First impressions count

It’s a funny thing, going to visit a house you own but have never seen for the first time. There is, to put it mildly, a degree of anticipation. So it was with an element of trepidation that, after a couple of days of traditional Danish Christmas with the in-laws – which mostly involved eating – we drove down to the island of Lolland for my introduction to Onsevig Station.

It was a vile day, of the kind that southern Denmark does so well in winter; cold, grey, bleak, a day straight out of some gritty Scandinavian crime drama. The drive takes around two hours on the mercifully quiet Danish motorways, but first we had to stop in the nearest town, Nakskov, to pick up the keys. The hire car had no sat-nav, the Good Lady Wife (GLW) had only visited the place once before, and we had no map, so things were starting to get tense.

Keys safely in our possession, there followed a degree of lively discussion as we tried to navigate the maze of roads between Nakskov and Horslunde. It was growing dark when the GLW finally had a eureka moment, recognising the illuminated white church rising out of the trees ahead.

Finally, we pulled into the drive and there it was; Onsevig Station. The first thing that struck me was the size of the place; it looms out of the trees like a small castle. But I had little time to ponder before we were all out of the car and standing on the doorstep. The next challenge; a ‘quirky’ lock. One of those locks that has a ‘knack’ to it, don’t you love them? A knack that is perfectly straightforward once you have mastered it, but which causes feelings of rising panic when you realise you are in remote rural Denmark, it’s cold, getting dark, and you can’t get in the house. A few minutes of frantic jiggling later and we were in.

Second impression; the smell. That smell of damp and ‘other people’ that I associate for some reason with childhood holiday cottages (though I don’t remember any of them ever being damp). The smell of a house where somebody else has lived, for quite some time, but not recently. Not, to be honest, a great smell. But hey, it was our smell now; we were in. Owners of a genuine, pre-loved Danish railway station. Time for the adventure to begin…