Epilog

So what did we learn from Wanderung 18? Well, of course, one thing we learned is that Hamburg is "home", at least for us. Monika comes from there and I've visited so often and had such a great time with my relatives there that Hamburg is also a second home to me. Heinke and Gustl are always game to wander around with us, and somehow on every trip we seem to see new aspects of that very old city.

But the remainder of this Wanderung focused on areas explored long ago by the Vikings. Vikings established trade routes in the Baltic Sea since at least 800 AD They plundered where they could and traded where they couldn't, but nowadays, of course, the coasts of the Baltic Sea are quite peaceful and well worth a visit. Tallinn, the charming capital of Estonia, had a nice old-world flavor to the section of the city within the old city walls. If you don't mind some hill-climbing, Tallinn was a very walkable city and we enjoyed rambling around despite the pouring rain. I would like to revisit it, of course, on a nicer day!

St. Petersburg, the erstwhile capital of Russia, had some extremely impressive sights. The Hermitage we visited during the day had collections so extensive that it would really take days or even weeks to see properly. The ballet we saw that evening was simply delightful, although I expect the performers get tired of dancing the same old stuff for us tourists during the tourist season. I would have loved to just walk around and wander through St. Petersburg to get a better feel for the city, but that would be extremely difficult both because visiting Russia requires a visa and because the new cruise ship terminal is at least a couple of miles from the center of the city, making any self-guided walking tour almost impossible to construct. We didn't see any evidence of bus service out to the new cruise ship terminal although taxi service was certainly available.

The cruise ship terminal in Helsinki is also a mile or two from the city center, but in that case a local bus can be used to get to within a couple of blocks of the dock. Walking to see the "Church in the Rock" added a couple of miles onto our walk, but if you used the city buses and trolleys you could see it plus the old town area with much less effort than we did. If you are looking for handcrafted items or just a (relatively) cheap snack, you shouldn't miss the marketplace at the pier in the old harbor area. Next time I would like to get out into the countryside a bit and get a feel for rural Finland if I can.

In Stockholm, the "Hop On, Hop Off" boat worked perfectly to get us from the cruise ship dock to the center of the old town in Gamla Stan and then around to the island where the Skansen is located. The street route is much less direct than the water route of the Hop-On Hop-Off boat, so I'm glad we took the boat and saved our energy for walking in the really pretty parts of Stockholm. We would certainly like to revisit the Skansen park, but for that I would really like to have at least half a day so that we could really watch the artisans work, take a leisurely look at the exhibits, and so forth.

It was wonderful to have three full days in Copenhagen. It is a pretty and very walkable city, and the bus and rail public transportation network can easily get you to the city center from the airport out to the southeast or from the cruise ship terminal on the northern edge of the harbor. Now that we know the secret of those "clip it" tickets, we would have no hesitation in staying anywhere on that transportation network and just shuttling into the city center to see the sights. I certainly enjoyed seeing the Nyhavn and Christianshavn areas of the city plus Rosenberg Castle with the Swedish crown jewels, but I really wanted to get to some museums besides the Naval Museum we saw this time. Next time I would also like to revisit the Tivoli amusement park and maybe even do some window shopping. If you do visit Copenhagen, however, remember to be very careful about the bicycle traffic! Folks like us from the U.S. are not used to watching out for bicycles, and bicycles are much quieter than cars so you don't necessarily hear them coming. As I found out, that stealthy approach can be dangerous if you wander into the streets trying to take the perfect picture of something!

In Dover we really made a very short pilgrimage to Canterbury. Canterbury Cathedral was the most impressive cathedral that I have ever seen. It is smaller than St. Peter's Cathedral in Rome, of course, but somehow the rows of graceful columns in Canterbury Cathedral make if look more like a classical temple of some kind. I found the interior awe-inspiring, and that effect on the parishioners was probably even more the case when the cathedral was first built centuries ago. The town of Canterbury also has many charming old buildings plus the remains of the old city wall and fortress to add some variety.

In Ireland we visited both Dublin and Belfast, and although both cities were "Irish" in some sense, they were more marked by their differences than their similarities. Dublin was a quintessentially Irish city. The river walk there was very pretty and Dublin Castle had an impressive variety of architecture. Unfortunately, since we visited on a Sunday the churches were being used for services and we did not get to peek inside those. Next time I would definitely like to have the leisure to visit some of the museums in Dublin; in particular the Writer's Museum and the Viking Museum both looked interesting.

The folks in Belfast really made us feel welcome by providing free shuttle busses into town, good maps for walking, and even live entertainment on the dockside. Belfast was much smaller than Dublin, but by the same token more walkable. We saw the pictorial legacy of The Troubles, and clearly there is residual resentment if not outright hostility that will hopefully not derail the current peaceable, if uneasy, coexistence of Protestants and Catholics in Northern Ireland. Rambling about the city, we particularly enjoyed walking along the garden sections and especially the graceful old wrought-iron hothouse with its exotic plants and flowers. But we also liked the harbor area, which was surprisingly photogenic. All in all, we liked Belfast more than we had expected to and felt it was definitely on a par with, or even more enjoyable than, Dublin.

Sailing on a huge ship through a very modest storm around Iceland to Greenland showed us that the Vikings must have been absolutely crazy to take on the ocean in those open longships. Our huge, heavy ship was being tossed around pretty well, and the Vikings in their overgrown cockleshells must have been chucked about far, far worse. Nevertheless, they not only made those voyages of exploration but also settled islands stretching across the North Atlantic from Norway to Iceland, Greenland, and what is now Canada. The hope and/or desperation that drove those expeditions must have been fantastically strong for them to brave the high seas in those tiny, flimsy boats. Predictably, the proportion of ships lost at sea on those voyages was rather high, at least for the longer expeditions. But sheer bravery and motivation is not always enough to win the struggle against nature. In the end, the ultimate survival culture in Greenland was the Inuit culture rather than the Viking culture.

Qaqortoq was by far and away the most exotic port on our journey. It was a lot of fun getting to know the Inuit folks, their culture and their Danish compatriots at least a bit. Greenland also featured astonishingly beautiful scenery and vast vistas and landscapes that really took our breath away, although part of that might have been the steep climb to the top of the ridge! We had both pictured Qaqortoq as a backwater fishing village on some muddy river delta, and I'm happy to say that our expectations were never more wrong in our life! We had such fun there that I really would like to return to Greenland to see and compare some of the other towns. Of course, I would someday still like to see Iceland, where the Viking culture did survive, and compare both its geography, culture, and people to that Greenland. Unfortunately, that will have to await some future journey.

St. John was a part of Canada we had never seen before, and the historic port area was well worth visiting. I would certainly like to return on a day with better visibility to walk up to the top of Signal Hill for a great panoramic view. Susan and Richard enjoyed their drive up the coast and the rental car place was right downtown, so that would be a good way to see a bit of the Newfoundland countryside if we can return some day.

In New York I had great plans, but coming down with a cold put the kibosh on anything more strenuous than the short walk around the Red Hook neighborhood that we ended up making. That was very disappointing as I have never yet actually visited the Empire State Building, the Statue of Liberty, or any of the wonderful ethnic neighborhoods in New York that I have heard so much about. Of course, much of what I've heard is from New Yorkers, so I have to take it with a grain of salt! In the end, we saw a lot of seaport cities on Wanderung 18, and each one had its unique points of interest that made our visit well worthwhile.

The gear we had taken along worked flawlessly. I was particularly happy to have a pocket-sized GPS that I could just turn on anywhere in the U.S., Canada, or Europe and get the detailed, local map of streets along with my current location, direction, and speed. I occasionally even used the address-finding feature of the unit and the "find points of interest" feature to locate grocery stores, restaurants, and that sort of thing. The Garmin Nuvi 270 that did all that functioned seamlessly as we crossed continents and did not appear to suffer at all from the rain, salt water spray, and general jostling around it was exposed to on the trip. The maps on the Nuvi do not, however, include topographic lines and that was one feature I missed. Topographic lines, once you get used to interpreting them, will help you recognize the features in any landscape no matter where on Earth you are. That is particularly useful when you are in an area such as Greenland where there are almost no roads but lots of features like mountains that you could use to keep yourself oriented if the map had topographic information. Still, in all the major cities we could orient ourselves by the streets and the Nuvi was fantastic for that.

Although everything worked well, we didn't use some things as much as I had thought we would. We never used our binoculars and the new 2600 milli-ampere-hour rechargeable NiMH batteries I used in both my shaver and my toothbrush were so good that I never had to take them out and recharge them. Since those are the only AA batteries I was using on this trip, I never used the AA battery charger and could have left it at home. Similarly, we only used the MP3 player and speakers for about 2 evenings on the Crown Princess despite spending many evenings in our cabin. At that rate, I'm not really certain it is worth the trouble to take them with next time.

We continued to use Baby, our laptop, intensively during the trip as it was the main vehicle for backing up pictures from the cameras and for both Monika and I to write our daily journals. We don't really have any backup system if Baby fails, so it did give me a start when it failed to boot up one morning. Fortunately, removing and re-installing the battery fixed the problem, but that made me wonder if we really should bring another laptop along "just in case". That would, of course, noticeably increase the weight and bulk of our electronic luggage which we are trying so hard to keep down. However, using chips rather than disks for the secondary backup of the camera pictures saved a noticeable amount of space. Instead of 10-15 CDs, we used a set of maybe ten 2 and 4 gigabyte SD chips that Monika could easily keep in a pocket of her purse. When we returned home we saw also saw 8 gigabyte SD chips that we will probably shift to as their prices drop below the $20 range. Taking 4 or 5 of those along on the next trip ought to cover our needs even with the larger file sizes of the pictures from my new Olympus 510 Evolt camera.

Speaking of cameras, I used my new camera a great deal on the trip and was rewarded with some very fine, 10-megapixel pictures. Although the Single-Lens-Reflex camera body is bulky, the camera is surprisingly light, probably because the internal components are all digital, and the quality of the optics was really superb, much better than any of our other cameras. But I was reluctant to expose a nice camera like that to abusive conditions like sandy beaches, blowing debris or salt water, and I also found myself reluctant to take it along in possible high-theft environments. I mean, after all, my birthday and Christmas gifts for the next several years are all tied up together in that camera, so having someone walk off with it would be very painful indeed.

Fortunately I still had my trusty old Panasonic Lumix TZ-3 to take with for all those occasions. I say "old" although the camera was purchased just over a year back, because I have put an enormous amount of wear and tear on it in that short period of time (22,000 pictures). I tend to take a lot of different shots of each topic, and I bracket the exposures of almost all the shots I take during the day, so the number of images really adds up. The Lumix's survival is really rather impressive testimonial to its build quality, but it did suffer from being used in the pouring rain for the day in Tallinn, Estonia. The water seemed to seep into the contact points of some of the buttons and shorted them out, and ultimately some of them ceased to function, so I ended up purchasing the successor model, the Lumix TZ-5 to take with on Wanderung 19, our trip to Italy in the spring of 2009.

As for you, Gentle Reader, I hope you have enjoyed our travels along the water routes of the old Vikings. I also hope you will someday get the chance to pack up your troubles in your old kit bag, grab your camera, and head off for parts unknown. Perhaps you will also see haunting images such as the scenes of fire and ice that so entranced us on this trip. If you do, please send us some pictures or, even better, send us your electronic journal and the pictures! We’d love to see them! Cheers!