12 posts tagged “denmark”
As the Danish king
Christian IV lay dying in Rosenborg castle, he looked up at a topless
Hera surrounded by cherubs. Hera looks more like a voluptuous
Renaissance Italian woman than like the haughty goddess of
mythology—a delightful
last vision for a man who delighted in life's pleasures.
We spent the afternoon yesterday in Rosenborg castle, Christian IV's Dutch Renaissance pleasure house. Christian lived from 1577 to 1648, and ruled just after Elizabeth I and at the same time as Gustavus Adolphus. Though he was not well educated he spoke several languages, loved conversation and was eager to learn from others, and was generally very curious about the world. He enjoyed the good life and was known as a womanizer and drinker. In his chamber at Rosenborg is a primitive telephone—a tube that ran to his wife's chamber and another that ran to the wine cellar—he could meet his needs at a moment's notice. Still, he had a reputation as hard-working, starting the day early, even after a night of partying. Christian IV oversaw the growth of the Danish navy, sent an expedition to seek the northwest passage, sent an admiral to Ceylon where the admiral declared a Danish colony in Tranquebar, and Christian himself loved sailing and made trips around Denmark and Norway, then part of Denmark, to check on the state of affairs.
He loved music and led the development of an organ culture in Denmark. Dietrich Buxtehude, the great organist and composer, was the organist and music director in Helsingor as a young man, not long after Christian IV's reign. Christian had pipes built in Rosenborg that would carry the music being played by musicians in the basement up into rooms on the main floor.
Perhaps to make up for his bad treatment of Tycho Brahe—causing Brahe to exile himself to Prague—and also because of his interest in astronomy, Christian built the Round Tower, an observatory in downtown Copenhagen.
And Christian had a lively sense of humor. At Rosenborg we saw a special chair for guests. When they sat down, “concealed tentacles in the arm rests” would trap the visitor. Then, at a sign from Christian a servant might pour water into a funnel at the top of the chair. The water then spurted from holes in the arm rests, dousing the visitor in an unseemly way. When the visitor rose from the chair, a horn in the seat—an early version of a rubber chicken—would toot. Ah, the indignity!
Christian's
life ended sadly, as he had involved Denmark in the Thirty Years'
War, draining the coffers and gaining nothing politically.
Nevertheless, he's the most beloved of the Danish royalty and it's
easy to see why. In his later portraits you see a man who ate too
much, dressed dashingly, and met the world with a twinkle in his eye.
*I found the photo of Christian IV at Flickr; it was taken by somebody called jconn.
Yesterday we traveled to Lund, Sweden, to spend time with a friend from Arne's childhood, Simon, and his family. They live in a neighborhood on the edge of Lund that was built in the 1970s, but it might as well have been erected in the Middle Ages. The streets are so narrow that you can practically touch the hedge on each side, and the houses are tucked in close together. Although it's possible to drive through in your car, and folks do if they need to drop off groceries or make quick pick-ups, the cars are parked in a row of garages on the edge of the neighborhood. The houses themselves are not huge--that is most seem to be about 1500 square feet.
On the surface, this just doesn't sound appealing, but the truth is, the neighborhood is charming, welcoming, and livable. First, with almost no through-traffic, it is quiet and safe. Second, the houses are arranged so that front doors are not opposite one another and so that sides with fewer windows are closest to neighbors. Back gardens are enclosed by hedges and fences. In short, even though folks are living in close quarters, there is a sense of complete privacy. And every few houses are arranged around a small park. Biking/hiking trails lead out of the neighborhood in several directions.
What a contrast this neighborhood is to the one we live in in Morris, built about a decade earlier. Parkview Heights (what pretension!) consists of ten houses, each one a good 3000 square feet or more sitting on about 1 1/2 to 2 acres each. The street is wide enough that a semi can park on it and neighbors can still get by in their SUVs. Houses are built well back from the street, feature long, wide driveways, and two car garages. You know the sort of place I mean. We all have the accoutrements of living large: sheds and patios and rider mowers, weed whackers, leaf blowers, snow blowers, boats, snowmobiles, trailers, RVs.
In Lund, developers on the same size property as Parkview Heights could accomodate four times as many houses and two small parks and still have room for everyone to have one car in a garage. And on weekends, instead of spending all of Saturday morning mowing our par-three yards, we could talk to our children or grandchildren.
But in Morris, as in all of the United States, the Middle Ages are not memory but curiosity. Living large on the land is our birthright, what sets us apart from our ancestors who came over from the small countries. Here in Denmark you can walk from one village to the next in half an hour. From Morris, if you walked half an hour from the city limits you'd be in a corn field and you may not even be able to see the farther limit of the field. If you wanted to get to the next village you'd walk the better part of the morning. No, in Morris, if you go anywhere, you drive. And any public building put up in the last twenty years begins with a parking lot. One topic in the community or on campus that is guaranteed to raise the temperature is the question of parking. Remodel the old ugly parking area downtown, but for god's sake, don't lose any parking space!
So it's interesting to think about what's going to happen at home in the next few years given that gas prices are not going back down. We might have to dust off our history books and take a lesson from the Middle Ages, when people lived small, quiet lives with few possessions and their two feet to get them around.
It's been interesting to read stories in the American press lately about the spike in public transit ridership—attributed to higher gas prices. Here in Denmark we're paying just over $8 a gallon, double what folks are paying stateside, and though prices have gone up here, they haven't risen as much as in the US. Europeans have been paying high prices for many years.
From the moment we stepped out of the airport in Copenhagen and saw hundreds of bicycles parked between the terminal and the automobile parking ramp, we knew we were in another world. It is all but impossible to imagine anyone getting to work at an international airport in the United States. I stepped out of Newark airport hoping to take a walk in the sunshine only to find the sidewalk came to an abrupt end at the point where cars and taxis turned to connect to the highway. Like most international airports, Karstrup is well outside the city limits. Nevertheless, enough Danes live close enough to it that commuting to work on a bicycle is possible. (The average Dane rides 4 km a day, which doesn't seem like so much until you realize that that number takes into consideration all Danes, 2 year olds and 90 year olds.) And there's an infrastructure in place to accommodate the bicyclists.
The Copenhagen government recently announced a big, well-funded project to increase bicycle ridership in the city. Currently, 36% of commuters travel by bicycle, 27% by car. The city is hoping to increase bicycle commuting to 50% (that's about where it is in Amsterdam, the bicycle capital of the world). So they're going to build bicycle ramps over particularly busy streets (the first went up just a couple months ago), create more bike lanes, build more bicycle parking areas, and put in pumping stations. Have a flat tire? Not to worry, air will be close by.
Of course, Denmark has a few things going for the bicyclists. The mild climate means that if you're particularly stalwart, you can keep your bicycle going year-round, but even if you're not, there are only a few months when ridership really drops. Denmark is basically flat, so traveling by bicycle in your Gucci suit is not unheard of. We've seen women in furs and stiletto heels spinning along. Really, everyone bicycles: our mail comes on a bicycle, senior citizens bike to the grocery store, teenagers bicycle along drinking soda pop, dog owners run their dogs alongside the bicycle, and dads with toddlers in car seats run errands.
Though you see people on high-tech road bikes wearing sleek latex gear, most people are out on sturdy, upright bicycles meant for getting around comfortably, and bicycle shops are found in any shopping district. (Aside: in our neighborhood shopping area are a grocery store, two banks, a shawarma/pizza joint, and a bicycle shop. No Blockbuster or McDonald's or Dunkin' Donuts.) Bicyclists have the right of way and bike lanes (where no parking is allowed) run alongside most streets and many country roads. There are even street lights just for bicyclists. Trains have special cars with room for bicycles, and at the stations are elevators or ramps for bicyclists to get up or down from the tracks and huge bicycle parking areas (in Roskilde it's a two story parking ramp!). It is not unusual to find large bicycle parking areas near public buildings and no car parking whatsoever.
This bicycle culture has many benefits, of course: people get into the outdoors, into the fresh air and the weather; it is unusual to see obese Danes; there are not huge ugly environmentally stupid parking lots everywhere you go; traffic is slow and light; and people aren't spending $8 a gallon every time they drive to work or go out for a gallon of milk.
So, as I read the stories about spikes in public transit ridership in the US, I think of what it might mean if Americans were paying $8 a gallon for gas, like the rest of the world does. Maybe we'd actually enter the 21st Century.
The past two Sundays we've driven due north to Tisvildeleje, a charming town right on the coast of the Kattegat. The day of our first trip was sunny and clear but cool, a good day for a hike, not good for swimming. Last Sunday, on the other hand, the temperature had risen, and we went north in our swimming suits.
To get to the beach, you drive down through the town past several restaurants, ice cream parlors, galleries, and thatched cottages on a narrow street made narrower by parked cars, down to the biggest parking lot we've seen in Denmark with the exception of the Ikea lot. On the first Sunday there were few cars, but on the second, the day before a national holiday, maybe a fourth of the lot was filled. It was easy to imagine a summer day with the lot just packed with cars and campers. On the town end of the lot is a little pølse (hotdog) and ice cream stand, and on the other end is a modest bathroom, still locked for the winter.
The beach itself stretches on and on in both directions, white sand broken by pebbly areas, with no lifeguards or garbage cans or beach-chair-rentals or any other signs of human presence other than the human beings themselves. If you go inland, you climb up the dunes and then enter a scrubland where people have formed paths to get to a lovely hiking/biking trail that cuts between the scrubland and the beech/pine woods and hillside that rises to the south. Many people bike in on the trail, lock their bicycles to a scrubby bush and then cut in to the quieter western end of the beach. And it's here where the nudists find the sun.
If you continue west you come to Troldeskoven, the Witch Wood, a fantastical wood of trees twisted and gnarled by the wind off the sea.
I had packed our beach towels in a big blue Ikea bag (thanks Lise and Luther!) and felt rather sheepish about it, but Anika immediately pointed out a number of other beach-goers who'd used the same bag. So we plunked down in the sand, spread our towels out, and opened our books. To our right were two young men speaking Polish. Between us and the sand was a trio of women, one older, perhaps the mother, of the two other women who looked to be in their 30s. The mother, a plump woman with sagging breasts, suntanned topless. To our left was a single man who lay in the sun and then cooled off in the water and lay in the sun some more. Off further to the right was a group of women and several small children; one woman, who was hugely pregnant, swam naked and stood drying herself beside the children.
The water was cold. And clear right to the bottom, so clear that you could watching the refraction of light off the rippling water as it moved along the sand at your feet. A man in waders fished and caught something, but then, while his admirers on the beach watched, the fish got away.
Arne and I slipped through the brush to the trail and walked west and then cut back to the beach. There, high on the dune, we sat on a crude bench and watched the people below. Here came a ripe and elderly gentleman, completely naked, tanned all over, and carrying an overstuffed backpack. Down on the beach we passed a family with small twin sons, naked except for big white floppy hats, both of them digging in the sand with bright blue shovels. A little ways on an elderly couple came walking toward us carrying nothing, then they stopped, stripped off their clothes, and walked into the water.
No one had music, we heard no one speaking loudly or shouting or even laughing loudly. We could hear the sea, pulling in and pushing out, pulling and pushing, its rhythm a reminder of eternity.
The Danes are known for their love of Christmas, the season of light, and no wonder when light is in short supply. The pagans knew something important: celebrate what you don't have!
What are the signs of the season here in the land of Gorm?
Candles: At the grocery store there are huge displays of candles...there are always lots of candles, but now there are even more, especially white and red ones and advent candles. Candles burn in windows, on tables, and in classrooms. I walked past a nursery school the other day and noticed, on a counter, a candle lit and glowing. Otto says a candle burns every day in his classroom, and has since December 1. There are not many big displays of lights on houses and trees, even downtown is less lit up than Atlantic Avenue in Morris, but when you walk around at night you can see in every house there are candles lit.
Chocolate: This is the season of chocolate and Arne has a theory: to make up for low levels of sunlight Danes turn to the drug of chocolate. Next to the huge displays of candles are huge displays of chocolate. People in Arne's division at Risø told him, on December 1, that he needed to bring a wrapped present and that it should be chocolate. Every day at morning coffee they draw a name from a hat and the named person gets to pick one of the presents. It's chocolate! So they open the box of goodies and by afternoon coffee all the chocolate is gone. Merry Christmas!
Gløgg and æbleskiver: Mulled wine and spherical pancakes a little smaller than tennis balls are now on the menu of every cafe and restaurant, in stalls at Christmas markets, and anywhere else people gather. You can buy frozen æbleskiver in big bags if you're not up for making your own. And in displays beside the chocolate you can find a huge variety of gløgg in bottles and cartons.
Pebbernodder (pronounced pew-uh new-uh or something like that--it's the same dark sense of pronounciation humor that makes Natchitoches sound like nackotish) and brunkage (brown cakes, but not at all like cakes, instead very thin crunchy spicy cookies) are the traditional cookies. An entire wall, just behind the candles and chocolate is devoted to bags, boxes, and cartons of these cookies.
Pine: Trees of course.
The big one on
the main plaza in Copenhagen features 800 lights and lots of
traditional red & white paper woven hearts. And just yesterday I
discovered that the Danes cover graves with pine boughs...they're
arranged beautifully to cover the gravesite, like a resiny blanket.
(Here's the tree, and in a weird moment of cultural dissonance there's a small Native American band playing in the foreground.)
There are a few things that are noticeably different here: no Santas with bells standing in doorways (here everyone participates, through taxes, in taking care of the less fortunate), as I said no big light displays--ostentation is not the Danish way, nor is excessive use of electricity, no Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer played loudly in every public venue, no blow-up dolls of Santa or a Snowman, and I have not yet seen a single Santa renting out his red-clad lap to families for photographs of toddlers wishing for Wiis or cell phones.
Glædelig Jul!
A couple evenings ago, Arne, Anika, and I sat in our living room with my sweet sister Beatrice. She was visiting from Georgetown, Texas. One highlight of our time with her was a short trip to Amsterdam, home of the Dutch Masters (no, not a baseball team) and of marijuana seed banks (international and organic varieties). Here's our interview with Beatrice. The adults were enjoying a glass of jenever, a Dutch liquor something between gin and aquavit, served ice cold. Otto was practicing a card trick in the background.
Arne: What surprised you about Denmark?
Beatrice: It's not as populated as I thought it would be. There are expanses of land that are greater than I had expected. It surprised me that everyone looks like a member of the Kildegaard family!
Arne: I have a big family! [All descended from Gorm the Old]
Arne: What about the Danish language?
Beatrice: I didn't realize it was so auditorially challenging! It's a stunningly difficult language. [The words for “kiss,” “lad,” and “bunion” are but one skinny vowel sound apart. What we first thought was a religious ritual turns out to be nothing more than a failure to communicate.]
Athena: Can you remember your first impressions?
Beatrice: Bicycles everywhere! There was the hassle with my suitcases, through no fault of my own, and I got my luggage the next day but it was sort of a reserved professional attitude about lost luggage. Attempts at humor fell like a brick (bad cliche). They met deaf ears. Though the airport is a major metropolitan airport it was really small. O'Hare is 15 times bigger!
Arne: [Coming to the defense of the Danes] Yes, but that was just the international airport.
Athena: Has anything differed from your expectations based on this blog and our letters?
Beatrice: I've had a different experience since we've had the car and we've been using it. Stupid question! move on.
Athena: Talk about the food.
Beatrice: I helped make breakfast today!
Anika: Describe the attributes of your most beautiful niece!
Beatrice: The bread selection is outrageous and I could eat the bread, a different variety, every day. So it's sad to report that my sister and her family did NOT feed me different bread every day.
Arne: We're still serving the hard rye bread from your first day.
Beatrice: The chocolate selection is wonderful and in Amsterdam it is amazing, but someone else ate all the orange milk chocolate [Arne: burp].
Athena: Do you want to say anything else about food?
Arne: About the pickled herring, for example?
Beatrice: I knew coming here that I would go to the grocery store [laughter] because that's what my sister writes about and I'm happy to report that we have almost gone every day and I'm looking forward to having the fløde skum. [whipped cream. Notice how she ignored the question concerning herring?]
Arne: What about your brother-in-law's sweet car?
Beatrice: It is heartening to know that the Kildegaard quality automobile selection continues unabated!
[Photo: That's Beatrice on the right, and our high-class Peugeot behind them.]
Anika: What about the weather?
Beatrice: It seems I brought clear weather with me! It hasn't rained once. I brought an umbrella and didn't need it; I didn't bring a winter jacket and needed it. [exaggeration]
Athena: Name one reason people should come visit us.
Anika: ...besides the fact that we're so amazing...
[Arne begins passing around a jar of German pickles that we bought at a gas station quick stop in an effort to relieve ourselves of coin Euros]
Beatrice: To see the land of Freya, Odin, and Christian IV. I think it's important that people come to the land of the Order of the Elephant! That and my sister and her family are hospitable hosts.
Anika: How about your niece?
Beatrice: She's stunningly beautiful.
Anika: Would you care to say more?
Beatrice: She doesn't snore.
Anika: ...unlike other people I know. [She looks knowingly toward her father.]
Athena: Any highlights from our time in Copenhagen?
Beatrice: It was busier than I remember [Beatrice was in Denmark in 1993]. I absolutely loved/adored the Rosenborgslot gardens. [Rosenborgslot was Christian IV's weekend get-away castle.]
They had bird cages and topiary and cement spheres and a moat. There are vast quantities of graffiti, which was disheartening. I don't remember graffiti in '93. In NYC they've had it for 20 years, and people have moved on, but here it is still very fresh. After getting our tickets on the train, the children laughed uproariously when their mother said to the lady “thanks for the food.” [There's no relief, even for the elders.]
Athena: Any highlights from our trip to Amsterdam?
Anika: I went to the zoo and it was filled with naked women behind glass.
Beatrice: The dancing houses! Rembrandt's “Night Watch” and the Vermeers.
Anika: I like everything Rembrandt painted.
Beatrice: 750,000 bicycles are stolen a year in Amsterdam!
Arne: The tour guide on the canal trip who could speak any language! But he couldn't do Indonesian, so he had to play a tape for them. [We took a canal tour and the tour guide asked what languages people on the tour were speaking. So he gave his tour spiel in English and Russian to accomodate passengers. He could have given it in Dutch, French, or German. The Israelis on the tour understood the English.]
Beatrice: It was interesting that the tour guide, speaking so many languages, apologized to the Indonesians for the Dutch having been bad people in the past, but that they were no longer bad people.
Arne: I liked the non-judgmental way he made reference to the coffee shops [where adults can legally enjoy marijuana and hashish] and the soft drugs and how a French girl had died a couple years ago. [She thought, while under the influence, that she could fly.] He was so matter of fact about these things.
Athena: Do you have anything else you'd like to add?
Beatrice: Well, about George Bush... No, seriously, this is a fascinating country and everyone who has an opportunity should come to visit. And who knows, when you come, the Kildegaards might be on their way to Berlin...or Helsinki...
Last Sunday the four of us hiked in Bogerup Skov and this Sunday we hiked in Bognæs Skov, (skov meaning wood), both of which are just across Roskilde Fjord from where we live. All woods, whether privately owned or not, are open to the public for walking and biking. Both of these woods have parking areas, trails, and maps, and on both days the parking lots were full, probably due in part to the crisp early autumn weather--perfect for a long walk!
Bogerup Skov is the older of the two woods, with trees dating back to the 1750s, and many trails veering off the main trails. It's a mixed forest with magnificent oaks, elms, and beeches standing 120 feet or more. Bognæs Skov is the bigger wood but with only one main trail and very few smaller trails diverging from it. It is also a young wood. In fact it's being logged and much of it is new-growth stands of pines or beeches interspersed with older stands or clear-cut areas and a few mucky ponds. We saw lots of pheasants in Bognæs Skov as well as deer watching us through the trees and flocks of mallards on the ponds.
But the real marvel of both hikes were the mushrooms. We've never seen such variety before! Mushrooms with thin frilly purple caps, others big white and flat (Otto called them pancake mushrooms), hundreds of golden brown damp ones covering a tree stump, stately black and white ones (the only mushroom I've been able to identify so far, called commonly the magpie mushroom), stubby red ones with white spots where the red surface had been nibbled away (by whom?), spindly white ones with tiny delicate caps (and angels dancing on them, no doubt).
Here are a few pictures from Bognæs Skov. If you recognize any of these, let me know what they are!
Mushrooms
by Sylvia Plath
Overnight,
very
Whitely, discreetly,
Very quietly
Take hold on the loam,
Acquire the air.
Nobody
sees us,
Stops us, betrays us;
The small grains make
room.
Soft fists insist on
Heaving the needles,
The
leafy bedding,
Even the paving.
Our hammers, our
rams,
Earless and eyeless,
Perfectly voiceless,
Widen
the crannies,
Shoulder through holes. We
Diet on water,
On
crumbs of shadow,
Bland-mannered, asking
Little or
nothing.
So many of us!
So many of us!
We are shelves,
we are
Tables, we are meek,
We are edible,
Nudgers and
shovers
In spite of ourselves.
Our kind multiplies:
We
shall by morning
Inherit the earth.
Our foot's in the door.
I've walked on past the sign that says "Private--Unauthorized Persons Forbidden," counting on my foreign-ness and poor Danish to excuse my lack of authority. I worry that my yellow jacket is visible for kilometers, though the doe and fawn don't notice until I'm almost to their napping spot. They hurry off into the field, but stop to look back. Yes, I'm a stranger here, I say aloud to them.
The manure pile steams--
and even this gentle rain
welcomes the autumn.
This week at Otto's school all the students are participating in a week long Special Week. They're divided into multi-age groups and then each group focuses its energies on different extra-curricular activities. Otto's not sure what all the groups are doing, but his is running a little “restaurant.” He saw another group carving into plaster. School starts at the same time this week, but ends at least an hour earlier than usual. So, yesterday, during our extra time together, I asked Otto a few things about school.
What is your trip to school like?
I have to carry all of my books with me because there are no lockers in the school and there is no place to put books except for the really heavy books--we have bins at the school for those. We don't meet every class each day so we only have to bring some of our books each day. So I carry a backpack with books. When I'm ready to go, wearing a jacket or whatever, I head out on my bike. I take a left, then a left... I bike on the old road by our house that is bumpy, so I have to watch attentively. Then I turn onto a gravel road and pass on the left a sheep meadow. I like to baa at them and see if they baa back. My record is 25 answering baas. Then I pass a cool yellow house that has a clay-tile roof and then I turn onto a road that has trees that shade it from the sun and it's never windy there. Then I get onto a farm road where there are farms on both sides which is the hilliest and windiest part of the trip. Then I get into the town of Store Valby where I turn into a neighborhood of houses and get onto the bike path and ride by a lake that has lots of ducks [coots mostly] in it. Then I pass a plum tree where, after soccer practice, I like to stop for a plum. Then I turn onto the last stretch of bike path which has an open farm field and horses on the left and trees on the right.
Do you ever meet up with other students?
If I'm on time, then I sometimes say hi to a kid who is faster than I am. But I'm late sometimes, though no one seems to care.
What happens when you get to school?
I squeeze my bicycle between other bikes in a big open hut that protects all the bicycles from rain. [How many bikes?] probably 100...and that's only that one bike hut...there is at least one other one. I walk into the classroom and usually all the girls are there--they're early and the guys are always late. Usually there are 2 or 3 guys. I hang my backpack on my chair, zip it open, and wait for the teacher.
What is your classroom like?
The desks are arranged in a horseshoe with the teacher's desk at the open end so that everyone can see everyone else. The roof is slanted and there's a window in the wall where the sun shines through, then catches on the roof, and brightens the room. There are lights too but we won't really need them until it gets dark. There is a broken computer in the corner. People take out the keys and switch them around to make funny words. There are two rolling bookshelves which people sometimes use to block the door as a joke.
What are your classmates like? How many are there?
There are 14 students in my class: 6 boys and 8 girls. There are a few students who are really really rowdy and loud (boys) and there is one kid who throws things while three kids run around trying to dodge what he's thrown. They play tag in the classroom. This happens when the teachers aren't there. [Note: the students stay in the same classroom and the teachers for the various subjects come to them.] Ten of my classmates have cell phones, if not all of them, and during breaks they play with them. Apparently some of the boys pay 2000 kroner for a pair of jeans ($400). [Do they listen to music?] I've only seen 2 ipods. They listen to rock and heavy metals and hiphop and techno--pretty much the same artists as my friends in Morris listen to.
What subjects are you studying?
math, English, Danish [a literature/writing class], German, geology, biology, geography, chemistry, physics, history, phy ed
Then we have something called Community twice a week. We talk about crime and the age at which you can do certain things, and the penalties for crimes like robbery or drunk driving. I don't really understand most of it. The teacher asks me something once or twice during this class, in English, like “Is there the death penalty in the US?” and “What's the penalty if you drink and drive?” “What's the drinking age?” “What's the driving age?”
What's your favorite class?
Danish because it's the most helpful to me. I do 2nd grade crossword puzzles and stuff like that to strengthen my vocabulary. The teacher gave me a folk tale by H.C. Andersen in English. She talks to me a little bit. [What do the other students do during this class?]I don't know what they're doing because I don't understand what the teacher is saying.
What other classes do you like?
I like phy ed. We start out by running 3/4 of a mile and then we play a sport. So far this year we've played soccer, foot baseball, and rugby baseball. The class is co-ed. [How is it different from your phy ed classes in Morris?] There is more running. We haven't had any written tests...it is all physical activity.
English is fun! It's like a huge break from everyone speaking Danish and it's finally a class that's all in English, so it's brain-relaxing time for me. Also, when they say “What is a pig?” and someone says “It's svin” then I can learn some Danish words.
How is your Lindebjergskole different from Morris Area High School?
It is a much shorter day. 8 to 2:20 and then on Mondays and Thursdays it ends at 12:45. The teachers are much less strict. For example, if they walk in and you're kicking a soccer ball they'll just say, “Okay stop that.” Sometimes the students obey. There is much less homework, even though they think that they're assigning a lot of homework. Sometimes we have double-period classes. Some classes are 45 minutes and others are 1.5 hours. It is more relaxed. If you're late there is no punishment, but people are almost never late. You do not need special passes to leave the classroom.
How is it similar?
There is a bell between classes. There is no uniform.
What is lunch like?
We eat in our classroom, but the teacher does not stay. Almost everyone packs food, but there is a canteen where you can get chicken and rice or salad or yoghurt, milk or chocolate milk or iced tea, no soda pop. The packed lunches are usually bread with mayo and leverpostej [liver paté, a very popular food for sandwiches and happy hour] and cucumber, or other sandwiches. No chips or pop. Apples. [What do you do when you're done eating?] We hang around and talk. We can go outside. Some people play basketball, and they're really, really bad.
What are some special things that have happened at your school?
We went to a film studio in Copenhagen where we practiced fake fighting moves and then split into groups and made a story that included fake fighting. Then the stunt guy came around with a video camera and recorded us all and then we watched each other's videos. It was a lot of fun.
The last period of the day on Friday we have Class Time where we get a slice of some cake or pastry and then they talk in Danish for a long time.
Are you learning any Danish at school?
I'm learning a little.
How is it spending your day surrounded by people speaking Danish?
It's kind of weird but it gives me a chance to think about things. Anything that pops into my head, I get to think about it.
Thanks to my sweet niece Karin, who asked about the environment here, I had the idea to take a little walk to Ågerup and back, taking pictures along the way. Well, as it turned out, by the time I had reached Store Valby I had more than enough pictures, so I just turned around there and came home. Here then are pictures and notes concerning the walk from the Kildegaard's house to Store Valby and back.
Most often we walk to the back of the building we're in, then across a big paved area, up a slight rise, through a narrow wood, and onto Bolundsvej, where we turn right (south). At the point when we come out of the woods, we look across a field. To the right is the "road."
Lillevalbyvej connects Frederiksborgvej (the main north south highway on the east side of Roskilde Fjord) with the main intersection in Store Valby. I think the stretch of Lillevalbyvej from just west of where Bolundsvej enters it to a bend in the road about 100 feet from Bolundsvej is a very old lane. A stone fence that holds in banked dirt with some large trees planted there lines part of this lane. You'll see in the photos that a few of the buildings on this portion are quite old, though I don't know the dates.
So the lane takes a sharp right hand turn and then a sharp left hand turn at which point you are headed due east with fields on your right and, after a lovely tree-enclosed meadow, fields on your left. You can see from the photos that the land has a little roll to it and you can make out lines of trees along modest creeks, clumps of trees around farm buildings, and in the distance you can maybe make out windmills, towers and even, in the right-hand photo, the Domkirke in Roskilde.
It's one kilometer from the edge of Lille Valby to the edge of Store Valby, one kilometer that, on a windy day, can be a challenge on a bicycle! It's pleasant to walk along here on a clear day with a view that stretches wide over the fields of barley, over stands of magnificent oaks, over the red tile roofs of houses and barns. I've seen many hooded crows, gulls, and swallows on this stretch of road. There is no bike path or sidewalk here, and it's a narrow lane, but there's not much traffic, though look out when the bus comes roaring along!
Just before the edge of Store Valby is a sweet little rest stop with a bench and garbage can. There is not place to park the car and I've never seen anyone at this rest area, but the garbage can does get used. And then to the left is a row of new townhouses and to the right a sign announcing that we've arrived in Store Valby.
From there we go down a steep hill to the main intersection, where if you turn to the left you go to Gundsølille, where Otto's school is, and to the right you go to Himmelev, where Anika's school is. There is no grocery, gas station, pub, church, police station, community hall or any other signs of a "town" in Store Valby. It's a sleepy little town with several fine old buildings on the main street and then a block off the main street a neighborhood of new buildings that look something like ranch houses. There's a nice bike path that goes from Store Valby to Gundsølille, with a fork going to Ågerup, and I like to make a trip going from Store Valby to Ågerup on the road, then returning via the bike path. Here are some photos of buildings in Store Valby. Notice the thatched roofs--what a distinct pleasure it is to see them on the landscape. I especially like the thatched roof with the TV satellite on it. The white farmhouse (right on the edge of Store Valby) is for sale and they're holding an open house on Saturday. We might just have to go have a look!
Here are a few other photos taken in Store Valby. On the left is the wild garden between the sidewalk and the yard of a house. It is very common for houses to gain privacy by way of hedges or wild gardens. Then beyond will be a small lawn lined with flowers and bushes, a patio with a nice table and chairs and an umbrella, and then the house, all of it on a small scale. Weekends here are decidedly not spent mowing golf course lawns.
So, we return toward Lille Valby. In the photo on the left you can see a funny tower with a round top--that's a tower on the Risø grounds, where Arne spends his days thinking about alternative energy. The center photo shows the road leading into Lille Valby. And on the right is the sweet meadow at the second turning of the road. Anika and I saw a man playing with a remote-controlled airplane here. It's a pleasant spot for a picnic or a tryst.
So back to Bolundsvej, the view down Lillevalbyvej, and then turning in to our road. When you cross through the narrow wood, there before you lie the grounds of Englegaard with a peek at Roskilde Fjord in the distance. In the building on the right you can see three fenced patios--ours is the furthest one, a lovely spot for a slice of rye bread with pickled herring and mayonnaise.
