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TheBoysGoNorth

Silly Swedish Skirmishes

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After we'd made the decision to head on upto Norway we were presented with the 7 hour drive that lay ahead of us and decided it best to break it up with some more Swedish goodness along the way. So far Sweden also seemed far more up our street with being much cheaper, more vegan, and a more interesting landscape than Denmark (also the squash is to die for). Starting our journey we did an hours drive and stopped off in Helsingborg for the afternoon. This was initally expected to be a tiny town with not a huge amount going on but we were pleasantly suprised. We started with the Karnan which was the keep from the old castle. Helsingborg in particular was a super critical location in the middle ages, being the eastern side of the Oresund strait, and so the gateway to the Baltic. This made it a key target for the Danish, who controlled this part of lower Sweden for much of its history, and the northern German Hanseatic trading cities. The tower itself had played host to several importan...

Slott-a decisions to make

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Back onto our usual schedulled programming of exploring, we went around Malmo on Saturday. Starting with a classic boardgames shop littered with ye olde board games with this 1980s Games Workshop game Some wandering later we went to the Malmo museum set in the castle (or Slott in Swedish). This was the site of a refugee camp of the white buses in 1945. These were a series of buses that brought concentration camp victims to neutral Sweden. It's nice for once to visit a European country not devastated by war either physically or psychologically. Just nice, easy to remember, wars from centuries ago. Speaking of which, my favourite story from this museum was the Swedish fleet during the Scandia war. In an episode of humiliation bad enough I'm sure he was pleased he died, the commander of the fleet turned his ship at too steep an angle and the gunpowder shifted dramatically and the whole flag ship sank immediately  Danni considering her career prospects as a fish. It does seem less ...

Successfully Cop(enhagen)ed

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Thursday started with us waking up at 7am and cycling over to the local Opel parts shop to find out if they had the tube we needed in stock, they didn't. We were able to order it but with no eta on the delivery we were stuck in place for the time being. Not wanting to waste a glorious day, and a not so glorious tan line, we headed to the local beach by bike. Having been told the mechanic's mate would be at the van for 3pm, we cycled back ready to see if he could concoct a fix. As it turns out he wasn't available so we just hung around Moira waiting until 6pm to find out. We did get to see some very out of place Highland cows though. The boys were starting to get quite frustrated by being stuck in place and not being allowed their usual freedom so we ended up taking them on 2 evening walks Friday rolled around and we were starting to feel like this fix for Moira would take the whole weekend when all of a sudden Ali knocked on the window. Low and behold the part had arrived a...

Birthday breakdowns

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 Tuesday started off ominously with Moira failing to start but fortunately a very friendly English expat walker in the car park we overnighted in came over to offer help. The help came in the form of her son Wilf who, after being dragged out of bed at the ungodly hour of 10am, helped us get started again. I'm sure nothing else could go wrong. A little drive and a cycle later we were in Copenhagen ready to explore the wonders of the city museum. Whilst relatively small, the modern exhibits and the coverage of the extensive history of civil disobedience in the city was super cool. Byggeren in particular was an example of a playground where the local community had built structures and had several battles with the police over whether they should stay. Danni had to have a slice of cake since it was her birthday. We followed this up with some Danish retail therapy and buying out 6th and 7th new board games (lol) We then took to the cycle lanes and happened across this gem Danni had read ...

Four Bros

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 Given most things being shut on a Sunday, we decided to make best use of the time as a driving day from Hamburg all the way up to Odense in Denmark. To break up this drive we stopped at Schleswig on the way assuming things would be closed and we would get treated to a small picturesque town. Schleswig was in fact far more impressive than we first thought with this super cool Viking museum. A strange geopolitical result of Schleswig historically being a Viking town and only being annexed by Germany in the 19th century. (Sort of, the Holy Roman Empire is complicated) I'm sure I looked very cool posing for this picture. As well as a killer museum, the town, Hedeby, had 5% of the buildings uncovered and rebuilt using original tools and techniques. Interestingly the town is called Haithabu in German but also Hedeby in Danish showing some cool linguistic links to the Viking invasions of Britain. After going around the museum and site we drove round the bay to Schleswig proper and had a ...

Hanse-at-it Again

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On Thursday and Friday we went throught two Hanesatic cities on our way up to Denmark on Saturday, leaving Germany for at least a week. As a bonus extra on the journey Bremen is the last of the 16 German Lander (states) that we were yet to visit) Thursday kicked off with a visit to Bauhaus (sort of like a mega B&Q) for a new fridge for Moira and some light (not literally) perusing. Once we got into Bremen we cycled past the enormous Becks beer factory and ditched the bikes to walk around one of the best preserved medieval city centres in Germany. This started with a faux-medieval alley of Botchestrasse. This was built in the 20s at the height of the Weimar avente guarde art style. Built to represent the Hanseatic brick craft streets (Botcher being barrel maker) but with lot of cool spaceshipesque features like this tower.  Next we had a classic city wander and enjoyed many of the funky statues that Bremen had to offer. I'm not sure we could get either of our cats to get that cl...

Over the Minimoon

Ostermarks Und Ostkatzen

Sick Ports

Scottish Shenanigans

European Exploration

French Follies