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.