Train to Frederikshavn

Looks like blogger is up to its lovable little photo tipping tricks. The train is NOT going around a curve really fast and Sandy seldom sits sideways in mid-air.

Anyway, this is Sandy and me on our way to the port of Frederikshavn, via another, larger city named Aalborg.

It is remarkable how much fun it is to travel on the train. I really enjoy driving a car, but doing it for hours to go across country is pretty mind-, wrist- and foot-numbing -- even with cruise control. Plus you get to see the countryside from the train in a much more intense way, no distracted by traffic and all the truly ugly roadside development we get in the USA: billboards, strip development, huge fast food signs, etc.

That much driving is also bad for the environ- ment, compared with the efficiency of moving a lot of people together on something like a train. (Just a short cheer here for Al Gore, who has just won the Nobel Peace prize for his campaign against global warming. (Too bad he wasn't that passionate and articulate in 2000 ;<) It is also very hard not too like a train decorated with motifs from the Viking Age. Besides these, Sandy noticed a motif from the Jelling stone right inside the train car door -- famous to medieval Scandinavia fans.
After several hours of pleasant train ride, we got to Frederiks- havn. Its most famous landmark is this powder tower. Building a round tower to guard an old city, store weapons and powder, seems to have been very popular, particularly in remote towns that didn't have other fortifications.

The town also has some nice old buildings, like this apotek (or apothecary -- drug store) and a nice Lutheran church. Mostly the town is about a container port, hotels, restaurants and shopping, because most people come through here because it is the port for the ferry to Oslo, Norway.

Scandinavia has an interesting tradition. People like to take ferries to get places because that way they can get really drunk and let someone else do the driving or navigating, whatever.

So the hotel we are in has a sauna, a huge pool and a hot tub, so that people who have just gotten off the ferry can sober up a bit, or so that those waiting for the next ferry can relax a bit. There is also a substantial shopping street and lots of restaurants. Some people literally take the ferry, get drunk, do a little shopping and then head straight back.

I ended up talking in both sauna and hot tub to a couple of guys who worked in the port (but seemed to be sobering up a bit along with the tourists). Lots of interesting Norse knotwork tattoos. One of them noticed I was reading a book in English (Terry Pratchett) in the hot tub and thought that was interesting. He had learned bits of all the Scandinavian languages and English on ships and liked to practice. He was telling he had tried German but found it too hard (apparently more than Finnish, which he had learned some of). Funny because I usually end up sitting in Danish class next to Germans, and we all notice how similar Danish is to German. In fact, learning Danish has brought a lot of German vocabulary back out of the depths of my memory because they are closer cognates than to English.

So off for some kind of dinner adventure and then, tomorrow, the ferry, which I am really looking forward, since I really like being out on boats of all sizes.