Skagen!

Skagen is the northernmost point on continental Europe. It's at the very tip of Denmark, where the North Sea and Baltic Sea meet. Jenn, Kristi, Erin and I all visited today. We walked down the pedestrian street after the four-hour train ride. It was really weird - every building matched. They all had the same basic, Danish shape and style, and every single one was yellow with a red tile roof. It got kinda creepy as we kept walking and they never changed. We weren't there for the shops, though - we were there for the beach, so we started walking towards it. A couple of houses broke the mold as we left town, but no more than I can count on one hand. We found a really beautiful beach - perfect white sand, sea grass, huge rocks by the water (which was absolutely freezing!). We had a picnic and played in the water, picked up cool rocks (Kristi is a geology major), took a bunch of pictures, admired the light (sought out by numerous painters). The color of the sky and the clouds was such an amazing blue - Erin called it an "emotional blue", and I think that description fit really well. Then we started walking to the point. OMG, it was rough - walking through soft shifty sand and smooth deep rocks is a real workout. We finally made it, and it was soooo cool. The two seas have different temperatures and the currents flow in different directions, so the color of the waters is slightly different, and the waves crash into one another in a line extending from the point. We took turns having our picture taken as the northernmost person on continental Europe. I got some awesome pictures of the waves.


After playing around at the north point, we began walking back into town. We were planning on seeing the buried church. Only the steeple is visible - the rest has been covered by sand drift. It's not like a sand dune heaped around the church - the level where people walk is now at the level of the steeple. But, as we walked back, it started raining, first lightly and gradually more intensely. It was pouring by the time we got to the train station, so we went ahead and took the train back to Aarhus (very soggy). We didn't get to see anything else, but everyone was still pleased with the trip. The beach was what we came for, and it was just as amazing as we'd all heard. It was an almost perfect trip.