Dritte Servierung - Hamburg

Above - Hamburg.

Above - Hamburg.

Above - the Germans are so organised that they have a count down to how long before the green man appears telling you it's ok to cross the road.

Above - the train station.

On Sunday we took the train to Hamburg. It was dull and wet. We walked around and stopped for a sandwich in a café where there was a lady with a dog in a holdall. Admittedly the I've seen rats bigger than that dog but still. In a café? At the table? In a holdall?!

We also came across a group of people wearing springs stilts. I have no idea what they're actually called or why on earth you might want to wear them. They make you taller and give you the ability to bounce... it almost made unicycling look normal.

Zweite Servierung - Danemark

Above - An Arriva Trains Wales... in Denmark!

Above - The centre of Esbjerg.

Above - The centre of Esjberg. Was there an evacuation we didn't know about?!

Above - The audience.

Above - The stage.

Above - Esjberg.

Above - Danish postboxes and flag.

Above - Tonder.

Above - Alex and Sam in Tonder.

Denmark, I found, was, in many ways, quite German. It was neat and tidy and clean. We went in the luxury of a German train to Tonder - a Danish town just over the border. There was me, Alex and Sam - also an English assistant and friend of Alex's. We walked around Tonder - there was a market and tourist information as well as a museum. It was upon purchasing postcards and stamps that I discovered that the Danish currency somewhat resembles polo mints - the coins have holes in the middle. Athough everything was in Danish it seemed the majority of people, or at least those who we interacted with at any rate, also spoke German. Handy. Particulary when buying lunch. A Danish cheese salad sandwich and muffin. We went back to the station to catch a train to Esjberg - deeper in Denmark, and, much to my surprise (like with the Oxfam shop discovery yesterday) I saw an Arriva train. Exactly like the ones which pull up at Ludlow station. Arriva in Denmark! How bizarre. On the train eating my lunch I discovered that my raison muffin was infact chocolate chip. Not all that great when you've given up chocolate for lent. I had two options. 1. Eat the muffin and forget lent. 2. Pick out the chocolate chips. I went for the latter getting some strange looks in the process!

When we got to Esjberg (a vibrant university town, apparently) it was raining and cold and dull. It also appeared to have been evacuated. There were no people. Anywhere. The place was empty. The shops were closed. You didn't have to be fluent in Danish to understand the opening times displayed on the shop doors - the sixth day down, Saturday, closing time - 14h. I want to work in Denmark. Everywhere, and I mean, everywhere closes at 14h. The place was empty -had they heard we were coming! We managed to find a café in which we somehow managed to order hot drinks to warm ourselves up. The poor man serving us - first asked if he spoke German and then I came along wanting to order in English. We sat upstairs looking out over the empty central square listening to English songs on the Danish radio. I wrote my postcards and realised that although between us we had a good grasp of multiple languages (English, German, French, Swedish, Frisian, Russian...) we didn't have the Danish work for 'France' for my postcard. I asked the man downstairs before leaving. Goodness knows what he thought of us - ordering in German and English and sending postcards to France! We left the empty café for the empty square. It was raining. There were a couple of people who we passed. Yet none of them had umbrellas. Infact, I don't think I saw a single umbrella in the whole of Denmark. Maybe they're banned? Maybe they don't yet exist in Denmark? I wonder whether the Danish language has a word for 'umbrella'. Well, at least now I'm able to tell a Danish person from a non-Danish person in the rain - the presence or not of an umbrella!

Whilst walking around Esjberg we stumbled across a few random things including a sign signposting 'England' as just round the corner (this was presumably a nearby town that coincidentally had the same name as what the English call their country...). We also came across a stage at the bottom of lots of steps leading up to a tall tower. Cue performances. That was my 15 seconds of fame - on a wet and soggy Danish afternoon in a town that appeared to have been evactuated I made my debut.

And that was Denmark. My everlasting impressions will be that it is clean, tidy and cold. It gives up at 14h. Oh and umbrellas just don't exist.

Gill reist nach Deutschland (und trifft sich mit Kaffee und Kuchen wieder) - Erste Servierung - Von Stansted nach Luebeck und dann weiter nach Husum.

Above - the centre of Lueback with one if its many green topped spires.

Above - Germany does Oxfam.

Above - the Market and Townhall (Der Markt und dem Rathaus) One of the most impressive Townhall's in Germany, apparently which has existed since 1230.

Above - Holstentor - one of Germany's most well known buildings built in 1469-78 in late gothic style.

Hello! I know I haven't posted anything for a long time but that's because I haven't really done anything amazing and anything of even slight interest I may have done I just haven't had the time to post. Term has however now finished so I have a bit more time on my hands to bring you up to date.

Last weekend I took advantage of Ryanair's sale and went to visit Alex (a friend from uni) in Germany. He's lucky enough to be doing a second year as a Language Assistant. Flying with Ryanair meant flying from Stansted rather than Gatwick which is the wrong side of London really but never mind. I caught the 0700 train from Brighton to Farringdon and then took the underground to Liverpool Street before catching the Stansted Express to Stansted Airport. When I arrived I noticed that, presumably in a bid to save money, Ryanair have replaced their check-in staff with machines. Luckily I had checked in online and so didn't have to join the queue to use one of the things. It threw me slightly not having to check-in and not having any bags for the hold. Seeing as I was only going for the weekend I couldn't see the point in paying to take a suitcase when hand luggage would do. I mean, the whole idea of taking advantage of Ryanair's sale was because it was cheap - putting a suitcase in the hold would have cost more than the flight itself! I made my way to the hand luggage search and had to separate out my liquids - nothing more than 100ml and all liquids had to fit into a 20cm by 20cm plastic bag. After the hand luggage search I made my way to the departure lounge making sure I'd been to the toilet before boarding the aircraft - I remembered the article in the paper about how Ryanair plan to charge £1 to spend a penny onboard. The flight was surprisingly short - less than an hour. The pilot was also very informative telling us not only the route we would be flying but also chiming up half way through the journey to point out the dutch coastline to the left and to let us know that it was -6*C outside. When I arrived at Luebeck airport (more of a landing strip in my opinion) I had been given instructions to come out of the teminal building and cross the carpark but not the road, to turn right and to wait for a bus at the bus stop to go to the centre of Luebeck.

When I arrived in Luebeck I popped in the tourist information centre for a map and then began exploring. Alex was to ring me when he arrived. Luebeck in quite small but very pleasant. It has lots of green topped churches (the roofs being made out of copper rather than lead, apparently.) It also has the Holstentor which is apparently one of the best known buildings in Germany. I wandered around the quiet, spotless streets. It appeared that northern Germany was very much like eastern Germany when it comes to everything being clean and orderly. I noticed how, even when there is not a car in sight, people waiting to cross the road still stand obediently waiting for the little green man to tell them it's safe to cross. I began to feel a little conspicuous trundling around a suitcase. A small hand luggage sized suitcase that made an inproportionate amount of noise for it's size. I began to wonder whether the German's had some sort of law about the amount of noise you were allowed to make in the street... I was certainly making, or at least my suitcase was making, a lot of noise. But then, somehow, I managed to get carpet entangled in one of the wheels of my suitcase meaning it wouldn't wheel along any more. As I was unable to untangle it I decided to give into my fondest memory of Germany from last summer - coffee and cake. I plonked myself down in a café and managed to order a sandwich, a cup of coffee and a slice of cheesecake. (Thanks to the shop assistants ability to speak English rather than my ability to speak German it has to be said) And then Alex called. It was then that I realised that a) I didn't really know where I was and b) it emerged that I'd chosen a chain of bakers that have branches on every corner of Luebeck. We eventually met in the Markt and Rathaus. By this point I was having to carry my carpet entangled suitcase. Well at least I wasn't breaking any German noise level law! We walked around Luebeck and, much to my suprise and excitment, found an Oxfam shop!! I've never encountered an Oxfam shop anywhere else in the world other than the UK before. We went in and, apart from it being so German (clean, tidy, neat) it was just like in the UK. There were even leaflets with the Unwrapped pictures in but, obviously, it was all written in German.

I hadn't realised that Husum (where Alex lives and works) was so far from Luebeck. It took us about 3 hours and two trains to get there. German trains are delightful. Clean, on time, confortable. A pleasure to use really. Husum is bigger than I imagined but still quite small. It's the British equivalent of Cornwall, ie Germans holidaying in Germany will go to Husum. It's by the sea but there seems to be a permanent mist pressing down on the houses. Alex lives in a street with other houses. It was very residential. And very German. And by that I mean, clean, orderly and quiet. Or at least it was until I arrived with my suitcase which, by this point, had shedded enough carpet (heaven forbid it came off from around the wheel in a supermarket littering the floor, needless to say it had to be picked up and taken home to the bin!) to be able to wheel again.