Spring in Denmark- Bornholm

We have just come up for air after a very busy 2 1/2 months of visitors everyday except one day.  Often we had multiple visitors.  It was very fun, different with each group of family/friends but there was no time to keep the blog going, despite doing so many different, interesting things.

I write this on the eve of my departure from Copenhagen.  What a wonderful year, one we enjoyed immensely but we are ready to head home and all that awaits us, especially Meredith and Ky about to have their first baby, a new grandson.

BORNHOLM
In April we took a 3 day bike ride around the Danish island of Bornhom which is located south of Sweden.  A hilly, windy, lovely island.  We rented bikes from a nice woman who didn't take our names or deposits and told us to lock the bikes and drop the key in the mail slot when we were done in 3 days.  The first day we headed out, sunny and warm for April against the famous "modvind".  And it was a howling, tough-going wind indeed.  Pedaling down hills in second gear was hard work!  But it is a good biking island, good trails and considerate drivers.   A nice hotel with a sauna erased some of the pain.

We met rain the next day but landed at 11 am opening time for the famous Svaneke brewery  Biking requires replenishment and the Svaneke Gold beer gave us the courage and strength to soldier on.

The photos say it all about the work and the rain.  We had to wring out our gloves at the end of the day.

The third day was interesting, stopping at the castle ruins of Hammerhus where the Danish queen and her lover were imprisoned.  It is the largest medieval fortification in Europe (2500 feet of outer defense walls) built in the 13th century as a base for the Danish crusades.  

Toward the  end of our ride (110 Km) the bike trail takes an incredible plunge of a nearly 30% grade that we basically slid down while walking/braking our bikes.  It was one of those bike trips that certainly had its difficult moments, but will be remembered all the more fondly for it.

Brussels - a wonderful place to visit

We travelled to Brussels over Easter to visit good Danish friends Henrik and Barbara who have lived there for a couple years now after Henrik landed a market research job with IKEA.  We were anticipating seeing our friends for 4 days, but had not expected to be as surprised and delighted with the Belgian architecture, food, and sheer old world charm.  I described it as Paris with a touch of Vienna. 

 The city bustles with an interesting mix of people and languages.  It is the headquarters of the European Union, as well as NATO and one is reminded that the Republic of the Congo used to be the Belgium Congo and there are several vibrant Congolese neighborhoods.

We walked a great deal through the streets of Brussels, Bruge, and Leuven.  Mostly this was deliberate—a street-level tourism approach shared with our friends—but extended a bit when a wildcat public transportation strike broke out over worker security after a shocking incident where a transport worker was beaten to death after a tram/car accident. We were walking through town when we came upon the first moments of the strike.  Trams and buses were being maneuvered into street blocking positions, drivers and workers began to gather on the square and everyone around us was wondering what was happening.  The strike lasted the rest of the time we were in Brussels.

Transport workers blocking traffic with buses and trams.  The city's free bikes in the foreground.

Our day trips took us to Bruges, a medieval city threaded with canals.  It is called "Venice of the North".  Well, not quite like Venice but the over 700 year old belfry and cathedrals and the beguinage- a cloister and refuge for the poor and widowed women were beautiful. 

   

Another trip took us to Leuvan 20 minutes from Brussels  (everything is remarkably nearby- next time we will take a day trip to Paris, an 1 1/2 hr trip on the fast train).  Leuvan is a centuries old university town and has the most elaborate town hall we have ever seen.  Built in 1439- its facade is a boggling vision of humanity.

Lovely architecture and historical events, impressive cathedrals filled with elaborately carved pulpits and beautiful stain-glass windows were abundant but THE FOOD!!!!   One highlight was the French fries  (those who know me, know the fondness I have for potatoes, esp in this form).  We visited the French fry museum in Bruges and learned that this holy food was supposedly invented here in Belgium, and was misnamed by the American soldiers during WWI who heard the Belgian soldiers who offered them this treat, speaking French. In Brussels we stood in line for 45 minutes to the walk-up French fry stand for this delicacy.  We then took them across the street to the bar for the accompanying beer.

             

Then there was the Sunday market near their apt with carts and tables loaded with wonderful vegetables, mushrooms, pates, homemade quiches and cheeses. 

One booth was surrounded by its customers, drinking wine and eating the escargot which was served out of a bubbling pot of broth.  The talking, the eating, the enjoyment of a nice Sunday noon glass of wine in the sunshine was delightful to watch.

Of this last delight, it has to be written by Nat.  I am not the best describer of the marvels of chocolate and desserts but I certainly appreciated the beautiful works of art.  

Godiva Chocolate shop strawberries. Henrik bought a cone of them and  they did not last long.

Lemon meringue tart--the best I have tasted and I grew up in a homemade lemon meringue pie kind of family.

Terrific tasting beer.  Henrik is a beer enthusiast and introduced us to a score of different kinds, including a random wild yeast brew (the vats are left open for spores in the air to settle in the kettle).   A Belgian beer guide described another beer of this kind as tasting like "horse blanket," so we weren't prepared for what turned out to be a pretty darn good citrusy tasting brew.  

We walked many, many hours each day, but always rewarded with good food and drink along the way and when we made our way home in the evening. Our friends confessed that Copenhagen had started to look a little provincial after living in Brussels and we could understand the sentiment.  We are happy to be back, but Belgium was a gem of a trip.  Now begins the time of the visitor.  We look forward to family and friends who are coming to share our love of Denmark as our time here is quickly passing by.

DONE!

More to come later but Nhat finished his manuscript today and handed it in to the publisher.  What a HUGE job.  Congratulations are definitely in order and we are off to get some local pizza and champagne.

Spring!

I should have written this earlier this week, when I was biking for 2 hours around the nature preserve.  I had to push my sleeves up and roll up my pant legs to cool off.  It was wonderful.  Really different than the post-biking photo 6 weeks ago.  Now early spring is truly back though the sun is shining and the wind is blowing, a lot!   We are still biking, pumping hard against that "modvind" and our bike legs are coming back.

Spring is here though.  The day is 13 hours long today.   Quite a change from the 7 hours of daylight we had in December and headed for 17 and a half hours at the June solstice.  What a heady difference.  Spring and thoughts turn to cleaning and tidying up, at least with us Scandinavian types.   Two weekends ago the neighborhood had a tree pruning Sat.  Everyone turned out with clippers and ladders and pruned the old chestnut trees of their bushy crowns, filling 2 dumpsters with branches.

It was a friendly group and they finished with the pølse wagon driving up and everyone eating their fill of Danish hot dogs. 

 I took to the windows afterwards as all this sunshine made their sorry state more obvious.




















We weren't the only ones who were cleaning up.  The municipal workers were out for several days cleaning the canals and harbor of a winter's worth of detritus, mostly in the form of bikes.  They had a diver crawling the bottom and then they would haul up the old bikes, shopping carts, tires and in one case a seaweed encrusted statue of a man in 18th century clothes, looking pretty sorry lying there on the barge.

Here are other signs of spring:  the wildflowers, the crocus bed in the Kings Garden and Challa and his friends bringing out the trampoline for the season in the yard below our deck.

                                                                  
So begins spring and then summer.  The visiting season has arrived.  We just said good-bye to Debbie Ward after a great week of walking, eating and talking. It was such nice weather that after we dropped her at the airport (from our #5 bus line) that we walked home.  I love an airport one can walk or bike to.  It took us about 1 1/2 hours similar to our usual 5 mile walk around our neighborhood on Bainbridge. Now the rest of the visitors will come so expect more tourist photos, pictures of folks you might recognize (esp our grandkids) and of course more biking experiences.

Quick Trip to Oslo

So this week's outing was a "mini-cruise" to Oslo thanks to an unexpected Groupon deal for $50.  We biked up to the ship harbored just down the street from Nhat's museum after work on Monday.  It was a glorious spring day and we loved motoring out of the harbor with it's brilliant white windmills and snapping flags on board.

 We sailed through the night.  Although there were two discos with a live, cover band and kids and some pretty intoxicated dancers living it up, we hunkered down in the throbbing bowels of the ship and read our books.  It was perfectly calm sailing and we were quite content in our pulldown bunks.

Next morning we sailed the long fjord into the Oslo harbor.  We noticed how much the shoreline resembled Lake Superior and how much topography there was.  There were hills!!!!  Just like home!  (The next morning we really noticed it as we sailed into the perfectly flat, not a hill on the horizon, Denmark).









We had 7 hours to see the town.  We started with their Resistance Museum.  Tons of information to wade through though the exhibit is a bit dated and down at the heels.  We realized it hadn't changed a bit since we saw it 22 years ago when we did this same trip with the kids and Anne's parents.  We then made our way to the Museum for Contemporary Art for a private tour with Kari Skytt-Andersen who is a conservator there.  Great exhibits of drawings.  She told us the inside stories on the art, artists and their foibles. Her role and duties as conservator of modern art were quite fascinating.

After we stopped by the museum cafe where the beer we enjoyed in the sunshine was $11 (for a rather small beer) and we passed on the $30 Caeser salad-  they say that Oslo is the most expensive city in the world--we had a take out falafel pita
and ate it on the plaza in front of Oslo's new Opera house on the harbor.  Stunning building with a huge, crowd-friendly plaza leading up to the roof which gave wonderful views of the city.

So it was time to get on board again, eat our cheese sandwiches and sail home.  We landed at 9:30 am on a sunny, spring day.  Our bikes were waiting for us and we strapped our duffel bag on the baggage carrier and cycled off to work and school.  It would be nice to explore Norway some time.  It has a totally different feel than Denmark and Copenhagen and Oslo felt like very different cities.  A 36 hour dip into another part of the world.  Oh yeah,  had to get a photo of this statue by the old castle.  Says something about the Scandinavian view of woman and how they put those little guys on a pedestal!!!  Poor things.

A trip home

It has been awhile since I posted on the blog.  It is not because I am not doing anything.  Au contraire, I just returned to DK after a 2 week visit back to Seattle, Bellingham and Bainbridge to get a grandkid fix, see Meredith's baby bump and go maternity clothes shopping with her and have my mom (almost 90) visit the West Coast family.  It was a busy time!!!!   Clementine and Cooper are fantastic.  And always busy.  Both are big talkers.  Clementine is full of questions and observations.  "What happens to the food after it goes into your stomach?"  That engenders the mention of poop which is a preschooler's favorite topic because it gets so much attention which is exactly the point.  Cooper talks all the time though what he is saying remains a mystery but he so happily carries on.  His most delightful words are "Thank you" said in the sweetest singsong way.  They get along very well and have some favorite games like pushing each other across the room in the little wagon.

My mom made the trip for 4 days and she and especially Clementine hit it off.  They "read" which was a little tricky because Clementine doesn't read and my mom with her macular degeneration has a hard time reading so they improvised.   She taught Clementine how to play the card game "war" and they had a great time together.  

Meredith is now 20 weeks pregnant and it was fun to see her and get excited about the baby coming in July.  She and Ky are over the moon with excitement and anticipation and with the experience of being Auntie and Uncle to C. and C., they are ready to be parents.  And they will be terrific parents. 

The big event of the trip was Clementine's 4th birthday which was actually her first as she was born on Feb. 29th.  She took off on her new bike and loved her new outfits, most of which were ballerina inspired.   Won't be long before she could be biking in Denmark like all the little kids here.

It was great to see everyone, including friends on Bainbridge, have my hair cut by my regular hairdresser after a disastrous haircut by the Iranian/Danish hairdresser at the corner shop, and go to the dentist because dentistry is outrageously expensive here.  The downside was getting back in the car and driving, driving, driving.  Second time I have driven in 5 1/2 months.  I missed my bike, though in the downpours we experienced in Seattle I was glad I wasn't on my bike.  I came home to sunshine and quite a warm day as you can see.  Very different than the last photo I posted of myself.  Exhausted and jet lagged,  I took a nap on the deck, just like the babies in Denmark  who nap outside in their baby buggies, even on the coldest days under their dynes.  Glad to be back and I realize that I only have 4 more months here.  Time to really appreciate the gift of a year away from work, many responsibilities, yardwork, etc.  We are ready for the many visitors coming in April, May and June.  And July and our return home to greet a new grandchild will be here before we know it.

Damn it's cold!

Winter is really here.  It has been down to 4 degrees with strong winds from the East..... the Siberian cold they are calling it.  It is really different experiencing this cold from the icy seat of a bicycle, fumbling to release stiff bike locks, and cheeks piercingly cold as we get buffeted by the gusts.  Oh, I guess we could take the bus, but then we wouldn't be testing our Nordic mettle.  It is not as cold as it was freshman year at St. Olaf where one morning I walked to work at the nursing home, it was -40 degrees but it is the coldest it has been in Denmark for 26 years.  Over 300 in Eastern Europe have already been sent to the eternal deep freeze.  I have so many layers on that if I were a paper doll and had all of this on, I would be an inch thick.

 The Danes have just started talking about windchill temps, but mostly just report the temps  i.e.  -20 centigrade which sounds colder than -4.  Anyway it is cold.  In the apartment too.  These >100 year old windows are not the most energy efficient though they greet us with beautiful patterns every morning.

The salt-water harbor is frozen over, with a trail of ice cubes where boats still ply their routes, but the ice-bound boats look a bit forlorn and defeated.

Nyhavn

The big harbor--ice from one side to the other.

And then this morning, we awoke to 2 inches of snow.  Now real Danes get snow tires for their bikes but we abandoned them today and went walking into town to see the Europe exhibit at the National Museum.  Nhat had copy edited the English text for the exhibit.  It is a pet peeve of ours that exhibits often have awkward translated language and misspellings so the museum director asked Nhat to correct it, so he had to put his figurative correct-o-tape where his mouth is.

  Afterwards, we walked down to a bar that an old Resistance veteran introduced Nhat to in 1991.  It serves slow beer--a draft beer that is tapped over a 15 minute period and it is served with a thick head of foam like whipped cream.  To ease the wait, one buys a "fast beer" and observes the social interactions of the community of regular customers.   The place certainly hasn't changed in 20 years--a nice way to finish the afternoon.

What's the point?

Today was a dreadful weather day.  Rain, sleet, a few heavy flakes of snow, wind.  Nothing like Seattle's snow and ice storm but I was very happy to be inside.  Inside, doing homework.  I sat with the wind and sleet behind me and dove into prepositions, definite and indefinite articles and verb tenses.  Prepositions are often baffling.  It is a matter of convention that you say you are "mad on someone", "good to Danish" (i.e. you are competent in Danish), "the shoes are too big to me".  And then there is "af" which when I look it up in the dictionary means: of, off, from, by, on or with.

Yesterday's class was a little discouraging.  We studied pronunciation.  Oh those vowels!  There are 3 vowels that all sound like "a" to the untrained (read "my") ear.  Today I heard an Oxford educated translator who knows many languages but teaches here in Denmark who said that the Danish pronunciation is the most difficult of any language he has encountered.  OK, that made me feel better.  Later on in class we worked on rhythm and fluidity of sentences.  Not only does my tongue trip up on words but when spoken quickly, half of the letters and syllables disappear.  "Sig til mig"   (see til my) becomes something quite different when tripping off the tongues of Danes.  I sometimes wish for thought bubbles over peoples' heads that would have Danish subtitles.  Then I would be just fine.

It all gradually improves though.  Yesterday, as I listened to the interview with the translator of Danish poetry, I realized I understood most of the story.   (And they were both speaking Danish).  When I watch the news or listen to the radio,  I am getting the message.  As I read the newspaper yesterday  (the Danish equivalent of the New York Times), I read through a commentary and understood it without frequent trips to the dictionary or asking Nhat, "what does.....mean?".

Classes will for me probably be over after mid-Feb.  I am taking a frequent flier trip back to Seattle to see the kids, grand kids and marvel over Meredith's pregnancy and help her start making plans.  Part of me would like to continue and take the last class in order to pass the national language exam in May and June, the final proof of competency in Danish but I don't think I will be able to stay in the course with missing two weeks of school during my trip home and taking time off for visitors.  That test proves one can speak and write on some adequate level but it takes forever to get the idiomatic language.  Who knew that "join the crowd" here, is "come into the warm"?

So I will continue to sharpen my pencils every morning for awhile.  That is one of the pleasures of school, using a pencil again.  I take these odd triangular pencils I bought from the $2 store (everything costs twice as much here) and watch the shavings drop off and have that lovely feeling of the sharp pencil to the page.  Now if I could just put my brain in a sharpener.  That would be helpful!!

Back in Denmark

 Oh yes, we are back in Denmark.  On our ride to work and school today I saw a man nearly blown off his bike by the gusts of wind which are still blowing outside my window at 4:30 pm.  Our bikes were blown backwards when we were at stoplights and on the way home, I felt a little like a drunk, wobbly bicyclist as I was buffeted by the wind.  And it is dark at 4:30!  And the drizzle!

Recently I read Jane Brody's column in the NYTimes on advice from the elderly.  TRAVEL  they said, when you can, before you retire, before you are too old.  So we did.  Grabbed another inexpensive charter trip to Gran Canaria, one of the Canary Islands.  We left 34 degrees and arrived to 72 degrees.  Not tropical but the sun was out, it had some strength, none of this wan, halfway up in the sky stuff but some real warmth to it.  We had a slightly funky but extremely well-situated hotel 1 block from a 4 km beautiful beach with a promenade along the length of it with restaurants, sidewalk cafes, street performers, etc. It was particularly glorious at night.

 Grand Canaries are part of Spain so we were surrounded by Spanish (and do they ever talk fast, a lot and with their arms waving, quite the contrast from the Scandinavians who are so fearful someone might hear them on the rare occasion that they talk) and Spanish food and culture.  Not to complain, but that Spanish food was delicious but extremely limited for the likes of vegetarian, non-fish eating Nhat.  We kept walking around trying to find something besides grilled cheese (and that's without the bread) and the delicious small potatoes in a special sauce which are the specialty of the islands.  Also, we are Midwesterners, raised by farm folk who ate dinner at the reasonable hour of 6 pm.  We walked a lot waiting for restaurants to open up at 8:30 pm and marveled at the folks who were sitting down to eat at 11 pm.

Walk-Up Window Bar Next to Our Hotel

Though many of the tourists (and there are many, esp Germans and Scandinavians) took to the beach despite rather cool low 70's and some clouds, we explored the largest city where we stayed, Las Palmas.  The original city district was built 500 years ago and we went on a terrific walking tour of the old town, seeing the Christopher Columbus house where he stayed before heading out for the New World and toured the cathedral built around the same time but finished a couple of centuries later, mixing up all the architectural styles that came and went.  They had a mummified cardinal (and I don't mean the bird) in one of the chapels who is awaiting a decision on his sainthood.  We had a wonderful meal in the courtyard of one of those 500-year-old houses, an oasis of palm and fig trees, cacti and
bougainvillea.

 

One day, as there were no cars to rent, we hopped on the local buses to see some of the sights in a couple of smaller towns.  Thank goodness there were no cars to rent as the roads were twisty, often one-lane roads which did not slow down much of the local traffic.  Several times we met another car around a curve despite the bus driver incessantly honking his horn around corners and the other car would have to back up to let us go by.  There was a fabulous Virgin Mary of the Pines sitting on a huge silver throne, dressed in golden robes in this church in a tiny town in the hills.

Another day, we heard about the fantastic, warmer beaches of the southern part of the island.  We took the bus and spent 1/2 hour winding our way through a tourist hell hole, with Norwegian fish cafes and a "Sioux City" area, complete with cowboys and Indians.  As soon as we got off the bus we decided to walk the 6 km to the other end of the sand dunes and beach.  The natural area of sand dunes was beautiful, the tourists streaming along the beach (which was red-flagged because of severe winds) were not.  Extremely large bellies and Speedos don't mix.  Nhat called it "the pilgrimage of the Northerners."
We made our way through the wienersnitzel restaurants and Hooters and made our way back to our beautiful, less crowded and less touristy beach.

And what is a vacation without a parade?  We hit the day before Three Kings Day, which is their Christmas Eve and got treated to a candy-throwing kidfest with camels, cartoon characters on floats, legions of  Roman soldiers, wisemen collecting letters from children concerning their present wishlists, quaint hawkers of sweets on rolling carts, and loud techno-music thumping away as soundtrack.

If the parade wasn't enough, we got to see the Spanish National Synchronized Swimming team do a New Year's Day extravaganza in a cove on our beach to Christmas music!

We got some good doses of sun.  We actually laid on some chaise lounge chairs and read all one day, bestirring ourselves long enough to get a Spanish tortilla sandwich and some beers.  The water was beautiful though cool, probably around 65 degrees so we jumped in but didn't linger long.

So it was a good break.  We saw the sun for at least 3 extra hours a day and felt its warmth.  Now, back to the books.  Nhat is working extra hard to get done and I am back in school.  Enjoyable but we are exploring the possibilities for our next trip.