10 May, 2023

After breakfast we go in search of a laundromat. There is one about 8 minutes’ walk from the hotel but when we get there, today is one of the days that it is closed. And it’s coin operated rather than tap and pay. A job for tomorrow, then.

Thanks to our extensive travels yesterday we can have a ‘free’ day today which we spend planning our itinerary around Northern Europe during August-November as well as booking our flights from LHR5 to Warsaw return and a hire car for the period.

While Lynn double checks my proposed Northern European route I head down the street to check for some suitable restaurants for dinner tonight. There are not many good restaurants but I found a couple that may just do.

It has been mostly an “admin” day but we did accomplish a lot despite not getting the laundry done. There is not much excitement in this port town but it is nice to rest up a bit.

11 May, 2023

First priority this morning (after breakfast of course) is to get the laundry done, otherwise we may be spending our Gothenburg trip in smelly clothing. Not ideal.

The laundromat is open this time. I can’t understand why it isn’t open 24/7. It’s not like the place is manned. Lynn has a fist full of Danish coins as the stupid laundry doesn’t take cards or have a coin dispenser. We follow the instructions to the letter but can’t get the machines to work so Lynn calls the owner. Apparently you have to slam the machine door shut really hard. Our next attempt and the system swallows our coins so Lynn is back on the phone and while the owner is on the phone she goes next door to the cafe and the laundry owner negotiates with the cafe owner to refund our coins. It seems that the laundry owner is 2 hours away. Perhaps if he had better machines and proper instructions there may be less issues. Obviously the owner is Danish and like many others in this country haven’t heard of the KISS principle.

We finally get things working with a lot of heavy handedness and much swearing. At over A$10 per load plus drying costs you would think that the place should be gold plated.

We take a break and head back to the hotel for a soothing cup of A$10 per cup coffee and to acquire more coins, before returning to start the drying process. This works a bit better but at A$0.20 per minute to dry it bloody well had better work.

We wait out the process at the laundromat by flicking through some Danish magazines. They look like the equivalent of the old Australian Women’s Weekly with stories about the Danish and English Royal families, TV celebrities, recipes and a TV guide thrown in.

All done so back to the hotel again while Lynn does my ironing on a bench-top ironing board that it not much bigger than a laptop computer. Again, more swearing but it gets done.

Lynn has planned a couple of last-minute visits to do around Frederikshavn so back to the car but the first stop at the Frederikshavn Church is about 100 meters from the hotel. Why did we drive I asked? “Because we have a couple more sites to visit”, is the answer. Interesting, because the next stop at the Krudttarnet Magazine is only across the road from the first stop. Confused, I am.

I didn’t bother to get out of the car at the church. It will probably be locked (it was) and we were illegally parked. The reason for the photo is because this is the first time we have seen a church like this in Denmark, rather than the traditional white ones with the large tower at one end with stepped roofline. Across the street is our next stop. It takes longer to drive there than walking. Just the driver today….

Krudttårnet (Danish for “gunpowder tower”) is a former gunpowder magazine and fortification in Frederikshavn, Denmark.

The tower was built in 1687, as a central component of Frederikshavn’s fortress. The fortress, originally called the Fladstrand fortress before the town was renamed in the early 19th century, was built to secure the northernmost useful anchorage on the eastern coast of Jutland. This anchorage was a strategically important site for ships sailing to Norway, and played a role in conflicts including the Great Northern War and the Gunboat War. The tower is now the only part of the citadel still standing, but is no longer in the original location: in 1974 it was moved by 270 meters to make room for an expansion of Frederikshavn’s shipyard, a move that took 13 months to carry out.

The last stop of the day is at Palm Beach. I just can’t imagine palms on a beach in sub -rctic Denmark but I will play along. At least this stop is about 6 km away so it justifies starting the car.

Close to Nordstrand Camping and Rønnerhavnen is the palm-lined beach of Palmestranden, which is Frederikshavn’s local and child-friendly beach with an exotic atmosphere and many activities.

There are about 100 palm trees on the beach from May to September. There are volleyball courts, petanque lanes and a barbecue area on the beach, and there is free use of the sun loungers.

The well-kept city beach is the only beach in Denmark where you can see real palm trees. During the winter they are moved to huge greenhouses, and in May they return to the beach.

While still wearing our warm boots and socks we test the water temperature. It can’t be more than about 5 Deg C. Stick with Curling, guys!

12 May, 2023

This afternoon we are taking the ferry from Frederikshavn to Gothenburg across the Kattegat Strait. The ferry doesn’t depart until 13:50 so we have a late checkout at midday. As we mentioned earlier two of our nights at the Best Western in Frederikshavn were on points and the third was paid. At check out Best Western seems to have screwed up their accounting and we were told by reception that we didn’t have enough points for the two nights. After going online it seems that Best Western have debited and credited the points process a number of times and made a real mess of things. I emailed the account transactions to the receptionist and left it with them to deal with Best Western. Off to a great start today….

We arrived at the ferry about 20 minutes before check in started but they opened the process 10 minutes ahead of schedule so we were soon onboard.

We managed to find a couple of comfortable seats adjacent to power outlets and settled in to the 3-and-a-half hour crossing to Sweden. As everyone is aware, Lynn can get seasick in a bathtub and after witnessing the rough seas at Grenen a couple of days ago she was concerned about an unpleasant voyage.

Lynn didn’t need to worry. The sea is so calm today you could water ski across the straits. It was like a mill pond.

We checked out the different areas of the ferry from time to time and couldn’t believe the quantities of alcohol being purchased from the ferry shops. It almost seemed that people were taking the ferry crossing just to buy cheap booze.

Still, it is a beautiful day to be on deck but there was way too much cigarette smoke for us to spend time on the sun decks.

As we head up the Gota Alv River to downtown Gothenburg we pass by a lot of small islands and shoals. It may be risky in the dark in stormy weather but no issues today.

Disembarkation from the ferry at Gothenburg was straight forward and we headed for our hotel which was entered into our car GPS. All was going fine until we reached our freeway exit and find that it has been closed. Naturally there are no detour signs or alternate routes suggested. We took the next exit and our GPS adjusted the route but all that did was take us into a construction zone with no escape. It seems a common problem as we had a line of traffic behind us also trying to find a way through. After many dead ends at construction sites it seemed like Auckland all over again where Auckland City was putting in a new underground rail system but didn’t think to have cross city access points for cars.

After stopping in a deserted industrial site Lynn found some GPS coordinates that directed us away from the city and, like she did in Auckland, crossed to the other side of the city and approached our destination from the other side of the railway and river. The logic of some (un)civil engineers astounds me. People aren’t mind readers, set up alternate routes!

It gets better… we finally arrived at our hotel and we have parking booked for the next three days (at a price nearly as high as the actual cost of the hotel). There is no signs to the parking station so obviously the Swedes are all clairvoyants. We finally found the unmarked underground car park entrance and tried to enter our provided access codes. Naturally they didn’t work. In the end I pressed the call button for help – nobody answered but the gate just opened. Why have a bloody code sent with instructions (incorrect instructions) when all you need to do is press the intercom button? Things don’t get any better… Once in the car park there are no signs to the elevator up to reception. Again we should have become clairvoyants before we arrived in Sweden.

Once at reception we had to queue up to check in (and this is at a ridiculous 7:30 pm since we wasted so much time with closed roads and a lack of signs). The last straw is when the check in chick wanted us to use a QR code to book a breakfast time each morning. FU….K OFF! Just book us in for breakfast while we are in front of you checking in to the hotel!

I think that she got the message that I have had enough of inefficient processes and stupidity for one day. She just booked our breakfast slots. It just doesn’t need to be that hard! It is just like the Scandinavian duvets on our hotel beds. Why have two undersized duvets for a double bed when one big one works better. The same for the pillows. I have seen bigger pillows in a child’s cot. No wonder they had to sell Volvo cars to the Indians. They couldn’t work out how to make them any more convoluted.

Why do people live in Sweden? It is cold, expensive, inefficient, has bad food and much more difficult than is humanly possible.

Once we had unpacked I was starting to cool down. We have a walking tour of the city booked for tomorrow morning so Lynn wants to walk down to the meeting point tonight to make sure we don’t have to jump through hoops to get there or wear red underwear on our heads to walk the streets.

I have to laugh when we walk downtown. We experienced footpaths that just end. Major street crossings without marked pedestrian crossings, crossing lights that aren’t synchronised to cross a street in one go so you either risk life and limb or wait in the middle of the street for the second half of your expedition just to get to the other side. But the biggest laugh that I had was when I noticed the large number of trams (tracks everywhere) but buses driving around the streets. F….k why? Trams or buses people. Make a damn decision.

I just hope Norway is better than Sweden. At least we are only here for three days before we head to Oslo, Norway. It is bad enough that we have to come back to Sweden in July after we finish with Finland. We didn’t have these issues when we were in Finland last October. Maybe it was their affiliation with the Germans during WWII that shook the Scandinavianess out of them.