24 July Copenhagen Part III

On Saturday 24 July, we took my mother to the airport in Copenhagen to fly back to California. After tooling around Copenhagen aimlessly for a few hours, we flew to Malpensa. Ironically enough, the guide book that rules Analyn’s travel life insisted that Peder Oxe was the best place to eat in Copenhagen – exactly the same place I had chosen a few weeks earlier with Ingrid and Ina. So I ate there twice. Who needs a freaking guide book?

Although the weather had been cooling down to the low 20s, going to Italy shot it back into the low 30s again. I just realized this summer why, as a child, I learned both temperature scales, rather than learning the conversion formula. First off, 9/5 is a mess, and then you have to add 32. But, assuming 20 and 72 are about the same, they don’t feel the same. Europe is much more humid and the air is somehow more solid. A European 20 is much warmer and more comfortable than a Californian 72. A breeze could blow off the Pacific anytime and chill you right down. In Europe, that won’t happen. When I was telling Analyn, before she came, that it was really hot – over 30 – she just said “oh that’s only 84” or whatever it is. But, soon enough, she learned than over 30 is damn hot.

21 July Lergöksrundan

Ingrid and I convinced Analyn to participate in our Lergöksrundan ritual the next day. This involves renting bikes from the campground and then following signs for the Lergöksrundan. This is all in Ångelholm, the town where my grandparents retired, and where I spent half of my childhood summers. Ångelholm is known for their clay doves, called Lergöks. A rundan is a route or circuit. Thus, if one follows the Lergöksrundan, one gets a pretty good sense of the town from forests, residential areas, the hospital, the river, the beach, the city hall, etc. In short, its what anyone visiting Sweden would want to see. Plus, bike riding is cool!

Being intrepid travelers, we were unconcerned with the fact that I had no grip and essentially rode without being able to use my arms. Analyn’s bike seat was several centimeters too high so she had to jump every time we stopped. But we managed it all and had fun doing it. I stole some pictures from Analyn’s Facebook page.

It was good to get a chance to relax a bit in Sweden. We’d been on the go for awhile, despite being on a cruise, so it was pleasant to take things slow for a bit. I was able to go swimming a few times. Analyn and Ingrid were able to shop for clogs. We could watch the sun set at 10PM and catch up on all our favorite Swedish vices, like scraping Knäckebröd across a tub of butter.

Unfortunately the internet was a bit of a hassle. The manager of the hostel, Sven-Anders, has a wireless signal. Analyn and I were able to see the signal but not connect online. Sven-Anders is about 60 and has the tech skills of Portia so he didn’t really understand why I kept asking him to reboot the modem. I told him to unplug it and replug it in sixty seconds later. 15 seconds later he said he had. I was skeptical. He also seemed to confuse his computer and his modem, claiming the modem was only on while he was working. Funny thing was the signal was constant – even when he “turned it off.” Needless to say, we spent a fair amount of time hunting around for free wifi signals.

18 July

The next day we drove inland to see my mother’s aunt Elly. Tante Elly is around 92 but clearly brighter than my mother, Analyn, and myself put together. We were talking about name days because it was a new concept to Analyn. Given that her name probably doesn’t appear on any common name lists except maybe in Wales, we broke it down to Anna and Linda or Lynn. “Anna,” Tante Elly said, “that’s 5 December!” I glanced at the calendar and I’ll be damned but she was right. She just knows shit.

We went to supper on a serene lake. Well, actually, we ate in a restaurant that happened to be next to a lake. Analyn, strangely enough, really likes northern European cuisine. Elly, Ingrid and I grew up on it, so I think we all had a good time. It was still warm from the heatwave, so we were glad to sit in the shade.

17 July Copenhagen

We set out down the main shopping street, which was mobbed on a Monday in mid-July, practically retracing our steps from a couple weeks prior with Ina. We had to show Analyn the changing of the guards at the Royal Palace. Frankly it was a bore, unless you really like watching two lines of men in funny caps staring at each other for ten minutes without flinching.

We passed back through Nyhavn where we tested the pølse, or Danish sausages from a street vendor (for like $7 each) and then settled into a harborside people watching café to quaff Leffe’s Life was good. We ambled back to the hotel and Ingrid liberated us a rental car and soon we were whisking along the Danish Riviera – my mother swears some people actually call it that - past Isak Dinesen’s house, on our way to Helsingør. I had planned on being able to show Analyn the Kronburg dungeon, but that was not to be. She had mentioned wanting to see a dark dank real dungeon and the best I have ever seen was at Kronburg.

We zipped through southern Sweden, only stopping for some groceries, before arriving at our Vandrarhem, or youth hostel, in Magnarp. I won’t lie to you and we didn’t hold back the truth from Analyn: the place is spartan. But it’s got everything you need and it’s got a beach, reedy and rocky though it may be, and it’s full of charm and close to where my grandparents used to live.

You have to share the kitchens (there are about two) with everyone else. This usually means drying everyone else’s dishes because they like to leave them in the drying rack. In ancient times, Swedish gnomes, akin to Tomten, would come out at night and dry them. Now they are an endangered species and unable to meet the demand. But the Swedes are fond of tradition and like to leave wet dishes around. My mother is not Swedish in this regard.

17 July

We spent the next day at sea, which, unfortunately, meant formal night. Ingrid is into that sort of schicky micky tam tam but it’s a waste on me. I had the suit. I wore it. At least this time we didn’t share a table with silly old American couples painfully discussing the pros and cons of different cruise lines. Formal nights in the Rembrandt dining room always made me long for the casual ease of the Lido. There I could always count on geezerly Americans teetering around aimlessly, stumbling into me in their cluelessness. I’m not making fun of them because they were old and disabled. Their physical limitations were no issue. The fact was that they never seemed to know where they were headed and would bounce back and forth indecisively like a 90s screensaver. I suggested the Lido would make a good video game like Pacman, because while you grabbed your food, you also had to dodge the wait staff. Any number of blue shirted Indonesian staff were always milling about like Pacman’s ghosts. They seemed to maintain a 2:1 ratio with the passengers. Their main goal seemed to be to stand where the passages were narrow and/or clogged with clueless people. Because I was clearly at an advanced level of Lido Pacman, they had an extra task with me. Like I said, they usually just stood around, maybe talking amongst themselves, but always standing in narrow areas. When I came by, they sprang into action, asking, nay demanding, that they help me. If I did not physically resist, they took my tray out of my hands. I tested this once. I let the evil blue Pacman ghost take my tray. I didn’t give it t him. He said, “Let me help you” and took it from me. Then he put the tray at a table where I didn’t want to sit. I thanked him and picked up the tray and put it next to the window. One time, between the salad bar and the table, a distance of maybe 10 meters, I was told I needed help seven times! That takes training.

I know these guys were instructed to offer help at every turn, but you’d think, after being rejected by me meal in and meal out over ten days, some would lose their persistent edge. But even on the last day, I was accosted as the first. I was in line one day with the director of hotel operations and I should have told him to instruct his staff: “if you see a guy without hands, do not help him.”

The final element of this Pacman involved the food itself. There was one server in particular who was baffling. His English was serviceable but he had the shortest attention span ever. I’d say, “Can I have this sandwich please?” He’d point to the same sandwich. “Yes.” Then he’d look away for a second and then look back at me. “Soup?” he’d ask. “No, still this sandwich thanks.” He’d nod and put the sandwich on a plate and then forget to give it to me. It was remarkable.

Before I caught on to his antics, I had asked him what the brown sauce in a wrap was. “Thai peanut sauce?” I had suggested. “No, pesto” he replied. “But pesto is green, not brown,” I insisted. Without a word he walked away and through a door. I waited. He returned a minute later. “Thousand Island,” he confirmed. I nodded and took it. It was Thai peanut sauce.

Kiel was simply a port they added to the cruise to round it out. It’s a nice town and all, but it doesn’t really warrant a Baltic cruise stop by itself. It was bundled in conjunction with a tour of nearby Hamburg, which we didn’t need. We walked around the Kiel downtown. That took about ten minutes. Some locals were sitting in a biergarten and I agonized about joining them. It was before noon but the bier was simply too tempting. By the time I first sipped, though, it was afternoon – by a few seconds.

Our cruise concluded the following morning in Copenhagen. They swept us off the ship and hurried to get ready for the next batch of passengers. Unfortunately the line for the taxis took nearly an hour, and, by the time we got to the hotel, Analyn had been waiting in the lobby for quite awhile. It was great to see her after being at sea so long with 2000 of AARP’s best.

16 July Stockholm

The next day found us in Stockholm. We cajoled some befuddled American septuagenarians to share a cab with us into town. They were muddled over the new currency while my mother tried her Swedish with the cabbie. Unfortunately, he was from the Middle East and boasted speaking many languages since he’d lived in Sweden 15 years. However, neither his English nor his Swedish were able to bear the burden of actual communication. Maybe he could sing along with songs?

We dropped the befuddled Americans off at the Royal Palace, which my mother disclaims to be the ugliest in Europe before anyone else can criticize its grey blockiness, hulking on a small hill like Lenin designed it. We wandered through Gamla Stan, which Ian pronounced like a Central Asian country. “Let’s see Gamla Stan,” I said, “I hear it’s near Afghanistan. I sure hope the Americans haven’t destroyed it too.” But they hadn’t. The Swedish postcard and t-shirt and Viking hat industry already had.

We stumbled upon the Nobel museum and I was curious to learn more. We later won a trivia game point by knowing that the awards are in six areas: medicine, physics, chemistry, literature, economics and peace. I’d like one in peace or maybe literature. The museum explored the history of the prize to some extent and touched on a few winners briefly. But mostly it was about Alfred Nobel and his life, which was remarkable, but not nearly as interesting to me as the former winners.

To complete our Nobel tour, we also visited the City Hall where the prizes are given. A very chipper Swedish-Chinese young lady guided us around and showed us how to walk down the staircase before accepting our prizes.

15 July

But my point remains; our floating hotel was docked in Helsinki the next morning. Being old veterans of Helsinki after our last conquest in the early 90s, my mother and I esteemed ourselves to be beyond the shore excursions and bus rides to the center of town. We wandered through the docks to the public bus and rode it downtown. Finnish, incomprehensible as it may be, was much easier for us than Russian. I had been puzzling through the Cyrillic by process of elimination and scouring my databanks since I had the script memorized in 1990. Suddenly now everything was in Roman script and there were cognates from time to time to guide us. Heck, we could pronounce some of the words! Most people seemed to speak either English or Swedish.

We had decided we wanted to see the church dug out of a rock. We did. It was. See pictures.

Helsinki is nice. It’s clean. It has some things to see. We walked around a lot.

Ian, the shore excursion director, had recommended a certain bus line in Helsinki. Ian, you see, was available 24/7 on the ship’s closed circuit TV, talking about our next destination, looped over and over. We found said bus and it promptly drove us away from the city center. The buildings were getting smaller and smaller and ever less interesting. Ian, you see, was wrong. But he was a pompous Brit (sorry, is that redundant?) and neither of us wanted to correct him. Plus, we had gotten second place in Ian’s Travel Trivia and didn’t want to jeopardize our shot at first – which we won the second time around. Luckily for us, the bus eventually looped back into town. That was enough Helsinki for us.