Cruising Copenhagen

Saturday we drove across the Big Island and right into Copenhagen, finding our campground, City Camp, near the Fisketevor shopping center, with unusual ease. After setting up, we decided to get a day pass on the harbor taxi, and thus spent the rest of the day cruising the sights, hopping off and on as interested us. The main shopping boulevard, all-pedestrian, stretches on for blocks, and was hopping with a fair weather Saturday afternoon crowd.

Downtown along the canal, just off the harbor

Canal-level sight

The Copenhagen Opera; far more attractive than that eyesore in Sydney

Queen Margarethe's yacht

Margaretheville

Main canal through Christianhaven

The polar bear statue; everyone else was taking pictures...

There she is, the Little Mermaid, Copehagen's answer to Checkpoint Charlie

A Viking boat replica in a harbor-side park; the Vikes held their community meetings under such boats



Vicki adds:

Copenhagen, Denmark June 6, 2009

We have been able to do a lot of free camping—which has been great, except that it means we rarely have Internet. What we are finding is that big cities have Internet cafes but they are few and far between and often hard for us to find. Small towns don’t have them at all. I think so many people have Internet at home and/or over their cell phones that Internet cafes are a dying business. We have used the T-mobile hot spot at some McDonald’s but it is about $12 an hour so not too practical. We need to compose more off line and then just have to post. But then I can’t really answer emails I haven’t gotten, off line.

Germany allows you to free camp anywhere it is not posted as restricted, so we have stayed in paid parking lots and in Berlin 4 or 5 nights in a rest area off the freeway that was only 2 miles from the city center. It was great and there were lots of other campers and, of course, truckers there.

In Denmark most free camping is not allowed except for up to 11 hours in motorway rest stops. Last night we stayed in our second one in Denmark, this one right on the coast south of Copenhagen near the island of Mon. There were about 20 camping rigs there. Because of our Montana license plates, we get lots of attention wherever we go.

We hope to stay 2-3 nights in Copenhagen. We are in a campground near the city center. It is just a parking lot next to a shopping center with a fence around it and 2 trailers with showers and bathrooms—the electrical hookups are temporary, too—like the kinds used at fairgrounds. For this luxury, we are paying $45 a night. Copenhagen is frightfully expensive. A hotdog and coke at a stand is $8 or $9—at the mall a burger with coke and fries is $18. Now that does include tax and tip, but it does make you catch your breath. We filled up with diesel again today--$111. We are averaging 20 mpg, but it is still $ .30 a mile just for fuel. Thank heavens we weren’t here last summer—I would have had a heart attack with every fill up. We were in a bookstore and hoped to replace the 9 year old travel guide we have to Scandinavia but the Lonely Planet for Norway was a mere $45. so we decided not to bother. We had planned 6 weeks in Scandinavia but it will really have to be great for us to stay that long!

I am sure Mark will tell you about the Hans Christian Anderson House and our megalithic tombs visits. He has gone over to the McDonalds in the mall where there is reputedly free Internet.

Oh, one sidelight. We still can’t get electric from the campsite lines. Our converter that we brought blows every campground outlet that we plug into. The campground guy here says that there is a specialist in American camper conversions about 20 miles from here. So Monday morning he is going to call for us to see if we can get it looked at. As long as we drive a lot we don’t need the shore power but there will be lots of times when it will be a necessity—especially when we visit big cities and will be staying put. Another adventure. (Did Mark mention he backed up Wed. in a parking lot, hit a pole and broke our $700 back window?)

Megalithic Denmark

On Mon we visited three sites, two tumuli with passage graves and one long barrow. All are about 4,000 years old. These sites are pretty much out in fields by themselves, with markers, but otherwise open and unbothered. I crawled inside the Kong site, which had a large inner chamber. Never done that before, without a guide, etc. A bit of a thrill, actually. The first tumulus had an interesting double aisle structure. Both were very low. The barrow was similar to the West Kennet Long Barrow in Salisbury.

The Klekkendehoj tumulus; the trail through the wheat fields takes you
to a double-aisled structure

Inside the Kong Asgers Hoj tumulus

Me emerging from the Kong tumulus

The Kong tumulus

The Gronsalen long barrow

Island-hopping

The big new bridge that connects the middle island to the Big Island

From the Big Island, we drove down to the island of Mon (more bridges) to see the white cliffs and also some megalithic sites

Our campsite that evening

The next morning

Han Christian Anderson Center

The Hans Christian Anderson center Birth house, adjoins the center; he was born into abject poverty Displays like this cover every year of his life The collection of editions and translations The rotunda in the center of the complex has six or eight murals, numerous statues, etc. Friday we drove to the middle island (Denmark is part mainland Europe, part a bunch of islands) and to Odense to visit the Hans Christian Anderson Center, one of the largest and best writer centers I have ever seen. He is, of course, the national literary hero, maybe simply the national hero (judging from monuments, gift-store fare). Interestingly, to me, the Fairy Tales were just a side-light. Most of his life he strove to be a novelist and playwright, and received recognition in Denmark rather late in his life, long after the Tales had covered the world.

Auf Wiedersehen, Deutschland

Sehestedt, Germany, founded 1282

Sehestedt's restaurant/hotel/beer garden

The church in Sehestedt

The historical museum (alas, it was closed)

A tall ship plies the Ostsee/Nordsee Canal, which links the North Sea and the Baltic...goes right through Sehestedt (school kids take the cross-canal ferry home for lunch, and back to school)

Thursday we departed Lubeck and headed north into Schleswig-Holstein en route to Denmark. We stopped in Sehestedt, on the Ostee-Nord Canal to take pix for Rachel's partner Will Sehestedt. It is a beautiful little hamlet, very well cared for, the Canal was full of traffic, including tall ships and the ferry, and we took a number of pix for Will and his family. 109 to be exact. After lunch we drove on, entering Denmark about 3PM. We thought we'd explor Havesled, but, by 5PM, the whole town appeared closed, sidewalks rolled up, so we drove on to a rest area near Kolding, where we spent the night.

Lubeck

The Holsten Gate at Lubeck

Interior of the Marienkirche in Lubeck, where Buxtehude played; the organ is still the world's largest mechanical organ

Plaque commemorating Bach's visit to hear Buxtehude; Bach almost lost his job by over-staying his leave

Niederegger is perhaps Germany's most famous marzipan shop...five floors including museum; yum

Just in case your Michelin map is a bit dated, it's helpful to know that Waghemansstrasse was changed to Wahm Strasse in 1460

Wednesday morning we took the Grey Wanderer back to the Mercedes dealership for repair. They told us it would take until mid-afternoon, so, equipped with some complimentary bus tickets, we headed for the Altes Stadt, the old city, to do the sight-seeing for which we came here.

Old Lubeck is an island in the river Trave, a very old city, capital of the Hanseatic League in its time. It sustained some damage in the war, but enough remains and enough has been restored for the entire old city to be designated a World Heritage Site. Most of the old stuff is 14th or 15th century, but some goes back to the 13th. It is a beautiful place, much of it pedestrianized, a great place to just wander. The pix above represent some of our walk about town.

Later in the afternoon we picked up the camper and greatly stimulated the local economy, far more than we had intended or wanted. It is hard to know what is reasonable...different place, different currency, dealing with Mercedes and not an auto glass dealer. Oh well. We continued our grocery shopping at Citti and later returned to our campsite, on the river, at the Congress of Music.

Shattering Incident in Lubeck

Ouch! But it was a nice band-aid

"Our" Mercedes-Benz dealer in Lubeck

Tuesday morning we undertook another reorganization of the camper, and I worked some more on the still-not-fully-functioning converter. We were going to do some heavy-duty grocery shopping in advance of our trip to expensive Scandinavia, but, in the Citti shopping center parking lot, I managed to back the Grey Wanderer into a signpost, breaking one of the back windows in the van. Horrors! Curses!

Vicki took all this calmly, stoically almost. I did not. Within a few minutes, however, we were at the Mercedes Benz dealership in Lubeck, arranging for repair. Unfortunately, the replacement window had to come from Hamburg, and won't be done until Wednesday. The Mercedes people (complimentary expresso, chai) did clean up the mess of glass and install a plastic sheet over the window frame (with a nice Mercedes logo) so we could carry on. We did a little more grocery shopping, then spent the night, with several other RVs, at the Congress of Music parking lot just across the river from the Altes Stadt.

Tiergarten, Brandenburg Gate, Reichstag, Memorials, Monuments, Air Ministry, Checkpoint Charlie, the Wall...and on to Lubeck

The Reichstag, the German Parliament...quite a tortured history

Goethe Monument in Tiergarten Park (almost as large as Phoenix Park in Dublin)

The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe

Inside the Sony Center, near KulturForum

Goering's Air Ministry, one of the few 3rd Reich edifices not much damaged in WWII (probably reflecting the Allies' low estimation of Goering's strategic abilities); it's presently the Ministry of Finance

Achtung!

Checkpoint Charlie; now Tourist Trap Tommy

Vicki at the Wall

Monday was our last day in Berlin. After breaking camp again at the Avus, we drove into the city and parked on the Tiergarten, near the Kulturforum, allowing me to walk around a bit of the park, all the way to the Reichstag, and back. Dozens of sites, scenes, some in the pix above, many quite moving. Later we drove to the Friedrichstrasse area, and took in the various sites there, the largely-intact headquarters of Goering's Luftwaffe and many of the other evils he managed (now the ministry of finance), Checkpoint Charlie, and the Wall. See illustrations. You'd think the Wall was maybe 9th or 10th century, given what little is left of it. Anyway, having thus done Berlin, and feeling very pleased with it, we proceeded on to the autobahn and to Lubeck, where we stayed for a night in an actual campground.

Rococo My World

Schloss Sanssouci, from the gardens and terraces

The Bildergalerie exterior

The Chinese pavillion

The "New" Palace

The Orangerie

The Ruins; no palace is complete without some ruins to show off

Our goal for the day, Saturday, which we totally underestimated, was the Schloss Sanssouci, Frederick the Great's summer palace (mid 18th century). We had read that the guided tour took an hour. It turns out the Schloss is just the opener... there also are the women's wing, the kitchens and wine cellar, the art gallery, the orangery, the parks, the orchards, the vineyards, the windmill, the (artificial) ruins, the Chinese pavilion, the guest palace, the new palace, and more. Think of it as the German Versailles (except for most of its time it was merely Prussian). Frederick is of interest himself, probably the closest we ever got to a philosopher/king (Voltaire lived with him for 3 years), but then the whole complex stayed in the royal family and after nationhood in the 1870s became one of the Kaisers' main roosts. In the new palace Wilhelm III signed the documents starting WWI. And in 1918 abdicated.

The whole thing is pretty much Rococo or Rococo revival, reflecting Frederick's era and, throughout, his interests and tastes. Rococo, to my great surprise, grows on you, especially when you begin to see some of its principles and themes. Apart from being a great nation-maker and statesman, and intellectual, Frederick was also a patron of the arts, a colossal collector of French and Italian painting, and an accomplished flutist (composed 102 flute sonatas). I knew of him primarily as a military leader, very much in the same league as Napoleon. He once “exhorted” his troops with the exclamation “Fools, would you live forever?!”.

We arrived a bit past 10AM and left a bit after 6PM, and, by my count, saw seven of the thirteen principal sites. Sanssouci was relatively undamaged in WWII. Despite the Red Army's thoroughly looting it (3,000 pieces are still “missing”), most of it was returned to East Germany, and what one now sees, unlike most other such national monarchical sites, includes much of the original (restored) furniture, furnishings, and art. Of particular interest, and worth the hefty admission price all by itself, is the Bildergalerie, the paintings gallery. It was the first purpose-built art gallery in Europe. Imagine something on the scale of Versailles' Hall of Mirrors, only, instead of mirrors, you have paintings, hung floor to ceiling, Baroque-style, practically every square inch covered by some master or other. The building itself, gold everywhere, sculpture, marble, mosaic, proportion, light, was great art. Alas, photography was not permitted here nor anywhere else at Sanssouci, although we did sneak a few outside shots. Apart from the Bildergalerie, the main hall in the new palace, which Vicki and I dubbed “shell world,” is pretty incredible...a whole 6-8k square foot hall decorated in sea shells and other mineral specimens, floor to ceiling, floor and ceiling included. The shell is a central Rococo image.

It was an exhilarating if exhausting day—3 stars plus, easily, and much more than can be done in a day—but we were glad to get back to our “site” at the Avus Rasthof. Driving to Potsdam from Berlin, by the way, takes you through the now-ruins of Checkpoint Bravo, a major entrance to East Berlin/East Germany.

Day in Charlottenburg

It was another day with Frederick the Great, Old Fritz, his grandmother and successors

Entrance to Schloss Charlottenberg

From the gardens

Some of the artifacts from Herman Schliemann's excavation of Troy, the museum of which is at Charlottenberg

Alas, the museum was closed for renovation, but we did make it to the Cafe Schliemann

We parked on Schloss Strasse, next to this beautiful old pump

As if Schloss Sanssouci were not enough, Sunday we spent most of the day at Schloss Charlottenburg, the palace Frederick the 1st built for his wife, Charlotte. After bearing him an heir, she spent the rest of her relatively short life there, pursuing her interests in theatre, music, painting, philosophy and the sciences. She was Fred the Great's grandmother, and presumably the source of his more humane interests. With her friend and tutor, Leibniz (inventor of the calculus and monads), she founded the Berlin academy of the sciences. Schloss Charlottenberg was badly damaged in WWII, but is now well restored, and many of its interior furnishings and art were saved and are now on display. It was built originally in the late 1690s. Fred the Great resided there for a time, but much of what is on display is from the mid-19th century, when later Prussian kings and queens resided there (in addition to the Berlin Schloss, the Potdam Schloss, Schloss Sanssouci, and others). Again, much art, mostly French (including David's “Napoleon as First Consul Crossing the Alps”), and much history. Happily, for our tired feet, fewer buildings and grounds than Schloss Sanssouci, and generally fewer wows.