28th Oct - End with a Contented Glow

Well we've just got a few more days in Copenhagen before we head onto our next stop - Amsterdam and as usual, we had to find our Michelin-starred restaurant for this 'stop' on the trip. We had heard about Era Ora (www.era-ora.dk), an Italian restaurant that has been a Copenhagen institution for over 20 yrs.

We walked for 35 mins to Christianshavn and saw the very unusual church steeple below and then had a very special meal at Era Ora. A four-course extravaganza which included: Venison in red wine with savoy cabbage (which melted in the mouth), truffle oil and duck pasta, the most amazingly tender and flavoursome veal with polpetino di risotto and a 'to die for' chocolate terrine which must have been 85% cocoa content. We chose matching wines and Chris will be pleased to know that we had a really BIG cabernet sauvignon (a 1996 Refola - Italian of course), which both Mark and I really liked. Normally I would find this wine much too heavy but it had a beautiful blackberry taste and after the other wines, it just seemed 'right'.

Luckily the weather held out, crisp blue skies with cool wind and 13 degrees as we definitely needed the walk home to partially digest the meal. After 2.5 hrs in the restaurant and a significant credit card bill, we have a very contented glow about us.


Turbot marinated with lime and Venison con red wine sauce and savoy cabbage (with Biaco di Custoza)


Trufie rolled in duck (with Cesconi merlot 2000)


Filet of veal, polpetino di risotti and saba sauce (with Refola 1996 Cabernet Sauvignon)


Tortino of chocolate (with la Morandino Piemonte)

25th Oct - Sweden 'Pimp up my Ride'

It's quite amazing how far you can travel in just a few days exploring the smaller towns in Sweden. We managed to travel 1,000 kms in southern Sweden (and admittedly, only saw part of it) but got a good appreciation of the coastal towns, in fairly wintery weather. For the first time, since arriving in London on our very first morning, we actually got questioned by a Customs official on the highway toll zone between Denmark and Sweden. I wonder why he had a confused look on his face, when he asked why two Australians were leasing a French licensed car with red (diplomatic?) plates and travelling from our 'home' in Denmark to Sweden for a few days? Can't explain it but he was very suspicious.

We started off driving from Copenhagen, bypassing Malmo for YSTAD, a tiny ferry stop to Poland (9 hours). It was probably once a more important town, but is nowa little slow. Nearly everything in Ystad was closed on Sunday but we managed to explore the town including some beautiful 11th and 12th century churches on foot, before driving about 20 kms further on to Sweden's STONE HENGE.



What you say? Aren't you in the wrong country? No, there really is a type of Stone Henge in ALES STENAR on the very southern coast of Sweden. It has been Carbon date tested by several groups and is estimated it is from 600AD. It's believed to be an iron age burial ground. It is extremely windy there (and this was a relatively good weather day) and it's completely exposed to the elements (including huge cow droppings everywhere - it's a mine field). Although not as large or spectacular as the British Stone henge, at least it didn't have a motorway 100 meters away!



As you can see in the photos, quite spectacular. Ales Stenar is on the rise above KASEBERGA which has a lovely old harbour, an ice cream shop and not much else. We didn't take up the ice cream but a coffee would have been nice, oh well.

Back in the car, we drove to SIMRISHAMN and found a cafe to warm up in and have a good toasted baguette whilst watching *Pimp Up my Ride' and American TV show we've seen before in Germany where people with extremely rundown cars get nominated by their embarassed friends to the show. The totally rebuild the car as a mean street machine with a massive sound system and at least one tv in the boot and at least two screens in the cabin. Some of them turn out really amazing and others are just hideous but the whole show is quite fun to watch.

Continuing up the South-East coast, we drove into KRISTIANSTAD, the old Danish stronghold by King Christian IV. Unfortunately except for a few churches, different in style to the last, and some interesting fountain sculpture, it was a quick 45-mins tour of the town on a Sunday afternoon and back in the car to HALMSTAD on the South-Western coast.



In Halmstad, we managed to find a hotel just outside the old city gate, the Clarion Collection Norre Park which was really amazing as it offered us not only room and breakfast in the morning but also an evening buffet including hot & cold dishes from 6-9pm for the reasonable price of 950SK (100€). This saved us at least 300 SK on dinner in town. We walked around the old town that evening, trying to avoid the steady rain falling.



The following morning it was only 2 degrees when we started out. It climbed to a massive 7 degrees by the end of the day, after we drove further south.

Initially, we drove up the Western coast to FALKENBERG, although we were mostly unimpressed and so decided to head down closer to Malmo/ Copenhagen via GESKÅ in ULLARED. A town in the middle of Sweden which has a massive Dimmey's type store (we've never seen a bigger shopping frenzy) and about 20 discount warehouses have set up around it. Apparently 3M people visit it each year and everyone was taking trolleys and 2 hand carts as they walked into the store 8some people were trying to manhandle two overloaded trollies through the store!). It was bedlam and after buying some essentials (gloves for Mark and winter socks for me), we headed out of there and straight onto the backroads (50-70kms-hour maximum) to a small town called ARILD which was extremely difficult to find.

However, persistence and a little about turn on the backroads later and we found what we were looking for - NIMIS. It's a rather unique and completely extraordinary driftwood sculpture in literally the middle of nowhere.

Arriving at the not very well signposted farmstead of HIMMELSTORP at 3.30pm, we spent the next 35 mins walking through very difficult terrain to find NIMIS (the name of the art piece). It would have been helpful to have really sturdy shoes, a walking stick and a bit better signage as we realised afterwards we took a very difficult and at times dangerously large sidestep of the correct route on the way down. With the failing light and unsure whether it would take us longer to return, we had to leave after only 10mins, although Mark made an amazing video with our digital camera and I'm sure people will want to see this. The pictures below, don't quite represent the 'shock, awe and wonderment' of us upon reaching it. (As well as sore knees, ankles and thighs).


(you can walk between, in, up and around these 'sculptures and the towers are about 5 stories high)

After returning safely to the car in only 20mins (going on the right path), we both commented that this was perhaps the best man made thing we've seen to-date on the trip. Certainly it was startling, impossible to imagine how or why the artist built it. We reallised as we were setting out from the car originally, we saw someone with a small tool belt carrying a hammer, who may have been the artist returning from adding some more driftwood to this scultpure which runs into the sea.

After a quick dinner at McDonalds (a guilty pleasure) we headed back home and paid another 285 Swedish Krona (AUS$50) toll just to cross a 1km long bridge back into Denmark.

21st Oct - Roskilde: Viking ships and dead monarchs

We took a day trip to Roskilde today which is the old Viking capital of Denmark about 40km west of Copenhagen. It's known for its viking boats and church which houses the burial chambers of most Danish monarchs since the Reformation.

The Viking museum is based around 5 viking boats (circa 1000 AD) found scuttled in the Roskilde fjord in the late 1950's. It wasn't until the 1962 that they could build a seaguard and pump out the water to extract them. After 25 yrs work restoring them, the display of the 'remains' of the boats are truly amazing. Since that time, a fantastic living museum has been built which includes replicas of each of the five boats (in summer you can watch more boats being built the traditional way and also crew the boats that are already built) along with the remains of the original boats). It was one of the better museums visited on the trip and catered for English speakers wonderfully. They also told the story of the vikings travelling down the Rhine pillaging and plundering (they forgot to mention the raping but were very discrete and careful not to glorify the wholesale slaughter and destruction of entire villages) which was an interesting insight. The whole display explained why the vikings travelled so far (they reached the mediterrean, Britain, the North Sea, Baltic and Greenland areas as well as far north America).


Roskilde viking boats (originals)


Replica viking boats at Roskilde

Our next stop after lunch was the Roskilde Domkirke (UNESCO World Heritage listed) which was started in its current form in 1170's. Since the Reformation all danish kings - and almost all queens - have been buried at the Catherdral.The catherdral also holds one of the most important church organs in Europe. You can easily see why 'Our Little Prince' will be called Christian as they have been alternating the future kings' names between Frederick and Christian since 1534.

20th Oct - Traipsing North & East in Demark

Well we've had an amazing few days travelling around Denmark and seeing the countryside, although as many Danes will admit, the countryside is fairly bland in most parts. Mark and I drove 400 kms west and north to Alborg in far northern Denmark to meet up with a friend of Rebecca's (Scotland) called Lone. They met nearly 7 yrs ago and became great Yoga buddies, amongst other things, and Lone had been a great help already before we met her with suggested places to visit and great websites for researching Copenhagen's travel, design, art and fashion high points.


Tam, Lone & Mark

After reaching the city of Alborg (approx 250,000 people) we finally met Lone and she had managed to score her landlord's carspace for us for the 2 days which was wonderful. She grew up in Alborg although she spent several periods during her University studies in Dundee. She knows a heck of a lot about the history of Alborg and was a fantastic guide for us, walking around town and telling us the old stories. Lone's place was literally on top of the most central street in town (Bourke St Melbourne equivalent), three floors up with views of a 500 yr old convent next door and gorgeous 300 yr old Church spire.


Lone's apartment


The church outside her front door

Her apartment is amazing (and apparently extremely large by Alborg standards), it's nearly bigger than our house and she even arranged to stay at her parents new condo (about 10 mins walk away) so we could stay in her place for the 2 nights. I've never heard of that sort of hospitality before (but it was very much appreciated). After checking out her favourite cafe for a drink, we headed back to the apartment and Lone made us a beautiful and very authentic Thai soup which required both a fork and a spoon to eat it! We've got the recipe and it will definitely be something we do back home, and possibly a bastardised version on the trip (depending on availability of some ingredients). We polished off 2 bottles of Chilean wine, Sauvignon Blanc definitely the pick and then set up plans for the following day.

On Tues we drove north to the very tip of northern Denmark to a place for Skagen (pronounced Skane) which is normally very gusty by mid October but spectacular as that is where 2 oceans meet and you can see the clash of their various waves. Well, Mark and I have been living charmed lives as the weather was divine, sunny, pristine postcard blue skies and almost no wind. There was a small but still effective wave clash and plenty of people taking advantage of October week-long school holidays to see this popular fishing and holiday resort town. It seems that all the multi-millionaire Danes and Swedes have holiday houses there - bit like Portsea or Lorne. You know you've made it big if you've got a substantial home there. Prince Frederick and Princess Mary holiday there every year for 2 weeks as well as the rest of the actors and important people about town. Skagen is also known for its coloured houses (Skagen yellow) and the partly buried church.


Skagen yellow house & partly buried church


The meeting of the oceans at the very top of Denmark

We had booked one of the best fish restaurants to say thank you to Lone for her hospitality and enjoyed the meal at Pakhuset very much. After having a home-made ice cream and walking around the shops, Mark bought his compulsory art piece and we were all happy to drive back to Alborg.

We ended up crashing in front of a movie on DVD - Girl with a Pearl Earring with Tom Wilkinson and Scarlett Johansson and said goodbye to Lone.

Wed, we drove to Arhus through quite thick fog, which eventually blew off by midday into a glorious but cool day. We visited the much-renowned Arhus ARoS Museum which had a special feature including 'The Boy' and a feature of the Hans Christian Anderson 200th birthday celebrations. The museum had invited 64 artists to prepare any sort of work on what HC Anderson's stories and life work meant to them. These have been donated to the museum and Denmark. Separately, in 1986 (only 4 months before his death), Andy Warhol, had developed a serigraph on HC Anderson and some of his own print artwork from the late 1800's and this work is pride of place in the exhibition. The ARoS building is quite spectacular too, having been designed very recently by a Danish architect and being invited by the Guggenheim Bilbao museum (in Spain) to form a partnership, of sorts.


ARoS art and staircase

Finally, after wondering through Arhus town, we drove onto Egtved (a tiny speck in the middle of Denmark) to view some rather unusual landscape sculpture. It's a stark and rather unforgiving environment and the wind had picked up considerably by late afternoon. It seemed to add to the drama of the sculptures.



Huge scultures at Egtved

We eventually made our way back to Copenhagen, pretty late and absolutely exhausted.

16th Oct - Copenhagen a Party Town

Well after a few days driving through Northern Germany we arrived in Copenhagen and managed to briefly meet our houseswap couple who are lovely. The place is decorated really simply with a lot of white walls and the furniture sets of the colours and contrasts as you'll see below. Thomas is a professional photographer and Stine is a fashion designer so you'd possibly expect something over the top but in fact it's a georgeous, almost minimalist look, with the odd designer piece thrown in.



The apartment is on the first floor which is brilliant after 3 floors up in Berlin (oh our aching legs) and it's right in the heart of the Red Light district which makes for interesting stores and company along the streets. It's been gentrified a lot over the last ten years from what we understand and it's an up and coming trendy area to live and party in (a bit like St Kilda ten years ago).

We've been extremely lucky with the weather as it's been cold but clear most days and temperatures between 15 and 19 degrees, although I think one day was only 13 degrees. Apparently, its normally blowing a gale and raining so hard you cannot use an umbrella at this time of year so we do feel special. Fingers crossed the weather sticks around a bit longer.

After settling in on Tuesday, we walked around the Vesterbro area to orient ourselves and then the following day toured central Copenhagen by foot for nearly 5 hours. On Thursday we took a look at some of the more typical tourist sites including Nyhavn (new harbour) and the Little Mermaid as well as a cruise up the canals to see the Opera House and some beautiful old houses dating back to the early 1700's and the ship building era.











Friday we just had an easy day, relaxing around the apartment and then seeing a movie (The Wedding Crashers - a bit of harmless fun) as we were getting ready for the big Night of Culture. For only 70 krone (20 AUD) we could go to any and all events across 300 venues which were running between 6pm and midnight.

We saw about 8 or 9 events, including a student photographic exhibition, the famous modern tapestries in the Royal Palace presented to Queen Margreth II for her 60th birthday (truly amazing), some choral music in an old church (fantastic sound quality), the carillion song of the church bells, a fashion parade by some up & coming Greenlandic designers (some of which Tam would love to buy) and songs by Jacques Brel, Edith Piaf and Patricia Cass sung in French in the French Literary Cafe amongst others. It was a crazy night, quite cold but clear. There were 60,000 people who attended last year and I think there would have been similar numbers out with us.

After stumbling back home, we got a text the next morning to say that 'Our Mary' had done the country proud and produced the Danish Prince on the morning after Culture Night. My sister in Scotland said I should head for the Rosenborg Palace for some commemorative events at 12noon. We raced down there and with about 3,000 others, stood around for nearly 45 mins to see the Changing of the Guard! It was nice but I thought there'd be something else.

Afterwards we wandered around Kastellet, an old palace which is now an Army barracks and tourist location and saw the amazing Grefion Fountain which took 11 yrs to build. It's quite phenomenal and has a real power of water gushing so it looks like the 4 bulls are ploughoing through the Swedish fields as the legend suggests.



From there we found the best Tapas place Nini's which has only been open 1 yr and had a lovely late lunch which reminded us of Mo Vida in Melbourne (except not as nice). We toddled back home in the late afternoon sun, well satisfied.

We thought for a Saturday night, we'd check out a local bar that we'd seen during the week - Simple TV on our own street. Well, obviously, we're in the know, as the place packed out within 30 mins of us arriving and they had a great DJ mixing old and new records.

Today we caught up with Lars, a friend of our houseswap couple and had a nice discussion over coffee and he suggested a few good ideas for day trips and things to do in both Denmark and Sweden. He also knows a heap about the history and politics of Denmark and Scandanavia generally, which really helped us have a sense of the place.

We were also in town when mary gave birth and went to see the changing of the guards (to celebrate the birth).



Tomorrow we're off on a short road trip north of Denmark, and then later in the week to Sweden. Next entry in a week most likely.

12th Oct - Small town, another small town and then LEGOLAND

Just a quick update that we have made it into Denmark after driving up from Berlin. Spent a couple of nights in a few small towns looking at old stuff which was really pretty but then we headed to...

LEGOLAND!!!!!!!!

Legoland is everything you ever dreamed of and then even more (or am I the only one who had those dreams?).

I had no idea that many of the models moved and had sound effects.

Not much to say but it was money well spent and the photos speak for themselves (sorry about the layout but using a Mac and who knows how this crazy machine works).