The Saustrup Family Blog

Updates are as usual few and far between, but a lot of stuff has been going on. Yesterday evening we finally got home, after one week of driving, visiting Russian family and dragging Nina’s stuff back to Denmark. Nearly 4.000 km in car and probably something like 1.200 km by train.

The trip went without any major issues, except for having to completely unpack and repack the car at the Russian border. The size of the car and the amount of stuff we were dragging called for professional tetris-like skills when packing, but we did it.

In other news, I was tested for strep throat (group A streptococcus) at the doctor this morning, and it came out positive. After being on long-shot allergy pills the last week, it finally seems like we’re on to something. I’m now on penicillin, and happily awaiting a change from the last 2-3 months of sore throat and fever. Needless to say, I’m exhausted.

Papers for the family reunification (Nina’s residence permit) went through, and the next step is for me to provide the municipality with a 58.000 DKK (8.000 EUR) financial guarantee. This was prepared by the bank while we were in Russia, and was sent by mail today. Things are looking bright indeed.

As the eager reader might already have observed, there is plenty for us to worry about these days. On a much brighter note though, we’ve been shopping for the honeymoon - and other future trips. Yes, we’ve purchased matching luggage.

No, it’s not big matching suitcases with our initials monogrammed on the side - it’s a couple of much needed hard-case motorcycle luggage cases. They will be mounted on the side of the motorcycle, so the passenger doesn’t have to carry all our things in a backpack. She wasn’t too excited about that on our last trip and I completely understand that. There are also security considerations - in the unfortunate event of an accident, wearing a backpack on a motorcycle isn’t such a great idea.

Givi E41N Motorcycle luggage case

Isn’t it pretty? We still need a part to fit these on the bike, but we’re almost there. Then we just need a full set of motorcycle gear for Nina and a much needed pair of motorcycle pants for me. Once the technical preparations are done, we just have to figure out one thing - where exactly should we go?

I believe that at some point, everybody goes looking for their roots. For me, this happened when I found my family name in America. Some people practice old school genealogy and go through rows and rows of dusty books with public records. Lazy people google.

My mother’s name is Sørensen, a very common Danish surname. Finding any people with this surname is not a complicated task - the phone book has a rather large section with them. Finding anyone that I’m actually related to, is somewhat more complicated and requires actual work, and let’s face it - I’m a bit lazy. My own surname comes from my father’s side, and is a lot more interesting in this context. Where there are over 79.000 hits for Sørensen in the Danish online phone books, there are only 49 for Saustrup.

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Actually it was last summer, but that’s no reason not to post it again! This was my second visit to Russia, and I decided to do it on my newly purchased means of transportation - my Honda CB1300. I drove from Århus, Denmark to Stockholm, Sweden and took the ferry to Helsinki, Finland. From here I drove more or less along the coast to the Russian border. From here it was a short but bumpy ride to the magnificent city of Saint Petersburg.

Driving to Saint Petersburg isn’t really that difficult, at least not when you have a GPS unit like my Garmin Zümo 550. The only problem is that this unit only covers Western Europe, and only shows the biggest main roads in Russia - and badly too! At one point I was driving on the road from the border between Finland and Russia, and according to the GPS unit, I was miles away from any roads and almost crossing through a lovely forest lake.

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