Saturday, June 30, 2018

June 30 - Lutjenburg to Sakskobing

Last morning in Germany and the 2nd last day of the Pub Ride.  Another beautiful day.  We ride 62 km to the ferry, on it for 45 minutes and then another 27 km to Sakskobing, Denmark.

Very similar countryside to the last few days.

Another hay bale person, announcing the sale of Strawberries (Erdbeeren).   I think this was a U-Pick.











A house under construction, interesting (at least to me) because they are using Styrofoam blocks filled with concrete for the basic structure and then adding brick facing.








First glimpse of the Baltic Sea (Howachter Bucht  or Bay).

If you look carefully at the far field, you see pairs of tractor wheel tracks.  They use these for access instead of putting roads in the fields, maximizing the crops.  And it looks nice when done well.









Crossing the bridge to Fehrmarn Island, with the ferry terminal at Puttgarden






There are ferries every 1/2 hour all day for a 45 minute ride, so there are lots of ferries.  Here's one of the others, similar to the one we're on.











One of the open water wind farms, on the Danish side.

Hardly a breeze can get through there without getting picked up by a turbine.













Docking in Denmark












One of our first bike paths.  This is a 2 way version for bikes only.  Note the dotted line.

In Germany and the Netherlands cities, bike paths were often designated with red bricks in the sidewalk.  Here, they use a solid white line to separate humans and bikes.


Our Hotel in Sakskobing.  The hotel name (Hotel Saxkjobing) is spelled differently than the town name.













It's not a big town.  This is the main square. 


An after dinner walk up a street in search of some ice cream.  Didn't find any - it's Saturday night, they've rolled up the town and apparently I walked in the wrong direction.

Note the church - the arrangement of the windows (eyes & mouth), clock (nose) and lines in the brickwork (cheeks) kind of gives it an astonished or worried expression. 

Also, check out the first white house on the right.  The 3 windows to the right of the door are not aligned, almost in an arc.  I don't now if this is wall settling, or intentional.

I notice some of the oddest things, eh?





A little further up the street is this park or cemetery.  It's walled off with a 3 foot wall and a locked gate, so I didn't get nosey.





Another street - this one seems to have more upscale houses.  I walked up another that was tree lined and all the houses were set back far enough for front yards and grass.

The architecture isn't strikingly different than what I've seen in the previous countries, but there is an different feeling here.  Perhaps it's me being apprehensive because I can't speak a word of Danish.  No problem though, because many of them know enough English to sort us out.

A bit of bad news.  We were warned prices are expensive over here.  Two 1/2 litre draft beers set me back over $19 Canadian.  This is due to the Danish tax system.  Apparently, if you want to buy a lot of beer for a party it is cheaper to buy Danish beer in Germany and bring it back over on the ferry instead of buying it here.  We saw at least one car on the ferry fully loaded with beer.

Off to Copenhagen tomorrow.  We are having a big wind up dinner, so I might not be writing anything until the next day.

Friday, June 29, 2018

June 29 - Hamburg to Lutjenburg

Another beautiful morning to ride.  We convoyed out of Hamburg, which took longer than expected.  We kept getting separated by traffic lights necessitating waits to catch up, some navigational miscues and a flat tire.  But we made it eventually.


This was cute.  See the little tiny girl in front of the man in the white shirt.  She inserted herself into the front of our line and wasn't going to let any cyclist pass her!  She was just pounding away on her push scooter.  That's her mother on the left.

We see very young kids out cycling on tiny bikes.  They're learning at a young age and don't seem to have a fear of bicycle traffic.





Once out of the city we had beautiful farmland to cycle through.  It is a bit more rolling now, not dead flat.  We have been seeing ripening grain crops (wheat, barley?) and a lot of corn.

Most of our route is on cycle paths parallel to the road.  Some are very smooth, some not so much with roots pushing up the pavement.


We managed to find a small bakery for a mid morning coffee & goody stop.  

Lunch roughly half way along in a nice shady spot beside the road.

This picture is after lunch and is of the Grosser Ploner See, a large lake.   Lots of wind kicking up waves.  This looks to be vacation cottage type country with lots of lakefront and resorts.  Still a lot of farms on the non-lake side of the road.


I spotted this barn just past the lake.  The left gable window and underneath the two dormers are what appear to be wire cages, but no  window glass.  Balconies for free range chickens, perhaps?











It's a bit calmer near the north end of the lake.  All in all, a very pleasant ride.












 We're in the quiet town of Lutjenburg, staying at the Hotel Lutje Burg.  Nice town, but quiet, which isn't a bad thing.  (Good beer as always)

Here's the main square


A building just off the square.  This is typical style for brick; there is a lot of stucco around as well.




Here's the view from the hotel room next to me.  Crowded looking back there.  Note the laundry.  Sue (her room) bought some strawberries from a street vendor outside the hotel.. To die for!






Since I'm a little thin on pictures tonight, here's a map of where we are.  We are at the blue dot roughly in the middle.  The Grosser Ploner See is near the bottom left (look for the town of Plon).  Tomorrow we cycle to Puttgarden, take a 45 minute ferry ride to Denmark and then a short 27 km ride to Sakskobing in Denmark.

This map has a larger scale, to show our position relative to Hamburg.  Rodby is in Denmark.




Thursday, June 28, 2018

June 28 - Around Hamburg

On my way out I saw this on the ground - sort of sums up Germany's feelings after yesterday's World Cup loss.







A beautiful morning - one of the canals with the boats of one of many of the harbour tour companies.









My first stop was Miniatur Wunderland, the world's largest model railway.  It's unbelievable and much more than just railroads.  Models of part of cities, all sorts of cars & trucks going everywhere & an (almost) fully operational airport.  

The Hauptbanhof.







A port city










The Control Room.  You can see behind the screens - there are a whack (technical term) of Ethernet cables back there.

There were about 5 or 6 people in there at times.  








Part of the Switzerland exhibit











The airport.   Planes were landing, taxiing to the gate, being pushed back, taxiing and taking off.  The model did everything except unload tiny people.

The even had the Millennium Falcon taking off!







Sometimes things go wrong and human intervention is required.  He took off his shoes and very carefully stepped across the model.

It turns out a train was stuck on a tiny light pole that had fallen over.


The last railroad photo I'm including in the blog.  Don't worry - I  can show you more if you want.  This brings out the inner kid in you. 

AND, I never touched anything (it sure was hard not to).







The next adventure was a harbour cruise.  A couple of things surprise me about Hamburg.  First, that it is a harbour city at all.  It's more than 100 km inland, although the harbour is still somewhat tidal.

Apparently in 1189 the Emperor granted Hamburgians the right to sail free of customs duties on the lower Elbe.  

Another surprise is the repair facilities.  I saw a number of floating drydocks and there is also at least one graving dock.  I think the biggest floating drydock can handle a ship of 250,000 tons.  The commentary was in German, so don't quote me.





An  interesting building.








There are locks in various places to help negate the effects of tides.  Here, we're entering one.


The ocean liner Costa Pacifica tied up being provisioned.  It is 290 metres long, 114,000 GT ( I assume gross tonnes) and has an 8.2 metre draft.  That's 27 feet, which gives an indication of the minimum channel and harbour depths required.

I just looked up some info on Wikipedia and ships with drafts of up to 13.8 M (45 ft) can access the harbour.





The cranes of the Altenwerder Container Terminal.  














This shot shows the contrasts of Hamburg harbour.  In front is Landungsbrucken, a centre for tourism;  behind are visible some of harbour cranes for containers and other cargo.








 Another adventure - a tour of an old Russian sub.  Give this one a miss.  I toured one years ago in Victoria and should know better.

It's just a crawl through a plumber's nightmare.







Now this might interest you - a motorized "Kiddy Car" tour.  I dunno, the bus that pulled up right behind them was pretty big.  They have front and rear escort drivers - might be a fun job.








A walk through the Alter Elbtunnel.  It's about 1200 feet long.  There are stairs and elevators at each end to access it.  Cars can use it as well.  It is a pair of tunnels, but one is out of service at the moment.  The best thing about walking through the tunnel - it was nice & cool down there on a hot day.


On the way back to the hotel I stopped by the Bismarck Denkmal (monument).















This interesting structure is called 'Flakturm IV (Flak Tower 4).  It was built in 1942 as part of the anti aircraft defense system.  It survived the war, became housing and I think is being redeveloped now.  




This picture from Wikipedia shows what the area looked like in 1944.  Up to 25,000 people used the tower as a bomb shelter.











Pizza, salad, beer and ice cream (all the food groups) for dinner and a very pleasant walk back to the hotel through a park.

The arch might be part of a ruin - I never found out any info about it.

That's it for Hamburg - back in the saddle tomorrow to Lutjenburg (118 km)















Wednesday, June 27, 2018

June 27 - Bremen to Hamburg

One of the best things about today's 120 km ride was that the weather was great.  I cleared up about 0830 and was clear and sunny afterward.  My cold is getting better.

The first photo is a backyard Christmas Tree farm.  Their shapes are more natural than our cultured trees.  Also, it looked like there was a Blue Spruce in the back.





 Meet another Hay Bale family.  Better job than the one yesterday.

I found this house / barn(?) interesting because of the multitude of small windows.  I'm not sure I'd like to live in it.  















I need to talk about this sign.  It was on a bridge.  The top part seems straight forward.  If there is only one truck on the bridge it can be up to 100 tonnes, if two are there together then the limit is 50 tonnes.

So, what's with the bottom sign?  One tank at 70 tonnes verses 2 at 40 tonnes?  I've seen this sign in a number of places, but have not seen one, let alone two tanks.  Of course, this area of Europe has been relatively heavily militarized at times since the World Wars, although we haven't seen much  on this trip.

Anyone know for sure?





We're in Hamburg now, heading for the hotel.  We had some interesting times navigating around construction at one of the suburban rail stations.  

On our first crossing of the river (the Suderelbe) there are 4 bridges in parallel:  A railroad bridge, two for vehicles (we were on one of these) and a pedestrian / cycle  bridge.  This photo is of the stone abutment arch at the north end of the pedestrian bridge.  Because our bridge has huge pedestrian / bike sidewalks, I wonder if this bridge's days are numbered.







Further along another bridge - this one caught my eye because of the interesting arched trusses.
This bridge had 2 sidewalks, 3 lanes each way for traffic and two lanes in the middle that were empty (rush our bus traffic perhaps).

There are lots of waterways and a huge number of bridges over them.  If I photographed all of them, I'd still be out there.



Dean and I were riding together and we decided to stop at St. Nikolas' Church ruins.  Read the plaque to the left to get the history.











The largest section of the church that's still standing.  The bombing did no destroy the tower.












The top of the tower - I had to go down the street to get a decent angle.  When built in the 1800's it was the tallest structure in the world.






The base of the tower / the original main entrance to the church.














We're at the hotel now.  I'm in the 4th floor - a smallish room with a sloping roof.  Looking out my window I can see this square, set up with a big screen so the public can watch the Germany / South Korea World Cup Match.  

Boisterous at the beginning, but very subdued at the end after Germany lost and was eliminated from the Worle Cup.


Out for dinner with another Greg and Rhonda.  Lots of people at the out door restaurants (forgot to take a pix), but not as happy as they wanted to be.

We walked by this building on the way back.  Not sure what it is.  I'll look closer tomorrow, although there are lots of 
buildings to look at.





A statue of Kaiser Wilhelm tucked away in a park we went by after dinner.  

Tomorrow is a free day in Hamburg. I've booked a ticket to Miniatur Wonderland (the world's largest scale model train setup.  Then I'll think about either a harbour tour or a walking tour about the centre of the city, which we are near to.






Search This Blog