Den #3: Vejle

The city where our hotel located was called Vejle. Still is. It is pronounced in the German way, almost like the word "whiler". It is a small town actually, near the sea. The only bigger street was a shopping street, or a pedestrian street if you will. Anyway, it was full of small boutiques which attracted tourists. Picture 1 (taken in the largest shopping center of Vejle): When the brand is succesful enough, all you need is a logo!

At first we had a hard time finding a place to eat or drink coffee, but later on we found out that the most of them were already closed. And it wasn't even evening yet! Almost every shop was closing during 5 - 6 p.m. We were really struggling for a cup of coffee. Our male guide had tipped us off to pay a visit to a "hidden" restaurant. It was very well hidden indeed, but we found it the other day, by accident of course. Maybe the expectations were too big to meet, but the food wasn't particularly tasty. And the service was pretty slow. Then we didn't realize that it was the way of the world in Denmark.

The hotel (picture 2) was alright, but the same breakfast buffet every morning started to irritate me. There was not that much assortment to variate a lot. Anyway we needed to eat something, notably those days we stayed in Legoland all day. The service proved to be slow also in the Danish hotel business, and the beds were not made at all during our stay.

Once we ordered a cup of coffee at the reception bar - after we had desperately searched for a coffee bar in the Vejle center. Ten minutes passed we noticed that the woman in charge hadn't even started to make it yet. My wife, the more impatient one, went back to the counter and explained the situation to another woman, who started to make it at once. In a moment she brought it to our table - only to be interrupted by the first woman, explaining that the second woman had made it in a wrong way. She took the coffee away, and came back after several minutes. That was a weird coffee machine she used: you had to push a piston (mäntä) down, but not before the coffee was ready. Hell, we were in such a need of coffee that we pushed it down quite soon and drank it. It didn't taste good, but it was coffee still. And our last cups of coffee there. It was strange because in the mornings the coffee was quite good.

In picture 3, you can see a shop called "Catwalk Scum". I just had to take a picture of it! Scum? What were they thinking of? Bum fashion, the next big thing? These things justify having a camera in your cellular, LOL!

Our male guide (who will co-star in the last episode of my Denmark study) advertised that there were some extremely delicious fish restaurants near the harbor. The fish would be fresh, caught the very same day. Well, we couldn't find any fish restaurants there. Hell, we didn't even find the street the recommended restaurant was supposed to locate. We asked some local people and they didn't know either. I wondered that it sure was easier to say "I don't know" than guide us in English. Finally we entered one sushi bar, which was a pleasant place. Once again, the waitress was polite but the service was so slow.

Since I'm on a roll with pictures (in fact, being lazy to transfer these pics to a PC delayed the making of this post. As you can see, it was worth having them here...), let's have another one. In the last picture, you can see a mixture of cola and energy drink. It promises to be the strongest cola in the world, having 50% more caffeine than leading brands. Not saying which they are, of course. I bought it at the airport, on our way back home. I thought that I might need some extra energy while driving from Helsinki back to Nokia. Yup, it was keeping me awake convincingly. I only took a couple of sips of it to be honest.

When we arrived home, I began wondering that maybe it was too strong a drink to bring to Finland. It's not for sale here, I guess. Then again, why would it be sold at the airport, if it were illegal to carry abroad?

Another thing that caught my eye in the can, was the text "support the breasts". Hell, I support them gladly, LOL! If it wasn't obvious after my previous post. It continues in Danish, but it says basically that 25 öre of each can go to the fight against breast cancer. I support that too, although 25 öre is close to nothing. It's something like 3,5 cents of Euro. It's kind of weird though: get high with caffeine and save some breasts at the same time. I'm all for saving Danish breasts, and as I mentioned earlier, there is a lot of it to save (I'd put a smiley here, but I have promised myself not to use them in my posts anymore. In my comments they adventure sometimes still).