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Copenhagen, Denmark is just a 30 minute train ride from Malmö, Sweden. So we boarded the Öresund-Link train, that took us over the Öresund( Öre Sound) by 8km bridge, the longest in Europe and an 8 km tunnel. The trains, which are more like subways have a car called “rest car”, where cell phones must be shut off and speech must be kept to a whisper. Lothar and I were busy planning our day until we were reprimanded not to speak by a “weird guy playing with his Rubic cube” . He motioned to a picture on the wall that showed a finger put up to the mouth in a gesture of silence, next to a cell phone. We naturally thought it meant that cell phones were to be put on vibrate. After this guy scolded others in the compartment, we didn’t feel so hurt anymore. As soon as we got off the train in Copenhagen, we noticed that the city had a much more diverse population than the other Scandinavian countries, we had visited. Sweden does have a lot of 1/2 Swedes, since a large number of the population seems to intermarry with foreigners. Norwegians have a very strict immigration policy, where only proven refugees are accepted into the country. Denmark, and Copenhagen in particular has an 11% foreign population, making it culturally, very interesting.
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Midnight Sun, a romantic term, a natural phenomena, that I always wanted to see. It is beautiful! But the days seem to go on and on and on. Anywhere above the Arctic Circle, you have at least one full day of daylight in the summer, so all of the Scandinavian countries enjoy this wonderful gift of nature. In Narvik, we were well above the Arctic Circle latitude, so the sun here does not fully set between the beginning of June until the beginning of July. Since Lothar had broken his watch, he was living in a type of twilight zone, never knowing what time it was. Every few hours, he’d venture the question about time and at each incident, he was surprised to hear the answer. His body clock and the sun clock just didn’t jive. We spoke to some locals, especially an engineering student, who was living in our B&B, and he told us that the Scandinavian people had this same problem, no matter how long they had been living here. I would have thought that people adjust more readily.
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Flashback to June 8th :
We were in Germany near Duesseldorf and the sun was shining again. The weather god has been really good to us on this journey. Today we visited Xanten, formerly the Roman Colonia ( town) Ulpia Traiana. The emperor Marcus Ulpius Traianus gave this Roman settlement it’s town rights in the year 110 AD.
Remember the opening scenes of the movie “The Gladiator” ? This was a recreation of the “Battle of Varus”, also called the “Battle at the Teutoburger Wald” in 9 AD.
Arminius, the Germanic ” Cherusker” Prince, defeated 3 Roman legions under the command of Varus during a 3 day battle in this wooded area near Bielefeld ( Gabi’s birthplace). This Roman defeat changed the Germanic political landscape and the Romans retreated to settlements on the west-bank of the River Rhine. Ulpia Traiana was one of those Roman towns.
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We left Narvik, Norway ( Latitude 68 degrees 25′ North, longitude 17 degrees 33′ East) on June 14th at 15:45.
We had slept until noontime to make up for the lack of sleep during the early morning hours ( remember, no night here). We were lucky again, because the train was stuck on the single track in Björkliden, Sweden and we received a free bus tour across the mountains to meet our train. The scenery reminded us of the Adirondacks, and the red wooden houses on the shores of the many lakes along the way looked like New England. We even saw a few reindeer and some lakes still had ice floating around.
We boarded our Connex train # 93, and the conductor gave us a six- person sleeper compartment, all to ourselves. We paid very little money and had more luxury than in the 2-person sleeper compartment we had had on the way here. This only happened after Gabi showed her displeasure with the high price tag for a private 1st class compartment, I had inquired about. Maybe the conductor liked us or he just was plain nice !
We had a picnic dinner on the train and went to bed, the sun still shining. In the morning, we woke up with clouds and rain outside, and realized how lucky we had been to see the midnight sun for 2 1/2 days without a cloud in the sky.
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We had enjoyed the midnight sun, sitting on the rooftop terrace at the Breidablikk Gjesthus on our first day north of the Arctic Circle. The Arctic Circle is at a latitude, where the sun never sets for at least one day of the year. At our latitude here, there are about 2 months of continuous daylight and our body clocks are all messed up !
We went to bed around 1 AM. Gabi wanted to make sure, that she knew the location of the light switches in our room, just in case she had to get up during the night. We were laughing when I reminded her, that light switches are not needed here this time of year !
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We tried to make a train reservation on Saturday, June 11th. The main train station in Stockholm, the capital of Sweden, can not process international train reservations on Saturday or Sunday. So much for spontaneous weekend trips.
Last week in Germany, we had booked a sleeper compartment for 2 persons on the Connex train from Stockholm to Boden.
We had dinner in Stockholm prior to boarding our night train at 21:27 on Sunday, June12th.
The compartments were tiny and we were glad to be in first class, so we did not have to share the cabin with other passengers. The quality of sleep on the train was only fair : lots of curves and sliding in the direction of our feet in the left-hand turns, in the opposite direction in right-hand turns !
Sweden is about 1000 miles south to north and we saw mostly trees : birches, Scots pines and Norwegian spruce. Hours and hours of trees.

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After a frustrating morning trying to acquire return train tickets from way up north in the Land of the Midnight Sun, Norway, to return back to Stockholm and on to Berlin, we spend a leisurely afternoon exploring Sweden’s past. Can you believe you can not book international railroad tickets out of Sweden on a weekend. They don’t work on the weekend….isn’t this taking the “social welfare state” a bit far? Next we discovered that it is more expensive to book a sleeper car for the same train here in Sweden than it was in Germany . Why? Cause the Swedish company puts a hefty profit on the service, whereas the German Rail does not. Believe me, if we could have booked our return through the Bundesbahn in Germany, we would have. But that was not possible, since the Swedish train company would not allow it. Everything is super expensive here! The government has it’s hand in everything with a value added tax rate of 25%.
The people pay over 50% in taxes from their income, but they are taken care of from cradle to grave. I’m still evaluating whether this is good or bad………. the jury will be in when I learn more!
Back to the title of this post.
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Yesterday we flew on Hapag Lloyd Express from Hannover, Germany to Stockholm, Sweden. We boarded our yellow machine, that looks like a New York City Taxi cab. We crossed the Baltic Sea and were soon over beautiful forests, green hills and hundreds of islands, comprising southern Sweden. We caught a bus into the city center and soon found our hotel for the next 2 nights, a boat in the harbor. The first room we were given had only a small porthole and being a bit claustrophobic, this was not a real good fit. The host switched us to the smaller boat next door, where our room now had two nice windows with a beautiful view of the Stadshuset (town hall) across the waters.
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Obviously, there are numerous things which I like about Germany, but I am working on my Top Ten Negatives :

# 1 : Bottle Deposit
You have to pay a hefty 15 to 25 cents deposit for beverages in plastic bottles. Only stores which sell the same brand will accept the empty bottles. This is very annoying when you travel. Chances are very slim that you find the same brand store. We also purchased beverages in gas station convenience stores and each brand sells different sodas, beers etc. I had to find a “Shell” gas station to return what I had bought at ” Shell”.
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We spent a rainy weekend in Hannover ( Westfalia, northern Germany ). Last Sunday, we drove to nearby
” Steinhuder Meer” ( a big lake, called ocean) and had our coffee and cake at ” Haus am Meer”. This was the typical old folks Sunday afternoon coffee time, and nobody in the restaurant was under 60 ( except for us of course).
Our rental car had a GPS navigation system and it came in very handy. On Monday, we drove to Gabi’s birthplace and the lady’s voice of the GPS guided me to all the addresses, Gabi wanted me to find. We took pictures of the house, she had lived in, until she was 8 years old. We also found her elementary school and spoke with the school’s principal. 40 % of the students are immigrants, most from Turkey. Germany is certainly changing !
At night we stayed in Muenster and walked through the old town, admiring lots of half-timbered houses. For dinner,we tried to find typical Westfalian cuisine and could not find any. Every restaurant wants to offer a more fancy menu and not the local fare. We ended up eating Bavarian food in northern Germany.