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.

Ladies and Gentlemen…..,The Queen.

The closest that I have ever come to the Queen of England would be the photo at the front of our grade one class in the West End "Little Schools" where I was taught to never backtalk to a teacher.  David Lanktree tried it and was given a big dose of shaken baby syndrome for the courage of his convictions. The Queen looked passively on as all this commotion unfolded before her.

Recently, I've become one of the fawning subjects of Her Majesty Queen Margrethe II of Denmark. She is not just the Queen of Denmark. As a European Royal, the British automatically include her as a "Stranger Lady of the Order of the Garter" (fact). This is a VERY exclusive club and you must be Royal or at the very least, entered as a contact in Elizabeth's iPhone. 

My own personal opinion of the concept of a Monarchy must be stated up front: Mette likes the Queen. Another member of our immediate family says "Off with their Heads" but I can't mention Lars' name because I know the secret police monitor my blog.

Danish Secret Police Undercover Cyber Intelligence Unit

Well, it's the Queen's 75th birthday this year so we went up to her Fredensborg Palace (near our house) to wave at the Queen and then we went into Copenhagen to wave at her there. By now she knew us as locals at her winter home, so I expected to have a coffee and a smoke with her. Not so. Seems she has quite the following.

Hello Queen!! I'm over here - wave at me!

She waved at me!

It's quite the event when the Queen makes a scheduled appearance at the balcony. There were thousands of loyal subjects and school groups attending. None of the school kids are very excited (including our own) because they have not yet learned the satisfaction of idol worship.

Burger King hands out crowns because they believe in the Monarchy.

She granted us a wave, we sang a song. She hopped into a carriage for a ride through the streets, we followed and she waved. The horses are nice and the sound of horseshoes on cobblestones stirs a primal urge to shoot guns at foreigners. Makes me want to send Steen off to defend the Russian crown from those uneducated peasant commies.

Fact: Almost all of the riders are women.

Juicy Gossip: the Prince (husband of Queen) is jealous of her attention. He didn't show up today because he was at the apartment of his mistress. (I made the last part up, but he's a Frenchman so you will believe it).

Now what does the future hold for these wonderful people who wave at us? There are two princes: the Crown Prince Frederik and the standby Prince Joachim. They are not interesting but their wives are. Crown Prince is married to a Commoner! He married the Australian beauty, Mary Donaldson from Tasmania. 

Joachim, who is not very popular (divorced once if you can believe it), remarried to a beauty named Marie from France/Switzerland. She is definitely not a commoner! Much royal blood courses through her veins. You can debate which one is prettier, because that is a national pastime.

Mary on the left, Queen in the middle, Marie on the right. Who's the hottest? 

HINT: remember what I said about the secret police earlier - pick the queen!

So, I have now been closer to the Queen of Denmark than to my very own Queen of England. She waved at me and I must say, she is very good at it. More gold for the Queen! Long Live the Queen!! Bring out the Princesses!!!

Italy - Awesome and Lame

We took a trip to Italy taking advantage of the cheap European airfares and met up with our good friends the Stanley's. We flew to Milan and then took a train to Verona where we met with our friends. One day in Verona, 3 days in Venice, high speed train to Rome for a 3 day stay and then we rented a big house in a tiny mountainside village near Salerno and the Amalfi coast.  I took 700 photos so when we see you next, we can sit down for 6 hours of pictures and mildly amusing anecdotes. You can look forward to that.

Here is a good/bad summary of the trip with some photos.

Moving about:

• Awesome - how about 300 km/hr in a high speed train crossing Italy on a track that is 74 km of tunnel in a total trip of 78 km!

• Lame - spending all of our last day in a 200 km traffic jam from Naples to Rome. It took all day to get the distance of Edm to Calgary. Do not rent a car in Italy; use trains, ferries or pack mules.

Food:

• Awesome - there were so many good meals and a lot of them we prepared ourselves fresh from the market. But the best was a little place in Acropoli where the 9 of us were at one big table on Easter Monday and the owner's friends and family were at the other.  There was no menu, they just brought us whatever they were eating. The courses ran like this: bruschetta, egg&cheese cake, pasta with artichokes, pizza, sausages & homemade fries followed by an Easter cake. Follow that with a shot of frozen lemon schnapps. 

• Lame - seriously, the food is sooo good in Italy but how about some fibre? Talk about traffic jams! 

Wine:

• Awesome - Every restaurant has a house wine but almost never a wine list. You just ask for red or white. Usually, it was very good. Wine purchased at our local village's grocery store cost anywhere from 1 to 3 Euro's. 
• Lame - one of the 1 Euro wine bottles was really bad. No problem - we had more.

Tourist spots:

• Awesome - Most of us agreed that Pompei was the most interesting of the tourist sites. All the other old Roman stuff had been pilfered for building material in later centuries, but Pompei was preserved beneath the ash. The coolest thing to me was the wagon ruts in the stone roadways. Venice is pretty damn cool too.

• Lame - Hey how about some garbage cans, a toilet and maybe some people dressed in period costume? That is very common everywhere else  - In Denmark they even do Viking battles with the kids as soldiers. There was a brothel in Pompei that would lend itself well to this idea.

Buona Visione:

• Awesome - some of the viewpoints from the hike down the mountain were very awesome (see Amalfi coast blog) but we accidentally stumbled upon a great view overlooking the whole city and the Vatican. 

• Awesome - Venice from the tower at St. Mark's Square

• Lame - the walk from the Metro to our apartment in Rome.

From the very heart of the Rome airport we took a wrong exit from a circle intersection and ended up having to drive about 35 km of freeway through two toll booths to get back in a panic before our flight. We arrived back in Copenhagen to sunny spring skies, no garbage, sane drivers, birds singing everywhere and our own dent-free car waiting at the train station brought by our great neighbors. It's good to be back!!

Italy - When in Rome

The Colosseum, or "Flavium Amphitheatre" has 5 million visitors per year and one bathroom. Not kidding - that's a fact. Rome has 4 million residents and 2 million cars sharing 150 parking spots. Not really fact but it seems that way. 

Guess which cars are parked

I can't say that I'm a big fan of Rome. Sure, there is a fountain or a church or a Roman masterpiece around every corner, but the place is a poorly organized garbage dump. I don't mean the streets are not organized because that's part of old city charm - it's the lack of garbages, tourist signage, pedestrian streets, etc. I can't count how many times our little gaggle of engineers started a sentence with: "Why don't they…(insert ridiculously simple solution to eliminating lineup at this monument)". The signage at all the monuments is so poor that there is an entire industry built up to take advantage of tourists gawking around looking for an entrance to the Colosseum. There are so many illegal souvenir vendors working these streets that Maersk brings in a dedicated container ship every night to restock from China. Selfie sticks are big this year along with Pope bobble-heads, painted tiles, plastic monument replicas, toy Vespas, jelly blob things, people with white paint standing still and even a guy with a puppy that wants money if you pet it.

The windows are drafty and the insulation is poor.

This lineup to St. Peter's Basilica is 2 hours long. You don't even get to meet the Pope at the end.

We came back minutes before quitting time to grab a quick run-around with no lineups. God shone some light.

There are no public bathrooms in Rome. If you see a toilet, you get in line and have a pee even if you don't have to go because there may not be another chance. Do not have a pint of beer for lunch! (It took me three days to figure that one out). 

 Mette is just pointing out where she had a pee.

There is a joke that goes something like this: "45% of the world's UNESCO Heritage sites are in Italy; the rest are protected". The Italian gov't cannot afford to look after all the churches and fountains and ancient Roman ruins so they are now selling advertising to companies in exchange for repairs and maintenance work. They recently received 25 million euros from a rich luxury fashion businessman to clean up and repair the Colosseum. Similar agreements have been made to repair the Tevi fountain (Rome) and the Rialto Bridge (Venice). Can you imagine how outraged we would be if someone wanted to put advertising on the West Edmonton Mall?!?!?!

Tom is outraged. The Pantheon has a hole in the roof and it leaks.

Despite all my griping, we had a fun time in Rome. We walked a lot of miles and experienced a lot of great food and awesome sights. It's one of the most interesting places on earth.
Just remember, when you're a pedestrian in Rome, don't wait for those cars that are lined up in the right lane of the busy street - they are parked! Honk your horn if you're not happy!!

Italy - Amalfi Coast

Imagine the busiest traffic you have ever been in - maybe Vancouver or Toronto if you have ever driven on the freeways there. Now take that big road and shrink it to two lanes with no shoulder. Ok, now take that and give it a lot of hairpin curves, some hills, some narrow corners and some blind intersections. Surround that narrow curving busy road with buildings, cliffs, pedestrians and a thousand scooters coming from every direction much faster than the traffic. Ok, now throw in a dog, some baby prams, a couple of tour buses, a peloton of racing bicycles, some lunatic Italian drivers and a rental car that has no scratches. Now put your wife behind the wheel and three singing, fighting, complaining, need-to-pee 11- year olds in the back seat and relax for a nice drive along the Amalfi Coast of Italy. I did far more damage to the vinyl dashboard with my finger's death grip than anything that happened outside the car.

Everybody tells you to avoid Naples but it can't be as bad as Pompei back in 79.

If you can stand up without hanging on to a tree, build a town. 

The Amalfi Coast is on the Sorrento peninsula about 300 km south of Rome and near the ruins of Pompeii and the ruined city of Naples (Italy's Mumbai). It is mountainous and therefore the roads and towns tend to cling to the cliffsides or in the higher mountain valleys. Absolutely spectacular views of the Mediterranean with towns stretched from the seaside up the terraced mountains.

We took an open bus from the town of Amalfi to a mountain village called Ravello and then hiked down. We took a centuries old trail that was used by the locals to transport goods up to Ravello before the road was built. It was an easy, fun downhill trail with lots of breathtaking views.

Easy to hike down but it would have been a killer to go up with a basket of fish on your back.

Grow some lemons, make some cheap wine, marry a hard-working Sophia Loren type - it's all you need.

The damn Catholics grab all the great spots.

Take the high road and the low road.

About 6 hours after driving to Amalfi, we had de-compressed enough to finally get back into the car for the return trip. Next time we're taking the boat.

If you have some time, have a peek at this video but I remember this road much busier. http://onceinalifetimetravel.me/2012/09/18/the-road-of-terror-driving-along-the-amalfi-coast/

Spring Flowers

These little crocus type flowers are sprouting all over the place. They don't even need a cow pie for starter food.