At the hostel we were basically handed a bike and a map and told to have a good time. We decided to attempt to visit one of Bornholm's beaches. Bornholm is famous for having the finest sand in the world. It is exported from bornholm and used in hour glasses.
The bike ride down was really nice. We had a view of the ocean the entire time, and we stopped at an outdoor market in a town. There was a choir singing and I ate a fresh mini donut that was fried in front of me.
Bornholm looks small on the map, but it is definitely not. It took us about 6 hours to get to the beach. We dumped our bikes a little ways away from the beach, bought some soft serve ice cream rolled in cocoa powder and sugar and walked down to the beach. The sand was about the same consistency as flour and was really great to walk in and touch. It squeaked when we ran in it.
The idea of biking all the way back was pretty exhausting, and we were hungry at that point, so decided to find food and then head back. Instead of following the coast, we thought we would trek inland, as it looked shorter and we wanted to see something new. Probably not the greatest idea, inland ended up being mostly farms. It's pretty depressing to be biking forever and seeing nothing but farmland. We finally ended up at a small town where over pasta we decided we were not biking the rest of the way back.
This is where it gets interesting: we ask for directions and find out which bus stops we need to use to get back to the hostel on the other side of the island. When the bus pulls up the bus driver looks very grouchy about having to put our 5 bikes on the bus and only speaks a mixture of German and Danish. We pay (a lot! $10 each) and sit on the bus.
(all our bikes+ the worst bus driver ever)A woman sitting next to us with her two daughters leans over and asks where we are heading and then she talks to the driver for a bit in Danish. She tells us that the bus driver made us pay way too much because he purposefully sold us tickets that were only good for 1 hour, when the next bus doesn't come for 3 hours. Then she tells us that we obviously cannot wait at a bus stop in the middle of nowhere for 3 hours so that we should come back with her to her house.
With some hesitation we finally agree, and that is how I spent 3 hours in a stranger's house in Bornholm, drinking tea and eating pizza. It's a good feeling to meet nice and caring people.
(my biking friends Maria, Shawn and Elizabeth with the nice Bornholm family)We ended up not getting back to the hostel until 9:30 pm, with our bikes left on the other side of the island because the driver would not allow them on the next bus. We spent the rest of the night hanging out at a crepe restaurant/café/bar.
DAY 2:
We decided to travel up the coast instead of down it. My bike got a flat tire along the way, but the hostel delivered a new one. Everything was so pretty! But it was also cold and windy and it rained on and off.
We stopped for lunch at a smokehouse, to eat traditional smoked herring that Bornholm is known for. It was a whole smoked herring (minus the guts, but with the skin and bone and eyes and everything) and it came with two pieces of rye bread (not the American kind but the dark danish one with seeds), onions and a raw egg yolk. It was really delicious!
We made it all the way north of the island to the ruins, the remains of a giant castle. We wandered around and admired the view of the water and the bright green grass growing everywhere.
On the bike back I was pretty sure I wasn't going to make it, with my poor tired muscles and the intense wind smacking me in the face combined with the rain. But I made it! We took the overnight ferry back and made it back to Copenhagen the next morning, just in time for classes. Actually other people made it to DIS for their classes- I went home and slept. oops.
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