Road Trip

Its been a least 2 weeks since I left the UK so its about time I went on holiday again. This time im travelling around northern Europe with friends Peter and Alex. We left MK on Sunday night and headed to Harwich from where we would pick up a ferry to Esberg, Denmark a journey of around 20hours. We happened to pick the night when storm force gales covered the north sea, making the trip a little choppy but after a few Carlsberg’s the swaying seemed to ease a little.

Denmark - we arrived in Copenhagen early Monday evening and headed out the same night to check out the place. As it was already dark we went to the famous Tivoli (pronounced tiv…oo….lie) Garden. This is a small inner city park with rides Christmas Markets and other fairground attractions. At night it’s lit up and has a great Christmassy feel. We bought mulled wine and strolled around the markets trying out some or two Danish words tak (thank you) and hi (hello), or in Peter’s case speaking in a weird English/Danish accent. After a few hours Peter and Alex eventually managed to drag me away from the markets and we strolled home.

The next day we set out to walk Copenhagen. In the morning we went to Christiana an inner city squat home to about 500-1000 people. The squat was set up a few decades ago and is now a colourful community of random houses and markets with a hippy feel and open drug taking. It means there have been numerous attempts by the police and city authorities to shut it down. One slogan I saw in Christiana summed up the feel of the area, on the café in the centre of the community it said ‘The safest café in the world…3000 armed police raids since 2005’. In a world of modern inner city apartments it was great to see a place like Christiana existing. The afternoon was spent seeing some of the more traditional parts of Copenhagen walking through the river, palace and shopping centre zones.

In the evening we went to have a few drinks out one the town. Unfortunately Copenhagen appears to be the most expensive place in the world with a beer costing about £5 !. Still we found a few warm places to soak up the atmosphere, including a not so warm ice bar, made of ice with ice seats, walls and glasses.

Other fun in Copenhagen included a trip to the Carlsberg Museum. This involved a trip through brewing history and best of all 2 free beers for a selection of Carlsberg’s finest.

Germany…..so to the next country. What looked a first as an easy trip from one country to another was a little more challenging than first thought. Copenhage – Cologne was an 8 hour drive. So we left early and put the foot down to reach Leverkusen a few hours before kick off. Despite awful weather it all worked out well and made the game and (eventually!!!) found our hotel in Cologne...... think my map reading needs a bit of work.

The next day we had a morning to explore Cologne so we headed for the massive Cathedral. We climbed for what seemed like an eternity before reaching the top of the which gave amazing (if very windy) views of the city. Much to my joy there was also another Christmas market and I pottered around while Peter tried out his Germany and Speaking in a weird English/German accent. After a while Peter and Alex finally managed to drag me out of the market.

Holland….country 3. The same day we left Cologne and set out to cover the short distance to Eindhoven and the PSV game. We didn’t get much time to do anything else in Holland, I tried my best to find another Christmas Market and Peter spoke to plenty of people in a wired Dutch/English accent but our schedule meant we must press on.

Belgium – rubbish……..well mostly. We said goodbye to Peter who was flying back from Eindhoven (presumably to try out his new weird accent in England) and Alex and I started on our journey across Belgium to Calais and home. I say Belgium is rubbish for three main reasons, the roads were awful (it took us 2 hours and 3 closed roads before we eventually managed to find a way out !!!) secondly we drove the whole length and it looked featureless and very boring, and thirdly it rained constantly. Still we did make a stop in Ypres the historic WWI town and visited some war memorials, and yes…..another Christmas market !!!

Great holiday……now im off to find another Christmas market and see if Peter is still speaking in a weird accent.