27th of August

Exciting week. Well, it could have been. Me and Jonas went camping on Bornholm, a pretty small, Danish island (but not small enough for a virtually non-existent bus system) in the middle of the Baltic sea.

Our main aim was to go find the Holy Grail. Once upon a time there were a bunch of Templar Knights hanging out in Bornholm, who built some special round churches and placed them in the shape of a hexagram. Obviously that meant something. Obviously that’s where the grail was. They've even got grail tours and official treasure hunts you can go on…


Well, my aim was to go find the Grail – Jonas’ main aim was to lie on the beach. And when he realized that it was gonna keep raining until we left the island, he swiftly switched aims and instead chose to full heartedly focus on drinking beer and having barbeques.

To be fair, the barbeque mania started before the trip had even begun. A couple of days before leaving, he both texted and emailed me about some disposable barbeque grills he had spotted in the shop. And when I didn’t reply quickly enough, he chose to call me instead.

“Can’t we buy those?
Let’s buy those!
Should I go buy those grills?
I’ll go buy them now!”

I thought it sounded like a pretty good idea at the time. Yeah, I had been having roast beef and potato salad in the garden for the latest two days, but so what – we were going camping so having a barbeque sounded like a perfectly logical solution.

Enthusiasm can be a tricky concept. I mean, at a glance enthusiastic people are quite uplifting to be around. It’s often even contagious. But there’s a very fine line between enthusiasm and obsession and it can at first be incredible hard to differentiate between the two.

The first day everything felt sort of reasonable. We went to a supermarket on the way to the campsite and got some sausages and potato salad. Normal barbeque stuff. When I suggested a pack of mixed lettuce and a few tomatoes, I got something of a weird look from Jonas. A look that said “we both know your suggestion is way out of order, but I’ll be patient since, after all, we ARE on holiday…”

The campsite didn’t allow any disposable grills, but had a large one for anyone to use. This was great, Jonas meant, cos that way we could bring his disposable ones with us around the island for lunchtime barbeques instead. I think that was when I started getting nervous.

The second day came and went with grilled burgers, potato salad and hot dogs.

The third day we were going to a famous beach. Jonas brought his grills and stopped off in a little town to get sausages and, since he decided to be spontaneous, hotdog bread instead of potato salad.

“Unfortunately”, he ended up grilling on his own, cos I insisted on stopping in the last town to try to find some other food than sausages, and then missed the bus. But we met up later on the camp site instead, to, after a swim, have another barbeque.

I think I can handle the meat, cos after all, meat is meat (as long as it’s not sausages) but it’s the potato salad that is now haunting my dreams. Even potatoes somehow manage to feel revolting.

Ok, I admit that it was me who found the campsite, and that it didn’t have many dinner options, but it was only cos it was the “best camp site on the island”!. To be honest, it was pretty good. It had a really nice pool, sauna, sunbeds, pool table, gym, a beach, an internet café, fresh coffee in the morning, and a guy selling some pretty good pop corn. And a barbeque grill. I mean, how can you argue with that? They even had a little shop where you could buy Spider Man equipment!


So, to sum it all up – no, no I did not find the grail. But the Danes seem to be pretty convinced it’s in Denmark, and I’m going to Copenhagen next week………………..so………………………………………watch this space!