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 Off on Arrival in Copenhagen

I just nailed down our first excursion outside of Copenhagen for our trip. We will arrive in Copenhagen on the morning of the 25th. On the morning of the 28th we are going to catch a train from Copenhagen, Denmark to Gothenburg, Sweden. If you are ever in this situation you should know that there are many train options between the two. You can use the Danish reservation site at dsb.dk, Eurorail at RailEurope (or a number of other sites), or Swedish Railways at sj.se. It turns out that even though you are on the same train the rates vary widely and seem to be changing constantly on the first and last option. We ended up going with the latter because kids under 15 ride free. Round trip tickets for all four of us were about US$200. A few days earlier they were only US$150 so buying early seems to be key.

In Gothenburg we will be staying at the Hotell Barken Viking. If that isn’t the coolest name for a hotel I don’t know what is. But wait, it gets better. This is no ordinary hotel. It is a ship. Unfortunately, it isn’t a Viking ship, as the name suggests, but it looks exciting anyway.

There are no pictures of the interior on the internet as it was just remodeled in May of 2008, but they sent us these pictures:

Just across the bridge from where the Barken Viking is docked is the main attraction for the day. While the wife and kids are off enjoying the summer in Gothenburg, I will be experiencing a music festival with a lineup one can only dream about.

If you were to ask me who are the current musical acts, never before seen live that I’d most like to see, I would answer In Flames and Dimmu Borgir. If you were to ask me who are the current musical acts, I have seen live before that I’d like to see again, I would answer Opeth and Dark Tranquility. If you were to ask me where would I like to see them, the answer would be in the heart of The Gothenburg Sound of course. It seems that all of these wishes are going to come true. And for icing on the cake, why not throw in a bunch of other great bands like Nightwish, Finntroll, Amon Amarth, and Soilwork too?

I have driven over 1,600 miles round trip to see Opeth on three occasions in Portland & Eugene, Oregon and Oakland, California, but this will be extra special seeing them in Sweden. Of course I won’t be able to understand any of Mikael’s usual between-songs banter in Swedish, but for this experience I can do without it. 😉

This won’t be my first concert out of the United States. Last summer I got to see Rush on their home turf in Toronto, and that was a night I’ll never forget.

I should also thank Morten, from Copenhagen Insider, for answering all of my travel questions so quickly.

Posted on June 18th, 2008 under Denmark. Tags: amon amarth, goteborg, gothenburg, hotell barken viking (hotel barque viking), metal, metaltown 2008, opeth, sweden. Comments Off on Metaltown 2008 Gothenburg (Göteborg) Sweden

In just over 10 days we’ll be in Denmark. I just found out today that there will probably be a change in plans for our apartment. We were planning on staying in Norrebro, as previously mentioned. Now it looks like we’ll be staying in a slightly larger place closer to where I will be working in Frederiksberg.

The building looks just as nice, if not nicer than the other one. The green courtyard is missing, but we are still a block or two from the reservoir. We’ll now be on the southern end of it instead of near the middle of the reservoir. We are closer to Tivoli.

My guide book isn’t as enthusiastic about Frederiksberg. “Frederiksberg was a green, prosperous country village that became increasingly popular as the upper and middle classes began to revel in the countryside in the 18th century. It is now a tranquil, upmarket residential area…”

We will be close to the Tycho Brahe Planetarium which I look forward to visiting. We will be a short bike ride to Norrebro as well. The Forum is a block away, but nothing is on the their calendar while we are there. We’ll probably catch Chris Cornell at Vega though.

My other guide book is a little more positive stating, “Leafy, stately Frederiksberg begins further west at Frederiksberg Alle. This broad, tree-lined avenue is lined with fin de siecle apartment blocks some of the most desirable in the city. It finishes at Frederiksberg Have, the city’s most romantic park, with a boating lake, rolling lawns and, looking down from the hill, Frederiksberg Slot and Copenhagen Zoo.”

In the above image I’m trying to get my bearings. #1 is where our first apartment was going to be. The blue dot is our probable new location. CBS (Copenhagen Business School) is where I will be teaching. T is for Tivoli. K is for Kastellet.

Posted on June 12th, 2008 under Denmark. Tags: copenhagen, Denmark, frederiksberg, kobenhavn, living in copenhagen, tivoli, trivoli. Comments Off on Probable change in Copenhagen apartment

How can I possibly have pictures from Copenhagen already when we don’t arrive for another three and half weeks? Well, thanks to information provided by Copenhagen Insider, aerial photos are possible even if you are on the other side of the world. So I took a few pictures to share with you of our future lodgings and the neighborhood.

Although I’m not 100% certain, I’m pretty sure part of the above is our apartment building. We are on the 4th floor. There appears to be a nice courtyard, garden, green area, whatever you want to call it, behind the place. We will be in a part of town called Norrebro. According to one of my guidebooks, Norrebro “is a lively, multicultural part of the city with plenty of bars, cafes, and alternative shopping centres.” In this part of town is the Assistens Kirkegard which is a famous cemetery. My guidebook goes on to state that “it is a wonderful place to relax or take a romantic walk. The churchyard is beautiful and is located in the trendy Norrebro district.” Sounds good.

My other guidebook says, “Norrebro is one of the most delectable nightlife destinations in the city and it is also a cutting-edge fashion centre.” It also provides more details on the famous, leafy cemetery including who is buried there. I will be living in the same neighborhood as the remains of Hans Christian Andersen and Niels Bohr. Cool. In Paris I’ll be in the same neighborhood as Jim Morrison. Last year, on our trip to Japan, we were next to Tokyo’s most famous cemetery as well. Ending up close to famous grave yards seems to be an unintended commonality on our travels.

Less than a block from our apartment is a reservoir called the Sortedam So. You can see people walking along it in the above picture confirming what my guidebook says. “You can lounge along their grassy banks or enjoy the scenic view from the bridges that cross them.” I’ll post that scenic view from the bridge for you here in a month or less. Stay tuned.

A short walk over the bridge will have us spilling into the Botanisk Have (pictured above from a bird’s eye view) which my guidebook describes as “among the prettiest outdoor spaces in the city, these gardens are studded with lakes, bridges, and lovely flowerbeds. Climb the winding staircase for a great view of the exotic trees below. A geological and botanical museum are also here.” Needless to say, I can hardly wait.

Posted on May 30th, 2008 under Denmark. Tags: famous danes, hans christian andersen, kobenhavn, living in copenhagen, norrebero, norrebro, trivoli. Comments: 1

When I found out late last year that I’d be living in Denmark this summer I determined to learn a thing or two about a country I knew little about. I’m not sure quite how I came upon this book; perhaps it was a Google search of something like “best Denmark books.” In any event, Music & Silence was available at my local library. Now that I think of it, I probably just typed “Denmark” into the keyword search of my library’s database.

Anyway, this book, being “historical fiction,” probably isn’t the best source to learn about Denmark, but it was entertaining. For me, Music & Silence went through three phases.

The first was confusion as I tried to figure out who the characters were. The descriptions are rich, but there are so many characters, and the author bounces back and forth between them; she also doesn’t go with a linear time line. This made for somewhat difficult reading, but it was exciting at the same time as the reader has to stay alert and try to piece things together.

The second phase was non-stop pleasure as you finally get your mind wrapped around the characters and become deeply involved in the plot. While this portion of the book is certainly the best, I don’t recommend entering this phase if you have other things you are supposed to be doing. You will find it hard to put the book down as you have to see what will happen with the next twists and turns of the story.

The final phase, for me anyway (I think my wife and other readers may disagree), was disappointment. For all the subtleties, complications, and richly woven plot lines of the bulk of the book the endings were all too clean, predictable, and perfect for my taste.

At least that’s my memory. It’s been five or six months since I finished this book so things are foggy at this point. Rose Tremain certainly painted some pictures in my head, though, of Copenhagen, the Denmark countryside, Rosenborg, and Frederiksborg. I’m anxious to see the real things.

Posted on May 23rd, 2008 under Denmark. Tags: book review, Christian IV, critic, novel. Comments Off on Music & Silence