Hamburg, Germany

Well, we've said goodbye to the horses and hosts of Meldgaarde Heste, and are currently doing a bit of exploring through Germany. After about two weeks on the horse farm, it was somewhat of a sensation overload arriving in Hamburg central station - it's huge, with about a trillion people wandering around, lots of bright lights and shiny things and just about everything you would expect from a city hub.

With only two nights here, we didn't try to do too much. Checked out the art gallery, which included possibly the biggest free-standing painting in the entire world - it must have been at least 10m by 20m!! We also climbed the St Michaelis church and got a great view over the city. Here we climbed 451 steps each way, up and down, because somebody thought it would be a good idea to skip the lift!!
Also spent some time wandering the main shopping district, which supposedly has the biggest shoe stores in Europe (or the world?) I'm not sure if we actually went in it, but we did find a store that had at least two huge levels, mainly with shoes for women of course. During this time Lecky sat outside the store and wondered why he wasn't drunk yet. Another major tourist drawcard in Hamburg is the Reeperbahn area - they call it the 'mile of sin', and it's basically a red light district with a lot of normal bars and clubs thrown in for good measure. The area is pretty much left alone by the police, which means at night it turns into an underage clubbing zone in the streets - you can drink alcohol anywhere you want here anyway.

We're just about to head off south to Hanover, and then probably the small town of Goslar at the base of the Harz mountains.

PS. Happy birthday to Lecky for Sunday! He will officially be considered a 'senior' in many European hostels - the cutoff is under 27 for 'juniors'.

Photos: Facebook vs Picasa

At the moment we're playing around a bit with different photo storage options. Have just realised that the links to some of our older albums no longer work - that's thanks for Facebook allowing you to post a public link to a private photo album, and then disabling/expiring that link after a few weeks. Nice.
So the pics from our latest album, 'Meldgaarde Heste', have been posted through Picasa.. if anyone has any comments for or against Facebook vs Picasa, feel free to let us know....

Meldgaarde Heste and Icelandic horses

After being dropped off by a local bus at a sign by a crossroad (apparantly in the middle of nowhere), we have managed to find our way to our second help exchange - "Meldgaarde Heste", a riding and activity center near Farso, in northern Denmark.

The farm consists of ~100 acres of paddocks and woodland, and is home to Hans and Jeanette, sons Alexander and Daniel, Monty the massive (but cowardly) german shepard and sidekick Ain (who we've nicknamed shit-for-brains), 4 barn cats, chickens, a turkey, and most importantly, about 100 Icelandic horses. We're the only helpers here, but there's also another girl who works and lives on the farm (Janni).

Work wise, our days normally start around 7:30 with breakfast, then I'm off to help Janni with the morning feeding of the horses. The horses are paddocked in 4 herds - smaller horses, bigger horses, mares and skinny horses - at least that's my best guestimate from observations anyway! One by one the herds are herded into the long stable, and get their breakfast of oats (which are crushed/rolled here), chaff and pellets. The skinny herd also gets fed in the afternoon. Horse breakfast normally takes just under 2 hours, and then it's time for people smoko :-)




Lecky and I have been busy whitewashing the outside walls of the barns - this basically means we mix up buckets of lime and water, and then "paint" it on with brooms. At first it just looks like the walls are getting wet and not white at all, but once it's dried, it comes up pretty nice. We've also painted a couple of inside rooms in the barn and boiler room (where the farm heating is generated by burning woodchips). All good practice for when we actually have our own house to paint :-)

Icelandic horses have very different gaits from the horses I've ridden previously. The walk is the short and bouncy walk of a pony (not long striding like my thoroughbred Mick), the trot is even bouncier and super fast (no rising trot here!), and then they don't seem to do a slow canter - it's just up to straight out gallop.


On the weekend we tagged along on a trail ride, which was great fun despite the sore muscles that emerged in the following days. The ride took us through pretty forests with mossy floors, over molehill-studded hills and along rolling fields. We got to one such rolling field, where Hans suggested a gallop, and Lecky said, "Sure, looks like nice soft ground!" This turned out to be a case where he should have touched wood - just as we hit top speed, Hans' horse spooked sideways (at nothing, in true horse fashion), and the rest of the horses thought it would be a great idea to follow suit. I lost my stirrups but stayed on, but Lecky's horse threw in a pigroot, and off he went onto the aforementioned nice soft ground (luckily no injuries!). After we caught his horse (which had decided to bolt for the road), we were off again and made it home without any more incidents.



We also did a bit of riding on some less unpredictable vehicles - some scenic cycling to Hvalpsund, which is a little town on the coast. It was mostly uphill all the way there, so by the time we got there we were pretty stuffed and couldn't be arsed doing more than taking a few photos and looking at some realestate ads in the window. And to our great disappointment, we headed into a headwind on the way home, nullifying all the downhill action we'd been hoping for. But one positive of the ride was counting how many aluminium cans are lying on the side of the roads - you get decent money for returning them, so we might make another more purposeful trip later on to clean us up some cash....

Kobenhavn

Firstly, I have no idea why we spell it Copenhagen....surely Cobenhaven would be closer if anything! Anyway, we had a sudden rush of excitement when we realised that the Danish (from the bakery!) actually came from...you guessed it...Denmark! Although there were pastries everywhere, we didn't manage to find the exact variety we're used to in Australia. Oh well, we had to settle for those pictured below:

There is also a Carlsberg brewery here, however the less than confidence instilling slogan pursueded us not to bother visiting...

We also managed to go on a canal tour in a boat with a glass roof. We saw the sights of Kobenhavn and a bit of an explanation of things we saw. We saw the little mermaid (think Hans Christian Anderson), who has had her head stolen twice...actually the first time the police treated the act as murder! We also saw the Opera house on the water, which has 1000 seats below water level! And saw the brewery which was once used for water storage. When Denmark was invaded (by the Swedes) the university students sucessfully defended the building. It was later turned into a brewery and owing to the fact that clean water was in very short supply, army personnel were permitted 10 litres of beer each, per day!!! We also managed to say g'day to princess Mary...or at least see her pad (she wasn't home....the one on the right in the bottom photo).

We also managed to have a brief look around Christiana although it didn't feel like a particularly safe place to be so we didn't stay long. Anyone who hasn't heard of this place should look it up on the net. Basically in the 70's a heap of hippies, artists and activists broke into abandoned barracks with the idea of creating a 'free' society run for the community, with no rent, taxes etc, and stayed despite police raids. It became famous for 'pusher street', where people could freely go and buy hash, and other bits and pieces...however it later degenerated into harder drugs. After violent police confrontations in 2004, the government agreed to leave this self-declared 'independent state' stand as a social experiement...minus the drugs. Although, you can still get drugs there apparently....only its not so open in there, and no photos are permitted down pusher street. Judging by the artwork in there, you can definitely see the hippie influence!

We managed to bump into Kim and went to a beautiful all-you-can-eat Greek buffet (the second night in a row for Anita and I!). Was great to see a familiar face for the first time in months and hear the news from home.

We've now moved on to an Icelandic Horse Farm in Gronnerup, in northern Jutland....there are about 100 horses here, so Anita is going crazy! I'll leave you with a great idea that I saw in Kobenhavn, hopefully we'll have these in Australia soon...

Kalmar, Lund and Malmo

After farewelling our snowy (and later slushy and waterlogged) farm in the deep forest, we bussed over to Kalmar and checked into the guesthouse at Sigge and Barbara’s place. Barbara is Lecky’s mum’s sister who has called Sweden home for about 40 years - we couldn’t have asked for more welcoming hosts. Every day we were treated to some delicious food, including semlor – cardamon spiced buns with a filling of sweet almond paste and whipped cream. Needless to say, the recipe for semlor has been written down carefully and will be recreated numerous times when we get back to Australia!

We took in a driving tour of Oland (a small island just east of Kalmar, connected by bridge), stopping for tea and cakes at the “Oland Café” in a windmill, and then at the southern lighthouse, which is popular with birdwatchers checking out the migrating flocks of bird species. Unfortunately the lighthouse was closed so we had to content ourselves with wandering around trying to stay warm, and then squelching through a waterlogged field trying to get a close look at a herd of elk.

We couldn’t come to Sweden and not visit Ikea, so we spent a morning wandering around the massive building full of Swedish furniture and homewares, and then ate Swedish meatballs in their restaurant for lunch. And to our joint amazement, we managed to walk away from the store without buying a single couch, kitchenware or any other quirky, tastefully designed piece of house furnishing.

The area near Nybro is renowned for its high quality glasswork. We visited one place called Kosta Boda, and were able to go into the factory to watch the glassblowers and artists at work. Although many of the pieces are your standard tumblers, plates and the like, there are some original pieces of art that are just amazing. We were very sad not to be taking one particular piece by Bertin Vallien with us.

We spent a night in Lund, bunking down in a train hostel that uses converted sleeper carriages as its hostel rooms. Here we met up again with Phil (a fellow helpXer from Nybro) for a drink and caught up on all the news from the farm since we’d left. Got a train to Malmo, where apparently some big protests were going on at the Davis cup tennis match between Sweden and Israel. After buying our tickets for the train to Copenhagen, Denmark, we were down to our last 2 or 3 Swedish kroner in cash – not enough to buy anything of interest – so Lecky went on a mission to find a coastal point to view the Oresund bridge, while I stayed in the station minding the bags (sitting on a bench next to a couple passionately kissing). Turns out the start of the Oresund bridge is a fair way from the town centre so it was a fruitless expedition. The bridge is one of the longest and prettiest in northern Europe – it’s about 16km long, part over water and part tunnel.

We're now in Copenhagen taking in the sights....and enjoying Carlsberg beer, which as the sign points out is "probably the best beer in town"...a less than confidence instilling advertisement. More on Copenhagen and Denmark in our next adventure...same bat time, same bat channel...

Farewell Sweden

Well, after enjoying a week of luxury in Kalmar, we have arrived in Lund (southern Sweden) and are staying in a hostel based in old converted train carriages. It's pretty interesting although a little cramped as you can imagine! Off to Denmark later today, so will be writing more about our time in Kalmar plus some more photos when we arrive there (new ones of the farm in Nybro just added)...