September 14-15, 2018

As hinted in some of the earlier posts, we are taking off to Europe for another lengthy trip, finally returning to Melbourne on 31 October! But before we get into the standard aspects of this Blog, Julie in fact left around two weeks earlier. Her destinations were Estonia and Rotterdam before joining us in Copenhagen on 15 September.

Estonia

The main purpose was to meet the family of her daughter’s latest beau – Sim. So here is the family shot:

Julie looks like a little shrimp here but she is not, standing 5’6″ which is nothing compared to Sim, 6’7″ and the rest of the family.

Sim also organised meetings with the people in Estonia who are quite advanced in automated vehicle technology and development. He also took her out to dinner:

Rotterdam

Julie also spent a week in Rotterdam doing a Doctorate level course study. A few snaps.

Flight to Europe

I was flying to Europe with Singapore Airlines, first to Singapore and then onto Copenhagen. I am joined by Julie’s Son, Ryan, and his partner Tanika, who are along primarily to help us move around the heavy suitcases.

I was in a bad mood since Julie had recommended buying a special electric toothbrush, which she had done 2 weeks earlier, but 6 different shops denied there was any kind in the entire airport. As a result I started hitting the Bloody Marys once I got to the lounge and then on the plane. Along with a meal and watching two movies and several wines I managed to make it to Singapore without sleeping.

Ryan and Nika were on a later flight than me and there was some risk of them missing the connection in Singapore. So after some time in the lounge I went to the departure gate for the next flight that we were sharing together and waited. And waited. Finally they showed up as just about the last to get to the plane, I was the last person to board from Business Class.

The flight was targeted to be 12 hours over night. In spite of it being late, I had a wonton noodle soup with some more red wine, but not a lot. I then watched a really dumb movie, Deadpool 2, decided to go to sleep and did really well getting somewhere between 4-6 hours of sleep – amazing really. There was only about 2 hours before we landed when I got up.

No photos of the food on the plane, I was out of practice at this Blog thing. Suffice to say that all that I had, and that was a lot, was Asian and quite reasonable.

Day 1 in Copenhagen

We landed at 6:15. There was a fair wait until the bags came off the airplane. Ryan and Nika eventually reached the carousel just as the bags started coming out. Nika pulled mine off for me, it was nearly the first on the carousel. Their bags came out in reasonable time, a relief after the delays in Singapore for them. We decided to take a taxi to the area where we were staying. We arrived there about 7:30.

Now this was a real problem since check-in time was 3:00 PM. However, our host, Palle Loran, said we could check-in early and organised for us to contact Cetina who would handle check-in for us. We decided to go into the local coffee shop which strangely did not open until 7:45. After a flat white and a phone call to Cetina we were into the apartment by 8:30 AM. Pretty good really.

Cetina was a delight showing all the details of the apartment, primarily to Ryan. It was also a true BNB situation with lots of fruit, cereals, juices and even some beers. Great stuff.

I don’t remember much about the day – I think I was in shock / jetlag from the flight. Julie showed up at around 1:30 and I think we had a nap until later. She decided we should go to the Tivoli food court for dinner which was a bit of a walk away.

I had frikadelle – supposedly light veal patties, but they were as light as a lead balloon. So Julie decided I needed more food.

Well, that was that, the start of the great journey.