We left Perolov's house on April 20th in what he insists on calling MY Mazda 626, a lovely soft green 88 sedan,
heading south for 3 hours to Osby to visit my dear friend Linda (the Angel Lady) and her family . Linda and Daniel have three terrific sons, who like to practice their English on me and I'm expected to reciprocate with Swedish. It's fun and we manage to communicate. Linda made us lunch, then it was off to collect Joel from school, before a tour of the town and a walk along a raised timber pathway by Lake Osby, lovely, quiet , Swedish forest. Dinner at home,was followed by the very special Swedish DVD movie I'd bought along the way, then after much shuffling of beds, to fit us in, our first day was over. After breakfast, Sandy tried her hand at using Linda's jigsaw, those of you who've seen her book, know Linda's angels are seriously cute and made of wood. We weren't allowed to leave without an angel each and some paper serviettes designed by Linda, while I was completely spoilt with one of her superb table centre quilts! Then we were off to Odense.The drive was uneventful, except of course for the crossing of the Oresund bridge between Malmö and Copenhagen, 15 km of bridge, followed by several of tunnel, a huge engineering feat, which costs nearly $50.00 to cross. If the Rotary conference next year is at Malmö-Copenhagen, no doubt we'll be making use of the MUCH cheaper water bus for foot traffic. We still had the whole island to cross, followed by another expensive toll bridge, till we reached Odense. After finding our B&B which was fairly underwhelming, hard creaky beds and no TV,we set off for the rather pretty walk along the river into the town, arriving just too late for the Hans Christian Andersen museum. Still his stories are mostly sad anyway, and he only grew up there, all his writing was actually done in the city. Odense however has a gorgeous old town, with lots of beautifully maintained, quite ancient buildings. The freezing wind made me stop to buy a hooded windcheater, which I subsequently wore to death,and after a dinner of wild boar with mushroom sauce and a prodigiously expensive glass of Aussie red it was back to our room for what was to be our last night in Scandinavia.
The road south to Germany involved another, mercifully toll free bridge, followed by quite a few hours of motorway at 140kmh on average and we were in the slow lane! They were passing us at easily 200kmh, hairy stuff. This continued till the ring road around Hamburg, when suddenly it all stopped and banked up before a rather long tunnel. After about 15minutes, sitting in the centre lane of traffic, we were one of at least 6 cars which suddenly had steam rising from the bonnet. We managed to sidle over to the right lane and get off at the next exit to sit in a garage, talking urgently and expensively to Perolov. Back on our way we were so pleased we'd stopped since the road led through a long single lane tunnel, a nightmare to break down in there! The delay however meant we'd missed Bergen-Belsen, which we'd managed to convince ourselves we SHOULD see, rather a relief actually,' though Sandy is still disappointed , since she often needs to teach from books on the subject.
Eventually we reached the home of our friends Elke and Mark d'Cunha in Celle only to discover when we arrived that we were to stay in a lovely B&B nearby, very spoilt! After a drink, we set off for a local Chinese restaurant for a superb meal, then bed. Next day, we walked in the forest with Elke and their Rhodesian Ridgeback Gandalf, who wasn't very well,a quick trip to their factory, then shopping for dinner at the local supermarket, which I always find very interesting in a foreign country. That done, we set off for the city centre, which has to be seen to be believed. Celle is the second best preserved medieval city in Germany and consists of street after street of 15th-16th century half timbered houses, now shops, many of them four stories high, with tiny rooms, low doorways and floors which meander drunk
enly between the displays of produce. Mark had insisted we have lunch with "Hot Pants", which he intriguingly refused to elaborate on. Almost too late, we managed to get a table at this Italian restaurant and all was revealed when the owner arrived to take our order. What a woman! Loved her, she was in her forties, long hair to her shoulders a tight white blouse topping a pair of the briefest hot pants hovering at the top of stockinged legs and high heels. This was complemented by her joyously overt personality, greeting us all with cheek kisses before taking our orders. The sheer force of her personality ensures a full restaurant I'm sure, lots of men of course, but we were in no doubt she's a woman's woman. After a superb meal, we were given a fruit sorbet and a glass of grappa on the house and as we left we got up the courage to ask if we could have our photos taken with her. No trouble at all. After lunch we saw a bit more of Celle, then back to the house for a smorgasbord of wonderful pates, cheeses etc and lots of wine. The next day we watched the Pope's inauguration on TV, history in the making, then at Mark's insistence we were treated to a special meal featuring white asparagus, a local speciality, just coming into season. It started with asparagus soup, then you could choose your meat to go with asparagus, salad and boiled potatoes. I had salmon which was superb and Sandy had hers with the more traditional ham. After this Mark insisted we have sweets as well .Since we were driving to Holland, we'd had no alcohol, but the restaurant owner arrived with his special home made liquor on the house, oh well , it was only a little bit, but I felt the need of coffee just the same. On leaving Mark and Elke presented us with a bottle of the "Burgermeistertropfen" (38% proof) and half a dozen little bottles of their own specially bottled and labelled Kingfisher Ralzeputz (58% proof).
The afternoon was spent driving to Wageningen in Holland, not far from the German /Dutch border, to stay with our friends Reinhilde and Kees. Due to our sumptuous lunch, we were a little late in arriving in Wageningen, but this was compounded by the complete failure of our Michelin guide computer directions, which told us to turn right, when we should have gone left. This resulted in a hilariously hysterical phone conversation with Reinhilde who had no idea where we were, since my reading and spelling of Dutch street names was totally beyond her comprehension. She told us that Kees was waiting outside for us and suggested we ask a passerby for directions since Churchillveg was a very well known street. This worked and we eventually found poor Kees who said he'd watched us sail past the end of the street and run after us shouting on one occasion! Finally we arrived and were treated to a lovely home made vegetable soup, followed by Dutch sausages served with a cabbage, potato and ham mixture, the name of which escapes me, but it was DELICIOUS. After dinner, I gave Reinhilde the ladybird fairy I'd made for her and was pleased to see her settle into her new home, bringing as she did several of Reinhilde's ladybirds back together with some Australian friends. Then it was off to Kees' house for the night! This time we had our own house, with breakfast set out and ready for us. Spoilt weren't we?
Next morning Kees drove us to the station and we caught the train to Amserdam. First stop was the information centre for a map, then we set off walking to the Rijks Museum via the Anne Frank house, with its queue around the corner as usual, obviously composed of people who had more than one day to see Amsterdam. We took some photos outside and one of the statue of Anne, then followed the canal as much as possible to the museum. The Rijks gallery's collection of Rubens, Vermeer and other Dutch masters was truly spectacular and well worth the long walk from th
e station. After a quick lunch of salad rolls, we headed for the Van Goph museum, just nearby. Here the security was quite amazing, and included airport like xray screening. Sandy felt there were fewer Van Gophs there than at her previous visit, but it was very interesting to see his artistic progression, from the very dark depressed looking early Dutch ones, followed by his experiments with pointillism and on to the development of his own, highly textured brilliantly coloured technique. Very interesting. Then a very quick, very long walk back to the harbour, where we made our big mistake. We were expected back in Wageningen early enough to go for a special meal of profetjes, the little Dutch pancakes in a restaurant that shut at 8pm. Arriving we thought in time for a short cruise of the canals, we were disgusted to be kept waiting till the boat filled, making us far too late for the restaurant after our long train ride. Embarassed and apologetic, we arrived at Reinhilde's house, but she forgave us and after finishing the soup from the night before,she went out for Dutch takeaway, chips and croquettes filled with beef and a creamy mixture,. Really yummy, together with some carrots and peas cooked by Reinhilde. We were delighted too to discover that while we had been checking out Amsterdam, Kees had spent time with his head under the bonnet of our car and his ear to the phone talking to Perolov and had managed to create a plug adaptor for our cooling fan, so from then on if the car got hot, or if we knew we were to be in traffic, we could just jump out and plug in the fan! Thank you Kees!!Sandy had been desperate to see a dyke, so after dinner, we just had time, in the daylight that was left, to drive about 10kms to investigate. Being brought up with the story of the little boy with his finger in the dyke, we expected to see a dam wall, but it was actually a long built up grass covered hill. That was the winter dyke, the summer dyke was the elevated road we were driving on and it even had some shops and houses on it. The summer one, was the higher, inner dyke, watched anxiously if summer rains were heavy, by the people living on the inside on what I have to say was very low lying land. We were also fascinated by the large semi-circular metallic gates, which stand high above the landscape until needed, when they are lowered into the water to retain and control the flow. They looked like two upside down u shapes, one surmounted by red lights, the other with green. I tried to photograph them, but it was already too dark. Later we went back to Kees' house , where we all had coffee and and a last chat. That was when Rheinhilde presented us each with two sets of yellow tulip lights, which we had foolishly admired in her house. I should have known better after the ladybirds, how can you forget such kindness?
What will be next? Who knows - wait and see!
Hugs,
SB
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