The only thing at the Danish supermarkets cheaper in Denmark than in the states is beer. Most things are about 2 times more expensive. But beer can be had for as little as US$.50 a bottle. On average it is about $1 a bottle, about the same as the states. That’s cheaper than bottled water here! At a bar or restaurant, though, you’re likely to pay much more in Denmark (about $6 to $9 a serving usually).

The above three bottles were purchased individually (not in six packs which is also different). The most expensive was only about $.75. The one on the right was quite potent at over 10% alcohol. The others were more typical pilsners at about 5%.

The Carlsberg Factory is not far from our apartment. After reading Guinness on the flight to Denmark I thought it might be fun to tour my first beer factory.

The rooms where you begin (Visitor’s Center) and end (Tasting Room) the Carlsberg Brewery tour are both quite nice. The tour is nothing special though. It is a self-guided tour and is more of a museum-like tour than an active factory-like tour. The coolest part is right at the beginning when you get to see the largest collection of different beer bottles in the world. Ironically, Guinness gives Carlsberg the distinction. You can read the Guinness notice on the wall.

If there was a Guinness record for largest collection of dusty beer bottles, Carlsberg would win that award too with the same collection. It didn’t look like anyone had done any cleaning in there for many years.

While tourists flock to the Little Mermaid statue in Copenhagen, the one at Carlsberg sits all alone. It is an exact replica, done a bit smaller, and is part of the tour. The larger version in the harbor was a gift from Carl Jacobsen whose father founded Carlsberg Brewery.

At the end of the tour you enter a very nicely done tasting room. Included in admission is a coupon for two drinks (about a dozen different beers or soft drinks are available). This is the only part of the tour that includes a view of the operating brewery (through glass). Nothing was happening in that part of the factory while we were there though.

The price of admission for the tour is less than what it would cost you to purchase two beers at a restaurant or bar in town and the atmosphere in the tasting room was great. The walls are lined with sayings and other displays including the Ben Franklin quote near the top of this blog entry.

If you want a factory tour that allows you to see someone actually making their product then I’ve seen better (Jelly Belly Factory Tour and Harry & David Factory Tour). However, at the end of those tours there is no “Skål.”

Posted on July 15th, 2008 under Denmark. Tags: beer, copenhagen, frederiksberg, little mermaid, living in copenhagen. Comments Off on Danish beer

. . . I think it was the Fifth of July. Actually, I know it was the Fifth of July as it was just last Saturday!

Everything changes in Copenhagen on the weekend. People seem much more relaxed, the car and bike traffic disappears (relatively speaking), and you can find lots of people having a good time at the numerous, large parks.

I love the parks here. Each has a unique, distinctive quality, yet all share a common Denmarkian (is that a word?–OK, Danish) feel that is very different from any park you’d find in the states.

60 Minutes recently did a feature story on the Danes being the happiest people on earth. On the weekends, at least, you can really see that at a park. They have laws prohibiting overtime work, a required maximum work week of 37 hours (which means most stores and businesses close right at 5 Monday through Thursday and at 2 on Friday), and forced vacations of at least 5 weeks a year.

Last Saturday we headed out to the largest park in our area, Frederiksberg Have.

While at the park we got caught in a very brief downpour (which seems to happen a couple times a week here in the summer). We headed for cover and wound up under a tree that was loaded with baby pacifiers hanging from it. Some had inscriptions attached to them, and reminded me a bit of Japanese ema. Not being able to make out what the wording attached to the pacifiers said (being in Danish of course), we asked a passerby what the deal was with this tree.

He said that people bring their kids here when they are ready to give up their pacifiers and tie them to the tree. They attach a written fond farewell and thanks for the help the pacifier has given the child to this point in their lives. Before winter someone comes out and takes all of the pacifiers down. Apparently the tree can’t support that many pacifiers and snow.

We thought it was a cute tradition. I think we had to trick our kids out of their pacifiers so the Danish method seems more humane and ceremonial. Plus, every Dane that we saw approach the tree had a smile come across their face.

The park and palace at the end of the park are over 300 years old. Frederiksberg Park contains some canals which were built in the century following the building of the “palace” (sometimes called “castle” in English). Apparently Frederik IV would sail around the canals. Last Saturday, people were rowing little boats around them.

While walking one of the trails we saw pirate signs so Ryan wanted to take that trail. It went through some thick foliage, but we never found the pirate treasure.

A wide variety of games were being played by the Danes, few of which I recognized. Some were playing catch with small balls (no baseball gloves so they didn’t actually catch the ball much of the time), others played variations on soccer, and the above photo shows a group playing something that sort of looked like baseball or cricket (but I don’t think it was either).

Posted on July 12th, 2008 under Denmark. Tags: castle, copenhagen, frederiksberg, living in copenhagen, pictures. Comments Off on Saturday in the park…

I have a load of really great pictures from our Copenhagen Canal Tour this past Sunday to show you, but it seems like too daunting a task to put together today. Instead I’ll take the easy way out and present three photographs that didn’t quite fit into any prior entry.

The kids really like the little park right next to our apartment. Or at least they did until they mastered the various balance beams that were so difficult at first. Now the challenge isn’t quite there. There is a ping pong table made out of cement with a metal net (no lets or net services with a metal net I suppose) at the park, but we don’t have any paddles or ping pong balls. The setting for the park is what I really like as Skt. Markus Church provides a nice backdrop.

We aren’t sure what exactly to call the bodies of water between Frederiksberg and Copenhagen City Center. In Danish they are “So” or more correctly “Sø” and there are three of them (divided into five sections by bridges or roads): Skt. Jorgens So, Peblinge So, and Sortedams So.

In English I’ve heard them referred to as lakes, canals, and reservoirs. They aren’t really canals. And they aren’t really lakes so don’t picture Lake Tahoe. In any event, we cross them nearly every day–sometimes numerous times a day. They are beautiful and loaded with wildlife. Around dusk (after 10 p.m. in the northern summer) you can get some really cool reflections off the buildings.

The above photo is perhaps the best picture I have ever taken. It had nothing to do with me though. I was just in the right place at the right time. The lighting, reflections, and everything were perfect. I didn’t do anything but push a button. I have done nothing to enhance this picture in photo manipulation software either. Make sure to maximize it to see just how cool it is.

Our big news of the day is that we are going to take a trip to Norway after all. We will be on a cruise ship to Oslo next weekend. We’ll have only one day in Oslo before reboarding and coming back. What we are really looking forward to is seeing the fjords from the ship as we sail in. What should we do when we get there? Here are some options:
– Akershus Castle and Fortress
– Norsk Folkemuseum, the Norwegian Museum of Cultural History at Bygdøy, with a large open air museum
– The Armed Forces Museum
– The City Hall, where the annual Nobel Peace Prize ceremony is held
– The Holmenkollen ski jump, arena of the 1952 Winter Olympic Games, Holmenkollen
– The Holmenkollen Ski Museum, Holmenkollen
– The Kon-Tiki Museum, Bygdøy
– The Munch Museum, Tøyen
– The National Gallery
– The Norwegian Maritime Museum, including ships Fram and Gjøa, Bygdøy
– The Oslo City Museum, at Frogner Manor
– The Royal Palace
– The Henie-Onstad Art Centre, Høvikodden in Bærum
– Oslo Cathedral
– The Storting, parliament building
– The Vigeland Park in the Frogner park (Frognerparken)
– The Viking Ship Museum, displaying the Oseberg and Gokstad ships, Bygdøy Tryvannstårnet

We have only 9 hours so if you can recommend any of the above or cross any of the above off of our list by commenting as a reply to this blog entry we’d appreciate it!

Posted on July 9th, 2008 under Denmark. Tags: copenhagen, frederiksberg, living in copenhagen, norway, pictures. Comments: 1

Back in Copenhagen our first order of business was to secure some bikes. Everyone, it seems, rides a bike here. We wanted to fit in and, more importantly, be able to explore a wider range of the city. The problem is that to rent 4 bikes for a month in this town will set a person back over 3,000 DKK, which, with the weak U.S. dollar, translates into over $600, about how much we can buy 4 bikes for back in the states.

A friend told us we may be able to purchase used bikes from a store they knew about and then sell them back after a month so that the net cost was less than 3,000 Danish Kroners. We went to the bike store to investigate. The owner told us that rather than sell us bikes that we sell back to him after a month he recommended we just rent used bikes from him. That way if we had any problems (flat tires, etc.) he would fix them for free. At 1,200 DKK for four bikes for a month with free repairs we took him up on his offer.

But the main reason I’m telling you this story isn’t about how to get rental bikes in Copenhagen. (If you are interested, though, his shop is just north-west of the Forum on Orsteds Vej.) Why I’m really relaying this is so that I can tell you the story the bike shop owner told me.

The owner is a really nice man from Iraq. He has been a Danish citizen living in Copenhagen for over 8 years running a humble bike shop.

He wanted to have a big vacation in America, visiting some relatives, so he saved up his money and purchased a plane ticket last year flying through New York with a final destination of Detroit which is near where his relatives live. He converted his savings of Danish Kroners into U.S. Dollars before leaving. Upon arrival in New York he honestly claimed at customs that he was carrying $7,000 as spending money for his vacation in the states. This was apparently too much money for someone born in Iraq to have on their possession and not be a terrorist in the “land of the free.”

Homeland Security immediately put him in handcuffs and ankle cuffs (since bike shop owners from Denmark who just walk off of airplanes after having gone through airport security are well known to have WMDs fly off of their person when not completely shackled). My bike shop owner friend was then searched and placed in a detention cell for two days. He told me he was cuffed at the wrists and ankles for more than 12 of those hours. After two days he was told that he cannot go to Detroit. They placed him on the first flight back to Copenhagen and so ended his American “vacation.”

And we sit around wondering why some of the rest of the world don’t like the good old USA?

He told me that he lived under the regime of Saddam for 30 years, and even though he didn’t like Saddam Hussein, he was never treated poorly during those 30 years by the Iraqi government. No, it took a trip to the United States of America, under the regime of George W. Bush, for all of his human rights to be taken away.

He told me he will never go across the Atlantic Ocean again and will never believe someone that tells him America is a land of freedom.

I told this story to a conservative American couple in Copenhagen a few nights back. I thought it would shock them. Instead of outrage, their response was, “At least they (the U.S. Government) are doing something.” My jaw dropped.

I felt like saying, “How would you like it if on your trip to Europe the British police had cuffed you and thrown you in jail for two days upon your arrival at Heathrow and then sent you on a plane back home?” But I bit my tongue as they changed the subject. The golden rule appears to be a one-way street for them.

Posted on July 5th, 2008 under Denmark. Tags: bikes, copenhagen, frederiksberg, norrebro. Comments: 11

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