A big thank you to Sasha for indulging me with this trip, which was a bit more of an endurance than even I expected and we were both solidly worn out at the end of it. But it was quite a trip and quite an event, I finally got to visit Wolsztyn and not only that, when there was steam trains running there. I'm glad I got to go - who knows when I might next see 8 working steam locomotives all coupled up together in a parade? It could very well be never...
Ever since we moved to Berlin, I've been keeping the occasional eye on the website of the local steam train group who run excursions on the main lines. Some are interesting, some are not, some happen when we are already away. One though for this year piqued my interest - a trip to Wolsztyn for the Steam Train Parade. Long time ago, way back in New Zealand the name Wolsztyn was very familiar to me - it was quite legendary in train circles that you could go to Wolsztyn in Poland and spend a week driving steam trains pulling real freight or passenger trains on the main line as part of something called The Wolsztyn Experience. My friend Dion and I even made tentative plans to do this during January 2016, when it would be cheapest (because it would be bitterly cold, in the middle of winter) and we were drumming up interest for the two other places - because you had to book it as a group of 4. But around the time I left NZ for the UK, Wolsztyn changed and instead of being a week it was now 4 days; it still cost the same or thereabouts, and they were dictating when it could be done on rather than you book any given week that you chose. This was much less appealing and then probably 6 months after I arrived in the UK you could no longer do it in any shape or form. This was because not enough had been spent on keeping the steam engines in working condition, so they became unreliable or needed major work, until all of them one by one fell into both of these categories and there was no money with which to fix them up. The passenger train services were replaced by modern railcars, and many doubted despite noises that they were working on trying to salvage the operation whether it would ever happen again. The operation was being underpinned by a British organisation, who somehow managed to let it go to pot but they dug in and got to work fixing it up. They announced that they were getting two steam engines fixed up and would be holding the Steam Train parade at the end of May. I was skeptical, but as time went on it seemed that it might just be true and certainly this excursion was running. Not only that, other excursions were going there too - and by going on this excursion it would tick a few boxes for me at once - namely a steam excursion from Berlin; an excursion that travels across an international border; and getting to visit Wolsztyn, the place and see this parade. So, we went. This was our steed - locomotive 03 2155, which was designed to pull fast passenger trains and this was one of the few excursions booked for this year to use this locomotive over the slower freight locomotive the train group also had. This is our train pulling into Berlin's Lichtenberg station, where we were hopping on the train - at a fairly early 6am in the morning! After blasting our way out of Berlin in the rising sun and with fogged up windows due to the rather effective steam heating, The train had a fairly long stop in Frankfurt - not Frankfurt am Main, the "main Frankfurt" that everyone knows about but Frankfurt Oder, the "other Frankfurt" on the Polish border. It stopped here to take on extra water. We wandered out of the station to get a look at the town, but got sidetracked by finding the locomotive taking water nearby and we were able to wander up to it and get photos with it without any trouble! After Frankfurt Oder we crossed the Oder River, which spans the border between Germany and Poland. This is the view of the train coming off the bridge, so the front half of the train is in Poland and the back half is in Germany - that stripey pole in the photo demarcates the border! As we got closer to Wolsztyn, there were a lot of lineside photographers taking photos of our train although the scenes they were taking must have been pretty average and most were going to places I would not have, and few were going to places I would have. At Wolsztyn there was a lot of action - a few local trips coming and going, and the arrival of another excursion from Cottbus in Germany headed by the world's fastest working steam locomotive 18 201 and a slower locomotive 35 1019. At Wolsztyn, there were a lot of market and festival tents - it was interesting to see that lots of people were clustered around some tents and very few at others, and it turns out all the ones people were clustered around were selling model trains or train-related items while the ones that few people were at were your candyfloss or slushie type food vendors! All of these tents were alongside or among a long line of derelict locomotives in various states - some had run in the recent past but were laid up, some were stored awaiting potential future overhaul and others are probably destined to be sources of spare parts. This one was a bit rusty - most were a bit better kept than this one. Just as the name of the event says, there was a parade - first of all the locomotives went past one by one or in groups of two, then they coupled into groups of 4, before lastly they all did a run-past together. The runpasts were quite a sight - and also sound, as the video's surely attest to! By now it was raining and it was not quite so much fun standing in the rain, with a cold breeze blowing as we waited for all of this to happen - and it all happened about 30mins late, which meant 03 2155 and 18 201 did not partake in the final parade runpast - they had to go off somewhere to turn I think, as the turntable at Wolsztyn was not big enough to take engines of their length and they couldn't afford to hang around. After the parade we got a hearty lunch, with a beer to go along with it and then wandered more around the festival market tents and around the Wolsztyn yard. There was quite a bit going on in the yard area - engines in the shed or on display out in the yard, including the locomotive in the bottom-left photo above which is called "Beautiful Helena" but in my opinion, that name is rather ironic as its not a very aesthetically pleasing loco! There had been no real guide to how many locomotives were going to attend nor where they were coming from - apparently the previous year's parade had a grand total of 3, but in the past it has been as many as 14. I had done some research and estimated at least 7 or 8 working locomotives would attend, but the actual number was 10. I didn't expect this Czech loco to be in attendance though, but was rather glad it was! Of the engines in attendance, there was this Czech loco, 3 German locos and the rest were Polish. This Polish loco was one of Sasha's favourites - there was a smaller green loco who's whistle went "Pip" and this one had a bit of a shrill to it, so we called the little green one Pip and this one Squeak. It was running shuttle excursions to a nearby town and back throughout the day. This is Wolsytyn Station nearer the end of the day - from right to left, one of the Shuttle Train excursions from Wolszytn; a Polish excursion train that was preparing to head back to its home town which I think might have been Poznan; and there are two rakes of carriages on the left, both belonging to the different German excursions including our one. We were due to depart about a half an hour after this photo was taken, but there was no sign of our locomotive nor 18 201 which was to head the other excursion back to Cottbus alone (35 1019 was staying the night at Wolsztyn). About an hour later they showed up, by which time Sasha and I had already hopped on our carriage in the yard (as had many others) since it was warmer taking shelter in there than being outside. The lone photo I have of our return trip - after 03 2155 and 18 201 arrived back in Wolsztyn facing the right way, they both needed water and coal (or oil in 18 201's case) and 18 201 was the first to depart with its excursion, ours being the last away some 2 hours behind time. When our loco coupled up to our carriage (we had been at the back of the last carriage on the way there, so now we were at the front of the first carriage on the way back), there was a collective sigh of appreciation when they coupled up the steam heating to the carriages from the locomotive! So as we headed across Poland we enjoyed a rather nice sunset, and then it was pitch black the rest of the way. There was also a stop at Frankfurt Oder again for water, but we didn't leave the train and our arrival back at Berlin's Lichtenberg station was just on midnight - it had been quite a long day to say the least!
A big thank you to Sasha for indulging me with this trip, which was a bit more of an endurance than even I expected and we were both solidly worn out at the end of it. But it was quite a trip and quite an event, I finally got to visit Wolsztyn and not only that, when there was steam trains running there. I'm glad I got to go - who knows when I might next see 8 working steam locomotives all coupled up together in a parade? It could very well be never...
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This is Part 2 of our Dimension Jump/The Netherlands/Denmark trip, Part 1 can be found here Day 4 - Nottingham to Newcastle and The NetherlandsHaving packed most of our things, we went down to breakfast, managed to see everyone we were hoping to see to say goodbye to bar one or two people (one of them getting out of the lift to go to breakfast as we were about to hop in and collect our bags from our room!), we then checked out and went to the railway station. We scanned our tickets, went to the platform and found a rather lonely looking railcar which turned out to be our train - already at the platform 10 minutes ahead of departure time. We were riding this railcar less than half an hour, from Nottingham to Newark Castle and it left at 9.25am. Sasha did ask why we were taking this earlier train and not a later one, the answer to which was it was cheapest plus gave us a good amount of time in Newcastle - the next connection was 2 hours later and sure, it would have meant more of a sleep in but next to no time at the other end in case something went wrong - this way we'd have about 3 hours to chew into which we'd spend in Newcastle all going well. Upon arrival at Newark Castle, we had just under an hour before our next train - from Newark North Gate station. The walk between stations was only supposed to be about 10-15 minutes and we spied a Castle ruin along the way so we spent some time looking around there, as well as through the town before eventually arriving at Newark North Gate. Sasha spied a display as we arrived at the station saying our train was listed as being delayed by about 45 minutes, but the preceding train was also delayed about the same amount of time. Sasha went to a ticket booth and asked about the delay - and we were told there were general delays but we could hop on the earlier train when it arrived. It would mean we weren't guaranteed a seat but we should be able to get one for most of the journey, if not from the outset. We also did a quick search for alternative transport but there was no way to get to Newcastle in time using any other method. So we waited at the platform, watching other trains go past (including a brand new IEP "Azuma" train on test, still painted white). This earlier train got later and later and eventually showed up at the station close to 11am, but pulled into a different platform than it was meant to and everyone then rushed over to it and tried to board. Sasha and I decided to strategise - walk towards the front of the train while everyone tried piling on the middle, we found an empty vestibule space to claim where we could stand and Sasha then carried on forward to see if there was spare seats anywhere. Shortly after I got a message - spare seats in first carriage, so I make my way there with the rest of our bags and Sasha had managed to secure two seats in the aisle opposite each other on a table. After we sat down, other people started coming into the carriage looking for seats but there were none. So now we just needed to sit and wait for departure, which we did... and waited... and waited... and not a lot of anything seemed to be happening. After maybe 15 minutes a train pulled up alongside us - I deduced that this was our original train we were supposed to catch. Hmm, might it leave before ours? and what actually is going on? So I hopped off the train (easier than trying to walk through the crowded carriages) down to the cafe car where the staff and guard were outside on the platform having a cigarette and asked them if they knew which train might leave first and what in general was happening. The hold-ups were being caused by a problem with the electric overhead lines between Newark and York, but that was all they knew and no one had any clue when it might get sorted or which train might go first if at all. All we could do is sit and wait and see. There must have been another something to cause the trains to be all late out of Kings Cross but if the overhead had problems, this might take a long time to fix. After another 15-20 minutes there was an announcement on the train saying that another train north going to Aberdeen was arriving on Platform 3 and passengers going to Scotland would be best to catch this train - and made mention that it was a diesel train. A diesel train means it can either go through the damaged overhead section, or divert around over another line but this train had the ability to get around the problem holding up our electric train. I immediately tell Sasha to grab our stuff and we're hopping off, just as we're crossing over from Platform 2 to Platform 3 the train (an HST, which the new IEP/Azuma's are going to replace) pulls up, a carriage door stops right in front of me, I open it (because its a manual door) and find Sasha and I two seats in the carriage - albeit facing backwards, but they are seats and the train is already reasonably full. Sasha joins me, and then the crowds pile in and the entire aisle becomes crowded with people - overcrowded really. But eventually we are off on our way, fairly slowly for a train that's capable of 200km/h because we are put on diverted tracks. The train arrives in York about 45min behind its own schedule, but by my calculations as long as it stays to that time we would have about 45min in Newcastle ourselves - not as long as we would have hoped, but enough time to find the bus we needed to take to the ferry terminal and grab some food to take onboard as some research showed food onboard would be a bit pricey for our liking. Because the train was so full of people, it took longer for people to hop off and on, which meant at each stop we progressively got later and later - and by the time we left the penultimate stop before Newcastle, my calculations said we'd only have 10 minutes before the bus left. Far too tight for my liking and probably not enough time to find food, although we knew the bus was a less than 5min walk from the station and there was a Sainsbury's on the way to the bus stop. By the time we pulled into Newcastle we were 5min earlier than the estimated time - so we decided to give the Sainsbury's a shot, did a very quick shop, through the checkout and over to the bus, joined the queue, hopped on and we were off to the ferry terminal. Only minutes to spare overall - far too close a call but we were safe now! At the ferry terminal we checked in, got our boarding passes/room door keys, proceeded through the border checks for leaving the UK and boarded the ferry. We had a slight bit of trouble finding the right staircase to our cabin but found it, dropped all our gear in it and then went for a little wander to get our bearings before going out onto the front deck to watch our departure from Newcastle, the city we'd been to but never gotten to see. Departure was on time at 5pm, and we watched the ship go down the river Tyne and pass out of the heads onto the ocean. We retreated back to our room and had one of our "Wine and Cheese" dinners, and afterwards we went for a further wander around the ship (a fairly decent size, about Kaitaki-sized in size but with more decks) before going back to our room and having an early night as we were rather worn out from the weekend at Dimension Jump and the day's travels and stresses - there was not much to do on board unless you wanted to watch a few older movies or play bingo! Day 5 - Welcome to The NetherlandsWe had set an alarm to go off half an hour before reached port, and Sasha went and had the first shower in the ensuite bathroom while I had a peek out the window. I was surprised to see we were already approaching the entrance to IJmuiden harbour, the harbour for Amsterdam which it is connected to by a canal and yes, IJmuiden is the correct spelling due to the complexities of the Dutch language. After we'd both showered, readied our bags and had a bite to eat for breakfast from our supplies we went out onto the front deck to watch our arrival into IJmuiden. The docking manoever for the wharf was rather complex - the ship came to a point where it stopped, and then it started turning and reversing at the same time as it did this kind of rearwards 120-degree turn mainly pivoting about the bow before reversing further into the dock area and then came in sideways to a wharf before a final frontwards movement so the bow met up with the on/off ramp. The Ferry docked ontime at 9.30am, but getting off the ferry was a bit of an exercise - the crowd moved slowly and not at all sometimes, as they would only let a certain amount of people in the gangway tunnel to the arrivals building at a go. By the time we got through, had passed through border entry and made our way onto the shuttle bus it was about 10:30 and from there it was still another half an hour into Amsterdam. When I was living in the UK I had often eyed up the cheap Minicruise deals they had on these ferries to the likes of St Malo in France but particularly Amsterdam, where you get a day in the town (unless you choose to extend it by an extra day and stay on an on-shore hotel but that usually threw up the cost immensely) before catching the ferry back that night. For our ferry we had taken, check-in closed at 17:00 with a 17:30 departure and the buses left at latest 16:30 for the ferry - so had we been intending to go back to the UK as our ticket allowed, we would have had at best about 5 and a half hours in Amsterdam. Probably okay for a quick day visit or shopping trip but not nearly enough time to do anything of substance, and if you were paying full rates for the minicruise well then why would you bother! Might be a bit less extreme on timings for the ferry from Harwich which doesn't have to travel as far, but still. So, Amsterdam - we had arrived, and were deposited near Amsterdam Central train station almost right into a cycle lane and this was my first encounter with Amsterdam cyclists - basically they rule the roads and the special cycle lanes and they are moving at a much faster clip than in Berlin, the chances of being hit a quite high! Having crossed the many intersections to the station, we found our way to the luggage lockers which were absolutely teeming with people. We went right up the back where it was a lot quieter and there were more lockers around, which was just as well as although the instructions never specifically said it you shouldn't close your luggage locker door until you've put the money in the machine as that's how it knows which locker the money belongs to - quite a lot of potential for disaster there if someone else is about to pay at the machine and you close your locker door unwittingly! Now unburdened by a lot of our luggage, we got ourselves train tickets to Utrecht and rode the 30 minutes to Utrecht Station before making the change to the train to get to Utrecht Maliebann. We were practically alone on this train which we thought unusual, but there was at least one other on the train when we departed and after about 5 minutes, the train came to a stop in the middle of the tracks and we stayed there for another 5 minutes. When the driver walked past, I realised he was changing ends of the train and sure enough, we started off in the opposite direction but then turned down a track which had us arrive at the station 5 minutes later. A very odd manoever but I suppose it wasn't worth putting in a direct connecting track here because this train we had just ridden only went to Maliebaan station - which was right in the National Railway Museum of The Netherlands. I've done a few of these National Railway Museums now but this one was one in particular I had wanted to do for a long time, because it follows a slightly different approach to it all. Instead of just been a collection of jumbled trains on display in a building (York, I'm looking at you) or the neatly ordered oldest-to-newest layout of the French one, this was a very modern concept museum where you could wander around at your leisure but there was an order to do things and the different sections were numbered. At No.1, you enter a "lift" with an audio guide which then tells you that you are going back in time and the lift jumps about and then the doors open "back into the past". You wander through an old early-1800's town where they explain where railways first came from (coal mines), and the construction of the first trains in the UK in 1804. You then pass through a blacksmiths and carpenters shop where they are making components for the first railway carriages, then into a station where a 1930's replica of The Netherland's first train is at a station - all the while you're learning about this progressive history of the train and how it came to be in the Netherlands from the audio guide. You end up popping out of here, and No.2 is about the importance of the train in standardizing time across countries and Europe as well as its importance of connecting destinations across Europe and even over into Africa and Asia, connecting people like never before. No.3 is best described as a "Haunted House ride of Trains" - you hop in a little wagon and get taken through the dark in, under, past and through different trains (including and Indonesian one, because that was Dutch once upon a time) before popping out. No.4 is the normal display of various trains in a hall, and there's also an outdoors display area and a childrens playground with a little hand-operated jigger, the kind where you pump up and down. Sasha and I had a little play on that by the way! We also had lunch in the cafeteria and did the interactive ride attraction in the separate building next to the playground - you line up in one of three lines standing on a number on the floor each, there's some people talking on a TV screen in front of you (in Dutch, but we were given a little pamphlet with an English translation) where they are telling you that you're needed to crew a train - and the number you're standing on designates what you're going to do. Sasha was the driver, I was the fireman shovelling the coal, a non-existant 3rd person was going to be in charge of brakes and the also non-existant 4th person was going to be in charge of helping the others with their tasks. Each of the lines was a separate train, so Sasha and I went to our train which looked like a steam punk-style steam locomotive, went through the door and a passage and came out in a diesel or railcar-like cab with 3 seats at the front and two behind. All the controls were that of a railcar or diesel so there was no shovelling for me to do - so I tried playing with the brakes and Sasha the throttles, but it was one of those rides where you actually don't control anything and it takes you through the landscape on the set course. Was a lot of fun even still! This is definitely one National Railway Museum where you don't even have to like trains to go to or appreciate the history, its entertaining for all ages and levels of interest. After finishing the museum, we had the option of either waiting for the train to take us back to Utrecht Central station (would have required another ticket) for which we would be waiting a little while, or we walk the 20 minutes across town - we chose the latter, which was a very charming walk past the canalways of Utrecht and some of its shops. We ducked into a few of them, mainly antique-style ones for Sasha but I did notice one place which appeared to be a comic store and on a sign outside I noticed it said "Niewe! Kuifje in het land van Sovjets in Kleur!". This had me intrigued as although I don't read Dutch at all, I knew Kuifje was the dutch name for Tintin and the first Tintin story, In the Land of the Soviets had only ever been produced in Black & White. Was it in colour? really? I had to find out, and sure enough it was - in Dutch of course but I had to have it lest I never see it again. It was €12 for the softback version or €17 for the hardback - at that price, definitely hardback! At Utrecht Central Station we got our next train tickets, made our way to the platform and waited for it to arrive. We were not going back to Amsterdam, but onwards to the nearby Gouda - the town where the cheese comes from. Gouda is said "Howda" by the way. Our train there was whats known as a "Koplopper" - a rather ugly train that resembles a 747 with the drivers cabin mounted above the carriage. I'd seen pictures of these trains for many years in my train books and thought they were the most hideous looking trains. They aren't much better in person but I think there are more hideous trains out there. In Gouda, we wandered into the main square and did have a look in a touristy store which was selling all sorts of Gouda varieties but we were hoping to find a supermarket to purchase some of the cheese from at a less touristy price. We didn't find one and when we went back to the touristy store, it had closed for the day! Our original concept had been to visit Gouda for a late lunch and then go on to The Hague, but it had just been an idea and as we had spent longer time in Utrecht we'd decided to ditch The Hague and have dinner in Gouda instead. Only problem now - finding somewhere to eat! there were plenty, but most of them seemed a bit overpriced. We did find one however which offered 3 courses for a set price and you could choose any dish from the menu - needless to say, Sasha and I had meals which incorporated Gouda in our food! After dinner and a further wander as it started darkening, we headed to the station, got tickets back to Amsterdam and caught the train back to Amsterdam Central. We then caught the tram to where we were staying, which was called Hostel Princess. It had been the cheapest accommodation we could find out of the rather expensive array of accommodation options around, that offered relatively easy access to the central city. We had booked a private room, but it did not come with its own bathroom - this was fine, we'd done that many times before. However no place we have stayed before was this unkempt and untidy - the toilets were out of order on our floor, but there was one on the floor below next to 3 showers. The window was open as well as it was already fairly hot in the room so I turned the heating down to almost zero, and went to shut the window to find it didn't fully seal either. This was definitely not the greatest place we'd stayed, especially considering the price but at least it seemed it might be okay. Oh, and we had thought the hostel had a 24hr reception but upon checking the check-in times after leaving Gouda we saw that Check-in was supposed to close at 10pm. We had a hell of a time trying to get a hold of the hostel to warn them we might be a bit late, but finally got through in the end - we weren't much off 10pm but the guy seemed to be in a hurry to get home! Day 6 - Getting to know AmsterdamOur first full day in Amsterdam started with a walking tour around Amsterdam - our go-to way of finding our way and bearings around a new city. It was the first English-speaking tour of the day so we had a reasonable crowd of people on the tour, but probably no more than about 15 total. Our tour guide Kendra took us on the tour from the National Monument towards the Red Light district, explaining about how the district came about - basically, Amsterdam was a port town, and the Catholic Church right in the centre of what is now the Red Light District was worried for the good little Catholic girls in the city so brought in non-Catholic women to cater for the port visitors! Even at that hour in the morning, there were one or two girls in their windows and we were told in no uncertain terms do not take photos of them - if you try, you might find you don't have a working camera very shortly afterwards, which is completely understandable. From there it was through to Niewmarkt and the Oude Kerk, before going along to the Nieuwe Kerk and the Royal Palace near where we started the tour - but on the opposite side of the "Dam" or square which had a big carnival in the middle with a Ferris wheel and rides. We then started fanning out around the other side of the canals from the central core of the city, where we learned about how Amsterdam's "drunken houses" have come about - they were straight when built, but have tilted and shifted independent of their neighbours because of the marshy ground upon which the city has been built and the results are only really noticeable nowadays, some 300ish years since the buildings were first built. After the tour was over, we decided to head to a nearby restaurant, Cafe Sonneveld for lunch where we would be able to sample "Stamppot", a traditional dutch meal of potatoes and veggies mashed together, with meatballs. We went there with another girl from our tour - she was Australian and staying with a friend in Delft for a week so was doing a day trip to Amsterdam today, and was doing various day trips elsewhere through the country during her week. The meal was nice, but hardly groundbreaking and after exchanging stories, travel tips and ideas, we parted ways with our lunch companion and we headed for the Amsterdam Cheese Museum around the corner. I know Jeremy and Rachel had visited here, but didn't know much else about it - basically it was a big Cheese shop, with a museum in the bottom level and on the top level you could sample little pieces of all the many cheeses they have for sale. Did we try them all? of course. Did we try a lot of them more than once? yes. Did we walk out of there having bought any cheese? Yes actually - there was a special "Gold Label" cheese which had won a gold medal in some cheese competition and was very tasty, so we bought a wedge of it to take back with us. Next, we headed to the Sex Museum in Amsterdam which we'd heard about before and is quite a serious place despite what you might think given its subject matter. Its basically a museum looking at how attitudes, practices and well, paraphernalia have changed over the course of time regarding the Museum's main topic. A bit overcrowded, and it was rather annoying having groups of guys going around and giggling at a lot of the props for what it was, a reasonably well done museum. Following this, we decided to go visit the supermarket near our Hostel to get supplies for the coming days and had a bit of a nap before venturing out again later for another walking tour - this one the Red Light District walking tour at night. We learned a bit more about the Red Light area - the ladies pay less than you'd think to rent one of the window spaces, you're not allowed to have 2 ladies in one window and oh yes, its not just ladies - there are some "Blue Light" windows around but the initiative to introduce guys never really took off in a major way. Also, most of the ladies don't come from The Netherlands but from other parts of the European Union, but rarely outside the EU as in order to work in the district they need to abide by many laws and register themselves, so illegal immigrants can't work there. Also, they have a fairly regulated health regime they have to comply with in order to work in the district too. Again, no photos allowed - not that I would even want to, its not my style! After the tour, we bought some Poffertjes for dessert from one of the few stalls at the carnival in the main square - Poffertjes are basically a small Pikelet covered in icing sugar and apparently its getting hard to get real Poffertjes from street side food stalls as they are getting bought up and selling small pancakes or crepes instead. Day 7 - Flowers and FieldsToday we were venturing out of Amsterdam itself again, although not a huge way away - we were going to the Keukenhof Tulip Gardens, somewhere that had been on Sasha's list for a while. We'd gotten a combination bus-and-entry pass the day before, so after having breakfast from our supplies we went to a bus stop near our accommodation and caught a bus which took us to Schiphol Airport, Amsterdam's rather large airport from where the bus to Keukenhof left from. As we arrived at Keukenhof, we saw a massive queue next to a caravan and large inflated tulips - oh hell, was this the queue for the buses? Yes, it certainly was. I tried to see if we could skip it since we already had the passes but no - the queue was for the bus, not for buying tickets and to buy tickets you had to get them from the caravan, then join the queue. We did have to queue for about 45 minutes - within the first half an hour we only saw 1 bus come pick people up, but after that there was a flood of buses and we got on one, and were on our way. Finally having got there, it was a bit of a relief and we started wandering around through all the lovely gardens and got to see the big fields next door. We also saw boats going among the fields - a quick reccie showed that these boat tours didn't cost that much, and we got tickets for the next one we could which was in just over an hour. So during the waiting time, we wandered around more of the very picturesque gardens and then at the appointed time joined our boat for a ride through the canals of the tulip fields. This was quite a nice relaxing and oddly picturesque trip, which lasted about 45 minutes in total. One thing we were thinking about doing in the afternoon back in Amsterdam was a canal cruise around the city, as we had a discount voucher but it started becoming apparent in order to do that, we'd have to cut short our time in Keukenhof - but we were really enjoying the gardens so we decided to give the canal cruise a miss. One section of the gardens honestly looked like something out of the Wizard of Oz, one of the pretty gardens lining the sides of the yellow brick road. After wandering around virtually all of the park and through most of the buildings, we called time on our visit to Keukenhof and caught a bus back to Schiphol and then back into Amsterdam. We started wandering around the city streets and canals of Amsterdam, and we were starting to get a bit hungry for dinner so we tried to find a place that would sell the Herring sandwiches we'd heard about - but every place we tried to find (with help from Google) had already shut for the day! so instead we backtracked quite some way and decided to head to one of the Febo Fast Food outlets near the main square. Febo is not your average fast food joint - its basically a self-service shelf of food in heated individual cupboards where you put the required amount in the coin slot, open the door and take the food out. I'd been wanting to try it but had not reckoned on it being for an actual meal. Because coins are needed, we needed to get more change so we visited a nearby store and bought a packet of Stroopwafel biscuits to break up a larger note than the change machine could handle in the Febo and asked for all coins in return. We each got a burger, but we also decided we wanted chips and a drink. To get these items, we had to order them from a lady behind a counter next to the shelves/cupboards and wait for the chips to be cooked - which to me kind of defeats the whole purpose of instant, self-service fast food if they still have a staffed counter and there is still a wait for food. With a bit of the extra change we had we bought one croquette and one cheese puff and split them - both were tasty but the cheese puff was my favourite. We were surprisingly sated after this food, which we didn't think we would be. After the food, we headed for a Coffee Lounge our tour guide had recommended in order to partake in some of Amsterdam's Coffee Culture, and after this we headed back across the city to have a look around the city at night and see some of the sights. Now pretty late, and also drizzling a bit as it had on-and-off during our time in The Netherlands, we called it a night. Day 8 - The Netherlands to Denmark, via GermanyToday was a travel day - from The Netherlands to Denmark, via Germany. We departed our hostel (which, to be honest, I was not unhappy to see the back of), caught the tram to the Railway Station and boarded our German ICE train (InterCity Express, and it was one of the ICE3 kinds of train) bound for Düsseldorf. We were only on this train for 2 hours, but it was the quickest way from The Netherlands to Germany. Off at Düsseldorf, we changed platforms and our next train showed up - a German IC train (InterCity, but not Express) to Hamburg which to me was a slight surprise as I had been expecting the double-deck but slower IC2 kind of train. This leg was 5 hours to Hamburg, and while on board we had lunch from our supplies. At Hamburg we had a slightly longer wait before our next train, which was a Danish IC4 railcar - it used to be German diesel-powered ICE trains but those ICE trains have not proven so reliable so the Danish trains took over services earlier in the year. German trains are okay in their comfort and spaciousness but not anything special, and while the Danish train looked frumpy and a little bit older in the decor it was certainly more comfortable. We crossed across northern Germany, eventually reaching Flensburg and then across the border with Denmark. There was not much to mark the border crossing as its Schengen - but at the very next station border police did hop on and wander through the train before we carried on. Our ultimate destination for the day was Vejle, and we were fairly surprised by how nice of a place it was - nothing too special but very clean and well appointed. The same could be said for our accommodation - huge room, own bathroom, modern and clean, comfy bed and big window - very much a contrast from our last place! We wandered around looking for a place to eat dinner at, but did not much like the prices we saw at most and eventually made a quick dash into a supermarket just before closing, getting supplies for one of our wine and cheese evenings far far cheaper than visiting a restaurant. Our accommodation had plenty of cutlery and utensils in the common lounge/kitchen area which also proved very helpful, and it was not a late night as we were fairly tired from sitting on trains all day - its amazing how travelling can take it out of you! Day 9 - Having Fun, Block by BlockOur day started with a lovely self-serve breakfast in the main lounge/kitchen area, before we headed to the train station and bought tickets so we could catch the bus to Billund and our destination - Legoland. As a kid Lego was the main toy I played with, and I always aspired to go to Legoland. I even had a book about the history of Lego at one point which talked about the Lego factory in Billund and the Legoland they created there. Nowadays there are a few Legolands, there was one in the UK near Windsor and there's one in Germany but I was dead set on visiting the original, and probably only true, Legoland and this is why we were here! You unfortunately cannot get in or near the factory unless on a special tour on selected dates, and they cost a mint but Legoland was awesome. There was a large section which had a model village of sorts depicting a lot of different countries all made of Lego, and a lot of it was interactive or moving. The large train you could ride around the park in was made of large duplo-like blocks, there were different rides you could do or amusement park-like rides which you could do which were all lego themed. The weather was not fully on our side however - it was cloudy with rain squalls, but most of the time we were able to go indoors into one of the rides or activities (there was a haunted house and an aquarium amongst the other indoor rides also). We arrived a little after opening at 10am, and it we didn't leave until just after 4.30pm - I never thought we'd spend so long there but there was a lot to do and see, or re-do (we had a lot of fun on one particular ride that we rode it a few times!). At least half an hour of our time there was spent sorting out the ultimate Lego souvenir of our visit - you could assemble your own lego men or ladies from a wide selection of heads, torso's, legs, hair and accessories - and you could assemble 3 of them, put them in a plastic display container and purchase it for quite a cheap sum considering how expensive Lego can be (and let me just say - no Lego sets were for sale at discounted prices at the park). Naturally, we created a replica of ourselves in Lego form, and tried to make the 3rd guy as close to the original style Lego man as possible although we failed in finding blue pants, so we decided to give him yellow legs and make it look like he wasn't wearing any pants! And I got to play with a little bit of Lego in the final shop too, as did Sasha. Then it was a bus back to Vejle Station, where we got some food supplies from the 7-11 convenience store in the station and waited until our train arrived to take us to Copenhagen. With it raining outside the view wasn't so great, but I do recall suddenly being on a bridge over water and the bridge kept going for a while and realising that this must be bridge between the two main islands of Denmark - Funen and Zealand. Copenhagen is on Zealand, but this is not the Zealand where New Zealand gets its name from confusingly - NZ was discovered by Abel Tasman, who named NZ Staten Landt as he thought it joined South America. When Dutch cartographers realised his error they renamed it Nova Zeelandia, and then Captain Cook anglicised it (as the Brits do) to New Zealand. By the time we arrived in Copenhagen it was dark, but our accommodation was only two blocks away from the main station. It was not as good as the accommodation we had in Vejle, but it was still far better than what we had in Amsterdam! A bit too cold, dark and wet to try venturing out, we instead sorted our plans for the next day, caught up on all of what we had missed on the interwebs and called it a night. Day 10 - Coping with CopenhagenOur morning started off with us heading to the railway station, through the railway station concourse and out the other side, and crossing the road to go to a bakery right next to the Tivoli Gardens for us to grab breakfast from. What were we having for breakfast? Danishes of course - they always say no one does Danishes like the Danish, so we wanted to find this out for ourselves and Sasha had researched some of the top rated places. This place, Andersen Bakery, had been rated as one of the best but was conveniently halfway between our accommodation and where we needed to meet for the Walking Tour. They had a deal where you could choose 3 Danishes from the cabinet for a good price so Sasha and I did this each, and then we went to the meeting point, registered for the walking tour and then tucked into the Danishes. Oh boy were these good! I have never ever had Danishes this good before and I have sampled probably more than my fair share of the damn things. The walking tour was another Sandeman's walking tour, and took us around a large portion of the old city explaining a lot of features and history as they so often do. We learnt about how Copenhagen had burned down a few times, and had suffered at the hands of a number of different powers throughout history. We also learned about Hans Christian Andersen, the fairytale writer who is revered in Denmark and has many things in Copenhagen either depicting him or his stories, and we also learned about how the wooden sailing boats in the Nyhavn (New Haven) were brought there to help rejuvenate the area, and then got trapped by a bridge that was placed at the other end and can never leave! We also wandered into the grounds of the Amalienborg Palace - the home of the Danish Royal Family, which you can freely wander around and drive your cars around which is a rarity in this day in age, especially with concerns over terrorism but the Queen insists that everyone can access the Palace. One house is for the Queen, but her husband does not normally live in there with her - he is French, and apparently has harboured a long grudge that he has never held the title of King despite being married to the Queen. I mean sure I can see him being annoyed at not having some kind of title or status, but King when the Queen is the person in the line of Royal Succession? Please, get over yourself dude. Prince Phillip isn't King and he's only Prince by virtue of his own Royal heritage, and for a while after marrying Queen Elizabeth he didn't even have that until the Queen gave it back to him. Our tour ended on the waterfront, our guide had been one of the better ones we had experienced in our many walking tours that we have done! Sasha had been enchanted by the Nyhavn - its not hard to see why, its very pretty - and was suggesting we have lunch there but where we were standing was about a 20min walk to the Little Mermaid statue. To go to Nyhavn and then back to the Little Mermaid didn't quite seem right, but to go to the Little Mermaid and then back to Nyhavn for lunch would see us very hungry. I wanted a few more photos of the Palace so we went and grabbed them, and on our way back to the waterfront we saw a Pizza truck so got a Pizza to share in order to tide us over - we would go to the Little Mermaid and then back to Nyhavn after. We ate the pizza in a nearby garden, and it was exceptionally good - the day was fairly cold although the sun was out so the warm pizza certainly helped! We wandered in the general direction of the Little Mermaid, as far as we could tell - there were no signs anywhere to help guide us, which must have been the same back when Mum & Dad tried to visit the statue in the 1980's and failed to do so - only to find out the next day that it had been removed for maintenance! Unlike Mum & Dad, we eventually found it - it wasn't hard as there was a large crowd of people gathered around on the foreshore trying to get photos. Trying to get a photo of the statue without people in it was easy if you zoomed in and framed only the statue, but if you tried to show the general surrounds you had no show! after getting our fill of photos we wandered around and into the Kastellet fortress that was nearby, but didn't stay inside it long before wandering back to Nyhavn. During the walking tour earlier in the day we had seen a fairly large canal boat squeeze its way around the corner in one of the canals, and I had also seen the departure location in Nyhavn for a canal boat company which listed a price which seemed pretty decent. We wandered in the general direction of this departure location, getting photos of Nyhavn along the way until we noticed a canal boat was just pulling up at the departure point and another was just leaving. This next departure was in 10 minutes, so we bought tickets and chose a seat right up the back. This company, Netto had boats which looked slightly unkempt compared to the slick and polished looking canal boats of the rival company - the blue paint of the hull looked like it needed repainting and some of the windows were a bit scratched looking but we were sitting outside up the back and wouldn't have any problems with view. This canal boat took us on a very pleasant hour-long cruise out into the harbour, through the Freetown Christiania area and then over to the Little Mermaid past the Royal Yacht of Queen Margrethe II (who's birthday it was) before taking us through the canals and then back to Nyhavn. It was only after we had taken the cruise that we checked out the prices of an hour cruise with the rival company - over twice as much as what we had paid! The other company's boats may look slick but you pay for the looks, the Netto boat was perfectly seaworthy. We then went to a nearby cafe/restaurant in the Nyhavn for a kind of afternoon tea snack/super early dinner where we had some of the local seafood specialities. Following this, we knew we wanted to go up one of the towers that were in Copenhagen. There was the Town Hall spire, which was the tallest and had a lift to the top - but there was also a Cathedral which had a spiral staircase around the outside of the turret. The first was more safe, but the latter sounded more exciting. In the end because of the wind, the earlier closing time and not feeling like walking all the way up a tower, we opted for the Town Hall. We had a bit of a wait in the queue to go up, as you can pre-book tickets and those get priority but within 30 minutes of waiting we were able to head up to the top. The lift dropped you off at the restaurant level, and then there was some internal stairs up to the viewing deck in the tower spire. The view was quite neat, especially as the fading sun was about to drop behind the horizon. We also could see a bridge - this was the Øresund Bridge to Sweden, and lo and behold we could not only see Sweden on the other side of it but make out a city with all its tall buildings also this was Malmö. It was fairly exciting to be able to see a different country on the other side of a fairly decent width of water! After the sun had dropped, it became bitterly cold up the top and although we had fairly warm clothes on the cold was still getting to us so we decided to call an end to our time up the tower. We also tried looking at the restaurant in the tower for dessert, but it did not appear to be an option. Instead, back at the train station we got some danishes from the 7-11 for dessert and had them back in our accommodation - it had been a fairly big day when all was considered! Day 11 - The Side Trip, then HomeThis was the last day of our trip. So we checked out of our accommodation, and headed to the Andersen Bakery again for breakfast - but this time we were eating in, and chose one of the breakfast deals they had going on. It was fairly comprehensive coming with coffee, a juice, croissant, spreads, and a danish but you could also get bacon and scrambled eggs as an extra. It was tempting, and we were talking about getting the bacon and eggs for each of our meals when at the last minute I suggested one of us get it and we share - we decided to do this. We got to choose our danish, so we each chose our favourite from the day before and when the eggs and bacon came it was huge - just enough for us to share between us, anything more would have been too much! So what were we doing today on our last day in Copenhagen? We'd discussed what we might or might not do the night before, and came to the conclusion that of all on what was on offer in Copenhagen aside from what we'd already done, we didn't feel too inspired to do any of it. Tivoli Gardens? the weather wasn't too conducive for a theme park and besides, we'd had Legoland already. Whatever else there was, which I can't remember? it didn't stick out (hence why I probably don't remember). The one thing that did kind of lodge in the imagination? Going to Malmö in Sweden for lunch. So, after breakfast we went across the road to the train station, and bought our tickets for the train to Malmö which go over the Øresund Bridge. Buying the tickets was the easy part, but then it gets more complicated because ever since the beginning of 2016 its no longer as simple as hopping on a train and crossing the bridge to Malmö. Due to border security concerns arising out of the Syrian Crisis, Sweden implemented Border checks from Schengen countries - which means you now have to catch any train going to Copenhagen Airport for the checks. Under Schengen rules this is allowed for special circumstances for a period of no longer than 6 months - so technically, this was now illegal border enforcement. They key is to not catch the train to Malmö, but the train or two going to the Airport before the one going to Malmö otherwise you have to pile off the Malmö train and wait 30mins for the next one - while the airport trains are more frequent. So we caught the train to the airport, piled off onto the platform and then didn't quite know what to do - do we file into the airport for checks? there were no signs on the platform, just barriers and security guards with people lining up next to some of the barriers. We had to ask, and got told to join the line. The Malmö train arrived, and the security guards glanced at the passports of everyone hopping on the train, but only a glance - really? was that it? The train then dived into a tunnel, and then emerged on an island in the strait and then onto the Bridge. When we arrived at the first station on the Swedish side (which wasn't Malmö), the train stopped and police came through the train to look at everyone's passports. We handed ours over, and were asked how long we were staying in Sweden. "Um, just a few hours and then back to Copenhagen" was our response, which took the officer aback. "Only a few hours? how long are you staying in Denmark?". "We fly back to Germany tonight" we said - "How long are you staying in Europe?" was his reply. "We live in Germany, the visa's are in our passports" we said. He found them, and then handed back our passports and wandered on. Not many people from Australia and New Zealand that live in Europe must pop across the border like this for the officer to be somewhat bamboozled by our situation! Once in Malmö, we started wandering around kind of following our noses as we didn't really have much of an idea where to go or what to see there - when we had looked up on things to do there, not much had come up and mainly was about "seeing" some of the buildings (from the outside). We wandered around the waterfront area and then to a park, where we sat near a windmill for a while. It was overcast and there was a breeze making things a bit chilly, and after a while we wandered in towards the old town area and found a coffee in which to have Fika - Coffee Time in Sweden, as well as a bite to eat for lunch. We definitely warmed up quite nicely in this cafe, and eventually wandered back into the streets and through the old town area which was quite charming looking before going back to the Railway Station. As it was now late afternoon, we caught the train back to Denmark to the airport, checked in for our flight with Norwegian Air and after going through security, started having a look at food options. We didn't really know what we wanted to eat, and of course as some or most airports do, the options were not cheap - we ended up getting two pizza's and two soft drinks but they cost us the equivalent of about €40 all up, and for pizza's they were okay, slightly gourmet ingredients but nothing overly special and when all is said and done not worth what we paid - but I think that would probably have been true of any food in the airport. I do like flying Norwegian as their planes are always clean looking and they have the free Wifi in the air, but again it was very slow (I swear that first time flying to the Canary Islands I was able to load Youtube videos over the onboard Wifi). Landing at Schoenefeld Airport just past 9pm, our trek home was done a bit earlier than usual and we arrived home at a decent hour with still a little bit of time before heading to bed, and of course back to work the next day! After all that time away, our trip was over. In SummaryThis was a very multi-faceted trip that you can easily separate into three distinctive parts, and as has already been seen, the first part was dealt with separately in Part 1 and already summed up. So I will sum up the other two parts - Amsterdam/The Netherlands and Denmark. Amsterdam/The Netherlands - lets face it, our Netherlands time was very Amsterdam-centric but we did see a bit of The Netherlands outside of Amsterdam too. We did Utrecht, a charming town and visited the railway museum there (one of the better ones I've done) and wandered around its rather nice streets, as well as Gouda - the home of the cheese of the same name, and the really wonderfulntulip gardens in Keukenhof. We didn't get to The Hague like we potentially thought we might, nor anywhere else like Rotterdam, Zealand or the canal village Geithoorn. However, our rather crappy, over-priced hostel aside I did enjoy Amsterdam - but I can't say I loved it or that it endeared itself to me as a city I want to visit again in a hurry. I kind of find this with a lot of larger, Western European cities - they're always the ones you think you'll visit when you are across the world and are planning a trip to Europe but there is just something about them that never quite endears themselves to you - too expensive? too busy? too over-touristed and un-genuine? not sure. We did get up to a lot of stuff while in Amsterdam, most if not all of what we had hoped to do so there is not really a lot of pressing need in my mind to return there - I do know I didn't take nearly enough photos while there of what I saw and what there was to take photos of, but it also was slightly un-inspiring to take photos of. Which sounds weird considering that there were the "drunken" Amsterdam houses by the canals but in all honesty, I couldn't be bothered to take out my camera half the time. That's not a sentiment I often have, but it does happen and Amsterdam was one place where it manifested itself. I didn't think that would happen in The Netherlands but there we go. Maybe it was the time of year with the still-cold, unsettled weather? maybe a visit in summer might be better? I'm not sure, but I do know I particularly liked Utrecht (it reminded me a bit of Gavle in Sweden) and can imagine anywhere other than Amsterdam is a bit more genuine-feeling. Perhaps Amsterdam is "not The Netherlands" in the same way that Barcelona is not Spain. Or Berlin is not Germany, although I very much love Berlin for it. To think that The Netherlands was one country I was seriously considering visiting that first Europe visit in December 2014 (I came up with 3 potential trips - 2 to The Netherlands, but ended up going with the 3rd to the Harz in Germany) but its taken me over 2 years to get around to finally getting there! Amsterdam didn't feature in that trip, in fact nowhere we visited this time featured in those proposals but the ferry trip from the UK to Amsterdam did, although not from any of the ports I thought it might. Another thing to remember is that when Sasha and I were looking at visa's for Europe, if it wasn't going to be Germany it would have been The Netherlands simply because those two had the least restrictions - but The Netherlands was an unknown quantity to both of us and in hindsight having made our visit, Germany was definitely the right choice. If we had gone to The Netherlands, it would have been Amsterdam - but a city where we couldn't get away with not knowing the native language straight up and also where it is very expensive to live, I don't know we would have survived there long or gotten jobs to keep ourselves there. Had we done so, I don't feel like we would have enjoyed it the same. Berlin really leaped out to both of us during our visit there before we contemplated living in it, and while it has been trying in many ways it has also been rather brilliant. I don't think I could have said the same about living in Amsterdam. Denmark - after so many ideas of travelling here we finally got to this country, and visited Copenhagen and Legoland. Fairly early on in my UK time I found super cheap flights to Billund in February or March and contemplated a trip, only to find at the last minute before booking that Legoland wasn't open in winter and I couldn't visit at that time (hence why they were cheap!). Legoland was amazing - everything I hoped it might be, and also a bunch more that I didn't expect but was pleasantly surprised about. Sufficed to say my inner kid definitely had a ball that day! Copehangen - every bit as pretty as I thought it might be, but surprising how we kind of ran out of things we definitely wanted to do there. Having said that, is it surprising? I kind of feel like the Scandinavian cities can be like that - picture perfect pretty, and have a lovely atmosphere but slightly devoid of actual must-do activities, and more there's a bunch of things you can do if you choose. We could have gone to a museum or two, but none stuck out - and in the end visiting Sweden for a while proved to be the biggest attraction once we'd gotten everything else out of the way. If we'd had more time there I think we could have easily found more things to do, such as visiting Helsingborg which is Elsinor in Hamlet. I guess its one of those things - visit a place because you know what you want to do there vs visit a place and see what there might be to do. Denmark, from what we saw of its countryside is more interesting than the German countryside for instance. Was great to finally visit Denmark but again, we ticked off virtually most things if not everything. Lastly a mention of Sweden, which managed to sneak itself in at the end. This was my 3rd visit to Sweden, even if it was for only a few hours - Malmö was very nice, but colder than Copenhagen and probably would be nicer to visit in better weather but it did have that very clean, very well presented Scandinavian charm although again, we didn't find any must-do activities there for us. As for the travel - our flights were fairly painless and it was a nice change going to the UK not having to go through one of London's many airports for once. Our UK train experience however was painful - trust it all to go to pot when we needed to travel on it and had a time dependency! we got there in the end but boy was that far too close for comfort. Getting to do the ferry between the UK and Amsterdam was something I had hoped to do once upon a time but had long figured would never happen - and I'm glad to have learned that doing a "day trip" by doing a mini-cruise is more just a couple of hours in the destination, as I'd contemplated such trips a few times to either Amsterdam or St Malo in France in my early time in the UK. I'm glad to have done it, its nice not to fly everywhere all the time although it wasn't really anything special. The big train trek across Germany in between countries was really bourne out of trying to do the cheapest way of travelling (it wasn't cheap when all is said and done, but flights were much more) but it did cost a whole day out of our time. Sure, we saw more countryside (not a lot to see until north of Hamburg but it wasn't anything majorly scenic) but had there been a flight which wasn't horrendous to Billund we probably would have leaped on that. In all reality - had we flown to Billund, at best we would have gotten an extra half-day in Amsterdam which we probably would have done not much with, or extra time in Vejle or Billund which we definitely would have done nothing with. If we'd gone to Copenhagen and upended the order of Denmark, it would have cost us that half day we saved otherwise in order to get back to Germany so really, travelling by train was the only way - even as humdrum a trip as it was. Oh and speaking of the travel... here's a map! Friday, Berlin to Nottingham (not shown); Saturday and Sunday, Dimension Jump in Nottingham (not shown); Monday, Nottingham to Newcastle and then ferry towards IJmuiden (blue); Tuesday, ferry to IJmuiden, bus to Amsterdam, train to Utrecht and Gouda then back to Amsterdam (green); Wednesday, day in Amsterdam (not shown); Thursday, Amsterdam to Keukenhof and back (brown); Friday, Amsterdam to Dusseldorf, then Hamburg, then Vejle (orange); Saturday, Vejle to Billund, then Billund to Copenhagen (red); Sunday, day in Copenhagen (not shown); Monday, Copenhagen to Malmö and back (blue) and then Copenhagen to Berlin (not shown). So, would we go back to either The Netherlands and Denmark? might be nice someday - but I can't see it happening during our current time on this side of the world, and certainly with us ticking most things off already and with more pressing places to visit I doubt they will be revisited anytime soon. They were nice, don't get me wrong but they are done for us for now. Do I have a slightly jaded view of The Netherlands and Denmark having been to so many other places? maybe? I can't discount that. Would I be more impressed by them had I visited them earlier on in my OE? probably, but I still feel like I would still have been more impressed by Stockholm in Sweden for instance or a number of the former Eastern Bloc countries if I'd visited them after The Netherlands or Denmark. Would a nicer time of year weather wise have helped? Possibly, but maybe not actually. One note on the photos in this blog - the only way for me to catch up on sorting and processing the photos, and get back on track with this blog (or at least try to catch up) was to move back to processing photos through an automated batch-processing process in Photoshop which while easy and fast, the end result does not necessarily bring out the best in each photo like manual processing. I don't have the time for manual processing at the moment, so we're all just going to have to put up with the lesser photo quality for now - but at least it gives some kind of idea. Two more countries ticked off of a very long list, and two which had been outliers for a while - our Amsterdam and Denmark, or Amsterdanmark (since Danmark is the native spelling of Denmark) trip was over. Where did we go next? well, its a doozy really, but that's the story for another blog...
The Netherlands and Denmark. Both high on our list, both we'd never been to. Eventually, we would have to visit them - it was just a matter of when and how. We'd mooted the idea of separate 3-day trips to both on a fair number of occasions, but for various reasons - mostly cost - they had fallen by the wayside in favour of other places. 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! PrefaceSo as you can see from above, Sasha and I both like Red Dwarf. We'd both liked it long before we'd even met, but although Sasha had been well aware of Dimension Jump and had booked her tickets to her first one before even leaving Australia, I had no idea Red Dwarf was even still going or there were still regular conventions until I met Sasha and she told me about it - nor that there was new seasons about to be made. What is Red Dwarf exactly? a British Science Fiction Comedy show (which is quite rare, usually they are quite serious when it comes to Sci-Fi) which has been going for nearly 30 years - which is quite exceptional really. And they are still making seasons intermittently, at least for now! 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. Day 1 - From Berlin to DJLuckily for once, we did not have a red-eye flight out of Berlin first thing. Our Ryanair flight to Nottingham departed from Schoenefeld Airport at 10am, so we only had to be there by 8am, got our Visa Check (so unnecessary), through security (didn't take too long) and then out into the terminal to wait for our flight. While waiting we got some breakfast to eat, then boarded our flight and started winging our way to East Midlands Airport. Although Sasha does go to Nottingham occassionally for work, usually the flights she takes go to Birmingham and then they travel to Nottingham from there or go via London and train up - so East Midlands Airport was a new one for both of us. On this flight we even got to chatting to the person in the seat next to us, mainly because he was curious about our accents (they always ask us this!) and he offered to give us a lift into Nottingham from the Airport as he was being collected by his Dad and it wouldn't be a problem. However we declined out of politeness, as well as the fact we had no idea how long we'd take getting through Border Security. We didn't have much of a wait at Border Security in the end, and proceeded out of the airport, found the bus we needed and rode it into Nottingham, getting off at the railway station. By now it was edging midday UK time but our stomachs were still an hour ahead on Berlin time - so lunch was in order. We found there was a few pubs nearby which would do good old fashioned UK pub food, but one of them was a Wetherspoons so we leaped on that as the option. Burgers were on special so we had that and a pint (myself a Doombar ale, Sasha a Strongbow cider) - you don't often get burgers in Berlin! After lunch we carried on to the Hotel, where while we were queuing to check in Sasha pointed out Hattie Hayridge who played the computer Hollie (in its 2nd incarnation), who was chatting to a lady who it later transpired had played some small parts in Red Dwarf herself and had been to the Dimension Jump as an invited guest before, but was here on her own accord this time as a fan of the TV show. We were able to check in early, and were told that while there were rooms ready to check in to they were near the elevators and might be noisy with people coming past in the night. Sasha quickly concluded that probably we would be some of the noisy ones anyway so it wouldn't be a problem - so we went up to our room (directly opposite the lifts) and dumped our bags before going downstairs to register. We collected our registration packs, paid for the photo shoot (we would have a combined photo rather than individual, halving the costs and this was no problem), found out a few more other details and then wandered into the main lobby/restaurant area. It was here that we met the other attendees - I got introduced to lots of the people Sasha had met the last time, and we met some new people also. Among these people were Dan from Liverpool, and Susan from Falkirk in Scotland - these two had been Sasha's core group at the last Dimension Jump two years previous, and readily integrated me into their circle. I got to meet Kerry and her partner, both of whom ran the Red Dwarf Posse page on Facebook that Sasha had invited me into and were fairly ebbulent individuals - both with delightfully thick Northern English accents which I had no trouble understanding but others did a bit. I also got to meet Stephen, who had attended the convention last time with his brother but was attending this time by himself; Erin and her boyfriend, and Erin had a knack of dressing up in a wide variety of extremely well-done Red Dwarf-inspired costumes and had come 3rd in the Costume competition last time, which had been her first Dimension Jump also. Most people had been before at least once but I was not the only newbie - Dan had a friend Claire for whom it was the first "DJ" as Dimension Jump gets abbreviated to; and also of note was Paul, who was from the USA and had come over as part of a 2-week holiday of the UK and France. What was remarkable about Paul was not just that he had come so far for DJ, but that he was the man behind a recently released fanguide about all manner of Red Dwarf facts and trivia - actually two fanguides, the books split into A to K and L to Z. This was his first time getting to meet the core audience his books were aimed at and many people were very excited to meet him. Eventually it came time to go into the main conference lounge for the Convention to start, and the first event would be the Quiz night so everyone started sitting in table groups. The main Red Dwarf Posse people nabbed Paul for their table quick smart, but we managed to assemble a crowd - unfortunately it didn't include Dan but we did have Susan and Stephen at our table, along with a few other people Sasha or the others knew and we had one spare seat which Stephen convinced Erin to sit in. When Erin's boyfriend came in a bit later with the drinks for Erin and him, we had to scramble to find an extra seat but it wasn't an issue. The quiz was fairly long and fairly involved with lots of obscure questions - and of our table of approximately 10 people, we had a core group of three (Erin, Stephen and Tim) who seemed to be pretty sure of the answers so the rest of us pretty much left them to it as we had no idea, but would encourage them with moral support along the way. The quiz questions were being read out by two of the guest attendees - Mark Dexter and Lucie Pohl, who both had one episode roles in the new Season 11 which had recently screened. After the questions portion of the quiz was over, and before the winners had been announced the ticket sales for the Coffee Lounge Sessions opened so I made a beeline for the queue so that Sasha and I could secure tickets for the Sunday session, which had our preferred group of actors of the two. During this time while I was in the queue, they announced the winners of the quiz back in the main hall and would you believe it, our team won! The rest of the team went up on stage and collected the little trophies while I stayed in line and watched it all from the line. I got us the tickets for the session that we wanted and went back in to join the group, and Paul who had written the tome on all the facts, figures, and trivia came up and congratulated us all - he said a lot of those questions had stumped him, despite the fact they probably are in his books somewhere! The rest of the night went on with a Karaoke session led by Dave Benson Phillips who is a UK TV personality although he has never been in Red Dwarf (apparently he would like to!). Some people were great, some people less so, but the highlight of the evening was when he got the 6-8 people who had all requested to sing Bohemian Rhapsody to come and sing it up on stage all at the same time. By now, it was past 1am so Sasha and I called it a night. Day 2 - Give Quiche a ChanceWe went down for breakfast, and started hearing stories that our names had been called out at the Karaoke sometime after we left - we never put our names down, turns out some of our friends had done so and had chosen the song "Wind Beneath my Wings". Just as well we weren't there because that saved some embarrassment, but we wouldn't have gone up had we been there anyway. Breakfast by the way was a big buffet style and it was great, except there was something very odd and unusual about the scrambled eggs - it was a strange colour and did not taste right. Perhaps it had been made up from egg powder rather than actual eggs but was not altogether pleasant and best avoided. The first event was the Photo Session - this is your chance to have a professional photo taken with the actors who are attending that day, and you buy a ticket for this and get a printed copy plus a digital copy. The great thing about this is the tickets are per photo - so since Sasha and I decided to be in the same photo rather than have individual ones, we only needed one ticket between us. Today's photo was with Robert Llewellyn (Kryten, the robot), Hattie Hayridge (Hollie the Ship's Computer), Lucie Pohl and Susanne Braun (both of whom had roles in an episode in the new season). I'd never done this sort of thing before and when we got close to the front of the line, what struck me was how quickly they had people going in for the photo, taking the photo and then the next person. There was a natural gap in the centre for people to stand in between the actors, which was fine for most people getting their individual photos but when Sasha went and stood in that gap it left me a little bit floundering where to go and how to get myself in the photo with very little time to spare before the photo was taken. Somehow I managed to make the gap bigger, put one arm around Sasha's back and then didn't quite know what to do with the other one and ended up finding I'd stuck it around Lucie Pohl when the photo was taken. Not quite sure if that was a breach of etiquette without asking her first but it just happened and I felt a bit embarrassed after! not that she said anything or reacted in any way but still. Once the Photo Session was over, the Guest Q&A's started with Robert Llewellyn fielding an hour-long Q&A session all by himself. He was quite funny of course, fairly candid and tended to stray off topic into all manner of things before coming back on track. The next Q&A session was with Lucie Pohl and Susanne Braun - naturally because they had only been in one episode of the new series the questions for them were a bit more limited but there were people in the crowd who knew them from other shows they had been in and it turns out Susanne Braun had played an important character in a story arc of the TV show Stargate SG-1 which I used to watch but didn't remember much of, but when this came up I remembered who I thought she had been in the series and sure enough after looking it up, yes she had been that character. It also transpired that Susanne Braun had made it to the final two to play Eva Peron in the film Evita, until the original director pulled out and a new director came along and chose Madonna instead. Actually I was quite impressed how the crowd came up with inventive questions that fell well outside of the Red Dwarf sphere, asking them general things about what they love about acting and the best and worst acting moments they've had for instance. Then it was lunch break - Sasha and I deciding to get lunch from the bar/restaurant at the Hotel, rather than go out and find something. The menu offerings were "Red Dwarf" inspired and so we got Chicken Vindaloo, which in the show is Lister's favourite dish (along with a pint of Lager, though we had a pint of Cider instead!). There was a bit more free time as the Coffee Lounge session took place (not the one we were attending) and then it was time to line up for the autograph session. When you register to attend you are given a number - they went from 001 to somewhere around 400, and for today's session the order you went in for the autographs was in numerical order, in groups of 50. Sasha and I were 132 and 133, so we weren't first but definitely we were not last. I had been wearing the "Give Quiche a Chance" Red Dwarf t-shirt Sasha's mum Pam had given me for Christmas, which the Chris Barrie character "Rimmer" (who is a Hologram) but during this time I was also talked into putting on an H-sticker on my forehead that our friend Claire had which would make me look even more the part. We had purchased a poster with the logo of this year's Dimension Jump on it (quite a clever logo looking like a space mission patch that goes on an astronaut's suit) and it was on this we both got autographs from Susanne Braun, Lucie Pohl, Mark Dexter and Robert Llewellyn. Sasha and I also got photos with Chris Barrie and Robert Llewellyn - Chris Barrie taking a bit longer with both of us as when he found out we were from Berlin he he wanted to talk a bit about its history and how fascinating the place is, but there wasn't really much time for this conversation! While the autograph session was going on, the "Red Dwarf Olympics" was taking place - a series of games & challenges which the person who scored the highest over all events won a prize. We didn't participate but we did see some of the goings-ons. Later in the evening was the Costume Competition - where people create their own costumes based on Red Dwarf characters, parade them in front of the audience and then of course there are some winners. Those entering the competition got to jump ahead of everyone else for the autograph session and go first so they had enough time to prepare for the competition - but this year there was about 40 entrants or more, some in groups but most as individuals. The competition started a bit late and took a long time to get through - Hattie Hayridge was the one announcing all the contestants as they came through. There was a lot of Rimmer's wearing the "Give Quiche a Chance" t-shirts with varying other accessories, but a huge variety of other characters from all across the Red Dwarf episodes - characters from new and old episodes. I thought there might be a few more from the latest season but not so much. The field was actually very, very good - some were clearly home-made while others were rather "polished" but were made up of easily store-bought items to make up the whole, but a lot of people had gone very "hard out" and you could tell that they'd done so expecting to win - but a lot of people had done exactly the same and not everyone can win! Oh and although Erin had been wearing a wide variety of clever costumes through the event so far, she had chosen not to participate in the competition this year and Stephen had found her a seat at our table - which actually had been Susan's seat so we ended up having to find two more chairs, once for Susan when she came back and one for Erin's boyfriend when he came over! In the end, there could only be 4 winners - the winner of the group category (two or more people as a single entry), and then 3rd, 2nd and 1st Place in the individual categories. The winner of the group category was a Son dressed up as "Ace Rimmer" and his Mum dressed up as Ace's secretary "Mellie" - both costumes virtually hand made and exceptionally well done. Individual 3rd Place was Paul, the American who had created the tomes of facts & figures dressed up as "Chancellor Wednesday" - simple but very effective; 2nd Place to a lady in a homemade version of a Rimmer costume, in which a lot of effort showed; and 1st Place went to a lady who dressed up as "Starbug", one of the shuttle craft which are used from time to time from the Red Dwarf spaceship. Definitely the prizes went to those who were not only inventive, but had put effort into creating their costumes by hand rather than "polished" store-bought ensembles. And rightly so in my opinion. But wait, the night wasn't over yet - there was the first of two Auctions for Red Dwarf art and memorabilia. Hosted by Chris Barrie and Mark Dexter, Chris ran most of the auction and conducted it rather well. The items ranged from signed copies of posters, or rare-released DVD's or books, or artwork inspired by Red Dwarf and some of it went for some very high prices! I think nothing went for under 150 pounds and the most went for about 800ish! By the time the Auction had finished it was very late - probably about 11pm and the whole thing was running nearly 2 hours behind schedule. But it still wasn't over as there was the Disco hosted by Dave Benson-Phillips, during which Danny John-Jules (who plays "The Cat") arrived and came into the party for a while before retiring to his hotel room. To be honest, I was hoping to "Dad-Dance" with Chris Barrie on the dance floor but he didn't attend the Disco as he'd already had quite a long day. A shame but the Disco was a huge amount of fun! Oh and I haven't mentioned it yet, but Sasha and I had gone out and procured a lot of cans of Strongbow Cider from a Tesco's earlier in the day and after we'd bought the first glass of Cider for the evening, I had made repeated trips up to our room with two empty glasses, coming back with full glasses - to anyone at reception (which I had to go past every time) it would have looked like I was just using the lift to go get drinks from the upper bar but we were saving a lot of money on drinks this way! Day 3 - Coffee and Liquor, Auctions and ActorsSunday's day began again with the hearty breakfast, before going into the Photo Session - this time with Chris Barrie (Rimmer, the Hologram), Danny John-Jules (The Cat), Mark Dexter (Rimmer's brother from an episode in the new season) and Stephen Critchlow (the "printed-out" Captain from an episode in the new season). Again Sasha and I were just having the one photo of us together with the actors, but what was different this time is Danny John-Jules was clearly fixed in his place and when Sasha went into the gap, she found herself a bit pushed up against him, able to put her hand around Chris Barrie but with no opportunity to do the same with Danny and not sure what to do with her arm. I ended up on the other side of Danny and noticed Mark Dexter next to me striking a pose, so I try and mimic the pose and then the photo was taken. Sasha thought she had ruined the shot with her awkward arm placement, but when we got the pic back later it was actually fine. After the Photo Session it was Guest Q&A's - this time it was Danny John-Jules by himself. Danny's was quite different than anyone elses as Danny got up and started talking about a few things, then asked for a question, went on a tangent and then started asking the audience to start asking him whether he knew people or whether he could figure out the degrees of separation between him and another person. He did quite well until someone called out Boutros Boutros-Ghali and he clearly had no idea who that was. After his hour, there was another Auction hosted by Danny and Hattie Hayridge - Danny mostly ran the Auction but was getting people to call out bids rather than put their hands up and he kept losing track of where the bidding was at a lot of the time. There was also a guy who had what is best described as an animal ventriloquist dummy and he kept entering the bidding fray with some outlandish bids, then standing up facing the crowd and would say "Bring It!" only to be outbid, and he would either keep bidding and going "Bring It" or eventually stand up and motion that he was bowing down to the higher bid and bowing out. Danny John-Jules kept picking on this guy and goading him to make more bids in between essentially making fun of him, which I found a bit odd and actually mean - sure, the ventriloquist guy was a dick and no-one really liked him but still you just don't do that. After the Auction, Hattie Hayridge and Stephen Critchlow did a Q&A session together, then Chris Barrie and Mark Dexter also did an Q&A. After that there was the raffle draw - we'd bought some tickets and although there were a lot of prizes won, we didn't win any unfortunately. After the Lunch Break (we had sandwich supplies we'd bought the day before and kept in the fridge in our room) there was the Coffee Lounge session - the one we were attending, and so we went in and sat at our table waiting for our 10-15 minutes with each of the 4 actors attending our session. For us, it was Danny John-Jules first up - and to be honest I didn't think it would go to well as he had come across as a bit aloof or basically like he didn't want to be at the conference from what I'd seen so far but he was fairly personable during the session, which was a nice surprise. Somehow also making fun of the guy in the auction came up and Danny explained that that's how he creates the connection with the audience when he's doing standup or comedy - find someone in the audience to pick on and it starts getting the laughing going and break the ice, creating a rappor with the audience. I guess that makes sense in a lot of other situations but when the audience is 400 fans of the TV show you've been in for the last 30 years, I don't think you need to do that - you're going to have them eating out of your hand straight away. Next was Mark Dexter, who was very personable and was interested to find out what we liked about the show in general and remarked on how very intimate the convention was with the fans and how respectful the fans were compared to other conventions he'd been to. Then it was Chris Barrie, whom we all asked a variety of questions of and he was very interesting to talk with - once our time was up Chris gave a very genuine and heartfelt thanks to all of our table for taking the time to come to the convention and for having an interest in the show, on top of the usual "its been lovely to meet you". Lastly was Stephen Critchlow who I thought we'd struggle with since he had only been in one episode and seemed a bit taken aback by the whole Red Dwarf fandom, but he was quite engaging and although he expressed that he'd like to be in Red Dwarf again, with his character "dying" he didn't see how it would be possible - until we pointed out his character was "printed out" and it would be quite easy for his character to be re-printed and maybe this time it wouldn't get jammed in the printer so he didn't have to wear the uncomfortable mask he wore last time! After this the Autographs kicked off - they were to be Danny John-Jules, Hattie Hayridge and Stephen Critchlow but because Hattie was going to have to leave early they set her up on a table in a separate spot in the main foyer. We joined the very long queue for Hattie as we were near the back of the entrance order for autographs in the main autograph lounge but as we got nearish the front, the other autograph line was going quicker and we got to the point where our numbers got called out and we were told that if we didn't go up now, we wouldn't get Danny's autograph. When we got into the room it was fairly apparent why it was going so quick compared to the previous day's one - Danny was not allowing any photos to be taken with him (as had everyone the day before) and was purely just signing things, kind of a sign that he just wanted it over with really. This left us in a spot wondering if we'd even get Hattie's autograph but when we came back down and re-joined the queue for Hattie, we got told that Hattie had agreed to stay on and would catch a later train so that no fan would miss out if they wanted her autograph. When we did get Hattie's autograph she was great to chat with briefly and we expressed our thanks for her staying on longer when she didn't have to, and she remarked how she's just grateful she gets to meet the fans and didn't want to put anyone out by leaving when she was supposed to and have people miss out. After this, the Conference was basically over - a lot of people started to disperse, catching trains or driving back elsewhere but for Sasha and I, and a core group of others we were staying another night in the Hotel before leaving the next day. We did however say our farewell's to a lot of the people we had met during the weekend that were heading off elsewhere - and before he headed off, we had a good chat with Paul the American who was going on to London and then Paris with a friend before back to the United States. We did suggest that perhaps he might make it back for a future Dimension Jump, but he seemed pretty sure he wouldn't be able to make it back over to the UK for another one and this was his one Dimension Jump experience - but he had loved it, as had I. As Susan was catching a late train back to Scotland that evening, we all got dinner together before she had to leave, and it was a fairly leisurely evening at the Hotel - a nice relaxing end to the whole Dimension Jump! Summing UpThere's no way about it - Dimension Jump was an absolute blast. A fun, geeky, exciting blast. Not only was there far more opportunity to meet, hear from and get to know the attending Actors than I had anticipated, but the attendees were quite a mix - from your stereotypical geeks or odd-types who obsess over the show, to those who really like it but its not the be-all and end-all of their lives, to some people who have even starred in the show but are fans enough that they actually attend DJ as a fan rather than an invited guest (even though they have been an invited guest in the past). Considering the show is nearly 30 years old, it was quite interesting to see that the vast majority of the attendees were not in the older age bracket but a very even spread of young and middle-aged - as a show its still bringing in the teenagers as fans and still keeping those who first saw it 30 years ago engaged. You have to admit, that's quite a remarkable feat for any TV show let alone a Sci-Fi one. Probably the biggest highlight for me was meeting Chris Barrie, although the biggest disappointment for me was probably not being able to "Dad-dance" with Chris on the dance floor like Sasha got to the previous year. Actually it was rather great to see how much the actors appreciated Dimension Jump and the fans - for the core actors, it was clear that they all really appreciated that something that had worked with and on for nearly 30 years was still popular and had such a strong fanbase - perhaps except for Danny John-Jules, who you couldn't help but get the impression that the likes of DJ was a bit of a necessary evil and that he was maybe embarrassed that after doing a great number of many things, he is still widely known best for Red Dwarf and not something else. It was also somewhat heartening, as much as a geek as I am about many things to realise that I am not the bigger geek/nerd out there and on many levels can pass for "normal" - and it was also kind of nice in an ego sense when Sasha was introducing me to various guys on the first or second day as her boyfriend Dan and seeing their faces drop in disappointment as they realise Sasha isn't single now - and of course for me it was nice to be there with the pretty girl the others wanted to be with! On Nottingham, the city where it was hosted, we didn't really get to see much but we did see a little bit and I don't know that there is much more to be seen there over and above what I saw already. I had an absolute blast, and its thanks to Sasha that I got to attend as I would never have known about it otherwise, and for that I am very, very grateful. Dimension Jump takes place every 2 years - this DJ was the 19th that had been held, and Red Dwarf had been around for 29 years so many people were speculating whether there might be a DJ for 2018 to celebrate the show turning 30 or some other event to mark the anniversary. To be honest I found it surprising that a lot of people were hoping that there wouldn't be a DJ next year - as it would mean them having to save over and above what they already to do splurge out on DJ a year sooner than they would expect. For us, we were secretly hoping there would be so that we might be able to get another DJ under our belts before we return to the Southern Hemisphere as we will not be living in Europe by 2019. As it now transpires, there will be a DJ next year - but not until October, which is too late for us unfortunately! I met a lot of great and wonderful people over the long weekend that DJ took place, and it is on that note that I must sadly note that Paul, the American whom we met at the convention and who had written the two big tomes of trivia and facts sadly passed away in an accident in August, at the age of 47. It was quite a shock to learn of this - and a sombre reminder that we will meet a great many people in our travels and lives, but not everyone is going to be around forever and some will get taken away from this mortal coil sooner than others. I certainly appreciated getting to know Paul over those few days, and although its quite possible we may never have crossed paths again it is quite sad to know that we never will. But I appreciate, and value the time I had getting to know him and the same goes for everyone else that I met at DJ - it is an experience I shall never forget, and like anything it is the people that make it - be it the fans, or the cast. Will this be my only DJ? I don't know. I'd like to think it wouldn't be, but I won't be attending another one while living over this side of the world. Who knows what the future holds...
As part of my birthday, Sasha had organised a trip away for a weekend. Managing to get a package deal with quite a discount, we were going to stay in Geltow - just outside of Potsdam. A lot was included with it, and it would let us explore more of Potsdam as its one of our favourite places to visit. We headed out to Potsdam on the train on the Friday evening, and then caught the bus to Geltow and walked the extra 5-10 minutes to our accommodation. It was in the middle of suburbia, but was a big German-style guest house/hotel I guess you would call it. It was certainly comfortable and decently appointed, and it included dinner for one of the two nights we would be there - so we had that the first night. The menu was set, but was very nice and we had some lovely fish as a main, as well as having an entree and dessert along with some wine. The deal also included day passes for the Potsdam metro system, so on the Saturday after breakfast we put these to good use and headed into Potsdam and then along to the "Biosphäre Potsdam" which we also had complimentary tickets for. This was a biodome, but not in a dome shape - instead it was an elongated rectangle, but was quite fascinating and we had a really good couple of hours wandering around the dome. We spent perhaps too long in the butterfly enclosure where it was really hot, but the butterflies did start landing on us although we never did manage to get that elusive decent shot of one of the amazing blue butterflies! We also had lunch here, which proved rather tasty also - even if it was meatballs and pasta! We then headed back into Potsdam's central area and then over to Park Sansoucci, Potsdam's main park of the 3 big parks and the first one that we had done. As it was still essentially winter, it looked a lot different - lots of Statues boarded over and covered up, and the plants were bare twigs or vines. We wandered up over into a part of the park we hadn't been before, stopped for a beverage and some cheesecake to share at one of the park's little cafe's before we headed back by bus into the Dutch Quarter of Potsdam which we hadn't really explored before. We had some dinner place recommendations here, but they were a bit pricey for us so we scoped out all of what was around, then popped into a pub which specialized in Belgian Beer where we had one or two beers before going into a slightly unassuming restaurant for dinner. This was an Italian restaurant, but they did great food and also had a very tasty red as their house wine. After breakfast on our final day, we checked out and headed back into Potsdam. We got tickets for the Potsdam boat cruise, wandered around Potsdam's very pretty and charming main square for a while before heading back to the wharf in order to board the boat. There was already a very heavy queue when we arrived, but we did manage to get some outdoor seats near the front of the boat. This was the ordinary "simple" cruise route we were taking around the Potsdam lake, but not on the ordinary boats - on weekends in the warmer months this company also use a vintage steam boat (this was its first weekend in use for the year), which you could ride on for no extra charge and this was exactly what we were doing because why not? we chugged around the different Potsdam "see's" (because in German, there is no differentiation between Lake and Sea) past the town, past Park Babbelsberg which we have not yet done, past the small Castle on an Island and then back past the Neues Park and back under the "Bridge of Spies" - the bridge connecting the state of Brandenburg with Berlin, but which happened to fall between the border of East Germany and West Berlin. On this bridge, a border point between East and West, they often exchanged prisoners who were often captured spies. During the cruise on the lake, one of the staff had come around asking for refreshment orders and we'd gotten ourselves a beer each to enjoy. After the rather scenic and enjoyable cruise on the boat, we wanted lunch - but didn't quite know where except we thought the restaurants along the main stretch would probably be too full of tourists and pricey at the moment. So we headed back to the dutch quarter and ended up at the Belgian Beer cafe again, where we had a few more beers as well as lunch in their conservatory-like area which was very pleasant (and the food, not only being a reasonable price was very delicious and filling!). Feeling a bit worn and also a bit sleepy from the high-percentage Belgian beers, we made our way to the station and caught the train back to Berlin. It was a thoroughly lovely weekend all round - a mix of relaxing as well as on-the-go, and we can say we've stayed in Brandenburg outside of Berlin now too if only just! I would thoroughly recommend the Biosphäre (although it might not be as "intense" as the one at the Eden Project in Cornwall, its a bit more well-rounded) as well as the lake cruise in Potsdam. A huge, huge thank you to Sasha for organising it all - I still don't actually know how much it all cost and how big of a discount she got, but she was struggling not to tell me exactly how much it was with the substantial discount vs what it normally cost so it must have been pretty good!
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A Kiwi out travelling in the UK and surrounding countries Archives
August 2019
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