Road trip in the shadow of Covid

Travelling liberated me. Travelling bound me.

When I had moved to Sweden twelve years back, I had made a promise to myself to explore unbound. I will not remain anchored to one place, one city. Rather, I will take flights to far-off places — Spanish coastal towns, Italian villages, Austrian mountains — wherever the promise of cheap flights beckoned me. And so, I travelled, stamping across the little known and the well-known of Europe.

So eager was I to remain unmoored, to travel far-off, that little did I do to dig where I stood. Yes, occasionally, I surveyed my surroundings and went on hikes in the backyard of Malmö, where I live. However, I failed miserably to bring myself to discover local gems. What is within the reach is valued little, they say. With my traveller’s eyes always set on the horizon, I had missed looking down at my feet in all these years. Travelling had shackled me.

Then Covid happened. At first, staying home was a novelty. Soon, the familiar impatience took over and the feet tapped the floor restlessly. I must travel, my mind argued. But there were no flights going anywhere, and when there were, the requirements to board one were complex enough to dissuade any leisure-seeking traveller. Eager still to travel, I eventually settled on a road-trip to South Zealand (SydKyst) in Denmark, for it held the promise of a few undiscovered charms.

Millenniums back

So, there we were, on a wintry Saturday afternoon, nestled inside a heated car driving across the half-underwater Öresund Bridge that, like an uncut umbilical cord, connects the Swedish Skåne region to Denmark. Zealand is the largest and most populous island of Denmark and home to its capital Copenhagen. We drove past Copenhagen towards our first destination — the county of Stevns, an hour’s driving distance south of Copenhagen. Stevns in known for its chalk white cliffs and we headed there to visit the UNESCO World Heritage Site, Stevns Klint.

Knowing little about the significance of this place, we had arranged to meet with an expert. In the parking lot, we found Jesper Milan waiting for us. Jesper is a curator at the geology museum in the region and had kindly agreed to show us around.

Stevns Klint (Klint is the Danish word for cliffs) stretches across 17 kilometres and overlooks the grey waters of the Baltic Sea. It contains well preserved evidence of the Chicxulub meteor creating the Cretaceous-Paleogene boundary. And what’s that, I wondered aloud.

“Well, the Cretaceous period ended around 66 million years ago,” answered Jesper as we walked down a flight of stairs to reach the bottom of the cliffs, “we recognise this period more with the disappearance of the dinosaurs”.

There are several competing theories about what led to the disappearance of the dinosaurs along with three-fourth of the rest of species. The now generally accepted theory is that a meteorite impact at a site offshore of modern-day Mexico, called Chicxulub, combined with a spew of volcanic ash from Deccan India, led to a cloud cover and cooling temperature for several years leading to the extinction. Then, over the next ten thousand years, life recovered.

At Stevns Klint one can see the evidence of this theory. Jesper walked us to the rising cliffs to point out the thin dark line that separated the rocks into two halves. “Here, you see a thin reddish line running across the cliffs,” Jesper beckoned me to come close to the rocks “This reddish layer contains Iridium. On earth, such a large quantity of Iridium is not usually found and therefore it must have come from outer space.”

Humbled, I stepped back. Here I was, on a cold windy afternoon, crouched between the rocks studying a reddish layer of iridium settled between the pre-and-post impact fossil layers. So far, I had not considered how old life on this planet is. There, that layer encapsulated the irrefutable evidence of how strong-willed life has been.

I shook my head for in my backyard lay one of the most impressive geological finds that I had neglected all these years. For once, I was beginning to be grateful to all the Covid-induced travel restrictions. If not for it, I don’t know how long I would have waited to come to Stevens Klint.

Looking around

As we walked back, I noticed a church perched dangerously on the edge the cliff. “Well, actually a part of the church fell over the rocks,” Jesper said, “the limestone cliffs keep eroding and slide further backward every year. When constructed, the church was well inside the land. But a day came when even the priest refused to conduct the service, for the altar could have fallen any day. Which it eventually did!”

The foundation of the church is now fortified, and it has become a tourist attraction. Inside the church, the altar is locked behind a griddled gate. Next to it, bolted on the wall, is a preserved article from 1928 in the local newspaper that captured the fateful event, ‘It happened quite slowly. The trees at the church began to wobble, then the bottom of the overhanging cliff gave way and finally the topsoil crashed to the beach with a roar.’

After lunch at the local restaurant, we followed Jesper to a limestone quarry in a town called Faxe. “Here at this limestone quarry, you are at the bottom of a 63-million-year-old ocean!” said Jesper as we walked down into the white swathes of the limestone quarry. How so, I wondered? “Because at that time this quarry was under the ocean, inhabited with sharks and crocodiles. These creatures swam between corals,” said Jesper, “you can still find fossils from that time out in the open. That’s why children love this place for they can go fossil hunting.” And that’s what we did too. What better souvenirs than these fossilised rocks, I wondered! As the winter sun disappeared, we scouted for limestone rocks containing fossils of corals and shark teeth to bring with us home.

As darkness gathered, we said goodbye to Jesper and headed for our night stay — a unique B&B run by the Norrmans. The Norrmans — Anna and Lars — had left their corporate careers to start this charming B&B, which has eight uniquely designed rooms. Each room is different from the other and it’s difficult to even spot a straight line anywhere. Lars built it himself, he told us while giving us a tour of the property. Once we settled in a room overlooking an indoor orangery and earmarked with flea market art that the Norrmans had picked up during their travels from all over the world, Lars brought us to a hot tub kept out in the open. Hot steaming water in the bitter cold was inviting enough for us to get into, to cap our first day on the road.

Other charms

Next morning, we drove to a newly built tourist attraction, called the Forest Tower. A half an hour drive took us to Gisselfeld Klosters forest, which houses an hourglass-shaped observation tower. A walk through the boreal Danish forest took us to the base of the tower, from where we walked onto a 650 meters long spiral ramp that took us to the top. Given that it’s a new attraction, there were quite a few tourists, mostly Danes who had taken a day trip from Copenhagen. However, the broad sidewalk and ramp allowed safe distance to be maintained during these Covid times while walking up. At the top, the 100-meter-long circular platform gave a panoramic view of the surrounding nature. While the views were charming, I was most intrigued by the Danish design that had gone in building this structure. For instance, the material used for construction was weathered steel and locally sourced oak that seamlessly blended the tower into its surrounding. At the same time, the spiralling climb ensured easy accessibility for all the visitors. Even the Danish Prime Minister, who apparently suffers from vertigo, was able to walk the gentle gradient ramp to the top to inaugurate this tower.

Later that day, we had no fixed agenda and decided to drive around exploring the towns and cities of South Denmark. While entering one such town, on a tall wall of what seemed like an energy plant, we caught a graffiti. It ran from the bottom to the top of this 30-meters long wall and illustrated a worker’s face. It was a strange place to put a graffiti. Intrigued, we called the local tourism office to learn more. Turns out that Naestved is punctuated with elaborately done graffiti art that covers its walls and towers, and all this street art was the result of a long-standing art project to inspire the local young people.

Graffiti culture is not new in Naestved and has been part of the town’s culture since 1984. So much so that Naestved has always had a regular flow of international graffiti artists from all over the world — for instance, ECB, DAIM, TOAST, ARYZ, LOOMIT, and LIMPO are some of the artists whose names I learnt as I walked around the city discovering the street art. All these artists agreed to participate in the project and as a result, here is one unknown town in the middle of nowhere that has now become the epicentre of graffiti and hip-hop culture.

We walked around the town till dusk, chasing the graffiti art that randomly popped up around every other corner. As the short winter afternoon melted away, tired after all the walking, we sat in a local cafe for a snack. Our road-trip was coming to an end soon, and with the disappearing light, our mood also started sinking. Just then, outside the cafe’s window, on the opposite wall, we spotted yet another piece of art — a girl riding what looked like a multi-faced grasshopper. Perhaps utterly meaningless, but the bright colours lifted our spirits up. Art, even on chipped walls, can transform emotions.

As we drove back home, I wondered how much I had gathered in the last two days on the road. Though we had set out to discover, little had we expected to stumble across experiences with such different shades. For once I was thankful to the pandemic, for without it I would have overlooked what surrounded me.

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