Boats are for sailing.

Day 9: Monday (1/12)

I got sometime around 11 or noon on this day and walked around Tess’s neighborhood a bit. It seems like a pretty nice area but Tess says it can be a bit sketchy at night as there are some projects not too far away. I walked around for a while, and bought a piece of frikadella. This is one of my favorite Danish foods, it’s somewhat similar to an enlarged Swedish meatball—but don’t go telling that to any Dane, they’ll first tell you frikadella is nothing like a Swedish meatball and then they’ll go off about how much better frikadella is and that the Swedes don’t know how to do anything right. To say there are some long standing cultural feuds between the countries is a fair assessment. Anyway, frikadella is a piece of meat, maybe about as wide as a small burger but about twice as tall, made of really tender meat (beef mostly, though there may be some pork in it) and with lots of salt and garlic and onions chopped and boiled so finely that it’s almost impossible to see them when looking at the meat. It makes my mouth salivate just thinking about it.

After I ate this frikadella I ended up reading and writing at a coffee shop for a couple hours. Then I went back to Tess’s and spent a little time relaxing before about 4 o’clock when my Uncle Pete tossed a couple pebbles up at the window. I let him and his friend Jørgen in (pronounced Yern) and then the three of us set off for the small island of Bornholm where my Uncle Pete and Aunt Maibritt live. I was originally supposed to take the train across Sweden and then the ferry from Ystad the day before but I decided to wait because Uncle Pete said he had to be in Copenhagen on Monday for business and his friend/neighbor Jørgen tagged along. Jørgen’s a pretty nice guy, doesn’t speak too much English but he says he can understand quite a bit. He’s a pretty modest guy and Aunt Maibritt later said his wife had a stroke so the left side of her body is partially paralyzed.

So the three of us headed out and took the super long bridge to Sweden and then drove around Malmö for a little while. We were originally going to stop and grab a cup of coffee or something but ended up just continuing on. I don’t really remember Malmö too much from when I lived in Sweden because I don’t think we spent a whole lot of time there. There’s probably reason for that. I know it was just after dark in the middle of January but it didn’t exactly seem like an exciting place. We drove on to Ystad and waited for the ferry.

Uncle Pete told me that when they had taken it earlier that morning from Bornholm the waves were 2.5 meters high. The is a big catamaran that can hold something like 150 cars but it can only travel in a maximum of 3 meter high waves. So the boat was for the most part bouncing up and down but fairly frequently it would smack down on the water with a loud smacking noise. At one point during the trip earlier the ship had come down so hard that one of the windows broke. Yeah, one of the 6-inch thick windows cracked down the middle and some pieces went flying. So I wasn’t surprised when we didn’t exactly have the smoothest ride.

We sat on board and each had a beer which was brewed at this microbrew on Bornholm and some just call it Svaneke Brew (after the town it’s made in). We had to gulp them down pretty quickly so they didn’t spill on the rough ride. About a third of the way into the boat ride the captain had to reduce the speed because the waves were too high. All of the monitors around advised people to stay in their seats and I started to get a little seasick. I haven’t felt sick on a boat since I was like twelve so I was a bit surprised that my head and stomach weren’t feeling too good. Luckily I didn’t toss my frikadella and I started to feel better towards the end.

Nothing too eventful happened for the rest of the trip and we got back to Pete and Maibritt’s house. I helped Maibritt prepare the dinner a little bit, cleaning the brussel sprouts and pealing the carrots. She had already prepared an awesome helping of lamb, though. The lamb was very tender and tasty. Great meal. We had some more of the Svaneke Brew, their flagship beer “Classic” which is a pretty nice, smooth medium ale, and a specialty one called “Skipper Clemens” which is an American style Pale Ale, very similar to Manny’s. It was delicious and suited me just fine as I’d been craving a good Pale Ale ever since I left Seattle. Oh yeah, all their beer is unfiltered too, so it’s extra good.