Scandinavia

I'm about three weeks behind now, so hopefully this will be followed soon after by some Eastern European goodness

Denmark

• When we were planning the trip, about the only non-negotiable was that we had to go to Scandinavia, where neither Bo nor I had ever been.  It’s not the easiest place to build into a road trip though – it’s not that conveniently located and it’s bloody massive.  I was initially really keen to visit Norway, especially Bergen and the fjords, but once we’d settled on the French rental car option this was ruled out – Norway is not in the EU and the French insurance doesn’t cover driving there.  On v28 of the itinerary, we settled on 10 days across Denmark and Sweden – Legoland, Copenhagen, Stockholm and then an overnight ferry south to Poland.  A very big-city-heavy version, and you could happily spend months exploring northern Scandinavia, but a good taster for newbies

• The logistics of the first part were pretty straightforward – head north from Germany.  First stop was Billund, home of LEGO, and pretty much in the middle of nowhere.  As well as the main headquarters of the company, the big attraction is Legoland.  We were there midweek, but during the school holidays, and it was pretty busy.  As theme parks go, it’s about midway between Rainbow’s End and Disneyland, skewed towards younger kids, but with a decent number of meaty rollercoasters, and some of the rides and amenities feeling a little dated

Gulliver vibes

• I can just about still handle a rollercoaster, but in my old age there are some rides that I really cannot abide – namely, anything that spins around or back and forth too much.  I can barely go on a swing without feeling sick, so I should have known better than to accompany the kids on a pirate ship ride that went back and forth and round and round at the same time.  I had to close my eyes and breathe deeply until it was over

• The absolute best part of Legoland is one of its original features – Miniland, an incredible collection of famous buildings, landmarks, and whole towns and villages, built outside and utilising grass, shrubs, trees, rocks and water features as part of the build.  There are millions and millions of bricks and tens of thousands of hours of work here, and you could easily spend most of your day at the park just marvelling at it

Block party

• The town of Billund has a few other Lego-themed ways to take money from your wallet, including the Lego House, with various exhibits inside, and some fun kids play areas covering its outside.  One Lego-themed way to put money back in your wallet would be working in the next building over, the Lego Product & Marketing Dept, which sounds like a pretty decent gig

• Both at Legoland and our accommodation at Billund, we encountered loads of wasps – nasty little buggers turning up seconds after any kind of food or drink was opened.  They must be such a feature of Danish life that we saw people at Legoland with BYO swatters to deal to them.  We also saw a load of far more agreeable flying creatures – swallows swooping about

• I do like a good bridge, and there’s a doozy on the drive from Jutland/Funen across to Zealand (not that one).  Called the Great Belt, it’s 18km in total, and cost the equivalent of 3B Euros when it was completed in the late 90s.  It links Scandinavia with mainland Europe and cuts about an hour off previous travel time which required a ferry crossing

• I also like a good bit of juvenile humour, so the fact that the Danish term for speed cameras is “Fartkontrol” was delightful 

• We enjoyed a few days in Copenhagen, which definitely fits my fuzzy definition of a very liveable city (some required attributes:  good public transport; lots of people biking; plentiful parks and playgrounds;  not too crazy busy; waterways, can be canals, or lots of islands)

March madness

• We saw Buckingham Palace in London, but missed the changing of the guard.  We’ve been making up for it in Scandinavia though, first in Copenhagen at Amalienborg Palace.  The guards wear natty blue uniforms, with a comically large fuzzy hat, which from behind makes them look bobblehead versions of Japanese Elvis impersonators.  The ceremony involved three different troops, but too much standing around to hold the kids’ attention on a hot day

Rose to the occasion

• Rosenborg Castle, modest and picturesque, is another part of the royal property portfolio, set amongst lovely grounds with a particularly nice rose garden

• We walked through Langelenie Park and checked out the Little Mermaid, which is a contender for the Mona Lisa “much smaller than you’d expect” award.  Also part of the park is the Kastellet, a 17^th century fortress with star-shaped ramparts, and a rather fetching windmill.  A short walk away is the Nyhavn, and the rows of colourful houses that feature on every Copenhagen postcard

Couldn't they have mermaid it a bit bigger?

• The weather was great, and Copenhageners were making the most of it with people sunbathing on the Nyhavn piers and a few hardy souls swimming.  The Broens Gadekokken street food market was a great option for lunch

• We were in Copenhagen for the weekend concluding Pride Week, and loads of people were heading into the city for the festivities.  There was a lot of preloading in occurrence – beers on the streets and on the train – but entirely in keeping with Danish nature, everyone was getting on the lash in an extremely relaxed, calm, and polite way

Fore!

• Our hotel in Copenhagen had a 9-hole mini golf course.  I thought I might have it in the bag, but carded a 12 on the last hole with a fiendish tunnel.  Kitty gleefully drilled a hole in one to take the W

• My running gear finally came out of the suitcase in Copenhagen. Having not run for a few weeks it was a slow and pretty clunky few kms around the streets and local parks.  It would also be the only run for a couple more weeks, as both Bo and I started feeling a bit fluey in Denmark

• The kids have locked into a thick-as-thieves groove, and are spending hours every day making up new Harry Potter plotlines and cracking each other up with private jokes.  After we played some Simpsons songs in the car, they’ve bizarrely spent the last couple of days memorising the words to “Mr Plow”

Sweden

• Sweden is huge.  We’re only seeing the very southern part of it, but the drive up to Stockholm is a two-dayer that needs a stopover.  We chose Granna, where the kids enjoyed a chilly dip in a lake and a nice sunset.  The town’s main claim to fame is as the birthplace of a certain type of rock candy, and you can watch it being made at the various stores in town

The prince of candy

• We had four nights in Stockholm, our longest stop of the trip so far.  It was nice to consciously take it easy, and not feel like we needed to cram everything in.  We had a mini apartment with its own kitchen and laundry, which felt cozier than the hotels and motels.  Bo and I were not feeling 100%, and the kids were in need of a recharge, so we enjoyed some late sleep-ins and lazy home breakfasts

• Stockholm is a series of islands, with the main city spread across some big ones, and then sprawling out across the inner and outer archipelagos extending out into the Baltic.  The main city is connected by a lot of bridges, as well as various ferries

Mo displaying hitherto unknown prowess for shinning up lampposts like a street urchin

• We spent a good day in Gamla Stan, the old town, enjoying the cobbled streets and narrow lanes.  We saw our second changing of the guard – this one was definitely the favourite, and a brass band on horseback would liven up any event. Mo shinned up the nearest lamppost for a better view

• I had a cracking fried herring sandwich from a little shack by the water.  So simple, so good – dark bread, battered herring, red onion, and a spicy dill mustard

• One of the bigger islands of the main city is Djurgarden, home to a large park and a load of museums.  We visited a couple on consecutive days:  the ABBA and Vasa Museums

Who needs Madam Tussauds?

• I’d always had a grudging admiration for ABBA’s songwriting chops, partly because lots of bands I liked seemed to respect them.  A year or so ago, on a work trip to London I saw ABBA Voyage, with hologram versions of the band in their prime, and had a great time.  The kids are fans, and we’ve probably heard more ABBA in the car this trip than anyone other than Taylor bloody Swift.  So the ABBA Museum felt like a good ‘when in Rome’ option.  It’s wildly popular, with timed tickets and long queues, for a relatively small and poky museum, whose layout doesn’t help itself.  There’s some good history and backstory, displays of costumes and instruments, and some fun interactive elements, including the chance to sing ‘Mamma Mia’ on-stage with holograms of the band, which Mo was the only one game enough to do

• The Vasa was a warship commissioned by the king of Sweden and completed in 1628, intended to be the flagship for the Swedish navy in the war against Poland-Lithuania.  It was beautifully decorated with a vast range of carvings and armed with specially built bronze cannons.  Unfortunately, someone got their maths wrong and the ship was massively top-heavy, sinking in the harbour a few minutes into its maiden voyage.  It lay on the bottom of the harbour for over 300 years, with the brackish Baltic water keeping it better preserved than shipwrecks in saltier seas.  In 1961 it was raised from the bottom in remarkably good condition, along with many artefacts and the remains of a dozen or so of the crew who didn’t make it. It is the biggest and best-preserved example of a shipwreck of this vintage in the world, but that meant the science and conversation principles to look after her were in their infancy.  Nearly 30 years later in 1990, a purpose-built museum opened to house her, with increasingly sophisticated climate controls and preservation techniques

Only fish got to see these carvings for 300 years

• The museum layout is designed for full shock and awe – you walk through the main doors into a huge hangar with the Vasa right in front of you, and it’s hard not to gasp.  You then wander through a number of levels around the ship, alternating between different views of the boat and it’s remarkable decoration, and fascinating exhibits about life on-board, displays of artefacts, and explanation of the salvage and restoration work.  We spent the whole afternoon until closing time and it wasn’t enough

• As well as a bunch of great museums, Djurgarden is also home to the Grona Lund amusement park, a historic theme park with a load of rollercoasters and horrendous-looking drop rides.  It also plays host to a summer series of gigs, with some big names playing on a small stage crammed in between the coasters.  In the week we were there, gigs included the Smashing Pumpkins and the Manic Street Preachers, both of which would have been great had the touring party not been tired and sick

• Stockholm has a great integrated transport system, with trams, buses, trains and a subway criss-crossing the city.  But the best way to get around is definitely by ferry.  The journey back from Djurgarden to our apartment was very scenic, although getting chilly even in late summer.  We passed a waterside pétanque club – a few beers and a game of boules with a view looked like a cracking bit of after-work socialising

• Danish and Swedish are two of the harder languages to learn on the trip.  Almost everyone we encountered spoke excellent English, but I still tried to have a go with my token holiday lingo toolkit (yes, no, please, thank you, sorry, one two three four, coffee, beer), with variable results

• Stockholm is the furthest north we go on the trip, and even though we’re in late August the daylight hours are noticeably longer.  We’re two months after the longest day, but it’s still light just after 5 and sunset isn’t until 8.30.  In mid-June that would have been 3.30am and 10.10pm even in relatively southerly Stockholm. The ‘midnight sun’ or perpetual daylight kicks in above the Arctic circle, where the sun doesn’t set between May and July (and the horrific opposite in December and January)

• Alcohol sales in Sweden are entirely state-regulated, with the only place to buy off-premise the Systembolaget shops.  There are plenty of them, and they are beautifully merchandised with a very well curated range of great stuff.  My impression before coming here was that the state monopoly would make it really expensive, which wasn’t actually the case for craft beer at least.  Buying alcohol on-premise was expensive, but no more so than coffee or food, which were a little pricier than other parts of central Europe 

• BEERWATCH:  We got some great beers in Stockholm, but the pick was the Gamla Enskede Bryggeri “Blood of Jupiter” red ale, with a whole lot of unexpected smoked malt

• I bloody love holidays.  I reckon I’m rather good at them too.  If lazing around on holiday were a representative sport, I’d be gunning for national honours (All Slacks? Black Naps?).  I actually quite like work, but I just absolutely love not working.  Travelling and seeing new places is obviously brilliant, but I also just love being able to sleep in, read books and the news, eat and drink lots of great stuff, get lots of fresh air, walking, and family hanging out, and generally muck around without deadlines and responsibilities and the constant overload of work and real life in the digital age. I also have a weird love for slightly mundane routine (like doing the washing up on camping trips), and the roadie routine just suits me perfectly.  The USA roadie was a good experiment in whether or I’d get bored without the stimulation of work for six months (a definitive nope), and my brain is really enjoying a couple of months of glorious simplicity again

Room with a view

• To avoid a couple of days of driving back from Stockholm, we’d found there was a ferry from just south of Stockholm to Gdansk in Poland – an 18-hour overnight cruise.  This also unlocked the chance to see a bit of Eastern Europe that we hadn’t initially planned, so we rejigged the itinerary and booked the tickets.  It turned out to be a great idea, and the ferry trip went smoothly and was great fun

• Overnight accommodation ranged from airplane style seats in a lounge to a range of cabins, all very reasonably priced.  We opted for one of the nicer classes of cabin, with not one but two windows, a complimentary fruit platter and mini fridge full of free booze, and buffet breakfast included.  Result!  We enjoyed wandering around the ferry, with some great Baltic views from the deck as the sun went down, and Mo enjoyed being the only person in the disco at 7pm, giving her licence to try out some breakdancing moves on the dancefloor

• Kitty and I are bad sailors so we were a little worried about seasickness, but it was a reasonably calm voyage, with just about the right amount of rocking to give us a good night’s sleep