Since this book was written in prison from the beginning up until 1946, the reader must forgive me that some of the experiences are not in their proper place. (Now follows a return to 1938.)
In the summer of 1938, Teacher Elm’s son Gunner and I went on a trip to Germany to visit a friend who had found work in Hanover. We cycled from home one afternoon and spent the night in Vordingborg, where we visited the Goose Tower and the Storstrøm Bridge. We left our bicycles in Vordingborg and continued the next day by train southwards, spending the night in Warnemünde, after which we continued to Lübeck the following day, where we had a four-hour stopover, and then went on to Hamburg, where we stayed for two days and visited Hagenbeck’s Zoo, St. Pauli, and went on a harbour cruise among other beautiful sights.
Then the journey continued south, and at 8 o’clock in the evening we reached Nienburg near Weissen (uncertain spelling), where our friend worked. We stayed there for three days and looked at German farms, agriculture, and customs. After that we travelled on to Hanover, where we also spent a couple of days in the beautiful old city. We stayed at the youth hostel “Hindenburg,” and on the last day we had a rather amusing experience there: Gunner and I were standing studying a map of the city, when a well-dressed young man also stopped and looked at it. Suddenly he said something to Gunner, who replied, after which he continued the conversation—but had to repeat himself several times, as Gunner did not understand him. He then said to me in Danish that Gunner didn’t understand him, whereupon the young man’s face lit up and he exclaimed: “What the hell, are you Danes?” He was from Aarhus and was travelling with a tourist group on a trip through Germany.
The return journey went via Celle and the Lüneburg Heath and Rostock, and lasted about ten days.