great danes

Wow, sorry about the title, but I had to do it. I could feel the pun blocking any other witty options coming out of the ol’ brain box. Okay, so Denmark: I had a blast.

I was a little nervous getting there, as I was staying with a friend of a friend who I had never met and only conversed with over email. She lives up on the coast, north of Copenhagen, but I was able to take a train easily from the airport to her town, where she picked me up. And Inge is awesome. She and her husband, Jens (pronounced Yents), were very cool, housing me, telling me about what Denmark’s really like, making me delicious home-cooked dinners. And their young son Markus was very sweet.

Inge took me around the town, showing me the church where she got married, which was modeled on the Copenhagen Cathedral and was built on land formerly occupied by an 18th century royal palace and gardens that had belonged to an insane king who let it fall into disrepair after he found out that his wife and doctor were using it as a location to have their affair. Whew, those royals: drama, drama, drama! (Though the insane thing, to quote Eddie Izzard: Because it’s a bad idea when cousins marry! Bottom of the gene pool, you know. You’re just scraping the barrel there, “We’ve haven’t got enough for any more of you royals there, sorry.” First rule of genetics: spread the genes apart!) Anyway, it was beautiful, the large park that’s left covered in the new snow–yes, it snowed there that morning, and wasn’t that a trip.

Then Inge drove me up to Helsingor to see Hamlet’s Castle. Dude. I cannot tell you how much I geeked out. I was walking through Elsinore! It was amazing!!

After the castle, we picked Jeanine up at the train station there and drove down to Louisiana, a modern art museum not too far from Inge’s house, and it was one of the cooler museum’s I’ve been too, though I didn’t get quite enough time to explore, but it was cool. I was so glad to see Jeanine (it’s been almost seven years!) and get to hang out with her. It turned into a beautiful day, and we later went on a nice long walk with Inge and Markus. Jeanine later said to me: “It’s so great hanging out with you; it’s so much fun and reminds me so much of your mom.” Awww.

Next day, we went to Copenhagen, which is a beautiful and fun and vibrant city. We went up this huge tower, called the round tower (but in Danish) that uses a winding ramp-thing instead of stairs, and it included this:

yeah, my humor’s not too far removed from that of a twelve-year-old boy. What can I say, I still giggle when the picadilly line trains announce that they are the eastbound trains for Cockfosters. Almost three months and it’s still a little funny.

Then we went to Nyhavn (new harbour), which is so pretty:

see? where Jeanine had to part to catch her train back home. Then Inge and I went for lunch to get a traditional Danish open-faced sandwich. At this point, I had a choice between fish, pork, or–essentially–and open-faced (gourmet-ish) gusburger. I still won’t eat at the white spot, but it wasn’t too bad. Then Inge left to catch her train back home. I took a canal cruise, which was pretty great, except that I started shivering as soon as I actually got off the boat. I warmed up by walking down the main pedestrian street, popping into various shops to look around and warm up. I got a few nice small things, but was mainly killing time. I got off the boat at 16:15 and my flight wasn’t until 21:25. I still ended up at the airport super early, but at least I was warm and not-stressed. Though CPH is a smallish airport, it was one of the longer security lines I’ve been in, complete with animated “how to go through security” instructional video, that I had to watch about twelve times because it was on a loop. So I got to the terminal with the directive to blow the rest of my cash (I was not going to pay exchange commission twice to get it back to pounds), which I did on food, mostly, and a really cute pair of Danish porcelain earrings. Oh, and I gave my nice dinner waiter (who was polite and charming though obviously overworked) a big tip.

Friday, I did something, but I can’t remember what. Errands, I think.

Saturday, I went to Kew gardens in Richmond to see the Henry Moore sculptures on display there (it was the last weekend of the exhibit), and of course, when I got there, it started raining. I also wanted to see the Oxford vs. Cambridge boat race which began at 1715 just a few miles east on the Thames, so after getting my fill of Kew and Moore, I decided to kill the next few hours walking along the Thames Path. It was actually quite pleasant despite the rain showers and cold wind, as long as I kept moving. However, about two miles down, the path turned almost entirely to mud, so I had to move quite a bit slower to keep from slip-sliding, but that did nothing to save my nice green chucks from the mud. Nothing more I could do, I kept going, which was fine once I knew cleanliness from the calf down was a lost cause. Eventually, I got to the bend in the river at Hammersmith bridge where I had decided to watch the race, and there was still half an hour before the reserve race. I happened upon a boat ramp and figured, “hey, I can kind of clean off my shoes here.” Bad idea. I mean, cool to have put my feet in the Thames (and it looked relatively clean there), but not so cool to be standing with wet shoes in the cold for the next hour. Well, it all worked out. I saw the race, heard some rather creative and loud curses against the winning/losing crew, and was part of the mad dash to the tube station afterwards. But, boy was I glad to get back to Nido, take a hot shower, make some tea, and wash my shoes in the kitchen sink.

And now, spring break is officially over. I have class this evening, but before that, I’m going to take my time today. Go to the gym, maybe go shopping, definitely drink more tea. And just for kicks, a little Monty Python graffiti: