Saturday May 2nd 2015. Still in Saeby, 9 km South of Fredrikshavn

  Tosca hunting wales  Rudi and Paulette arrived. Back to basics: wine!     Wine from a different angle

Nowadays anything better than a shelf I consider a good mattress. The sun was shining right through my thin curtain. So a non-walking day started after a good night’s rest. Though it is still pretty cold, the Danes have spring in their heads. In shorts, with barely dressed shirts they are having breakfast outside in a morning temp. of quite a bit below 10 degrees C. And I’m a little worried. I still have to arrange so much, but O.K., I also have time for a few days. Tosca has produced some droppings, swimming in a puddle of urine just next to the mat right inside the front door. Surely because of half that deer yesterday. First cleaning it up. Because I have no water, I have to get it 100 m. away with a bucket. The turd taken away. Then getting another bucket of water, to do my own laundry, the clothes. Then for the third time to the laundry room to wash myself. Then a walk with Tosca, so she can still discharge the remaining “excrements”. That filth has to be picked up with plastic gloves and next again for the fourth time to the sanitary areas, because that’s where the bins are. Clothes hang out drying in the sun. Buying breakfast at the grocery store 800 m from my cabin. Meanwhile, it already is a few hours later.
But now about that concern. Tonight cineast Rudi and Paulette will arrive. They probably don’t want to sleep under the open sky. So googling for alternatives for them. And then like all hell arranging my booking for the ferry to Oslo in Norway before I’ll have to wait still longer. At first I wanted to leave on Sunday. But Rudi couldn’t make it from the Netherlands to Saeby that soon. Monday the ferry was already fully booked. Tuesday the ferry did not sail. Then finally on Wednesday, but I do not want to wait here at the camp still longer, eating out of my nose. So better get the ferry booked now. Last night wifi did not work, but for reasons that I don’t understand it does work now. Since I have to be at the ferry very early on Wednesday, and it still is 10 km. from here, I should  better get a room, at my last night in Denmark, in the youth hostel Frederikshavn, near the ferry terminal. According to the website there are no dogs allowed. To hell with it, until now all youth hostels always solved the Tosca problem. And then I want to search for the addresses of the ferry terminal and the youth hostel. Can I cover those 10 km, that early in the morning? When I arrive on Wednesday evening in Oslo, how do I get a car there and will the car agency still be open? With that car I drive over to my Oslo youth hostal for Wednesday night, but first I’ll have to arrange that today or tomorrow. Thursday morning I can go to the Norwegian Trekking Association to get the key that fits all of their mountain cabins. But what address the Norwegian Trekking Association  has in Oslo? And will they still be open? When those things are fixed the time is ready, more than ready, to go to daughter Marieke, 7 hours by car, to coache back again the same distance after two days. Because I will pass through snow, I still have to take care of winter tires.
And then I suddenly realized, that if I pass on Wednesday with Stena Line Ferry to Oslo,  Tosca’s worm treatment is over 5 days old and that is too old. I hope I’ll find excuses to convince the border officials. They won’t throw Tosca overboard. It’s absurd anyway, the whole worm thing. The border between Sweden and Norway is about 2000 km. long and lots of foxes, badgers, wolverines, roe deer, elk, rats and even a few bears and wolfs cross that border, together with their intestinal worms. Do you think those thousands of Swedish animals do not have worms? And those few domestic dogs and – cats from the EU do?
Ow, all that will keep me busy today. And Tosca will still want a walk. For example to the sea, a couple of hundred meters from my cabin. Also shopping for supper, or do Paulette and Rudi want to go out for diner? Does that mean Turk / Italian, because there is nothing else around here.
Why so extensive this description? To make it clear that this is not just a relaxing holiday walk. Exhausting days of walking, constantly hoping to find addresses with food and drinks on the go (so you do not have to drag it all along), shelter, sms, emails, blog, searching for the right route and all that for as little money as possible. Continuously. A kind of survival from day to day and from hour to hour. I like it here, but just relaxing, definitely is not the right word. I mention that because there are people who seem to envy me for my wonderful vacation of one year. If that’s what you want, one must look for something else.
The evening with Rudi and Paulette I’ll describe tomorrow morning. But I can already say that we had diner, you never guess where, at an Italian restaurant. Bona sera signorita, kiss me good night.