Denmark (Eurotrip_2012)

             The relatively cheap fifteen hour overnight train ride from Amsterdam to Copenhagen was anything but luxurious. The cabin we were in was simply six seats facing each other and while my fellow passengers had no problem sleeping I couldn’t get more than a couple hours of rest under my belt.

            The train also broke down in Odense, which is about a two hour train ride directly west of Copenhagen, so after sitting on the platform for an hour waiting for them to fix the train they announced that this train would no longer be continuing on to any of its remaining stops. Instead, we were transferred/crammed into a smaller train full of business people on their way to work and forced to stand for another two hours while the train made its way to Copenhagen airport where we were to meet up with Margot’s father, Mikael, her grandparents, Kirstin and Harry, and her uncle Paul. Welcomed by Mikael at the airport we were asked if we desired any coffee, which I greedily accepted. I can honestly say that before I came to Denmark I’d had less than 10 cups of coffee in my entire life, well this cup at the airport was the beginning of a coffee marathon that’s left me leaving Denmark with the ability to say that I’ve honestly had more than 70 cups of coffee in my entire life.

Margot’s grandmother Kirstin had just turned 90 a couple of weeks earlier and a birthday celebration in Copenhagen was why so many of Margot’s relatives were coming into the city and also why she was so excited to be going there. We separated from Paul and Margot’s grandparents at the airport and took the metro to Jan’s apartment to meet up with Nina, Margot’s sister, and Thomas, Margot’s second cousin. Jan had graciously allowed several of us to use the apartment for a week and also to use it for a huge party following the much more formal birthday dinner. Thomas knew that we were coming into town and thus had planned a bunch of awesome things for us to do in Denmark. However, we didn’t know about these plans ahead of time and were a bit unprepared when we arrived in Copenhagen, so things got moving a little slower than Thomas probably anticipated. Eventually we made our way to the car which was parked out in Roskilde at Thomas’ Uncle Borge’s apartment, had some coffee and pastries with him and then got in the car for a four hour drive up to Hobro where Thomas’ grandma Ingor and Margot’s aunt Helen and Uncle Jens live. The car however, had different plans for us when it decided to break down right before we were to cross the huge Great Belt Bridge that connects the island of Zealand which is where Copenhagen is to an island called Funen which is just the island between Zealand and the huge main Danish island of Jutland. Thomas and I spent the next hour pushing the car up and down the side of the road while Mikael unsuccessfully tried to push start the car in second gear. Miraculously, after we had called Danish Triple A and were waiting impatiently on the side of the road Mikael somehow got the car to start. So once again we were off but quickly found ourselves in a huge traffic jam while crossing the bridge passing right next to Aarhus. When we finally made it to Helen’s house it was well past midnight but this didn’t stop us from staying up until two drinking wine, learning about the families inside jokes, and receiving a well needed van Loon family tree for future reference.

The next day we made our way to east coast of Denmark and enjoyed a nice day at the beach. We got our feet wet in the Atlantic Ocean and drove up and down the beach searching for an old war bunker while Thomas complained about, “all the damn German’s going to the Danish beach.” We were originally planning on visiting Skagen on this day, which is the northern tip of the country where two parts of the North Sea, the Kattegat and the Skagerrak meet, but due to the unanticipated length of the previous nights’ voyage we decided to take the much shorter trip to the beach and it turned out to be a great day.

The Danish weather was cooperative, which I would soon learn was a rarity, and it was great to see the old musty bunker that six Danish soldiers were once stationed in. After the beach we drove past Thomas’ old school, which is most similarly compared to an American boarding school and then regrouped at Helens place before heading up to Aalborg for a night out. We meet two of Thomas’ old school friends there, Jacob and Oscar, and enjoyed a free outdoor concert while drinking the infamous Danish beer Tuborg. After hanging at the concert for a while we grabbed some dinner and then went bowling. By popular decision we decided to have a bowling competition, pinning the three Americans against the three Danes while Mikael observed. Unfortunately, Margot, Nina and I disgraced us all when we got annihilated three games in a row. Plus the Danish guys got a couple strikes when the red pin was at the top of the triangle, which meant that they got free shots from the bar. It was a sad day for America and I couldn’t feel more ashamed of my performance, nor could I forget how ashamed I ought to feel since Thomas continued to remind me throughout the rest of my stay in Denmark. He also became quite infatuated with Yo Mama jokes during my stay, which Margot suggests is my fault for joking around too much, but in the end it simply lead to a lot of laughs and good times at the expense of my mama. Sorry mom.

                After going to a hipster bar and learning how to lose consistently at a game called Liar’s Dice we made the drive back to Hobro and hit the hay. The following day we took a short two minute drive over to Thomas’ grandma Ingor’s house for some breakfast and coffee. Ingor seemed to me a very happy woman and I really enjoyed her company, promising to come back up with Thomas the following week and see her again. Her house was also positioned next to the Fish Farm that Helens husband Jens works on. He had just constructed a huge brand new fish farm and I thought the whole process was really interesting. Thomas grew up here and constantly helps Jens out with the farm and all of its construction so he gave me a thorough tour of the farm. It all seemed so simple the way that everything was laid out and the way they described how the process worked but you could tell that it took a whole lot of hard man hours to build and maintain the farm. It sounds stupid because it was just a fish farm but I really enjoyed learning how the farm worked.

             After this we got in the car for the long car ride back to Copenhagen and then scrambled to get ready for the big Birthday dinner in time. After changing my dress three times and spending thirty minutes doing my hair I realized that I was in fact a man and therefore it only took me five minutes to get ready while the ladies participated in these bewildering preparation habits. We took to the streets of Copenhagen in a hurry with the Danish amusement park Tivoli as our destination.

                Upon arriving at Tivoli, which by the way acted as Walt Disney’s inspiration when building Disney World, we were confronted with a new dilemma, which one of these restaurants holds 52 members of the van Loon family? We spent the next twenty minutes walking around and asking hostesses whether Kirstin van Loon was having a birthday dinner at their restaurant. We finally found the correct restaurant but we were the very last people to show up. As I sat down I found Nina sitting across from me, hiding behind a wall of wine glasses that would soon be filled one by one with expensive wine and a bunch of Margot’s relatives to my left. I quickly made friends with Martin, Peter and Mikael as we acted cultured in order to match the sophistication of our food dishes and then whispered to each other how exactly we were supposed to eat this certain dish. And thus we ate our delicious food and drank our delicious wine and I couldn’t have felt more honored that Margot’s family actually allowed me to be here. During the party Paul, Margot’s Uncle who had organized the party, kept urging family members to come up and give speeches in Kirstin’s honor which they all happily agreed to do. Margot gave a wonderful speech about her Farmour and Nina eventually gave a really nice speech about fudge and how much Kirstin loves it.

            After the main courses Paul crowned Kristoffer with the best speech of the night by awarding him a bolo tie and then everyone started to mingle. I went over and started talking to Thomas and his older brother Rasmus, who Margot and I will be seeing again in Florence, when the waitress decided to just give us a bottle of red wine. This would’ve been fine except the same waitress had just left a bottle of wine with Mikael, Peter, Martin and I at the other table half an hour ago. Needless to say, when Thomas and I made our way to the exit trading swigs of Whiskey with Helen and some family member who I can’t quite remember I was feeling pretty good, not as good as Nina but still pretty good. I don’t want this to turn into a story of debauchery and whiskey shots so I’ll try and keep the story short. We all went to a karaoke bar at the theme park where I sung My Way by Frank Sinatra with Martin and Bohemian Rhapsody with Thomas. Nobody clapped when we were finished except the group of drunk van Loons in the corner. Then we all walked back to the apartment where the “Youth Party” was supposed to occur. Kristoffer and I got lost in the city and after being told by a bouncer that his buildings wall was not a fucking toilet we finally made it back to the apartment. Shortly after we arrived all of the grown-ups decided to crash the youth party which I thought was great but the other youths agreed was just downright rude. I met Jan (the owner of the apartment), re-met Malene who is Kristoffer’s sister and Margot’s awesome cousin that I met last October when Nina brought her over to my apartment, Malene’s sister Katrine who is equally as awesome and has two kids with Peter, and the list goes on. We mingled and drank and woke up with hangovers at noon the following day.

                We said goodbye to Margot as she left with Mikael to see the Danish island of Bornholm where Margot’s grandparents met and then Thomas and I ventured out to begin our recovery from the previous night, finding an all you can eat buffet breakfast which we thoroughly enjoyed. After making it back to the apartment and cleaning ourselves as well as the apartment up we finally went out to see the city at half past four. Somehow we managed to see the Royal Theatre, the National Sandcastle Convention, Amalienborg Palace, The Little Mermaid, Frederik’s Church, Holmen Naval Base, the Gefion Fountain, Rosenborg Castle, and I experienced Danish weather at its finest, which means that I was randomly caught in monsoon-like rains for ten minutes and then it instantly got sunny again. The Gefion Fountain has a really cool story behind it though, according to legend the Swedish king Gylfi promised the Norse goddess Gefjun that she could have all of the land that she could plow in one night. She turned her four giant sons into Ox and proceeded to plow the entire island of Zealand off from Sweden which is how the island was created. Later that night when we set out to find Christiana but failed we continued our sight-seeing efforts instead and I saw Parliament, Christiansborg Castle, and the building which housed the old Danish stock exchange.

                The following day Thomas and I set out for Hobro in Jutland to stay with Ingor for a couple days. We successfully made the drive out there without any problems and decided to go mountain biking in the Danish Rold Forest which was really awesome and a ton of fun. Completely worn out we gobbled up Ingor’s Danish dinner, thanked her, watched The Gods Must Be Crazy and then went to bed for a whopping eleven hours. After waking up at noon with the day completely shot we just relaxed and I got caught up with all of my expenses and journal entries. The next day I said good-bye to Thomas as he put me on a train bound for Copenhagen so that he could prepare for classes which started the following week.

                I met up with Dane and Caitlyn in Copenhagen for some dinner and we witnessed a really odd and confusing outdoor play involving a doctor, a donkey, a guitar, and a shitload of chopped wood. By the way Dane is Paul’s son and lives in Boulder as an EMT, as does his wife Caitlyn. The following day I explored Copenhagen again except this time I was the tour guide for Dane and Caitlyn whereas the previous time Thomas was guiding me. I did, however witness the changing of the guards which was completely new to me and really awesome. After exploring the city we went to Helsingor, where Jan has his summer home and where he was letting everybody who had gone to Bornholm stay. I had dinner there with Margot, Mikael, Paul, Jackie, Kirstin, Harry, Dane and Caitlyn. I also tried Herring for the first time which I honestly thought was delicious and didn’t quite understand why people make such a big deal about it.

       After dinner Margot, Dane, Caitlyn and I took a train back to the apartment in Copenhagen. The following day Dane and Caitlyn flew back to Denver while Mikael discovered that the German airport workers were on strike and thus he couldn’t leave and instead came back to meet Margot and I at the apartment. We went to the Rosenborg Castle and this time I got to go inside and see the crown jewels and all of the different rooms. The castle was a lot smaller than those I had seen in England and although it was completely different I thought it was really interesting in different ways. For instance, the ceilings weren’t as decorated or incredible as those that we saw at Windsor Castle or the Royal Palace but the rooms were smaller and thus the ceilings were a lot closer to you as you walked below them. This made it possible to really see the detail and the carvings and engravings that were impossible to see in the huge rooms in England. The castle had lot of really cool rooms including a room covered completely mirrors and an amazing grand hall on the top floor. The entire ceiling was decorated in carvings, the two coronation chairs at the end were made out of narwhale tusks and the walls were covered by twelve tapestries that depicted the Scanian war. It was a really cool castle and I’m glad I got to see it.

                That night Mikael went to eat dinner with Klaus and Margot and I met up with Malene and Katrine to have some wine with some of Malene’s co-workers on the canal in front of her workplace. Everyone was really friendly and we had a great time drinking and listening to music with them. Afterword, the four of us came back to the apartment to cook a simple dinner of pasta that turned out to not be so simple. The stove suddenly stopped working after about ten minutes and we were left with half cooked pasta in lukewarm water. We were forced to bowl water in the coffee machine and then pour it on the pasta several times before it was finally done and we could eat. While we were struggling to cook dinner Katrine announced that she couldn’t wait any longer for dinner and had to get back home to watch her children. Just before dinner was ready Malene’s friend Nikolina came over to the apartment to have some dinner with us and thus made us four again.

                After dinner Mikael arrived back from his dinner with Klaus and the girls encouraged him come out to the bars with us. We were at the first bar until about two when we came back to the apartment where Margot proceeded to pass out and where the rest of us decided to go back out to a place called Hong Kong bar. Malene had to explain to me that in Copenhagen there are some bars, like Hong Kong bar, that never close and don’t really get busy until about 4:30 AM. Well true to her word, we beat the rush arriving at three and the bar was still packed when we finally left out the front door and the discovered the sun beating down on us.

          I didn’t realize just how big of a mistake this was until Margot woke me up a couple hours later and reminded me that we had plans to go out near Koge to play volleyball and have dinner with Margot’s relatives Kirstin and her husband Kenneth. Kirstin is part of a volleyball club so she had some of the other guys in the club come and play volleyball with us on the Danish beach which was a ton of fun. However, after colliding with my 200 lb teammate, getting a mouthful of sand, and getting hit in the face with the ball, which coincidentally went over the net and scored us a point, I have to admit I was hurting just a little bit. After volleyball we went back to their house where we chatted, learned about all the hip Danish music like Nick & Jay and Panamah, and had the most amazing dinner I’ve had during the trip so far. It was sirloin wrapped in bacon, some amazing scalloped potatoes, vegetables, and some Danish ice cream for dessert. By the way the three Danish foods that I was the most impressed with were Ice Cream, Hot Dogs and Rye Bread. My mouth is starting to water just thinking about them. After dinner we said goodbye and then took the train back in to Copenhagen. We stayed up watching a movie with Malene and then took to the sack.

                The following morning Margot and I went out to Mager Strand to have brunch with Nanna who is the daughter of Jan, and her husband Rasmus.

           They were incredibly kind and it was great spending the morning with them. After brunch Nanna dropped us off at the metro and then Margot exclaimed that her phone was gone and that she’d left in Nanna’s car. Well Nanna didn’t live too far away, like 1 ½ kilometers, so I said I would run back to the house. I spent the next twenty minutes running around Denmark desperately searching for this house that I could vaguely remember driving to, but just as I was about to freak out and try and find my way back to the metro I saw Nanna waiting for me outside her house. Turns out that Margot never lost her phone at all, it was just in a different pocket of her purse. I had to laugh at the situation but I informed Margot when Nanna brought me back to the station that I was no longer going to believe her when she said that she had lost something. I don't know if any of you are familiar with the Boy that Cried Wolf, well Margot is the Girl that Cried, "I lost my ticket/phone/money/keys." And if that was the name of her first book then the sequel would be called the Girl that Cried, "Oh wait nevermind, it's right here." The most amusing part is that she constantly thinks that she's lost something but 99% of the time it turns out to not be lost at all. Luckily so far it's just resulted in some laughs and the release of all the stress that was just created, so I have no complaints.

                When we got back into Copenhagen we did some last minute cleaning up at the apartment and then went to grab coffee with Malene and Katrine before we had to catch the ferry to Oslo. We went to this hipster coffee shop that played a ton of Johnny Cash and talked about how great the past couple weeks were and how we hoped we could see each other again soon. They walked us to the ferry dock, said goodbye and just like that Denmark was behind us and we were sailing for Norway.