dannyman.toldme.com

Roskilde

Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2002/10/01/roskilde/

We drove off to Roskilde, where I bought a durable little pocket-sized notebook with some Danish cartoon character on it. The existing small notebook was nearing capacity. In addition to a small notebook, I also keep a larger notebook for journalling. This new notebook fits in the back pocket of my slacks, where its predecessor did not, not to mention the souvenir quality of a weird little Danish cartoon bear.

There is a cathedral in Roskilde, the Dom Kirke, which is filled with the bodies of Danish royalty. Far more fascinating is the Viking Ship Museum, which holds the restored remains of a half dozen Viking ships. A film, which runs alternately in Danish, English, and German, described the resource-intensive labour of love that it took to recover, re-assemble and prepare the ships for display: twenty years, a great deal of ingenuity, and a lot of loving patience.

Outside, they run a modern-day Viking shipyard, where they build Viking ships based on the archeological clues offered by the remains inside the museum. As the Vikings did, they use hatchets to cleave wood along the grain, resulting in stronger, lighter planks than modern sawmill techniques. The result is that Viking ships were actually far more sophisticated than historians had previously been inclined to believe.

One of the clues to Viking ship-building techniques is found in the Bayeaux Tapestry, that I had skipped just three days before. Live and learn.

We spent the night in a gay little hotel in the gay little town of Odense. I ate Danish haggis. Not bad.

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Haarslev, Odense

Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2002/10/02/haarslev-odense/

We drove over to Haarslev this morning. Grandmother’s Grandfather was from this little town. We arrived in the morning, through spookily foggy weater, to see a church surrounded by a cemetary where the evergreen shrubbery was tinseled in glistening cobwebs. The place felt eerie, and somewhat familiar. Perhaps it felt like the Northern parts of America, like the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, where Danish and Swedish ancestors would have felt at home in the new world. Part of us is from this mysterious little town. Ancestors worshipped in this modest little church.

We spoke with the Priest about finding records from that era, but she explained that records of such age would be found at the archives back in Odense.

We returned to Odense, not to review nineteenth century Danish paperwork, but for Uncle John and me to visit the train museum while Mom and Grandma visited the Hans Christian Andersen Museum.

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Rodby

Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2002/10/02/rodby/

After that, Uncle John navigated us down the islands of Denmark to a little town called Rodby. A ferry runs from Rodby to Germany. The advertised rate was 3€ for a pedestrian. That is a lot better than the 60€ I had to pay to get to Copenhagen a few days prior.

There was little else in town besides a hotel named Dan. As it was getting dark, Mom decided that they would stay there for the night. We splurged for dinner at the hotel’s expensive restaurant, as the alternatives were a diner with no seats, and an Italian restaurant populated only by its staff. We tried the next town over, where I ventured into a pub and asked for a restaurant, and after much frustrated grunting, was referred to the aforementioned hotel back where we had come from.

Splurging was excusable as it was our last night in Denmark; I was to ferry over to Germany, and the family were driving back to Copenhagen the next day to catch a flight back to the States.

Dinner lasted some time. We derived no small amusement from the fact that the one hotel employee we dealt with was working not only at the reception on the ground floor, but as the restaurant’s sole waiter upstairs. He was, understandably, a bit high-strung, kind of like Basil Fawlty. “Can we smoke?” “In Denmark, we smoke just about anywhere, so yes you can smoke.”

Uncle John wanted to chill the four-pack of beers that he had purchased, but there were no refridgerators in their rooms, so he asked the waiter about ice. The waiter explained that, however lamentably, the ice machine had broken, so that the ice cube in our water pitcher was the last in the entire hotel. Hoewever, in Denmark the water was safe to drink so it was not in any way necessary to boil the water.

Okay.

The ferry ran every half hour, all night long. Walking over to the ferry, we drank the beer that had been chilled slightly in the restaurant’s freezer. On the ferry itself, nobody ever charged me any money but then what’s 3€ between friends?

Trucks unload at the ferry terminal, as I leave my family in Denmark to make my way to my next adventures in Deutschland . . .

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Puttgarten, Germany

Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2002/10/02/puttgarten-germany/

When I arrived in Puttgarden, the real adventure began. I looked around at the signs, and asked around for information. Everything was closed. The next train to Lübeck was at 5:15. Well, how far to walk? 90km. Oh, nevermind. The ferry terminal was mostly abandoned, the night traffic was trucks. No ATM, so I had no euros, just credit cards, krones, and traveller’s checks.

I considered hitching; I could probably catch a ride to Lübeck, and give my benefactor some krones. I could sit and wait for the train, dozing off as I did so. Find a reasonably safe corner of the terminal to snooze the night away? Hop on the ferry, and ride all night long, or try and sneak in to the hotel before 1AM … stroll down the second floor, innocently singing “Danny Boy” and hope a family member caught the signal?

As of 11:15, I had to call on a service phone to board the ferry as a pedestrian. As the guy was walking over, I saw the well-lit word HOTEL hovering low in the not-too-distant night sky. I changed my mind on the ferry, and decided to press on and try my luck at this beacon of desperation. When the ferry terminal guy appeared, I asked him, with finger gestures that conveyed “walking” how to get over there. He pointed, answering in German, I caught “straat” for “street”. Danke schone, as I went off, in to the dark night, in the direction indicated.

If Rodby’s Danhotel had Basil Fawlty holding down the fort, Lübeck’s Hotel Dania was managed by a tense, mousy Tim Roth a la “Four Rooms” charging me the stellar sum of 78€ to stay the night.

He explained that there were no hostels anywhere, and the nearest ATM was 6km away. I paid with plastic. The next morning, after a fairly nice complimentary breakfast, I saw a map in the hotel lobby that had an icon for youth hostels in the legend, but none to be found on the map itself.

I recalled the lonely, expensive night I’d spent in Cheyenne, Wyoming when the Beetle broke down on my passage to California. This hotel was more expensive, but I remained in better spirits.

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Hamburg

Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2002/10/03/hamburg/

Everything in Germany was closed today for the national birthday. I took the train to my previously-anticipated destination, Lübeck, but just didn’t care anymore and there was nowhere to sit down and get my bearings, so I pressed on to Hamburg.

I dropped my luggage off in a locker for 1€ and went in search of hostels. I could never get an answer from the first-reccomended hostel in my guidebook, but some good soul had left a page photocopied from the Hostelling International directory for Hamburg’s HI hostel. I took the U-Bahn over. It was big and clean and overlooked the Elbe with an impressive view.

I purchased a Hamburg Card for the next day. This is a transit day pass with discounted museum admissions. It was valid from 6PM the day before, so I spent some time wandering on foot around St Pauli, a cool alternative sort of neighborhood, stopping in at little fast-food restaurants and puzzling over the incomprehensible German menus.

As an aside, I recalled Stefi’s lament about how Latins never speak English. In Hamburg I encountered any number of Germans who will continue to rattle on in German, even after they have established that I don’t speak that language. I guess that if you’re German, you really don’t notice whether Germans speak English or not, and if you look sort of generically northern European, as I do, perhaps one simply assumes that your reticence to respond is due more to your character than a linguistic deficiency. I have further found that smart-looking young adults are the best bet for English. A bit younger, the kid selling me bread was practicing her high-school English.

I stopped in an Indian fast-food place. The smells made me hungry. I ate there.

During my meanderings, I consulted various paraphenalia to determine if there was some club I’d want to visit that evening. There were a very few available on that national holiday. I opted to do laundry instead, as I was on my last pair of underwear.

The super-efficient German washer and dryer in the hostel’s basement took six hours to complete a wash-dry cycle. I and the other American doing wash may have been a clue short since the machines operated in German, but we followed the graffitti on the one machine that indicated “full wash” followed by “hard arse rinse” and “soft arse rinse”. I got to bed about 2AM. My fellow countryman remained in the basement to complete his second load. After all, he had been out the night before and just barely missed the 2AM curfew, and had to sleep on the porch until 6h30. One must respect the insanity of his long-suffering tenacity, but best to do it from a distance, tucked cozily in bed.

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Hamburg’s Art Collection

Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2002/10/04/hamburgs-art-collection/

Breakfast was had amidst throngs of German families and school groups. I recalled the lament of an Australian I had met the previous evening in the hostel’s bar that despite the fairly nice facilities, the place was plagued by too many Germans, travelling in packs of noisy young kids, making it difficult for the solo traveler to mingle with other solo travellers, because everyone was already part of some massive German-speaking group of kids.

The Kunsthalle, “Hamburg’s one un-missable art collection” was opening when I arrived. I spent the day wandering amongst the paintings, with a lunchtime jaunt to St. Pauli area. The Hamburg Card got me around town all day for free, as well as a modest 3€ admission to the Kunsthalle, and its modern art counterpart next door.

The modern art museum was filled with a wide variety of crap. I took some solace in the fact that the crap was generally of American origin, so we’ve fooled the Germans. Suckahs!

Actually, the thing about modern art is that it doesn’t belong in museums, so much as it should appear randomly in public spaces to mess with people’s assumptions. For example, a yellow neon signs that says “five words in yellow neon” is an annoying waste of musem space, but if one were to run into it amidst the neon signery of the red-light district, it could actually transport your brain to a different place for a little while.

I saw a 45-minute film, titled “H-I-S-T-O-R-Y” which concerned itself with the relationship between authorship and death, with a series of airline hijackings framing the plot structure: a history of hijacking. The history itself was interesting, though hard to follow, because the cinematography was a frenetic pastiche of old footage from airline history, cut with random stuff like people getting married under water. It was an American film from 1999, and its tempo felt all the more excited because of the German subtitles, which threw me off from the films heavy use of English captioning.

The previous night’s wash had destroyed my hat. I’d have figured it ought to be able to weather a washing, being from the military surplus and all, but no, it lost its shape and color and it shrunk. It looked like some goofy girl’s hat. I’d have kept it around as a sick souvenier, had I the room. I made up for my hat deficiency by dropping 10€ on a haircut.

I also spent some time checking e-mail, finalizing arrangments for Janet’s 9 October arrival in Milan. I reserved a room through the Internet for us in Turin, where hotels are cheaper. Then I wondered what to do tomorrow — I was already tired of Germany — how about South France? Work my way over to Milan? How about the twelve-year-old boys in the next room over cut it out and let us get some sleep?

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Hamburg to Mannheim to Karlsruhe to Strasbourg to Lyon

Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2002/10/05/hamburg-to-mannheim-to-karlsruhe-to-strasbourg-to-lyon/

I am on an ICE for Stuttgart, though I alight at Mannheim. I would be on a Thalys to Paris, then a TGV to Avignon, but the Thalys was booked, and would have cost me 71€ to board. Instead, I am Hamburg to Mannheim to Karlsruhe to Strasbourg to Lyon. Fortunately, I love trains.

ICE rules. The rail pass gets me first-class service. I boarded my car, walked past a few private compartments, and approached a glass barrier. As I leaned forward to figure out how I was supposed to get around it, it slid to the side. Star Trek!

The bilingual “Ihr Reiseplan” advises me that the Mannheim station has a first-class lounge with laptop work stations, with limited Internet access. I must check this feature out!

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Ascension to Vieux Lyon

Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2002/10/05/ascension-to-vieux-lyon/

It seems that “First Class Passenger Lounge” has only limited implementation in Germany. Mannheim had no Internet access for my laptop, but I did enjoy a complimentary café au lait.

The final leg, Strasbourg to Lyon, was six hours on a desolate, lonely train, through a wonderful sunset. The car was older and the seats less comfortable than Germany. The conductor told me not to put my feet on the seats, then explained that it was okay if I took my shoes off.

I got in to Lyon about 23h30, and wandered around in the dark, mostly-closed station of Lyon Part Dieu. I figured out where the Metro was, and took it over to Vieux Lyon, where I walked up a steep hill. The narrow street turned, and then there was more steep hill to ascend. This happened a couple more times. I hadn’t had the phone card necessary to call ahead, and the Metro was beginning to shut down. Should the hostel have room to accomodate me, I’d be extremely grateful, because at this hour, the alternatives, after climbing this steep hill …

They had a bed. 12€. I was grateful.

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Lyon

Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2002/10/06/lyon/

Spent the day just wandering around Vieux Lyon. My first stop was to the Roman Ampitheatre, just ten or so metres from the hostel. Constructed twenty years before the common era, these were my first Roman ruins. The structure itself was in good shape, and they had bits of facade resting in a fenced-off area. The ampitheatre, like the hostel, has fantastic views of Lyon, below.

Sunday morning spent overlooking a modern city from the remains of an ancient city, high on a hill on an overcast day. For company, I had a few other tourists mingling with the ruins, singing birds, and the peal of bells at a handful of cathedrals, appealing to the heavens for the clouds to part and reveal the day in its full glory. The same appeal of people of this place made towards different gods in the same sky two millenia ago.

I wandered more, found myself at the Cathedral Notre Dame de Fourviere, with another great view over the city. Downhill, I arrived at Rue du Boeuf (Beef Street) and took a picture, because of my friends’ affinities for all things meat. For 20€ I splurged for a three-course lunch and a bottle of wine at Les Pavés de St. Jean, just down Rue St. Jean from the Cathedrale St. Jean. The Salad Lyonnaise had chewy bacon and a poached egg in it. I hunger for that salad whenever I think of it.

I wandered more, past street vendors on the river, scoping out Internet cafes reccommended by the guidebook. I picked up a sandwich and a bottle of wine on my way back, as well as some postcards. I spent the evening at the hostel, which has an extremely chill atmosphere of young international students looking for housing, sharing bottles of wine, to the accompaniement of an ever-changing, ever-great soundtrack, mixed by the super-hip-but-still-friendly staff.

I wrote postcards, and talked with Italian and African students about the ramifications of American foreign policy. By bed time, counting lunch, I had consummed two and one third bottles of wine, and a neat vodka-beer thing. I had a slight headache the next morning.

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“The Other Side” (Basel, CH)

Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2002/10/08/the-other-side-basel-ch/

After spending some relaxed, uneventful days in Lyon, I checked on the route to Milan to meet Janet. I wanted to travel overnight on my flexi rail pass, and still use it in Italy the next day, which you can do if you depart the day before after 19h00. The friendly lady at the train station entered a search for trains leaving Lyon after 19h00 and arriving 9 October at about 8h00. There was such a route, from Lyon to Mulhouse to Bale to Milan, arrving at 7h10, leaving me with plenty of time to figure out the way to Malpensa, 50km outside Milan, while Janet’s plane arrived at 7h50, and she went through customs and baggage check and whatnot.

“Where is Bale?”

“I don’t know.”

Bale is what the French call Basel, in Switzerland. I arrived there from Mulhouse at about 23h40, and entered something novel – passport control! How quaint! A border within Europe! The station was actually partitioned – Swiss trains on one side, foreign trains on the other. The International side had a timetable for International trains, and the Swiss side had a timetable for all trains. But where was the 2h00 train for Milan? I asked the passport guy, because he was the only person around. He made a call, and said that the Milan train would be the last of the evening, just go wait on the other side. But the only train I saw scheduled was bound for Paris, and the next train after that was the first of the morning trains, around 6h00.

Passport guy disappeared, leaving the Swiss frontier undefended while I pondered the meaning of “other side.” I saw that there were two Basel stations, and what may very well be the last train of the evening for “the other side”. I re-infiltrated Swiss territory, and while figuring out where the heck the platform was, barely made what I perceived to be the last commuter train for the “other side” to get to Milan.

But the other station had no trains at all on its timetable. Well, until I went back through passport control, and saw exactly one train scheduled – for Milan at 2h30. Wandering around with a confused look on my face, a cop at the passport station that I had previously waltzed through introduced himself by casually asking for my passport. After establishing my identity, I explained to him my mystery. After much research with his Swiss computers, and probably a phonecall or two, I don’t know, because around the same time four cops showed up with a skinny African handcuffed behind his back, whom they proceeded to fingerprint, while my cop explained that the train number I was looking for would be at the other station, but that that train no longer ran. There was a 2h30 night train for Milan, but it would be an hour late, the platform adjacent to the one indicated on the timetable.

I hung out on the platform. It was chilly so I waited in the enclosure. All alone. Freight trains came zipping through the station. At 2h10, the sign on the one platform went flip flip flip and advertized that a Nachtzug was scheduled to arrive at 2h30, bound for Milan. There was also a little red notation that I can no longer recall, that I figured meant “not on schedule”. Around 3h20, a very long train of sleepers and couchettes and night cars from Germany, France, and Italy pulled up on the platform opposite me. It was from Milan, its various cars destined for different cities in Europe. All the same, things were sufficiently weird that I yelled to the conductor for confirmation – yes, this train was coming from Milan, not going to.

Ten minutes later, as that train was resting at the station, its opposite pulled up to my platform, right where the passport guy said it would be, next to where it was scheduled to arrive. I got on, walking through, looking for the conductor. I spent some time reading _Catch 22_ in a cozy conductor’s seat on a fancy German sleeper car. When I finished the chapter, we arrived back at the first Basel station I had arrived at, and I made my way through the train. I ended up in an Italian lounge car, where the conductor, uninterested in any ticket I may or may not have, showed me to a seat in a compartment occupied by a sleeping Italian. The seats slid out and were comfy enough to sleep on, and this is how I spent the night.

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Italy

Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2002/10/09/italy/

At the Italian border, we stopped to show passports to armed officials, who interrogated my compartment-mate, and had a dog sniff our luggage. When I got to Milan, I hopped on the Malpensa shuttle bus, wondering whether Janet would still be there when I arrived. I arrived a little after 10h15, and wandered around for a bit. Before long I found Janet dozing in a seat. She was glad to see me, waiting for a bus to Turin, where our hotel room was reserved, as the bus folks told her that a bus to Turin was quicker than a bus back to Milan followed by a train to Turin.

She had been sick throughout her plane flight, so waiting around for the Turin bus on the hope I might still show up was fine with her. She wanted to ride together, so I exchanged her Turin ticket for a Malpensa, and we headed back to the shuttle bus.

Well, except that the shuttle bus return ticket I had was for a different company than the one Janet had. I went and bought yet another shuttle ticket, then tried to “give away” the odd ticket when the bus guys explained that we could just use it later, when we went back to the airport, as Janet was scheduled to do in two weeks.

Another hour or so back to Milan, a couple over to Turin, and we wandered through the rain to our cozy 70€ hotel room, which had a tiny private bath and a squeaky bed. The rainy afternoon was spent making the bed squeak, and when the weather broke, we wandered lost around Turin trying to find food, which proved more frustrating than we expected. Afterwards, we returned to our little nest, and spent some more time giggling about and provoking the squeaky bed.

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Firenze

Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2002/10/10/firenze/

We made our way through the rain to Turin’s station. We split up to wait in seperate lines for train tickets. A guy in a closed ticket window beckoned Janet over, and got us two second-class tickets on the next Eurostar. It was a confusing enough transaction, where the price kept changing, and in the end we had three tickets – one for the two of us to Milan, one from there to Firenze, which is what the Italianos call Florence, and a third one which was the supplement we paid for Eurostar Italia. We made the train – despite my dyslexic tendancies to think we were bound for Venicia – and things were pretty zippy. We figured out the three tickets, and decided that while Eurostar is nice, we’d prefer to ride the slower trains that don’t cost extra.

Two of the hotels reccomended by Lonely Planet were in a three-story building that housed six seperate one-star hotels. We booked a room in the first one that we could find a person manning the reception, paying 62€, saving ourselves 10€ by not splurging for a private bath. The room felt like one in a hostel with four single beds, and a long list of rules posted on the wall explaining that we were not allowed to invite our friends over to drink alcohol. I clarified that the room was indeed private, and we pushed two of the beds together.

We spent the rest of the afternoon getting lost in the markets, checking out restaurants, grazing on snacks, and scoping out Internet access for the laptop. We found a suitable replacement for my hat, this time in grey, for 10€. That evening we had pasta and wine at a covered outdoor table at a nice little restaurant where the waiter gave us a discount for paying with cash.

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Duomo

Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2002/10/11/duomo/

After breakfast the next morning, we decided to try our luck at one of the other hotels in the building. We spent the next two nights at 60€ apiece at the nicer Marini Hotel, a floor below, where they had a wall of clocks set for different time zones, a wall of movie stars’ pictures, and a current poster for Firenze’s daily train departures.

We wandered near and far in the rain. We found a couple of good places that would allow a portable computer on the Internet for a very reasonable price. At one point, I fed birds by kicking around the crusty bread someone had tossed in the park, and mashing it in to edible-sized pieces with my foot. We toured the Duomo, which was very pretty, but we could not figure out where we could climb to the top. We stumbled upon the tower adjacent to the Duomo, and climbed that to the top instead, as the skies cleared, and became sunny, affording us a splendid view. We spotted the line that we would have waited in to climb to the top of the Duomo, and I congratulated us in falling in to an equally wonderful view without waiting in line. Just as we were done seeing Florence from above, it began to rain again. Fate was smiling upon us.

We acquired salami, mozerella, bread and wine for dinner, and enjoyed some tasty sandwiches during a quiet evening together.

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A Good Day in Florence

Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2002/10/12/florence-good-day/

We decided to check out the Uffizi Gallery, but the line was long and nasty, so we gave it a pass. We wandered through more rain, checking out the funky Ponte Vechio, a bridge over the Arno River with little jewelry shops growing off of its sides. Janet has a degree in Horticuture, and wanted to check out the Giardino di Boboli, across the river. Through the rain we wandered, uphill, uphill … to Piazzale Michelangelo, where we were afforded pretty, overcast views of Florence. We continued wandering across the south hill, looking for the garden, but when we finally found it, it was closed, as we continued our wide arc through the South of the city, back North across the river, and home to the hotel.

That evening we stumbled on a splendid little restaurant where we ate very well for 12€ each from the tourist menu, which earned us two courses, a side dish, dessert, wine, and bread. This experience was an extremely pleasant conclusion to our last evening in Florence.

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dannyman’s picks: Florence

Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2002/10/12/dannymans-picks-florence/

Internet

Rocket Arena Multiplayer Gaming Zone
Via A. Lamarmora 23 (Telephone 055 576 991)
Cool little gamer’s den on the East Side, said they’d connect a laptop. Prices were reasonable.

Planet Web Internet Point
Borgo Albizi 66 rosso (Telephone 055 245706)
A funky little dive with super-cheap connections; 2€ per hour before 11:30 am and 3€ per hour after. Support for laptops, Japanese and Korean keyboards, and CD burning. Their bandwidth and latency sucked ass while I was there, but it was sufficient for e-mail.

Restaurant

La Falterona
Via Zannoni, 10r (Telephone 055 21 61 12)
Friendly, cozy place with an excellent 12€ tourist menu.

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