Ikean't believe it!

Incandescently Irritated with Ikea's idiotic intent to sell incomplete inane items with the impossibly ill-conceived intention of inspiring incompetent individuals with no impetus and insufficient instruments (such as I) to follow incomprehensible infantile iterative instructions to install these in-situ.


Before I start my inevitable rant and rave about how in my day things weren't like this and this countries gone to pot and all that, I need to get the overdue apologies out of the way. I know it's been over a month since my last blog and I thoroughly understand that, as a would be professional bloggist, I cannot afford to be idle for so long. David Mitchell would never do that! So please accept my sincere apologies for my tardiness. I can quite honestly say I have been very busy this past month and a bit. The events that you're (hopefully) about to read took place at the start of September. I will endeavor to move quickly to bring the blog more up to date. I'm toying with the next blog being a blur of unrelated pictures and discombobulating half stories bringing up to date in whirlwind of pastry breakfasts, oddly attired passengers on trains and trips up towers. However that's enough of all that. Are you sitting comfortably? The I shall begin.

If you should ever find yourself renting a room or apartment in Denmark here's a heads up... they all come completely unfurnished... and by that I mean no bed, chair, desk or lights (not even big lights). There was only one remedy for this situation- IKEA

Personally I'm not a big fan of Ikea, don't get me wrong, it's probably the best location for hide and seek, but as a shopping venue it makes me real in horror. I find Ikea starts by lulling you into a false sense of security by wowing you with free pencils. But before you know it you're mindlessly wandering through sickeningly sanitised Swedish sitting rooms filled with sofas called something like Søreen and Gåttenbuller.

Before I got to the main shopping experience I decided to gorge on Ikea's interpretation of traditional Swedish cooking. I opted for the meatballs, this in hindside was a massive mistake. I'm sure you're all familiar with these Scandawegian meat globules, with their heavy dull brown cream based source.



I wonder if this might actually be the single worst meal to eat before departing on a 12km hike around the hills, valleys and forges that make up the Ikea show room. The 15 "meat" balls in my stomach seemed to be made of some dense hazardous organic waste and every time I moved I could almost hear them grinding together like marbles.



Now any of you who know me will know that I'm generally fairly stubborn and like to do things my way, and if I'm faced with a system I'll probably do my best to avoid conforming to it. This led me to refuse to use the silly little pencils and scrappy pieces of paper offered by Ikea to write down the incomprehensible names and the meaningless numbers, instead I walked around the endless maze of beds, lamps and laundry baskets muttering "that's nice" and "I better get that one".

Several hours later...

I found myself in the bowls of Ikea. This room has none of the glitz and glamour of the upper levels, you instead are surrounded by thousands upon thousands of cardboard boxes. These boxes, as I'm sure you know are labeled with a stupid number and an even stupider name. If you're lucky there's a minute line drawing of the shelving unit on a wee sticker stuck to the box. This meant, predictably, that I ended up wandering aimlessly from aisle to aisle, eyeing each box in turn trying to find Jules, Rörberg, Lak & co.

Eventually I succeeded in piling several trolleys dangerously high with ridiculously large, unbalanced boxes. After a tetter-tottering shuffle through the checkout where I literally only endangered about 5 people, I made my way to the car. Now I'm not sure if this happens in England, but in Denmark's Ikea, some of the items you buy are not available from the cardboard box basement Hades and so you have to venture to an outhouse and wait for many many hours for the item you've already bought.

Due to the waiting times that could gestate an elephant, the tiny car park was pretty full. The problem was exacerbated by some truly horrific parking.



After eventually picking up all the components for my room I then realised that I hadn't taken into account the dimensions of the car at all, so I was reduced to packing, unpacking and repacking the car repeatedly in the car park. At each permutation I would lower a different combination of seats. This made level 50 on Tetris look easy. After about an hour of slowly getting more vexed in the car park I finally managed to squeeze everything into the car.



Although I had managed to physically squeeze everything in, I hadn't quite anticipated that I (and my most generous helper Sascha) had to both fit in the car and I had to have enough space to operate all of the controls. Mum & Dad please cover your eyes for the next sentence. I had to drive the car back to my house with me only being able to see out of half the windscreen and the left side window... that might have been one of the scariest drives of my life! Actually it wasn't quite as scary as driving through Germany whilst eating those god-awful yogurt sweets. Luckily it was a Sunday afternoon so the roads were relatively quiet and relatively quiet for Denmark is like as quiet as a combination of England playing in the world cup final, 6 inches of snow and 9am on New Year's Day on English roads.

However the logistical problems I had just overcome were nothing compared to construction ones that were awaiting me. As soon as I got home I threw myself into building the MDF monstrosities. Pretty soon I realised that I was inadequately prepared for the ordeal, having only a flat-head screwdriver. It was then that I made my biggest mistake; I decided to open all of the boxes and work on every item until such a point as I would need another tool be it a hammer, Phillips screwdriver or allen key. This resulted in my room being filled with a collection of semi-conjoined slabs of wood and a titanic pile of nuts, bolts, washers and screws.

Eventually I actually asked for help and borrowed some tools from my housemate Jacob (a.k.a. lifesaver). This allowed me to seamlessly finish the remaining instructional stages and build all of my furniture. For all of you that are thinking "that last sentence doesn't sound like the whole story", well you know me too well. It turns out mixing together all of the nuts, bolts, washers and screws from 8 different large Ikea kits was a bad idea. This problem was exacerbated by Ikea's refusal to do colour detailed instructions so often I'd be using the wrong connector inadvertently because two kits had similar parts just unnnoticeably different sizes or colours.

Ikea also seem to have a thing for cardboard and sellotape. By the end of my Ikea binge I seemed to have a 4 by 4 by 4 meter cube of cardboard in my room. Also I found that within the cardboard boxes each component was affixed using several kilometers (see I'm European already) of sellotape. Surely if the box is sealed somethings could just be allowed to be in the box without being awkwardly stuck to an inside edge? Because of this my office chair (Jules) very nearly wasn't built. I pulled all of the parts out of the box, fighting off several grasping tendrils of thick sellotape with my trusty, if a little dainty, craft knife. I then chucked the box onto my very own - visible from space - cardboard landfill, that could easily compete with the seven waste wonders of the world (Great Pacific Garbage Patch, New York City Dump, Slough, etc). I then found I needed two different sorts of screwdriver so the project was put on hold. When I returned to it I found that I hadn't actually got any screws. I cursed Ikea's name for about 15 or 20 minutes before, reluctantly, deciding I should just make sure I hadn't just not seen or mislaid the screws. My search led me to cardboard city, where after checking 60 or 70 different boxes, I found the prodigal screws individually sellotaped to the inside of the box!

My Ikea troubles didn't stop there. the final item I had to build was my bed. I managed to get a staggeringly good deal on it. Due to Sascha being a member of the slightly sinister sounding Ikea Family, I managed to get a reduction of almost £140 making my bed cost a little over £50! For anyone who cares its a 200 x 140cm wicker framed bed, very nice. I got the 5 boxes home, no I'm not exaggerating a single bed took up 5 whole boxes! I then eagerly unwrapped and began the arduous task of assembly. After 26 steps and approximately 34 separate nut-bolt interactions I realised that I hadn't got the wooden slats I'd need to support the mattress.

The next day I jumped into Luwig and drove back to Ikea. I then had to queue for the customer help desk to ask for the slats. Now everywhere in Ikea has lovely Ikea seats for you to sit on and I imagine they act as a form of advertisement for their lovely comfy seating. When you're in the Ikea cafe you're sitting effectively on stock. Similarly if you end up waiting in the outhouse you get to enjoy the comfort of some of the higher end Ikea sofas. But the customer desk seems to be the exception, while you're waiting for your number to be called, you get to endure some of the cheapest chairs available in Denmark, these seemed to have been designed with no reference to the human body and as a result don't accommodate silly things like spines. Eventually my number was called and I approached the child who appeared to be on the very first rung of their Ikea career ladder. Although his English was infinitely better than my Danish he didn't know the English words for Mattress or slat. This forced me into one of the most bizarre games of charades I've ever played. I got quite into it and eventually he kept saying a word in Danish over and over again, I looked blankly at him and he did a crudely drawn picture of a mattress sitting on some slats with an Ikea pencil. I was so into the charades that I think I actually put one finger on my nose and pointed at the picture with my other hand. Once we had bonded over charades he was very charming and I soon found myself garnished with two boxes of slats to complete my bed.

Once home I set to work finishing the building project. This I did with only minor injury.



Luckily I had imported some good old English plasters that successfully helped to stem the gushing blood and now I have almost a full range of movement and near complete sensitivity with that digit and only really notice some aching in cold weather.

So now, dear readers, I have a full complement of furniture in my room as well as a couple of lamps. I already feel more settled into my Danish life. In just over a week's time I'll be starting my Danish lessons, but that's another story. I'll leave you with my poorly constructed Ikea Haiku, before I get any complaints let me just clarify that it's meant to be an anti-climax just like finishing a Micke desk.

Ikea furniture
Sleek Swedish style there's no doubt
But where'd that screw go?

Back to School

Sadly I feel the need to start this blog with a flood of apologies for taking such a long time to sit my derrière down and dedicate a few minutes to some serious blog making. Secondly I apologise for this having so few photos, and probably some of the ones I've used are arguably (definitely) completely irrelevant to the text. OK so flood was a bit of an exaggeration, perhaps a trickle of apologies would be more appropriate?

So where were we last time.... Ah yes, your adventurous protagonist had just traversed a continent in a little yellow car with a tarantula.

I arrived on a Friday night and had little time to prepare for my first day at university, the following Wednesday. I read every document, brochure and leaflet, but all I could find was that I needed to be in building 2 for a welcome breakfast at 9:30am...



Wednesday morning arrived far faster than I expected. I awoke early and donned a t-shirt that I'd prepared specifically for my 1st day. As you can see I have fear in my eyes and butterflies in my tummy. The bag in the background is Sascha's and I didn't take it with me (although I imagine it would have made a bit of an impression).

Sadly I don't have any photos of my first day at uni, I spent it mainly with a map in hand and a confused look on my face. When I arrived I found out that the buildings were not necessarily in any logical order and all looked remarkably similar. Each building was branded with a greeting card sized number located on one side. I therefore found myself walking up to a building, circumnavigating it until I found it's number and then, finding it wasn't my desires destination, I'd make a bee-line to whatever building was closest and wandering around that.

Eventually I found building 2. I'd be lying if I said there wasn't the slightest bubble of uncertainty uncomfortably rising in my stomach.





I've learned that generally all Danish gatherings (that don't contain alcohol) involve vast quantities of coffee, occasionally accompanied by dense rye bread and smelly cheese. This welcome breakfast was no exception. I pored myself a coffee and looked on as my fellow students sank enough coffee to get their heartbeats to Olympian levels.

There was then shouts for order, followed by the inevitable housekeeping announcements. my heart sank as about 75% of these were only in Danish. I began to worry that a degree in a non-English speaking country might be beyond me.

Luckily your intrepid narrator resisted the urge to jump onto the next train to København lufthavns and jump on the next plane to Blighty.

In the afternoon I was ushered to a lab safety lecture, mandatory for any science based subject. The lecture was a full 3 hours long. Highlights were few, but luckily there, otherwise I'd have nodded off as I was experiencing a "coffee crash" following the mornings caffeine binge.



We had to watch a video highlighting the potential dangers of work in a laboratory. The video was in Danish, but a resourceful lecturer had come up with the bright idea of creating a powerpoint demonstration for English subtitles. This was amazingly confusing. The TV had approximately a 28" screen and was stood on a waist high stand. The powerpoint demonstration was projected onto a cinema sized (and I mean the size of a cinema not a cinema screen) pull down white screen. Each word of the subtitles dwarfed the television screen.

The preposterous set up was nothing compared to the video however; in one scene a lady was busy pipetting liquids from one tube to another (almost exactly like the background of every sciency news report) when a colleague pushed past her, causing her to stab herself in the hand with the pipette. Liquid was splashed everywhere. Some landed on the floor causing another person to slip up and some splashed over an open sandwich which was placed conspicuously on a desk in the corner of the frame. The video was shot in a 999 lifesavers style with the victims giving awkward interviews to camera, interspersed with the stunt filled re-enactment. All the while a lecturer was trying to duck under the projected subtitles on the wall to click the powerpoint demonstration on after each line of dialogue.



The other moment of respite came when Chemistry professor talked to us about the dangers of fire in a lab. After recounting a grizzly tale of how he once was set alight, but had failed to register where the fire-extinguishers were in the lab and was forced to run from corner to corner ablaze; he proceeded to poor ethanol into a bin and set it alight. He nonchalantly walked in front of the bin and muttered something about needing a fireman. All the students looked on in confusion. His murmuring eventually grew more urgent and one bright student realised the fireman he was asking for was, in fact, one of us. They grabbed the nearest fire-extinguisher, pulled the pin and discharged a cataclysm of carbon dioxide in the general direction of the bin. However, no sooner as the flames were abated the professor struck a match and re-ignited the inferno. Again he mumbled about a fireman. This process was repeated until all except one student had fought the fire.

The professor looked at this student and confidently flicked a match into the bin, it was getting very hot now so he was standing quite far away. Sure enough fire began to lick the air above the bin. "fireman, fireman, where are you?" he muttered. The girl then stood up... she was 6 months pregnant, she explained that if the room was on fire she would probably just leave, and that tackling any dangerous situation was probably beyond her. The professor agreed courteously. He then seemed to turn around and see the, now quite substantial flames; "fireman, fireman, where are you?" however we had all had our turn, so all the students looked at each other. A full 2 or 3 minutes past with us all looking around, too shy to make a move and him repeating "fireman, fireman, where are you?" By now the flames were several feet above the mouth of the bin, the student closest started to look genuinely concerned. He leapt up and discharged what seemed like an entire extinguisher full of carbon dioxide into the room. The sound was deafening and I instinctively flinched, closing my eyes. The air was cold. As I opened my eyes shafts of light pieced the thick smoke, for a second I felt I had awoken in the video for Baker Street.



This isn't actually a photo of the lab after the fire-extinguisher incident, this is pilfered from google images. I'd of thought it would be obvious that a lab probably wouldn't have had a saxophonist in it.

I went that home that evening and slumped in front of the TV... I was exhausted. Imagine my shock when I saw this advert for the Danish electronics and white-goods store Elgiganten.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v7_kwijDswc

(I'm sorry but you're going to have to copy and paste this into your browser, I unfortunately am not good enough at blogging to make this know that that's a link, sorry - maybe a flood of apologies was right?)



Thoroughly strange.

Any how I'm going to call that a night right now, I'm sorry that this hasn't brought you totally up to speed, I still need to tell you all about Ikea and moving house and meeting new people and things, but I'm going to save that for next time (this is like the next time on Hu's blog...) so you all have to keep reading!

Blog 5: Destination Denmark

Hu was just a normal kid, trying to keep his head down and lead a normal life. He wasn't looking for adventure, but adventure was looking for him.



Humphrey was a your typical stay-at-home tarantula. He never got out much and, if he was pushed to admit it, was afraid of the great out doors. All he wanted was to stay under his piece of bark and quietly eat invertebrates, but sometimes you can't always get what you want.



Ludwig Van Beetlehoven started out life on the mean streets of Mexico before retiring to a commuter belt town 30 miles south of London to gracefully live out a quiet life of trips to the supermarket and leafy runs to country pubs for lunch. But the Volkswagen spirit of adventure was ingrained deep within his pistons.



When the call came they all knew what the had to do. Sometimes you have to put aside what you want to do and do what's right.


Or if you like the Lord of the Rings opening:

Hu: I'll go to Denmark but I don't know the way
Tomtom: You have my navigation
Ludwig Van Beetlehoven: And my wheels
Humphrey: And my web

Thus the unlikely fellowship was formed.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Before leaving England I was once again faced with trying to cram an entire life into an improbably small space. This time however I had a little more than 20kg to play with and so managed afford myself space for a couple of luxuries such as speakers and a warm winter coat for the inevitable long cold lonely winter that's fast approaching.

I also managed to persuade my mum to take me to Costco to stock up on essentials like 6 packs of toothpaste, 4 halloumi cheeses and a gallon of mouth wash. Walking around Costco makes you feel a little bit like you're further ahead than you really are - as you walk towards what you think is a normal bottle of tomato ketchup, you stop to pick it up, only to realise you're still over meter away and it's not a normal bottle but a giant two litre behemoth.

It was a shame that I didn't have space for a 45kg bag of rice!



If you ever go to Costco and are hungry, I'd definitely recommend the buffalo wings and BBQ ribs you can buy piping hot there. Mum and I were ravenous after pushing our industrial sized trolly around, so got them for dinner. I would have included a picture but we ate them too quickly and my fingers got covered in BBQ sauce after the first one so I would have got my camera sticky... To quote an inferior products tag-line they were finger licking good!

I spent most of Thursday packing the car. I had to plan this quite well to ensure Humphrey was adequately concealed but also had enough ventilation to allow him to breath. The last thing that I wanted was for Ludwig to become a giant yellow spider coffin. (In the photo below Humphrey's packed in the left hand corner).



It turns out that I probably could have filled up 2 beetles and still have had to make tough decisions on what to take and what to leave. But I was pleased with the level of crammedness of the car, and made sure that I could still see out of the back, as really the last thing I wanted was for Ludwig to become a giant yellow person coffin (sorry Humphrey but that's just how it is).

With car packed I made sure I had my paper work:



And finalised my snacks for the journey.



As Ludwig would be my home for 12 hours straight I planned my snacks meticulously. To keep me awake, if I started to get sleepy I had chilli rice-cakes and strong minty liquorice chalk (skole-kridt), for savoury nibbles I had Twigglets and cashew nuts and for sweet tooth I had Tunnock's Caramel Wafer Biscuits; did you know 5,000,000 are made and sold every week! Of this particular week I had 0.0001% of the global stock of Tunnock's Caramel Wafer Biscuits! I also planned to pick up some Haribo in Germany (its birth place).

I also checked my state-of-the-art digital entertainment system - this would be all that stood between me and total insanity over the next 24 hours.



Here's the instrument panel that would be my connection to Ludwig's moods, I like it's blue glow! Oh and don't worry I haven't run out of petrol, I'd just put the key in the ignition and not turned it yet - otherwise this would be a really short blog!



This just leave the route:


View Larger Map

At 7pm local time I was waved goodbye by my mother and the intrepid trio trundled out of the driveway to start the first mile of this pan continental adventure. The going was good until I hit my first queue as I approached the Dartford crossing - little did I know that this was a sign of things to come.



I got to the Ferry port around 9ish and exchanged an internet print out for a key to my cabin. I drove through, what I can only describe as the most apathetic customs I've ever seen. There wasn't even an official watching TV not waving us through. Instead I was scrutineered by an empty chair, but luckily I wasn't stopped. As I drove up the gang-plank I knew I had reached my Rivendale.



Facts about the ship:

Length - 240m
Speed - 22 knots
Capacity - 1200 passengers
- 230 cars



As confusing as this may sound, this photo isn't actually the ferry I was on, it's a scale model of the ferry on the ferry. I know what you're thinking is there a scale model of the model on the model, but sadly I don't know, the windows weren't real windows on the model so I couldn't look in to check. Also how many things have scale models of themselves inside them? is it only nautical craft?

I parked my car on orange level 4, wished Humphrey a goodnight sleep and began my hunt for my cabin.



My cabin had bunk beds; I chose bottom and my overnight bag chose top. There was compact bathroom with a shower (just out of shot) and complementary Lux shower gel (I know what you're thinking, is this a ferry or a cruise?). The mirror in the cabin was covered in streaks of grey paint, I couldn't work out if this was a stylish design feature or whether a previous occupant succumbed to Cabin Fever and had smeared grey boot polish over it.









After settling in I retired to the Bar to enjoy an approximation of a British ale and a perusal of the internet.



Logging on to facebook on Stena's free internet cause a barrage of security questions involving me identifying you lovely people in various photos... this wouldn't have been a problem had you guys not tagged cup cakes as yourselves or if indeed all photo tags involved your faces!

However after several attempts I managed to log on to facebook and brag about my sea-faring adventure to a couple of you avid readers! It wasn't long before my eyelids began to droop and I hit the wooden hill to bedfordshire - I say wooden but I mean is gaudy gold-plated pseudo-grandiose.



There I had possibly one of the worst nights sleep I've ever endured - The boat rocked around, the duvet was scratchy and synthetic and engines made a constant 300 decibel drone.

I was woken by a multi-lingual tannoy informing me in Dutch and English that Breakfast was being served and would do for another hour so I better wake up. I turned on the TV for something to ignore as I got washed and dressed, and between various Dutch and German breakfast shows found this never ending info-merchal for a CD box set of 100 classic 70s country and western songs. The info-merchal consisted of video footage of each singer singing one line of their featured song, on a loop for ever.



I then went to the Taste Restaurant (Stena's words not mine) to try and get my money's worth from the breakfast buffet. I had 2 sausage, 4 bacon, scrambled eggs, mushroom, beans, toast, croissant with ham and cheese a boiled egg and coffee. My advise would be avoid the scrambled egg!

I then made my way to the car and swapped my English driver aid -



- for my European driver aid.



As I left the ferry I was worried that Gunnar Blomdahl the CEO of Stena had passed away, but luckily the flag was just in front of a lamp post.



I passed through customs with no hiccups and soon found myself driving through the Netherlands. As far as I can tell the whole country consists of green-houses and very little horses.





Everyone talks about Holland being flat, bit it still amazed me just how flat it is. I'm pretty sure no one in the Netherlands has ever lost a marble or ping-pong ball because they stop where ever they land, as they literally cannot roll anywhere. Apparently there is no Dutch word for hill, slope, mound or valley.



The boarder between the Netherlands and Germany took me a little by surprise. I sailed through at 110 kph about 70 mph. There was a building spanning the motorway with militaristic spikes coming out from the roof. The building however looked long abandoned since the conception of the Schengen agreement.

While in my first traffic jam in Germany I saw where Jason's family harks from.



Ludwig was starting to get thirsty, so I pulled into a motorway side Shell garage to give him a drink (strangely in Germany some service stations are only petrol stations, with no toilets and others have toilets but no petrol station). There I tried to implement plan Haribo- there was a shelf full of salty liquorice, which I avoided and grabbed the first gummy thing I could see. which turned out to be:



These might be the most disgusting sweets in the whole world, I actually wished I had bought the salty liquorice. Jogi-Bussi have the same gummi/foam ratio as my favourite Haribo hearts and frogs, but are also "mit joghert". Each sweet has a globule of actual yoghurt embedded in the gummy top.



I can assure you that the yoghurt/gelatine combination is actually worse than you expect. I managed to eat 4 in about 8 or 9 hours - and at least 2 of these were accidental when I was trying to get a liquorice chalk and reached into the wrong bag.

After my sweet disaster I had to stop for what an American would no doubt call a "comfort break". There I found the most confusing tap I've ever encountered.



To make water you had to punch the hand really quite violently. I tried to tentatively to tap the hand, push the hand and high five the hand but nothing happened and a man behind me waiting to use the sink gave me one of those "what are you stupid or something looks". Still once I was done it was back to the open road.

I approached Hamburg at rush our and soon ground to a halt in a sea traffic. Despite the traffic I quite liked Hamburg, the docks had cranes that looked like giraffe.



While in the tragically long traffic jam, I saw two interesting trucks:

This one has the German and internet celebrity Knut on it (although sadly only a picture)



and this one I imagined I could pick up with one hand.





I stopped just outside Flensburg for dinner. This is the last big German town before the boarder with Denmark, and I thought that a German meal would be a fair bit cheaper than a Danish one. The menu was hand written on various tiny blackboards pinned up around the seating area. I quickly established that the lady working there spoke worse English than I did German, i.e. no English. I also tried my best French, Spanish and Danish but to no avail. It was then that I noticed that the blackboards were numbered. Not to brag, but I am pretty hot on German numbers up to and including 12. Unfortunately the lowest blackboard I could find was numbered 15, so I was reduced to pointing while muttering "bitter and danker" over and over again. I hoped I would get at worse a horrible German sausage thing, but my heart sank as the lady grabbed a pale blob of unidentified meat with a pair of stained metallic tongs and plunged it into a deep fat fryer. A few minutes later this was put in front of me.



I cut into it and watched it bleed cheese over my plate. The chips were ok though!



The service station redeemed itself with two things, the first a dog bar (see my German's not that bad).



And secondly one of the coolest German compound words I've ever seen.



After nearly filling my belly and stretching my legs I made for the boarder. Just with as the crossing into Germany, entering Denmark was slightly underwhelming. All that signified the changing of state was an exit on the motorway called "items to declare". One thing that did impress me, however, was the rain that had persisted since England abated, the clouds cleared and the sun shone.



In this picture Germany is to the left and Denmark is to the right.

With the weather improving I donned my sunglasses, turned up the music on my high-tech entertainment system and had myself a right little sing song. With an eclectic mix of Frank Sinatra, Bob Marley, The Beach Boys and Johnny Cash I flew up Jutland and before I knew it was crossing the bridge onto the island of Fyn (pronounced fun but in very strong Birmingham accent).

I stopped to stretch my legs on Fyn and took a lovely photo of Ludwig.



I was eager to keep going, so jumped back in the car and motored on. I had almost completely crossed Fyn when Ludwig started to complain about being thirsty. I decided, as I was only 35 miles shy of my goal I a "splash and dash" (a term Formula 1 fans will be familiar with) was in order so I pulled into to the last petrol station on Fyn. In Denmark the petrol pumps have buttons on them so you can choose between 2 types of petrol from the same pump! How strange is that!



Here's Tomtom's view of the route at this point.



I was about to cross the Great Belt Suspension Bridge. The bridge is actually two bridges with a combined length of over 13 km. Midway between Fyn and Zealand is a tiny island where the two bridges meet. The first bridge, a long low snake over the sea, has a railway line next to the motorway, on the island in the middle this railway line plunges into a tunnel. At the highest point on the suspension part of the bridge you're at the highest point in Denmark! In this photo I'm actually already over half way over the 1st part of the bridge and as you can see the rest of it stretches pretty much to the horizon.



I was very impressed with the bridge, and once on Zealand I knew I was on the home straight. As I left the motorway (or E45 like the face cream) for the last time I couldn't suppress the grin on my face. "I can see clearly now the rain has gone" came on the advanced in-car entertainment system. I had made it!

But I know my task wasn't complete until I knew all members of "Destination Denmark" had survived the journey. I quickly scrambled for the boxes on top of Humphrey's vivarium. I was greeted by a slightly miffed but thoroughly alive spider!



After a chance to stretch our combined 10 legs and rest our combined 4 wheels all 3 of us reflected on our adventure. We were tired but happy. Humphrey and I shared a Danish beer (but if I'm honest I fell asleep before finishing it). No beer for Ludwig though - he's not allowed.





Me tired at the end of a very long day.

If you've read this far I'm hugely impressed! I'm so sorry to have used up so much of your time! If you're a glutton for punishment this week I'll be blogging about my first day at uni and possibly moving house. Thank you!