It's Thursday morning, and nearly 11:30. Jesper is at the office, Jeanett is at work, her son Lasse is at school, and I have been organizing photos from the past few days so that I could write a bit about our time so far here in Denmark, and more specifically Helsingor and Copenhagen. Where are Noah and Jake you might ask? Well, they're still asleep, having won yesterday's debate on the topic of when they should be getting up today, which, as I mentioned is Thursday.
This debate though is likely going to be more like a referendum in Canada, as I suspect we will keep having it periodically. But for now, they slumber, or at least they have not made it upstairs yet, and when they do, I will continue to incur their debt. But who knows, perhaps they're tired, it's been a busy few days.
There has however also been a lot of good down time. Totally chilling out. Watching movies. Eating. Reading. Soccer. Some of you may have noted the Happy Noah FB post a few days ago. Quiet. Sunday was one of those days, as were Thursday and Saturday of last week. Today is also one of those days. And tomorrow is Legoland. So I think we're striking a decent balance.
This is where all of that chilling out has been happening.
As I mentioned, it is a lovely house, full of lovely people, and I am very, very thankful to Jesper for inviting us to stay, and for showing us about when he's had the time.
Jesper and I met several years ago via work. He has a company here in Denmark that the company I work for partnered up with to respond to an opportunity in Ontario. You know how you just hit it off with some people? We didn't win the contract, but Jesper and I became good friends. I'm not sure that the shareholders, board of directors, or even my boss would agree, but I think it was a good investment.
Their home is about a 10 minute walk from the city centre of Helsingor, which gives you the markets, pedestrian shopping streets, rail station, Kronborg Castle, the Elsinore Castle of Hamlet, and other good things you'd expect to find in a small city in Denmark. Right, only the one Hamlet castle in Denmark. Lot's of other slots about though, so I'm sure Helsingor isn't alone in the town with castle department. It's a good one though.
I haven't included shots of the city yet, as I haven't taken any, having spent the time walking the streets, just, well, walking. I may get out and take a few today just so I have, but I may not. If you're craving a looksee, then try google.
Meanwhile, this is some more of their garden.
And these are a couple of the many apples on the many apple trees they have. I believe I've already told you about breakfast and the open face sandwich. Well, that breakfast also included freshly pressed apple juice.
Ya, it's pretty good here.
So far you have only seen pictures of Jesper and Jeanett dressed in the "viking" clothes from our day out at Trelleborg. Here is how they normally look.
Actually this was them Saturday night, off to a birthday party for a friend. I think they got home around 4am or so. Sunday was a quiet day for us all.
Noah, Jake and I spent Monday wandering about Helsingor. We started by getting Copenhagen Cards at the tourist bureau near the train station. Having already spent some time reading it over and knowing what it provided for, we decided to get them for three days, or, more specifically, 72 hours. It was good from 10am Monday till 10am Thursday. If you're ever in Copenhagen and doing the tourist thing, then I highly recommend this one. Not only does it include admission to over 70 sites, it also provides access to the public transit system for the entire capital region of Denmark. So we could get to and from Copenhagen with this card, as well as see as much as we could possibly handle along the way.
A lot of Monday was spent at Kronborg Castle, and I will post separately on that, perhaps later today.
The other places we went were the Maritime Museum of Denmark (M/S), and the Oresund Aquarium, a lovely little aquarium that should not be confused with Den Blå Planet (The Blue Planet) aquarium in Copenhagen, which we were also hoping to see but ran out of time due to cute furry creatures. More on that in another post.
The Maritime Museum was very cool. I'll be honest and say that I'm still a bit museumed out, and having come to this one after we'd been to Kronborg Castle in the morning, the information saturation levels were already quite high. But this was our day to do it, people had suggested it, and we felt like it. So did it we did, and we got what we got out of it. Which, I guess, is the point.
The building itself is super cool. It's underground. They basically took a dry dock and built around and through it. Really neat.
So the gallery space is on two sides, and they are connected via these central corridors zigzagging across.
Those corridors also act as the ramps from ground level down to the museum entrance.
And then on the inside all this zig zagging (I'm not sure if there is a space between zig and zag so I am doing it both ways to avoid internal consistency, which while preferable, isn't nearly as much fun) creates some interesting gallery space, including a very funky stairwell.
I think this makes our third maritime museum. There was the Dockside in London, and then the Merseyside in Liverpool, and now this one in Denmark. I'm almost disappointed we didn't go to one in Halifax, else we could have a bit of a theme here.
But like I keep saying, I like these museums that are built to address a single topic in a comprehensive manner. I guess I use the term "single" rather loosely given all the topics the maritime museums do address. The M/S focusses primarily upon trade by sea, and Denmark's long running role in that area. Kronoborg Castle, and before that the forts that sat on the same site, were ideally situated to deal with ships coming in to the Sound, or Øresound, which is the narrow straight running between Helsingør, Denmark and Helsingborg, Sweden. They (Denmark and Sweden) both used to be ruled by the same monarch. Actually it's happened a couple of times when Denmark ruled Sweden and then visa versa. I won't get into that though. Oh, you may have noticed the cool letters I've just started tossing around. Don't get used to it. And yes, more internal inconsistencies to keep you on your toes. I'm using Jesper's mac, so I get a Danish keyboard which includes the three additional letters that Danish have that English does not. "Å" which sounds like "o" as in old. "Æ", which sounds like "a" as in ache, and "Ø" which sounds like "ir" as in weird. Anyway, don't get used to it, I'm not hunting these things down on my tablet.
Right, so it's a good place to control trade from. Ship comes up the narrows, flag in the right position, they dock and pay tax on their freight. Flag in the wrong position, cannon fires a warning shot, ship docks, they pay tax on their freight and the costs for firing the cannon. Apparently it used to be a flat rate per ship, but as ships got bigger it then became a percentage of the estimated value of the cargo. Crafty king that he was, Eric of Pomerania, who introduced the tax in 1429, it's called the Sound Due incidently and existed until the mid 19th century, got a good thing going, but I think it was King Frederick VI who got the big money when he went for the percentage. And to ensure that ships weren't underestimating the value of their cargo to pay lower taxes, the King had first rights to buy at that price. Kept folk fairly honest I suppose. It also financed the building of castles and the throwing of big parties, as the dues went right into the monarch's piggy bank. That said, they weren't extracting taxes from the citizens to pay for their homes and such, so I guess it worked out reasonably well. Denmark still has a monarchy that they apparently like, so it couldn't have been too bad of an arrangement.
Anyway, here's proof that there is something inside the museum aside from nifty architecture.
They're Captain's compasses and were designed to hang above the Captain's bed so that, even when lying down for a bit of a nap, he could know which direction they were headed.
The M/S of course discusses trade right up until current day. Mærsk is, I believe, the largest shipping company in the world, and is Danish. So ya, they're good at this sort of thing. There is also this very cool game we all played where we got to try and make money at shipping. It's a simulation that has you select five different cargo types and then, based upon a few variables, pick the appropriate ship to transport the cargo. If after five ships you've made a profit, then you're doing good. And yes, we all turned a profit. I for one though am going to continue to urge Noah and Jake to do well in school and will not be switching my day job, assuming I still have one when we get back to Canada.
We then headed along the harbour to the aquarium. It's just a little one that features the marine life to be found in Denmark, or perhaps around Denmark would be more accurate. Or whatever, you know what I mean.
The cool thing about it is you get to touch stuff.
Like this nifty little fella.
Or these ones.
They both feeling kinda dry and sticky surprisingly enough.
And of course you can try and chase a crab down.
He was not overly fond of us. And why is he a he? I have no clue, I'm just saying that. I didn't actually check, and even if I tried, I have no idea how to tell.
Okay, I looked it up. Having nearly posed the question it seemed like the right thing to do. By the way, there are YouTube videos on this topic. Apparently popular amongst those breeding hermit crabs.
So, the internet tells me that males have hairy legs, and females don't. Unless, I assume, the male is also an olympic swimmer, in which it gets regular laser treatment and is also smooth, at which point you need to coax them out of their shell a little and look for the gonopores. These are tiny genital openings the females have. So, gonopores, girl. No gonopores, boy. This may come in handy next time you are at the Royal Winter Fair and your child decides this would be the best pet ever. So don't forget.
Here to help.
And then we left and wandered back the house by way of this lovely little garden.
That was the end of Monday, minus a yummy pizza dinner and some movie I can no longer remember off of Netflix.
You still haven't heard about the beginning of Monday, which was Kronborg Castle. Nor have you heard about Tuesday, which was wandering about Copenhagen, or Wednesday, which was the Copenhagen Zoo by day, and Tivoli Garden by evening.
It's coming though, so stay tuned.
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