Winter Warnings

I've been reading, with some sadness from my perspective, that the autumn weather on the Canadian prairies has been spectacular and that the Oilers and Riders have been less than spectacular. Actually, this is the first time in my life that I'm actually worried about the impending winter months. Even though the winter is warmer and shorter, I'm told the old sun is not going to be around very much.

Wind surfers and Para-sailers in the hurricane behind us

The Danes combat this the same way we do: get outside lots, stay active and have friends over for nice food and candlelight. This is called having a "hyggelig" time (pronounced hew-gely, loosely interpreted as "cozy"). 

Steen reading in front of the fire he built

The clouds, the wind and the rain mean a bit more seclusion on my part but I'm trying to combat this with workouts and running. I have found that I'm not anywhere near ready for retirement and need some things to keep me busy. While paying for a photo-radar ticket we also found out that my Alberta Driver's license is only good for 90 days. I can get a new Danish license after a driving test but only when I get my CPR number (see blog post #1), so I'm going to have my wings clipped soon. That's not as dramatic as it sounds because I have a bike and public transit, but still not good news. 

Learning the Danish language is still my prime objective but I can't take free lessons until I get my CPR number (see blog post #1). Paying for them is an option, but we are running a much tighter budget here than we ever have in the past. There is a simple reason for this:

Results of scientific study

I could probably find a job, but I need…….. (see post #1). Meanwhile, my objective is to schedule myself busy with worthwhile and meaningful tasks, keep fit and maintain a positive outlook. In fact, there is a section of blue sky between the clouds as I write this. Things are looking up!

City and Country

This Thanksgiving weekend marks the start of school holidays for the kids and teachers here in Denmark. The kids are warming up their thumbs for some anticipated screen action so I will take great joy in disappointing them with blackouts. You may not know this, but Mette is teaching English for a few hours per week at the elementary school so the holiday affects her also.

Friday night was "Culture Night" in Copenhagen where all the doors on art galleries, museums, dance studios, churches and historical buildings are thrown open and the public is admitted for free. Almost all the squares have tents set up with music and drink so the entire city and surrounding areas converge on the downtown. The night was mild and the sidewalks were packed with people and bikes. It was a really cool experience. We went to a big art gallery where one of the rooms had a 20' ring filled with 3" of sand and horse footprints in a figure 8. It was moving - I wept with the rapture.

The very next day we launched into a countryside bike ride around our area. The farmland and forests are covered in trails that are excellent for biking or hiking. The Danes really take advantage of the outdoors. On our 26 km journey we ran into bird watchers, falconers, horse riders, skeet shooters, hunting dog trials, radio controlled airplane enthusiasts, runners, bikers and farmers. I couldn't help but think the RC airplanes and the skeet shooters should join up or maybe the bird watchers, falconers and hunting dogs. There would be some great efficiencies in the club system.

On Thanksgiving Sunday we were invited to the house of another Canadian (Jeff) and his Danish wife (Louisa). They used to live in Vancouver and have been here for about 2 years now. They have kids in Maja and Tom's school. We also met up with another Mette who is married to an American (Kevin) and they've lived here for about 15 years. Louisa's sister and kid were also there so we numbered 16 in total. Louisa roasted a turkey (not so easy to find or finance) and we baked a couple of pumpkin pies - FROM SCRATCH! Baking pumpkin pies is not so easy, so you can imagine the rig pig language coming from me when the basket I was carrying them in broke and they tipped upside down! We scraped off the snails and moss and ate them anyway. It was a fantastic party and we had a lot of laughs and discussions. By the time we left at 1 AM, there were kids lying all over the place like a "kid bomb" had gone off. 

The Mermaids of Copenhagen

One of the most iconic images of Copenhagen is the "Little Mermaid". Based on a Hans Christian Anderson story, the statue was commissioned in the early 1900's by the Jacobsen family who founded the Carlsberg Brewery. 
The picture below is not the famous statue. This one is found about 100m up the wharf at an ice cream shop. It is less visited by tourists but much more likely to lure sailors into the rocks like they're supposed to.

Definitely NOT the "Little Mermaid"

Tourism Highlights

Greg and Charlene Weiss, great world travelers and friends now for 18 years, made a stop in Nivå to cap off their European Great Battles Tour. They spent the previous 2 weeks with other friends on a guided tour of some of the great battlefields of WW1 and WW2 in Northern France and Belgium. Wisely, the Danes conceded defeat to the invading Nazi's but kept a healthy resistance and smuggling operation during the war. We were going to have to dig a few layers deeper into the sedimentary layers to find the Viking age if we were going to discuss battles and wars. But that's not what this visit was about.

Our location north of Copenhagen allows us to zip into the big city easily or squeeze that big Peugeot down the winding country roads stirring up chickens and kids as we roar through the villages. We spent lots of time in Copenhagen, in Hillerød at their castle, in Roskilde at the Viking Museum and a bit of local stuff here.

Highlights of the tour (besides just spending time with old friends):

Renting bikes in Copenhagen to join the masses on the fantastic bike paths in the city. The bike rentals are part of the CPH share program where you register your ID and credit card and then take a bike and leave it at another location. The new share bikes (CPH is on their second or third version of the bike share program) are heavy electric units with touch screens for GPS and registering. They are almost too heavy to pedal without the electric motor assist, but a lazyman's freewheeling delight when powered.

Copenhagen share bikes. Riders are enjoying the pissoir (guess what that is)

We found a cool Diner in a part of town that is revitalizing from being a hooker and lowlife street that serves a great "working man's supper" that would be categorized as comfort food: very tasty and packed with calories. The tables are close and your fellow diners don't hesitate in leaning over with a recommendation while you read the menu.  I had 'biksemad' which is a hash of leftover potatoes, diced beef roast, and onions topped with a fried egg and a side of pickled beets. Since the locals are puffing on cigarettes while they eat, I can't tell if it tasted good or not - it was a bit like eating in the Commercial Bar during the blues jams back in the 80's; it's all about the atmosphere!

Chicky Grill Bar - picture it packed with some extra chairs between tables. No photo on night of mention because all you could see was cig smoke.

Perhaps one part of the tour which has changed from really cool and interesting in 1995 to a bit too sketchy in 2014 is the Christiania area. It was an early 70's hippy occupation of an abandoned military base right across the harbor from downtown in what is now a very desirable location. It was founded on commune principles, especially freedom, but that has morphed into a "Freetown" of drug dealers. The main road is called "Pusher Street" and there are probably a dozen street stands where you can buy hashish and weed. Even though tourists are kinda welcome, you get the feeling of glares as you walk by in a place where you are obviously not a customer or a local. Greg and I twisted our ball caps into 'lock' position and tried talking like Eminem but that just got them angry.

Pusher Street in Christiania - this photo is from the internet. There are about 5000 "No Photos" signs posted throughout the area.

Maja and Tom's birthday ended up windy and rainy so we had a birthday lunch at a restaurant in Hillerød by the castle. Here's a tip for all you world travelers: when a Danish waiter asks "would you like something to drink?", the answer is "yes, I will have a beer". I made the mistake of requesting a soda water and ended up paying 45 kroner or $9. If you put free water into a 2 cent plastic bottle, the 'value' increases to pusher street criminal kroners. My EPCOR friends would be living in estates and driving in blacked-out limo's if they lived in this country! 

After spending the equivalent of a temporary foreign worker's monthly wage on lunch (thanks to G&Ch), we headed back to our place. We played backgammon, quizzed the kids on geography and math questions, and then Greg showed the kids some card tricks. All three consider those 2 or 3 hours to be their highlight of the G&Ch visit. Like I said earlier, it's all about being with friends!

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!