City Camp, Copenhagen. Never have we stayed on a site more functional and urban, but it most certainly served its purpose which is, I think, to provide somewhere for motorhomer-types to overnight very near to the centre of a fine city. The portable cabin-style toilets and showers were fine, the traffic noise at night was bad (so we shut the roof), and we weren't impressed by the large number of used condoms discarded on the car park. Even so, if we were to return to København, we'd be likely to stop at City Camp again.
We'd walked into the city and were filling our faces with very good grub. On that morning I'd asked our neighbour, a sprightly old Danish motorhomer, how to pronounce København. The answer is close to Ker-ben-how-n. He continued with a tale about playing big band jazz and the American band leader being quite unable to pronounce our neighbour's surname. I don't doubt the silvery haired dude had lived a full life well and for a good long while would continue to do so.
There are real adventurers (very odd Ranulph Fiennes-y folks), and there are people who don't want adventures at all (yes, you know some), and somewhere near the middle are people like us who (are physically lazy and), after six weeks realise that they might be little bit tired having been surrounded by quite a lot of foreign-ness and they might feel a need to dive into a familiar chain restaurant and indulge in what one knows to be good grub cooked by someone else.
The Tivoli Gardens - like Blackpool without that tacky Blackpool-ness. This tower is a very useful landmark.
These rickshaw riders seemed to have English and Australian accents. The Tivoli Gardens are in the background.
Mini-furniture for spoilt children, an indication of a nation's prosperity?
kitschbitch dot dk
Drying his sweatshirt.
Perversely probably, this is one of my favourites.
Dragon's tails, we're told. But twisted into a narwhal's tusk with which to threaten god? The building was once the Stock Exchange.
Management Speak by G. de Gook.
What might Charles Manson have thought of the Church of the Holy Helter Skelter?
Confidence.
This is new to me - taking photographs of (old buildings reflected in) modern urban buildings.
Elegance.
Condom car park - probably the oddest view we've ever had from a campsite.
Our last evening of Scandinavian sunshine.
Next day: I'd very much wanted to visit Christiania (despite the Rough Guide's words of caution), but we got a bit lost and we had other places to go, you know how it is sometimes...... But I'll have to go back. You might like to try "Christiania, you have my Heart" on Youtube. Anyway, without telling Jo where we were heading, I drove on across town to this quiet area, looked to the right....
Could be worse. Looked to the right again......
Warship. Looked back to the left........
Sussed it?
Hans up if you think that kid is gonna grow up to be a complete arse, or famous, or both.
Back through the centre - magnificently foreign.
100km south down the E55 we were crossing the Farø bridge again. The first time we crossed it we had never visited Sweden, Finland nor Norway. Briefly we allowed ourselves to feel like experienced travellers.
The Storstrøm Bridge from the Farø Bridge.
Rødbyhavn, (Denmark) to Puttgarden, (Isle of Fehmarn, Germany). We'd beaten the height barrier again and were in with the cars and little vans.
Denmark's wind turbines waving goodbye.
The women in the tourism office on the Isle of Fehmarn seemed not to think my question was silly at all. She gave me an inadequate map and within the next hour several other Germans gave me directions which I thought I understood. A wildly squeaking farmer, said people should leave the poor man in peace. In case you're ever heading to the location of Jimi Hendrix' last ever public performance, I think you'll find that the Photo Location >>> is absolutely exactly 100% correct.
"The morning is dead and the day is too, There's nothing left here to greet me but the velvet moon, All my loneliness I have felt today, It's a little more than enough to make a man throw himself away And I continue to burn the Midnight Lamp. Alone." I have an (almost) official but poor quality recording of Jimi Hendrix' last ever public performance and it is very far from being his best, but even so, had any other guitarist written, let alone played, Jimi's tunes as well as Jimi did even on a bad day we'd've surely been amazed. (Those sad lyrics are from his 'Burning of the Midnight Lamp' released as a single three years before he died).
Kieler Bucht (Kiel Bight) and a site so crowded you wouldn't stay more than one night even if you'd paid a hefty deposit. Soon the Chinese would be hosting the Olympics and, as they have since 1949, continuing to crush the people of Tibet. Nineteen forty nine.
Familiar? The Dartford Crossing. Back to the start (ho-ho): http://picasaweb.google.com/SumDoood
