Camping life and crashing cars

I'm back from this year's summer holiday trip. Since we just replaced our tiny, red, three door Citroën with a bigger, red, five door Citroën (totally coincidental, I don't as of yet feel any loyalty toward any particular car brand), using the car as transportation seemed like the reasonable thing to do. Some may say (actually: many have already said) that a change of car was about time. I don't know. True, we have three kids, true, the car had an appoinment with the shop as often as I have an appointment with my hairdresser (actually says more about how rarely I see my hairdresser than it says about the car), but it served its purpose. It took us where we needed to be, and we even managed to bring with us whatever luggage we needed. Or the size of the car made us sensible packers, I don't know.

Anywho, we packed our stuff and our kids into the new car and took it to Denmark, for one week of camping life and amusement parks. I would say it went fairly well. I don't think sleeping in a sleeping bag in a tent ever will be my preferred choice of sleeping arrangements, but for a few days it's ok. The lack of showers doesn't bother me that much, the absence of a fridge bothers me more. And I don't like eating my breakfast on the ground. (What I have mentioned here are of course stuff it is possible to do something about, but I'm not a very advanced camper, so it will have to wait for the next time around).

Denmark is a cute and flat country. I have only been to Copenhagen before, so it was nice to see the more rural parts of the country this time. And now I realize that I'm starting to sound a bit dumb and dull, so I'll leave the geography part at that. Legoland and Fårup were nice - I'm a sucker for roller coasters and other scary rides, but I realize now that 1)I have been getting a lot older or 2)It has been way too long since the last time I visited an amusement park, because a couple of the rides really freaked me out. But in a good way. I guess.

On the way back we stopped a couple of days in the southern part of the country, and then a couple of days in Stavanger, where my in-laws live. And there our lovely new car ended up looking not so lovely anymore. On my way out of a roundabout, a crazy German youngster in a rental car came rushing from the right, and there was no way I could avoid hitting him. ( I say "crazy" - he seemed pretty normal. I say "youngster", but when he first stepped out of the car I ballparked him to be in his late thirties, at least older than me. He turned out to be born in 1985. 1985!) So, there we go, our new car is a wreck (not technically, I guess, but in my mind it is). I kind of miss the old one. Yes, it was small, but at least it looked good.