Germany and Scandinavia 2024 Post #12 Wednesday Sept 18
We spent today resting in Stockholm. I went to the nearby mall (a 4 story building) to do some souvenir shopping and bought a nice tea towel by a Swedish artist. It wasn’t a touristy type of mall. In comparing Sweden and Norway to Canada, I have the following observations: 1. Sweden and Norway seem to be a much more outdoorsy, fitness and activity culture: there are bicycles everywhere, young parents are pushing their children in strollers and even jogging at the same time, I don’t remember seeing anyone overweight, apparently the alcohol is very expensive and people have to be 20 years old to buy it from a government store. 2. Both countries are constitutional monarchies just like Canada and all can be considered quite nordic. 3. Everything is more expensive in both Norway and Sweden than Canada. 4. Of course, sports-wise, in all European countries, soccer is big but in Sweden, hockey is also big and in Norway, skiing is big. 5. Stockholm and Oslo are at the same latitude as the division between the western provinces and the northern territories of Canada, so more north than most of our cities, but since they are on the ocean, they don’t get as cold as if they were in the center of a continent. 6. The cities feel more safe and cleaner with less graffiti than Winnipeg. 7. The Scandinavian countries teach English in school as their second language and all the countries’ languages are so similar that they can basically understand each other, whereas Canada has been trying to do this but it seems that the scandinavians are much more successful at it because EVERYONE we spoke to understood us and spoke English extremely well. 8. The Scandinavians are well dressed and groomed. We saw two ladies with huge Botox lips today in Stockholm, the only two we’ve seen on this trip. 9. Travelling through both Norway and Sweden reminded me of areas in North America but more compact and less expansive. Although, I saw some buildings in the countryside with moss, or grass roofs that I haven’t seen in N.A.
There is an event this evening at the Avicii Arena beside us and the cool lights are on again. We head home tomorrow starting at 9:35 am to Amsterdam, then Minneapolis the Winnipeg.
Germany and Scandinavia 2024 Post # 11 Monday and Tuesday Sept 16 and 17
On Monday, our hotel in Oslo was right by a busy highway which, when the window was open, provided for white noise as well as cool air, so I had a great sleep. After breakfast, we had a local tour guide direct the bus to drive by places in Oslo like the modern opera house that people can walk onto the roof, and the harbour with some cruise ships. We walked through a huge sculpture park in light rain. It was raining all morning so all my photos through the bus window shows only the rain-streaked glass of the window. We left Oslo in the late morning, driving through forests and by lakes. It was amazingly just slightly hilly with farm fields here and there. We crossed the border to Sweden as if it were nothing. We stopped in Orebro, a very pretty town with a castle in the middle surrounded by the river which acted as the moat. It had stopped raining and the temperature was very enjoyable. We drove on to Stockholm, arriving at about 7 pm. The hotel we are in is HUGE! It is right next to an arena and has two sections 11 floors high. It is also located next to a mall so we could get some food at a grocery store. Since each Scandinavian country has its own currency, it is fortunate that they prefer to do cashless transactions - otherwise we’d be forever exchanging Canadian dollars for Euro, or Danish Krones or Norwegian Krones or Swedish Kronas.
This morning, Tuesday, we were in a little less of a hurry to get on the bus. Up to this point, we had to eat breakfast at 6:30, bring our luggage to the bus and be on the bus by 7:30 am. This morning, since we were not travelling to another place today, we didn’t have to pack our bags, and our city tour only started at 8 am! Woohoo! We had a local Swede direct the tour through Stockholm, and like many good tour guides, he had many jokes and tall stories to entertain us. We found out that Stockholm is a city on mostly 14 interconnected island connected with something like 57 bridges. We stopped on a hill to get a panoramic view of part of the city, then drove to the city centre and the royal palace. The tour ended there and we were free to make our way back to the hotel. Since we were right beside the Royal Palace, I wanted to go inside. We have to pay for admission, but it was a good activity. The palace is no longer the residence of the current king, but it is used several times a year for functions and meetings. It is crazy lavish but I suppose it wouldn’t compare to a place like Versailles in France. As we were leaving, crowds were gathering and stanchions were being put up in the courtyard of the castle. We found out it was almost time for the changing of the guards so we waited for it. It was not a very big to-do but I did notice that the guards were all very young men and women. The leader had an eye-patch which made him look, to me, very serious indeed. We ended up walking directly to our hotel, which took an hour but it was a beautiful sunny day of 18 degrees and I got my 10 000 steps in!
Germany and Scandinavia 2024 Post # 10 Sunday Sept 15
Well today was all about travelling…all day! This misty/rainy morning we had 30 minutes to have breakfast (all 63 of us and there was another bus-full at this hotel as well) then we left Bergen, Norway at 7:30 am. Our first stop was for 15 minutes at Tvindefossen Waterfall that happened to be along the route. These falls are 100 high and are also known as Trolls’ Waterfall. I had plenty of time to take my pictures and I even spotted a headband in the little kiosk there, so, having lost my little knit headband the day earlier, I bought it. It was about half the price of the ones in town. Then we travelled to Gudvangen to take a 1.5 hour boat cruise in the most famous fjord: Sognefjord. It was spectacular! The boats, called Future of The Fjords are the first all-electric, carbon-fibre vessel in the world. It is powered by two electric engines. It was indeed very quiet. When I went to stand outside on the forward decks, you could only hear the sound of the hull cutting through the water. I even heard a herd of goats on the side of the mountain as we passed them. (I got a good picture of them.) The misty rain let up part way through the cruise but there still were mystical, low clouds hanging partway down the mountains. This cruise through the fjord reminded me of the Alaskan cruise we went on but the boat was much quieter and the shores much steeper and closer. After the cruise we boarded the bus again (it was starting to feel like our home) and drove on. We were driving through tunnels, fields, forests, mountain meadows with sheep and steep valleys with rapids in the bottom. My ears definitely popped a few times. One of the tunnels, Aurland Tunnel, is the longest in the world at 24.5 km. We had another 15 minutes stop to take pictures of a Stave Church, a well-preserved Norwegian wooden temple from the 12th century. Then back on the bus… we arrived at our hotel in Oslo, Norway, at 8:40! We had that 1.5 hour cruise and the rest was spent on the bus. Were we glad to get off! The foods we ate were stuff we bought the day before because there were no meal breaks except for the cruise and all they had were snacky things.
Germany and Scandinavia 2024 Post #9 Saturday Sept 14
We drove from Stavanger to Mortavika, where we took a ferry across Skudenesfjorden, a fjord. Our huge bus just drove onto the boat with all of us on it. Apparently, this is part of the road system here and every car has to pay tolls which are automatically scanned as you drive by somehow. The ferry crossing took about 25 minutes. We were allowed to stay on the bus for this crossing but I got off to take some photos of the fjords. On the other side, we continued and passed through the world’s deepest tunnel below the sea. When we got to Sandvikvag, we boarded another ferry with the bus but this time the driver needed to take a break so we had to get off the bus and go in the ferry. After the 45 minute trip across an arm of the North Sea, we carried on to Bergen. We had tickets to go on the funicular to the top of Mount Floyen. It can’t be that high because at the top there are huge trees and a park as well as a resident goat herd that like to be pet. We were told that any day that it doesn’t rain in Bergen in good day, it was a sunny 15 degrees Celsius with no rain at all. One local said that when it rains, everyone is in a bad mood, and when it is not raining, everyone is in a good mood. At the top of Mount Floyen, there were dozens of youngish people washing black mud off themselves as if they had been in a mud race or something. I looked it up and it’s the Trolljeger or troll hunter obstacle course. They were filthy and cold but they certainly looked like they had had fun. The top of the mountain is said to look like a troll forest and now that I know that, I concur. When we were going back to the hotel from eating at a local pizza place, we heard loudspeakers announcing something like another race in downtown Bergen and there were people lined up in the streets. We noticed that the young people here don’t smoke, don’t have tattoos, have stylish clothes and haircuts and are very polite. One table of older teen boys actually picked the crumbs off their table before leaving. The prices of everything here is extremely high. Our large pizza (with hand tossed crust) cost $24 in Canadian. I lost the knit headband I had brought so I looked to get another one. The only ones I could find were the Bergens of Norway thin ones costing $40 Canadian! I can do without.
Germany and Scandinavia 2024 Post #8 Friday Sept 13
As we travelled north from Aarhus, Denmark, the landscape got less and less hilly. I noticed that the houses in Denmark had roofs that were even at a higher pitch than in Germany. At the very north tip of that peninsula of Denmark, we boarded the ferry for Norway and disembarked 3 hours later at Kristiansand, Norway after crossing the North Sea. It was a bright sunny day with low winds and about 15 degrees C. I took a photo of the sea as we left port, the water from the port didn’t seem to mix with the sea. Odd. We ate on the ferry which was quite a large ship. At Kristiansand, we boarded the bus while it was still on the ferry. Today our English group has 62 travellers and we have a double decker bus! The scenery was awesome! We travelled to Flekkefjord for a pit stop then on to Stavanger to our hotel, arriving after 8 pm. Norbert and I walked about 10 minutes to a grocery store which was thankfully still open to grab some cheese and crackers for supper. Everything closes at 6 or 8 pm here so we were lucky. At Stavanger, there is a monument with 3 swords in a rock commemorating an historic battle in 872 when King Harald Fairhair united Norway under one crown, defeating two other kings. It also represents peace since the swords are in solid rock and can’t be removed. The scenery so far is unlike B.C. and Switzerland in that the mountains don’t have snow on them right now. There are picturesque farms, villages, sheep, cows and lakes dotted everywhere.
Germany and Scandinavia 2024 Post #7 Thursday Sept 12
We said goodbye to Germany this afternoon after having stopping in Hamburg for lunch. Hamburg has a small old town area and an artificial freshwater lake. It is also is the second most populous city in Germany and the third-busiest port in Europe. We rode north for another 2 hours to Flensburg, Germany where Norbert and I bought supper to eat later. I am glad we came to see Germany. I see it as a modern country with a very long past and a horrible 20th century. I have found that even though, in general, they did not seem outwardly welcoming, most of them we met were normal people. I appreciate that German history makes up part of our Canadian heritage. I was surprised that the landscape was so hilly and green.
We entered Denmark at about 4:30 pm and didn’t have to stop at the border. We are now in Aarhus, Denmark. What a pretty place! From our hotel room’s wall to wall windows on the fifth floor we can see the harbour and the old town. After we ate our sandwiches, we walked to the harbour. I of course put my feet in the water, the Kattegat Strait, the sea between Denmark and Sweden. High tide was ebbing, and the way they have the harbour here, you can walk in the water on the walkway when the water is high enough. I loved it - and no sand! Aarhus is Denmark’s second-largest city and it is much more open, or spacious than the cities that we’ve seen in Germany. It is the largest container port in Denmark but we must be on the ‘people’ side of it because I find it very people friendly. It claims also to be one of the world’s leading destinations for international meetings and we walked by the convention centre which right on the harbour. There are bicycles everywhere, and, like in Germany, there are dedicated bike lanes.
Germany and Scandinavia 2024 Post #6 Wednesday Sept 11
Today’s journey was through the towns that inspired the oral tradition that the Brothers Grimm collected in their books. Our first town, Trendelburg, had a large medieval castle on top of a hill with a Rapunzel Tower. I climbed the tower’s winding spiral staircase made of stone for a floor then made of metal. It was about a 9 story climb so nowhere near the height of Gloucester Cathedral I had climbed in 2019, but at top offered a very nice view. For the tourists, they had a ropey looking ‘Rapunzel braid’ hanging out of one of the tower openings. A little cheesy but it fits with the theme. There is a 22 room hotel and restaurant in the castle and it is apparently always full. I had always been curious about the name of the major forest in the area where these tales are said to originate, The Black Forest, and did it still exist. The name conjured up images of a dark, mystical or mysterious place. Driving through the very hilly area on small little roads, we passed many huge stands of surprisingly thick forest, where the trees were mostly deciduous. Indeed, I could not see anything past the first line of trees except black. I can definitely understand that in medieval times, this would be a scary place giving origin to the many dark tales like Little Red Riding Hood and Hansel and Gretel. Creepy! Our next town was Hoxter where we had lunch (I ate a bruschetta from an Italian snack and dessert place - delicious) and had a quick visit to a Benedictine monastery first founded in 822 A.D.! We went on to try to see the ruins of another castle close to Polle that they use as a backdrop for Cinderella, but as soon as it got there it had started to rain and even though the bus stopped, and the rain let up, no one got out. The castle was up the hill, obscured by trees and we just left and carried on. Our last tourist stop was Hamelin, of the story: The Pied Piper of Hamelin. They really hype up that story in this town. Among the granite cobble stones, they have put in, here and there, metal ones stamped with a rat. There is a giant rat on top of a footbridge and they were getting ready to put on a play for the kids in the town square when we were leaving. Many shops have a giant rat in their store. One looked like a Bollywood version. We were told by the guides that due to some convention of some kind in the area, the hotels we were supposed to use were full so we had to go elsewhere. It didn’t matter to me where we stayed but last night, we dropped off half our bus load of travellers at one hotel, and had to drive an extra 30 minutes to our hotel. And leave extra early in the morning. We were warned that we only would have one choice of restaurant and to maybe buy some food at the last stop. I am glad we did because it was 8 o'clock by the time we got to the hotel which would make supper even later if we had to order in this fancy restaurant. The big plus of that hotel last night was that it was not by a busy road, but in amongst trees and, with the window open, I had a good sleep listening to the rain on the leaves all night. The other plus is that tonight the same issue happened that we did not get the original hotel -we are not even in the town we were supposed to be in - BUT this place is like a spa hotel, we have a suite with slippers and a bathrobe and TWO balconies! And we bought our supper in the last town so we enjoyed our supper on a balcony.
Germany and Scandinavia 2024 Post # 5 Tuesday Sept 10
This morning we left at 7:30, headed for the Rhine River, on which we cruised for about 2 hours. It is apparently the most scenic part of this river. We passed many castles, medieval looking villages, old churches and vineyards on a slope that seemed impossible to use. A group of students were aboard for a while. They seemed to be about 9 or 10 years old. Many of them were able to talk to the Americans onboard in English. I was impressed. And they were quite well behaved too. After the river cruise, the bus kept roughly following the river valley and dropped us off for lunch in a pretty, little town along the river that was full of tourists but quite pleasant. After about an hour, we drove on to Cologne, basically to see the Cathedral Church of Saint Peter. WOW. It is huge! At over 155 metres tall, it was the tallest building in the world until 1884. It still is the tallest twin-spired church in the world and the third tallest church of any kind in the world. The inside is massive with immense columns and extremely detailed, colourful stained glass windows. Tonight, our hotel is in Essen, which used to mine coal and produce steel. We have a earlier start tomorrow so if the pictures don’t load right away, I will leave it for another time.
P.S.: Many of the places we were brought to during the entire trip so far are UNESCO World Heritage Sites.
Germany and Scandinavia 2024 Post #4 Monday Sept 9
We left Munich this morning and headed south, almost to the Austrian border to the Bavarian Alps just to see a castle… and it was worth it (we didn’t even go inside). The Neuschwanstein Castle has been described as the inspiration for Disney’s Cinderella Castle. Unfortunately, I couldn’t get my camera to talk to my phone so I can’t include a photo until I figure it out but it is impressive. It was raining a little but so very little that I didn’t even wear my jacket. Back on the bus, it took us north now. The landscape has been farms and forests on rolling hills. There are a lot of solar panels set up in fields everywhere and we saw some hops farms too. We arrived at Rothenburg, a beautifully preserved medieval village described as the prettiest one in the area. It was spared destruction in WWII We got driven to Frankfurt, which was described as Gotham city - very impersonal. It is a major financial hub - home to the European central Bank of Germany and of Europe. Frankfurt was completely destroyed in WWII and rebuilt.
Germany and Scandinavia 2024 Post #3 Sunday Sept 8
Another very full day today! We left at 7:30 from Nuremberg and travelled to the Danube River down which we sailed for about 40 minutes. It was a lovely sunny morning. I had no idea that it actually flows from east to West unlike the other major European rivers. It actually starts in the Black Forest and empties into the Black Sea. It was very beautiful. We got to sail through the Danube gorges which is very strictly controlled to preserve it. The Austrian composer, Johann Strauss II wrote a waltz named the Blue Danube in 1866. It brought to mind images of royal people in super fancy ball gowns dancing. It is apparently the most famous waltz and is familiar to practically everyone. Even the grandkids and I knew the tune when Veggietales used it as the melody for “stuffmart” in Madame Blueberry. I had to put one foot in the water. The boat cruise ended at a Benedictine Monastery existing since the 1040! We had just enough time to pop into the beautiful church and catch a little of the mass - it was in German of course. From there the bus took us to Dachau Concentration Camp and Museum. From the beautiful to the atrocity of the Holocaust. I have no words. The first episode of “The Tattooist of Auschwitz” tells the story well and everyone on the planet should know it. From there we travelled to Munich, driving right past the Olympia Stadium where the 1972 Olympic Games were held and then stopped to look through the BMW (which I just learned is for Bavarian Motor Works) showroom which is described as the biggest in the world. In Munich Old Town, there was a very light misting of rain- so little that I didn’t bother with a jacket. There, we walked past the Opera House to Marienplatz where immense churches had their bells timed one after another so that they didn’t compete with each other. One set of bells ringing at a time was loud enough, I can’t imagine if those ~7 churches’ bells all rang at the same time. I think that would be the definition of ‘cacophony’! One of the set of bells also had the German coocoo clock type animation where large ‘figures’ were chasing each other. At the end, one of the jousting knights actually knocked the other knight. We were also shown the Hofbrauhouse - the most famous pub in the world. It dates back to the 16th century (that’s in the 1500’s!) I now know what a Bavarian beer house is like. A big privilege is to store your own beer stein in a glass case under lock and key. The bus finally drove us to our Munich accomodations, a converted movie house which showed its last film in 1966. We got a round corner suite room which is very comfy. Looking over the day, I found myself remembering the Germany I first learned about before I knew anything about the wars: the coocoo clocks, the wooden clogs worn with thick woolen socks, the hand carved Christmas ornaments, schnitzel and beer, fairy tales and some of our school friends’ maternal language. We went from the beauty of nature, music and a thousand year old monastery, to past horrors, then from high tech engineering to old German church's, clocks and beer houses. My insides feel like a yoyo but I am in a good place.
Germany and Scandinavia 2024 POST # 2 Sept 7, Saturday
We left Berlin at 7:45 am - or we were supposed to - some of our group was waiting in the wrong place and were quite late. We headed south to Dresden which is very close to Czechia. The drive was quite scenic with red and yellow pine forest - (I believe they were tree farms because although they were huge, they were a little too uniform in size), cereal fields, hay fields and small villages. The homes and farmhouses all seem to have extremely high pitched, tile roofs. In Dresden, we had some free time to explore the old centre with its grand palace and other glorious buildings from a time when this capital of Saxony was the seat of the kings from the 14th to the 18th centuries. The photos tell the grandeur of these buildings. We boarded the bus again at noon, headed for Bamberg, and all was well until traffic stopped. We were stuck for about an hour and were never sure why, but since we aren’t the people driving, I didn’t really care. We arrived in Bamberg and followed our guides to the old centre. Here 80% of the buildings are original and are around 1000 years old. You can tell they are old because there are few straight lines and angles. Apparently it wasn’t bombed as much as other cities. We boarded the bus again for our final destination of the day: Nuremberg. Yes, the place of the war crimes tribunals. The only visible tribute to this historical event, in front of the building formerly used as the justice palace, are 4 posters bearing the flags of the 4 nations involved. We hadn’t had a lunch and it was already 7 pm so as soon as we got checked into our hotel, we went for an Italian supper at the hotel across the street and walked into the medieval walled city to check it out. It’s another early morning tomorrow, so it’s off to bed now. As old as some of the buildings are, there are many very modern ones in these cities as well. Our hotels so far have been so modern that there is almost no wood and lots of glass (even the bathroom doors are glass), tile and acrylic. There is a frosted glass ‘window’ from the bathroom into the rest of the room and the end of the room is a solid wall of curtains. Very cool.
Germany and Scandinavia 2024
Post #1 September 6 - Friday
This morning we had a guided Berlin City tour. Grade 12 history come to life. From the Brandenburg Gate (the only surviving gate of 11 gates from when Berlin was a fortified city in the 17th century), to the remains of the Berlin wall with its death strip and watch tower, viewing this city without considering its history, would leave you terribly mystified. Berlin is very different than any city I have ever seen. Some parts remind me of Montreal a little but only because of the wide, busy streets, the amount of people walking around and the large 5-6 story stone buildings. The Berlin I have seen so far has a LOT of graffitti, lots of bicycles, lots of traffic, lots of weeds and a lot of areas that seem desolate or empty between pockets of population. One article I read described this as "islands of life in a sea of vacant post-Soviet blocks and industrial sites". I wasn't sure how I felt about Germany before. I knew the history of the wars in Europe and I know that stereotypical German cuisine (especially pork sausages, beer) does not really agree with me. I wanted to see past that. The area in which we are staying is not a rich, nor touristy area, so the people we pass are mostly locals. So far we've noticed that they are NOT chit-chatty, but also not especially rude. Many young people have a lot of tattos and piercings. Seeing images in the Berlin Wall Museum of families separated by the wall and having read All Quiet on the Western Front, made me realize for the first time that many Germans were likely in a tough spot. First, Hitler gets elected promissing a better life then he takes total power and seeds hatred, then after they lose the war, half the country and half of Berlin gets occupied by communists. Sheesh! For a city that had been 90% destroyed by 1945 and had been cut in half until 1990 ish, it is looking not too bad. Much of the old buildings of East Berlin were rebuilt to look like the original in about 1994. We also walked through the Memorial for Murdered Jews in Europe where Germany is basically admitting that attrocity. The guide told us that the artist designed it as a sea of concrete like the vast amount of headstones in a war cemetary he had visited. I'm now very glad we came to Berlin - I have now put a human face on German people who, before, in my brain, may have sometimes been represented by a swastika.
Germany and Scandinavia 2024
“Again?!” That’s the answer I got when I told people we were going on another Europe trip. It made me clarify my motives for this visit. Where the last trip was self-directed and custom planned, this is a packaged bus tour. Where the last trip was hitting a LOT of my personal bucket list places, this one is “show me your country”. The theme of our previous trip was family and Canadian history in Europe, this one is sort of mending the sense that Germany is the War country - plus I want to see the cool fjords and mountains in Norway and Sweden.