Day 2: Zey may haff von ze war…

The ferries between Rødby, Denmark and Puttgarden, Germany run all day & night. I had probably just missed one, since it seemed to take forever before a ship finally appeared through the fog, and I could maneuver the old wreck on board. After ten minutes of attempting to decode the map hanging on the garage wall, I finally gave up and trotted off in a random fashion, following my finely honed instincts (that is to say, my nose was vibrating like a rabbit on acid, sniffing for traces of the familiar smell of fat food frying).

I finally happened upon the cafeteria, which was serving food of the kind any Ethiopian refugee would have turned down. Needless to say, the room was full of Germans stuffing their faces. I decided to pass on the opportunity to get a free autopsy in a first rate German hospital and instead went searching for the tax-free shop. When I bought my ticket, I had received a coupon ceremoniously entitling me to purchase a box of tax-free cigarettes. I can't really say my heart swelled at this considerate offer to catch lung cancer for less, courtesy of the European Union's insane tax rules, but I knew there might be other goodies to be bought at the shop, so I ventured inside.

Apart from a couple of Danes looking decidedly lost and one employee doing her utmost to avoid eye contact with any potential customer, the shop was empty. After strolling around, I happened upon a notice that explained the emptiness and lack of service: Due to tax rules, they could not sell cheap booze and tax-free cigs until they had been out to sea for a certain period of time. The veterans on board already knew this, and were therefore killing time eating grease in the cafeteria or playing one of the numerous slot machines in the hallways. Since I was only looking to buy some snack and soda, I finally managed to corner the evasive employee and make a purchase.

We finally reached Germany, where the fog was somewhat lighter than in Denmark. I was still being overtaken by insane people, but this time I could perform certain preparatory maneuvers and besides, being passed by Germans sort of FEELS right. They're supposed to be bastards, unlike the meek and jovial Danes. The road from Puttgarden (which is situated way out on a small island, almost as close to Denmark as to the German mainland) was dark and boring. There were almost no houses, little traffic and not much in the way of vegetation either. I was still glancing at my road atlas now and then, debating with myself what would be the shortest way to Berlin, from whence I would go south towards Bratislava by way of Dresden and Prague. After a seemingly endless drive, I reached the outskirts of Lübeck. I was by now a couple of hours behind schedule, it was way past midnight, and I hadn't seen a single motel in Germany so far. Still feeling reasonably alert and hoping to find some cozy and cheap little place along the way, I foolishly decided not to stop in Lübeck. I took some exits towards something that looked like a major road on my map, but after five minutes, I found myself solidly in the countryside, on a rather narrow and winding road. Looking back, I probably drove on a road that went parallel to the motorway, but I saw no signs for it, so I kept going.

The night was dark, with a constant drizzle of rain interspersed with fog. In addition to this, and the unusually slick road, I was overtaken every ten minutes by a Mercedes or BMW flying low over the German countryside. There was also the constant danger of animals crossing the road. Countless foxes, badgers and cats with a death wish chose the approach of my car as the appropriate time to hurl themselves out in the road in a desperate quest for eternal peace, and it was only with the utmost effort and luck I was able to avoid the little bastards. Well, at least they kept me wide awake.

By now, I had reached that state of mind where you're tired but not really sleepy. I'm talking about that time of night and that frame of mind in which people variously write masterpieces, compose symphonies or commit murder. I was doing a little of all. That is, I was laughing quietly but menacingly as I pondered the complete lack of motels, hotels, guesthouses and the likes. The only conclusion I could think of was that it was all an elaborate plot to get at poor foreigners like myself. I imagined a group of uniformed Germans hunching around a table, maps in hand, mumbling something along the lines of "zey may haff von ze war, but let'z zee zem try to find a plaze to zleep".

I finally reached an intersection where I could safely take off towards the Autobahn to Berlin. The road became much better and there were fewer animals hurling themselves at my car now, mostly because, by the looks of it, they had already been killed by the cars that had gone before me that night. I have seldom seen such a morbid collection of squashed badgers as along route 106 between Wismar and the Autobahn. Another strange thing I noticed was that the Germans seemed extremely sensitive to lights. They would start flashing their lights at me, signaling me to dim my lights while they were still mere dots on the horizon. I would drive for miles before finally passing them, most of the way in pitch darkness. No wonder they run over so many badgers. (In my somewhat less than sane state of mind, I came up with the theory that this was really their intention - to kill badgers and then probably serve them to foreigners on the Rødby-Puttgarden ferry).

I stopped at a couple of gas stations along the way and was surprised at the horrible lack of English skills. This was probably due to the fact that just a few miles east of Lübeck I had crossed into what was once the ridiculously misnamed German Democratic Republic. Still, the wandering acne commercials (the "before" picture) behind the counters were mere snots at the time the wall fell, so they should have been subject to sufficient doses of American cultural imperialism to know the language better by now. Possibly, they were just engaging in the favorite German pastime of being mean to foreigners.

About half way to Berlin, I had yet another bad junk food experience. The site was a pretty big complex of gas station/truck station and a McDonalds. It was the middle of the night and the restaurant was empty, but half a dozen employees were on duty. Or, rather, they were crouching in a corner, blabbering and laughing loudly, taking no note of any would-be customer (in this case me). I guess they were planning how to hide the signs to whatever motels there may have been left in the area. By loudly tapping a coin on the counter and humming tunelessly at 90 decibel, I was finally able to attract the attention, such as it was, of an employee. It was a testament to my bottomless hunger at this point that I was able to actually consume the stuff she served. Leaving out the fact that this employee was quite possibly the ugliest, nastiest thing I've seen behind a counter (including seeing myself in the mirror at the museum), the burgers were cold and burned.

I drove on towards Berlin, making good speed on the Autobahn. This was one of the main arteries of the nation, and still I saw no sign of any motels. Feeling increasingly desperate, I pushed on, yet knowing in my heart of hearts that I would not be sleeping in a bed that night. I had been warned against the terrible traffic machine around Berlin, but I was still no match for the combined efforts of my Michelin map and German signpost designers. I got lost and spent a half hour trying to get back on the motorway again, in spite of actually being able to SEE it for most of the time. It was a most frustrating and Kafkaesque experience.

After taking a few illegal turns I was finally back on track and drove in a wide circle around Berlin before getting off at the correct exit to Dresden. Approximately two miles after this, I drove into what must have been a storage area for motels. They were left and right. Wherever I looked, a motel sign was visible in the now increasing early daylight. Resisting the urge to simply drive off a cliff with a resounding "Geronimo", I instead clutched the wheel tightly, wiped my tears and moved on.

I had been warned against sleeping in the car, since criminals often stake out parking lots and rob tourists, sometimes even killing them. However, I was getting seriously tired and finally stopped at a big gas station where the parking lot was already full of cars with sleeping people in them. It was getting light, there were lots of people about, and my car was probably the shabbiest in the parking lot, so I felt pretty safe. It would have had to be a very desperate criminal indeed who would even look twice at this car, so I put my seat back as far as I could and drifted off into a haze of scary dreams where I was being chased by dead badgers waving tax-free coupons.

After three hours of fitful sleep I awoke, back hurting and sweat dripping, only to discover that somebody had taken the opportunity to eat cotton with my mouth while I was asleep. "How very rude", I thought. In addition, the car was baking hot, since the sun had now been up for a couple of hours. I went inside the gas station, emptied my bladder, filled my stomach, and drove off towards Dresden. I was still not in very good shape, but at least I felt somewhat human again.

By now, it was broad daylight and the Autobahn was full of cars, most of them going at insane speeds. You would see up to a dozen cars at a time doing 100mph or more, separated by a couple of inches. Even though this was the old East, most of the cars were pretty nice - BMW, Mercedes, Audi and the sorts. Still, every once in a while I'd overtake an old Trabant or Lada from the days when the dinosaurs (or communists, as they were called) roamed the earth.

After about 30 minutes, I noticed that flashy black cars with dark windows were overtaking me time and time again. These were all going at even more insane speeds than the rest of the traffic. They were going so fast I never got around to find out what brand they were, but they looked pretty nice in a sort of thuggish way - the type of cars driven by Mafia hit men or the kind of gangsters that get killed by James Bond in every 007 movie. Even though they were spread over several minutes, they looked so uniform they must all have been part of a group, probably heading the same place. Maybe they were going to a Mafia convention or something.

After a few hours, I reached Dresden, a city mostly famous for having been bombed back to the stone ages towards the end of the 2nd world war. Between Dresden and a point some way inside the Czech Republic there is no Autobahn, only the E-55, a road of decidedly moderate proportions and quality. Leaving the motorway just north of Dresden I was again subjected to a surprise attack by the combined forces of Michelin and the German signposts (I strongly suspect both have been infiltrated by the Al Qaida). The route winded its way through the actual center of the city, across open squares and poorly marked intersections. I quickly adopted a form of communist driving - I followed the street with the heaviest flow of traffic. Dodging homicidal trams and suicidal pedestrians, I finally hit a hill so steep it would make San Francisco blush, and at the top, lo and behold, were the correct signs for the E-55 south.

Dresden ended quite abruptly. There were little of the traditional suburban areas surrounding such a big city; the transformation from the heavily populated downtown to the countryside was over in a couple of minutes. The architecture was decidedly mixed, with an interesting blend of decaying concrete slabs from the communist era and modern western-looking houses. Here and there, you would also see old western-looking houses that had miraculously survived a world war and forty-five years of People's Democracy.

As I drove on southwards, the landscape slowly rose. The scenery was quite nice and even though it was only late April, summer seemed to be taking a firm hold of things. As I approached the border, the hills became quite steep as I entered the Erzgebirge mountain range that separates Germany from the Czech Republic. Here, some of the villages looked quite western, almost alpine in style. As I drove through a long series of practically indistinguishable mountain hamlets, I discovered a strange phenomenon: The traffic lights were all constructed so that it was almost impossible for the first car in line to see when the lights changed. You had to crane your neck and roll your eyes to get the slightest glimpse of the lights. Sitting in my car, bending into impossible shapes, I probably looked to the locals like the hunchback of Notre Dame in a moment of acute indigestion. I suspect the lights have been designed by militant chiropractors.

Still, the district should have quite a potential for tourism once they clean up the roadsides. Allow me to explain. The last few miles of the road inside Germany was littered with the most incredibly obscene amounts of garbage. Mixed with the green grass, the white spots of snow and the blue skies were plastic and metal objects in every color and shape known to man. Every inch of ground along the roadside was covered with bottles, plastic bags, various types of wrapping for foodstuffs and snack, redundant parts of car engines etc, etc. It was just horrible. I reached the German border in a state of disbelief and shock that anyone could allow such a wonderful area to be destroyed by garbage and filth.

Day 1: Exit Scandinavia

Before setting out for the continent, I had a dental appointment in Oslo around noon. Emerging from the dentist in the usual state of uncertainty as to whether my jaw was still attached to my head, I foolishly thought, "Well, this is as bad as it's going to be for the next two weeks". At 2:30pm I got in the car and maneuvered the old wreck out of the city streets (the traffic machine in Oslo is the universe's only example of a perpetuum mobile) and onto the highway.

Not wishing to be confined to the realms of French Euro-pop and "Best of Bavarian Oompa", which is what I feared European radio stations would be playing, I had wisely made a wide selection of tapes to listen to. I cranked up the volume, and head banging ever so slightly to ZZ Top, I headed for Sweden.

After only an hour or so, I got my first nasty surprise. I hadn't been to these parts of Norway for years and had completely forgotten that there was a toll plaza on the highway. Since I was leaving the country anyway, I hadn't bothered to stack up on Norwegian currency, and found myself sadly penniless. I was given a payment form and sternly admonished to pay it within 3 days. It was not said aloud, but I gathered big burly men with Italian accents would show up on my door if I didn't.

Since I was going to be out of the country for 2 weeks, I decided to stop in Sarpsborg to find a post office and pay the damn bill. I had never driven a car in Sarpsborg and knew nothing about the outlay of the city. Sarpsborg is one of Norway's oldest cities. The area is rich in findings not only from Viking times but also from the Bronze Age, the Iron Age and the Stone Age. Sadly, urban planning didn't seem to have made much progress since then, and I soon found myself cursing and sweating, caught up in a tangle of one-way streets, annoying little squares that interrupted the flow of traffic, narrow, winding lanes and not least the local pedestrians, who all seemed blissfully unaware of the potential consequences of having a Subaru station wagon containing a rather rotund adult male bearing down on them at 50mph.

In my desperation, I broke the holy male code: I broke down and stopped at a gas station to ask for directions to the nearest post office. Judging from his looks & speech, the parents of the man behind the counter had probably been cousins, as had their parents before them. Forcing myself not to try and follow the lofty flight of his shifty eyes, I was able to concentrate on, and even occasionally understand his mumbling instructions. I set off in the general direction his feebly flaying arms had pointed to and soon found myself, to my great surprise, outside the post office building. Fortunately, the cosmic balance was immediately restored, as the office was closed for renovation and the front door contained a Byzantine instruction on how to get to the intermediate office. Surviving even this ordeal, I finally crossed the Swedish border with all bills paid and the tape player still blasting good old 80s rock.

After a few minutes inside Sweden, I discovered that the signal on my cell phone was gone. I had loaded the phone with almost $200 worth of prepaid cards, so that I could stay in touch with the folks at home, or call for road assistance, police, ambulance, pizza, etc if need be. The internet pages of my service provider, Telenor, had assured me I would have full signal coverage in all the countries I might possibly be going to on this trip. Well, here I was, not more than ten minutes inside Sweden, and my fancy cell phone was already reduced to a $350 vibrating, oversized calculator. I cursed Telenor. Loudly. Obscenely. I cursed its internet pages. I cursed its employees. I cursed the employee's ancestors, their family trees and their future grandchildren. The windows were steamy with my fuming hatred.

My raging anger soon went into that almost comfortable state of Righteous Consumer mind where you find yourself thinking about the immeasurable pleasure you're going to have upon returning to the offices of the Business That Wronged You and tear up your contract in front of their shocked eyes and tell them in no uncertain terms where they can stick their phone directories.

My concentration on hating the phone company was also distracted somewhat by a growing hunger, so I finally swung by a Swedish McDonalds restaurant to fill my poor stomach with a rightly earned dose of fat and sugar. This was the first in a long series of disappointing junk food experiences. The water in the restroom was ice cold and I had frost burns on my hands when I left. I hadn't bothered to buy any Swedish currency, and the bastards took my Norwegian money (I had gotten some at the post office in Sarpsborg) at an exchange rate of 1:1 (the Norwegian Krone was 25% more worth than the Swedish at the time). In addition, the burgers and the soda were even blander than in Norway.

As afternoon turned to evening and darkness slowly descended, I drove on southwards, down the Swedish west coast. The landscape here is flat and horribly boring. Until the mid 1600s, the landscape for many miles inside the present border was Norwegian. Looking at it now I couldn't help thinking the Swedes had shown a terribly poor taste in Norwegian landscape, grabbing this dull, gray stretch of soil. On the other hand, I suppose agricultural land was an asset back then, instead of the bottomless hole of subsidies it is nowadays. At the time, I thought it was just the wind but that sucking sound I heard was probably of taxpayers' money going down the drain.

After several hours, I had finally picked up the signal from a Swedish cell phone carrier. I was feeling vaguely ashamed about the curses I had cast over Telenor (too late, their share price has plummeted since) and yet still somewhat angry with them for ruining my wet dream of going postal in their complaints department.

All the way down the coast, I debated with myself over whether I should head for the ferries between the Swedish town of Helsingborg and the Danish town of Elsinore or push on all the way down to Malmø, where I could take the bridge over to Copenhagen. Not knowing the ferry schedules and not wanting to waste time driving around the harbor area of Helsingborg to find them, I opted for the bridge.

The bridge over the Kattegat strait is one of the engineering wonders of the world. It cost billions to build, took years to complete, it is huge and impressive and a wonder to behold, and it will, needless to say, never make money. It is an example of waste and political megalomania worthy of the finest Soviet bureaucrats. Bear in mind that at the time they started building it, Sweden had budget deficits and a national debt much bigger than the US, in relative terms.

Sadly, in addition to the oncoming darkness, the bridge was covered in fog so thick you could cut it with a knife and I never saw the bridge, nor the ocean. In fact, I had no idea where the bridge started and where it ended.

Somewhere in the fog and darkness, I crossed into Denmark. Now Denmark has always been one of my favorite countries, and I have nothing but fond memories of my visits there, going back to a trip to Copenhagen when I was something like 10-11 and managed to shoot a perfect 20 out of 20 score, killing little plastic bears at a laser gun booth at the famous Tivoli amusement park. I also had vague memories of obscenely tall sandwiches and friendly, smiling people. For many years I had a summer job as a guide at the local museum in Hønefoss, and an experience I shared with all the other guides there throughout the years, was that if we had Danish tourists visiting, we had to count on using about twice the normal amount of time on a tour, since we would always get into the most pleasant irrelevancies with them. No one can small talk like a Dane. No people, not even Americans, are as easy to engage in conversation, and they are usually pleasant, witty and intelligent in their discourse. Guiding Danes was always a two-way process and at the end of a tour, you'd often find yourself almost ready to pay THEM for a thoroughly enjoyable time. In short: I luv'em.

The Danes have a reputation (at least in Norway) for being calm and laidback. It was therefore with the greatest surprise I soon found myself in some strange, redneck version of a Formula 1 speeding race. I was making good speed, I thought. I was even going a little over the speed limit, in spite of the darkness and the ever-increasing fog. And yet they kept coming from behind, at insane speed, throwing their cars out in the oncoming lane two inches before they would have crashed into me, miraculously throwing the car back in the right lane again, two inches in front of me and two inches away from being smashed to pulp by the oncoming truck who is wildly honking his horn, flashing his lights and saying his last prayers. This happened again and again. No matter how fast I went, no matter how recklessly I ignored the darkness and the fog, they would perform their death-defying rituals. I could have understood this kind of behavior in Germans, but almost all the cars had Danish number plates.

In addition to this mad driving, a truly stunning proportion of the cars I met or was overtaken by had only one working light. Moreover, the ones that had two working lights usually had one light shining much stronger than the other, causing me to squint and curse. Thus it was that I arrived at the ferry terminal in Rødby a little before midnight with a splitting headache and a much shaken belief in the mental and moral accountability of the Danish people.

My European Journey (or How I learned to love America)

-A fortnight in search of motels, junk food and English speakers-

Introduction

In the middle of April 2002, I had just left a position as political secretary in the local government in Oslo, a job demanding in both time and effort. In addition I was thoroughly fed up with Norway (a not entirely uncommon phenomenon amongst Norwegians with triple digit IQs) and feeling generally restless. I just wanted to get away from it all for a while and besides see a little of Europe after five years of taking my holidays in the US.

Apart from a few minor visits to Denmark and a few hours in Germany, I hadn't really been to western & central Europe since I drove to Bosnia and back in '93. Sure, I'd been to Poland, Russia and Estonia since then, but those were (especially at the time) fringe countries in my mental map of Europe. I had an urge to see if things had changed in the past ten years and also to compare the experience of traveling in Europe to that of traveling in America.

I didn't have any very clear notions of where I wanted to go, except that I had an invitation to stay with my uncle & aunt in Bratislava, and that I had heard very good things about Spain. I was especially urged to go to the south of Spain and do a 1-day ferry & bus trip to Morocco. Being violently anglophile I also had some vague, yet strangely pleasing dream of standing on top of the cliffs of Gibraltar, mooning the Spanish mainland.

Thus it was that I set off for the European continent in my battered old Subaru station wagon one sunny Thursday in April. I was armed with a suitcase, my visa card, a Spanish pocket parlor, a Danish guidebook for Slovakia and a Michelin tourist and motoring atlas for Europe. In retrospect, I should probably have packed a flame-thrower too, but you can't think of every little detail, can you?

Actual travel writings

Although I love traveling and although I quite like to write stuff, it's only recently that I've started to write about traveling. So far I've written about the first four days of a two-week trip I took around Europe in April-May 2002 plus a (soon to be finished) travelogue from a 7-day Euro-trip in July 2004. I'll be posting daily chapters from the first trip, though I don't expect that I'll ever complete the story, it's already too long as it is...

Where have I been all your life?

European countries visited are:

Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, UK (England & Scotland), Germany, The Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, France, Switzerland, Austria, Italy, Spain, Andorra, Russia, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Greece, Macedonia, Serbia, Slovenia, Croatia and Bosnia-Hercegovina.

In addition I've been to Canada and to 40 of the 50 American states.

This page will (hopefully) be updated...

Some nifty links

Here's a list of webpages I've found useful (this page will be updated):

Before traveling in Europe I like to calculate my journeys by using the Michelin search engine. From experience, the distances usually take less time to cover than what Michelin will have you believe. Notice: I will not accept responsibility for delays due to traffic jams, weather conditions or outbreak of civil war or anything else that may pop up along the way unless I've caused it personally.

Handy sites for finding travel companions:
http://www.hitchhikers.org/ has postings for drivers, but not for hikers. Only place I've ever received serious replies.
http://www.solotraveller.com/ has a message board and is searchable by many criteria.
http://www.travel-companion.net/ has message boards. Free, but some spam.
http://www.budgettravel.com/add-hm.htm has message boards. Free, but very plain.

(Do NOT use http://www.travelchums.com nor http://www.cstn.org/ - they will not allow you to communicate with others and they will ERASE your contact info (emails, phone numbers, home page) if you provide any in your "free" ad. Thus, there is no intelligible info to be had there. They do this to suck you dry by forcing you to use their heavily priced contact services.)

Why this blog?

I love to travel and sometimes I write stories from my travels. This blog gives me the opportunity to communicate with people back home, people I meet on my way and to send coded messages to the mothership currently orbiting our planet. Also, my therapists claim it's good for me to "get it all out".

Imagine their surprise when the mothership lands on their heads.