Eskegov Slot, Sculpture by the Sea, and the Highway to Høl

It's Tuesday morning. It's the last day before we head out of Jutland towards adventures on Zealand and beyond. The Roskilde Festival is Thursday - well, it's all week, but we have tickets for Thursday - and we'll be staying in Roskilde Wednesday and Thursday night with plans to do castle things, Viking things... maybe even Sweden things.

But today is Tuesday, and it's sunny, and Pam and I are engaged in our morning rituals in the sun room. Books, papers, iPads spread about the table - writing, researching, and plotting our day while children and turtles sleep.

Monday, June 29

Yesterday was a local day with a walk through the forest down by Rands Fjord. This, of course, after we make our traditional stop at the local bakery for delicious Danish pastries and 12 kroner coffee. I plug GPS coordinates from the brochure and map into the Garmin that has been our navigational angel since we got wheels, and in a short time we're in beech forest next to the fjord waters following the well-marked paths past farm land and farm houses, Danish sheep and cows.

After the hike, we explore the coast by Brejning, starting at the marina where employees of a local school are bailing out their sailboats. When we ask for a good beach, they point us 1.5 kilometer up the coast, but what we find there is a muddy, rocky mess that, despite the excellent pier and rowboats that Griffin enjoys jumping into ("Zeb and Lars were here."), is not what anyone should call a "good beach."

We had down the coast to Hvidbjerg Strand, which our hosts recommend to us as their best beach, but it proves to be just a narrow rocky strip of coast - and not even pretty-rocky (like England). Sharp and pokey-rocky. Muddy rocky.

And so it's down to Høl, the gorgeous stretch of sandy beach that Pam and I found a few nights back. This is the best beach in town, without a doubt. Maybe the locals are just trying to keep it that way.

The water is super cold. We walk way out in the low tide and it's still only up to our thighs. Rowan, Berit and Pam read on their beach towels, Griffin practices the songs he's been assigned for a camp he's doing when we get back, and I doze.

Sunday, June 28

On Sunday, we headed up to Sculpture by the Sea, an event that happens occurs through the month of June on odd years in which large public art sculptures are erected along Aarhus's southern coast. 

It was kinda neato - we liked the huge shipping containers resting atop big puffy pillows. Berit particularly liked the fact that I believed they were resting atop those pillows and not on top of hidden supports. Better than the sculpture however was the people watching and the starfishes that Griffin found in the shallows as he bounded across the boulders that line the coast.

We spent the rest of the afternoon in Moesgard where Pam and I walked the beach for interesting rocks. The water is (still) frigid, but Rowan and Griffin both swam in it, as did I after some wrestling over the matter (literally) with Griffin.

And Griffin built this awesome sand sculpture.

Saturday, June 27

Griffin nixed our mountain biking idea for today, having fallen off of a play structure yesterday and banged up his hip, but we still thought we'd get outside up in the Lake District, an area north of us with rolling hills, beach forests, lakes, rivers and Denmark's highest point (at 171 meters).

We're thinking we'll find a good hike by visiting the tourist office in Silkeborg, but things never go like you plan. We land there in the middle of the Riverboat Festival, complete with throngs and throngs of Danish retirees getting their New Orleans jazz on. 

We enjoyed some lattes and crepes and walked around town, where Rowan bought a copy of Scott Westerfeld's Pretties to replace the one she left somewhere in Copenhagen. The shop keeper with the cool star, owl and bird tattoos pointed us to the Almind Sø (It's pronounced like "soot" except without touching your tongue to the roof of your mouth at the end. Go ahead, try it. I'll wait. The word means "lake.") as a nice place to hike around.

 

The weather, already un-awesome, suddenly turned downright horrible. It rained buckets, cats, dogs and frogs. It came down like a mother. Griffin and I huddled in a shop alcove, and Pam and Rowan and Berit came and rescued us with loaner umbrellas from a sports equipment store. We walked through lakes back to the car.

When we got to the Almind Sø, the rain had let up. I dove in the lake and swam for about ten seconds, as did Rowan and Griffin. We walked around the lake path, singing songs and marveling at the large, black slugs.

Pam is very cool, making breakfast for the kids and sandwiches for lunch while I write this. I've had to spend some time this morning catching up. And I haven't even gotten too Friday yet! 

She set the smoke alarm off while cooking the bacon. It was the second time since last night and I'm pretty sure that Tanja and Karsten are right now receiving text messages from their neighbors that the Americans are burning their house down.

Friday, June 26

Today we drove back to the island of Funen to Egeskov Slot (slot = castle), a fantastic 15th century castle complete with moat and drawbridge whose former owner, Count Gregers Ahlefeldt-Laurvig-Bille was one of the best bowhunter's in Denmark (with skill comparable to that of Ted Nugent). The castle's "Deer Room" has Count Greger's trophies (heads), many with the arrow that took down the animal.

The castle and out-building are full of cool collector stuff - there are about a million classic cars and motorcycles, an vast intricate dollhouse that includes the world's smallest working organ, a piece of Marie Antoinette's dress, Dracula's tomb (really not ssure what this is). 

We really enjoyed the grounds, though - particularly the treetop walking - spiral staircases that ascend into tall trees and rope walks between the trees. Pam got lost in aa hedge maze, so I went in to find her, losing myself as she came out. According to Rowan, all you need to do is place your right hand on the wall to your right and keep it there as you walk through the maze. I'll test that another time.

Back in Børkop we stop by the roadside vegetable stand and the butchers. We plied young Søren the butcher with questions about the chicken breasts and the sausages. He probably thought we were idiots, but was exceedingly friendly about it. "Chicken" in Danish is "kylling." 

We're kylling it. 

Breakfast: Danish rye bread, karrysalat (curry salad), herring

ARoS Museum, Legoland, and an Unexpected Visitor (Wednesday and Thursday)

Wednesday - ARoS Museum, Aarhus

Everything is an opportunity for language-learning. It's Wednesday morning, and I'm putting the laundry in, happy to have figured out that "hvidvask" means "white wash" before bleaching all of our clothes.

There's a hard rapping at the door, which is next to the laundry room. Rowan walks past the door and then past me. "There's a man at the door, Dad." Thanks, Rowan.

There  is indeed. A uniformed man who barks something at me which - surprise! - I don't understand. "Sorry, I don't speak Danish." I am compelled to repeatedly apologize about this, what with having come to their country without a lick of Danish language to my name. This is not entirely true, but the opportunities to use "The child is eating an apple," and "He is the man," seem to be few and far between. Thankfully, "Hej!" in Danish is the same as "Hi!" in English, so if we keep our mouths shut after that, we blend right in.

So my man immediately switches to English, which is what the Danes do. All of them speak English, or at least a whole lot of them. As Martin, our neighbor, tells me, "We're a country of five million people. We don't really believe anyone is going to learn Danish."

"I am the chimney sweep," says my uniformed guest. Ok, I think. That sounds about right. I explain that I am not the home owner here, launching into an explanation of the whole home exchange concept, none of which interests my man here. He just wants to sweep the chimney. It's an annual arrangement, evidently, and the whole thing takes fewer than 10 minutes before the chimney sweep hands me the bill for the home owner and bids me good day.

And it is a good day, if you like cold. And rain. I gave Berit a hard time for buying a winter coat at the flea market in Copenhagen, but guess who's laughing now. Go ahead. Guess.

It's clearly an indoor day, so we make for Aarhus - the Copenhagen of West Denmark. It's the big city in these parts, a college town with lots to offer including the ARoS museum which is the largest modern art museum in Northern Europe. Or at least Scandanavia. Something like that.

And it's excellent. The building itself is very interesting, with its Guggenheim stairs and all. I read that the exhibits are laid out in thematic homage to Dante's Divine Comedy. You enter in the middle and either ascend to Heaven or descend to Hell. 

In Heaven, you find ARoS's iconic "My Rainbow Panorama," a 360 degree hallway made entirely of colored glass that sits atop the museum and affords a rainbow panorama of Aarhus as you walk around the ring and through all the colors of the rainbow.

The lower floors are Hell. The art there is disturbing in a variety of ways that I am unable to actually call up in my memory, having walked rather quickly through the area. I'm not a fan of disturbing artowrk, and as I speed walk past those who are, I feel the stares of more highly-developed art patrons as they look at me askance, thinking that I don't get it. And they're right. I don't.

A favorite exhibit of ours is an installation in which you enter a large room so full of pink smoke that you cannot see 10 feet in front of your face. The five of us spent some time in there. It would be a great place for a game of hide and seek. Actually, Griffin wanted me to hide his backpack so that he could try to find it. I wouldn't do that, but hid my hat instead. Even that was picked up and placed on the bench outside the room before he could find it.

We headed to the outdoor pedestrian mall after the museum, where Griffin and I got 50 kroner schwarma and a Coke. This schwarma was much better than at the place we found in Copenhagen. In fact, we may partake in this schwarma whence again in Aarhus. Pam and the girls had some foccaccia sandwiches at a cafe next door. 

We split up for a bit on the mall, with the girls doing some shopping (Berit bought some shoes and Rowan, some sneakers) and Griffin and I wandering about with our hands in our pockets. I whistled Beatles songs while he beat-boxed and for a moment we considered putting our hat out. The girls found us at a foosball table outside one of the shops, and we all played a few games.

Thursday - Legoland, Billund

Billlund, the home of LEGO, is about a half hour from here. It's where they actually make LEGO, the name of which comes from "leg godt," meaning "play well." There are several Legoland locations around the world, but my thinking was, if ever you were going to go to Legoland, this would be the place to do it.

As it turns out, the theme park itself was small and moderately interesting. I'm guessing now that theme parks, in general, are perhaps what we do really well in America. Not in Denmark (Here it's rye bread. See previous.). We stood in lines with throngs of Danish school children, and we rode a few rides. The best part of the whole place was Miniland, an area devoted to miniature versions of places around the world. It was unfortunate that we found this last, since I would have probably just sat in Miniland the whole day, watching the miniature LEGO boats, buses and trains, move about these miniature worlds. What I really liked were the way the people were set into these scenes with each other, and I enjoyed taking some photos like these.

In the evening, Pam and I consulted Martin and Pia about biking to the beach. The kids wanted to stay home and chill, so the two of us took off together on a downhill route that got us to the Vejle Fjord  / East coast of Jutland in about half an hour. It was a beautiful ride through farm land and past ridiculously cute coastal houses some with sheep.

And despite the temperatures, when we finally found ourselves alone on a wild, sandy, shell-strewn beach, there was no stopping me from submerging myself in these Scandanavian waters.

Ribe, VikingeCenter, Sankt Hans (Tuesday)

It's light before 5 am, and by 7:30 I've probably been in and out of dozing for a while, so despite my brain fog, I get up. Pam is, of course, already awake, as are Rowan and Griffin. I am up before Berit, but only because she won't wake up until I wake her up.

Last night we met Karsten's father, Gunner, and his sister, Lena, who brought the car, a Citroen Berlingo, to us in Middelfart (where they both live). And yes, there was some snickering over the town's name, for sure.

We get to the house hungry, and since the kids were probably not going to love the herring and liverwurst our hosts left for us, we chowed down on some sausages, cheese and bread. This, of course, after assessing our digs, divvying up the rooms, and feeding the turtles. 

Yes, they have two turtles, Tanja (Tanya) and Pedersen, which is simply the best name for a turtle and one I can't stop saying or even singing (to the tune of "Terrapin Station," and they needed to be fed. You have to feed them on either side of the tank, however, or else when you drop the frozen turtle food blocks into the water, Tanja will eat them both and Pedersen (I can't figure out ... if it's the end or beginning...) will go hungry. Which is exactly what happened last night.

But back to this morning.

I made eggs, we fed the kids, and then some time around 10:30 we were off to Ribe, Denmark's oldest city/town/village - established in the year 700 by Vikings. The drive was a little over an hour at highway speeds of 130 kph and we proceeded directly to Ribe's VikingeCenter, an open air museum much like Old Sturbridge Village, except with Vikings. Because everything's better with Vikings.

This was a lot of fun, and we learned things. For instance, those helmets with the horns - that's not a real Viking thing. Perhaps, our man tells us, some Vikings or Viking antecedents had helmets with horns for ceremonial uses, but they weren't used by real Vikings. It would be impractical. The great thing about the smoothly-domed Viking helmet is the way the sword slides right off it. Horns might grab the sword, causing the impact to be directed into the skull, resulting in death. Not good.

We spent quite some time with the Viking woman who was showing us Viking games, one of which involved using sticks that looked like slingshots without the sling, to toss a bull's testicles back and forth. This was great fun, especially as she explained the game to us. I responded in kind, explaining to her that in Colorado, bison testicles are considered a delicacy.

There was also a game in which two people tried to knock each other off a log by swinging large pillows at each other. In light of the fact that she had called the first game "Balls," Griffin and I dubbed this one, "Sack." No end of amusement there. Griiffin and I spent some time knocking each other off of the log, while the girls built flower crowns with our Viking host.

In the afternoon, there was an excellent falconry show with three birds - an owl, a Harris hawk, and a falcon. Really cool. The falconers explained everything in both Danish and English, and Griffin got to wear the glove and have the owl fly to him.

After the Viking Center, we headed over to Ribe proper where the architectural centerpiece is the cathedral (domkirke) that was built between 1150 and 1250. Beautiful stonework with the exception of the brick tower that replaced one of the spires that collapsed on Christmas night in 1333, killing many of the parishioners in the process. Climbing the brick tower is 10 kroner well-spent, as you can see all of Ribe and the surrounding area from there.

We promenaded around the lovely streets of Ribe - eating ice creams and holding the parrots that we found within the shops there. You know, like you do.

Tonight was Sankt Hans Eve - one of those combination Christian and Pagan holidays celebrating both the eve of Saint John's birth and the Summer Solstice. And what do we do during the Summer Solstice? We burn huge bonfires all over the country to ward off the evil Germanic witches. That's what we do

So this evening we took the Berlingo over to the nearest beach - about 15 minutes from home - and hung out with a bunch of Danes getting their bonfire on, with appropriate choral accompaniment.  There were huge bonfires up and down the beach, so prior to ours being lit, Pam and I strolled down to the next one over which was already aflame. By the time we returned, ours had been lit and burned down to the ground. Phooto courtesy of Rowan.

Denmark 2015, Heathrow to Copenhagen to Middelfart

Saturday, Heathrow  to Copenhagen

Waiting at Gate A6 for our departure for Copenhagen. I go to the water fountain to fill my bottle. I fill it once, drain it, and step back up to the fountain to fill it again. A young Indian-looking man, bespectacled - walks up to the lower fountain, the child sized one next to me. 

"Excuse me sir, how do you work this?"

 I show him the button in the front, which produces a trickle of water, and he thanks me as he uses his hand to lap the water into his mouth. I finish refilling my bottle and replace the lid. The young man, also finished, turns to me.

"You are from the U.K.?"

"U.S." 

He smiles. "You  know Golden State Warriors?"

"Um, no," I respond. I don't really follow basketball and I'm not following him. But he smiles and persists. 

"You know Boston Red Sox?"

"Sure," I smile.

"Baseball," he nods enthusiastically. "You know New York Yankees? Also baseball." I nod some more, smile some more. He does too.

"Wayne Gretzky," he persists," Canadian hockey player."

"The best," I respond.

"I love the hockey," he enthuses.

"You're a big sports fan, huh?" I ask.

"Yes. Thank you sir." And with that, having apparently exhausted potential conversation, he walks back to his seat.

Heathrow is otherwise uneventful. We get sandwiches and caffeine. I've never appreciated a cup of tea as much as I do the one I get from Starbucks after three hours of fitful, up-right near-sleep. Griffin is listening to music on his ipad headphones; Berit is playing Jetpack Johnny or some such game; Rowan is drawing in her journal; and Pam is playing Words With Friends.

Eventually, we will land at the Copenhagen airport. The train will take us to the Christianshavn station, 12 minutes away, from which we will walk 10 minutes to our AirBNB apartment at Bodenhoffs Plads 8. There we will find the key hidden in the Christiana bicycle (it's a riddle) and we will enter our abode for the next two days.

This goes down exactly as described except it takes us a while to realize that the Christiana bikes are the ones with the big box cart in front, this one outfitted with a seat for children. We find the key box inside of that and, upon entering the code, we retrieve the key and are in our apartment.

And it's fantastic and spaceous, a vast expanse of wood floor underscoring its sparse, Scandanavian design sensibilities.

And we're out. We head around the corner to Christiana, a hippie haven since early 1970 squatters took the land there. In addition to the head shops, hemp wear, and hash heads, we encounter a couple of middle-aged men just hanging out near their abodes, and by hanging out I mean totally naked. This is, of course, great amusement to the five of us, but we decide to head for parts of Copenhagen that, while still free spirited, are perhaps not so single minded in their free spirits.

We're tired and hungry after our travels and trying to find food upon which we can all agree at a price that we can afford in a locale we don't know proves a challenge. Eventually, we land in a Schwarma shop on "the walking street," which we later come to know as the Stroget. The kids have been troopers through all the post-flight walking. After dinner we grab some ice creams, and we head home. It's midnight when I finally go to sleep.

Sunday, Copenhagen All Day

"Danish words don't even look like anything. They look like a child bashed their skull against the keyboard and these are the letters that came up." - Berit

Pam awoke us all at 7:30 this morning claiming that we needed to get up to get on our new schedule, but the truth is that Pam requires coffee immediately upon awakening, and she wasn't venturing into Copenhagen without us.

Rowan uses FourSquare to find the open coffee shops nearest us, and we head out for Kaffebaren, a 20 minute walk. Once there, barista Stefan fills us full of lattes. Everyone but me that is, since I'm appalled at the price we're paying. It was short-sighted. I was eventually going to need coffee (the Danes aren't much for tea). We congregated with our beverages in the downstairs seating to plan our next attack... food.

Overhearing a woman speaking about street food nearby, I asked Stefan, and he gave us directions. We quickly arrived at what was a great big flea market allon the canal, one that I would have greatly enjoyed had I not been starving and caffeine deprived.

On the other side of the flea market was where the Rebel Street Food trucks gathered where there was something for everyone. Rowan and Berit each got a variation on grilled cheese with ham. Griffin got a large sausage dog, and Pam and I devoured Leif and Anna's rye bread sandwiches. Pam's was a vegetarian version, while mine had pork with beets and Dijonaise. The bread, which the couple bakes themselves, is a hearty rye that is simply amazing. If there's one thing the Danes do right, beside smalll, plastic, primary-colored toys, it's rye bread.

From the street food, we headed back up to Hans Christian Anderson Avenue, crossing over the water and walking into the central part of town with the Tivoli and the Ny Carlsburg Glyptotek Museum on our left. The museum had a Man Ray exhibit, and though Sunday was free day, we didn't end up getting there for it.

We turned right instead, down the Stroget and the Straedet, the touristic shopping streets that Pam and Berit throught they wanted to visit. I shall refer to this period as the dark times, times that later prompted Berit to tell us that we were going to have to figure out how not to argue so much the next day ("You guys are going to have to get your shizz together."). 

Things got better when we found our way out of the shopping district to Nyhavn, those colorful rows of canal houses that grace all the Copenhagen guidebooks and postcards. We disagreed on our next move and decided to split up. Pam and the girls headed for Norrebro, an edgier cafe and shop-ridden part of town, while Griffin and I stayed at the harbor, where we saw a couple of people paddling a two-person kayak in the canal.

We asked for and got sketchy directions to the kayak rental place that kept us walking around a bit. And then we did a bit more walking, once we decided we needed to eat something before paddling around for an hour.

Griffin spoke to me of how we would recall this moment. "Remember when we went kayaking the canals of Copenhagen together? And then afterwards you gave me 1000 kroner? That was epic."

Toke (to-kah) showed us the route, out into the main canal and then through some channels that took us through beautiful cobblesone streets, colorful houses and plentiful boats. Griffin persisted in devising new challenges for us 

"Let's park between the boats!"

"Let's pull over so I can climb up this ladder!"

"Let's get in behind the tourist ferry and row like crazy to stay inside its wake!"

I tired of the games and Griffin's relentless energy, but Griffin was an energetic and hilarious rowing partner the whole time. 

After kayaking we got crepes (Nutella and banana) at our neighborhood crepe stand, happening upon Pam and Rowan there. The kids went back to the apartment, and Pam and I wandered through Christiana, looking for a salad for her, before calling it a night.

Monday, Copenhagen before heading out for Middelfart and Borkop

We awoke later this morning, packed and booked it for Norrebro, out destination the Coffee Collective cafe, a great little coffee bar situated in a glass covered food court not unlike Haymarket Square in Boston. We all also got food and enjoyed our lunch before heading back to Bodenhoffs Plads to get our luggage before our 1 pm checkout.

Back in Norrebro, I took the family on an unfortunately long walk to the Staten Museum for Kunst, before we gave up, ate the snegls we'd purchased earlier, and rerouted to the Kobenhavn Botanisk Have (gardens). This was the park that Rowan, Pam and Berit had discovered the previous day, complete with a palatial greenhouse. Martha and Mom and Dad would be smitten with this place.

Sometime after 3 pm, we started to make our way towards the location of our bus departure. We're not exactly speedy when we're dragging our rolling luggage around Copenhagen's cobblestone streets, and it took us a while - first to get to Central Station (which Pam likes to call "Grand Central Station") and then to find the D.G.I. Byens bus station. 

The bus is a very comfortable cross-country affair.. We've been on it for two hours now, during which time I've eaten the salami and cheese sandwiches that Pam made for me, drank a half cup of the complementary coffee ("Please only get a half cup as people have been known to burn their fingers and spill coffee down the fronts of their shirts.") and typed up this historical account of our travels on a small keyboard bluetoothed to my phone.

Pam and the kids are in the rows in front of me. They've been enjoying the free wifi and playing various games, though now it appears that Rowan and Pam are both napping. It's 7:12 pm, and I think we'll be in Middelfart by 7:30, where we will get the car from Karsten's Dad, Gunner, and drive home, to Borkop.

It's been pretty cool hee, 50s and 60s with a little rain. We hope the Danes are enjoying their stay in our house. I think it's been in the 90s in Colorado.