Soon after they left us in June, they announced their engagement, so we also had to congratulate them, and find out how long Mike knew he was going to pop the question and other details.
Our flight was with SAS (Scandinavian Airline) and we thought it was very good. We arrived in Copenhagen after just over an hour and, being early, we sat and waited for Mike & Karen. After a short while, Mike arrived, minus Karen, who was stranded in the US on a business trip. So, Mike played the perfect host, and guided us back to their apartment on the excellent train service.
Karen & Mike's apartment was great. So spacious compared to our flat. They have a cool Ikea pull-out sofa in the lounge, so we were very comfortable. After chatting for a while, and having a nice cup of tea, we slept around 1am.
Next morning, I ventured into the bathroom for a shower. Little was I to know, that I would have been better off staying dirty for the weekend. I turned the shower on, and noticed the stream of water hitting the end wall where it threatened to trickle down to the floor, so I redirected the nozzle to go straight down. I put my clean clothes down on the ground, and my towel on a shelf, and gaily threw my PJs onto the floor as I got into the shower.
After a very nice shower, where I vaguely noticed a bit of water backing up in the bottom of the bath, I drew back the shower curtain and started to step out. I stopped, as I thought I had water in my eyes because I couldn't believe what I was seeing. I was sure my pyjamas were moving! Rubbed my eyes. Yep - they were floating over a considerably amount of water. My clothes for the day had sunk already. Panic! We were on the 5th floor after all!
I yelled for Mike, and grabbed my towel. He opened the door (the right Mike fortunately) to see what the problem was (he was thinking I had left an item of apparel behind). It didn't take him long to assess the situation. He grabbed a pile of towels from the washing basket and flung them in the water. They were absorbed without a trace. About this time he called for Mike, shouting that there had been a flood.
Mike thought that it was the trickle sometimes caused by the shower hitting the back wall, but was he in for a shock when he stepped in! Out came the cleaning products, out went the carpet. Out I went! The two Mikes mopped and I dried off my underwear and got dressed. A bit sheepish!
Fortunately it wasn't my fault. Mike pulled back the drain grating in the bathroom floor, and stuck a wire clothes hangar down there. Out came a big wad of hair and gunge. Certainly not all from my head, else I'd be bald! I just happened to be in the shower when it blocked. Obviously the bathroom was designed for this time of emergency, as it was a sealed floor, and no complaints were had from the neighbours below. However, the neighbour 2 floors down rang to complain, but it turns out she was complaining about the carpet dripping from the balcony onto her pot plants. Mike assured her it was clean water (!!) but moved the carpet anyway. Everything was hung out to dry on the clothes rack.
Breakfast went a long way to comforting me. Mike had got Danish pastries (real ones!) and a walnut bread loaf from the local bakery and introduced me to the delights of chocolate slices on bread. A delicacy from Denmark. We even bought some from the supermarket to take back to London. Wafer thin chocolate slices plonked on bread. Although Mike did spoil it with putting jam on his piece too. I went for the pure unadulterated chocolate option. Not even butter! Yummo!
Soon after this, Karen arrived. So, we chatted some more, and eventually agreed on meeting for lunch after Karen had showered. So, Mike took us on tour through a castle just opposite their flat, and on to see the Little Mermaid. It is about ten minutes from their house. Little is very apt. But I was pleased to see it, as I identify it with Copenhagen. I felt I could go home from that point having seen all that I know of Copenhagen (not expecting to go to the Bohr Institute at all on this trip).
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| Rubber Chicken meets Little Mermaid |
The other thing on my list of things to do was to buy another pepper mill. Karen & Mike had given us one as an engagement present back in London last year, but it was one of the things stolen from der Bus in Luton. So I wanted to replace it. We scoured stores to no avail ( I have since got one the same from a shop in Santa Cruz, California - Peugeot mechanism and all) but had fun looking.
An important thing to get done today was to watch the All Blacks play South Africa in the Tri Nations. So we found a pub that had too many South Africans for my liking. It was a very exciting game - one of the best. But, New Zealand lost in the dying seconds and put us in the unusual position of wanting South Africa to beat Australia in the last game. This would give the Tri Nations to the most deserving team - New Zealand. Where all rugby trophies belong. We met some rugby mad Danes (didn't know they existed!), and some pleasant South Africans amid the rabble.
To forget our sorrows we went to Tivoli - an old-fashioned amusement park in the middle of Copenhagen. I thoroughly recommend this as a highlight. Mike and Mike decided they would ride the Big Drop (I don't know what its real name was - you get raised up 50 m or so, and then dropped suddenly. Looked awful!). Karen & I positioned ourselves for a good view of their faces on the way down. It was quite amusing. Their faces screwed up a bit, but the really funny thing was both their legs went straight out from their seats. So, although they both said it was a cruise, Karen & I had seen their bodies belie their bravado. That's our version of events, and we're sticking to it.
There are some nice restaurants at Tivoli, so we picked an average priced one, and queued for a bit to get in. Mike & I had venison and loved it. Dessert was pretty good too.
Just before midnight on Saturday night, there are fireworks at Tivoli. So, we found a good spot and watched them. The wind was blowing the wrong way, and we all got showered with soot particles and exploded fireworks. Not to mention obscured by the smoke. A few smuts in the eye later, it was all over. We rounded off the evening with a few arcade games of the best sort. A game where you put rubber frogs onto a plate, and whack the end with a huge mallet, sending the frog through the air hopefully to land on a lily pad. Another where a water pistol is used to hit targets which gradually inflate a ballooon - winner is the one that pops it first. Very enjoyable evening.
We got home late, and crashed pretty soon. Although I picked up a book of Karen's to read which was to be our undoing later.
Sunday was relaxing. We toured a bit more of the city, seeing the palace and the marble church. We spent a few hours in the Nation Museum, checking out the Danish section with great interest. There were runes, coffins, skulls with holes drilled in for surgical procedures (and evidence they lived to tell about it too), viking ships, weapons and all sorts of clothes. There were plenty of artefacts from medieval Denmark too, and a good Greenlandic section. A very good museum. I gauge all museums from Dunedin's fantastic museum, and this one rated pretty high. After this, we visited the Round Tower, which was an observatory built for a king.
He was so lazy, the tower had access for a horse and carriage almost to the top. Now there is an art exhibit at the top. Very odd too, it was. Paper shapes at around 20,000 dollars each (some as cheap as 1000, others 100k). Not quite my cup of tea. Kinda hard to imagine it as anyone's cup of tea, really. Imagine it as the kind of thing where if you bought a new house, and this paper contraption was in a room, you'd pull it down thinking the previous owners had some bored kids. That, or an origami master run amok.
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| Mike and Mike at Round Tower |
Woke up after Mike & Karen had left for work. Started reading the book. Kept reading the book. Told Mike to have the first shower, but kept reading the book. RossKilde plans vanished as the morning passed - and Mike still hadn't showered! With the book finished, I showered and we reassessed our options for the day. Some shopping was decided upon, along with a photo shoot of the rubber chicken with the Little Mermaid.
We met an old Danish lady in Mike & Karen's lobby, and she muttered some Danish at us and gestured wildly at a dwindling pile of Ikea catalogues. As we crept up quietly to her I'm pleased I did not utter my single word of Danish in greeting ('Hey' was what I thought was Danish for 'Hello', but turns out that was Swedish. Apparently hello in Danish is 'Hi'.). We smiled, and let her ruffle the pile a bit. Maybe she was saying how the Swedes are taking over Denmark and no good will come of it. The Danes being a bit anti-Swedish by all accounts. Lucky I didn't greet her in my flawless Swedish then!
Next stop - dodging the tourists at the Little Mermaid for that rubber chicken photo. I waited for a pause in the frantic posing, and grabbed my chance. I held the rubber chicken aloft in front of the Little Mermaid, and Mike took video footage and photos. Then, a woman started waffling away to me in a Nordic language of some description. It did sound awfully like the Swedish Chef from the Muppets. I wondered if I was offending Danish sensibilities holding a rubber chicken in front of the number one icon of the country. I did not need to worry. She merely wanted to poke the chicken - I think she wondered if it was real. Maybe petrified chicken - a long lost Danish viking recipe. Her friend behind mimicked biting the chickens head off. The Scandinavians have strange eating habits (remember Mike's huge slab of rams testicles in Iceland, and the whiff of petrified shark we got - not for us though - reserved for special festivities. Thank goodness!).
We bought a present for Karen & Mike to celebrate their engagement, and wandered back aimlessly (although Mike swears he knew exactly where he was going) through parks. Mike & Karen arrived to see us off at around 5pm. We promised to see RossKilde next time.
We had nice weather, and we enjoyed seeing how Karen & Mike live in Denmark. We've still got a few Scandinavian countries to explore (with Norway, Sweden and Finland being high on the list), and will no doubt tackle them soon. Denmark was surprisingly un-foreign, with the two old ladies on our last day being the only ones with no English that we encountered (although our stunned mullet expressions might have indicated to them that we only spoke Swahili, and they were fluent in English). If it weren't for pickled herring, we could have been in England. I'm sure living there presents its own unique problems that we were unaware of (Mike touched briefly on a strange tax system), but for English-speaking tourists it is very easy to get around.
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