Denmark Day 2

Thursday, December 21, 2006

Day 2: ...Jet lag sucks! and the clock in Dad's apartment is also wrong, so I've been really disoriented with time. I went to bed around 11:30, woke up at 3am, went online at 4am, fell asleep around 5:30 or 6? then got up at 11:30 to go sightseeing. Mom, Emmy, and I went on a nice long walk near the harbor. We saw a lot of cool statues, mostly devoted to Mercury and Neptune, and then one honoring Hans Christian Andersen's The Little Mermaid fairy tale. Saw some cool old buildings, a few palaces and statues of previous monarchs aswell. Afterwards, we had our first authentic Danish food for lunch, Smorretrod, I think. It is an open face sandwich with pretty much unlimited toppings. Mom had shrimp, I had sausage, and Em had cheese. It was pretty delicious. The main problem I've encountered will Denmark so far is the hours that stores are open. Most shops are open 11-6 (the Danes really enjoy a quiet evening) and Dad gets off work at 5:30, so it is hard to go out at night as a family. Luckily, since it is Christmas week, some major stores are open til 8. These were pretty much general department stores however, and didn't have anything unique or worth buying. Tomorrow we are going to a Danish Christmas market, so I can pick up a lot of traditional gifts for my friends. Since we had most of the evening to kill, we looked up some myths and monarchial history on wikipedia. They have a pretty cute Christmas story. Nissers (the Scandinavian form of Elves) are very helpful to farmers, but are also mischevious and will turn on them if they are not respected. Farmers have to put a bowl of rice pudding in the hay loft or else they will get bad luck. Nissers also only appear to children. This myth also trickled down to urban Denmark, and children have to behave or else the Nissers will play tricks on them. Look up monarchs of Denmark if you are bored. My favorite is "Erik the Lame" son of Erik the Memorable and grandson of Erik the Kind. Somebody in that family dropped the ball... hehe. Dad has satellite, and some of the titles we get are hilarious. Chip og Chog (Chip and Dale), Batman of the Future (Batman Beyond) and Van the Man (Van Wilder). There's also a lot of soccer and winter sports highlights, which is refreshing because you don't see much of that in the States. No snow yet, but also no rain, apparantly it has been an awfully rainy season so far. We've been lucky to have good weather.