The question was asked: “Forgive me for asking, but what is there in Holstebro?”
I mean, it was a perfectly valid question, really. The only reason I travelled into Holstebro on Saturday was because it was (one of) the most convenient stations for Host as that’s where he works. So this morning, armed with caffeine and determination I hitched a ride on his morning commute to work and set out to answer the question: “What is there in Holstebro?”
It turns out there’s quite a lot for the thrifty Interrailer.
I started with the Holstebro Kirke because churches are generally free.
There has been a church in the Kirkestræde since 1340 on the same site as the current church, which was built between 1906 and 1907 and received special permission from the The Ministry of Church Affairs to be oriented from north to south due to the size constraints of the church square. It’s nice and simple inside.
There is in Denmark a widespread custom of hanging the replica of a sailing vessel in the church sanctuary. In more ancient and mystical times it was believed that an offering of a miniature ship would assure a safe voyage for ship and her crew. This continued into the common era and the models are normally suspended in the nave of a church, a word derived from the Latin navis, meaning ship.
More recently, the mystical side of this belief has faded away, but people remain proud of the craft and where better than a parish church to hang a smaller version of a vessel that once contained a lot of seamen?
So that answered yesterday’s question, as the church with the previously fat priest had one hanging in the nave and it was the first time I’d seen such a thing.
Outside the church there are a few pieces of art to find, and then during my aimless wander over the next few hours I pretty much kept falling over more, mostly sculptures.
They range from little sculptures, like The Peddler outside the church, to massive rock-type affairs sticking out of the ground, to painted gables on houses. I think the whole was a victim of the grey and dreary weather, something which confirmed when the sun came out just as I was making my way to the station.
One attraction was conspicuous by her absence. In front of the Old Town Hall in Holstebro, a sculpture by Alberto Giacomette, ‘Maren å æ woun’ – in English Woman on a cart – used to stand.
Worth millions,for safe-keeping she was lowered into the ground on her plinth every night by a elevator which would then assure her early rise the following moning. She was “unfortunately damaged” during an “incident” when a worker failed to understand why, exactly, she was refusing to ascend one morning despite his repeated thumping on the ground floor button.
The mechanism had failed to open and our unfortunate’s persistent ramming had unwittingly mushed her head into it repeatedly.
En route I discovered one final large sculpture of people standing on what might have been a mushroom, but I’m not entirely sure. It is, apparently, a sculpture of some of the local residents which is quite alarming as one of them has two heads.
At the station I discovered cake which I consumed with a large mug of filter coffee in the lovely station café-cum-lounge with big comfy seats. They also sell Fisherman’s Friends (the plain variety, not the vast array of flavoured abominations that everywhere else seems to have ) so I bought a packet of them before hopping onto the 12:34 to Struer where I changed onto the 13:07 to Thisted.
Host had suggested this journey, in fact, because there’s a lot of hardcore train-on-fjord action along the delightful serpentine route. Thisted is the terminus of the Thy Line, 73.6km of single-track that runs north from Struer cutting through the peninsula of Thyholm and on to Thisted. The town’s name derives from the Germanic deity Tyr, who gives his name not only to a town that translates as Tyr’s Stead, but also what we call Tuesday.
Which today is not.
I had been warned that the train was “a little bit like a bus”, but it was a modern Regional-Express operated by Arriva which stopped at every joyously-unpronounceable station along the way. I did many squees and dashed from side to side of the carriage taking photos as more pretty slid past the windows.
After something of a glum few couple of days I have to confess that a bit of pointless going somewhere on a free train just because was just what I needed. And there is nothing better than watching a pretty part of the world slide past your window. Even a slightly grubby one.
I had another little wander and look in a church before grabbing a sandwich in the Coop and chomping on it just as Host arrived by car to take me on a magical mystery tour of northern Denmark.
One thing I noticed on the train is that there is an inordinate number of wind turbines, a horizon feature I am curiously drawn to. We got to look at what are best described as “seriously fucking enormous windmills” at the Østerild Wind Turbine Test Field then continued to the Thylejren camp, a hodge-podge of self-constructed homes built on a site founded in 1970 by revellers at a music festival who had such a great time that they decided not to leave.
In Klitmøller we visited Cold Hawaii, where surfers were out braving the “bracing” winds of the North Sea while I collected pebbles (souvenirs) and looked at the remains of German sea defences which have slowly sunk into the sand and been consumed by the sea since they were constructed in the 1940s. Those that have not been completely consumed, not along this stretch particularly, are now brutalist art happenings (rather than galleries, I am told) and I’ll make an effort to see one next time. It was peculiar seeing a structure once so vainglorious now just sticking out of the sand as if in some future dystopia involving apes.
We watched the surfers, enjoyed the “light” (I am assured) breeze, consumed pizza, then had a pretty drive home. The Mittens are a success.
I have to make a plan. Host is going to Copenhagen tomorrow and returning on Saturday, by which time I need to have decided what I’m doing next. Not that I’m being thrown out, but lovely as it’s been my pass now only has 42 days remaining and I feel I should extract maximum value from it; my very dull Excel sheet tells me I’d have paid 915€ on point-to-point tickets so far without my pass.
I’ve paid 61,84€ in reservation fees.
I’m tempted to try my luck at the Northern Lights again by going north (strangely enough) and perhaps getting a ferry east. This would mean revisiting Sweden and I’m not actually bothered by that as I’d happily have another couple of lunches in friendly Gothenburg before heading up on a night train to Kiruna or somewhere insane. Finland is no longer having a rail strike which means I could “hop” across and get to Estonia, but I’m slightly annoyed by the lack of a rail connection between Latvia and Lithuania and I think it would be a shame to miss doing a complete circuit on the train (that is, after all, why I bought the ticket).
DB now appears to be on strike on Monday so I can’t go too far south just yet. Meanwhile in France, things are mental so it’s probably best that I just keep pottering about looking for pretty things until such time as it’s safe to go home. I fear I might waste too much time going north when I could be heading south and east to places that are, well… cheaper.
I’ve been playing with Chronotrains and hotel web sites to find a cheap solution to this desire to go north. More decision-making is required.
