Denmark

Gedser, Denmark

Ruda left Paris one spring to travel north-east along the Marne and down the Moselle, eventually to join the Rhine at Koblenz on her way to Scandinavia. On the Rhine she was encouraged on her way by a ‘helpful’ current of over seven knots, despite which she did make it to the bank occasionally to visit Bonn and Cologne, and to moor beneath Frank Gehry’s ”New Zollhof” in the Media Harbour in Düsseldorf where the crew thoroughly enjoyed that town’s very good pork, bread, beer and cakes.

None too soon she swerved out of the Rhine current and headed into the more tranquil waters of the Ruhr, the Mittelland Canal and the Elbe-Lübeck Canal to arrive in Lübeck, the informal capital of the medieval Hanseatic League. After loading up with marzipan, the pride of the present-day city, she ventured out onto the brackish waters of the Baltic to visit the northern German towns of Wismar and Rostock before hoisting her Danish courtesy ensign and heading north across The Sound to the island of Falster.

After a pause in the southern Danish port of Gedser in early summer, Ruda continued her Nordic adventure by navigating the eastern coast of Denmark to Copenhagen, where she found a berth in Nyhaven in the centre of town, where she felt herself completely at home among the old boats that line that quays below some of the most charming architecture to be found in that mercantile, sea-faring city.

From Copenhagen, Ruda travelled across the Øresund to Swedish Malmö before turning north towards Gothenburg and threading through the islands and skerries of the Bohuslän coast as far as Strömstad where she crossed the border into Norway, and steamed up Oslofjord.