Tivoli

Star Flyer

And so the goodbyes begin. It's quite a strange feeling really, and as well as saying goodbye to people, we are also saying goodbye to places as well. Tivoli was first on the list as it closed for the season recently... 

The Little Pilot

As the first place we visited together as a family, (almost as soon as our feet touched Danish soil), I will always have a soft spot for Tivoli. We have plenty of happy memories from the many (many) times we visited. For those people that are about to move to Copenhagen, this will be one of the places that you visit the most, believe me (make sure you buy a season ticket, it will pay for itself in a few trips!)!  We took so many guests here, that at times I will admit to being thoroughly sick of the place, but it was really nice to visit it one last time to bid it a fond farewell.

The Galley Ships

 We had to make sure that we went on almost every single ride for old times sake, bidding farewell to our favourites, Den Flyvende Kuffart (The Flying Trunk), a trip through the tales of Hans Christian Andersen, (which it is worth alone for a listen to the English narration -. when you get to the Little Match Girl listen out for the part about the "gooooze"), The Mine (a leisurely journey through a "diamond mine", complete with giant sneezing pink dragon), The Galley Ships with its manicly spinning viking ships, and a couple of turns on the traditional and very beautiful carousel.  The first time Small Boy ever went on this he started off astride a small rhinocerous.  The ride turned once, and the rhinocerous reappeared without him.  Panic gripped, until I saw him high upon the giraffe's back, he had obviously had a change of heart!

We saved the best, the glorious Rutschebane  for last (and went on it 4 times in a row)...    This elderly wooden roller coaster (one of the oldest in the world) comes with a brake person for each train, employed soley to deploy the brakes before and after each big dip (can you imagine that job?)! This is a ride we all love, and you can't help but laugh most of the way round (I do shut my eyes at the top, where it looks like you could go careering off the edge though)... I remember my Dad convincing my Step-Mother that this ride was really tame, but all you could hear was her screaming "Oh my Gaaawd" all the way around! It's fantastic in a chuck you out of your seat, leave your stomach behind kind of way, and my strange children both adore it (sit at the very back for maximum effect!)... 

Tivoli will reopen in a few days for Halloween, when it's covered with thousands of pumpkins of all shapes and sizes, and then of course in December with it's Christmas Market, and its myriad of potent Gløgg and æbleskiver stalls... Sights all worth seeing, but to me, Tivoli will always be best late on a summer's evening, when it's quiet, and when you will see people that have been going their whole lives, relaxing and enjoying themselves...

Anniversary

Last week we celebrated our wedding anniversary - in the snow. The polar opposite of that hot sunny day seven years ago, in the Garden Route of South Africa. Eager to escape the big rip-off expense that is a big white English wedding, and to incorporate our love of travelling with that of each other, we decided to choose somewhere we hadn't been to before (and unfortunately haven't yet had the chance to go back to yet - maybe for our 10th wedding anniversary?!). We got married underneath a huge jacaranda tree surrounded by a few of our nearest and dearest, who had travelled halfway across the globe to be with us. The following day we rounded off the celebrations with a huge picnic in the nearby Stellenbosch vinyard. We wouldn't have done anything differently at all, and if you have ever considered going to South Africa before, but haven't yet done so, you should. The people are incredible, the country is the most beautiful we have been to so far, and both the food and wine are amazing!

This year, we somehow managed to give each other identical cards and gifts - I have to wonder whether that means we are the most intune couple ever, or whether it says a lot about the "huge" choice of products available here in Denmark!!

The snow hasn't let up really, with only a brief respite yesterday, when I thought we might be in for a thaw. But, it's back again this morning... We saw Betty Stick out walking earlier and it is seriously no exaggeration on my part when I say she's out whatever the weather!

With the cold weather come the usual colds and bugs, and as I write this looking out onto more falling snow, my small boy is feeling very sorry for himself and is currently being kept entertained by watching The Flumps (which was made when his mother was younger than he is now!).

Two weeks left at school until the holiday. I love this time of year in Denmark, it's just incredibly christmassy (especially with the white stuff) and somehow it seems a lot less plastic than at home. It's still commercial of course, and Christmas stuff starts appearing in shops as soon as Halloween is out of the way - but the decorations seem more organic, and there are candles everywhere (even more so than usual!). As we have visitors this weekend, are hoping to take them to go and chop our tree down at some point. Will update when I can.

Nearly Bare.....

This is the walnut tree in our garden. My parents once had a village pub called exactly that, and guess what? It had a walnut tree in front of it! It's still there I think, although it was the victim of many an accident, including a Robin Reliant exploding underneath it. The walnut tree in our garden is hanging on to its last few leaves for now, but the garden is covered so you can guess what we will be mostly doing this weekend! It hasn't produced many walnuts this year though. According to English folklore, you are supposed to whack the trunk with a stick to produce a good crop the following year... a good job for stick boy!

We have had a crazy couple of weeks what with half term and the like. Our first lot of guests arrived on the Thursday of half term, in time to visit Halloween Tivoli on the Friday. They loved it and couldn't get over how many pumpkins there were, it was also much warmer than Halloween Tivoli last year which was a good thing, but it was sooo much busier... I don't think Halloween was that big in Denmark until recently, but (like the UK) it gets bigger each year, and Tivoli's marketing is obviously working! Our three year old was given some candyfloss which was nearly as big as him. After a few minutes he began to look like one of the X-men with a bright orange, very sticky sugar crust over his entire face and hands. A woman pushed passed us on her way out and got rid of most of it for me when she walked off with half of it stuck to the side of her coat. She was in too much of a rush for me to be able to tell her, so I expect she was really pleased to discover that later on! But luckily the small boy was completely oblivious to the fact that half of it had disappeared. Horrendous stuff!

On the Saturday we went to the Frilands for their last day before closing for the winter. They had a great festival in the form of a 17th/18th century carnival which was fantastic! The kids loved the "circus" and the pretend strong man and performers. At the end of the show, they announced that a "beautiful lady" was about to perform, out came a girl with a large blouse with fake arms attached. Her real arms (or rather elbows) formed her "boobs" under the blouse which she then moved about in time to music. The children all stood saucer-eyed at this, their faces were a picture. I would have taken a picture of them, but it definitely would have had camera shake as I was laughing too much. At the end of her performance, she leaned forward and produced two material boobs out of the front of her blouse. After she had left the stage, we asked our three year old what she had done. He said "she showed us her cakes..."!!! Bless!

Sunday we went for a long walk through the forest. Our friends couldn't get over the amazing autumn display we are enjoying at the moment. I don't remember last year being like this, it is pretty breathtaking, although rapidly disappearing in the wind...I don't know whether the bitterly cold winter had something to do with the amazing colours perhaps, but I love it! I don't think I could ever live somewhere that didn't enjoy a good autumn!

That afternoon, I had a text message, it simply said, "see you Friday!" I immediately knew who it was from - my father, a Yorkshireman of limited text words! Hence the lack of blog, for which I apologise, but we have been too busy gallavanting to Sweden (and various other places) where we drove down towards Ystad again, this time stopping at a tiny fishing port called Abbekås. When we got there we were flagging as it was past lunchtime, so we took a chance (it was Sweden after all!) on a small place there called Abbekås Hamnkrog for lunch. What a find! The owners are so friendly and welcoming and the food was wonderful! I had plaice with roasted beetroot in lemon and a beurre blanc. It was huge and delicious and I didn't have room for the potatoes. The children had authentic swedish meatballs made to a family recipe (with the nicest mashed potato I have ever had) with lingonberry jam, and my Husband and Dad both had plates of herring and smoked eel. This place is also a hotel, it's peaceful, the food is excellent and the staff act like you are their very first (and best) customers - what more could you ask for?

A couple more days to enjoy my Dad's company before he goes back home. I will update again shortly - honest!

Emma

Constant Sunshine (and Suffocating Heat)!

The weather decided for us that Breakfast at the beach was in order this morning! We made a hasty picnic (plus all important flask of tea), and left home just before 8.30. The light was beautiful, the temperature perfect and we had a lovely couple of hours before we left to go back home at 10.30, just as it was getting busy and too hot! The weather has been spectacular for the last two weeks, perfect for my in-laws who have actually returned to Florida with a tan! We managed to pack an awful lot in while they were here. The various trips of course included our favourite Frilands Museet,where the children learned how to spin wool and Tadci earned his picnic lugging them around in a wooden cart. Numerous picnics on the beach, followed by copious amounts of ice cream (and coke floats!), the obligatory Tivoli, and Sweden for a day where we searched out Swedish meatballs in Lund(and a giant in the vaults of the Cathedral - although we couldn't find him!), and stocked up on BBQ food at the supermarket! Then the grand castle tour, when we packed in three in a day,Krongborg slot (aka Elsinore - who also has another much more impressive giant in it's vaults, but we will visit him another day), Fredensborg, the Queen's summer residence where we explored the gardens (only open to the public in July - get off the grass!!), and Frederiksborg in Hillerod which is my favourite, it's stunningly beautiful and quite the wedding conveyor-belt at weekends. We also did a central Copenhagen canal boat trip which we haven't done before, it was lovely but the day was so stiflingly hot, I am looking forward to doing it again on a cooler day. My In-laws also very kindly babysat one evening, and as the weather was too warm to sit in a formal restaurant, we decided to be tourists for the evening and go to Tivoli, where we ate at Grøften, one of the oldest and most traditional restaurants in Tivoli, it's a bit of an institution. We dined on Danish asparagus and fjord rejer (tiny fresh water shrimp),

and shared a lovely bottle of La Motte Wine from Franschoek where we got married many moons ago, it was a great evening (later in the week we bought a tub of the tiny fjord rejer and made our guests work for their supper, although they are very fiddly to peel, the shrimps are really sweet,and only available for a couple of months over the summer so well worth trying if you can)! It's definitely a restaurant that's been added to our list of places to take guests, the food is good, and the atmosphere's great!

A quiet week at home awaits before we go to Skagen next weekend.

Veruca Salt & Furniture Shopping...

Another weekend draws to a close. We went to Bakken today. We hadn't actually planned to, but felt like we should as we were nearby and the last time we attempted to go, all the rides were closed. Bakken is slightly less salubrious compared to Tivoli, but I don't actually think you can really compare the two. It's not as manicured, but it's more relaxed in a lot of ways, and certainly less busy (could have been due to the weather though). It's in a beautiful location, and the history of the place is very impressive, the very fact that it's the oldest (intact) theme park in the world impressed me, you can imagine what it was once like...The huge, incredibly old-looking wooden roller coaster isn't getting me anywhere near it though(should we go again)! There is a good choice of restaurants here,and the traditional beer hall looked fun! We had flaeskesteg rolls for lunch, (roast pork with crackling) piled high with gherkins and red cabbage, they were good, and very typical Danish fast food! The children had a great afternoon and went on quite a few rides - very brave when it was quite cold and threatening to rain (funny how they still wanted ice-creams though, doesn't matter what the weather's like for that, and yes, that is a child size ice-cream!!)... ! I am not sure what has happened to spring actually, the weather has decided to rewind itself somewhat recently, we have even had the fire lit again for the past couple of nights.

On Friday afternoon we had an open house at R's school. This time they were to show us some of the gymnastic skills they had been working on over the term. I was "delighted" to note that R was less than enthusiastic about this display, so when some other mothers told me that they would be taking leotards for their daughters to change into, I thought it might cheer mine up if I did the same! I arrived a few minutes before the display with her ballet kit in hand as a surprise. She is so like me in many respects (the sport hating gene is definitely one of my mine), but amazingly (and very unlike me) she is actually very graceful (yes, even if I do say so myself!!) and her ballet skills are good, but as I have yet to find an English speaking ballet class here, she hasn't actually worn her outfit for several months...She certainly loved the surprise and quickly got changed into her leotard like her class mates! All was going swimmingly, until she found her ballet shoes at the bottom of the bag. Why on earth I hadn't remembered them and taken them out is just beyond me, of course they weren't going to fit her after all these months. Thus followed what could have been a scene from Cinderella, they just weren't going to fit, no-matter how hard she tried to squeeze her feet into them. Then without warning, my tiny, excited and almost enthusiastic daughter, transformed into a furious Veruca Salt banshee type creature... It took quite a while to placate her, but afterwards she explained to me that although she loved the surprise, it was actually a horrible surprise that her shoes didn't fit anymore, and she was quite sure that they would have made all the difference to her scissor jump! As I am sure I have said before, we do indeed live and learn as parents! However, she performed as planned! The display was very sweet, and all the children did very well. Meanwhile, S had a great time jumping like a mad thing on a huge crashmat at the back of the room, while the show was taking place.

Inspired by the poor weather, on Saturday we decided that the search for a new sofa really did need to start. We outgrew our two seater sofa almost five years after we bought it (ten years ago from that awful UK chain DFS). We weren't married then and lived in a typical London (very old and very badly sound-proofed) conversion flat a couple of stories up. I remember that we ordered the sofa, the delivery men arrived to install it and then it just wouldn't go up the stairs! A quick trip back to the shop confirmed that once you had ordered and paid for the sofa, they didn't care how you got it into your property,or whether you used it as garden furniture - it was no longer their problem! Not one to give up, my engineer husband found a way for it to be hoisted up through the sash window using a large rope, where it came back down the same way a couple of years later when we moved out! Anyway, as we currently have two more family members, who have helped trash it, it's more than time to buy a new one... It was refreshing to note that IKEA in Scandinavia is as hellish as it is in the UK on a Saturday! We bid a hasty retreat to the less hectic world of ILVA where we both fell in love... with different pieces of furniture. I am yet to convince him that my sofa is the best, as he is to convince me that his is the best. I bet I give in first just to get a new one...

I made Delia's twice baked Goat's cheese souffle's last night (did I mention the weather was bad) . They turned out very nicely (note they are supposed to sink back down, the second time you bake them they puff up beautifully) and I would have really enjoyed them had I not really burned myself taking them out of the oven. An excellent fool-proof recipe though, I highly recommend making them!

A short week ahead, we have another holiday on Thursday which means no school on Friday either...

Speak soon.

Emma

Duck Diner & More Somber Reflections...

Our feathered friends returned yesterday and were here again this afternoon. The children wait for them to give them bread. R thinks they are on holiday and that they think we are a restaurant...

We had visitors from London for the weekend, my good friend Charlotte and her little girl Isabella. R & Isabella are the same age and have known each other all their lives, so it was very touching to see how happy they were to see each other again! Charlotte and I had a great night out on Saturday in Copenhagen, ate far too much sushi at Sticks and Sushi on Nansengade, and had fun at a couple of nice quirky little bars, Bankerat and Kaffe Kasalet all of which I would recommend. Sunday we all spent the day together at Tivoli (our first visit of 2010), where much fun was had by all until Isabella tripped over a missing cobblestone and fell headfirst into a fountain!! Luckily only her pride was hurt and it was a sunny day. I dread to think how it would have panned out had we been visiting on one of the sub-zero days of winter...

I had wondered what the flags on the buses were for this morning, but as I have since found out, today is Liberation Day in Denmark. Each year on May 4th, candles are lit and placed in windows once darkness falls to commemorate the liberation of Denmark at the end of WWII. During the occupation curfews were enforced after dark, and black-out blinds were used so that no light could be seen from the outside. As part of the celebrations on being liberated, the Danes lit huge bonfires and put candles in their windows to symbolize their return of freedom. This tradition continues today, and as one website points out, perhaps this particular custom allows us to reflect and take stock of what is important.