23 Sept 2013
Koge to Faxe Ladeplads
36 miles

This is my fourth hot dog of the trip, meaning I am averaging 0.5 hot dogs per day. Before you think you’re missing out on some special Danish treat, let me just tell you that this is a hot dog from a petrol station, and there’s nothing lost in translation here when I say petrol station. By petrol station I mean the place where you fill up the car, wash your bug-stained windows, check your hair on the surveillance TV, and grab a Coke for the road.

This fourth hot dog is tonight’s dinner. And since we’re counting, this is the second time we have eaten dinner at a Danish petrol station. Now, it is a little bit fancy, in that you can choose between a regular hot dog or a cheese hot dog or a chili hot dog or, if you’re feeling the need to add some vegetables to your diet, a tomato basil hot dog. So it’s not like we’re completely missing out on the new Nordic cuisine. But truthfully, there is nowhere else to eat in this little town unless one is willing to brave the packaged balls of mystery meat warming beneath the heat lamps of the local grocery. The kid behind the counter assured us they were “the best in Denmark”, those slightly blackened balls made of “swine”, but if they were so good, I wondered, why were there so many packages of them left in the case, long after the dinner hour had passed? Nope, I’ll take my chances at the petrol station, thank you very much.

Hanging out at the petrol station is a step up from lounging in tonight’s campground cabin. Informed by the very pleasant campground hostess that the cost was cheap because the cabin was “old”, we were still not fully prepared for what greeted us behind the door – a dark hole into depression, is how I’d describe it. The best feature of the room was that the front door stayed open of its own accord, helping to disperse the stench of stale cigarettes. Yep, we have really outdone ourselves on this Denmark trip. I don’t know how much more pampering I can stand.

But lest anyone think we are being cheap, although we prefer to refer to ourselves as “fiscally frugal,” our walk to the petrol station confirmed what we knew before we pedaled even one stroke past the campground – that it was the only gig in town open for accommodation. The touring season has definitely come and gone here, but at least today’s scenery gave us something pleasant to dream about while we lay sleeping on our thermarests so as not to touch the well-worn beds.