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The Northern Finale
  • Dominick Pisa

The Northern Finale

Copenhagen, Berlin, & Reykjavik Read more
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  • Trip start
    May 21, 2024
    Dominick PisaThe Northern FinaleTraveler
    Kylling is Danish for chicken.

    Copenhagen

    May 21, 2024 in Denmark ⋅ 🌬 64 °F

    From the official website of Denmark:

    “Once we were brutal Vikings. Now we are one of the world's most peaceful societies. Welcome to Denmark.”

    It continues in the summary of Danish history:

    “They continued to plunder and steal, along with more peaceful activities such as trading precious metals, textiles, glassware, jewellery, and fur. On occasion, they also bought and sold European slaves.”

    This is a lesson in the evolution of an entire people. I’ll let you know how it goes.    Read more

  • Dominick PisaThe Northern FinaleTraveler

    Malmö

    May 22, 2024 in Sweden ⋅ 🌬 72 °F

    Malmö, Sweden’s Jersey City, lies just across the bridge from Copenhagen. It’s in the middle of a major revival since the bridge was built. There is so much new construction — high rises, parks, apartment buildings. One significant addition is the Turning Torso which is a high rise residential building designed by Santiago Calatrava, the famous Spanish architect who built New York’s Oculus. This all surrounds the historic downtown which has had a resurgence. Malmö has also had a major influx of immigrants, which makes it very multicultural, however, this also came with a major rise in crime which is unusual for Sweden. Malmö ranks second only to Naples in Western Europe according to the recent crime index. I was pleasantly surprised though. It’s a nice city.Read more

  • Dominick PisaThe Northern FinaleTraveler

    Copenhagen — Kastellet

    May 23, 2024 in Denmark ⋅ ☁️ 64 °F

    In 1959 the founders of Häagen-Dazs chose their company’s name (totally made up) to honor the Danish resistance movement during WWII, particularly for their attempts to aid Jews in Denmark and get them to safety in Sweden. The Danish Resistance Museum tells the story of the Danes during their five years of Nazi occupation. The curators of this museum are brilliant. First of all, the museum is underground. As you begin, you are given an audio guide which allows you to listen to the stories of five people in Copenhagen who each held a different political point of view. It starts with rumors of a German invasion, then the government’s accommodation of the invaders, then rising resistance, acts of sabotage, counter-resistance, and finally the liberation of Denmark. They have a station where you decipher a coded German message, and one where you act as a Nazi sympathizer and tap into phone calls to gain information on potential saboteurs. In the end, you find out what happened to the five characters you followed in the tour. I spent more than two hours here, and felt like I had just watched an incredible film. This museum blew my mind. Their choice to retell this story without a political bias and to courageously retell it as a people’s history is powerful. It attempts to put you in the shoes of the people under occupation in a world where it looks like Germany will likely win the war and no one is coming to help you. With the luxury of hindsight, it’s easy for us to believe we understand what we would do under those circumstances. This museum makes you feel the chaos, uncertainty, and the struggle to survive. In doing so, it also highlights the bravery required to resist. Only a small section was about Danish fishermen sailing overnight to Sweden to transport Jews to safety, which is an amazing story by itself, however, this museum is about all Danes, regardless of religion or political views. It’s about holding on to a free society in general and how to preserve it. It’s about watching your country being invaded by an aggressor and trusting your government when they tell you to remain calm and not fight back. It would have been easy for Denmark to take only the accolades — the well-deserved Häagen-Dazs tributes — but here they chose to tell the whole story. Most Danes did not resist the Nazis and some of those Danish fishermen only smuggled out refugees for the money. It’s a very complicated period of history, and, though it has a happy ending, people made choices based on their own survival instincts. If there is one consensus in the museum about resistance, it seems to be that we need to monitor our government closely before things go too far — before the opposition is vilified, before the media becomes a propaganda machine, before the police are told to stand down rather than protect citizens, before guns are confiscated, and before political opponents are rounded up and imprisoned on trumped up charges. It’s a wake up call for all citizens of a democracy. Looking back is easy. It’s harder to see it while it’s happening around you.Read more

  • Dominick PisaThe Northern FinaleTraveler

    Copenhagen — Nyhavn

    May 24, 2024 in Denmark ⋅ ☁️ 68 °F

    Copenhagen is a beautiful city. It has a lot in common with Amsterdam — canals, bicycles, beautiful architecture, and a high standard of living. As I got to the airport, the woman checking in in front of me was from The Netherlands and she was saying to the Danish airline employee how similar the Dutch and the Danes are. “Not like the Germans though,” she insisted. English is the other thing they have in common. Everyone speaks it well. In the center of the city they lead with English when greeting people. That’s got to be weird. I enjoyed my days in Copenhagen. The people were great. There’s a bit of a multicultural feel to it, but not as much as Amsterdam. They had more bikes than Amsterdam though. Rush hour was amazing to watch in the city center. I was particularly impressed today because the weather was bad, but the bikes were still out in droves.Read more

  • Dominick PisaThe Northern FinaleTraveler

    Berlin — Mitte

    May 25, 2024 in Germany ⋅ ⛅ 75 °F

    I took a bus tour of Berlin today and then hopped off at Checkpoint Charlie. It’s a strange historical site. One couple was in line to take their Christmas card photo. Others were buying communist memorabilia. There’s a memorial nearby which solemnly tells the story of hundreds who died trying to escape to freedom. A block away there’s an escape room to attract tourists. An escape room. One of the preserved sections of the wall had the word “madness” in graffiti that someone had written on the East Berlin side long ago. Imagine being liberated from the Nazi regime and then to find yourself on the communist side of that wall. One elderly man was speaking to a group of tourists. “We hated the wall in Berlin. It separated us from our friends and family. To us it was like a prison wall.” He looked like he would have been high school age when the wall went up. It must be so hard for him to explain how important this was to people who barely remember the Cold War. I thought back to when I was teaching European geography in 1989. One student asked why West and East Germany were both colored in pink on the globe even though they were separate countries. My explanation was that our globes were 20 years old. They were from a time when people believed Germany might reunite so the map makers must have been hopeful it would one day happen, but chances of that happening seemed very slim. A month later the wall came down, and within a year Germany was reunified. I remember that student bringing me a clipping from the paper the day it was announced that East and West Germany were now one. He happily reported that he had told his parents, “Mr. Pisa’s globe was right!”Read more

  • Dominick PisaThe Northern FinaleTraveler

    Berlin — Friedrichshain

    May 26, 2024 in Germany ⋅ ☁️ 75 °F

    The East Side Gallery had the exhibit I was looking for. Their multimedia presentation inside gives you a timeline of events from 1945 to 1989. They use interviews with East German guards and escapees — some successful and some who failed and were imprisoned. News reels bring you through the years with speeches from Kennedy, Reagan, Gorbachev, and Kohl. They present you with a barrage of video from the days leading up to the wall coming down, and then three glorious rooms devoted to the November day when the people flooded the Brandenburg Gate. Then you take a walk along a stretch of wall they have preserved which has been transformed by artists into a series of murals. It sits right along the Spree river that cuts through the city and it has a park-like setting. It was packed with people. Clearly one of Berlin’s biggest attractions. I think Berlin should be a celebration, and not just a memorial, and this place captures that feeling.Read more

  • Dominick PisaThe Northern FinaleTraveler

    Berlin — Tiergarten

    May 26, 2024 in Germany ⋅ ☁️ 79 °F

    Berlin’s Tiergarten is a beautiful park directly behind the Brandenburg Gate. It’s also featured in a very sweet Rufus Wainwright song. I was happy to walk Janice through it virtually:

    https://youtube.com/shorts/2BhpsB3J75g?si=Td3Gp…    Read more

  • Dominick PisaThe Northern FinaleTraveler

    Reykjavik — Midborg

    May 29, 2024 in Iceland ⋅ ⛅ 46 °F

    Beautiful views from Hallgrímskirkja

  • Dominick PisaThe Northern FinaleTraveler

    Remember Reykjavik

    May 30, 2024 in Iceland ⋅ ☁️ 45 °F

    Last night I had paella at a Spanish restaurant in Reykjavik to bring everything full circle. I had been looking for a way to find closure and then, when I went back to the hotel, I met Joe. He is a really nice guy from Connecticut who started up a conversation after telling me my English was really good. He was surprised to find out I was from the States, probably because my clothes are pretty standard European wear (they seem to wear hiking clothes daily) and my hair was a bit out of control because I desperately need to see Clara for a major overhaul. He told me about his day on the glacier snowmobiling and about the eruption he got to see at the volcano. He lost his wife last year and has been traveling alone for a few days in Iceland to clear his head. While telling me about his favorite places to travel, he asked “Have you been to Spain?” He went on to describe a cathedral he visited there with a huge statue of Saint Michael the Archangel. To understand how important this was to me, you have to know a bit about some of my travel rituals. I carry with me an Italian prayer card with a prayer to Saint Michael that I picked up years ago in Italy for protection. It travels with me whenever I travel alone, and I look for Saint Michael wherever I go to give thanks. I stop into churches named in his honor. In other churches I look for statues or paintings. I went to the cave in Gibraltar, for example, because it was dedicated to the archangel. And here is Joe from Mystic asking me if I’ve been to Spain to see the statue. This was clearly a message. So while standing there on a street in Reykjavik, I was being asked to summarize — to scan through the past seven months and give a succinct account. I told Joe:

    • about Spain and arriving in Santiago on my 60th birthday accompanied by pilgrim friends I had made along The Way

    • about the Cruz de Ferro and placing the stone given to me by four special blondes from Millburn Guidance encouraging me to carry them with me on my pilgrimage

    • about how grateful I am as a former history teacher to have traveled across England with all of its culture and castles and becoming so familiar with the country that I could give a rundown of the offerings in Tesco’s or Sainsbury’s

    • about Vinnie flying to meet me in Lisbon and spending Christmas week hanging out in that beautiful city

    • about drawing the landscape in Tenby on the Welsh coast and staying a week in one of my favorite places in the world

    • about exploring the Azores with Mark and Derick on the island of Saõ Miguel (Saint Michael) and finding out about a special group of pilgrims there

    • about how I treasure my month in Scotland and the day I got to see Lizzie’s Scottish home

    • about meeting up with Zach, Armand, Trish, Barb, Joe, Sue, and Vinnie in Ireland and seeing the home of Sue’s great grandfather and walking that day on the Kerry Camino when the weather and everything was so perfect

    • about the glimpse I got into how great it is to be a Guiney, even if it was only a temporary honor while we Czech-ed out Prague

    • about seeing Naples, Salerno, and the Amalfi Coast one more time with the food and culture that was so familiar

    • about streaming Izzy’s graduation from the beautiful terrace in Salerno even though I couldn’t be there in person

    • about exploring Amsterdam with Ronnie with our canal boat digs and then sharing Paris with her especially the Patti tour

    • about everyone at home following along and rooting me on through Penguins or texts especially Lisa B, Sue, Liz, Marina, Marianna, Janice, Mark, Toni, and Bill who were my constant companions

    • about Marianna and her mom placing pins in a map of Europe on Sundays to make sure they always knew my current location and Marianna “stalking” me through the magic of iPhone on the days I was on the move

    • about virtually walking Janice through the Tiergarten in Berlin and reminding myself constantly of her wise advice for me to “protect my Camino”

    Poor Joe from Mystic didn’t know what he was in for when he stepped outside for a cigarette and decided to start up a conversation with this wild-haired “foreigner.” But I knew that my last day in Reykjavik was going to be about reflecting on the last seven months. And there he was with his question about Saint Michael. He decided that I was truly blessed to have had this time and these experiences and the support of all of these people. I wished him well and encouraged him to walk the Camino in Spain for an opportunity to find the clarity he needed. Joe went back into the hotel but I had more walking to do. It was midnight but still so light out. I walked a few blocks and pictured myself on Marianna’s map — the final pin. I thought about what Joe said so sincerely — truly blessed. Deciding it was finally time for my trip to end and to return to the final hotel room after 224 nights, I looked up to see a store front I hadn’t noticed before. It was simply called “Remember Reykjavik,” and I snapped one last photo.    Read more

    Trip end
    May 30, 2024
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