Copenhagen to Stockholm
July 8-26, 2022
Mike and Judy Henderson
I'll leave this map on each page so you know where we are.
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July 16, 2022 (Saturday) We've left Norway and arrived in Gothenburg, Sweden. Our morning bus tour began at 10am, a welcome later start, and we'll have lunch at a restaurant in Gothenburg.
On our way to the Masthugget Church, we crossed the Älvsborg Bridge. Here's a view of the bridge from the bus. (Picture taken through the bus windshield)
And a better view in a picture taken from the web, showing the design resembling the Golden Gate bridge.
We arrived at Masthugget Church, which is located on a very high hill in Gothenburg. It was built in 1914 and the tower is 60 meters high.
From the hilltop we had an excellent view of Gothenburg. One thing which caught my eye was this statue of a woman looking out to sea, looking for her seaman husband. The statue is on a column with an overall height of 44 meters. The statue is part of the Maritime Museum and is called Sjömanstornet, or The Seamen's Tower, and is an iconic landmark of the town.
This picture was taken from below, through the bus window, before we went to the church.
From the church, I was able to get a better shot of the statue. You can actually go to the top of this statue, either by stairs (192 steps) or by elevator. If you take the stairs, the advice is to stay close to the wall and don't look down.
Judy and Jean at the overlook.
And Judy and me at the overlook.
A view into the church.
And a closer view of the altar.
When we left the church, we went to the Gothenburg Botanical Gardens. The theme this season was "Darling Dahlias". The medallion shape at the far end of the pond is planted with various plants in a pattern resembling a huge dahlia. A new theme is chosen each year, with a new set of plants.
Here's a statue in the garden pond.
Then we headed to the Sjömagasinet Restaurant for lunch. The original building was built in 1775 as a warehouse for the East India Company. It's obvious that the building has been renovated, but they've tried to keep the atmosphere of the original warehouse, with rough hewn lumber throughout.
We had a nice lunch of Burrata salad, crusted filet of sole, and chocolate desert.
We were joined by Jan, who was a teacher of Spanish in the Chicago schools, and who now lives in Portland. When I asked him what his hobbies were, he replied "Traveling". Later, at a Seven Seas Society get-together, he was recognized for 200 nights on Regent ships! I'd say that's a lot of traveling.
After lunch we rode back to the ship. The Volvo Museum was on the dock, right next to the ship. Why it was located right at the dock area is a mystery to me, but it was very convenient for us.
It's a good-sized museum, with Volvo cars from the earliest days to the present production. Volvo makes large, over-the-road trucks, and those were well-represented, also. I took a lot of pictures but will only include a few here.
That ended an interesting day in Gothenburg.
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July 17, 2022 (Sunday) We're in Kiel, Germany today. Judy has a cousin who lives in Hamburg, and she and her family are driving to Kiel today to spend the day with us. The two cities are about an hour's drive apart.
Kiel has a very impressive cruise ship terminal. Up to this point, the ship has lowered a gangway to the dock for our excursions. Kiel has a "skyway" connection between the ship and the port building, and the building is very nice and modern.
Angela and her family were able to drive right into the parking lot of the terminal and were waiting for us when we exited. Here's Angela, Judy and Conrad in front of the terminal. Thomas was parking the car - I'll have a picture of him later.
We brought them a jewelry box that I had made. (For Angela: The main wood is ambrosia maple, and the top is "wonder wood" - I wonder what it is.)
We drove to Laboe, where the submarine U995 and the Naval Memorial is located. Here's a picture of U995. It's a type VIIC/41, and carried 4 officers and between 40 and 56 enlisted personnel. Where they fit 40 to 56 sailors in this ship is beyond me.
The majority of the U-boats in WWII were type VII's and most were type VIIC. Some of the most famous U-Boat captains were Günther Prien, Otto Kretschmer, Joachim Schepke and Erich Topp.
And just a side note: The German submarine service lost close to 30,000 seamen out of about 40,000 who served on submarines in World War II. That's a loss ratio of 75%, the highest of any military group in World War II. Germany lost 785 of 1,170 U-Boats in WWII.
I took pictures of the interior, but there were other people going through at the same time and they blocked some of my pictures. So, some of the pictures here have been taken from Wikipedia. They were taken when the ship was empty. The aft torpedo tube. The ship carried 14 torpedoes, total.
The electrical control panels.
One of the electric motors.
The diesel engines. It must have been LOUD in here when they were cruising on the surface.
Bunks. There are only sleeping accommodations for eight sailors here. Notice a visitor trying to exit the sleeping area through a small round "doorway" at the end.
The control room and periscope.
The radio room.
SONAR room.
The "head". This was the only toilet on board.
The forward torpedo room, with a torpedo on the left side.
After we left U995, we went to the Naval Memorial, which is located nearby. It's 72 meters high, with an observation deck at the top. It had begun as a memorial to those lost in WWI, but had to be expanded to include those lost in WWII.
Inside the memorial, two of the walls had symbols that each represented a lost ship, submarine or dirigible.
Fortunately we were able to take an elevator to the top.
A view from the top.
We could see U995 from the top of the tower.
Judy and Angela leaving the memorial.
After leaving the Naval Museum, we went to the Open Air Museum Molfsee, which has exhibits of buildings and life in northern Germany in the 1600's.
The entrance building is unusual. I don't know what it is sheathed in, but it looks like steel. The design of this building resembles the old buildings we were about to see.
There are many, many buildings on the grounds. I'll only put pictures of a few of them here. More pictures can be found on the link above. It was a beautiful open air museum with many structures and open fields.
One of the houses, with a vegetable garden.
A windmill. The whole structure of the windmill could be rotated so that the blades faced the wind.
A furniture maker's bench. This exact bench would look perfectly correct in a woodworking shop today. There have been very few changes to the woodworker's bench through the centuries.
A room in a wealthy family's home.
A warehouse for storing (probably) grain. The entry was on one side, large enough for horses and wagons to pass through, and the exit was straight ahead, on the other side. It was very practical.
A wheelwright's shop. There are some modern tools in the shop (more recent than the 1600's). For example, the bandsaw toward the center rear.
A large home with a very expansive thatched roof.
Looking up the end of the "straw" we can see that it is good for insulation, and as the stalks are simply laid one on top of another, they form a watertight barrier that will last a long time.
The train that takes people through the exhibit grounds.
The gatehouse.
Then it was time for lunch, but many restaurants were just closing (2pm). We finally found one facing the water, right on the beach, in Heikendorf. Here are Conrad and I are enjoying Wiener Schnitzel.
After lunch we went back to the port and said our goodbyes. Here are Conrad, Thomas, Judy, Angela and me, with the Regent Splendor in the background. We wished we could have taken them with us, to continue our journey.
When we walked back into the cruise terminal, there were x-ray machines and metal detectors. Also, stations for someone to do passport checks. But there was no one there. We looked around and couldn't find anyone so we just walked through, and to the ship. So much for port security. Actually entering the ship, however, means producing our cabin card with photo each time. That way the ship knows that we are aboard.
That was the end of our day. Janet and Jean went to Lübeck today and took pictures. I plan to post some of their pictures and the story of their day, but that's for later.
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July 18, 2022 (Monday) We arrived at Rønne, Denmark, on the island of Bornholm, this morning about 10am. The ship does not have dock space at Rønne so we'll have to tender in. The sea wasn't that rough, but the tenders were rocking and rolling and bouncing on their trips from ship to shore. I took this picture from the ship as a tender was coming back.
We have a tour on the island starting about 1pm, so Judy and I went ashore a bit early. There were only us and another couple on the tender. We wandered around the downtown area and found a large department store that sold food and clothes. We bought some snacks to take with us on the tour, since we hadn't had lunch.
About 2pm we boarded the bus for a trip around the island. The first place we stopped was Østerlars Church, a round church. Apparently, round churches are fairly common - Wikipedia lists quite a few.
In the center of the church was the baptismal fount. Everything else was around this central area.
The altar was fairly simple.
They had a small organ.
Pews in the round.
Then we drove to Gudhjem and walked around the town. We watched some artisans making fine glassware.
For lunch we drove to Allinge to the Allinge Røgeri restaurant, where we sampled smoked herring and beer.
Jean, Judy and Janet at lunch. If you like smoked herring, this is probably the place for you. Otherwise, not so much.
There's a partially destroyed medieval fortress on the island, by the name of Hammershus, and we headed there next.
The story of Hammershus and additional pictures can be found in the link above.
I met another Regent guest, William (Bill) Shankel, while we were at Hammershus. Bill was an A4 pilot during the Vietnam war and was shot down over Hanoi in December 1965. He spent seven (miserable) years in the Hanoi Hilton, released in February 1973. Upon release, he went to medical school and became a physician, specializing in general surgery. Very impressive fellow. You can see a bit more about him here, here and here.
Here's a picture of Bill that I took later in the cruise.
As a side note, in contrast to Bill's story, I refer you to the photograph called "Burst of Joy" and the story behind it. End of side note.
We then returned to the dock area and took the tender back to the ship. We had dinner in the Compass Rose and then to bed.
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July 19, 2022 (Tuesday) We arrived at Gdynia, Poland this morning. We have an early bus tour to Gdańsk.
To a large extent, Poland is defined (or haunted) by the effects of World War II. The German invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939 initiated World War II.
The Nazis viewed the Polish people as a source of slave labor to be worked to death, while racially pure Germans moved into the area. Hitler claimed that his invasion of other countries was for Lebensraum, meaning land for Germany to expand into.
The Nazis had prepared lists of what they called the "intelligentsia" of Poland - teachers, doctors, politicians, anyone with an advanced education, about 100,000 people, and rounded them up in the first few days after the invasion. Most were executed within days. This is called "Intelligenzakton".
The Jews of Poland were also targeted. At the beginning of the war, there were about 3.5 million Jews in Poland, out of a total population of 35 million - about one tenth of the population. By the end of the war, there were probably no more than 380,000 Jews in all of Poland. Nine out of every ten Jews were murdered. Or to put it another way, if you were a Jew in Poland in 1939 you had a 90% chance of being murdered before 1945.
At the end of the war, a portion of eastern Poland was given to the Soviet Union, and a portion of Germany was given to Poland. This caused a massive migration of people - people who lost everything they had - both Polish and German. Here's an article on Wikipedia about changes in Polish territory.
But enough preliminary information.
We were on the bus by 8:30am and the bus ride to Gdańsk took about an hour. As we left the port, I grabbed this picture through the windshield of the bus. It's a monument to seamen lost at sea.
Gdańsk was essentially destroyed during the war, so all of the buildings we see have been rebuilt after the war. Some were built to look like the original building and some are of modern design.
Our guide for the day is Piotr Marciniak. In real life, he's a cop. He said he does community policing. Professional guiding runs in his family, so during the short season of tourism, he doubles as a tour guide.
We began our tour by walking to the riverfront of the Motława River, and crossed the Green Bridge.
We entered Long Market Street through the Green Gate.
A view back to the Green Gate from Long Market Street.
And a view forward of Long Market Street.
The Gdańsk Town Hall is located on Long Market Street.
Along Long Market Street is a memorial to Daniel Fahrenheit, who invented the Fahrenheit temperature scale. I took this picture from the web because the memorial is enclosed in plexiglas and I had a lot of reflection in my picture.
Alongside the Gdańsk Town Hall is a fountain with a statue of Neptune.
Some of the "buildings" along Long Market Street. These currently are actually just false fronts to large office buildings.
Another view down Long Market Street, from in front of the Gdańsk Town Hall
We left Long Market Street and came to what I call a "Play Fountain". It has many nozzles in the surface that shoot a short burst of water up in the air.
There were four lion statues at the four corners of the fountain. Here's one.
Then we went to Saint Mary's Church, which is one of the largest brick churches in the world. It can accommodate about 20,000 worshipers. The church is hemmed in by other buildings, and I couldn't get a picture of it. This picture, probably taken with a drone, was taken from the web.
A view toward the altar.
A closer view of the altar piece. The guide explained what the picture represents but I didn't hear all of it. The female figure in the center is Saint Mary.
A 24 hour, one hand, clock and a calendar. The clock is the Gdańsk astronomical clock built between 1464 - 1470.
A very ornate organ in the rear of the church.
A painting in the church. Those who lived a good life go to the left, all others go to the right.
After leaving the church, we went back to the Long Market Street and passed by the Great Armoury.
We went into an amber jewelry store. This is one thing that irritates me about some excursions. They take you to a store with a schedule of about an hour there. Maybe some people are interested but most of the time people are just waiting to get moving again. Regent isn't the only one that does this. When we went with Tauck to Morocco they did the same thing.
Here the son of the store owner is demonstrating how they polish the amber.
Judy and I had an ice cream from a store across the street, so it wasn't a total loss.
We exited Long Market Street through the Golden Gate and caught the bus. Our next destination is Oliwa, where we'll hear an organ concert.
We arrived at the Oliwa Cathedral.
The view as you enter the church.
A closer view of the altar area.
The organ. It is reputed to have 7,000 pipes.
At 2pm, the organist began the program. Here are the pieces played:
1. Bach - Toccata and Fugue in D Minor
2. Schubert - Ave Maria
3. Jones - Intrada
4. Bach - Air on the G String
5. Charpentier - Te Deum
6. Morricone - Gabriel's Oboe
7. Handel - Hallelujah
After the concert, we boarded the bus for the trip back to the ship.
Janet and Jean were not feeling well, and cancelled their plans for dinner at Prime 7, so Judy and I went without them.
Here we are in the restaurant. The waiter took the picture and he was shooting into the bright window so we're very washed out. Also, beautiful background of the dock loading area.
Judy took this picture of me with better lighting.
That was our day.
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July 20, 2022 (Wednesday) We're in Klaipėda, Lithuania this morning.
We woke up to some bad news this morning. Janet and Jean tested positive for COVID and will have to quarantine for five days.
This page is full so I'll continue the story on the next page.