Motourama Part 12: Celebrating The Danish Way
Hello family, friends and followers! We have arrived in Nordjylland – Esben’s part of the country. This is going to be a more relaxed part of our motorcycle adventure around the world, with a lot of hygge, Danish traditions, and parties. It does, however, have an irritating twist at the end.
When we arrived in Sæby, at Esben’s mom’s place, we unloaded all of our bags and switched to comfortable clothes right after the welcome hugs. Delicious food and beer was served immediately after. Perfect. After the dinner we made our way over to Esben’s dad’s place and were greeted with even more welcome hugs and delicious beer. Perfect, again.
The next couple of weeks, we spent relaxing with Esben’s family (real hygge – cosiness), visiting friends, celebrating the world trip as well as our farewell, working on both the bikes and on the first Travel Stories.
We even helped Esben’s dad out with a bit of renovation on the outside of his house. The walls needed a new layer of chalk, which we applied in a flurry of brush strokes and slick cooperation. Reward: pizza and beer and the satisfactory feeling of having helped out with a large and cumbersome task.
The freshly chalked house of Esben’s dad. The facial expressions are the ones of boys trying out a new toy for the first time – our drone in this case
There was also plenty of time to try out the drone – our E2-D2, as we have dubbed him – and the result was visually quite pleasing, we think. Take a look for yourself:
Friends’ house from above. Note the other drone next to Falkor.
On a hilltop in Aalborg with the gang.
The same evening this photo was taken, as some of you might have seen on facebook.
Esben’s childhood house – the red tiled house surrounded by trees with two and a half visible cars in the driveway.
The little brook, that Esben and his friends used to dam up when they were kids, much to the irritation of the people living upstream, where the water would overflow into their garden. A circus is in the process of setting up camp.
We also celebrated the 30th birthday of Esben’s earliest friend with a surprise visit, along with a couple of other friends, to shower him in pepper. It is a bit of a tradition in Denmark, to shower someone in spices, when they turn a certain age without being married. At 25 it is cinnamon, and at 30 it is pepper. The process is usually not particularly pleasant for the birthday kid, as it often involves being showered with cold water before the spices flow, as to make it stick better to the skin. Esben’s friend took it in stride and stood his ground, as he was literally peppered with pepper and hosed down with a garden hose.
This photo was taken exactly 5 years earlier, as he turned 25. Poor soul.
But, alas, the hygge couldn’t continue on forever. The reason we spent a couple of weeks in Denmark, was due to a visa application hold-up. If you remember our “illegal” border crossing from Germany to Denmark (link here), it was due to Esben’s passport being at a travel agency, specialising in visas for Russia and Mongolia. Well, we had sent in our passports to this travel agency in the start of March to both get Russian visas, and for Esben to get a Mongolian visa. The Russian visas were no trouble at all, and were expedited quickly. We weren’t told anything regarding the Mongolian visa, and assumed (which is dangerous to do, if you have a schedule) that everything was in order. It wasn’t until the date for our departure from Berlin in the middle of April grew closer, that Esben called the travel agency to ask when the passports would be ready. This call, already back then, resulted in a bit of a shock; they were not able to apply for the Mongolian visa until 90 days prior to entering the country – an important bit of information, that they had failed to notify us about. As we are planning for an entry in early August, that meant an early May application. This was a bit of a problem, as our planned border crossing between Germany and Denmark was on the 1st of May. There was no way to have the passports ready by then. Well, nothing we could do about it, and they promised us, they would have the passports in our hands by the mid of May. We should just give them a call in the beginning of May to let them know the address in Denmark to send the passports to. We had given them a call, as soon as we came to Sæby, and got the delivery address sorted out. The middle of May came around, and we gave them another call to hear when we could expect our passports. To our surprise and dismay, the answer was “In the beginning of June”. Apparently the 90 days prior to entry had been reduced to 50 days, and again, they had not informed us of this, although they had known for two weeks. We aborted the whole endeavour of getting a Mongolian visa through them, there and then. In order to not wait unnecessarily long for the passports to be send to Denmark, we had them send to Berlin. This meant that we would be visiting the city, that we had already said goodbye to twice, again. A sour end to a sweet time in Denmark.
We packed the bikes and left the next day, which will be the content of an upcoming tale of our motorcycle adventure.
Until then, make sure everything is on time.