We journeyed most of July 17 from Dortmund, Germany to Copenhagen, Denmark. We had debated going that far north as it really was out of the way. But my maternal grandmother's family came directly from Copenhagen. Rachel has some Danish roots as well so we wanted the girls to be able to stand in the places where our family came from....so, off we went!
We checked into our accommodations and as we were eating dinner we got a call from Andreas Lau who is an old friend of Rachel's family. He and his family were driving back from Sweden (which is just over the bridge from Copenhagen), and so they stopped and had dinner with us. Small world! We didn't even think to take a picture or I would include one here.
July 18 we toured Copenhagen starting at the Little Mermaid (inspired by Hans Christian Andersen). We found a free parking space, double checked there were no parking meters anywhere around, and headed to the statue. On our way we saw a swan with her babies...
..and AJ did his 'Spiderman' pose. LOL
There were a huge number of tourists in the area + tourist boats zooming up to the statue from the water (you can see one of the tour boats leaving the picture below)
My brother Stan has a hilarious story about trying to ask his wife to marry him at this statue, but it was like something out of a comedy that the proposal didn't end up happening here.
Got some nice shots of the kids as we were heading to a fountain in the area...
Personally I thought the fountain was much more impressive than the Little Mermaid.
AJ saw this water shooting up and of course had to 'touch it' He got soaking wet...
Ice cream at the fountain on a hot summer day in Denmark. Nice.
We visited the little church next door and learned that it was championed by a princess from Denmark who ended up marrying King Edward of England...and thus she became Queen of England.
Headed back to our car and even though this sign in front of our car indicates 3 hours of free parking during the times listed, we had a parking ticket. Well, that was a bit of a bummer. Again, we looked for the parking meters / pay stations, but didn't find any.
Admittedly, this parking ticket was irritating, but we did the best we could to focus on the next thing we wanted to do in Copenhagen. We headed to the church where my Maternal Great Grandparents, Olaf and Nathalia Kyster were married.
Church of our Savior, Copenhagen
AJ slept during this time, so Rachel stayed in the car with him while the girls & I explored.
At the back of the church we paused and I just asked the girls to imagine that about 125 years ago a bride stood at the back of this church ready to walk down the aisle to marry her man. That bride was their Great Great Grandmother Nathalia Kyster, and if that wedding hadn't happened they wouldn't be standing there (and neither would I!). It made for a very different kind of 'walking into a European church' experience.
(added the following picture after returning to the States and seeing it at my parents home...) Nathalie Marie Thomsen Kyster and Olaf Helgesen Kyster on the day after their wedding.
Visiting this church is really the primary thing I wanted to do during our visit. It is still actively used and has a gigantic organ from the late 1600s which was being played while we were in the church...
History of the church...
One of the absolute best things about this church is the very, very unusual steeple. It has a gold staircase spiraling up the exterior. I have never seen anything like it and was THRILLED to learn that we could actually go UP that staircase.
V wasn't so thrilled as she is scared of heights so this is what she looked like during our trek up the steeple (but to her credit she DID go to the top....hugging the steeple all the way ;)
At the top!
V clinging to sister as we were back near the base of the steeple....
...and much happier once we started our descent.
In this area of town, hippies in the 1960s took over old military barracks and basically started a commune. It still exists today and is like a little pocket of hippiness where the police just let them do what they want in their commune. We didn't have any interest in visiting that, but this is the stoplight in the area which got a chuckle out of us....
Finally, we headed to Ripleys Believe It Or Not which includes a museum exhibit on Hans Christian Andersen....voted by the Danish people as the most significant Dane of all time. That's not Hans in the first picture; its an exhibit of the tallest man to ever walk the earth (at least the tallest documented man)
Statue of Hans Christian Anderson. My great grandmother (the one married in the church above) used to sit on his lap as a little girl and listen to him tell stories.
And tell stories he did! I had no idea just how many stories this man wrote that are classics. Other than the Bible, his stories have been translated into more languages than any other book.
Hans in wax form...
He loved to take scissors to paper and make things like this when telling stories to children. Perhaps he made something like this for my great grandmother...
Self portrait. He wrote the Ugly Duckling as a reflection of his own life...
The museum had various displays depicting his stories. AJ was particularly enamored with this ballerina in the toy soldier display. He would just sit there and say "Do it again!" as she would spin and dance as this story played out...
We left the museum and got ANOTHER parking ticket!!!! This one really irritated us because we had paid for parking on the street, had the receipt in the driver's side window (not hard to see) and had plenty of time remaining when we got to the car. My first thought was "there is no way we are paying these tickets!" But we thought that wasn't the best lesson for our kids. There are a lot of unfair things in life but 'doing whatever you want' generally creates more headaches.
So, we talked with the girls about the part of the Bible that says 'render unto Caesar that which is Caesars' In addition, we talked to them about Corrie Ten Boom's family living under Nazi occupation and obeying those laws that were not fair but refusing to obey those which were against God's will (ie persecuting Jews). These parking tickets were not fair, but they weren't against God's law. We felt the girls need to know that sometimes life isn't fair, and its how we react that really matters.
In this case, I got up the next morning, went to a police station, figured out from them where to go to get the parking tickets resolved, and on our way out of town we stopped at that place. We learned that in Copenhagen when you have a free parking space you have to put this little clock on your dashboard showing what time you parked. It is very weird they would ticket a visitor for not knowing that, but that's the law.
We filled out a document contesting the ticket and asking for leniency. We definitely filled out the same document for the other parking ticket including photo copies of our paid parking ticket during the time when we were ticketed. The lady at the place said that the parking ticket person probably didn't look on the driver's side window because the law states you need to have the receipt on the window next to the curb.
Anyway, we did what we could to resolve the situation, and they said the authorities would respond in about a month to our home address. So, we will see what happens and report back!
The Rest of our Denmark Trip
We stayed at a great youth hostel with many fun things for the kids...
While the kids played outside I was inside managing to destroy our room (not really but I knocked this plastic light casing off its mount 2 different times during our stay)
Playing chess (which AJ routinely came in and ruined!) LOL
AJ on the trampoline like apparatus....
The girls....really love these kids and the joy they bring Rachel and me...
We headed out July 19 back toward Germany. There is a massive bridge in Denmark that connects two parts of the country. It was the only toll road in Denmark we encountered. In fact, toll roads are rather interesting in Europe as almost all of them take credit cards. I don't think I have seen that in the USA but maybe that will happen in the future.
I think toll roads speak to the health of a country's finances as well. The worse off the country, the more toll roads and the higher the tolls. By far, the most expensive toll road country is Italy (a country with massive financial problems) followed by France. In contrast, we didn't pay a single Euro on toll roads in Germany. As a sidenote...if you don't like driving with 18 Wheelers / Big Trucks, then Italy is your place. Due to the high gas prices and high tolls I don't think we saw a single 18 wheeler on an Italian road. We saw a few in France and then Germany was like the USA with big trucks all over the place.
One could probably make the same case for a country's health based on gas prices as Italy has gas prices equivalent to $8.50 a gallon while German gas is the equivalent of $6.85 a gallon. Expensive no matter how you look at it! Fortunately, our minivan got the equivalent of 30 miles to the gallon.
Odense, Denmark - Childhood home of Hans Christian Andersen
We stopped by the childhood home of Hans Christian Andersen on the way back to Germany. It was a small home and a small museum. Our credit card didn't work, we had no Danish cash, and the place didn't take Euros (surprising since the Danish currency is pegged to the Euro and thus has a constant exchange rate)....but the lady working there was very kind and said "Just go ahead and enjoy the museum."
In Denmark, there is a concept called "hygge" which is a state of being the Danes are constantly striving toward....it is a state of warm being, like a feeling of joy with friends and family. One of our waitresses explained how to say it...'Hugu' is a goal of that feeling for the future while 'Huga' is having and experiencing the good time right now. Our parking tickets had us as far away as possible from a 'hygge' state but this lady at this museum gave us a 'hygge' moment. Good on her!
The house...it was actually a series of apartments back in Hans' childhood. His apartment included the 2 windows on the right side.
The museum was very simple with information about his life. Most of the quotes came from his autobiography...
On Christmas Eve in Denmark if you were a naughty boy or girl you would get coal in your shoes instead of goodies ;)
The kids in the apartment. The first shot shows the entire living space. It would seem cramped to most people, but the girls said it was pretty nice compared to the cow dung huts in Tanzania and the tin shanties in the slums of Nairobi. Those are true statements!
Hans writes about his fear of prisoners as a child....that's because the back yard at the time of his childhood backed up to a prison! It's no longer there but I can imagine the fear as a child living in a place with a prison in the backyard!
Our journey back to Germany was to attend a special 50th Wedding Anniversary celebration for special family friends. Will write about that in the next posting.
Til then,
God Bless
