On our first walk around Copenhagen we went through the aforementioned Assistens Kirkegård cemetery where Niels Bohr and Hans Christian Andersen are laid to rest. This place is incredible. It has atmosphere and then some. There is a rich flavor to the entire cemetery. The greens are lush, the trees old, and the varieties endless.

Around one corner you may find a couple having a picnic. Around another you may find curious tombstones in a unique setup. Some gravestones have runes on them as well. I’m not sure if they are Viking, Anglo-Saxon, or, more likely, Younger Futhark or Rok.

The only thing that disappointed was the graffiti. Niels Bohr’s tombstone is a mess on the backside (not pictured). You can see what Hans Christian Andersen’s currently looks like below.

The graffiti relates to The People’s House Copenhagen located at Jagtvej 69. I don’t know all the details but apparently the government sold the building, and the new owners are going to demolish it against the wishes of many people.

This is the front of Niels Bohr’s gravestone. The graffiti on the backside contains several English curse words. I have no idea why.

Posted on June 30th, 2008 under Denmark. Tags: cemetery, copenhagen, Denmark, famous danes, graffiti, hans christian andersen, kobenhavn, living in copenhagen, norrebro, pictures. Comments: 1

At long last we arrived in Denmark on Thursday morning. We arrived but some of our luggage wasn’t so lucky. I believe this is the fourth time in my life that some, or all, of my luggage has been lost or delayed. Losing luggage seems like something that shouldn’t happen to a person more than once in their life.

The letter I received from the university said that someone would meet us outside of customs. No one was there. When I called my contact person they said the person was inside the baggage claim area, and I had missed them. Great! How does one go backwards through customs?? It turns out in Copenhagen you can.

Customs in Copenhagen, I should mention, are the easiest customs I’ve ever been through. You just follow the sign that says you have nothing to declare and walk out the door. There wasn’t a single person there to look through your luggage, and the passport stamp didn’t involve a single question. I’ve been interrogated in our friendly neighbor Canada more than once. In Mexico you push a button and about one in three people who get a light when they push have their luggage gone through. Copenhagen was a welcome change.

At our apartment we learned another lesson. The 2^nd floor in Denmark is what we would normally call the 3^rd floor. So when our apartment key envelope said “2^nd floor” we went up one flight of stairs and tried the doors. Our key didn’t work. Luckily the occupants weren’t in or we would have looked like robbers. After much stress (we were jet lagged and very tired which didn’t help), we tried more doors in the building, eventually finding ours on the 3^rd floor.

I feel asleep immediately as did the rest of the family. Somehow my wife woke up after a few hours at about noon (3 a.m. by my body’s clock) and woke the rest of us up so we would sleep that night. I felt like the walking dead for a half hour or so.

I snapped a few pictures from the inside of our apartment, as well as a couple of what we can see outside our windows like the local church–Sankt Markus, before we went out exploring for the first time.

Posted on June 29th, 2008 under Denmark. Tags: frederiksberg, living in copenhagen, pictures, Travel. Comments: None

We took a town car from our hotel to downtown Washington. The driver fancied himself the tour guide which was fine with us. We knew nothing having never been to this part of the country or done any research for this unexpected adventure. We didn’t even know what state we were in (Virgina) until we asked.

Instead of just dumping us at the Capitol Hill Building, our driver gave us a tour of the Iwo Jima memorial, Arlington Cemetery, the Pentagon, and told us what else to see. He even let us get out and take pictures at the Iwo Jima statue. It was much bigger than I had expected. (We recently watched Flags of Our Fathers and Letters from Iwo Jima, the latter being much better, so we had some idea what this place was about.) There was nobody at the monument when we got there. As we pulled away a few tour buses showed up with masses of people.

Our driver dropped us off at the Lincoln Memorial. Some workers were blasting high pressure water through fire hoses up Lincoln’s nose when we first got up the stairs.

Next we walked through the Vietnam Memorial Wall area on our way to the White House.

At the White House we made friends with some guys from Norway who gave us some tips about Copenhagen and encouraged us to visit their country too.

From the White House we headed by the Washington Monument and ended up in the Smithsonian Castle. Nothing much to see in there (although the exterior was cool) so we made our way to an art museum with lockers (and an Andy Warhol) to finally put down our luggage for a while.

We finished off our time in DC at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum and the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian before heading to the airport to finally go to Denmark.

Posted on June 27th, 2008 under Other. Tags: Washington D.C.. Comments: None

… in Washington D.C. As inevitably happens when you are traveling long distances, things don’t go as planned and you end up stranded somewhere.

The above picture is of our plane from Portland, Oregon to Washington D.C. From our nation’s capital we were scheduled to connect on a flight to Copenhagen. However, even though we were there and ready 30 minutes before our scheduled departure, and our plane was there and ready 30 minutes before our scheduled departure, the crew was required by some regulations to get some more beauty sleep. (By the looks of this crew, the beauty sleep didn’t help. ) Therefore, we were 2 and a half hours behind schedule in Portland and subsequently missed our flight to Copenhagen.

Ryan used the extra time to get some shut eye.

Ellie used it to send email to her friends.

Upon arrival in DC, United Airlines gave us a room at the Hyatt Hotel, $60 in meal money, $60 in cab fare, $400 in travel vouchers on future flights, and 4 bags of toiletries. Since we are going to be in Copenhagen for over 5 weeks anyway, missing a day isn’t the end of the world. I’ve never toured our nation’s capital either so DC will now be one place we don’t have to take a vacation to in the future.

In the airport I saw Pat Robertson. He was talking with his traveling companions as I passed him, and I heard him say something about Jimmy Carter. Airports are weird.

I’ll save most of our DC adventures for tomorrow’s blog entry, but one thing I found very curious at the airport I will share today. The Dulles airport in DC must be the most poorly designed facility on the planet. The terminals are long, long hallways with no moving walkways. It takes forever to get from one end to the other. But that isn’t the worst of it. The worst is that the terminals are not connected. To get from one terminal to another you must ride on a shuttle bus (of sorts). The shuttle buses look like crazy, military carriers from a low budget sci-fi movie.

That still isn’t the worst of it. To get from one terminal to another these shuttle buses must cross the runways and taxiing areas of the airplanes. So the airplanes and shuttle buses are trying to drive around each other on the runways causing all sorts of delays for those trying to get from one terminal to another and for those on planes trying to get to gates. (Our plane had to wait after landing about 15 minutes before it could creep up to a gate and let us off.) It felt like we were in some sort of bizarro world that only some mindless scoundrels would have created. But then again, we are talking about Washington D.C…

Posted on June 27th, 2008 under Other. Tags: Washington D.C.. Comments: None