Denmark

A few short days after bidding a sad good-bye to Marie (after spending a last weekend in Leipzig with her at her friend Pauline's), we headed to Denmark. Our friends Calin and Susanne had been there already for a week and a half when we arrived, as they were vacationing at Susanne's parents' home there.

We didn't want to spend a fortune on train tickets (and believe me, it can cost a lot to take the train only a few hours here), so we were thrilled when we were able to find some cheap 29 euro tickets from Jena to Rostock, where we could catch the ferry to Falster island, where Susanne's parents live. The only catch was that we had to take 7 different trains from 22:50 Wednesday night until 8:03 Thursday morning, and the longest single train ride was one hour and thirteen minutes. On the upside, it meant that I could work all day on Wednesday and still get to spend Thursday in Denmark, so I was all for it. And for once, Deutsche Bahn didn't let us down with hopelessly late connections. (One train was somewhat late, but the train we had to catch after was also slightly late so it all worked out.) To remember our foolishness, we decided to take pictures at every train station we stopped at.

So here's Jer in Jena at around 22:45, waiting for the first train to arrive...
And then half an hour later here I am in Naumburg...
And then in Halle (an der Saale) waiting for train number 3...
I even managed to sleep a little on that train, when I wasn't being bothered by Jeremi photographing me.And then at 1:22 we made it to Magdeburg, where we got to hang out for around 3 hours waiting for the next train. We managed to find a bench in the station, but the doors were left open all night. Luckily we'd thought to bring a blanket, so Jeremi was able to get some warm sleep. Unfortunately it was continuously interrupted by a few really drunk men who decided to hang out at the train station all night, occasionally singing and shouting to experience the excellent accoustics. Ah, Magdeburg.
And from there the next stop was Stendal...
and then Wittenberge.
Yup, it's really getting lighter now. And then we transferred trains again in Schwerin,
until finally we made it to Rostock!But our transportation was not over. We actually took another regional train up to the ferry terminal, and then boarded the ferry to Denmark. We didn't get a picture of the last regional train, but Jeremi did take a picture of these enourmous windmill blades that were on the ground at the port:
Here's a picture of the ferry after it arrived:
And here's Calin and Susanne's car, when they came to pick us up:
Finally, we made it to Susanne's parents' house. We were staying in their guest cabin in the backyard, which was just perfect. (Her dad originally built it as a shed, but he did too good a job, so it became a cabin for guests.) Here's me unpacking my bag, getting on my swimsuit before we spent the afternoon swimming in the warm (and surprisingly fresh!) waters of the Baltic sea.
On Friday they took us to yet another island, to a park where there were huge chalk cliffs going into the sea. We'd never seen chalk "in the wild" before, and that was pretty damn cool. So we took a whole bunch of pictures.
On the way there we stopped in another town, had some beers at a local brewpub, and looked at shoes and sunglasses. Calin and I tried on sunglasses that made us look like celebrities:
(These sunglasses were actually pretty cool, because I couldn't see the frames at all while I was wearing them, but they fit really tightly to my face, so they fogged up from the moisture of my eyes. They also shifted around like crazy when I smiled because they were sitting halfway down my cheeks. Maybe this is why Victoria Beckham never smiles.)

On Friday night we went to a village party nearby so that Susanne could meet up with an old friend from high school. The village was really small, and the party was in someone's backyard in a big tent. When we first arrived a really drunk man who didn't speak English at all sort of adopted me, and we sort of made conversation in German while he brought me around to introduce me to people, and then he sat me down and brought us beers. Here's the tent from the party:
After a while the mosquitoes came out a bit so we headed back to Susanne's friend's parents' place for a few more drinks and conversation. (We really want Susanne and Calin to visit Canada with us sometime, but we think it might be better in the late fall or winter, because I think they'd die if they had to put up with our mosquitoes. Calin's been to Minnesota before, so at least he knows what it'll be like...)

On Saturday it was Hans' (Susanne's dad's) birthday. They have a belief in Denmark that if you're good during the year then the weather is nice on your birthday. Hans must have been really, really bad, as it poured rain for much of the day, making a small lake in their backyard.

We went to visit a nice little harbour town during the day, with a beautiful castle that some rich people actually own, and maybe even live in from time to time. Here we are in front of the castle:
And on the walk along the waterfront we found a big old teeter-totter which provided us with no end of entertainment. The handle was really low, such that if you were getting bumped while at the top holding on to the handle just made you fly forward instead of only up. And of course with me teeter-tottering against Jeremi, I was getting bumped a lot. They got a great picture of me looking terrified here:
And another of Jeremi's graceful dismount. He's really all leg, I swear.
On the way home we stopped for ice cream at a place we'd seen earlier that made their own waffle cones that smelled so good. But since it had been raining all day the sidewalk and patio were somewhat flooded, so we had to ditch our shoes and go wading to the cafe.
And there we were served the biggest ice creams I have ever seen in my whole life. And we only got the medium size! They also came with about a cup full of either whipped cream or marshmallow fluff on top. I finished it, but it hurt. And I never want to eat ice cream again.
Here's Susanne hiding behind hers:
Then that night we had a big delicious birthday supper for Hans. Actually, every meal that we ate there was big and delicious. We were truly well fed, and pretty well never hungry.
It was sort of like visiting my family in this regard, where there is sometimes too much food. I forgot to mention the supper on Thursday night, which was a traditional Danish meal of potatoes with a white sauce with parsley, beets, and something like really thick slices of bacon cooked until crispy. And the restaurant even had a thatched roof, which was pretty common there (and in norther Germany), but a huge novelty to us. And the breakfasts and the lunch that met us when we got back from the ferry were huge arrays of breads and toppings. It seems that these toppings are sort of a set thing though, and a particular sauce goes with a particular cheese or meat, and it's not really done to mix and match them in strange and different ways, which of course we did. (Usually Susanne's dad gets scolded for doing this, so he was happy to have someone even worse than him.) And now we're sort of in overeating detox, at least for now. Though all this talk of food is making me hungry... ...but not for ice cream.