Hirtshals, Denmark

Up through northern Germany and the entire length of mainland Denmark in a constant deluge of rain - 14 hours door to door.

Here's where we see just how easy to please I really am: My first train (of the day's scheduled five) was delayed, meaning I missed all my subsequent connections. (And believe me, I'd expect nothing less from the Deutsche Bahn!)

But a helpful woman at the information desk found me a connection a couple hours later, on an ICE (the nicest, fastest train type). While she was apologizing that they didn't have anything sooner, I was thinking, they refund half my ticket price because of the delay AND I get to go on an ICE? And with fewer times I have to change trains? Ooh, and four euros worth of food vouchers??

It was pretty silly how excited I was, as I ate my free sandwich in a train station bakery and read the Greenland part of my Iceland/Faroes/Greenland travel guide and fantasized about going there too.


Arrival in Hirtshals, a small town on the northern coast of Denmark, fresh sea air and the smell of flowers. Blocky brick apartment buildings; a blonde teenaged boy on a scooter and his equally blonde kid sister behind him, peddling like mad on her bicycle to keep up.

The picture above is in Hirtshals at 9:45 p.m.! I love Nordic summer nights. And here's the view from the youth hostel, overlooking the sea, around 10:45 p.m. Still not dark, just deep blue:


I walked down to the sea despite the driving rain. Grassy bluffs (lighthouse included), a sandy beach, and iron gray, storm-tossed waves. Just what you want from the North Atlantic! (Or the North Sea, specifically, in this case.)



P.S. Favorite snippet about Greenland, from my Lonely Planet: "When most people think of a typically Danish scene, they don't normally imagine towering peaks, glaciers and icebergs - but then, few realize that Greenland comprises 98% of the land area in the Kingdom of Denmark."

This Strange Fascination with the North Atlantic

All of a sudden, my next trip already starts tomorrow.

I know, I know, I already traveled a lot, and lately I'm traveling so much it's nearly getting silly – 3 weeks in the U.S., 4 weeks back, 2 weeks away, 4 weeks back, then I'll be off yet again... But it's all part of a sort of experiment in seeing how much I can travel, and do some of my work remotely while I do, without the constant coming and going starting to make me crazy.

It's definitely been a little bit nuts lately, with so many trips to plan at once. But it's also awesome, so I'm not complaining.

So where am I going this time? Guess!

(Photo of Eyjafjallajökull eruption, April 17, 2010, from Wikimedia Commons)


Yes, Iceland! And the Faroe Islands! Which lie sort of between Norway and Iceland and Scotland, and are semi-autonomous but technically part of Denmark, and it's okay if you didn't know that, because hardly anyone does!

It seems I've always had a strange fascination with the far northern Atlantic. My first year in Germany, when all the other Fulbrighters went to warm places like Turkey or Morocco during fall break, I went to...northern Germany and Denmark. I can't even quite explain it myself. But I do like a good storm-tossed sea...

So I've always wanted to explore some of the North Atlantic (think of places like Iceland, Greenland or Norway's tantalizingly far north archipelago, Svalbard). Even better, do it by ship. Stop at a couple different places on the way.

So...

Tomorrow morning, I set off early for a long day of train connections, to get to the far north of Denmark by nighttime. The ferry (!) sails the next day.

After a day and a night at sea, it stops at the Faroe Islands.

(Sorvagur, Faroe Islands, Wikimedia Commons)


I can't tell you how excited I am about the Faroes. I love discovering small, out of the way countries (or not-quite-countries, as the case may be). The islands sound stunningly beautiful. I even found someone to stay with through Couchsurfing, AND she's a singer-songwriter, which is another one of my favorite things.

This is by far the best tidbit I've read so far in my Faroes research, from the Wikitravel "Stay Safe" section on the islands:

"Generally: The Faroe Islands are very safe.
No risk of natural disaster or animal attack.
Crime and traffic are minor risks.
As you drive along, please be aware that the sheep may be startled and leap out in front of you. If you happen to collide with a sheep, you should immediately contact the police in Tórshavn at telephone number 351448 for assistance."

Then on to Iceland!

(Thórsmörk, the destination I'm possibly most excited about, also from Wikimedia Commons)

In lieu of having time to actually write something about Iceland, here's Lonely Planet's description of the country's most famously disgusting food:

"...Hákarl, putrefied shark meat which has been buried in sand and gravel for three to six months to ensure sufficient decomposition. It can be left anywhere, because even carrion birds won't touch it."

Ha. I won't be sampling that particular delicacy.

Incidentally, Iceland is the furthest north I'll ever have been! One little island off the north coast actually sits on the Arctic Circle... but I, regretfully, decided that it didn't make sense to spend a lot of time and money getting there just to step across a line, turn around and head back. Arctic Circle, someday. This time around, I'll spend my time with the dramatic glaciers and volcanoes of the southern coast, and hip, quirky Reykjavík, the capital.

Oh, and hot springs. Lots and lots of geothermal hot springs.

It's a Small, Small, Small, Small World

This is how small the world can be sometimes, and how cool Facebook can (occasionally) be:

In February, during the Berlinale film festival, I was standing on line to buy tickets for a friend and me. You might remember that Berlinale ticket-buying is a massive undertaking that can involve standing on line for as much as an hour or two.

Anyway, on this particular line-standing marathon, I finally reached the front of the line (after two hours!) and my debit card didn't work in the machine at the ticket desk. (Even though everywhere else, it worked fine.) I was FIVE EUROS short of being able to pay in cash. I asked the guy at the desk if at the very least I could run to an ATM, come back in five minutes, and pay for the films I'd already listed for him – rather than going to an ATM and then having to get back on line for another two hours. Nope, he said.

Desperation. Exhaustion. A woman standing a couple places back from me said, here, take the money from me, I'll give you my bank account number and you can transfer it to me later. She was a complete stranger. With no way of knowing who I was or that I'd really pay. (And yes, it's only five euros - but still, the trust was what astounded me.)

I got my tickets, then went home and transferred the money, along with my deep gratitude.

Fast forward to now, July, and I just got a message on Facebook: It's from the same woman, who just stumbled across me because it turns out we have mutual acquaintances. Three of them, in fact, all through different connections, none of it related at all.

She asked if I'd like to meet up for a coffee or something with her and her boyfriend who happens to be visiting, since he also remembered her telling him the story from the Berlinale line, and was equally excited when she told him we'd now virtually crossed paths again.

It's a small world. In a city of 3.5 million.

Shut Happens

Cool sign on a café in Friedrichshain, Berlin:


(Reads:
"Shut Happens
Unfortunately, Spielwiese is closed")

Stocking up on Maple Syrup in Berlin

Once a year, the Aldi grocery store chain has maple syrup, only as long as supplies last. Now, it's not as if you can't buy maple syrup anywhere else in Germany, but it tends to be expensive and Aldi is cheap, so this sale is kind of a big deal among North American expats.



I first heard of it a couple years ago from this Berlin expat academics' listserv I'm on. Since then I've, um, marked a note in my calendar for July each year, and apparently now I've become that person who checks by Aldi in early July until I find out what week the sale will be, and then writes the listserv about it.

Which I feel a little silly about (I mean, it's just maple syrup), except that this year I got four or five responses back, from people who wanted to express their gratitude, the sale had slipped their minds this year and they would have missed it if I hadn't written, etc. A friend who lives most of the time in Spain but visits Berlin often even asked if I'd pick up a bottle for her.

Yeah, we're a strange bunch over here.

Even stranger to me, though, is that each time this comes around and I go to Aldi to stock up, I get some other shopper peering in fascination at my purchases, wondering what on earth I'm buying. This time, a guy asked me, "Do you dilute it with water?" And when I said, "Uh, no," he asked, "Oh, so it's not something to drink?"

I do realize that maple syrup is a North American thing, but the Germans I know are generally a cosmopolitan bunch, who've at least heard of it. So it always surprises me to come across someone who hasn't!

Es Endet Alles

Posters for the final Harry Potter movie have gone up around Berlin – and when I say posters, I mean ones that cover entire multi-story apartment blocks!


I was getting a little snarky about the poster slogan, "Es Endet Alles" (literally "everything ends"), which to me seemed not quite to have the dramatic ring you want in the final installment of an epic series. I take it almost less as "the dramatic conclusion is here!" and more as "oh, it's over." But that's probably just my non-native ears, because I checked with one of my students, and she thought it sounded okay, if not super exciting.

Anyway, I just checked, and that is in fact a literal translation of the slogan on the English-language posters: "It All Ends."

But even better! Check out this page of movie posters that includes ones from a few different countries. Todo Termina!

Yes, because I'm a Harry Potter nerd. I don't even watch the movies (I'm a book purist when it comes to stories I really like), but this end of an era is still kind of exciting.

Und...das Spiel geht ins Elfmeterschießen!

Well, well, that was quite a game.

I don't follow soccer and I don't even know all that much about it, but when there's a major tournament and Germany is going nuts over it, it starts to seem worth checking out!

The Women's World Cup is taking place in Germany, but I didn't get around to watching any of it until yesterday's quarterfinal game between Germany and Japan (dead boring, not worth recapping) and today's quarterfinal between the US and Brazil (highly suspenseful!)

I actually missed the US' first goal, because it happened right in the 2nd minute of the game, before I even got there. Then it stayed 1-0, and it stayed 1-0...until some rather unfair seeming refereeing allowed Brazil to redo a penalty kick that had been blocked the first time, but now became a goal.

And it stayed 1-1, and it stayed 1-1, and the game went into overtime. In just the second minute of overtime, Brazil's renowned player Marta scored. So for the rest of the overtime, Brazil was leading, still leading...and they weren't being very sportsmanlike about it, either, with one of the players faking an injury – to kill time and keep her team in the lead – in the most blatant way any of us had ever seen.

Pretty much every spectator seemed to be mad at Brazil by this point, though I was still kind of rooting for them, since they were just clearly playing better. And Marta really started to shine, just as impressive as I'd heard.

But then. The 90-minute game had already added 30 minutes of overtime, and now we were into the final 3 minutes of overtime for the overtime. In the next to last minute, in the 122nd minute of a game that's technically only 90 minutes long, Abby Wambach of the US team scored, using her head. Soccer is insane...

With the game suddenly tied again and time up, it went to a penalty shootout, which the US won (their goalie, Hope Solo, is quite amazing). And it was all over and the US had won after all.

The German friend present commented that this fit the American "dream," the way it would be if this were a Hollywood movie: the underdog status through most of the game, with the unfair referee call and some low-handed tactics from the other team, but never giving up and then getting that decisive goal literally in the next to last minute of the game.

How to Talk to Little Girls

Aw, someone posted this article and I thought it was pretty cool: "How to Talk to Little Girls" (hint: not about how cute their frilly dresses are). Wonder if this actually works in practice with real life kids (of either/any gender).

Translating Scottish

Recently a German friend of mine, Tanja, and an American friend, Patrick, happened to cross paths and I asked if they knew each other. "I know you," Tanja said, while Patrick blinked at her in surprise. "You're the one who told the joke nobody could understand."

Rewind a few months to my birthday party, where Patrick (who has some sort of claim to Scots-Irish background, or something) had everybody in stitches with his Scottish jokes, which involve plenty of dialogue related in a thick Scottish brogue.

Most of the listeners were Germans who, though they speak excellent English, were not quite up to the whole Scottish accent thing.

So Patrick told Scottish jokes and I stood there and listened and then translated what he said into "regular" English that the Germans present could understand.