An Afternoon at the Game

Sunday afternoon is for football. Not the wife-beating, dog-fighting, muscle-brained NFL (don't tell them I said that) or the Roughie 0-24 pigs fly, hell freezing over, can't believe it could possibly happen CFL, but the football that seems quite popular to the other 7 billion people on the planet. We're trying hard not to use the "S" word for football because it kind of sounds like when people say "ice hockey" to us. Don't want to be an ignorant immigrant rube from the New World.

We went to the Lyngby vs Køge football game in the Lyngby suburb or district of Greater Copenhagen. This would be a Div 2 league with young professional players. Good football but in a stadium that holds maybe 6000 and with only about 1500 people at the game. When you buy the tickets, you need to choose the "type" of seating: do you want to be with the drunken-flag-waving hooligans, the regulars, the families or in the fenced-off enemy section? All sections allow smoking so suck it up like you did in the 1980's. We chose the family section because I don't want my kids exposed to any kind of swearing.

The food at the game is Pølser (big wieners) and Øl (beer). The pølser is sold as an exposed wiener (even in the family section!) with 2 small buns on the side. This was very confusing to the kids and caused much consternation. Mette spent about 3/4 of the game slicing buns and creating hotdogs to solve this painful dilemma.   

You can get a good deal on a pølser and øl or if you are really thirsty you get a simple piece of cardboard with 5 beer holes that folds up with a carrying handle so you can carry a rack of draft beers back to your mates in the hooligan section.

The game was pretty good with some nice football and only a couple of times did a player cry out in agony when he was bumped. Lyngby won 2-0 so the crowd was in a pretty good mood at the end. A little bonus for us was that the stadium is adjacent to the Danish Technical University where Mette studied so we got to see where she developed her diligent study habits and wallflower personality.

Some Juvenile Humour

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The Abandoned Lego Factory

So there's this Danish company that uses American movies to sell Chinese plastic all over the world and they have 6 theme parks that are actually owned by the British. Our first visit to Legoland was 21 years ago during our Danish countryside honeymoon. We've been there lots, the kids have been there lots but it is still fun and not as chaotic as you would expect. The place is designed for younger kids (12 and under) but Steen still gets a charge out of it due to his delayed mental development.

We took a couple of days from school because they just go on field trips every day anyhow and it's a good way to beat the lineups at the rides. Legoland is on the mainland (Jylland) so to get there we need to leave our island (Sjælland) by crossing the world's third longest suspension bridge (1.6 km span) across about 7 km of water to get to the next island of Fyn. Once on Fyn, you head towards Middlefart and cross another bridge to the mainland. Legoland is plunked down in the middle of farmland in the middle of Jylland in the middle of nowhere because the original Lego factory was here in the town of Billund. It's a 3 hour drive, which is a very long distance to travel in Europe so we need to stop a few times to get coffee and stretch our legs.

Storebæltsbroen (The Great Belt bridge). Photo not by author.

Driving across at 110 km/hr. Photo by passenger in car - not the driver - she was texting.

Our first stop is at the Hostel we are staying at. When you add an 's' to the middle of 'hotel', you get to pay for bedding (or bring your own), make your own beds, strip them down when you are done, sleep in bunk beds, clean the kitchen, fix the broken pool table and watch Swedish TV with a group of Germans in the evening. Our hostel is right by the Givskud Safari Zoo which is about 30 minutes from Billund. At the zoo we saw a lion eating a horse and a gorilla eating her own vomit. Sorry, but no giraffes were on the menu today.

On our first day in the park, we have almost free run of the place. If you like a ride, go on it 10 or 14 times until you get bored. If you get thirsty, pay your $5 Canadian for a half liter of bottled water; there is only one fountain on the 35 acres and the employees at the concessions are not allowed to give you tap water. Grrrrr.  

An informal survey and data count shows that more than 100% of all Danish kids under the age of 10 are blonde! If you have a long blonde-haired daughter dressed in bright pink or peach clothing, you will NOT find her in the crowd. She will be completely camouflaged.

The highlight for most of us is the Pirate ride where you can shoot water cannons at the spectators and they can shoot back at the boats. We drenched a boatload of Chinese teens all decked out in their special lime green tour jackets. We didn't stop until they agreed to accept a shipping container of spare plastic Lego pieces from our house!

København aka Copenhagen, or "CPH" to the twitter gen

As the kids headed north by bike to school, we headed south to the train for a day trip into Copenhagen. As you might expect, it's not called Copenhagen here; it's called København (Køben - the market, Havn - Harbour) and pronounced in an unrecognizable "Koobnhawn". It  is an incredible city that is completely old and new at the same time. For tourists (and there are many), you have canals, harbors, castles, a pedestrian street that is 7km long, museums for guns, doctors, industrial design, modern art, landscape art, Renaissance art and Art Mainprize (legendary coffee drinker from Carlyle, Sask).

Little kids on a field trip or some highway workers lost their way

Walkable and VERY bike-able but not very car friendly, this city seems like a place where a 16th century town has been evacuated in the morning and replaced with a modern civilization in the afternoon. I think it is really cool to see a father riding with his kids along busy but safe bike paths, pull up to an old 17th century building, lock up the bikes, grab the groceries (small fridge) and head upstairs to the apartment. I'm thinking that they cook a healthy root vegetable stew, discuss EU strategy in Syria while they eat, clean the kitchen together while they joke around and then work on their oil painting of a ballet dancer, but I'm sure they just play Minecraft on their iPads and ignore each other like the rest of the world.

Cobblestones, bikes and old things everywhere… and Mette.

A compass and map are useless in this city of curving streets, 5-way intersections, neat little alleys and dozens of parks and squares. With street names like Holmbladsgade in the Holmbladsgadekvarteret, Kronprinsessegade and Østbanegade, you aren't going to be asking for directions either. Or at least "Good luck with that".

Nice stop for a cold Tubourg - just to shelter from the rain of course.

S'Cool to go to School

Our morning ride to school takes us past the affluence of the seaside homes along the coast. Today is spectacular with the sun low in the morning sky reflecting off the calm waters of the Sound. Tom, Maja and I are riding our coaster bikes along the quiet road on our way to school having a few laughs and enjoying the view of a cruise ship, some sailboats and a rowing club out for a morning rip. People come out of their houses wrapped in housecoats and walk to the nearest jetty for a quick dip in the ocean. This is the idyllic ride to school that I had imagined from way back in Edmonton.

People who live along the Gammelstrandvej often have a little private beach or sitting area surrounded by hedges and many have their own swimming pier. No pictures of morning swims - swimsuits are not common and swimmers are typically quite wrinkled.

Maja and Tom have started school in the regular program with all the Danish kids. Typically, newcomers are placed in a language intensive program called M1 or M2 (depending on age), but their big brains and lack of peers in the M1 program prompted the school to start them directly in the regular curriculum. They are loving school here and who wouldn't? It sounds like a lot of fun and games. This week is a "market" at the school where they work at booths making and selling things to each other. I suggested we fill a shipping container and sell the goods to Toys 'R Us but the damn socialists won't let me. 

Steen started into the M2 program about 2 weeks ago. His response to the first day of school was "That was the best day of school I've ever had!" There is only 10 kids in his class, all from other parts of the world who are learning Danish together and (somewhat) keeping pace with regular math and science. They will get moved into regular programming when they are ready. Day one consisted of obtaining an iPad, creating a shopping list and walking to the grocery store to purchase ingredients to the lunch they will cook on Day 2. Day 3 of school was cancelled because the teacher had an appointment! This is starting to sound suspiciously like NAIT!

What is up with this country and their commitment to sport? Maja went to her first gymnastics class yesterday and the instructor noticed some raw talent (gee, thanks Kerrie) so she was invited to try out for the team. Four sessions per week, 3 hours each. "Twelve hours a week?" I ask mathematically.  She looks at me seriously and says "We want to be the best. We are all here to be the best in the country. That takes a lot of time and commitment." Next we get Steen into rowing and we'll find out he needs to take a private jet to train at Oxford on the Thames … if he wants to be the best.

Slowly but surely we fill up our calendar as we get the kids established and start to plan out holidays and vacations. It's always a delicate balance between travel and budget, sports and family, rural drives and urban hikes, beer and milk in the fridge.