looking out across the ocean.

Our hotel in Esbjerg “A Place To” was quite unusual, it looks like a renovated silo but is actually a new tower designed to be sustainable and maintenance free. We were on one of the upper levels with a balcony so we had a wonderful view across the ocean, port and green lands. 

We enjoyed our evening with a meal in the main square, we felt like we weren't in a tourist town but in a more "normal" Danish town as there seemed to be very few, if any, tourists around.

Alas poor Yorick

Copenhagen

This morning we caught the train to Kronberg Castle, famously known as "Hamlet’s castle". K had gone through a Hamlet stage at high school so had this visit near the top of her list. It was raining and cold on the walk from the station to the castle - welcome to summer in Denmark! The castle was well kept and interesting even though there is no proof that Shakespeare ever visited and Hamlet is of course fiction, it was still good to see the back drop for the famous play.

After heading back to town we went for a change of scenery with a visit to Freetown (also known as Christiania) on one of Denmark's islands. The autonomous commune was started in 1971 and we took a stroll down Pusher St where they had little stalls selling cannabis - kind of weird because apparently it's illegal but you wouldn't think so judging by the open trading. The general vibe of the whole area was your usual hippy commune kind of thing (think Nimbin perhaps?) i.e. multicoloured and  generally grotty but still with shops and stalls trying to get some of those the capitalist tourist dollars (or krones in this case!).

It's not that big but it's not that small either

Copenhagen

After seeing the crowds of tourists last night we were a bit wary of going on the walking tour today in case there were too many people, as we'd had poor experiences in the past with big groups.

There were over 100 people but fortunately we were split into five groups. We were a bit surprised to find that three of the guides were Australian, we weren't sure how it would go but as as the tour progressed we realised it was very interesting having one of our own give their perspective of the Danes, and how Danish society differed from ours.

After the tour finished we walked from the Royal Palace area to see The Little Mermaid statue. K was pleasantly surprised to discover the statue was about five times bigger than she expected from all the descriptions she had heard about how small it was (but it is still on the small side).

From there we revisited a few of the areas from the walking tour. The temperature was supposed to be 21 degrees but the wind chill factor made it seem much cooler, it was the coldest weather we'd experienced for quite some time!

Where's your mask? What mask?

Hamburg (Germany) to Copenhagen (Denmark)

First class seats again for the 4 hour train trip to Copenhagen. The seats looked almost new and the train was very clean, our only regret was that we didn't book a quiet carriage. We were exposed to endless chatter in a language we didn't understand (yes, our fault for not learning the local language)!

We arrived into Copenhagen station in good time and dragged our suitcases all the way around the streets surrounding the station, to finally realise that if we had turned right instead of left when we exited the platform we would have been at the hotel in just two minutes!

We strolled the block or so into the old town to find we were amongst masses of tourist just like pre covid times, the busiest we'd seen for a long time.Thailand was still quiet and Frankfurt and Hamburg aren't particularly big tourist cities like Copenhagen. It was also noticeable that in Denmark masking up isn't a thing like it was in Germany. We have tended to stick to masks in crowds as the last thing we need on our trip is to catch Covid!

No women allowed

Hamburg

Jet lag hadn't seemed to impact us too much so far, but it seemed to finally catch up as we really slept in today! 

As we’d been to Germany a few times before we decided we would skip an organised walking tour for Hamburg and try a self guided tour instead. We had made our way to the impressive Rathaus (town hall) where we noticed the tell-tale umbrellas of a free walking tour group. We decided to tag along for a while to see if it was OK as the tour size was about 20 people, not too big, not too small.

As it turned out the tour guide was quite good so we enjoyed hearing about the history of Hamburg and managed to see a lot of things that we would have inevitably missed if we'd tried to guide ourselves.

The tour ended near the Elbphilharmonie, a modern concert hall, so we took advantage of the free entry to the terrace to look at some views of the city, which weren't that great as they mainly looked out over the docks area.

It was now getting very warm at 34 degrees so we took a short break before heading out to Reeperbahn the party/red light district. The set up was similar to Amsterdam in some ways where women ply their trade from windows you can see from the street, but women aren’t allowed to enter some areas at all.

We went back to the plaza near our hotel for dinner, and struggled again with the number of smokers and the fact that smoking is allowed at restaurants. It really shows how Australia is quite different to Europe in many ways, not always for the best but in this case it definitely is.

One other thing we noticed about Germany was how most people on public transport are still wearing masks, much more compliant than at home.

This train will not be continuing

Frankfurt to Hamburg

We found a nice café nearby that made a decent flat white, but as the size of the cup was so small we ended up drinking two, to the surprise of the café staff who wanted to know where we were from that we could possibly find that their double shot flat white was not enough!

We had a four hour train trip to Hamburg, the train was delayed but we had booked first class so we enjoyed our comfy seats with a table as we settled in to enjoy the German countryside. All was going well for the first 2 hours until it was announced that the train would be stopping at Hanover and not continuing. 

We waited half an hour on the platform in 35 degree heat and piled into the next train with everyone else on the platform, two trains of people into one train, hardly enough seats and definitely none left in first class. K ended up on a table in the restaurant car, M found a seat where he could keep an eye on our luggage.

Our arrival into Hamburg ended up being an hour late, and after running the gauntlet of the heat, crowds and beggars we finally made it to our hotel.

Guten Morgen!

Frankfurt

We’ve been to Frankfurt before we so we spent the day doing some shopping and running some errands. We were amused to read the heat warnings issued in the press as the temperature was going to be 33 degrees C, we found it quite pleasant and nicer than Thailand as it wasn't as humid.

Wherever we go in the world people think that we’re German, not usually a problem unless you're in Germany where it can be a bit of an issue. Whenever someone speaks to us it's in German and we can't understand them, our vocabulary stops at "guten morgen"!

Back into it

Phuket (Thailand) to Frankfurt (Germany)

After spending four weeks in July chilling at Bang Tao beach in Phuket, Thailand it was time for us to hit the road and do some real travelling once again.

We took our time getting out of Thailand, we flew from Phuket to Bangkok, had a good night's sleep and then hopped on another plane for Frankfurt in Germany. We had packed a few clothes and essentials into our hand luggage in case our suitcases were separated from us as we'd heard there were lots of issues in European airports. Even though our flight was delayed we were fortunate to arrive in Frankfurt and find our cases had made it there as well.