Sunday, September 23, 2007

Ssssssrrrriiiiifffttt!!!!!!!!!! (Copenhagen, Denmark)


. . . That is the sound of the kroners being sucked out of your wallet in Denmark. Copenhagen is the most expensive place we've ever been. It's a pretty but unremarkable city. As we hadn't booked ahead, quality hostels were booked and we ended up paying around $200 USD /night for a hotel room comparable in quality and 1/2 the size of a Motel 6 room at home. This is fair for Scandinavia. Meals were also the highest we've seen in Europe. Our plan had been to head up to the fjords in Norway, but further investigation showed the same costs in all of where we wanted to go in Scandinavia. So we cut it short and headed back down to Germany.

While in Copenhagen, we visited the Danish Resistance Museum, which housed the pictures, stories, and war paraphernalia of World War II Danish resistance fighters. One of the most interesting bits from this was where someone had used a pin to inscribe their concentration memoirs into a long scroll of toilet paper. The resistance fighters often did not survive the war, dying in raids, from torture and execution, or from taking cyanide to avoid being caught and disclosing vital information.

Truck/Tank, Danish Resistance Museum


Underground Newsletter Press, Photos, Paraphernalia,
Danish Resistance Museum



The Famous, Serene Little Mermaid Sculpture
(what you don't see are the hordes of tourists jockeying for this same shot)

Lubeck, Germany


Traveling by train from Amsterdam on our way to Copenhagen, we stopped shortly in Lubeck Germany. There we walked around the picturesque town, visited the rathaus and Nobel prize author Thomas Mann's "Buddenbrook's House," and sampled marzipan.

The Bells of St. Mary's, Still Down From Bombing During World War II


Astrological Clock in St. Mary's


I Always Told My Kids They Were The Spawn of Satan


Lubeck in Marzipan


Monday, September 10, 2007

Current Schedule

9/10: We are currently in Grindelwald, Switzerland, hiking daily in the glory that is the Swiss Alps.

9/11: Eric's birthday! There will be more hiking, heady cheese, and sweet wine as the whole world celebrates.

9/12: Train to Milan

9/13: Flight to Athens

9/13 - 9/30ish: Greece, mostly islands

10/1ish - 10/9ish: To Rome, in Rome, leaving Rome, maybe Cinque Terra on the way to . . .

10/10ish - 11/10: Spain and Portugal

11/11: London

11/12: Flight home from London