Sunday on the streets of Utrecht

What a day in Utrecht!  We arrived last night and drove all over town trying to find a campground to stay using the Points of Interest on the Sat Nav. One was a train wreck, undergoing renovations and with only temporary amenities; three others had succumbed to a ball wrecker and were now new apartment blocks. After a hilarious drive north, then south, then west, under overhead bridges that were too low for our height, Peter huffing and puffing, and roads the width of bicycle tracks and maybe a few were, we finally found a country respite about 8kms out of town which, on this long weekend holiday in Utrect, was also booked out: but such was Pete's charm they gave us a hard standing without electricity for just the single night. We had hoped for two. 

And we are in the middle of prime summer temperatures now at the end of May. We could have done with a fan but, amazingly, we survived the night without power. Just a week or so ago we were moaning about the freezing cold. 

At nine this Sunday morning we were the only ones surfacing in the streets of Utrecht. Just us and the choir boys. Not a soul else was about but the church goers. We think from the streets around the main Domkirke where we parked, that they probably partied in Utrecht until late last night. Confetti was thick on the ground, as were cigarette butts, last night's empty beer cans, and a new and fresh layer of graffiti. 

We found the only coffee shop open in the downtown and had our best coffee to date. Delicious. Along with a stylish loo: what more can one ask. Then a couple of hours on a walking tour found us up and down canals, visiting ancient Cathedrals, old cellars built into the lower walls of the sides of the canals, and tiny almshouses that once housed the poor but looked too trendy and were now likely home to a much different population. We wandered little sunny alleys and shaded leafy walking paths and loved the colour and alternative air that Utrecht gives off with its large downtown university population. We had a lovely time, keeping to the shade and going hither and yon. 

We ate lunch early as we had a 2 o'clock appointment in another part of town, so had to search high and lo to find a place that served anything cooked. Many lunch things on menus in Europe seem to be able to be more assembled, rather than cooked: which saves hiring a chef hours before he is really needed. Moreover, most would have been exhausted after last night, we think. 

Again, we found our fallback choice on the menu: croquette: but, this time, sadly, it was microwaved, not deep fried, and served on a slice of white bread: so not a patch on our brilliant Den Haag feast. Plastic, Pete said, disappointed. 

Utrecht suddenly came alive just as our lunch was complete. People arose from their beds and surfaced for their first coffee of the day, or their juice du jour or vino.  Cyclists and walkers came out in dribs and drabs, then in dozens. As the day poured down even sunnier they came out in droves. 

Our afternoon was spent going through the Rietveld Shroderhuis, that we were only able to access with a booking made in advance. For us, that is a chore, as our mobile rarely works (usually the battery is dead flat) and we have very variable internet access. Complicated by having the confirmation number on a laptop email which is not all that portable or flexible. Still, we managed. 

A group of Argentinians, Koreans and Americans arrived before us. Only twelve folk are ticketed at any one time to enter this small architectural gem that was built for Mrs Shroder and her three children by Gerrit Rietveld in 1924. We were so glad we'd booked in advance or we'd have had no hope of seeing it. 

Rietveld was a furniture maker. At the time he met Shroder he was doing an architectural course and vitally interested in architectural ideas. He and she discussed ideas and found they liked similar things, so much so that she commissioned him to design and build her this elegant simple home at the end of a long row of terraces in Utrecht, that, even today, creates so much discussion and interest it is now a renowned World Heritage Site honoured by UNESCO. 

The house, on entry, is small, almost tiny. It is only when you wander through each of the rooms and pay attention to the taped descriptors that you even begin to appreciate the many functions Rietveld was able to incorporate into these small spaces with his clever planning: an unusual skylight on the top floor of the house that allows light to flow through the entire house: folding doors that are able to enclose complete open spaces making them intimate and secure; clever illusions, like a disappearing corner where a window opens in such a way that a corner of a room disappears, completely welcoming the outside in; shutters that during the day are panels on the wall, but at night are removed and click in to shade the window. 

The house reminded me of the eccentric spaces (albeit those were crammed and jammed) in the house of John Soanes, the architect, in nineteenth century London. I wonder if Rietveld knew of John Soanes work. 

You can see that Rietveld was primarily a furniture maker: his expertise is in thinking of the ins and outs of the small stuff and how to make it work: making each arm of each chair useful and effective; each bed able to double as a sofa; a door is designed to fold away into a disappearing space when it is no longer needed or to become a wall if that is the preference. 

But, as well, Reitveld is able to visualise the whole: the house in its setting of the landscape is prime: creating windows that take full advantage of the views; decks that gave every member of the family private outdoor and indoor areas; and rooms, at a slide of a panel, are able to be transformed from the private to the communal. He demonstrates that he thinks of the detail and also has the ability to conceptualise. 

This wonderful home is nearly a hundred years old, but dressed in its simple Mondrian prime colours of blue, red, white, black and yellow, it feels as fresh and bright in its ideas as if it were built just yesterday.

We left the site, searching for a campsite, which we'd been warned would be a problem this holiday weekend, and found one after a drive south over another narrow dike road with idyllic rural scenery and a quick ferry trip across a river to Culemberg. 

We saw possibly the entire population of southern Netherlands draping themselves in bikinis and swimsuits on the sandy shore of any patch of water, even a canal or a pond, enroute. Along with the resident population of Netherland's sheep. 

Question: Why, given that we see so many sheep in the fields is it impossible to find lamb in the supermarket in the Netherlands? We rarely find anything other than schnitzelled or skewered pork or chicken, along with a small selection of fresh fish. Once we saw lamb frozen but Peter would not buy it. We'd tried that once in France and he said it was cardboard after it was frozen. And once we found, and bought, beef. But so rare to find the variety or the cuts that we get fresh at home. 

It is amazing how much of the soil in the Netherlands is actually sand, too. We find that when we go walking in the National Parks we are actually kicking up sand--no matter how far inland we are. We think this might be a function of so many places being below sea level, but we don't know for sure. But much of the land is really very sandy. 

Our campsite, tonight, is heavily occupied. Many people who have spent long winters with white pasty arms and legs have, over the last couple of days, sprawled too long on beach chairs in this sun and allowed their limbs to be overexposed. Yesterday and again today they have looked, at the end of the day just like cooked lobster: hot and red and hurting. Ouch!

Interesting pole building on the outskirts of Utrecht

Domkirke cloisters, Utrecht

Red shutters in one of the lanes in Utrecht

Canalside, Utrecht.

Rietveld Schroderhuis, Utrecht

Rietveld chair

White bodies, albeit stone,  sunbathing on the grass at Kroller-Muller museum

Darling Vincent

Another private art collection: this one at its heart has my favourite painter, Van Gogh, so we made a special journey to visit it.

The Kroller-Muller Museum in Otterlo contains the personal works of art collected by Helene Kroller-Muller, the daughter of a German industrialist who married a Dutchman who became director of her father's company. 

Helene became heavily involved in art collection after attending an art appreciation course. The teacher of that course soon became her personal art advisor as she set about acquiring her very large collection of over 11,000 pieces of work.

Her favourite artist was Van Gogh. She collected nearly 200 Van Gogh works, including over 90 of his paintings.

One of my favourites (and one of Vincent's favourites) was The Potato Eaters. This piece Van Gogh painted in his very early Dutch period: the colours deep, dark and gloomy reflecting the mood of the poor peasant farmers who have on their plates to eat, only potatoes. Their faces, noses and fingers, too, are shaped in almost a caricature-potato shape, so involved was Vincent with the shape of the potato as he created this work. The shafts of light and the brilliant contrast of the small patches of white in this work are just amazing. 

Helene also collected his Cafe Terrace at Night in the Place du Forum in Arles. This is another of my favourite paintings, the bright bright yellow against the deep dark blue of the sky with the colours all collected in the yellow and blue cobbles of the street by night. When we were last in Arles we stood in exactly the spot where Vincent painted this evocative piece. 

Helene's collection of Van Gogh's work is the largest outside of the Van Gogh family collection, so we were able to see works here that we had not seen in Amsterdam, or in other art galleries.

Works we might not ever have seen had Helene not gifted her entire collection to the state during the financial troubles of the 1930s. Her only condition was that they build a museum for the collection. This they proceeded to do and Helene even became its first director: a role she occupied until she died in 1939. Today the museum has been extended and sculpture acquisitions have been included over the many acres of gardens: my favourite being the white floating sculpture in the pond. This is beautiful in form and motion. We had the day walking around this very accessible garden and museum and loved every minute of it.

The Potato Eaters, Vincent Van Gogh

Cafe Terrace at Night, Vincent Van Gogh

Langlois Bridge at Arles, Vincent Van Gogh

Blue and green: all texture and floating form

Kroller-Muller Museum, Otterlo

Floating sculpture in Kroller-Muller Museum

Colourful Celle and white spargel

Some places are made for a long lazy weekend in the sun. Celle in Germany is one of them. We first came to Celle (correctly pronounced Tsel'-ay, a darling old lady in one of the squares told us today) over 30 years ago. We came, not because we'd heard much about it at the time, but when we were in Legoland in Billund in Denmark then, we saw a lego reconstruction of the village of Celle and could not believe that any place could be so colourful and so medieval after so many destructive wars, so we wrote down its name then, and tracked it down.  And today we returned.  

Celle is nearly as beautiful even today tho' its outskirts of light industry and its role as a service centre for surrounding villages make its periphery easily able to be ignored. 

The Zentrum ranks up there as one of the prettiest historic Alstadts (old town centres) anywhere and it is the sort of place I would love to come for a long romantic weekend: sipping wine, eating spargel, photographing medieval half timbered houses in-between times. 

There are always sad bits in Germany: Anne Frank died in the Belsun concentration camp which was not far from Celle. A British bombing raid destroyed over 60 lovely old half timbered houses in the last part of the war, and at the same time a trainload of prisoners being railed to Belsun was hit. Many escaped but over the next two days hundreds the escapees were hunted down in the woods, and shot. These tales are hard to bear.  

A rare Jewish synagogue in the downtown, however, was saved from fire during the pogrom burnings of 1938,  mainly because of its strategic location next to an important leather factory. As were most of the fine and historic houses in the Alstadt. 

And there are hundreds. Which are well cared for and colourful, as the Germans, unlike the British, go in for multi-colours. Some are so old they are in the process of being propped up with external buttressing. Bec and I even saw a blue and gold house that was quite blingy and gorgeous.

Spring is the time to go to Celle. When spargel is on every menu and the sun is shining.  The surrounding area must be a real spargel-growing area as white asparagus was available in little temporary markets all along the sides of the road.  For the first time, too, we saw it being harvested, so stopped and asked if we could see all the action.

The harvest foreman was from Bologne. His busload of sweat-shop labourers were from Rumania. No one spoke Engish. We were forbidden to use a camera until the man from Bologna discovered we were Australian. Then we could take all the photos we liked.  Clearly not immigration personnel.  

The asparagus grows in long mounds of sandy earth, set in parallel lines and covered with long lengths of white plastic. It grows beneath the soil and the harvester pulls the soil away with his hand, swipes the top few centimetres to find a batch growing. He would then dig down beside these and cut with a big sawing action about the length of the asparagus underground. This would remove lots of loose soil which he would then replace, rebuilding the mound with this trowel, and covering the growing bed for the next harvest. 

Around this part of Germany spargel is for sale for about 3kgs for 10E. In Den Haag, for 1kg we paid over 20E.  We eat it every night we see it at this time of the year no matter what the price.  And from now on I will think of, and thank, the illegal Rumanian men who worked hard out in the hot sun to harvest this delicious white vegetable at its prime eating time, for our pleasure.  

Square of medieval half timbered houses in Celle

The oldest house in Celle: 1522

Long rows of the most delicious white asparagus

Harvesting white asparagus

Old haunts

Today it has been 28°C in Copenhagen. Tonight we have had the fan on. Such are the vagaries of European weather. 

A wise man once said something along the lines that you need a certain happy level of disequilibrium between what you know and what you don't know in order to create a level of real interest in something. Unfortunately, Denmark does not have a sufficient gap between what we know and what we don't to prick our travel interest for terribly long. It is too similar to many places we know from elsewhere: and not different enough to spark or hold our interest for too long. Weary travellers that we are. 

The rolling canola-clad countryside rarely changes, so there is little interruption to that. There are only a few cities all up, and these have been so damaged historically by fires and wars that little, if any, interesting architecture remains there. So, there is not much distinctively Danish that draws the eye and keeps it involved. 

The central squares of larger market towns have one or two stepped gabled buildings that could be of interest, but the majority of surrounding buildings, are sadly uninspiring. Much of them stem from the middle of last century and are characterised by plain, blocky exteriors that we call communist-clad as there is little or any adornment. It is basic functional stuff that would make Prince Charles do his huff, puff and carbuncle grump.

Moreover, it is grimy. Like many European cities Danish ones need a good steam clean. Buildings are clad in a thick layer of pollution grease that blackens and streaks almost everything, added to which everyday litter and liquid gets thrown around footpaths and roads, along with ugly graffiti everywhere, and there is much to clean. Not that a steam clean would improve the architecture but at least the cities might look a little more inviting. 

We don't remember it like this. The Danes have a reputation for design. We are surprised they don't utilise their design capabilities more in their modern public buildings. Having said that the new Copenhagen Library is a blocky black building made of glass and granite that leans enticingly out into the water. 

Its very lean makes it an interesting building. Without that, it would have been just another office block construction, like many growing along the various waterfronts in the city. The new Opera house is another building in a potentially beautiful setting on the water, but its design is uninspiring: it, too, is blocky and low set, and it wears an odd square top 'hat' that anchors it to the ground rather than giving it enough lift-off, or height, that it really needs. 

Danes, too, have a reputation for being the happiest nation in Europe--yet, in every square we have been so far there have been many forlorn-looking alcoholics hugging their brown paper bags of beer. We haven't seen this for years in Europe. Why here? 

I bet these guys weren't in on that questionnaire. 

For lunch today we tried our first smorebrod in the old autonomous zone, the hippy and free drug suburb of Christianshavn which has been undergoing a facelift since we were last here: pickled herrings on heavy nutty rye and a fried fish served with a curried egg and a poached egg salad. Lovely flavours, especially with a Danish pilsener. 

We walked Copenhagen's busy streets till our shoe leather felt thin. It is not a small historic centre. It does require some considerable walking. Much of the downtown is currently heavily obstructed with building works: old pipes carrying water and other gunk that live below the ground are being replaced. It makes the going tricky. 

We came across a Lego shop in the mall where you could buy little lego pieces from containers by the bucket-load. We loved the storage idea. A shop assistant told us proudly that designers from Billund build the wall sized lego-murals and the life-sized figures that decorate the shop and the entrance, and that these are changed every year. Such are the little things that catch our eye.

The Little Mermaid has been moved. Too many bits and pieces have been chopped off her as souvenirs or damaged over the years, so the authorities have moved her a little out to sea, for protection.

We had taken a bus into town from our wonderful campsite on a fort, near the beach in the city's northern suburbs. We chatted to an elderly lady on a walking frame as we waited for the busstop. She had lived in Brisbane in 1965 for one year with her family. In that time she had visited more parts of Australia than we have yet managed to see. She said she missed it every single day of her life. We invited her to come visit us there.

But we are learning, even so, to be mindful that revisiting old haunts is not always wise. Some things are truly better left as beautiful memories of special times that once were. 

Library, Copenhagen

Opera House

Smorebrod in Christianshavn

Clever Lego storage idea

The Little Mermaid

In search of Vikings

We took the long Store Baelt Bridge from the island of Funen to reach the island of Zeeland. We must have gone by ferry last time we came to Denmark, though neither of us remembers it, as this bridge has only been opened since 1998. 

In 950AD Gorm's son, Harald 1, or Bluetooth as he was called, would have sailed the same expanse of water with nearly a hundred oarsmen in one of his graceful Viking ships, back and forward to Roskilde the heart of his empire. Roskilde was where he was buried. His body is said to lie at the base of one of the altar columns in the Roskilde Domkirke with many of the other Danish kings and queens who ruled from here. 

Harold's ships would have had a graceful keel made of strong oak and long rows of overlapping strakes forming the hull caulked together with wool and tar. This finely fluted hull would have been reinforced with ribs on the inside and strengthened with stringers and floorboards rubbed shiny with sea brine on the outside. Atop Harald would fly a large square sail of sheep's wool to catch the best winds wherever he wanted to sail: whether to trade or to raid. Often the sail would cost more than the boat build. 

Vikings were extraordinary seamen. They roamed the waterways for hundreds of years stretching from the seas of Eastern Europe far across to the North America waters where they regularly traded for bone and skins. 

Actual boats, that the Vikings have designed, built and rowed, have been successfully dug from watery graves, rescued and displayed at the Viking Museum here in Roskilde where Harald reigned. 

We were so impressed with this the first time we visited that we spent another sunny afternoon here on the Roskilde waterfront, enjoying the exhibits. Amazing what they have found buried in the peaty preservative waters of the Nordic seas: even an entire boat builder's chest filled with axes, knives, chisels--all the equipment any reputable Viking boat builder would need in order to construct a boat hewn from local timbers.

From these and the marks on the boats that have survived, museum archaeologists have built their own tools and fashioned their own boats using similar tools of trade as the Vikings used. Their boats have become exhibits here and in other museums around the world; they also build for private buyers who fancy a boat like a Viking built. 

I think Harald would have enjoyed all this retrieval and exhibition: being a man with a such a strong sense of history himself: he would have appreciated the sensibility of it in others.

Store Baelt Bridge

Roskilde Viking Museum

Viking boat build 

Viking tool chest 

Viking tools 

Boats built like poetry

Another place, another time

We have been very busy hunting down the villages my ancestors came from in the peninsula of Jutland.

We first found Jelling and from there quickly came to Bredston village, the home of my great great great grandmother, Ane Mette Hansdatter. The church Ane would have attended with her family was delightfully white, with an onion-shaped spire atop. Ane, such a pretty name, had a daughter with another pretty name, Maren. 

Forstballe, where my great great grandmother Maren Neilsdatter came from, is so tiny it has no church at all. There are only one or two farmhouses that make up the entire Forstballe hamlet, and Maren's nearest church, mentioned in her baptismal records, is just a couple of kilometres along a rural road, at Norup.

The land we pass is farmland: there are soft green rolling hills, an occasional pretty wood and sometimes the trees merge to make a welcoming tunnel across the roads. Everywhere in Denmark there are birds chattering and singing: they are pleased to see us. It feels quite English in parts, and so familiar. Not in any way alien.

It just feels right, as if the very blood that zings in your body that comes from these people recognises these parts and is happy that you are here.

We then found the Gauerslund parish church where my great grandfather, Peder Mathiason no doubt attended church, and where he was baptised. We had been looking for his home village on Google Maps and on the Sat Nav, but could not find it. But the very last grave we visited in the church at Gauerslund showed that the name I had been hunting down might have been wrong. Instead of Tellerup, it should be Sellerup. I had been confusing the European S for a T in transcription. Such a common error in genealogy.

So, we followed this new lead and found Sellerup just 2 kilometres away from its Gauerslund parish church. Here, Peder and Maren had their first child, my grandfather Niels Pedersen. Here he grew up with his brothers, Andreas and Mathias, and his sister, Mette.

Sellerup is a tiny farming hamlet still, no more than half a dozen houses still standing. It has two or three older farms from the 19th century and even earlier that exist still. These Peder and Neils and the family certainly would have been familiar with. It is highly likely they might even have worked on one or other of these very farms.

While we were moseying around the little hamlet we were noticed. Two local farmers came over and chatted to us: one drove his tractor. They were the owners of the two oldest properties. I told them about my relatives. They told us that all the land that my relatives once worked had belonged to the king of Denmark who had his castle just south of here, in Kolding. The king had a hunting lodge just a few kilometres from Sellerup which had a footpath leading to it that was four horses wide: a luxury, probably built by his peasant workers.

Around the time of the French Revolution, after the peasants revolt, the agricultural land in Denmark was broken up and given to the peasants, who became tenant farmers. So in these rolling hills busy with canola crops, dairy farming and pig husbandry my Danish ancestors lived, worked, prayed and played. Over a period of three or four generations they, like most folk at the time, lived geographically very close. They didn't stray too far from home. A ride of just over 20 kilometres connects all my family birthplaces.

Then my great grandfather Niels took to the sea. He found his way to the sunny climes of Australia, where he married a wee Irish lass and started a brand new brood of his own. In another place. In another time.

Bredston parish church

Norup parish church

Gauerslund parish church

One of the oldest farms in Sellerup 

The land looks just like this

Homeplace of my ancestors

Royal Jelling

Our first big stop in Denmark was the village where my great great grandmother, Appelone Nielsdatter, was born and lived: Jelling. 

Jelling is a royal village. As such it is unique, even special. But if you didn't know that, you could easily pass through Jelling yawning, and perhaps wonder why those mounds of grassed earth and that lovely old church just happened to be standing there still. 

They don't make too much of a fuss of anything in Jelling these days. The old Jelling of my great great grandmother's days seems to have all but disappeared. All that remains that she would have experienced are King Gorm's mounds, the Jelling Runic Stones, and the Jelling Church. These three things, alone, are amazing to me. I certainly had not expected them before I arrived. 

Gorm the Old was a Viking king. His empire stronghold was in Jelling. This was where he held court and where his court from Jutland, Funen and Zealand, paid homage to him. He was a loving king, and had a large memorial stone beautifully writ and raised in about 940 AD, on which he honours his wife, and his country, Denmark. He calls his wife, Thyra, 'Denmark's ornament'. This is the first mention of 'Denmark' anywhere in history.  On Gorm's stone. In Jelling. So, Thyra's stone is really Denmark's birthstone. 

When Gorm died his grieving son Harald Bluetooth (Bec believes he had a front tooth that was rotten, or had lost its nerve and turned blue) -- Harald 1 built the mounds as a memento like the pyramids of Egypt for his beloved father and, it is believed, buried him in one of them in a wooden pavilion topped with rock and covered with earthen sods. He added a second major memorial stone to his father's love-poem stone.

These two runic stones are so precious today, and form the foundation of Denmark's early history, that they are now under glass in the church grounds and the Jelling site has been named a UNESCO World Heritage site and visitors flock here. Archaeologists believe Gorm's remains were moved from the south mound and placed inside the delightful white church that still exists to this day. 

The Jelling church is plain, very simple, stuccoed white. It could be a Quaker meeting house it is so spare. It is over a thousand years old.  This is where my great-great grandmother was baptised, where she came to church with her family, kneeling to say her prayers atop King Gorm's remains. 

Outside, Appelone's friends, family and relatives were buried. The church grounds are amazing. If nothing else, Denmark has the very best cemeteries that I have yet seen anywhere in the world. They put Australian cemeteries to shame and reminds me that we really need to take greater care of our cemetery grounds. For those who come after us. 

There are large family cemetery plots all over Danish church grounds, all individually hedged with small leafy box, or miniature juniper hedge, and individually decorated to remember the family members buried here. Some have stone birds, flowers, and ponds as adornment to carry with then to the next world: one we saw has a stone tractor. There are small clumps of new tulips and little flowering azaleas everywhere at this time of the year.  Meticulously, lovingly, cared for.  These are wonderful, peaceful, forever-resting places and could not be lovelier. 

Love poem stone 

Jelling church 

Ferry 'cross the Elbe

The sun is shining in Denmark, so we didn't head for Spain. The weather is dramatically warmer than the Netherlands, so much so that children tonight are swimming in the campsite pool.

The scenery from Netherlands to Germany was typical: from well-ordered Dutch fields kept meticulously, even anally, neat we crossed into Germany with its verges less kempt, its fields only occasionally plowed, and some of them lying fallow, still under consideration. There wasn't really a sign to say that we had arrived in Germany, or that we'd left the Netherlands. Forty years ago we were stopped at the Border crossing here, we had to show our passports, and because Pete looked like a long haired, long bearded hippie in those days, we were practically strip-searched. Not so now. All the barriers are down.

We took rural routes through Germany which appeal to us much more than motorways, but still we rushed to catch the Wischaffen-Gluckstadt ferry. We needn't have bothered as Thursday, we soon discovered, was a religious holiday in this part of the world, Ascension Thursday, and much of the population was travelling to or from something, so four ferries ran our direction in just one half an hour. Amazing service.

German boys are already partying. Every town we drove through on this holiday long weekend we have seen a pack of drunken youths wheeling a barrow of their beer supplies from an old haunt where they likely had worn out their welcome, to their new haunt. This is a four-day weekend. These lads will have a major headache come Monday if they don't learn to pace themselves.

The scenery from Germany to Denmark changed yet again. For the entire month throughout the Netherlands and Germany the land has been flat. Up close, Denmark has lovely rolling hills, at this time of the year they are all covered in golden canola and a green grassy grain we have yet to identify.

Many of their buildings are rendered, painted white, mustard, or sometimes grey. Barns are not nearly as huge as the German ones, but still extensive, considering that we've seen few animals in the fields here: mainly grain.

Q: Why do grain farmers need such large barns? I can't imagine storing grain is very profitable, so surely it is not for that?

We're impressed though with the roadside markers: little signs mark parking places (3 places allowed) or a heated swimming pool (a man with a roof over his head) or camping allowed, and so on. Signage 

Roads are not nearly as well looked after in Denmark as they were in the Netherlands--or in Germany. Campsites are considerably more expensive, at least double elsewhere: tonight $A40, plus showers extra. Thanks to Rene's forewarning we did most of our shopping in Germany so we shouldn't be too horrified.

While the Danes are internationally famous for design, so far their architecture has proved nothing more than nondescript. They have been through may wars and lost many old and possibly lovely buildings. The replacement construction is plain, mostly red-brick, undecorated and uninteresting in its sameness. Houses are mainly little squares or rectangulars topped with pink or black tiled pyramid roofs. There is so little variation that the scenery almost become tedious. Not much is remarkable, as in the Netherlands. The rural churches, though, are interesting and have found favour with us.

We've been on the hunt for the touted espresso. Sad to say we are not finding it. Netherlands coffee was fine, just not brilliant. It was lacking full bodied flavour at times and left to overbrew at others, and sometimes is was just not hot enough. We're ordering Danish espressos everywhere and I hesitate to call what we have been served coffee, as yet: it is more like coffee-coloured dishwater. So disappointing.

The best coffee to date has been served in an Italian restaurant by a young Romanian couple, who had to relocate to Germany to find work. Such is the coffee search so far in Europe. We are hanging out for a really delicious, even a decadent, espresso. We shall have two if ever we find one.

Wischaffen-Gluckstadt ferry 

Gold and green countryside

Barns, bedrooms, borgs and brrrrr!

Today we are nearing the German border. The scenery is becoming flatter, canals fewer, the roads wider, the fields larger. There are more detached houses and the farmhouses are huge with attached barns more than five times the size of the house. Monster-sized. We can't get over them. Some even have two or three barns of gigantic proportions. 

We would have loved to have seen inside at least one of the barns before we left the Netherlands, but the only one we've had access to has been renovated into a coffee shop so was quite unrecognisable as a barn.

Question: With all these animals kept in these massive 'rump barns' in winter whatever happens to the accumulated methane effluent? How scary would a lit match be? And how on earth does a farmer muck out these massive barns in the depths of winter? And can you imagine the size of the mound of accumulated gunk at the end of winter with all these animals indoors: chickens, goats, cows and horses?

Continuing our quest to learn more about all things that keep Netherlands afloat we headed to the museum of a terp village in Warffum. Overall, this was more a reconstruction of an 18th century set of small dwellings which had been built on a mound. Some were relocated from different parts of the Netherlands. So, not really about being a terp village at all; more about the functionality of such 18th century Dutch homes. 

Here, again, we found the displays would have benefitted from some attempt at multilingual translation, but these are small parochial museums and might not attract too many overseas crowds, tho' we did notice Canadians on our page in the Visitor's Book, so there are some.

Most of the houses displayed rooms whose main function was either the formal living or dining room with cupboard doors in the walls. These were interesting. These simple cupboard doors in a living room closed in a built-in bed for the householder, tucked away into the wall.

The cupboard beds in these rooms were all about hip high, with shelves or drawers built-in underneath. Very functional. They reminded us of the beds that Rene prefers, and he even had one built along similar lines, at home: on a high platform with the mattress atop that, and beneath all sensible slide-out storage space. 

These days we have such massive space, whole large rooms for separate bedrooms, that really offer not much more than extra space without any real extra functionality, and this looks such a cosy option for such a cold climate.

Part of our agenda coming this route was to visit the borgs, or old castles, or estate houses that are at various locations around this region. Today we visited a couple of them that are similar to some of the smaller chateaux in France, but the weather has been so appalling that we hardly gave them the time they deserved.

Ice chips are floating on the air down from the Arctic.

Peter has voted to go to Spain.

Fields are much larger and meticulously furrowed

Menkemaborg with quite a small detached barn

Another large barn

Dining room with bedroom and storage behind cupboard doors 

Fraeylembaborg - too cold for any visitors today