Episode 4

To begin with I forgot to mention that very shortly after we had got off the ferry and almost immediately after we'd crossed into Belgium David got pulled over and breathalysed, as was every other driver in the area. Good job he hadn’t had any of that duty free booze on board.

We had considered going into the city of Oldenburg, however, as Lyn’s guide book had almost nothing to say about the place we settled instead on visiting Brennen. My humans had been here a few years ago and thought it quite a lovely place, this time they took me on a walk around the city centre. It was market day and the central square was full of market stall selling the usually array of market goods. Fruit and veg stalls abounded, along with plenty selling plants and flowers. The spring sunshine must be inspiring everyone to grow something even if it’s only in a hanging basket or window box.

Our wander took us through the narrow lanes of the oldest part of the city. Here coffee shops and small, expensive restaurants abound along with arts and crafts and up market boutiques. It’s a bit like the 'lanes’ in Brighton, for those of you who are familiar with them. Me, being a stuffed toy of tender years have not yet been there.

I got my photo taken at the Roland statue, L can’t remember who he was, she will have to look that up. We strolled along the embankment of the river and through some pedestrian malls. L did get some odd looks from people as she had me tucked inside her jacket with my head resting under her chin. People probably think the poor of girl can’t leave home without her stuffed to; they’d be right:

Another city we spent some time in was Hamburg. This is a huge city on the Elbe river. Once a very major port, not quite so important now, apparently, it was heavly bombed during WW2 so not much of the old city remains. The city hall is huge and faces a large open plaza where there was a concert in progress. The theme of this concert seemed to be to convert Germany to 100% renewable energy. With the amount of electricity this lot were using it would have taken nearly the whole output of a medium sized power station.

The burnt out/bombed out ruin of St Nickoli’si church stands as a permanent peace memorial. The spire pierces the skyline and from the viewing platform a good view may be possible but after much consideration, the long queue mostly, and the tall buildings all about, it was decided to give it a miss. We seemed to have walked a damn long way around this city without having much to actually show for it.

Driving north along the west (North Sea) coast we saw just how serious the Germans are about using renewable energy. We had seem all the way from France a great many wind turbines, and lots of solar panel too on houses and industrial buildings but nothing quite like we saw up along this route we took. Clusters of massive farm barns with their whole roof area covered with solar panels. On the north facing side (away from the sun) the panels would be mounted on frames so as to face the sun. Houses too are covered in the same way. There was a vast number of wind turbines too and a couple of solar farms. This sort of investment in alternative energy really puts Australia to shame.

We have been camping in rest areas. In each country except Holland there are plenty of such places. Some have toilets, many don’t, but at least there is someplace to pull off the road but in Holland there doesn’t seem to be hardly any. Perhaps it’s because the place is so small that the authorities presume everyone can get from start to end of their journey without a break. When you could find a public loo, a mighty difficult task, there was always a charge, even in service stations and train stations, up to about $1 AUD. An expensive piddle! Lyn was not impressed, but she was mighty glad I was only a stuffed toy and didn’t need to use one.

After crossing into Denmark we continued up the west coast of Jutland. Like the northern part of Germany the countryside continues to be fairly flat. The number of wind turbines is still impressive but there are far fewer solar panels on roofs. There are 3 blade and 2 blade wind turbines here.

Along the coast there are sand dunes similar in height to the dykes in Holland with farmland being cultivated right up to the base of the dunes. L thinks that in a hot dry summer, if such a thing happens here then many crops would fail as the sandy soil would dry out too much and there doesn’t seem to be provision for irrigation. In many places there are houses in amongst the dunes, from a single farm house to a small suburb. If a tsunami came over the top of those dunes, about 12m high, then most of the country would be swamped. We went up on top of the dunes in one place and had a morning coffee facing the North Sea. The shore is very sandy and there are rock ‘breakwater’s built out into the sea every 200m or so. The sea was fairly calm, the sun warm and my humans thought about getting out their shorts to wear. Boy! Summer must be coming!

We saw some funny little mounds, bit like over sized grassy ant hills. Only Australians would know what I mean, anyway we came to a small rest area where there were a couple of wood carvings of Jutland warriors and while there Lyn read that the mounds are actually burial mounds dating between 3500 and 3100BC. Here too, was a small sample of how the Jutland warriors from 1100BC used to build their earthen forts with a moat in front. Apparently for about 1000 years they were almost in constant state of war. Nothing changes really:

© Lynette Regan 6th May 2013