Seeth-Ekholt, chapter 1

On popular demand, I will try to write this blog in English, even though I'd rather not. Maybe I'll slip back to Swedish when I get tired of misspelling everything, but that is a different story, to tell on another blog.

Well, let me tell you about Seeth-Ekholt, and the trip to get there and back.

We started up Friday morning early (me and Eli sent thoughts of thanks to my mother-in-law for babysitting Isolde the whole weekend), and went over the bridge to Denmark. The trip to Rödby, Denmark, went smooth as a whistle, and we went by ferry to Puttgarden. On German soil we stopped to buy alcohol (that's an old Swedish tradition - all Swedes buy alcohol in Germany, as much as they can possibly carry), and then we were off towards Seeth-Ekholt again. After a couple of mishaps I was personally responsible for, we were finally able to roll up to the camp site, about 1600 hours. A few of the other groups had already arrived, and we started to make camp. Before long, we had a place for doing the dishes, along with a hole for waste. Our three tents went up, and were furnished with straw until we had made cozy beds. A pavise shield put on four stakes forced into the ground became our table, and a handful of chests were our benches. A great camp, in short.

People were becoming hungry, and even though the excellent people of Historia Peregrini were cooking as fast as they could, it was clear that the food shouldn't be ready for some time. We therefore decided to dispatch a foraging patrol. Me and Lunkan left camp and went to the nearby Elmshorn to shop groceries. We started by getting ourselves some bread. We bought a huge loaf weighing in at 2,7 kilos - by far the biggest hunk of bread I have ever seen. In addition we bought some lovely pasties with strawberries and vanilla cream. We loaded it all in the car, and went back to shop. We bought sausages (three different kinds), two kinds of cheese, a load of different weissbier, and some small stuff, like spice, sour cream and the like. In short, we loaded up for a feast.

As we came back, we fed the dogs the pasties - and there was much rejoyce! Somebody even took a photo of them. When spirits where higher, we started to cook a bit of food, and as the evening was rolling in on us, we could serve smoked mackerel, sausages (some of them were fresh - not cooked or spiced, but a raw meat product! I spiced them up with loads of thyme, salt, cardamom, black pepper and salt, boiled them half-ready and then fried them - and they were glorious!), cheese, bread, beer, sauerkraut, wine cooked cabbage, mead and wine.

By this time, some of our friends had started arriving. Kyra, from Bürgerliches Leben um 1400, came over to keep us company, along with Nijso, Bertus and Laurens from Deventer Burgerscap (we were a bit disappointed that none of the girls joined). Soon Lorentz from Elvelüüt Hamborch and some of the guys from MiM (Mensch im Mittelalter) also joined. Lorentz had his laptop with him, and we could watch his excellent film from Morimondo, Italy. It became a quite pleasant evening, with a couple of drinks, good friends, lots of laugh and enough food to go around.

The mist started to whirl and twirl around our legs and our shoulders, and finally it was time to go to bed. The moon shone eerily and beautiful when I went up to have myself a piss in the early morning hours. It was hauntingly hidden behind the almost solid barriers of heavy fog. I stood watching for a bit, until the chilly air drove me back to Elisabeth and the warmth of our bed. I felt very much alive as I closed my eyes and went back to sleep.