Pre-trip food, culture and a great playlist

Looking back on it, the things we did before the trip were almost as much fun as the trip itself.

We got all kinds of books out of the public library and supplemented those with online resources, like TripAdvisor and Yelp. We bought a few of the traditional travel guides but really didn't use them.

Ordering promotional materials through tourist web sites for the various countries took quite a bit of time and yielded mixed results. We got better info through TripAdvisor reviews on things like which caves would be full of tourists and which were likely to be less busy.

Seeking out and cooking food from these countries made the months before the trip very enjoyable. The flavours were familiar but had a twist. Especially delightful were Icelandic skyr, Alsatian Baeckeoffe, Belgian beer, Dutch Stamppot with Rookworst and Danish Smørrebrød. Trying the food once in Europe, in the villages where it originated, was fantastic.

We tried to watch movies that would get us ready for the trip, but didn't find much that the whole family could watch. Ben Stiller's The Secret Life of Walter Mitty was fun (especially the longboarding in Iceland). The Swedish/Danish crime drama The Bridge was excellent to get a sense of Copenhagen and Malmö (not for kids). The original Swedish Wallander, set in Ystad in the south if Sweden, was also terrific (also not for kids).

We watched a bunch of travel-related YouTube videos for places we would be visiting. Most of the time, the videos were for people focused on just walking around cities and visiting castles or were for people with really young kids. Not that helpful for our planning.

We listened to audiobooks set in Europe. We particularly liked Marina by Carlos Ruiz Zafón. We did a bit of library book reading on Van Gogh and other artists whose works we were hoping to see in the Rijksmuseum.

I started reading Anthony Doerr's All The Light We Cannot See before the trip and finished it during the flight home. It was a fantastic read for travelling across Europe.

What turned out to be a favourite thing was the playlist we built with artists from the countries that we planned to visit. So many great artists that never get played here or suggested through online sources. None of them were playing live where we were, but I would try to arrange for that next time.

To save you having to dig up these songs, have a listen to the Team Chapman Travels 2016 Playlist.

Last, but definitely not least, we need to mention Washed Out's fabulous song, Amor Fati. The video for this song is a delightful teenage travel adventure, shot in Iceland.

Nóa Kropp

It was with trepidation that we opened this bag as this candy suspiciously appeared like the other chocolate-licorice delights from Iceland.

These are surprisingly very good. Kind of like malted milk balls with with something a little different.

7/10

Kyoto - Nano Paper Model

Second in the set - beauty in miniature

Sirius rjómasúkkulaði

Our bag of candy has finally delivered for Iceland. Rjómasúkkulaði sounds like an Icelandic volcano, but in fact it means milk chocolate.

Very good milk chocolate that makes us think of one of our fun shopping trips to Bonus in Selfoss. 

Sam with his Island UEFA Euro 2016 rally cap enjoying some chocolate.

Inari Shrine - Nano Paper Model

The factors that come into play when planning for a trip can range from the practical (must stop for food/gas at place X) to those that are attached to a story thread.

The only reason we flew into Munich was because it was the closest airport to Neuschwanstein Castle.  The castle is a major tourist attraction for sure, but we would have avoided it had it not been for the models that Will had built in the past.

After Lego started to get dull, we bought Will a number of nanoblock model sets.  Nanoblock is a line of construction toys manufactured by Kawada Co. Ltd, a toy company based in Tokyo, Japan. The bricks in these sets are extremely small (you need tweezers to put them together). His favourites sets were/are the world landmark models and for his birthday two years ago we bought him the Neuschwanstein Castle kit. This baby consisted of 5600 pieces and it took him months to complete it. So, when we were asking the boys about what they wanted to see in Europe, the castle was near the top of Will's list.

When I was in Japan in May, I came across the nano paper kits also made by Kawada and picked up a number of them for the boys try out.  Will's first attempt was of an Inari Shrine.  All that is in the kit is laser cut paper and detailed instructions.  Two solid hours were needed to put this together.

The end result is pretty cool.

The box

The finished model

Will and Ludwig II

Rugbrød - attempt #2

So despite my enthusiasm for the Venø starter last weekend, the final product was a little flat in the taste department.  My guess is that Venø did not have enough time to act on the sugar in the flour.

So here we are - a beautiful Saturday and the second batch is in preparation.

Venø seems to be quite happy in our fridge.  Upon retrieval this am, there was a layer of alcohol on top of the starter, which is a good sign.

So I added two tbs of Venø to 100g of rye flour and 100g of well water, mixed this together and let it set for four hours.

After four hours, I added the following to the mixture:

500g well water
400g rye flour
100g of oat groats
15g sea salt

Mixed together and added it to a greased bread pan.

So here it is in the bread pan after 6 hours. It has almost doubled in size and has a heady, fermented smell.

The baked loaf is quite a bit lighter than the last loaf.

Smashing. Good flavour with the sourness I was expecting.  

Euro Trip Pack List

Here are some packing suggestions for families planning a similar trip.

Prepare and print out a day by day itinerary to try to get a good mix of activity, driving, culture and food. We used the clear document holders pockets amd included extra for tickets and receipts. Include hours of operation for everything and call them the week before (we found a lot of places were closed.) Include rainy day activities. Something we really liked was including on our daily list specialty foods from the areas we were travelling through to make sure to try them. We did sausages and beer in Bavaria but I regret not taking time to try real Black Forest cake.

Good cell phone and data access was central to our trip. Make sure it won't cost too much by using a SIM card bought in Europe.

If you're driving, bring a GPS with current Euro maps loaded and add all of your AirBnbs and the main destinations for your trip. When you're tired of trying to read road signs, just follow the GPS. It saved our bacon many times.

Buy tickets to museums and book activities as much as possible in advance to ensure you get to do what you want, when you have time to do it. For example, we booked horsebackriding in Vik in advance. They are a small operation so we wouldn't have been able to go if another group had arrived first. We arranged to go blokarting in the Netherlands but there wasn't enough wind for us to go on the day we had chosen to do it, so we missed out.

When on our way to Ameland, the ferry was very busy and so called the bike rental place while on the ferry to reserve e-bikes. We were really lucky to get them because they are popular and extra fun to ride.

Check if the places you want to visit have tours in languages that you understand and find out when they are offered, because it might just be on weekends.

If you like picnics and want to make best use of grocery stores, bring a large cooler bag, freezer packs, a few Thermoses, water bottles, a cutting board, utensils, plates, bowls and, of course, a good corkscrew.

Bring a first aid kit. We didn't need it but that's a good thing.

Bring a Bluetooth speaker so you can have tunes wherever you go.

Since we were staying in people's homes through AirBnb, we brought a pack safe with a strong key lock. We locked our valuables inside of the car when we were in Amsterdam and didn't really use it other than that, but it was a nice option to have.

It was nice to have brought maple sugar in little present bags (and thank you cards) to leave for the AirBnb hosts and others that we met.

Everybody had a day pack and duffel bag. We packed extra duffel bags for gifts and momentos and brought one hard-sided suitcase for fragile Items. If we had brought hard sided suitcases, we wouldn't have had enough trunk space.

Kropp med pipardufti

I don't know if there is a causal relationship between Iceland's love of licorice-based candy and how well their football team is doing at Euro 2016, but this candy is a zinger.

Post taste testing comments are in the realm of "medicinal", "instant coffee with tar undertones" and "just nasty".  One dissenter in chez Chapman remarked "very yummy".

So 3 out of 4 reviewers gave this one a 1/10.

The dissenting east block judge gave it a "solid 8/10".

Nippon

"Kind of like kinder egg chocolate mixed with rice crispies." Will and Sam rate this one an 8/10.

Smiley Monkey Candy

Take a close look at the monkey on this package. Notice his smile.

This is a very salty black licorice snack.

Nørregard applesin/citron

Denmark. Orange and lemon. No sickly black licorice aftertaste.

7.5/10 rating.

Geocaching

It is difficult to describe geocaching to the uninitiated in a few sentences.  It is part treasure hunt (you are looking for something hidden), part exercise (to get to the hidden caches you may have to hike several kilometres), and part adventure travel (you go to out of the way places you would not normally visit).

Basically, geocaching is a real-world, outdoor treasure hunting game using GPS-enabled devices. You navigate to a specific set of GPS coordinates and then attempt to find the geocache (container) hidden at that location.

We have been doing it as a family for the past couple of years and it is lots of fun.  One of the things that makee it fun is the use of "trackables".  Each trackable is etched with a unique code that can be used to log its movements as it travels in the real world.

Before our trip, we bought 8 trackables to release in geocaches in the countries we visited. With trackables, you should define a goal - essentially where or what you want the trackable to travel to.

With our 8 trackables, we defined the goal as to make it back to a geocache in Ottawa where we would collect them and use them on future trips.

You can check the progress of each of our trackables by clicking on the following links:

Team Chapman #1

Team Chapman #2

Team Chapman #3

Team Chapman #4

Team Chapman #5

Team Chapman #6

Team Chapman #7

Team Chapman #8

William at the Kongsvegur geocache in Iceland

 

Freyju Möndlur Klassic

I am sure these kidney beanesque candies from Iceland appeal to someone, otherwise they wouldn't sell them.

Hard outershell with an initial caramel flavour, these degenerate into something that is akin to black licorice oil on your palate.

A perfect treat for someone with short term memory loss.

-1/10 rating

Octopus Balls

No joke, this is what the Japanese translates to on this package - Octopus Balls.

Before I went to Nagoya, the boys gave explicit instructions about what they wanted me to bring back.  Kracie food kits were at the top of the list (see our first blog post).  Go to YouTube and enter kracie into the search function and you will see how cool these kits are.

So here we go.  Iron Chef William has googled English instructions for this kit and is underway.

Frankly, this is like an edible playdough kit with an Easybake oven overtone.

 

Melanie just passed by with a concerned expression on her face.

Octopus parts have been formed. Dough is being made.

 

Final product is surprisingly good.  Mellow seafood flavour with a curry sauce.  Japan, you crazy. 

The bread

We made our first rugbrød using the Venø starter this past weekend.

Friday evening involved mixing 1 tbsp of our Venø starter with 100g of rye flour and 100g of water and letting the mixture set over night.

First thing on Saturday morning, we mixed the Friday component with 400g of rye flour, 100g of cracked rye and 500g of water.  This was put into a buttered bread pan, covered, and set aside for 3 hours.

After 3 hours, the wild Venø yeast was very active and the dough had a distinct beery aroma.

In a 350F oven, we baked the loaf for 60 minutes.

The resulting loaf looked good, although in the taste department it was lacking the full punch of lactic acid that I was expecting.  This means that I need to leave the dough in the bread pan for a longer period of time in order for the yeast to work their magic.

Venø the starter

You can't bottle up your vacation and take it back with you but this might come close.

Last winter I tried to capture wild yeast to make traditional Rugbrød.  There wasn't much to it - mix equal parts of rye flour and water together, expose to the air, feed twice a day for a week and then use it to make bread.

My starter worked, but it was lacklustre.  It took twice as long to work as what most recipes called for but the final product turned out ok.

Fast forward to our vacation and our second to last day on the island of Venø in Denmark. I found some flour in the cupboard, mixed it with water and let it sit in a wild flower patch next to the cottage with a steady ocean breeze blowing over it.

On the day that we left, I took a teaspoon of the exposed mixture and put it into a sealed bag and brought it back to Canada.  

I inoculated a new rye flour and water mixture with the Venø mixture and the results have been spectacular.  It doubled in size in less than 12 hours and produced all of the tell tale signs and smells of being an exceptional sour dough starter.

First loaf of bread will be made this weekend.

My starter - now called Venø

Skalle

These are interesting little devils.

They are wine gums that are a mix of licorice and sour berry that we picked up in Sweden.  You would think that black licorice mixed with anything would be a disaster.

So these were a surprise - confusing flavour at first that was pleasantly nice after awhile.

Consensus is an 8.5/10

Look O Look

Not sure I would even classify this one a candy. The boys picked it up in the Netherlands. William said eetpapier translates into edible paper. 

According to Sam, this one rates a 2/10 for taste and 6/10 for novelty (tongue tattoo was a hit)

Gammeldags Lakrids

As part of the post vacation therapy regime, we are going to be posting reviews of some of the candy we have brought back from our trip.

"Gammeldags Lakrids" is a potent black licorice candy. I am not a fan of black licorice - others in the Team Chapman household are.

When I opened up our hardcase after we arrived, everything smelled like black licorice.  This sealed bag of Gammeldags Lakrids" was responsible hence the first in line to be consumed.

Black licorice lovers rate this 8/10.

A few more watercolour sketches

It was so beautiful and warm on Venø! These were done on the beach in front of and around the cottage.

Back in Iceland

The flight to Reykjavik from Billund was about 2.5 hours.

Sam's lunch included a play set. I played with it more than he did.

Icelandair has been a pleasure to fly with.

The Home of Lego

It was a short drive from Venø to Billund.

Billund is where Lego was invented and the Billund Airport has a pretty cool Lego store. 

Our flight was delayed by 45 minutes  but we should have no problem getting our connecting flight in Reykjavik.

Lunch was smørrebrød at the airport.

All packed

View out of our bedroom window.

Mønsted Kalkgruber

We started packing up today and cleaned the car out.

We drove 40 minutes to the Mønsted Kalkgruber, which is the the largest underground limestone mine in the world.

There are more than 60 kilometres of underground paths. Concerts have been held underground and part of the mine is being used to age cheese.  There is also a very cool multimedia theatre.