Return to Denmark
September 23 — Denmark; traveling from Berlin to Odense
I promised myself I would not talk about what happened in the Copenhagen airport. After all, we were very much looking forward to coming back to the friendly people of Denmark. I won’t mention that there were no signs for rental cars and we kept walking and asking people. We finally got a definitive response from a flight attendant that it was out the far door and a short walk. So we walked and walked and after 15 minutes saw a car rental bus go whizzing by. We were so pissed. I was conjuring up all the nasty things I wanted to say to someone. We finally got to the building and despite having vowed I would not say anything to the Enterprise rental agent, my frustration bubbled out. And then when he couldn’t find our reservation, I was really frustrated.
Turns out the green E at the rental car counter stood for Europecar. So I sidled down to a very smart and funny Enterprise agent who outfitted us with a very nice Audi at almost the same price. It’s a very comfortable ride and my favorite feature is the adaptable cruise control which also senses the changes in speed limits and makes adjustments! I like it. The one program is that it is very low to the ground and I was killing myself getting in and out. Deborah showed me her technique of pivoting both feet to the ground, inching forward and then standing up.
It was the most traveling time on the trip so far except for the flight over since we then drove 2-1/2 hours to Odense. We stayed in an old-fashioned guest house which was great (considering we couldn’t get a place in the center of the city because of a major robotics tournament for high school kids. We were in the overflow accommodations with the Rumanian delegation about a seven minute drive away.
September 24 — Odense
Yes, the city named after Odin and at the center of the Viking legacy!
After a very substantial breakfast spread with several different types of rolls, cold cuts, fruit, yogurt and much more, we drove into town to see the Hans Christian Anderson Museum. That’s actually an understatement. It’s set in a 16th century town but with several different pavilions at three different levels. Everyone gets an audio headset with an other sensor unit on top. On the ground are images of listening and the audio automatically picks up on it when you are in range.
The audio was top notch with professional actors. This was supplemented by a variety of interactive exhibits of increasing complexity as you moved along. H. C. Anderson as they seem to call him was a complex personality, probably gay, who was constantly traveling and trying new art forms from pen and ink to cut paper to plays and novels. At one point our narrator relates how Anderson was showing some of his drawings to a friend and, hoping to elicit some favorable comments, said “they’re probably not very good, I’m still learning” to which the friend replied, “you’re right, they’re not very good.”
After lunch, we began exploring the more modern part of the city, starting with the pedestrian street which is filled with locals shopping and promenading. It’s like the Italian passeggiata but every day.
Later I went to the Odense History Museum complex which looked like a miniature Colonial Williamsburg only a lot earlier. I was met by a giant apple at the entrance (the city is known for their special apples, and there was an apple tree growing in their courtyard. One of the mom’s I spoke with is a regular at the museum and pulled a few of the applies from the tree for herself, her toddler, and one for me.)
All of the old buildings really felt old, and the stairs in one of them were so worn down that the edges of them were missing. Very unlike the side steps to Duke Chapel that were ground down when they were constructed to make the Chapel appear to be a lot older than it was! The buildings also bulged in placed and sloped downwards in part. And the doorways were so low I had to duck.
That evening we drove to Billund to prepare for our LegoLand timed entry at 10:00. Our hotel was in the nearby countryside with a couple of small ponies, a sandbox for kids, and a small soccer field. After the drive I was excited to kick around a soccer ball with a dad and his young son. The hotel was incredibly well-ordered from the carefully pruned vegetation to the detailed instructions (in pictures) on the wall. And there really are seven different recycling containers! We caught the hang of everything except the heating system and wound up roasting ourselves that night.
September 25 — Billund
At the bakery breakfast, chatted with a young philosophy instructor from Toronto, who is doing research on Kant’s political philosophy at a university in Norway, and was now a trailing spouse in Billund for his wife’s work at Lego. He was very familiar with the book, A Year of Living Danishly, and said that Lego paid careful attention to it and has made several corporate changes based on that author’s experience. In the end, we talked a little about AI and I generated an open mic night at a comedy club between Kant and Nietzsche on the existence of God. He thought this was a crazy idea because neither of them were known for a sense of humor. However, he was very impressed that ChatGPT created a funny conversation with some very clever and appropriate humor!
I was not anxious to visit LegoLand but was really blown away by it. I’m very glad we went on a school day and not in the summer when it is totally mobbed. There were enthusiasts there of all ages and cultures and they were incredibly passionate about it. After being amazed by some of the giant creations at the entrance, we started on the top floor which showcased the handiwork of Lego creators from around the world in really spectacular ways.
I was drawn to the animation studio and set up in a two-camera station there. They made it very easy to create the animation with Lego artifacts. And since we were given ID wristbands when we entered, I was able to capture everything I created, including the video.
From there I joined in a Lego robotics activity were a group of us were trying to restore a honeybee population by digging for water, planting seeds and then watering them into flowers. You programmed your machine by dragging icons for turning, pounding, and watering into the control board and then pressing the activate switch. I was doing quite well for a while and then I wasn’t able to grown any more flowers. I hadn’t noticed I had run out of water and needed to go to a nearby pond to refill my water tank. But others kept draining the ponds before I got there!
I did much better in building Lego race cars for speed and another for speed and leaping abilities. At one point on the speed course, I mumbled something about heavier is better and then went off to add heft to my car. In the background, I heard several kids repeating to each other, as if absorbing a secret, that “heavier is better.”
Finally I just stood in awe and watched the action Lego scenes created over thousands of hours. I particularly loved the playful elements like pirates creating a diversion and then stealing gold pieces. Below you can see the toilet paper thrown onto the soccer field by irate fans and seagulls swiping some fast food:
September 24 — Aarhus
We continued onto Aarhus. Deborah checked out a yarn store and I headed to Dokk1, a multipurpose community space known for its’ library and playgrounds. But first I checked out the outdoor play spaces which had some unusual elements themed around nature. There was a 25’ brown bear holding a large “log” up to his shoulder. You had to climb inside the bear to go down the very long slide. I chickened out.
Then I saw a dad and son bouncing on some wooden “islands.” These were a series of horizontal surfaces mounted onto two strong coil. It was like mini-trampolines but much safer. In another portion of the patio area for Dokk1 was a large monkey standing amidst a kind of jungle with some horizontal logs woven between them. I tried walking on the logs through the jungle and it was fun.
Inside, I was talking with one of the librarians and she said I would really talk with this other librarian who is in charge of the whole children’s section. Yannil was great and took me for a tour of the children’s section and talked about the different play areas. For the risk averse American audience the tiered steps/reading area might be an easier sell. And the 20’ tree with small cubby spaces that could be used for climbing to the top would be a no go. Then there were some tamer areas for very young children.
They had a miniature Scrap Exchange with materials in pull-out drawers (this is Denmark after all!) and a long work table. There was a large maker space with a 3D printer and laser cutter and yet another space for building electronics and computer projects.
They had so much extra space in this building that they even had a very large padded room where kids can just run around. And for older kids and adults, regular game clubs meeting and spreading out their large game formations.
For our last real night in Denmark, we splurged on what they call a social dinner which consisted of seven different small plates to share. I was a little worried that it would be a snooty place but both the servers and the guests were generally young people who enjoyed creating, serving and trying different tastes. Our waitresses was very quick-witted. It was fun and unusual and we barely worked our way through all of the small dishes. We staggered our way back to our wonderful Aarhus hotel which was a beautifully designed and very welcoming space in an older part of town.
September 26 — Aarhus to Dragor
Our last morning in Aarhus, we decided to forgo any museums and instead take our time wandering through the very old Latin Quarter. The area is the oldest section and is adjacent to the old university, drawing it’s name from the all students that lingered in cafes and lived there.
There were many clothing stores with unique, solidly built designs and we both hoped to find something there. Deborah scored on several shirts and I picked up a couple of leather belts which were significantly cheaper and nicer than what I’ve found in the states.
On our lazy morning, we wandered through the Latin Quarter and plunked down in a town square cafe for some peach ice tea. I know if looks suspiciously like something else but they seem to serve everything in Carlsberg glasses!
As we were hanging out, we noticed the bronze figure of a Greek figures incorporated into a water feature. We were drawn first to the birds playing in the water, then the missing arm. The missing penis seemed odd but it didn’t appear to have been broken off. Moving in closer, we notice the unusual feet.
We began to speculate about the art students at the nearby university having some fun in creating this androgynous figures. I asked one of the nearby shopkeepers about it and she had not noticed the “mismatching” feet.
We cut it a little close in getting to the ferry and had some trouble finding the right place, making it with about three minutes to spare. It’s a popular 90-minute and I was surprised to find it outfitted inside as a cross between an airplane and a mall. There were several different eateries, and sections with comfy, high-backed chairs with videos to watch everything from the news to children’s animations. One of the few clues that it was even a boat was in the men’s room with the horizontal bar to hold onto in the event of turbulence.
After exploring the ferry thoroughly, I settled in outside in the back to watch the horizon (and minimizing possible motion sickness). And chat with other people in similar situations. It’s the new smoker’s club of people who have to gather outside in the elements. Traveling overseas gives me a little more courage than I might have had at home. So I went up to a beefy man and asked him what the “313” tattoo symbolized on his neck and learned that it relates to some symbolism in the Koran. He also had a verse from the Koran on his arm. We chatted a while and I learned he works as a bouncer in Copenhagen. And he showed me the recent knife wound with 14 stitches on his left upper arm.
The ferry terminal was on the tip of a peninsula so we followed a cavalcade of cars down this narrow strip of land, stopping first to look at an antique shop set up next to a thatched roof home and then a small cafe near the water. The “beach” was made up almost exclusively of large rounded rocks which meant for some treacherous walking. But since the rocks were so colorful, in a subdued Danish way, it was fine to just walk slowly to the gentle lapping of the water.
September 27 — Dragor (Denmark) to JFK
We planned to spend the last night of the trip near the Copenhagen airport and I found a small fishing village just 10 minutes away and we checked into the Dragorbade Hotel. We ate at a charming pub-type eatery where we had a long conversation with the owner, discovering that his middle daughter just went as an exchange student to Indiana. The daughter is staying with a Mennonite family and it took them a while to understand the difference between the Amish and the Mennonites. They wanted to be sure there wouldn’t be heavily religious pressure on their daughter as most Danes are not very religious. The daughter was also on the Denmark national cheerleading team so the exchange program did a great job of matching her with this family that had two cheerleading daughters.
I stopped to pet a couple of pugs on their way out to the water’s edge and spoke with a woman of about 40 who had just returned to the village after 15 years of living and working in Mexico. She told me the second pier with the small structures on them contained saunas. In the wintertime, it is apparently popular to chop holes in the ice and go for a bracing swim, followed by some time in the sauna.
I also asked her about the young teens on bikes coming and going to the boathouse at the water’s edge during the school day. The dog owner confirmed the teens leave school on their own to come to this location for boating, which counts as PE credits. How very different from the US!
We had hoped to catch up with and stay with my cousin, Karen, and her husband on Long Island this evening, but the traffic made this prohibitive, with an estimated one hour and 45 minutes to get to their home. It’s their new place and it is much further away from JFK.
So here we are patiently waiting this morning for our return flight home, with just a 3-1/2 hour delay (so far) courtesy of Jet Blue. Let’s see if they can top the six hour delay on the way to JFK on the first leg of our trip, though much of that was due to a severe storm. We still consider ourselves lucky that all of our other flights were on top and that, despite a forecast of rain almost every day for the first week, we didn’t see any the whole time.
Some lingering thoughts and questions:
What happened in Berlin (Germany) that there is such an emphasis on cash? Whereas in Denmark almost all transactions, even the smallest amounts are done with a credit card (or app on their phones).
We’re worried that the Danish preference for black, white and beige has rubbed off on us. Or maybe it’s that these are the only clean clothes we have at the moment.
Thanks for reading!
David
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