Berlin to Stockholm
16 AUG - 18 AUG
Back in the Summer of 2009...(oops, hold it right there, did I just go a little 'Bryan Adams-esque' on myself there?) - Lets strike that from the record and how about I just go with the Summer before last, my cousin, Big V , (I call him that because he's significantly taller than me, although that's no real achievement, and his name is Vladimir, I'm sure you're intelligent enough to figure out the rest), made his way to Australia for a few months. During his stay we decided to head south over the new years period, taking in the epic administrative and bureaucratic highlight of Canberra, the capital that just keeps on giving (mostly nightmares of the insanely banal), the much suprising emerald coast down near Bega/Eden, Melbourne ofcourse and then onto one of the top ten drives on the planet, the Great Ocean Road. As you probably know, 'one' may well be the loneliest number but when it comes to two in a vehicle over the course of several days and cabin fever suddenly strikes at the heart of every best intention, well sometimes you're able to find fault in the most solid of foundations, please see Jordan-Elisher circa 2002. Thankfully at the end of the journey there were no reprisals, there was no hate mail, no swearing or cursing of one another's mother, which between you and me would have just been plain weird because of that sister relationship thing! It was all just cool and it ended up being a great experience.
Hamburg on the run
Tearing up the bitumen of the south-east we strolled in and out of many topics of conversation such as whether the EU was a social and political experiment that was just waiting to implode, the genius that is Jim Jarmusch, whether ninety mile beach is what it proclaims itself to be (Wikipedia it's arse if you're interested), and Big V's interest and love in the diversity of terrain of our continent and some of its incomrprehensible distances. For me, eh, Australia is home but I don't quite get the same sense of wonder or pleasure in driving the 1000kms between cities and then walking into an identical K-mart or chatting with a guy in the same language and with the same accent of the place that I'd left 10hrs earlier. The mentality, the culture and the attitude remains the same. I guess being stuck on the world's largest island tends to do that. Europe ofcourse is a vastly different proposition, whicn in turn strangely reminds me of a quote by Ronald Reagan when he returned on from a 'foreign affairs' exercise to South America back in the early 80's, it went something like, 'You'd be surprised at their attitude down there, they're all different countries!'. Now apart from Ronnie believing in alien life forms, his wife running the country with the aid of clairvoyants, and Arthur Laffer selling him the 'benefits' of supply-side economics, I 'get' the dumbass quote for its simplicity however. In Europe you can move 30-40kms, encounter a new language, new mentality and have whole gammut of culinary treats ready to go. So when Big V sent me a message via facebook a few weeks back and suggested that he'd pick me up from Berlin and that we'd drive the 1500+ kms up to Stockholm all I could say was, 'Oh yeah, ROADTRIP my man!'.
Border hop - into Denmark
The Great Belt bridge - between the islands of Zealand and Funen - Denmark
The challenge of taking on this type of drive is right up my alley. If something is a little difficult to do or is a bit out of the way to reach then sign me up for that wacky adventure and I like the fact that Big V has the same sort of mindset when it comes to these things. V's perspective might be a little different from mine however in the fact that for many years Serbia had been under sanctions and it's only been in recent times that it's citizens have been allowed to travel the EU freely without having to encounter the nightmare of filling out 50 page visa applications for the countries they were wanting to enter. Never the less, when V turned up just after midday at Berlin's Tegel airport it was high fives all round and then onto the business of sorting ourselves a course onto the E26 and pointing ourselves north to Sweden via Denmark.
Heading west out of Berlin and making the most of the opportunities that German autobahn's present, we were gliding along like a 747, pushing the pace somewhere close to the 160kph mark. Still, when you're moving along at 160+ and then get taken at speed by a by a guy called Helmut on his way to a pretzel appreciation convention, well, you've got to ask yourself questions. I'm not sure what those questions maybe, although perhaps I'd first go with why I nominated a dude call Helmut to be pushing 240kph+ in his Volkswagon Golf? Sometimes the sums just don't add up to what the total should be. With that said the German motorways are a lesson in what the world should be and what Pepsi Max has been pushing for the last decade, 'a world without limits'. Cutting through what appeared to be the boring city of Hamburg and then heading north via Neumunser and Flensburg, we covered the near 600km run in something like 4hrs and a few listens of Powderfinger's live Vulture St album. I tell you, after not really having listened to any music for nearly two months and constantly being in the midst of flashbacks to the Mohammed bros of Chefchaouen belting out 'Berber hits of the 70's' on their two stringed violin and tamborine, this CD was like an auditory orgasm. I owe my cousin big time for having racked that album from me last year!
You know it
The Drogden tunnel, setting you up for Oresund bridge - Denmark
....and then...and then my friends we hit Denmark. Than land of the 'nice Germans'. Now really, what the hell has Denmark ever offered anybody other than a few finalists in the Miss Universe contest, the Laudrup brothers and some funky currency called kroons which kind of remind you of silver doughnuts. Via road there's really only one way to get in and out of Denmark and that's to take the E45 up the guts, turn right halfway up this great state and then make your way to Copenhagen. I wonder how our little hometown girl Princess Mary travels when she's galavanting across her new homeland? For Big V and myself we were kind of dismayed at the average state of roads across this little multi-islanded state. Having to limit yourself to between 110-120kph when you'd just broken every speed limit in 98% of the countries around the world was kind of disappointing but on the plus side, do these guys know how to build a bridge or what? The Oresund bridge connects Denmark and Sweden between the Danish capital city of Copenhagen and the major Swedish industrial city of Malmo. In term of function the bridge connects the highway network of both countries allows Sweden to be connected by road to both Central and Western Europe quite directly. This cable-stayed bridge is quite an engineering feet, nearly 8kms in total length (7,845m), it runs from the artificially built Danish island of Peberholm and covers approximately two thirds odf the distance between the countries. The remaining distance is completed under Drogden Strait on the Danish side, with the Drogden tunnel picking up from where the Oresund bridge drops you off. There about 4kms of tunnel on the Danish that takes you some 270m below the strait and leaves you virtually on the doorstep of Copenhagen. Quite an intruiging run when you consider the country skipping involved.
Oresund bridge - Denmark/Sweden
Oresund bridge - Denmark/Sweden
Pulling into Malmo (Sweden) somewhere after 10pm we were getting onto making the critical decision of whether we should bunker down for the night or whether we'd go for broke and try to make the Berlin to Stockholm run in one stretch. Eyeing off the 700kms+ from Malmo to Stockholm my cousin made the call that I kind of secretly hoped/knew was coming, 'lets go for Stockholm!' - 'I love the way you think big brother, lets do it'. Off we set into the middle of a dark Swedish night with fits and spurts of fog attacking us quite a distance up the coastline. By the time we made a turn inland and lined up with Jonkoping (a few kms up the road from Huskvarna) we had entered a new day and my cousin had been in the hotseat for well over 12hrs. I'm not sure what his physical condition or mental state was but the Swedish roads were having an hypnotic effect on me, so much that I found myself smacking my head against the head rest for the next two hours as I drifted in and out of sleep. I felt like a vegetable for having ridden shotgun for so long and there was nothing I could do to keep myself awake. Thankfully somewhere about 3am Big V came to his senses also and we parked our vehicle for a few hours rest somewhere close to Norrkoping.
'Somewhere in Sweden' - moose and deer abound!
Our 'digs' in Stockholm
Big V on the pier, post recovery
In what turned out to be a relatively mediocre dawn we started up again sometime after 5am and made up the remaining distance to Stockholm in somewhere close to 2.5hrs. The weather for the final stint was kind of odd with rain coming down in 3-4min spurts, stopping for 30-45 mins and then starting up for another 3-4 mins, kind of like an 80yr old man with a handful of viagra. Thankfully we made it to our destination without a problem and by the time we had located the residence of my aunt's friend who was kind enough to be putting us up for the next few days all we good really do on arrival was smile, say thankyou for the hospitality in advance and crash out on the beds that she pointed us to. Nodding off at somewhere between 9-10am my cousin, barring the two fitful hours of sleep in the Swedish wilderness surrounded by wild moose and deer, had been motoring for 22hrs. He had already started snoring as he was falling from a prone position onto his bed, and as for me, well I was thinking that he had just enough 'Serbian craziness' in him to try and convince me of taking the return leg from Stockholm to Belgrade in one hit...but that was going to be a discussion for another day.
