Denmark

It was quite a wrench but we have now moved on to Hamburg in Northern Germany where it's a scorching 28 degrees. - a full 18 degrees above normal for this date. However, we can't leave the Danish Capital without a few words about Hans Christian Anderson. The celebrated author was a regular diner at a house just along from our apartment and we think of him as we enjoy yet another delicious Danish smoresbrod...

Copenhagen is a beautiful city, especially in the warm autumn sunshine, and we have spent the week strolling her wide, cobblestoned, boulevards and relaxing in her splendid city parks where ugly ducklings are beginning to turn into swans and a little mermaid looks wistfully for her prince charming...

According to Anderson, this little mermaid swims to the surface every morning and evening to sit on the rock in the hope of catching the prince's eye. She is on the 'must see' list of every visitor and bus-loads flock here every day, but James was up before dawn to get a private audience – but did she catch her prince?

The Danes are very proud of their cultural heritage and each year at the start of the school's autumn break Copenhagan celebrates with a festival called “Culture Night” where 250 museums, theaters, libraries, churches, ministries and parks throw open their doors to celebrate the city's diverse culture. The streets were thronged as we visited one of Copenhagens cultural icons,The Danish Design Museum, which largely celebrates the Danish chair...

The Danes love their chairs, they virtually worship their chairs, and from the temple of chairs we went on to the city's renowned temple of fun, the Tivoli Gardens, in the heart of the city...

In 1843, King Christian VIII sought to pacify his subjects with a pleasure garden, and so was born the second oldest amusement park in the world – the Tivoli Gardens – where ordinary folk could be amused with rides, entertainment and greasy food. We had the Danish national dish of roasted pork belly with lots of crispy crackling – it was delicious. However, after such a fatty feast we felt it unwise to venture on any of these sky-high rides...

Although Tivoli has some of the latest and scariest rides, it also has a wooden roller-coaster built in 1914 and this beautiful carousel circa 1920...

Walt Disney used Tivoli as a model for Disneyland in 1955 and the pleasure park is Tripadvisor's No.1 pick in Copenhagen. Although people are often dissappointed because Tivoli is only open in peak holiday seasons, we were lucky. The gardens had been closed since early September to prepare for the coming Halloween and it re-opened on our last night in Copenhagen with ghostly lanterns and imaginative pumpkin displays...

The sun was still shining as we left Copenhagen for Germany by train this morning and we had one last glimpse through the Amalienborg Palace at the lofty dome of the Marble Church as we made our way to the central station...

Goodbye Copenhagen – a wonderful, wonderful city.
Now to continue with our views of Copenhagen please turn up your volume and click here..... https://youtu.be/iNy9Hmp2n5Y

The canalside port of Nyhavn is the picture-perfect heart of Copenhagen today, but it wasn't always this way. Not so long ago this was a rat-infested area of slums and dilapitated wharves. Today, its quays are lined with ancient sailing boats, (some a little worse for wear), while the quaysides are home to a plethora of bars and restaurants where a couple of the local Tuborg lagers will set you back $30Cdn. Location, location, location! But not everything in Nyhavn will break the bank. An hours guided cruise along Copenhagan's waterways cost only $11 and took us past many of the city's regal sights including the Christianburg Palace which has been taken over by the parliament and the supreme court. But, we should not feel sorry for H.R.H. Margrethe. She and the rest of the Danish Royal family seem to have more castles and palaces than Queen Liz and her boys in the U.K. Palaces like Amalienborg where we watched the changing of the guard – several times...

Amalienborg consists of four almost identical palaces surrounding an octagonal plaza in the city centre. One is for the queen; one for her son, Prince Frederik, (a musical ironman who races motorbikes, hunts, shoots and is an arctic explorer); one is now a museum; and the fourth, we guess, is just to stop the place looking lopsided. There are many palatial rooms in the Amalienborg Palace but some of the grandest have been given over to an exhibition of theatrical costumes and sets designed, and even made, by the present Queen Margrethe...

The chain-smoking Danish queen seems far more down to earth than her English cousin, Elizabeth. Our apartment is very close to the palace and we are told that the queen often walks past alone in the morning, although we haven't spotted her yet. And, at the age of 78 she is still working as a professional designer for the Danish Royal Ballet and for pantomimes performed at the Tivoli Gardens theatre. When the Queen wants to get away from the hub-bub of city life, and the cyclists using her palace as a shortcut, she can always retreat to one of her country pads where she keeps her jewels...

The Rosenborg Palace is just a short carriage drive from Amalienborg and, although it's surrounded by beautiful gardens, it's hardly in the countryside today. But Copenhagen is a green city where you are never far from a park. At this time of the year the autumn colours reflect wonderfully in the city's many lakes...

Another place for reflection is Frederiksborg Castle in Hillerod, (40 minutes by train but only a couple of minutes in the royal helicopter)...

This aristocratic pile of bricks was first built in the late 1500s but has been burnt down and rebuilt several times since. A mere seventy of the rooms now house the National History Museum of Denmark with enough exhibits and paintings to keep your head spinning for a week. This is the incredibly ornate Royal Chapel where Danish Kings were crowned until 1840...

And this is the Royal bedchamber...

If you think the bed is a little over the top then how about this ceiling...

With three palaces and several museums under our belts you might think we have done Copenhagen - Oh no...Not yet.

Whenever we go to take a photograph of some important building in Denmark there always seems to be a biking Viking in the way. We get the camera set up with the perfect shot of a castle or palace; somewhere like Fredericksborg Slot, the Danish Royal castle in Hillerod north of Copenhagen, and bingo...

Yup – a biking Viking comes screaming around the corner and spoils the view. And then it happened again at the Amalienborg Palace in the heart of Copenhagen. The late afternoon sun was perfectly illuminating Queen Margrethe's stately abode; the royal standard was flying – she was at home; the tourists had all gone to their hotels; it was just us and two smartly dressed guardsmen – then this happened...

Biking Vikings have managed to get themselves and their machines into almost every picture we've taken in Denmark There's no getting away from them – they are everywhere. And when they are not scaring us by riding furiously on the footpaths and jumping traffic lights they are using them to block our view. Just look at this famous building – if you can...

And how on earth are we supposed to get to the subway station through this lot?...

Most Danish cyclists are, in truth, very considerate of motorists and pedestrians and they generally stick to the cycle paths. However, they are not always conscious of the impact they may have on the aesthetics of 500 year old buildings in somewhere like Koge...

Although, when when they are symmetrically parked in front of an ancient building they can create a pleasing work of art that marries ancient with modern...

There are 4 bicycles for every 5 residents in Denmark, (a percentage only beaten by the cycling crazy Dutch who, statistically, all own a bike). The Danes cycle on average 1.6 kilometres a day and they generally take their bikes with them wherever they go – especially on trains and subways where it is free...

Cycling is obviously good for health and great for the environment – it's just lousy for tourists who want to get shots of beautiful old buildings in Ribe for their travel blogs...

However, we have no such quibble with horses and we greatly enjoyed watching a horse-ploughing competition on our way from Aero to Copenhagen...

We will be in Copenhagen for the rest of the week and the weather is absolutely beautiful. So we are hoping to get some great bike-free shots of the castles, palaces, gardens and, of course, the Little Mermaid. Stay with us and keep your fingers crossed.

After a few weeks of variable weather we finally hit the sunshine on Denmark's Aero island and simultaneously stepped into the future and slipped into the past. Where else can you find a state of the art wind turbine powering the lights in a beachside thunder-box...

But when it comes to lighting a public loo in an unusual way, what about the lighthouse at Soby on the west coast of the island...

The small island of Aero is a pastoral paradise and has the best climate in all of Denmark so its understandable that many tourists visit here. It is especially popular with wedding parties, particularly for Germans with a romantic bent, but weddings tend to lead to excessive drinking so guidance may be needed – although this sign might confuse anyone already half-drunk and desperate...

It appears that there are public toilets everywhere on Aero, some are even combined with historical artifacts to give them a more romantic appeal...

But we are not here for the weddings, the booze or the loos. We came to see the beautiful thatched cottages...

...the cobbled streets of 18th century houses...

and the parade of colourful beach huts that line the shore...

Aero is only a relatively short hop on a ferry from Germany and all but two cars that accompanied us from the port of Fynshavn were German. Denmark is generally more expensive than Germany so why is Aero so popular with the neighbours? Maybe it's because of the large flocks of swans, (the national bird of Denmark), the friendly locals and the beautiful scenery. But maybe it's because it only takes a week to get a wedding licence in Denmark while it can take three months in Germany. So, any German wanting or needing a 'quickie', need only slip over the border to Aero island to get hitched in one of the quaint whitewashed churches...

Denmark is a generally flat land with many windswept islands scattered throughout the Wadden Sea and the Baltic. As a result, more than two-thirds of its electricity comes from renewable sources – especially wind power from legions of giant turbines. There are thousands of windmills, both on and off shore, and the latest has a giant wingspan of 164 metres, (twice the wingspan of an Airbus A380 super jumbo jet). However, none of today's turbines compare in beauty to this ancient thatched windmill in Aeroskoping – the historic centre of Aero...

The island of Aero is not only self-sufficient in electricity, it has enough spare to power battery operated car ferries that are in the works to replace the aging fleet of polluting diesel vessels. This leads us to wonder which other islands in the world could follow Aero's lead and use the wind to cleanly drive their ferries!

The southern Danish town of Tonder lies within howitzer range of Germany and has been back and forth over the border so many times in the past that the inhabitants must wonder which way to turn at times. The town was officially bilingual until the end of the second World War when the Germans were given the boot. However, Tonder survives on tourism these days and judging by the car licence plates in the parking lots, the Germans are back in force. The doorways of Tonder have a distinctly Teutonic look...

...as does the medieval Renaissance church with its richly decorated pulpit carved in 1586 and its amazingly ornate organ...

Tonder was German throughout World War 1 and some of the Zeppelin airships that bombed British cities were based here. The base and the airships were destroyed by aircraft from a British aircraft carrier in 1918 but the town remained unscathed and there are many shops and houses dating from the 18th century...

We were expecting to visit the Friday market in Tonder, (as per the guidebook), but discovered that it had closed sometime ago. However, there were plenty of shops in the cobbled streets for those with deep pockets. This nice little chair had been reduced to a paltry five thousand six hundred and fifty Canadian dollars. (but that could be for a pair)...

The Danes love their bakeries, and so do we, but it's no good asking for Danish pastries here in the oldest bakery in Tonder – these are all Danish pastries...

And after lunch we headed to the beach to walk off some calories...

Yes - those are cars and people at the other end of the beach but you may need binoculars to see them.
This is Romo; a small island in the Wadden Sea which can be reached by a lengthy causeway. It has miles of the widest beaches we have ever seen and, despite the time of year and the relatively murky weather, there were actually hundreds of German holidaymakers on the sands. There were also signs warning us not to use binoculars...

At first we thought that was because we might be able to see the island's nudist colony from the top of the dyke, but then we discovered that a large area is a military zone and they didn't want us taking too close a look at their war games. We did manage to get a shot of this enormous tank in the distance...

But, if you were hoping, we didn't see anything of any size worth photographing on the nudist beach.

Our tour of rural Denmark continues with almost unending vistas of arable land being grazed by cattle, sheep and pigs, and we are enjoying the bounty of pork, bacon, butter and cheese for which Denmark is renowned.
The answer to Thursday's blog question is that the boxes are Indian brick moulds. We have no idea why they are so popular in Denmark. Were they imported to make bricks, or did someone pick them up cheap in Delhi in the hope that the Danes would find a use for them? Answers on a postcard please ... Oh - never mind. We probably can't afford to buy you lunch in Denmark!