To sail or not to sail? Being this close to Helsingør, the home place of old chum Hamlet allows adding the Shakespearean tint to this question which, if you contemplate it carefully, reaches the proportions not much smaller than that of the famous original. What to do: to endure the laborious drive across the plains of Denmark, void of much landmarks to rest one’s eyes upon? Or to gamble the quick and safe sail with a ferry boat from Rødby to Puttgarten in Germany against facing the dreaded queue, which can truly claim one’s sanity within a couple of hours?
Well, the choice is not the easy one. However, after realizing that we slept in and have about no time to cover something around a thousand kilometers, crossing both Sweden, Denmark and a good chunk of Germany, we had to risk it and headed for the ferry which was supposed to shave some 150-200 kilometers off the journey towards Alfsee – a charming little resort place somewhere between Bremen and Osnabruck, where good German families come to choose from a variety of accommodations and entertainment venues. (You can only wonder where the tour book style comes from). Anywho, now we are safely here and I am typing this while stretching on a sandy beach of the shallow lake where, yes, again, my children are chasing each other in and out of the water and which is in addition equipped with a water ski apparatus – a cable that pulls brave skiers around the algae-green surface of the artificial lake. Lidia is reading a clever book next to me, she came here especially for the water skiing experience and you can expect a video report of this event any time soon.
Now I can look back at the adventures of yesterday, which included a two-hour traffic jam outside Copenhagen – I still have to look into what actually happened on the road – we saw a large chunk of tarmac flooded with water, while rambling the secondary roads trying to find an entrance ramp not blocked by police tape. Fun, such fun. You should be relieved to know that betting all money on the ferry paid off splendidly: drive in, pay, get in the end of a smallish queue, drive onto the boat not even having the chance to stop the engine – we were off within five minutes – thank you, Scandinavia and good-bye!