Week 3 - Germany and Denmark

Greetings, or Hej! From Denmark.

Last week, we spent the majority of the week driving the looooooong road through Germany to reach our first stop; Aarhus.

We left Switzerland to drive into Germany last Saturday, and not long after we crossed the border we promptly broke down! We had been dealing with a coolant leak for a while and so had been topping up every 200km. Whilst we were on the Autobahn, our serpentine belt died (which we later found out was due to another mechanism not spinning correctly) meaning that our water pump stopped working, battery light came on the dash and we lost power steering. Luckily, the autobahn is a straight road, as trying to steer any way other than straight was like trying to steer a boat on land. We spent 2 nights camped outside a Mercedes garage courtesy of superb breakdown cover Ayman organised, and by late Monday afternoon we were ready to go! We spent the night in Bruschal, Tuesday and Wednesday night at a camp ground in Stuttgart and then drove over 1000km to make it to Aarhus, stopping at a truck stop on Thursday night.

Our journey through Germany - the red paper plane is roughly where we started and the blue flag is our end destination!

Germany was a bit meh – we didn’t have anything planned as we had both been there before but Ayman did manage to visit the Mercedes and Porsche museums whilst we were in Stuttgart!

Our time in Aarhus was lovely and peaceful, we stayed in a small village called Odder on a campsite for 2 nights. We did some much needed ‘van chores’ – charging batteries, grocery shopping, laundry and emptying the toilet. We visited Aarhus city centre and went shopping for amazing mugs, had pastries and coffee from David Bread Head in the park, took photos on the oldest street and had delicious street food for dinner.

The oldest street is called Mollestien - some of the houses here were from the 1300/1400

Despite it being a rainy day the colours on the houses still looked bright and lovely!

Our next stop was in Odense. We got dinner at a nearby restaurant to where we were stealth camping for the night before spending the next day in Odense city centre! Odense is the home of everything Hans Christian Anderson - we spent a lovely (albeit cold) time in his dedicated park, walking around where his house is and enjoying the views of the cobbled streets. Once we were finished here, we started the drive to our next stealth camping spot for the night, enjoying the views over the bridge as the sun began to set.

More lovely old streets - I love the colours on the houses!

"blink twice if you're a hostage"

He's a big deal in Odense

Our next stop in Denmark is Copenhagen which we are really excited for; we have 4 nights here and have some fun stuff planned! Thank you for reading and if you want to see more photos they are all on our Instagram account barksandbackpacks.