Way back when we were living in London, there had been the filming of new seasons for a TV show Sasha and I both like called Red Dwarf, which is a British Sci-Fi comedy. We had been unsuccessful in getting live audience tickets for any of the filmings, and Sasha managed to secure standby tickets for the final filming but they were only that, standby - no guarantee of getting in and it was quite a long way for Sasha to go from her work to the filming location, and would be very tight timewise even if she snuck away early to get there in time to be let in, and even if she did she would be at the back of the standby queue and would be relying on a lot of people not showing up in order to get. She wanted to go, but the risk of failure seemed to great - so I told her that forget about going to the standby, we will make sure we go to Dimension Jump (the Red Dwarf Convention) the next year.
So those tickets for Dimension Jump eventually got released, and the convention was the weekend before Easter. It was Sasha who came up with the idea - if we took the time off between the Dimension Jump weekend and Easter, we'd get a much bigger time for a holiday which we could use to visit both The Netherlands and Denmark. Well, what she said was Amsterdam and Denmark - for some reason both of us kept referring to The Netherlands as a whole as just Amsterdam, but Denmark as Denmark rather than Copenhagen or anything else and this might have been partly due to the fact our Netherlands focus was almost solely on Amsterdam, but we had a wider focus for Denmark than just Copenhagen because I wanted to go to Billund as well - where the original Legoland was. So we applied for this time off, taking off the Friday before Dimension Jump as well as it started on the Friday night and we wanted to be there for all of it and it might take us a while to travel to Nottingham, where it would be held. As it turns out I found cheap flights on Ryanair direct from Berlin to Nottingham on that Friday morning, so that sorted that and would give us some time in Nottingham to explore as well. Sasha had sorted the accommodation, staying in the Hotel where the Convention would be held. So far, the Dimension Jump aspect was all organised, locked in and sorted.
Less so the rest of it. We had a general idea of what we wanted to do - catch the ferry from the UK to The Netherlands, spend some decent time in Amsterdam, visit the train museum in Utrecht, visit the canal village of Geithoorn, then in Denmark visit Legoland in Billund, time in Copenhagen, and catch the train which gets driven on and off the ferry with you onboard between Denmark and Germany back to Germany. Sounds all fair enough except the time we had didn't really allow us to squash all of this in without comprimising on various things. Catching the overnight ferry to Amsterdam was a no-go for the Sunday night as Dimension Jump would still be going on and we'd have to leave early to make the ferry, so we could only do it the Monday night - but that effectively steals a day away from elsewhere Flying to Amsterdam would save time, but was not so cheap and removed the added adventure of the ferry although the ferry was not cheap either. Flying between The Netherlands and Denmark made sense, except the most suitable flights were between Amsterdam and Copenhagen so if we visited the canal village (and we were thinking of spending a night there) we'd have to backtrack to Amsterdam, and flying to Copenhagen would make getting to Billund difficult or chew into a lot of our Denmark time as we'd have to go Copenhagen-Billund and back in order to catch the train that goes on the ferry from Copenhagen. Flights Amsterdam to Billund were too expensive, but in general flights from The Netherlands to Denmark were too expensive anyway. We did look into the idea of overland travel between Geithoorn the canal village and Billund, via Germany - but it was complicated and also somewhat pricey.
What to do? well, at Christmas time I got an email from one of the UK ferry companies where if you played a game and scored over a certain amount of points, you got access to prizes and discounts. I played it a few times - it was hard - and on one of the goes, got enough points that I got access to prizes. The one that immediately leaped out was a return minicruise from Newcastle to Amsterdam for £25 per person twin share - considering the ferry we had been looking at, the usually cheaper ferry from Harwich to Hoek van Holland near Rotterdam was clocking in at close to £150 one way for both of us, this was an absolute steal. Trains from Nottingham to Newcastle would not take much longer nor cost any different than Nottingham to Harwich, so we booked in both - knowing fullwell that we had no intention of doing the return leg of the minicruise back to the UK. This was for the Monday night, so we'd have Monday to get to Newcastle and spend a few hours there before catching the ferry (which left earlier than the Harwich ferry as it took longer). This then meant we really only had 3 days in each The Netherlands and Denmark to play with, plus an extra day for travelling between them. It took us a long time to ponder how we'd do this, but in the end we had to cut stuff out. So we would no longer visit the canal village of Geithoorn as it was very awkward to get to anyway and was less a village than a collection of under 20 houses, and cut out the train that goes on the ferry - this was more because it was replaced by a bus over Easter. This effectively gave 3 clear days in each country, and with Geithoorn removed it meant we could easily travel from Amsterdam to Denmark - either Billund or Copenhagen as with the ferry train gone, it didn't matter which order we did those two in. In the end the price of transport settled the method and order - flying from Copenhagen to Berlin on the Easter Monday was much cheaper than flying to Berlin from Billund; and it was cheaper to catch the train from Amsterdam to Billund via Germany than try and fly to Billund. The timings for the various attractions were worked out, factored in and accommodation and internal country travel figured out or booked accordingly - finally we were all set!
So the intention had been to do this trip as a single blog post - it was not a two-week or longer holiday which is the only other time I've split blog posts into two. However in the course of writing this it became apparent I had written a lot, and I either would have to compromise on detail to fit in photos or make it an unmanageable tome to read. Considering how the trip was split into distinct different parts, I've elected to do this trip into more than one post. So here is the first part - Dimension Jump, the Red Dwarf Convention!
Preface
We both really wanted to attend one of the filmings of the new seasons, but we missed out so we settled on attending the next Dimension Jump if we could - as surely after making two new seasons for the first time in a long time, and what might be the last 2 seasons ever made, all the cast would be there? So sure enough we ended up in a position where we could attend, but unfortunately Craig Charles, who plays the main character Lister would not be able to attend - he didn't go to the last one either so Sasha has yet to meet him. This was slightly disappointing but still ok - the convention would be lots of fun and worth it, and we'd still get to meet the rest of the main cast. People like Robert Llewellyn who has also been in Scrapheap Challenge, another show I used to love to watch as a kid; or Chris Barrie, who was also in the (rather facile) Brittas Empire but also a bunch of transport-and-engineering documentaries which yes, include trains so they were right up my alley (Chris is quite into his cars and transport as well). For me though, I've never been to a convention and so I had no real frame of reference other than the movie "Galaxy Quest" with Tim Allen and Sigourney Weaver. Turns out Sasha hadn't seen Galaxy Quest so I made it required viewing and Sasha mentioned it was a bit like that but also a lot more personable and intimate. So semi-prepared for what was to come and also prepared to be surprised, I ventured into this trip.