Departure

Hans Aas had told us that tall ships might be passing by while we were at his home and the last day after we had packed the car I walked out back to take a last look at the salt water half a mile from his home. Sure enough a line of tall ships was strung out along the lake.

We drove down to the small town of Hvapslund where a peninsula forced the ships near the shore and watched the procession go by.

 

We weren’t the only ones looking on. People sat along the coast watching the tall ships pass by including this clutch of bikers who were waiting for a ferry to cut through the race and take them to the other side of the lake.

We crossed Limsfjord with the bikers and continued following the tall ships for another 20 miles until we broke from the Limsfjord.

At our last stop, the old Viking town of Ribe, we stayed at a quaint old hotel the Dagmar. We were assigned the Bridal suite where the ancient canopied bed was so short that Claudia volunteered to sleep on a divan so I could sleep diagonally across the bed.

At the hotel we had a chance to watch television in English once again. We watched a little CNN but I went to bed watching a German movie in German without any English subtitles. I’d read about the movie a few years ago. It was a portrayal of Adolph Hitler’s last days in his Berlin Bunker as the Russians stormed the city. Even without subtitles I knew the story well enough that my dearth of German was no handicap.

The next day we flew home.

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