I think part of my love of clouds came from Bill King, the long-time announcer for the Oakland A’s, Raiders, and Warriors. I remember Bill giving play-by-plays of not just the A’s games but also of the clouds on days when they were particularly impressive.

Lest you think that I took all of the photographs in today’s blog entry and yesterday’s during the course of a single afternoon, you should know that the pictures were taken on no fewer than seven different days.

Posted on July 14th, 2008 under Denmark. Tags: clouds, copenhagen, Denmark, living in copenhagen, nature, pictures. Comments Off on Cloud connected (part 2 of 2)

I have always been a fan of clouds. Don’t ask me why, but I like ’em. Not just your ordinary single layer of high-sky clouds. I like multi layers, multi colors, and lots of movement. We get some nice displays of clouds back in Ashland, Oregon but not with the regularity I have experienced so far in Copenhagen. Nearly every day features at least one display of not just one or two types of clouds but many types and colors all at once. You may have noticed them in a few of my prior entries.

This entry and tomorrow’s will feature many images of Danish clouds. I was inspired to do these two entries after going to the National Art Museum (Statens Museum for Kunst) in Copenhagen on Friday. There I saw four paintings by three different Danish artists that featured the kinds of clouds I’m talking about. I’ll include those four different paintings as well.

You are going to need a good-sized screen to see these as they are meant to be seen. Click on the images a couple of times to get to the largest view.

Posted on July 13th, 2008 under Denmark. Tags: clouds, copenhagen, Denmark, famous danes, living in copenhagen, nature, pictures. Comments Off on Copenhagen clouds (part 1 of 2)

. . . 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…

This entry is for some of the slightly risque things we’ve encountered in Copenhagen. Don’t worry. There’s nothing to offend here–just a few things you probably won’t usually encounter in the states. I’m not going to include, for instance, pictures of the outside of strip clubs, which in Denmark include life-sized pictures of fully nude women.

First up is the tamest of all I suppose. In fact, it barely belongs in this entry. I include it only because I thought it was a bit funny.

My wife points to the above and says, “check that out” as we were walking down Stroget. I thought it was a nice scene so I took the above photograph. On closer inspection, however, we find the following:

The above caused me to recall the story about Tyco’s $2 million birthday party for the CEO’s wife which featured an ice sculpture of Michelangelo’s David spewing vodka from his penis and a birthday cake in the shape of a woman’s breasts with sparklers mounted on top.

Next up is a scene from Tivoli, a child’s amusement park, or so they say…

Not only can you visit bars in Tivoli (and there are a ton of them–something I’ve never seen in amusement parks in the states), but they have large tobacco stands selling all manner of cigarettes and pipe tobacco. The amount of smoking that goes on outdoors here is one of the few things I don’t like about Copenhagen.

Posted on July 11th, 2008 under Denmark. Tags: copenhagen, pictures, stroget, tivoli, video. Comments Off on Things you don’t usually see in the U.S.A.

When you see Copenhagen postcards, a calendar featuring Copenhagen or Denmark, or pick up a guidebook dealing with the place there is a strong likelihood that you will see one of only three pictures. That’s a shame because there is so much beauty here. I particularly like the brick buildings and architecture of which you’ll see much more of here on this blog during the next few weeks.

For today, we’ll quickly move you through the three postcard shots, with a minor twist. The twist is that you’ll see these postcard shots with people and/or from a slightly different angle.

The above is Stroget, a street almost a mile long that is only for pedestrians. There are actually many shopping streets that run parallel or almost parallel to Stroget that have little, if any, automobile traffic as well. The typical photograph of Stroget (actually Strøget) is early in the morning with little, or no, foot traffic or bikes. The reality is that there are usually lots of bikes and people on Stroget. Also, the normal camera angle is from further to the right and elevated. I think they take that shot from above a restaurant that you can’t see in the above picture that I took.

I have a mini tripod, but I don’t use it much. Therefore, we usually only get family portraits when someone sees me taking a picture of the rest of my family and offers to take our picture. So far no Dane has offered to do so. When I was taking a picture of my wife and kids a student from Singapore (from Copenhagen Business School where I am teaching) offered to take the above shot. Nyhavn is the place that our friends from Norway that we met at the White House said we should not miss. They were right. Nyhavn is a very picturesque harbor/canal that we enjoyed.

The most popular picture in Denmark, though, is the one I’ve saved for last.

There she is–The Little Mermaid. This isn’t how you usually see her though. Every photo I have seen of her has been from the land. The above picture I took from our boat so you get more of her backside, and you can see what is going on on the land (tourists photographing her). You only see the two guys in this picture, but there were actually about 30 or 40 people on the land taking her picture. She really isn’t that spectacular and isn’t worth the trip on land. You’ll end up with nothing but the same picture that can be downloaded off of a million sites on the internet. There is nothing else to see or do at The Little Mermaid statue location.

And there you have it–three postcards from Copenhagen. We saved a bundle on stamps and real postcards doing it this way. Actually, we just sent off several real postcards. If you made Ellie’s short list then you can expect it to arrive in the next few days.

Posted on July 10th, 2008 under Denmark. Tags: copenhagen, hans christian andersen, little mermaid, nyhavn, pictures, stroget. Comments: 2