As we creep out of winter and start thinking about the spring and summer, I thought it might be good therapy to have a "look back" on the winter and glean some positives from the experience. I'm back behind the wheel with a temporary drivers licence and now Mette is getting retribution by making me drive the kids to all their activities in the evenings (I love it!). I still have to take a Danish drivers test, but I'm an excellent driver.
The town we live in is about 35 km north of Copenhagen. As you drive in along the coast road toward CPH, the houses get very, very expensive. CPH is one of the world's most expensive cities, so you can imagine the cost of a large house on the coast within a short commute of the city center. Our town is close enough to commute from but just out of the really expensive areas. Nothing but pensioners and Syrian refugees out at this postal code.
Here are the Top 5 Things I enjoyed about Nivå in the Winter:
#5: The Gym
Steen at the Nivå Gym
The "Nivå Sport and Motion Center" is more than just a small-town gym. Harald, the uber-fit 60 year old martial arts instructor owns the center and runs it like an average joe gym. There are always folks sitting around the table having a coffee and cake to replace the calories that were burned off. If you get a "Sweatin' with the Seniors" pass, you can come to the gym before 3 PM and get a discount. There is no hardcore electronic pass system to make sure you paid, just Harald who spends his mornings there with his dog offering up advice and new exercises to us.
#4: Downtime
Not sure that too much downtime is good or bad. I know that if you are working like a plow horse right now, you would love to have a complete day with only a trip to the grocery store on the agenda. That's great but 90 days in a row like that? I almost cleaned the house a couple of times out of boredom!
I've read a lot of books from the library, rediscovering Grisholm, LeCarre and Alan Furst. We've laughed through all 5 seasons of Modern Family on Netflix and gave Sons of Anarchy a steady run for 2 complete seasons. I even "binge watched" Sons for 8 straight hours on a rainy, windy Monday in January. The family had to put paddles to my chest and slap me back to consciousness when they found me.
#3: The Paper Route
You have no idea how many flyers we get in our mailbox in a week. It is a huge pile of mostly unwanted advertisements led by the grocery stores and furniture stores. Steen is now part of that problem. He delivers flyers to about 100 houses in our neighbourhood and I really like helping him so we can walk and talk on a rainy Friday afternoon. After work we typically sit by the fire with a Coke and a Tuborg. I like to tell him about delivering the Leader Post back in Carlyle with Gerald Doty who would throw the papers in the garbage on days he didn't feel like doing the route. Gerald ended up in jail during most of his adult life, so I must stress that these are "stories", not "advice".
#2: The Harbour and the Coast
The harbour and coast
If you need to get out for a walk, we almost always cross the road to the coast and the harbour. It's a pretty quiet place in the winter, but the ocean can be really awesome when the wind is howling. Living by the ocean is a huge bonus for us and a very different way of life for a prairie boy. Sometimes, when the wind is really blowing, I like to squint my eyes and imagine the ocean is a Saskatchewan wheat field and Sweden is the trees of Manitoba in the distance. Wait, is that my dog running away?.. or just a seal?
#1: The Ride to School
The Gammel Strandvej. Sweden is just across the sound.
Every school morning I bike with Maja to their school in Humlebæk, about 2 km up the coast. Tom always leaves earlier and Steen travels a different route to his school. We were able to bike to school every day of the winter, in the rain or sometimes even in the rain. Our route passes by some nice homes on the coast and the Øresund is right by our side for most of the trip. Just before the school, we enter the very old and quaint fishing village of Sletten which has a jumble of old cottages and thatched roof houses with a narrow road through it. I'd like to say that I stopped at the harbour for fresh fish in the morning but when your main criterion when buying fish is "does it taste too fishy?", then maybe you should be eating more pork. Do we ask a butcher if his chops taste too porky?
The old fishing village of Sletten
Too be honest, I really struggled to find 5 things that were good about a winter in Nivå (like c'mon, downtime? really?). Denmark, in general, hides inside the house during the winter and waits for spring. Copenhagen is actually a bit further north than Edmonton, but without the cold and snow, you don't get the activities that we might take for granted. Give me a sunny -15 day with fresh snow anytime!
