Travels with "Peedie Charlie and 2017 Adventure: August 2014

Blog 28.8.14

Hi from the Ardenne

What’s happening with NZ Politics? We go away from the country and miss an intriguing election campaign. We find we are going into Stuff, Radio NZ and the Herald websites whenever we are connected and even reading the piece in the Guardian. It will be a good test to see how much NZers value political integrity.

We have just had a few days with Sarah in Brussels and are heading South to Heidelberg to meet up with Dave and Irena, friends from Plimmerton.

The Ardenne is a really beautiful part of Belgium with lots of pretty villages, hills and lovely river valleys. We camped beside a river last night. Today we went on a tour of some limestone caves at Rochefort, descending 75 meters (626 steps)and with one of the caverns having a ceiling over 35 meters. Heady stuff.

We seemed to have timed our visit to this area in the same month as the 100 anniversary of the German invasion in WWI and many of the towns have displays showing what the area looked like after the fighting. One of these villages is Dinant where we caught the cable car up to the citadel where they had a well presented display. Loved the views from the top.

We had a week in Germany before traveling to Brussels. We wanted to go back to the Mosel Valley where we had camped in 1970’s falling in love with the white wines of the area.

On our way to the Mosel we stopped and saw the formal gardens of the Summer Palace at Herrenhausen at Hanover. These were the first extensive formal gardens we have seen and found it fascinating how all the separate garden rooms were created.

We stopped for a night at Lemgo which is an ancient town with lots of the buildings with carved wooden frontages. This is the only campground we have stayed at where the people did not speak English so we had a hilarious time miming the info we needed. Although the caretaker introduced himself the next morning “hi there I’m Mike from Norfolk (with a very strong Norfolk accent), lived here for 39 years and teach line dancing……best way to meet my third wife, to be”!!

Cologne was our next stop and we camped by the Rhine for a couple of nights watching the varied river traffic. The barges are huge and often in more than one part. Our day in the city was great with a walk around the famous cathedral, a boat tour and a visit to the Museum of Chocolate! The latter had a café where we indulged in decadent cakes and rich hot chocolates. The city was extensively bombed during the war and is and interesting mix of modern and traditional. How the bombs spared the cathedral is hard to imagine.

Bergen is a little place on the Mosel river where we again camped by the river and relaxed for a couple of days. We hiked in the hills walking through orchards where the trees are covered in apples, nuts, plums and pears. In this valley the vines grow on the steep slopes on any land available. The town had a couple of wineries and was not as touristy as some further up river. We would love to come back (soon!) and do a bike trip down this valley.

In Brussels we mostly did non touristy things like going to the movies (these are not dubbed as in the rest of Europe), going clothes shopping and stopping for coffee. And of course hanging out with Sarah. We did visit the Museum of Musical Instruments where they have a great roof café overlooking the city. In the museum each of the instruments on display is played through headphones so we now know what some of the old instruments mentioned in books etc sound like. As it is the bicentenary of the birth of Adolphe Sax there was an extensive exabition of the history of the saxophone. Later when we visited Dinant (where Adolphe was born) the whole town was covered with displays of stylized Saxes. Apparently the sax was conceived in Brussels and developed in Paris. Also there was saw the evidence of terrible war atrocities from WWI

Because our language skills are almost non existent we have likened being in Europe as similar to being in a large cryptic crossword. Especially when we are trying to buy things like gluten free food. Google translate is a saviour. We have slightly more vocabulary in French so we are less confused in Belgium except where we run across Flemish. When we were trying to find Sarah’s flat our GPS was giving the street names in Flemish where we were looking for Avenue etc. All part of the great travel experience.

Blog 17.8.14

Guten Tag from Germany

Yesterday we crossed from Denmark to Germany, just north of Süderlügum. This town had 5 supermarkets and several petrol stations. These shops were very busy being Saturday and had signs that they accepted Danish money. When we went into one of the supermarkets to stock up we were surprised, and pleased, to see just how much cheaper things are in Germany. We are staying at a campsite in the village of Heidenau - we used it on our way north as it has a good swimming pool heated to 28 degrees with an array of solar panels and excellent facilities. Just as well as air temperatures are now dropping with highs of around 20 – 21degrees. The whole of Northern Europe has an end of summer feeling with crops being harvested and trees are losing their leaves - in Scandinavia children have started back at school.

Our last blog entry was before we crossed into Sweden, just after dropping Sarah at the airport in Oslo. We drove across the Southern part of Sweden stopping to camp by beautiful lakes. While on the motorway we were stopped by a huge electrical storm with strong wind and hail. All the traffic stopped - when we got underway again there were trees that had blown onto the road. Dramatic stuff with all sorts of lightning and tremendous claps of thunder…..Thor at his best!

We found a great campsite near Stockholm, which was on another beautiful lake that was good for swimming. Just what was needed after a hot days sightseeing. The metro only took 20 minutes to get to the centre of town. We had a good walk around the old town, Gamla Stan, managed to find a café with wonderful coffee, almost Welli standard, and….. gluten free goodies. Watched an extremely elaborate changing of the guard at the Royal Palace with a full military band on horseback then caught the ferry over to the amazing Vasamusseum. The “Vasa” was a war ship that sank in 1628 after sailing only 26 minutes on her maiden voyage. She was salvaged in 1961 and provides a snapshot of how life was in that year.

An interesting story of how it sank. Two different groups of ship builders constructed it. The Dutch built the port side with the Swedish having the starboard honour. During the building each group used a different length measurement system. This resulted in it being a bit lop-sided, (also had an incorrect amount of ballast in the keel), following the initial firing of the royal salute by two decks of cannons. This caused the ship to sank as it was not able to ‘right’! Result was that the Dutch received the blame. Resolved diplomatically as the Dutch designer had died, thus no honour was lost!!! The restored, and preserved entire ship is in the museum with the food, clothes, games etc all preserved and on display. A really fascinating place. The next day we took a harbour cruise passing through locks to get from the lake to the Baltic sea.

We drove South stopping at the characterful town of Granna on the large Lake Vattern. All over Sweden there are shops with huge selections of sweets and big self service isles of sweets in the supermarkets. Granna is known for it sweet shops which included an amazing chocolate café. We drove across the elegant, (and expensive) Oresund bridge to get to Copenhagen. In all the years Marg has known Colin she did not realize he has a fascination about structures / architecture / design and he was in raptures about this bridge.

Again the campsite was close to the city, only 15 minutes on a very fast metro. We really enjoyed Copenhagen, it’s a cool place with a good vibe and lots of energy. It is easy to walk around although we got lost a couple of times as the city map was confusing with many streets not being named. We took a canal boat trip to see the statue of the little mermaid and little she is! Also saw most of the fascinating buildings and sailed through the suburb of Christian which is built around water. Visited the Tivoli Gardens which has been an amusement park since the mid 1800s. Beautifully presented with the rides set in a fascinating garden. We visited the Danish Design Museum that certainly was a real highlight, setting the world interest in this design approach/style in context. We wanted to visit a museum about the Danish resistance during WWII but firstly we had trouble finding it (it was all underground in a park!) and then when we found it was closed as they had had a fire.

After all this city sightseeing we headed up to the north of Zealand, the island that Copenhagen is on and had a great day off at Hornbaek, one of the beaches in what is called the Danish Riviera. Great to see beaches with white sand, clear water (cold) and sand hills. The next day we visited the nearby town of Helsingor and Kornborg Slot, the castle where Shakespeare set Hamlet. We had a great tour taken by ‘Horatio’ who told the story as he took us around to all the places mentioned in the play. He was a great storyteller. Apparently the king, at the time of Shakespeare, put on great 3 day parties and part of the entertainment was to use actors across from London to perform. Scholars/historians think this was how Shakespeare knew the layout of the castle so well. This castle was built and collected tolls (Sound Dues) for 400 hundred years from this waterway near Oresund with a matching castle in the Swedish side. This meant “pay the toll or be sunk by cannons on either side of the straits. We were so close that Marg kept getting messages on her mobile welcoming her to Sweden. Our last night in Denmark was spent by another beach near Middelfart, (neither of us!!) just before crossing onto the Danish mainland.

What a wonderful month we’ve had in Scandinavia.

All the way around we have been reflecting on why these countries always score highly in quality of life etc indexes. Interestingly their ‘freedom index’ is not as high as NZ. They are certainly rich and have wonderful amenities. We particularly noticed the very nurturing way young children are parented and how the governments support this with generous parental leave, up to 18 months in Sweden. There is also a concept of equity where people do not seem to be judged by the type of work they do. For example you see beautiful young women collecting the rubbish. Anyway we were certainly made most welcome.

Tomorrow we head down to the Mosel valley where we spent a wonderful week in the 70’s then make our way to Brussels to stay with Sarah for a while. Colin may just try some of the Mosel wines….……..again!

After storm1