Today I took a bus along Egypt's Mediterranean Coast to El Alamein, site of a decisive World War Two battle between Germany and the Allies. The battle has particular significance to me because my grandfather, while serving in the New Zealand army, was captured in this battle by the Germans, thus beginning three years of POW life.
El Alamein itself is barely worth mentioning. The village was small and nondescript. The Military Museum at El Alamein is pretty ordinary too. However the Commonwealth War cemetery moved me. As I walked into the most orderly and clean place I have seen in Egypt, except perhaps the Bibliotheca Alexandria, a soldier asked me what country I was from. I answered New Zealand, and he showed me to the New Zealand section. Row upon row of Kiwi graves are here. It seemed so...stupid that these young guys died in battle where the desert meets the sea in North Africa, so far away from the cities and towns where they grew up. I had the preconception that soldiers are mostly 18 or 19, but the age of each soldier was shown and they tended to be between 25 and 40 at the time they died.
The bus ride was around 100 kilometres, and once we left Alexandria almost the entire coastline was built up with holiday villages, resorts for rich Egyptians I guess. As it is now winter in Egypt, these were all completely empty and closed, together with the restaurants, fast food outlets, and shops they contain. It looked like an abandoned city.
The bus dropped me off on the side of the highway, a 10 minute walk from the museum. I realised that I had no idea how to get a bus back to Alexandria when I was finished. This bothered me somewhat during my visit. When I had finished and was walking back to the highway, I figured I would just wait by the side of the highway and try to flag down nice looking buses. If all else failed, the fact that I am a tourist with money to spend made me feel confident that someone would soon enough help me spend that money on a fare to Alexandria.
I needn't have worried. Before I even made it to the highway a mini-van driver must have sensed my thoughts and stopped on the highway when he saw me walking down the intersecting road. The ride I was worried about finding was actually there waiting for me! A quick piece of negotiation and I had a ride back for a third of the bus fare on the way there. If only all travelling was so easy.
Monday, December 20, 2004
Sunday, December 19, 2004
Alexandria, Egypt: Backpacking in Style
In Alexandria I feel I can live the way rich people do in the French Riviera - but on a backpacker's budget. Waking up to a view through my French windows over the Mediterranean, I sauntered downstairs and across the road to a cafe that reminds me of the opulence of cafes in Vienna, but again with that vital price difference. For a couple of Euros I had a big and tasty breakfast with a horde of waiters and waitresses swarming around me.
Well, it is not entirely the way rich people holiday, because they probably have running water in their bathroom when they go for a shower. Now I realise why the room was so cheap and why the manager wanted me to pay in advance. This had made me suspicious so I agreed only to one day's payment. This morning after breakfast I found another hotel with equally impressive views in an equally impressive period building, but this time with the promise of hot water.
The lifts in both building were those old metal cages with wooden doors that you open manually. The lift rises within the spiralling staircase.
I am writing from the Bibliotheca Alexandria, better known as the Library at Alexandria. Naturally it is not the library from antiquity, that was pretty much wiped off the map 1500 years ago or so. This is the new version, opened in 2004, and it is amazing to see. It's not in the same league as the Pyramids and Pharaoh Tombs, but it is still impressive, inside and out. I don't have the words to do it justice, so I won't try.
Well, it is not entirely the way rich people holiday, because they probably have running water in their bathroom when they go for a shower. Now I realise why the room was so cheap and why the manager wanted me to pay in advance. This had made me suspicious so I agreed only to one day's payment. This morning after breakfast I found another hotel with equally impressive views in an equally impressive period building, but this time with the promise of hot water.
The lifts in both building were those old metal cages with wooden doors that you open manually. The lift rises within the spiralling staircase.
I am writing from the Bibliotheca Alexandria, better known as the Library at Alexandria. Naturally it is not the library from antiquity, that was pretty much wiped off the map 1500 years ago or so. This is the new version, opened in 2004, and it is amazing to see. It's not in the same league as the Pyramids and Pharaoh Tombs, but it is still impressive, inside and out. I don't have the words to do it justice, so I won't try.
Saturday, December 18, 2004
Alexandria, Egypt: Islamic Internetting
Alexandria offers a respite from the hassles of the tourist spots in Egypt. There's not really much to see here, and therefore I don't have to put up with people offering me things I don't want everytime I walk down the street, which happens in Cairo, Aswan, Luxor, and Dahab.
Here is a good reason to come to Alexandria. I have a hotel room in a belle epoque building, with enormous window-doors (is that what they call a French window) opening onto a terrace from where I can gaze over the Mediterannean Sea...and for 30 Egyptian pounds (4 Euros, AUD$6).
I am writing this in an Internet cafe, where in the seat next to me is a women covered from head to toe in black, including the head covering with only a slit for the eyes. This is not too common in Egypt - most women have only a colourful scarf covering their hair, leaving their face visible, and in Cairo and Alexandria many women have no head covering at all. I can furtively glance at what the woman next to me is doing, and she seems to be writing e-mails in both English and Arabic, and gazing at many photos of war scenes, more or less as the media would show from Iraq.
Here is a good reason to come to Alexandria. I have a hotel room in a belle epoque building, with enormous window-doors (is that what they call a French window) opening onto a terrace from where I can gaze over the Mediterannean Sea...and for 30 Egyptian pounds (4 Euros, AUD$6).
I am writing this in an Internet cafe, where in the seat next to me is a women covered from head to toe in black, including the head covering with only a slit for the eyes. This is not too common in Egypt - most women have only a colourful scarf covering their hair, leaving their face visible, and in Cairo and Alexandria many women have no head covering at all. I can furtively glance at what the woman next to me is doing, and she seems to be writing e-mails in both English and Arabic, and gazing at many photos of war scenes, more or less as the media would show from Iraq.
Tuesday, August 17, 2004
Malta: Country-sized Summer Resort
A couple of weeks after Italy I met up with another Australian friend
for a week in Malta. Malta is also a comically small nation, made up of
a couple of Mediterranean islands. To borrow my friend's description it
seemed more like a tourist resort than a country. Unexpectedly a large
contigent of the visitors we met were students from Eastern Europe who
had come to Malta to take English lessons and have a summer party, not
necessarily in that order. A girl from Slovakia said to me, "I am here
for a holiday. For my parents I say that I am here to learn English."
Malta has the oldest human-built stone structures on the planet, 1000
years older than Stonehenge or the pyramids. We spent several hours
getting to the oldest of them all, on the island of Gozo (home to Gozo
journalists), and found that their age was really the only significant
thing about them. They were simply piles of variously shaped rocks,
making a crude shelter of some sort. Those stone-age people learnt a lot
about how to build to impress by the time they got around to making the
pyramids.
for a week in Malta. Malta is also a comically small nation, made up of
a couple of Mediterranean islands. To borrow my friend's description it
seemed more like a tourist resort than a country. Unexpectedly a large
contigent of the visitors we met were students from Eastern Europe who
had come to Malta to take English lessons and have a summer party, not
necessarily in that order. A girl from Slovakia said to me, "I am here
for a holiday. For my parents I say that I am here to learn English."
Malta has the oldest human-built stone structures on the planet, 1000
years older than Stonehenge or the pyramids. We spent several hours
getting to the oldest of them all, on the island of Gozo (home to Gozo
journalists), and found that their age was really the only significant
thing about them. They were simply piles of variously shaped rocks,
making a crude shelter of some sort. Those stone-age people learnt a lot
about how to build to impress by the time they got around to making the
pyramids.
San Marino: Country with a View
I've managed to make a couple of trips over the European summer. The
first was 10 days in Italy and San Marino with my German girlfriend. I
was keen to visit San Marino, one of the world's smallest countries. It
has only 35,000 people, a total area equivalent to a few Melbourne
suburbs, and may as well be part of Italy as it is surrounded by Italy,
and the people speak and eat and look Italian. It is normally a day-trip
destination where the tourists arrive by the busload in the morning,
walk the steep old streets, have some lunch, get their passports stamped
at the tourist centre, and buy some tacky "tax-free" junk, that seemed
to me to be more expensive than regular tax-included prices elsewhere.
Because we arrived on the last bus in for the day, we stayed overnight
and it worked out well. Because people don't normally stay overnight,
the accommodation was cheap. San Marino is mostly a fortified city on a
mountain surrounded by lower land, so every room has a great view. In
the evening we sat on our terrace looking out in one direction to the
Apennines, the mountains which run down Italy's length like a spine, and
in the other direction to the Adriatic Sea. From our terrace we could
watch the locals, young and old, make their evening "passagiata", the
Italian tradition where everybody comes out in the cool late evening
air, strolling up and down the streets chatting, flirting, joking. Soon
after a crossbow tournament took place, all the contestants and judges
dressed in renaissance garb. It was colourful, kitsch, and amateurish,
but what interested me was that this was something they did for
themselves, not for tourists because almost all the tourists had gone in
the afternoon.
Next we went to Florence where I met up with an Australian friend.
Together we walked "la cinque terra", a coastal hiking path connecting 5
villages built on steep hills leading down to the water that allegedly
have maintained traditional lifestyles. Rubbish. It was tourist central.
The walk was good, lots of great scenery, especially as you come around
a bend and see a village in across the next cove. But the villages,
especially the last one we saw seemed to be inhabited only by tourists
save for the shopkeepers. The only tradition I saw was the worldwide
tradition of welcoming the tourist dollar no matter what the cost. We
went for a swim to watch off the sweat and dirt and found ourselves
swimming with fishscales discarded by fisherman, which was less than
pleasant.
For the rest of our Italian trip we used Naples as a base for a few
days. From here we saw Pompeii and Herculaneum which is another ancient
Roman city, like Pompeii buried by Vesuvius but much smaller and better
preserved. The summer heat and smog in Naples was relentless, so the
idea of seeing the ancient water ducts under the city was attractive
especially when the advert said "It's cool underground so you will need
to bring a sweater". We were joined up with a group of German schoolkids
for a guided tour. The tour was in Italian-style English ("Disa waza
builta by...") so the Germans didn't understand much. They got bored and
started acting like bored schoolkids, talking and giggling, tempting me
to test how deep the shafts were by pushing one or two over the edge.
Naples is interesting to see after you have travelled too much. It is
chaotic, crowded, congested, and sort of feels more like a South East
Asian city than a Western European city. In the old part of town people
live in 10 square metre apartments. The streets are lined with hawkers
and vegetable markets that appear wherever the owner feels like. Washing
hangs between buildings over the narrow streets that appear to be
pedestrian-only until motorbikes and small cars come racing through
giving you only a second or two's warning to jump out of the way. There
seems to be little planning with the buildings which are built around
each other and on each other wherever there is room. The city is at the
same time a Catholic stronghold - in one quarter, the "Spanish Quarter",
there are 35 churches in a 2 square kilometre block - and an organised
crime stronghold - the Camorra, the Naples version of the Mafia, has
50,000 members. Even the name of the city is paradoxical - it derives
from Greek for "new city", yet it is anything but new, as it was
established by the ancient Greeks on top of an even older city.
first was 10 days in Italy and San Marino with my German girlfriend. I
was keen to visit San Marino, one of the world's smallest countries. It
has only 35,000 people, a total area equivalent to a few Melbourne
suburbs, and may as well be part of Italy as it is surrounded by Italy,
and the people speak and eat and look Italian. It is normally a day-trip
destination where the tourists arrive by the busload in the morning,
walk the steep old streets, have some lunch, get their passports stamped
at the tourist centre, and buy some tacky "tax-free" junk, that seemed
to me to be more expensive than regular tax-included prices elsewhere.
Because we arrived on the last bus in for the day, we stayed overnight
and it worked out well. Because people don't normally stay overnight,
the accommodation was cheap. San Marino is mostly a fortified city on a
mountain surrounded by lower land, so every room has a great view. In
the evening we sat on our terrace looking out in one direction to the
Apennines, the mountains which run down Italy's length like a spine, and
in the other direction to the Adriatic Sea. From our terrace we could
watch the locals, young and old, make their evening "passagiata", the
Italian tradition where everybody comes out in the cool late evening
air, strolling up and down the streets chatting, flirting, joking. Soon
after a crossbow tournament took place, all the contestants and judges
dressed in renaissance garb. It was colourful, kitsch, and amateurish,
but what interested me was that this was something they did for
themselves, not for tourists because almost all the tourists had gone in
the afternoon.
Next we went to Florence where I met up with an Australian friend.
Together we walked "la cinque terra", a coastal hiking path connecting 5
villages built on steep hills leading down to the water that allegedly
have maintained traditional lifestyles. Rubbish. It was tourist central.
The walk was good, lots of great scenery, especially as you come around
a bend and see a village in across the next cove. But the villages,
especially the last one we saw seemed to be inhabited only by tourists
save for the shopkeepers. The only tradition I saw was the worldwide
tradition of welcoming the tourist dollar no matter what the cost. We
went for a swim to watch off the sweat and dirt and found ourselves
swimming with fishscales discarded by fisherman, which was less than
pleasant.
For the rest of our Italian trip we used Naples as a base for a few
days. From here we saw Pompeii and Herculaneum which is another ancient
Roman city, like Pompeii buried by Vesuvius but much smaller and better
preserved. The summer heat and smog in Naples was relentless, so the
idea of seeing the ancient water ducts under the city was attractive
especially when the advert said "It's cool underground so you will need
to bring a sweater". We were joined up with a group of German schoolkids
for a guided tour. The tour was in Italian-style English ("Disa waza
builta by...") so the Germans didn't understand much. They got bored and
started acting like bored schoolkids, talking and giggling, tempting me
to test how deep the shafts were by pushing one or two over the edge.
Naples is interesting to see after you have travelled too much. It is
chaotic, crowded, congested, and sort of feels more like a South East
Asian city than a Western European city. In the old part of town people
live in 10 square metre apartments. The streets are lined with hawkers
and vegetable markets that appear wherever the owner feels like. Washing
hangs between buildings over the narrow streets that appear to be
pedestrian-only until motorbikes and small cars come racing through
giving you only a second or two's warning to jump out of the way. There
seems to be little planning with the buildings which are built around
each other and on each other wherever there is room. The city is at the
same time a Catholic stronghold - in one quarter, the "Spanish Quarter",
there are 35 churches in a 2 square kilometre block - and an organised
crime stronghold - the Camorra, the Naples version of the Mafia, has
50,000 members. Even the name of the city is paradoxical - it derives
from Greek for "new city", yet it is anything but new, as it was
established by the ancient Greeks on top of an even older city.
Saturday, June 19, 2004
Scandinavia Month Part 2
Two weeks after visiting Denmark and Sweden I completed the Scandinavian trifecta by flying to Norway for a four-day weekend. I often tell people
that my homeland New Zealand is the most beautiful country in the world.
After visiting Norway I’m not so sure. It’s the fjords. I know that
sounds clichéd but they were simply stunning, almost indescribably so.
The highlight of my Norway trip was the day-long “Norway in a Nutshell”
tour. With one ticket I got to:
• take a train ride past lakes and into the mountains, with a
photographic-opportunity-stop next to a glacier.
• take another train down a step incline past nymph-infested
waterfalls. (The nymph part is true, something they do for the tourists).
• take a boat ride through the peaceful fjords, which are long,
narrow inlets carved out of the mountains by glaciers in times past and
now surrounded by cliffs that descend from 500 metres above sea level
straight down to 1000 metres below sea level.
• take a bus ride from a village at the end of a fjord up to the
mountains, the ride offering ever more scenic views back to the village
as the road ascends.
• pay exorbitant prices. To complete the experience of “Norway in a
Nutshell”, the ticket is expensive, like everything is Norway, so I
could only afford to eat dodgy falafel sandwiches during my trip.
Norway was a poor country until the 1970’s and was reliant on American
aid to maintain what living standards they had. The things that make the
country beautiful - mountains, glaciers, and fjords – don’t provide for
good farm land. However in the 1970’s enormous oil reserves were found
in Norway’s waters and as a result Norway is the 2nd richest country in
the world (per person), and therefore one of the most expensive
countries for tourists. I don’t think I will visit Norway again until a
long lost uncle dies and leaves me his fortune.
Oslo is the capital of Norway but Bergen, the second biggest city, was
much nicer. It was 20 degrees in the city centre near the sea yet
mountains partly surrounding Bergen still had snow. From near the centre
of Bergen I took a 10 minute “funicular” train ride up the mountain to a
forest and spent the afternoon hiking. With the long Nordic summer days,
it was still light at 11pm and the sky was already brightening again at
1:30am.
I took a night train from Bergen back to Oslo, intending to sleep
through the journey. However I got seduced by the Norwegian scenery
again. The train passed through the snowy mountains and the full moon
hung low over the mountain tops giving everything an eerie glow. I spent
a good part of the trip staring, staring, staring out the window, even
though I was tired enough to fall sleep the moment I laid down.
Naturally Denmark and Norway play the Viking card a bit. Both countries
claim to be THE home of the Vikings. Both countries have 1000 year old
Viking longships in museums. Both countries sell tacky tourist hats with
Viking horns. After meeting the friendly people in Scandinavia I find it
hard to believe that their Viking ancestors raped and plundered all over
Europe for 300 years.
that my homeland New Zealand is the most beautiful country in the world.
After visiting Norway I’m not so sure. It’s the fjords. I know that
sounds clichéd but they were simply stunning, almost indescribably so.
The highlight of my Norway trip was the day-long “Norway in a Nutshell”
tour. With one ticket I got to:
• take a train ride past lakes and into the mountains, with a
photographic-opportunity-stop next to a glacier.
• take another train down a step incline past nymph-infested
waterfalls. (The nymph part is true, something they do for the tourists).
• take a boat ride through the peaceful fjords, which are long,
narrow inlets carved out of the mountains by glaciers in times past and
now surrounded by cliffs that descend from 500 metres above sea level
straight down to 1000 metres below sea level.
• take a bus ride from a village at the end of a fjord up to the
mountains, the ride offering ever more scenic views back to the village
as the road ascends.
• pay exorbitant prices. To complete the experience of “Norway in a
Nutshell”, the ticket is expensive, like everything is Norway, so I
could only afford to eat dodgy falafel sandwiches during my trip.
Norway was a poor country until the 1970’s and was reliant on American
aid to maintain what living standards they had. The things that make the
country beautiful - mountains, glaciers, and fjords – don’t provide for
good farm land. However in the 1970’s enormous oil reserves were found
in Norway’s waters and as a result Norway is the 2nd richest country in
the world (per person), and therefore one of the most expensive
countries for tourists. I don’t think I will visit Norway again until a
long lost uncle dies and leaves me his fortune.
Oslo is the capital of Norway but Bergen, the second biggest city, was
much nicer. It was 20 degrees in the city centre near the sea yet
mountains partly surrounding Bergen still had snow. From near the centre
of Bergen I took a 10 minute “funicular” train ride up the mountain to a
forest and spent the afternoon hiking. With the long Nordic summer days,
it was still light at 11pm and the sky was already brightening again at
1:30am.
I took a night train from Bergen back to Oslo, intending to sleep
through the journey. However I got seduced by the Norwegian scenery
again. The train passed through the snowy mountains and the full moon
hung low over the mountain tops giving everything an eerie glow. I spent
a good part of the trip staring, staring, staring out the window, even
though I was tired enough to fall sleep the moment I laid down.
Naturally Denmark and Norway play the Viking card a bit. Both countries
claim to be THE home of the Vikings. Both countries have 1000 year old
Viking longships in museums. Both countries sell tacky tourist hats with
Viking horns. After meeting the friendly people in Scandinavia I find it
hard to believe that their Viking ancestors raped and plundered all over
Europe for 300 years.
Scandinavia Month Part 1
I’m at home with my windows open to let in the cool air of a German
summer evening. Every now and then I hear a human roar sounding from the
pubs and cafés in my neighbourhood. The European soccer championships
are being held this month in Portugal and as I write Holland is playing
Czech Republic. The roaring I hear occurs whenever a goal is scored. To
say that Germany is soccer-mad at the moment is an understatement. The
evidence:
I was away for business this week and hence ate in restaurants the last
two nights. In both restaurants the waiters were more interested in the
soccer action on the big screen TVs than they were in serving food. I
innocently asked a waiter the score of a game I missed and got more than
I wanted. He told me the result, as well as his analysis of every game
played so far and a prediction of who would win and why. He wanted to
continue with stories from the previous European soccer championships,
but I reminded him that he hadn’t actually taken my order yet.
Now to the topic of my e-mail: In the last month I made two long weekend
trips to Scandinavia. The first was by overnight train to Denmark.
Stepping off the train in Copenhagen, a harbour city on an island, I got
an immediate feeling that I would like this place. I could taste the
fresh sea air that you don’t find in Germany. The people were naturally
warm and friendly. And there were free bicycles for tourists to use all
over the city. You simply put in a coin and the bike lock is released,
then you return it to a special stand and the coin is returned.
Before long I noticed Australian flags in the streets alongside Danish
flags. I found this mysterious until I heard that the next weekend some
Tasmanian woman would be marrying the Prince of Denmark. I guess this
was big news Down Under but it hadn’t hit the German headlines. All of
Denmark was keen on Australia. While I was there the Aussie band
Powderfinger performed in the “Rock and Royal” concert, a sailing race
was held on the harbour between Denmark and Australia, and the Danish
brewery Carlsberg was selling a special commemorative Royal Wedding beer
made from Tasmanian hops and Danish malt.
In Copenhagen I visited an unusual suburb called Christiania. In the
70’s a group of free-lovin’ artistic hippies started squatting in a
deserted army barracks in Christiania, and declared it to be an
independent country with its own rules. Those rules, as far as I could
tell, were centred on regular – no, continuous smoking of marijuana.
There were plenty of men with grey pony-tails openly smoking and
marijuana was openly sold in the cafés. Over the years the residents
have grown in number, shrunk in short-time memory capacity, and
experienced occasional violent conflicts with the Danish government and
police force. I wandered right through this suburb and after fighting my
way through the initial dense fog of sweet smelling smoke I found many
houses in a small forest near the water, still a part of this squatters’
kingdom, on what must among the best real estate in Copenhagen.
Later I took a train to Elsinore, a town and castle where Shakespeare’s
Hamlet is set, about an hour north of Copenhagen. The castle is on the
water’s edge and many locals were using the castle grounds for fishing.
The castle itself was unremarkable but for the view across the water to
some mountainous land that I figured had to be Sweden. The idea of
SEEING a country and not VISITING it was killing me so I headed to the
ferry terminal and made an impromptu visit to the Swedish city
Helsingborg, bought myself some dinner and an ice-cream, then took
another ferry back. The whole Swedish episode, including travelling
time, lasted about 2 hours.
summer evening. Every now and then I hear a human roar sounding from the
pubs and cafés in my neighbourhood. The European soccer championships
are being held this month in Portugal and as I write Holland is playing
Czech Republic. The roaring I hear occurs whenever a goal is scored. To
say that Germany is soccer-mad at the moment is an understatement. The
evidence:
I was away for business this week and hence ate in restaurants the last
two nights. In both restaurants the waiters were more interested in the
soccer action on the big screen TVs than they were in serving food. I
innocently asked a waiter the score of a game I missed and got more than
I wanted. He told me the result, as well as his analysis of every game
played so far and a prediction of who would win and why. He wanted to
continue with stories from the previous European soccer championships,
but I reminded him that he hadn’t actually taken my order yet.
Now to the topic of my e-mail: In the last month I made two long weekend
trips to Scandinavia. The first was by overnight train to Denmark.
Stepping off the train in Copenhagen, a harbour city on an island, I got
an immediate feeling that I would like this place. I could taste the
fresh sea air that you don’t find in Germany. The people were naturally
warm and friendly. And there were free bicycles for tourists to use all
over the city. You simply put in a coin and the bike lock is released,
then you return it to a special stand and the coin is returned.
Before long I noticed Australian flags in the streets alongside Danish
flags. I found this mysterious until I heard that the next weekend some
Tasmanian woman would be marrying the Prince of Denmark. I guess this
was big news Down Under but it hadn’t hit the German headlines. All of
Denmark was keen on Australia. While I was there the Aussie band
Powderfinger performed in the “Rock and Royal” concert, a sailing race
was held on the harbour between Denmark and Australia, and the Danish
brewery Carlsberg was selling a special commemorative Royal Wedding beer
made from Tasmanian hops and Danish malt.
In Copenhagen I visited an unusual suburb called Christiania. In the
70’s a group of free-lovin’ artistic hippies started squatting in a
deserted army barracks in Christiania, and declared it to be an
independent country with its own rules. Those rules, as far as I could
tell, were centred on regular – no, continuous smoking of marijuana.
There were plenty of men with grey pony-tails openly smoking and
marijuana was openly sold in the cafés. Over the years the residents
have grown in number, shrunk in short-time memory capacity, and
experienced occasional violent conflicts with the Danish government and
police force. I wandered right through this suburb and after fighting my
way through the initial dense fog of sweet smelling smoke I found many
houses in a small forest near the water, still a part of this squatters’
kingdom, on what must among the best real estate in Copenhagen.
Later I took a train to Elsinore, a town and castle where Shakespeare’s
Hamlet is set, about an hour north of Copenhagen. The castle is on the
water’s edge and many locals were using the castle grounds for fishing.
The castle itself was unremarkable but for the view across the water to
some mountainous land that I figured had to be Sweden. The idea of
SEEING a country and not VISITING it was killing me so I headed to the
ferry terminal and made an impromptu visit to the Swedish city
Helsingborg, bought myself some dinner and an ice-cream, then took
another ferry back. The whole Swedish episode, including travelling
time, lasted about 2 hours.
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