The Circus is Leaving Town

As panic sets in and the clock ticks towards our Aug 12 departure from Denmark, it's time to ask some crucial questions: do we need another bag of oatmeal or do we make do with what we have? Should we get Tom a haircut at Suliman's for $30 or wait till we get back and get one at Ted's for $15?

The great Baldoni circus came and went. 'Run away' I said to the kids.

People are asking "Are you excited to go back to Canada?", and I have to say that I'm looking forward to seeing friends and family, looking forward to English discussions, looking forward to living in our new house, but not looking forward to leaving here. The spring and summer here are awesome when the sun shines.

Every day I've been down at the beach with my inflatable tube around my waist, black socks and flippers waiting for summer to arrive. Wait a minute, I don't think I own an inflatable tube and if I did it wouldn't be pale white with hair on it!  Anyway, summer didn't come in July so now that the Danish kids have to go back to school in early August, the Norse Gods have finally granted warm weather and clear skies. 

Last call kids. School starts Monday. HaHa!

We just sold our Peugeot a couple of days ago and met with our landlords to make sure we would be getting our $8000 deposit back. Money is pouring in when we need it least. We could've used a couple thousand in January to get down to the Greek Islands to watch their economic collapse with flip-flops and a cool drink.

Who could resist the allure of this sporty French cruiser? Sold.

If we start at the beginning with a mission statement, it would probably be "Expose the kids to the Danish culture" and perhaps for Mette, more importantly, was the wish to be with her mom during some tough times. My personal goal was to see as much of Denmark and Europe as we could with the time and money that we had available. I had also hoped to learn Danish but that goal disappeared like a two-four of Pilsner at a Whitebear Wedding.

Maja and Tom have thrived in the Danish school system where the motto is "Play hard then take the afternoon off". They have tons of friends and have very mixed emotions about leaving. Mette has been able to share the last 8 months of her mom's life with her and she has also managed to make about 100 new friends to go with the ones she already had here.
Steen has survived but not thrived and I didn't jump off the Malmö bridge when the winter darkness took hold. Apart from winter, I enjoyed living in Denmark and Europe so it was really only 3 months of bad against 9 months of awesome and interesting.

What are you gawking at? Can't a guy get any privacy?

These are all positive results and we all got to dig into the interesting details of the lifestyle here on the Danish Riviera north of Copenhagen. I'm going to miss riding my bike up and down the coastline past the expensive houses and gorgeous view of the Øresund. I think if the mayor of Edmonton really wants to make our city more livable, he needs to bring in an ocean coastline; not just a temporary beach on the side of the river. Think big, Mr. Mayor!

Heating up a frisbee for supper. Last days at the beach.

As I write this, we have about 4 days left before we pack, clean and evacuate for the airport. We spent last night with some friends and a fire down at the Sletten beach. Today, Steen and I will deliver papers for the last time and Mette will join up with her old school friends for the last time. Maybe we'll just eat our last bowl of oatmeal here and we'll pass on the Suliman haircut so that Ted can catch us up on the Oilers. 


Thank-you everyone for reading the blog and making comments. Special thanks to Apper for providing a link to his Facebook contacts - I even had readers from Russia! I've had over 8500 page views over the last year, most from Canada and Denmark, so I know that you are following and that makes it encouraging and fun to write. We'll see our Canadian friends soon and we'll see our Danish friends again in a couple of years. Goodbye and Hej Hej.

Sweden's not so bad

National Gallery of Volvo Victims

Sweden has not been involved in a war since Napoleon's Era in early 1800. Before that though, the Danes and the Swedes have been pounding it out on the battlefield for a few centuries. The existing animosity simmers but never really surfaces. There is an empty spot on the wall in a Hillerød Museum where a small bronze plaque marks the spot of a missing painting "Stolen by the Swedes". Danish King Christian II in 1518 signed an amnesty after a long war with rebellious Swedish nobles and then proceeded to behead all his enemies in the "Stockholm Bloodbath". They haven't forgotten that one.

I risked my life to get this photo

So with all this delicate history in mind, we headed off to Stockholm with a written assurance from the Danish Queen that she would muster the forces to come and get us at the first sign of trouble. Surprisingly, the streets were fairly quiet when we arrived. Most people in Stockholm (and Sweden in general), pack up and head to the country to live in their summer houses during July. There are plenty of tourists to keep things humming but compared to Copenhagen, it seemed eerily quiet…. was it a trap? 

Stockholm is like a huge Victoria, BC except with 6' tall blondes in miniskirts instead of a bunch of pensioners in support stockings complaining about the noise made by the growing grass.

Stockholm is an amazingly pretty and clean city built on a bunch of islands within an archipelago of about 20,000 islands. Incredible fact: Stockholm is further north than Fort McMurray, but other than the occasional moose, the similarity ends.

Even the U-Boats got lost getting to Stockholm so the Swedes were able to remain neutral.

Obviously, water plays a big part in the psyche of the Stockholmer with lots of bridges, water buses and tourist ferries. We took an hour long ferry out to a town called Vaxholm to get a sense of the surroundings by sea. If I was really rich, I would take my yacht into Stockholm for a few days of cruising before accepting my Nobel Prize in bovine waste chemistry.

A retired Börje Salming lives somewhere in these islands hiding his hideous scar face.

Highlight of the trip for the family was probably the Vasa Museum where they have retrieved and preserved an almost perfect warship that sunk in 1628. It sailed out of the shipbuilding yard in Stockholm to the cheers of thousands, fired the cannons, caught some wind and tipped over. The crowd went home.

Umm, yeah, King Gustavus? You know that ship you've been waiting for…..?

Personal highlight was my 54th birthday supper at "Lasse i Parken" which is an outdoor cafe with some live music. I had to celebrate one day after my birthday because I was on a train enjoying a $12 Swedish beer the day prior. The only alcoholics in Sweden live close to a Danish Ferry.

Nice little cafe in the park for my B'Day supper.

We slipped out of town after 4 days of living among the cursed Swedes and luckily nobody recognized Mette's accent. They are not the terrifically horrible race of people that I had been led to believe. If they keep exporting good hockey players, cheap furniture and tall blondes, they might make it another 200 years before they need to battle the Danes again.

I had Tom act as a decoy while I stole this cherub to take back as plunder.

Different Century, same Jackasses

When I was a kid growing up in Carlyle, the pinnacle of entertainment was the occasional Demolition Derby held just south of town in a large circular arena surrounded by a dirt embankment for the spectators. (I wonder if the future archeologists will think we were performing tragic plays in a primitive but cultured society?). The best Derby I can remember was back in about '82 when Daryle Basken (a friend and gentleman peer) was driving really, really drunk in a car he had prepared for the day. I know what you're thinking, but hey, what's he going to do? Crash? He got disqualified immediately for chasing the flag official out of the ring but when you have spent all week welding the doors shut on a car, you don't give up so easily. Besides, there were cars to smash up even if you couldn't hold the trophy at the end! The coffee shops and high schools were buzzing in every town for weeks after. I often wonder where that crazy bastard ended up - probably head of English Literature at Cambridge or something.

Daryle Basken in another time

As a responsible adult, I can hardly condone this type of behavior, tsk, tsk, but I do enjoy a good bashing now and again. That itch got good and scratched this weekend at the Esrum Medieval Days. Oh sure, there were no '65 Pontiacs red-lining towards a man running for his life, but they did have a mounted knight smashing his lance into a guy with a wooden shield in pure "jackass" style. He charged at this guy at full trot on his horse and drove him into the ground. These guys are what they call enthusiasts.

Ok, put your hand up if you like watching a good fight at a dance or somewhere else that young men gather in the presence of alcohol. Back in my day, the best fights were held for entertainment and often had that good natured banter between combatants that you might find in a comic book. One time when Wayne Valentine was fighting a much bigger guy who didn't really want to fight, the big guy took him down easily a couple of times and then stopped fighting. Wayne picked himself up, dusted off his clothing dramatically and then before squaring off with his dukes up said "You let me up. For that, I won't kill you". Then he attacked and lost again. Wayne would have been a Templar Knight in the Middle Ages.

These guys don't sharpen their swords or axes, but they aren't doing a choreographed stage fight. I saw one guy get clonked on the helmet with an axe and it left a good dent. They are really doing battle and it ends when they are exhausted from carrying around 50 kg of armor and sweating inside a tin can hat.

Of course there is lighter entertainment like falcons, music and magic shows. I watched one magician that actually used magic instead of "sleight of hand". Seriously, he lifted the cup and there was an apple in it - no ball. Magic.

He was Swedish and funny. Imagine that.

Woman and eagle fused into one strange but dangerous creature. I bet she could find your reading glasses!

If I could go back in time, I would make sure the bagpipe only got played at funerals.

Now you might think that knights were honorable men fighting for king and church, but I think they were mostly drunken young guys in search of adventure and scullery maids. The boys from Manor would occasionally buy an old car for $100, don their armor (skidoo helmets) and drive on the country roads looking for a steep ditch to roll it. Now don't tell me these same guys wouldn't have signed right up for a 1200's crusade to Jeruselem. I just don't think the United Church of Canada was into those things.

Living the Dream in Paris

My life's ambition and ultimate goal was to have a look through Geordi La Forge's sci-fi visor, but now I've changed it to "Living in Paris for One Month Without Kids."  I shall henceforth devote all my energies to this dream.

Sorry Geordi, your visor no longer interests me.

What a great city! They clean the streets and sidewalks every night and the waiters are all friendly and bilingual; exactly the opposite of what you have been led to believe from watching the Simpsons. You can poke a chocolate covered finger at any place on the Paris map and you will find an interesting neighborhood with street cafe's and some gritty history. And speaking of chocolate, don't forget about caramel, crepes, sorbet, nougats and creme brûlée. History? Head chopping, Nazi invaders, massacred Protestants, starving citizens eating zoo animals, Napolean's miracle comeback after a minor hiccup in Russia and of course Carla Bruni's whisper-speak pop songs.

You don't just go to Tim Hortons for a donut when you need a treat. You must travel a kilometer of winding streets to find the exact shop with the exact specialty that the wise and all-knowing internet has directed you to.

Our first taste of macarons from  Michel Cluizel.

Selecting just one chocolate at Jacques Genin. Poor kid.

Except for an afternoon at the Pompidou modern art gallery, we did not spend a lot of time inside museums or churches. We walked a lot of neighborhoods to the great annoyance of the kids: Montmartre, Marais, Montparnasse, and that is just the "M's". The traffic and parking is very civilized like Copenhagen but without the thousands of bicycles. When in Rome, I spent a lot of time mad or annoyed at the city but Paris gets an A+. Everything is beautiful and artistic. You don't just have a door, you have a beautiful door with a unique welcome mat made of Canadian beaver and a special vase of beautiful flowers which match the color of the artistic wrought iron stair railings designed by the Art Nouveau master Guimard.

The highlight of the week was probably the 59th floor of the Montparnasse Tower which is a 1970's skyscraper supporting a fantastic view of the Eiffel Tower with the setting sun in the background.

Great view except for that stupid steel thing. Bloody Engineers!

A few more sights of Paris:

If the Metro took longer than one minute to show up, we would yell at the locals and kick over garbage cans.

Check out the rooftop garden. Have a cocktail and look at the tourists on the Arch d'Triumphe looking at you.

If you can afford an apartment in Paris, you don't need your own stinking kitchen. Eat here!

Ballcaps, shorts and running shoes. These bumpkins are not from Paris. I bet they ask for ketchup!

 "Monochrome" by Yves Klein hanging in the Pompidou

“My paintings are but the ashes of my art” - (Yves gets A+ for bullshit)

So a month in Paris without kids? You truly need a lot of time to see all the neighborhoods, art and treasures of Paris. My own little treasures have their own plans and demands which surprisingly conflicted with mine while we explored the city. So if we drop a kid off at your place for supper and don't come back for a month, you can rest assured that it's just all part of a much bigger plan. 

This either means don't bring your kids to Paris or you are not allowed to date smaller Asian women.

Mette's 50 Birthday Weekend

Between funerals and birthdays, the winged FTD flower delivery man gave up running with wings on feet and settled for a panel van. It was a tough week with Mona Maria Rasmussen's funeral but a week and a half later, we were able to bring together some close friends for a scaled-down birthday supper at our house. Scaled-down means 20 people instead of 50, and having it in our house instead of a hall simplified the logistics considerably. It also allowed me to take a much greater role in organization so I was able to decide, all by myself, which toilet I would scrub first.

Once Mercury gets on his hardhat, all he needs is a nipple twist to get going.

Like most Danish celebrations, it was centered on the meal table and the elapsed time between starting appetizer and serving of dessert was 5 hours. Five hours was just the food part; there were cocktails, appetizer, short speech from the husband, main course, quizzes and games, dessert, and late night bumper cars as the departing guests maneuvered the narrow road on the way home.

Quizzes between courses

I powered out at 3AM but Mette and 3 friends stayed up to watch the sunrise over the ocean. This weekend happens to be "Pinse" or Pentacost which is when the Holy Ghost came back down to keep the Christian religion going and beat the Muslims to the best real estate. 
A Danish tradition on Pinse is to stay up on Saturday night to watch the "Pinse Solen Danse" or the Dancing Sun. The sun isn't really dancing; if you stay up all night, chances are you have had a few more drinks than your optical nerves can handle.

Mette, Sanne, Hanne and Martin

Pinse Solen Danse

So what does a 50+ year old do the next day? How about a Veteran Machine festival? Huh?
The town of Græsted has an annual car/motorcycle/tractor/army tank weekend that is like a car show or threshing demonstration but ON STEROIDS! You want cars? There are old cars, American muscle cars and just plain weird cars. 

This car was smart before the Smart Car. Steen, not so much.

Trucks? pickup trucks, delivery trucks, semi trucks and army trucks. Steam powered stuff?  How about tractors from USA and Europe, stationary engines, baling machines, music pipe organs, and lumber sawing machines? Noise? How about gathering 200 people around a rebuilt Rolls Royce WW2 aircraft engine with propeller and CRANK IT UP! 

They had an old 1930's Bucyrus drag line digging a hole! Who wouldn't want to see that? Top it all off with a WW2 trenches and infantry role play with explosions, fighter planes, machine guns and Allied forces winning the day and you've got yourself a damn good Sunday afternoon. These guys take the word "enthusiast" to a whole new level that's hard to believe. I love these quirky things about Northern Europe.

The Brits assisted the Resistance by dropping food, guns and books about proper table manners at Tea.

If you squint you can see soldiers, jeeps and ambulances. Three fighter planes are in the air also. If you don't squint, you see the back of a guy's head.

Monday had to be a bit more subdued so Mette took a sunrise row at 4AM with her rowing club. The rest of the family slept and missed an awesome sunrise. Fifty is the new 20! 
(If 20 year olds enjoyed watching a 1905 steam tractor billowing coal smoke and moving at 1 km/hr).

4AM on the water with just the grunts of the old girls.

An Orgy of Colour and Light

Paris in the springtime? I'll take Denmark in the springtime. 
You know when you've been snowmobiling all day with a bunch of people and at the end when everyone takes off their bulky ski-doo suits and you see some incredible babe* that has been with you the whole time? That's what Denmark is doing right now - peeling off the grey clouds and overflowing with flowers and birdsongs.

(*Note - according to my friend Stu Thomson, if it is a parka, ski-doo suit, coveralls or burka, if you're a Canadian male, you should be able to spot them.)

After biking with Maja to school, I like to continue on to my favorite spot in Humlebæk where I can look out over the ocean. Here I can escape my hectic, stressful lifestyle for a few minutes before I have to get back to the house where I must drink coffee and look at the harbour.

Rick is thinking Happy Thoughts

View from my Happy Place. Note the kayaker in his happy place. 

He's looking at me thinking it would be nice to sit on a park bench right now.

Before the leaves arrive on the trees, the flowers blossom so we've got white, pink and yellow flowering trees everywhere. If you continue my earlier analogy, Denmark has her hair done up, makeup tastefully done, jewelry everywhere and she's twerking right now.

A glorious canopy of flowers so you can skip your way to the train station to commute.

A "Tulip Tree" which has flowers that are just like a…um…uh...

Makes you want to lie down and stare at the clouds. 

But then the bugs will come and it won't be as pleasant as you imagined.

We broke all of the Danish traveling rules and drove 2 hours out and back on the same day (with no coffee breaks) to get to Møn, which is a little island just south of Copenhagen.

The claim to fame for Møn is the Chalk Klints (Cliffs) which are on the easternmost side of the island facing the sea. The whole island is quaint and picturesque, but the main tourist draw is a walk along the coastline where the chalk slowly falls into the sea during storms and exposes some great fossils. The dinosaurs here are the same as in North America except they have a more formal class structure and tend to fight amongst themselves.

Rolling countryside of Møn. "Surf and Turf" for supper every night if you live here.

The Chalk Klint. (Hey, Cliff Renwick!)

Chalk and Chert 

(for my Geological friends - sorry I didn't have a rock hammer for scale)

One big winter storm and this comes down. Better get the kids away from there.

We're rounding the corner into the final months of our Danish experience. Mother Nature is working hard to erase the dark winter and it feels like we have so much to do with so little time. Our friends Deb and Gerry are visiting at the end of May, Mette turns 50, and we might try to squeeze in a week in Paris but mostly we want to explore Denmark before the rising sea level turns this country into a shallow lake.