Back to Denmark (Kolding) for some wild autumnal weather

It seems very appropriate that I now post about Kolding, as I have a cold, again....

We met Morten, Birgitte and 3 kids right at the beginning of our trip, as we were both going to our planes to depart Bornholm, us off to Stockholm, them off for a week's holiday in Lithuania.  It turns out that 5 years ago they spent a year travelling Africa, Norway & Finland with the children.  So we had to hear more.

We had been unsuccessful at contacting them while in Denmark, so when they invited us to stay when  we were already in Berlin, we wanted to hear more about their trip so had to go back north to see them.  We found a weather window to get into Denmark, but the weather thwarted our plan of just staying for 2 nights with low cloud, wind and rain.  Morten and Birgitte spent the last 3 years building their new house on their own, and luckily for us Birgitte has converted their old house into a really lovely B&B in Sysselbjerg, which the photos on their website do not do justice.

Perfect Danish dining room in their new house: surprisingly comfortable dining chairs, extendible table and good lighting.

I really enjoyed the opportunity to see how people live and eat in Denmark.  I'd been wondering what the thin slices of chocolate sold in the supermarket were for, so was really pleased to discover that they're eaten for breakfast on white bread, something I never would have guessed.  We also had a traditional birthday party of Boller (sweet buns) and hot chocolate as a cousin was having her birthday, and even if the birthday person isn't present it's a good idea to celebrate their birthday.

Day flight to Bad Salzgitter - sleepy hamlet with great gliding and icecream

Bad Salzgitter is very active with gliders and paragliders

all four of us with the plane

What was meant to be a short walk into town....  Note Kerstin's fabulous box shaped earrings.

We tested all four icecream shops in town, this is the one that got our vote.

my inner spotter couldn't resist this old fully open cockpit glider (hanging from the ceiling).

Kerstin looking almost like she's enjoying the flight

Hannover once more

I have been to Hannover quite a few times already.  But Kerstin moved there, so it was time to go again.

with Kerstin & Gerd in the Herrenhaeuser gardens

mmm Flammkuchen, thin base with creme fraiche, bacon and onions

Kerstin did some stunning cooking during our trip, we had a day out in Hannover and all four of us went for a fly to Bad Salzgitter.

Airfield review of Berlin Bienenfarm near Nauen EDOI

We were going to see Julian's sister Clare who lives near Jungfernheide station, so decided to drop in to Bienenfarm.  Bienenfarm is a very friendly airfield, quite close to the station Paulinenaue and they kept offering to drive us to the station so even without bikes getting into town would not have been a problem.

the airstrip is the long green strip across the centre of the photo

Trains go once an hour, take 35mins to get to Berlin's western main station, Jungfernheide and cost €5 if a ticket sales person comes past to sell you a ticket (the station does not have a machine).

The onsite restaurant is very good and prices are very reasonable (schnitzel €7.40, bratwurst with potato salad €6) and the bratkartoffel (fried potatos) that came with the schnitzel are really the best I've had in Germany.

There is a wide range of activities available from the airfield, from all the usual air based recreations through to canoeing, cycling and beach volleyball, so it could be a good destination even if you didn't want to go into Berlin.

The only downside that I can see is that fuel is really very expensive, so it is worthwhile fuelling elsewhere.

Costs for a 700kg aircraft €7 per landing, €3.50 overnight.  Airstrip 850m grass.

Berlin, du bist so wunderbar

The new palace in Potsdam from the air

Berlin city of my youth.  Dirty, noisy, but surprisingly green.  To celebrate seeing the friends I hadn't seen for 6 years I came down with a nasty cold.  Typical.  I also forgot to take my camera with me when seeing them, so most of the Berlin trip will only be remembered.

Except of course for the shoes.  We did find time to do a little sightseeing / shopping when I wasn't hacking up my lungs on the sofa.  Julian had to see Hackische Hoefe and Tacheles (before it closes down), but otherwise I didn't manage to take him to the area where I used to live (Lichterfelder West), which is a really attractive area of town and really did surprisingly little in the 9 days we were there.

Tacheles in the rain.

These are a few cold cuts available at the market at Hackische Hofe, my question is, would you be inclined to eat the teddy bear wurst?????

I was really happy to see Irene, Yvonne and Rainer.  Maybe they will come and visit me in Australia sometime soon?  Irene is to be relied upon for the top tips when it comes to good food.  My life would not have been complete without tasting Rosa Canina's organic chocolate and spice icecream or raspberry and basil.  Mmmmm.

Clare's two new 4 month old cats kept us amused for hours with their antics.

Yes the fatter cat does have his entire head inside the kitty biscuits box...

Having a beer and a Wiener schnitzel at the airfield (Bienenfarm) on the way out.

Luebeck from the air

Beautiful old town protected by the river

It has been my goal to see Luebeck ever since I saw a documentary on it on SBS.  It was an important Hansa (German trade port league) city in the 12th to 15th centuries and in the 14th century was the capital of the league and 2nd most important city in Germany (after Cologne).  All this history of wealthy trading of course translates to beautiful architecture.  The currently most important product of Luebeck (to me anyway) is marzipan, so you can imagine how important getting there was to me.

I had picked out a great little airfield, called Hof Altona 28kms north of Luebeck on the beach, a nice cycle into town and organised to camp there.  But once again the weather was not my friend so we decided to just stop for petrol at the main airport and keep on going to Berlin to surprise Julian's sister Clare by arriving a week earlier than expected.

Petri church tower

On the left the symbol of Luebeck, the Holsten gate, along with the historic Salzspeicher (salt warehouse) buildings, in the brick renaissance style.  

Luebeck's wealth was grounded upon being the harbour on the end of the salt route, exporting salt to Scandinavia for fish preservation.  But more importantly these buildings were used as a set in the classic movie Nosferatu.

Copenhagen from the air

Coming from flying in the UK where airspace is very strongly controlled, Europe has been a real eye-opener.  Regnar suggested that a flight over Copenhagen would be a good idea, and that if Copenhagen's main airport, Kastrup, weren't too busy, they'd let us fly over their runway.  Crazy, we thought, but gave it a go.  And it worked.  Cleared to fly over runway 12 (120 deg), not under 300ft (100m).  Then once we reached the end of the runway we didn't really know where to go next, so asked for permission to do a 180 and fly back down it.  Granted.

Just flying over the odd jumbo

Nice, hey!

We also got to do some good sightseeing over Copenhagen.  As a German speaker I was fascinated to discover from wikipedia that the name was originally Køpmannæhafn, which is understandable from modern German as kaufmann (merchant) hafen (harbour).

Kastellet

Kastellet is one of the best preserved fortifications in Northern Europe.  Construction started in 1626 and originally the king intended to have a castle there.  From the air you can see its pentagram form much better than on the ground.

We find it really interesting to look at things from the air and from the ground and compare the resulting photographs.  Below is the Copenhagen Opera House, donated by Maersk shipping to the Danish state and located just opposite the Royal residences.

It's a controversial building, though more people seem to hate it than to love it.  What do you think?

And this is the palace square on the opposite side of the river.

From above you get a really good impression of how it lays out.

nice reflections on the canal / windows

Rosenborg castle, which houses the crown jewels

I somehow managed to miss this photo of an amazingly well restored Roller / Rolls in my last post on Copenhagen, so here it is.

Copenhagen: design city

We met Regnar on Samsoe, he didn't have much time to chat as he was taking some friends for a joy flight out of Kopenhagen, but he pressed his address and number in our hands and said that we had to come and stay with him and his family in Kopenhagen.  Who were we to say no?

Regnar, me, Storm, Julian.  Kids always seem to be the opposite of their names, Storm is the most peaceful child you could imagine.

Landing was a challenge as we were going into the small private grass strip, Freeslev, that is right next to quite a good sized glider strip.  So we did a circle and then another circle as we tried to find the little grass strip, all the while keeping an eye on the 3 circling gliders and the tow plane that was diving back to the ground.  Finally, the airfield!  And was that people waving from the end of it???  Indeed it was.  We packed up and got moving quite quickly once on the ground, as it turns out that it was Regnar's son Storm's first birthday that day and people were coming around, no photos as I was a bit embarassed.

Kopenhagen is a fantastic city, like Aarhus it is quite compact (we were staying a half hour's bumble on the bike from the city centre), but has all the attractions of the major city that it is.  There are so many possible things to see in a city, that we decided to focus on design for this trip.  So we definitely had to see the design store, Paustian, designed by architect Jorn Utzon's (of the Sydney opera house fame).  They had all the good furniture of the last century (Le Corbusier, Eames, Artek etc., etc.) in a really well redesigned old warehouse.  Normann Copenhagen was also on the list, although its hipness was a little bit over the top.  And of course a bummel along the second hand district, which we couldn't do for long, as it was hip in an edgy, someone's going to steal my bike kind of a way (and you know how I feel about the idea of someone stealing my bike).

looking appropriately depressed (unhappy hipsters?) in the children's department of Normann

Paustian, it's hard to capture the building.

We also had a look at Christiania, of which I of course do not have any photographs: the combination of the sign at the entrance saying both pictorially and in several languages 'no photographs' with the dodgey dealers (what the English police call 'with the hood up', i.e. hoodies) that not only populated the area, but also had trestle tables displaying the 12 varieties of dope they currently had on offer kinda scared me off the idea of photography.  Christiania is quite fascinating, as it was started by hippies in the 70s as a country within a country, at that time no only with legal dope but also with normal stores etc., that just didn't pay any tax.  Liberal Denmark just let them do their thing back then and hasn't really worked out what to do now that the demographic has changed from hippy uni students to big business of the mafia kind with your usual dregs of society dealers.

Wherever we go we've been on a mission to find the best icecream.  Several people recommended the Ismageriet in Copenhagen as one of the best, so we took ourselves off on the 45 min each way journey.  Below is Julian with his well deserved icecream.  The white fluffy stuff is called guf, it's like uncooked meringue with strawberry jam very, very sweet and it really overpowered the icecream.  The icecream itself is really very good, with all the fruits coming from the local area - customers bring them in, or staff collect them.  I really enjoyed my rhubarb icecream as it had the nice tartness of the fruit.

All guffed out

Yum, Ismageriet (ice cream makers) from the inside

Regnar was a wonderful host, very thoughtful and generous.  When we left he made us a packed lunch of Smorrebrod, so that we could see what a Danish packed lunch looks like (yum sorry, too busy eating to photograph) and gave us a variety of Danish conserves to put on our Smorrebrod (open sandwiches on dense rye bread).  This included something called Rogen, which is pressed fish eggs and eaten with a squeeze of lemon and of course the lemon to go with it!  Rogen is really nice, with a good texture and a flavour like crab.  He also gave us some of the beetroot burgers he made for his work (cooking for schizophrenic men), which were really lovely.  Take 1.5kg of raw beetroot, grate it & mix it with some cabbage, onion, feta cheese, a dozen eggs, breadcrumbs, some spices and you have a really lovely vegetarian dish that tastes good to meat eaters too.  Denmark is the only country I've visited which has beetroot available in plastic 1.5 kilo bags, just like carrots.

Helsingor castle from the air

You will hear from us again and again that we flew over some amazing tourist attraction / UNESCO world heritage town, as sometimes time and bicycle distance just doesn't permit us to look from the ground.  At least we don't have to battle with crowds or pay silly entrance fees.  Below is Helsingor one of the stunning sights we sort of saw on the way from Hoegenaes to Copenhagen.

Amazing castle with the marina in the background

and Helsingor from the other side

On the way we had a look at Helsingborg from the air - the city on the Swedish side of the water across from Helsingor.  The story is that in Helsingor the Danes used to say 'do Denmark a favour, take a Swede to the ferry', as it's the closest place to Sweden  in Denmark and all the Swedes used to go over there to get drunk on the comparatively cheap alcohol.

Helsingborg harbour, Sweden

and this is the town hall in Helsingborg, again only seen from the air

Hoegenaes ceramics

I went to the Hoegenaes museum on my own, and luckily there weren't many people there, so I could not feel too embarassed about taking heaps of photos of the lovely ceramics.

Inside one of the old kilns, surrounded by the traditional salt glazed pottery

lovely accordeonist

Aake Holm - famous ceramicist's troll figures.  They make me laugh.

I thought Leanne would like this pig..

I really like the shape of these pots

I love the geometric pattern on these pots, which were also for sale at the museum shop, but....

Hoegenaes airfield review

Long final for Hoegenaes' relatively long, smooth grass runways (600 - 800m)

Hoegenaes airfield is located really close in to town, which means that it probably won't be there in 10 years time.  In the interim it is a fantastic location with heaps for the visitor to do for easily 4-5 days, unfortunately we didn't have that long.

Hoegenaes aeroclub as seen from the outside

Hoegenaes is located very very close to Denmark, which means that the airfield sees a lot of international visitors.  It is also a busy training airfield.  This means that you meet many people at the airfield, all of whom are very nice, but the atmosphere is more business like than the smaller airfields.

Stunning sky, with CGOL wisely wrapped up for the night

About 6 rooms are available, each with a double bunk and a single bed.  Cost per bunk is quite high compared to the rest of Sweden / Denmark at 200 SEK per bunk.  BYO sheets and towels.  You can also camp.  Landing fee was in the usual region of 100SEK.

In short: great destination with lots of fun things to do.  It's not too far to travel from the rest of Europe either.