Legal In Denmark

OK.  Now I am legal.  Here is my visa.  Only 4 months from the inital application.  The county government never registered that I had left 6 years ago (we weren't aware that we were supposed to "deregister") and for years has been sending me letters at my old address which the woman we rented from has been throwing away.  So when this letter arrived at my old address because the computer did not register my new one down at the immigration office, she threw the first one away.  I called and tried to find out what happened so they sent a new copy.  Our old mailman must be on the route because he just delivered it to my old address, down the street.  She opened it and finally realized it was something not to be tossed.  So I went to the "folke register" this week.  A painless process of updating my address and visa number and now I am enrolled in that socialist health care system and all set for the year.  We tease Paal and Mona that they are no longer vulnerable to arrest for harboring an illegal alien.

This time tomorrow we will be in Rhodes, Greece.  The Danes are enthusiastic travelers and in the 60's many cheap charter companies started up.  We took advantage of their last minute sale as we have no particular schedules or demands and bought a week's trip there.  $378 per person for flight and a week's hotel in a small town south of Rhodes city.  In 1972, after Nhat and I got married, we went to Europe for what we thought would be forever in order for Nhat to not go to Vietnam.  We applied and were accepted to Guy's Hospital in London for nurses training, which provided housing and a stipend for school.  While waiting for the April start, we left cold England and went as far south as we could in that January.  A miserable 24 hour ferry ride (last time I ever ate figs) took us to Rhodes where we lived in a 50 cent a night pension with wall to wall beds taken by traveling young people.  The place was run by "Mama Nina" who met each ferry with a sign and a offer of "clean sheets".  It was true, she washed those sheets scrupulouly, at least twice a week.  We cooked vegetable soups on the hotplate, and ate delicious yoghurt with Greek honey and oranges every day.  Evenings we went to the local taverna where we were treated by the locals to retsina and snacks.  We stayed a month, spending $125 for everything.  The next month, we went to  a nearby island Symi where we lived on $80 a month.  We had planned to go further but when the ferry listed into the harbor, we decided we would get off at the nearest island.

Now that we are older and Nhat doesn't look like a Greek Orthodox priest on vacation (they all had ponytails and long beards) we will likely be paying for our own retsina.  Rhodes has become a huge tourist destination and full of crowds but we are curious to see the places where we stayed 40 years ago and see if we can find some of that wonderful yoghurt which they spooned out of big cans onto waxed paper.  Will post some interesting photos.  It is full of medieval history, the Knights of St. John built a citadel and 2 1/2 miles of walls around the old city.  It is also 82 degrees there and this week, fall is definitely coming to Copenhagen.