Journey to Denmark

We're in Copenhagen and I've just woken up to a snowy view out of the hotel window. According to this computer the time is 02.32, but that's in Canada.

After breakfast yesterday we took the Number 6 tram ("unser Tram" said the man at the Bremen hotel) to Bremen's Hauptbahnhof carrying our luggage, and it took us several stops before we'd worked out how to buy 2.40 euro tickets for the ride, the machines at the back of the vehicle only accepting Bremen transport cards. Schwarzfahren, we thought, we'll be in trouble if we get caught, but then managed to reach the machine at the front to feed it a note.

At the Bremen Hauptbahnhof we had a long wait for our train, and a second breakfast, followed by a visit to a magazine shop, after which we noticed an announcement on the display for Platform 9 telling us that our train to Hamburg was going to be 40 minutes late. This was bad, because, even if it had been on time, we'd have only 12 minutes to catch the connecting train to Copenhagen. Frantic debate. We decided to take the risk of jumping onto the slow, double decker commuter train, that was due to arrive at 13:25, allowing us a 3 minute connection time at Hamburg. It was a peaceful ride, stopping at all the little country stations on the way! Towards the end of the journey we got to know a bi-lingual family who lived in one of the Hamburg suburbs, British, but bringing up their two children to speak German. The mother worked for Hapag-Lloyd.

We knew we had to be on Platform 5 for the Copenhagen train so when we arrived we rushed up the stairs with the suitcases, the escalator being too slow and crowded and along the bridge, pushing past the more leisurely travellers. Rushed down the stairs for Platform 5 but found the train to Copenhagen on platform 6. Leapt on by the first available door. The electronic display inside the carriage said that this train was going to Berlin. We asked the other passengers. No, Copenhagen, they assured us, but they were a bit anxious too. In the end the train set off 15 minutes late, luckily for us, and the driver announced over the loudspeakers that we really were going to Copenhagen, to cheers and applause from everyone in our carriage.

A Ferry Going the Other Way

The countryside was flat, with occasional deer, cows, sheep in the fields, beech woods, canals. Near Lübeck a few hills materialised and the fields had a covering of snow. I saw the twin spires of the Lübeck churches; I have been there before. Then, our first glimpse of the Baltic coast. If it hadn't been so grey, under such low cloud, I'd have seen more. Every few kilometres we passed a wind farm, the blades gently turning.

View from the front of the train

The "Sun" Deck

Eventually we pulled in to Puttgarden harbour and to my amazement (Chris seems to have expected it) the train rolled onto a ferry. It can't have been a very long train; we were sitting at the very front of the front carriage, so couldn't tell. We had just missed one boat so had a 20 minute wait for the next; they are very frequent. Nobody was allowed to stay aboard the train; it remained on its rails in the hold, with the doors locked, while the passengers mounted the five flights of steps to the upper decks. It was a nice ferry with a Sonnendeck outside, although the sun was nowhere to be seen and was setting in any case. The daylight is of short duration here. The sea was grey and smooth; we crossed it for 45 minutes. All the other passengers seemed to be Danish and used to this journey, northern, seafaring types. We passed other ships in the mist, with their lights on, and saw the lighthouses ahead.

We landed at Rødby, then rolled onwards to Nykøbing, Vordingborg, Naestved, etc. over more wide canals with industrial scenery in the dark and commuter trains going by.

Spending a day in Bremen

On the last day of November we made the acquaintance of Bremen, one of the Hanseatic League ports of the middle ages. Lübeck was another such place, as was Bremen's Partnerstadt of Riga (Latvia), so I learned in the cathedral where they were collecting donations for a new organ in their sister church there.

Chris set off straight after our hotel breakfast for a three hour meeting with a Bremen company I'm not allowed to name, accompanied by Karsten, QNX's sales manager for North Germany and Malte the FAE for the area. Karsten too was suffering from a cold, so Chris and he manfully croaked at their potential customers together, hoping they'd be able to make a quick getaway afterwards. Not before lunch in the staff canteen where on Fridays it's always Currywurst.

Meanwhile I had a leisurely stroll down to the River Weser in the morning sunshine to see the tethered boats, several restored old ones among them, such as the Admiral Nelson, Pannekoekschip (that's Dutch for pancake ship ... we're close to the Dutch border here). A harbour boat tour wasn't on offer, regrettably. On the upper promenade by the river (the Schlachte), stall owners were getting their stalls (Buden) ready for the Schlachte-Zauber: a famous annual winter market with a maritim flavour, that had just opened the previous evening. Hundreds of thousands of shoppers are expected here and the merchants will make the most of it, dressed up in olde worlde garb, pirate costumes a favourite, especially if you have long hair and a beard to start with, selling not only Christmas decorations and cookies, but also felt hats, woolly socks, candles, ropes, salted herrings, poffertjes (another Dutch concept), wooden swords and scimitars, nose flutes, tubular bells and bronze bells. I bought a little bell for bringing my Konversationsgruppe in Ottawa to order, next time we meet. There were improvised outdoor bars with wood chips underfoot to soak up the spills and small wooden fires in braziers, to encourage long term standing in one spot. There was a rope ladder to climb for a dare, bound to throw you off onto a padded mat at the third rung, though if you made it to the top you were promised a 20 Thaler reward. After sunset, I brought Chris back here; the fiery torches were lit then, crowds were gathering and we heard a choir of elderly gents in captain's caps and navy jackets singing old time songs in Plattdeutsch to the accompaniment of harmonicas, their listeners swaying to the music, some singing along. When we returned this way after a warm up in an indoor restaurant, four lively throat singers from Uzbekistan (I guess), accompanying themselves on erhus and drums, had taken the stage in place of the ancient mariners.

My lunch had been a beautifully grilled fish with lemon juice, sauce, rice and steamed vegetables in a cosy corner house on the market square, a Unesco heritage area also full of Christmas stalls at present. I'd got there up the narrow Böttcherstrasse, which I'd remembered from a BBC German lesson I used to make use of when teaching the language, and where I bought a children's book about the Musicians of Bremen, the Stadtmusikanten of Grimms' fairy tale fame. Their likenesses are absolutely everywhere in Bremen, the bronze sculpture of them the best. I ate early, because I wanted to visit the St. Petri Dom for the free lunchtime organ recital there, J.S. Bach's Fantasien in C-mol and C-dur and his Choral-Vorspiele (Preludes) played on the Hochchororgel.

By the time that was over, Chris was free to come and meet me by the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Brücke, and then we explored the Schnoorviertel together, i.e. the oldest part of town, the streets there very narrow, winding and picturesque. The Schoor-Konditorei, in an old vault apparently, served me a delicious slice of Stachelbeertorte.

We carried on by walking through the parks am Wall, by the curved city moat, and so back via a couple of bookshops to the coloured lights and noisy merriment by the river. The Schlachte-Zauber smelled of woodsmoke and Glühwein.

Unterwegs

Hamburg Hauptbahnhof, yesterday afternoon

We're crossing northern Europe from one place to another, again.

On November 23rd we flew overnight to London, with hardly any queuing at the airports and an extraordinary view of flooded England on the descent to Heathrow. What are those wide rivers I don't recognise? I asked myself. They weren't rivers, they were watermeadows, doing their job, as Martin pointed out when we met him in Reading later.

It was still raining when we got off the X26 bus at Teddington with our luggage (lucky enough to be able to leave it in our Park Hotel room at 10 o'clock in the morning) and raining more heavily when we walked across Bushy Park to Emma's and Peter's house with the boys, via a fish 'n' chip shop. Why did they put that 'n' in the sign, Alexander's granddad asked? Because there wouldn't have been enough space between fish and and and and and chips. Alexander thought that was a very funny sentence.

On the Sunday (Nov. 25th) we all caught the Number 33 bus to the London Wetland Centre, although that was less of a wet day, quite fine, fortunately. It's a good place for families. We found all manner of ducks and geese there, and a black necked swan. When the birds dived underwater Thomas said "Duck gone ... 'peared ..." (short for disappeared. He is just beginning to talk.) There were bird watching hides with adult watchers who had taken a vow of silence within. Thomas threw pebbles into the puddles for the sake of the splash, and Alexander used his binoculars. We found a great playground with tunnels and a rope slide. Back at the house, Alexander demonstrated his reading skills to me, and Thomas admired the moon, as well as a street lamp that he also referred to as the moon. ("Bye-bye, moon!" he said, as we went in again.)

By Monday I was developing Thomas' cold. Chris went down with it the following day, and my mother, sad to say, the day after that, because we were visiting her in Cardiff. I have far less to report about Cardiff than I'd have liked, because we were so indisposed. It can't be helped. We enjoyed one another's company and an Indian supper in Whitchurch, and would have very, very much enjoyed a trip to the empty beach with Faith and Mel on the Wednesday morning, had we felt up to it. As it was, we had to muster our inner resources for the drive back to Reading, where we had to stay that evening, at the Ibis hotel on Friar street, stuck in heavy traffic in the Reading rush hour on the way. The Budget car rental staff are to be commended for waiting for us to arrive late at the end of a stressful day for them, and for treating us courteously when we finally brought their car back.

We slept on the 13th floor of the Ibis, which is the best floor according to a regular customer I met in the lift. It certainly offered a good view from the windows, looking down on the curly high street gables, without which that city would be far less attractive. Next morning we made a leisurely start on the RailAir bus to Heathrow's Terminal 5, whence we flew to Hamburg with British Airways, taking off in sunshine, landing in grey cloud. Neither of us felt poorly any more; it was easy enough to roll our luggage to the S-Bahn station: "This train [S1] proceeds in the direction of Hamburg Central Station," the loudspeakers helpfully announced in English. Hamburg Hauptbahnhof was rapidly filling up with rush hour commuters and long distance travellers as we waited for our connection to Bremen, and when the train came, it was so packed that we couldn't find a seat. Chris stood up all the way to Bremen and I sat on the floor between people's feet, reading the "Spiegel" and eating leftover Heathrow sandwiches. At Bremen Hbf. we had some difficulty hiring a taxi and when we did manage it, the driver was somewhat rude and curt, but no problem, we came directly to the Mercure Hanseatic Hotel in the Alte Neustadt and neue Neustadt along the Friedrich-Ebert-Strasse, across the river. Another Ibis-like hotel with perfectly adequate accommodations but no bath for Chris to soak in. Nonetheless we slept like logs, apart from the strange dreams we both had.

Today Chris worked hard until lunchtime, then spent the afternoon with me in old Bremen, but that will be the subject of a separate blogpost.