Northern Europe 2019

Deb, Elizabeth Kalowski (a friend we'd traveled with before), and I flew out of Portland about noon, Wednesday, June 19, on Air Canada to Calgary, Frankfurt, then Copenhagen for a few days before shipping out for Baltic ports.

In Copenhagen, our first task was visiting the old town on a tourist open bus made up to look like a small train.

Deb and Elizabeth rode in the cars, I took a turn in the cab.

We started in City Hall Square with bronze dragons on the balustrade guarding the Hall.

We visited Tivoli Gardens at its 10 a.m. opening

and headed straight for the Dæmonen roller coaster

where Deb scored a front row seat.

The coaster included an Immelmann loop, a vertical loop, and a zero-gravity roll as well as the usual stomach-churning drops during its one-minute-46-second run.

Deb loved it.

We wandered the pleasant 15 acres and found a restaurant (among many) where we ordered the traditional smørrebrød.  Yummy.

A peahen and chicks visited while we ate.

At the National Museum, we examined an Aurock skeleton from 8600 B.C. found in a peat bog at Vig, as well as artifacts from Viking days.

We stopped at Rosenborg Castle, a pleasure palace built in the 1600s by Christian IV. 

In the Great Hall, silver lions guard the thrones, at royal funerals they guard the remains.

A lathe used to turn ivory was on display,

as well as lovely ivory ship models.

And, a first for me, was the royal commode, one of only three in the entire castle, all of which empty into the moat.

In the King's garden outside, a pipe band complete with beavers played the changing of the guard.

We toured the waterways of the city, starting from Nyhavn, one of the more picturesque areas.

We sailed by any number of buildings of architectural or historical interest, most of which floated right by me, except for the Church of Our Savior in Christianhavn and "the most photographed tree" in Copenhagen─only a moment is available to photograph the church as the boat goes by before the tree photobombs the view.  The tree has its own web site─you can Google it.

We took a turn past Hans Christian Andersen's Little Mermaid, a four-foot bronze, a regular target of vandals: Its head has been cut off at least twice, an arm was detached (and replaced), its rock was blown up, it has been regularly splashed with paint of various colors and once had a dildo attached.  The crowds on land make it almost unapproachable but we had a good view of its back.

Despite the crowds, the city and its waterways are remarkably clean.  We passed kayakers policing the water.

Not far away, a refuse burner turns trash into electricity in a structure so large a ski run was constructed on its roof.

Bicycles everywhere.  Bikeways separate from highways.  Special bike stoplights on the bikeways, smaller than auto stoplights.  Several times we almost got run over by bikers before we learned to pay attention.

Sunday, we boarded the Regal Princess, 19 decks high, 1083 feet long, about 3800 passengers and a crew of 1300.

A cruise ship is an interesting concept, essentially a "destination" hotel complex that provides endless entertainment and shopping possibilities: shops sell clothing, jewelry, souvenirs; restaurants and cafeterias provide food 24/7; swimming pools, hot tubs, spas, movies, live theater, games, dancing, auctions, casino action, and on and on.  And while you're sleeping, it moves from tourist attraction to tourist attraction and if you want to leave the ship, provides guided tours.  We had ordered bubbly and Hors d'Oeuvres.

Our first destination was Stockholm, via its port city, Nynäshamn.  Most memorable for me was the Vasa museum, built to house the Vasa, a 226-foot-long warship that on August 10, 1628, sailed about 1,400 yards on its maiden voyage, and sank.  Largely forgotten until rediscovered in the 1950s, in 1961 it was raised.

Thousand of artifacts found in and around the hull included clothing, weapons, cannons, tools, coins, cutlery, food, drink, and six of its ten sails.  In the museum, along side the ship was a model, complete with cannon and sails.

The ship was to be the pride of the Swedish navy, heavily gunned, richly painted, and decorated with extensive carvings, which survived 343 years in the icy airless water.

The next day we awoke in Finland, where we arranged to take "the Best of Helsinki" tour along with 42 other tourists in a large bus with a driver and guide.  Our stops included 20 minutes in Senate Square, dominated by Helsinki Cathedral,

and a ten-minute visit to Sebelius Park, lined with tour buses, to see the Jean Sebelius Monument, created by Finnish artist Eila Hiltunen.

What was supposed to be an abstract representation of the composer's music was seen, when the sculpture was unveiled in 1967, as organ pipes. (Sebelius composed little music for the organ.)  To satisfy the outcry, Hiltunen added a representational Sebelius face frowning at the original sculpture.

We visited Temppeliaukio, also known as the Church in the Rock and Rock Church, a Lutheran church opened in 1969, the interior carved out of solid rock, illuminated by light that enters through a skylight surrounding the copper dome.

We bused to Porvoo, one of six medieval towns in Finland, first mentioned as a city in the 14th century.

Although the Old Town is known for its 18th and 19th century buildings and 15th century cathedral, much of the town has burned from time to time and rebuilt.  It now caters to tourists.

The next morning, we woke in St. Petersburg and prepared for two days of exploring.  We took a cruise on the Neva to see the city from the water.

We sailed by the Hermitage (from left to right: Hermitage Theatre, Old Hermitage, Small Hermitage, Winter Palace), and enjoyed the sun on the river.

We visited Peterhof Palace, started in the 18th century, pretty much destroyed WWII, rebuilt by the Soviets.

The Grand Cascade contains 64 fountains driven by gravity-fed water.

The Samson Fountain in the center, created by Mikhail Kozlovsky in 1802, based on an earlier lead model, depicts the moment when Samson tears open the jaws of a lion, celebrating the Russian victory over Sweden in 1721.

A 20-meter vertical jet of water, the highest of the Peterhof fountains, shoots from the lion's mouth.

In WWII, the statue was looted and never found.  In 1947, a replica by Vasily Simonov, based on drawings and photographs of the original, was installed.

On the way to Catherine Palace in Pushkin, about 30 kilometers from St. Petersburg, we stopped at the Royal Court Carriage Exhibition in the former Imperial Duty Stables, built in 1824.

Among the carriages was a ceremonial one-seat sleigh built by the Markov brothers in the late 19th century in Moscow.

Catherine Palace, originally constructed in 1717, was modified and expanded repeatedly.  According to Catherine II's memoirs, "That house has been pulled down six times to the foundation, then built up again."  When the Germans retreated in WWII, they left only the shell; the Soviets rebuilt it based on archivists' documents.

In one of the rooms we came on a harpsichordist playing.

Perhaps the biggest attraction is the amber room.  Originally constructed in Prussia in 1701 for the Charlottenburg Palace in Berlin, it was given to Peter the Great in 1716.  After several renovations, it covered more than 590 square feet and contained over 13,000 pounds of amber.  It was called "the eighth wonder of the world."  Looted in WWII, in 1945 it disappeared in Germany.  In 1979, the Soviet government decided to construct a replica which finally opened to the public in 2003.

We were ushered into The Great Hall, or Light Gallery, as it was called in the 18th century,

given a glass of bubbly, and entertained by a string ensemble and a dance group.

The Great Hall, intended for balls, formal dinners, and masquerades, is approximately 1,000 square meters with 696 lamps on chandeliers around the mirrors.

About an hour and half before it opened, we went to the Hermitage (the second-largest art museum in world─the Louvre is the largest, New York's Met is fourth).  Visitors, about four wide and a hundred yards along the front, were already waiting.  Our guide had arranged to get us in early so we went to the front of the line, were given stickers, and walked through the inspection port.  We descended into the Treasury, room after room of gold knickknacks and baubles collected during Tsarists' days, then followed our guide's mantra ("Keep walking, keep walking") upstairs to look at other treasures.  Among them was an elaborate animatronic, the Peacock Clock, featuring three life-sized birds, acquired by Catherine the Great in 1781, still working and shown daily on Russian TV.

We stopped by the Kolyvan vase, eight and half feet tall and weighing almost 19 tons.  It took two years to extract this slab of jasper from the rock, a thousand men to haul it to the Kolyvan lapidary factory in about 1843, and twelve years to produce the finished work.

We walked by masterpieces such as Da Vinci's Litta Madonna

and I found a number of bronzes that I wouldn't mind taking home

but finally the crowd and the guide's mantra overcame my involvement with art and despite the warning we had been given that we could not go off on our own in Russia, I fled to a lounge while Deb tried to find something of interest in the gift shop.

She failed.

The next morning we were in Tallinn.  The town, population about 400,000, was founded in 1154 and now claims to be the best-preserved medieval city in Europe.  The view from the upper city is mostly of red roofs rising above trees.

One of the highlights of the upper city, the Alexander Nevsky Cathedral, was so disliked as a symbol of Russian oppression that in 1924 it was scheduled for demolition but lack of funds and the building's massive structure held up action.  After Estonian independence in 1991, the parliament again discussed demolishing the cathedral but action has not yet started.

In the streets, buskers and mummers play to tourists.

The town wall, dating to 1265, and the narrow streets were interesting.

I particularly liked the bronze monks by the wall in the lower town.

Sunday, June 30, was a "sea day," given to lounging around the ship and eating well, but was not without incident.  A medical emergency required a passenger to be medevacked.

The ship slowed from its usual pace and the top decks in the stern were closed.  Two EMTs rappelled down, then a basket was lowered.

A few minutes later the basket was raised, the EMTs followed, and the helicopter flew off.  The operation took about half an hour.  An announcement over the boat speaker system said the ship would be about half an hour late reaching port.

The next morning we were in Warnemunde, Germany, and while most of the tourists took buses to Berlin, we went to Schwerin, capital of the state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern.  Our goal was Schwerin Palace, located on an island in Schweriner See.  We first took a brief boat trip to see the palace from the water,

then we toured the interior.  Perhaps most interesting was the palace ghost, Petermännchen, a small poltergeist shown here in a painting on a cupboard door.

Schwerin was granted city rights in 1160 by Henry the Lion, honored in the city square by one of the stranger monuments one might find, showing Henry being greeted at another town, whose residents resented him after their town lost prestige in competition with Schwerin.

After another sea day, we docked for a short stay in Oslo.  Although we had charted a tour, slow learners that we are, we had learned a lesson and on own took a taxi to the viking Ship Museum arriving about 10 minutes before it opened, beating the crowds of tour buses that soon filled the parking lot and surrounding streets. 

The museum displays the Gokstad, Oseberg, and Tune ships from Viking burials, plus sleighs, a cart, tools, textiles and household utensils.

The ships were actually sea-going, brought ashore and buried around the years 800 to 900, excavated from 1867 to 1903 and have had varying degrees of restoration.

While the ships are impressive in size and construction, I was more taken with the elaborate decoration of items buried with them.

We took a taxi to the Munch Museum, arriving shortly before it opened and well before the hordes of tour buses.

Even so, the wait to be processed took a bit of time: security is tighter than TSA security checks in the U.S., a result of the theft in 2004 of Edvard Munch's iconic paintings.  Security film shows the thieves making off with the works,

the theft described by a Norwegian tabloid "as easy as robbing a kiosk."  The damaged painting were recovered two years later and are now on display.

Unlike the prime attractions of many museums, viewers can approach the paintings closely and see them hanging openly.

When the ship docked again in Copenhagen, we flew on KLM to Warsaw via Amsterdam, stayed overnight, then took a train to Krakow, going second class in a compartment for six.

The country looked much like southern Illinois or Indiana, long rolling hills with farm fields and small towns.

In Krakow, we stayed at Piano Guest House, a few blocks from the train station and Old Town

and around the corner from Cimetarz Rakowicki, a 100-acre cemetery in the center of Krakow, a national monument to the dead of Poland, both the famous and the less famous, including those lost in wars, epidemics, and uprisings.

Rows of WWI dead moved me.

The next morning at about six, we joined a group of about ten to visit Auschwitz.  Originally a Polish army camp in the town of Oświęcim, Auschwitz became a complex of 40 camps, but we were scheduled to visit only Auschwitz I and Birkenau.  Today, trees grow at the entrance, partly obscuring the sign "Arbeit Macht Frei."

In a small effort of resistance, the Jewish iron workers who made the sign forged the B upside down.  The site is maintained by the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum, established in 1947.  In 1979, UNESCO named it a World Heritage Site.

As our guide took us through the grounds, he explained what we were seeing.  At places where human remains were collected─for instance, the mass of hair from victims─he asked that no photographs be taken.  Otherwise we were free to take photographs as we wished.

The numbers of individuals murdered is only an estimate.  Many victims were not at the camp long enough to be counted and many records were destroyed.  Among the structures still standing is a "shower" room.

We were going next to Birkenau, which had been mostly destroyed at the end of the war, but I already had too much of gratuitous cruelty and murder and chose to sit at a cafeteria while Deb and Elizabeth went on.  They saw the original Birkenau entrance,

a freight car of the type used to transport victims, and remains of destroyed gas chambers.

I spent the time talking with a young guide who had led tourists through the camp for 17 days in a row and needed a break.  Among other things, he told me that in the five years of operation, 22 tons of gold were shipped from the camps to Berlin.

The next day we took the train back to Warsaw.

We walked through Royal Baths Park with the Frédéric Chopin statue, the first monument in Warsaw destroyed by the Germans.  According to legend, the next day a handwritten sign was found at the site that read: "I don't know who destroyed me, but I know why: so I won't play the funeral march for your leader."  The original mold for the statue made it possible to cast a replica, placed at the site in 1958.

 

 About 85 percent of the city was destroyed, including Old Town, which, rebuilt, was listed as a World Heritage Site in 1980,

and today caters to tourists from throughout the world.

After all the gruesome reminders of WWII we encountered, the most restorative for me, strangely, was the Mały Powstaniec (Little Insurrectionist) in Warsaw, a bronze designed by Jerzy Jarnuszkiewicz, funded by scouts, of a boy clutching a captured Sten gun and wearing a German helmet and too-large boots, commemorating the children who served, inspired by 13-year-old corporal Antek, killed in action, August 8, 1944.

We flew home Monday, July 8, on Air Canada: Warsaw, Toronto, Portland.