But first, let me explain away what may otherwise seem like pure laziness. My first excuse is that blog posts like these that contain lots of photos and descriptions actually take a few hours to put together. I know it probably doesn't seem like it would, but from start to finish, no lie, it takes about three hours.
I used to have that kind of time, but this year I also went back to working part-time. I started out working two hours at the kids' school on the playground, and over the course of a few weeks it ballooned into four hours a day. First I picked up a one-hour reading group, and shortly after I landed a gig doing a math intervention study for the University of Oregon. It's all really fun, and I'm so glad to fill my day this way, but I've been shocked at how it's changed my amount of free time and forced me to adjust how I do errands, make appointments, etc. (Full-time working parents, this is not news to you!) On top of that, I completed a bike shelter!
That being said, I will also add that I find your comments really inspiring, as they make me feel like my words aren't just going out into the abyss, so if you enjoy something you read here, please leave me a note. (If you're having technical trouble commenting, let me know that, as well.)
Anyway, now let me get on with the real story, which is the part of our trip that took place in Denmark and Sweden.
Our flight into Copenhagen was a rough one. I'd booked a flight that was already set to get us in later than I'd liked, but alas, it was cheaper, and that was our primary driver on this whole trip -- make the whole thing happen without completely breaking the bank. We were set to get in at 9 p.m., and there was a 3-hour delay. Now if you know our kids, you will know that they need their sleep. Bedtime typically is between 7:30-8 p.m., and in the summer, maybe a little later. When we landed at midnight, they were drop-dead tired.
Now a normal family might have booked a cab or an Uber to just get dropped off at their place, but not the frugal Vasiceks, trying to save a penny wherever we could. We took two trains. LOL! This is how the kids looked by the second train, and we still had a bit of a walk ahead of us after this!
Poor little tired kids! I don't know how they did it, but they woke themselves up for the walk, and we finally made it to our airbnb. The neighborhood wasn't much to look at in the middle of the night, but in the morning and over the course of the next few days, we really fell in love with the place! This was our view of the courtyard in the building we stayed in.
The building had this enormous inner courtyard with bike parking, a playground, a huge recycling station, and areas where people could gather. I was so envious at dinnertime every night when multiple families would gather in the courtyard to share a meal. It sounded so awesome!
Below is our little Danish kitchen.
This was our living room, which ended up having a ton of kids toys in it.
This was Molly's bedroom.
We were in a neighborhood that was filled with north African immigrants. There were falafel shops all around, stores where you could buy a burka, and all kinds of world languages being spoken. Our place was also right around the corner from the train station. We spent a lot of time on this train.
The first day was a little rainy. We explored the main parts of the city on foot and on a double-decker tour bus. This is the stork fountain in Amagertorv Square.
There were lots of cool little streets to explore off the main square.
This is the statue of the Little Mermaid. The Little Mermaid, before it was appropriated by Disney, was written by a little Danish author you might have heard of -- Hans Christian Andersen! This statue was unveiled in 1913 and is a major tourist destination in the city, but I have to say that I found it a little underwhelming, like many tourists do.
This little statue has quite a history of vandalism, as described by wikipedia:
This statue has been damaged and defaced many times since the mid-1960s for various reasons, but has been restored each time.
On April 24, 1964, the statue's head was sawn off and stolen by politically oriented artists of the Situationist movement, amongst them Jørgen Nash.[1] The head was never recovered and a new head was produced and placed on the statue.[1] On July 22, 1984, the right arm was sawn off and returned two days later by two young men.[1][9] In 1990, an attempt to sever the statue's head left an 18 centimeters (7 in) deep cut in the neck.[1]
On January 6, 1998, the statue was decapitated again;[9][10] the culprits were never found, but the head was returned anonymously to a nearby television station, and reattached on February 4. On the night of September 10, 2003, the statue was knocked off its base with explosives and later found in the harbour's waters. Holes had been blasted in the mermaid's wrist and knee.[11]
In 2004, the statue was draped in a burqa in a protest against Turkey's application to join the European Union.[12] In May 2007, it was again found draped in Muslim dress and a head scarf.[13]
Paint has been poured on the statue several times, including one episode in 1963 and two in March and May 2007.[9][14] On March 8, 2006, a dildo was attached to the statue's hand, green paint was dumped over it, and the date March 8 were written on it. It is suspected that this vandalism was connected with International Women's Day, which is on March 8.[1][8][15] The statue was found drenched in red paint on May 30, 2017 with the message "Danmark [sic] defend the whales of the Faroe Islands", a reference to whaling in the Faroe Islands (an autonomous country in the Kingdom of Denmark), written on the ground in front of the statue.[16][17] About two weeks later, on June 14, the statue was drenched in blue and white paint. "Befri Abdulle" (Free Abdulle) was written in front of the statue, but it was unclear what this referred to.[18]
When we saw her, she looked to be in pretty good shape, compared to the descriptions of previous vandalism!
Here are some more pictures from our explorations on that first day.
This is Rosenborg Castle, which is located in the center of Copenhagen.
Copenhagen is known as one of the biking capitols of the world. It's taken very seriously, and the infrastructure around the city is phenomenal.
So naturally, we had to try it for ourselves! The 'family bike' options weren't as nice as in Amsterdam, so Joe basically turned into a pedicab for two days. Looks like a happy scene, doesn't it? Well it was a challenge! That pedicab was off-kilter to the point that Joe nearly dumped the kids every time he took a right-hand turn. The kids were going ape shit up front constantly, with absolutely no appreciation for the hard work poor Joe was doing. And commuter cyclists were not excited about the amount of space this thing took up in their lane. Biking in Copenhagen, compared to Amsterdam, was serious business. You either go with the flow or get the hell out of the way. That's not to say that the cyclists there were unfriendly -- they just had a job to do, and we were in the way.
It kills me to admit it, but I really enjoyed cycling in Copenhagen. While Joe was struggling along in his death cab, I was by myself on my bike for the first time on our trip, and I had a comfy cruiser with Joe leading the way. It was awesome, at least when I could let go of my guilt for a minute, but then I'd hear the kids going crazy up front and I'd have to come back down to earth. LOL!
Copenhagen has a really spectacular botanical gardens, and we spent quite a bit of time exploring the grounds and the palm house. It was one of my favorite things in Copenhagen.
We bought tickets to get into the butterfly exhibit, which was inside some of the greenhouses. We saw some amazing butterflies, including the blue morpho!
This was a display of the different stages of their coccoons, with some even hatching before our eyes!
This is the blue morpho, which is actually brown, until it opens up its wings.
This is called a crystal wing butterfly, and I'll bet you can see why!
There were frogs in the greenhouses, but you had to look hard to find them!
This is vanilla! I had never seen it growing before, and it was pretty fascinating. The large hanging pods are where the vanilla beans are found.
This is the inside of the blue morpho's wings.
This large building is called the Palm House. It was built in 1872 and houses some fascinating botanical displays.
It was really, really hot inside the palm house. In the middle was as staircase that led to the very top, where you could get a good view looking down on the garden. I loved the look of the white cast-iron staircase snaking up between the plants.
The heat and humidity at the top was almost unbearable, so we didn't stay up there too long. The view was really cool, though, and they had a display that talked about the bamboo that grows inside the greenhouse. They explained that the bamboo requires constant monitoring because of how fast it grows. There was even a time when it got neglected for long enough that the bamboo grew out the roof!
I love this view of the staircase and the Palm House.
Every day there is a changing of the guard that begins at Rosenborg Castle and ends at Amalienborg Palace, the winter home of the Danish royal family. The castle and the palace are in separate parts of the city, so the procession goes through the streets, right along with all the bikes and cars and pedestrians. We decided to follow it on our bikes.
Here they are coming out of Rosenborg.
It was really hot and humid, and these poor guys were still wearing their fur hats and full uniforms!
Here's the procession slipping right into the day's traffic.
I imagine this gets a bit annoying for drivers in the city, but we loved it!
I was surprised that they even stopped for red lights.
Here are all the people waiting for them to arrive at Amalienborg Palace.
After the procession we escaped the heat with some ice cream.
We visited a famous cemetery in the middle of the city. It's called Assistens, and it is the final resting place of some notable Danes, including philosopher Soren Kierkegaard.
And the Little Mermaid author, Hans Christian Andersen.
The interesting thing about this cemetery was that the Danes seemed to treat it more like a city park. There were people wandering through all over the place, meeting friends for a chat on a bench and strolling through hand-in-hand. It was a cool feeling, and a really picturesque spot.
Back at our airbnb, we took some pics of these amazing kid-carrier bikes, which were parked in the courtyard.
And we ogled the amazing recycling facilities. You could recycle or compost nearly everything.
Another thing the Danes have really figured out is the conjunction of public transport and cycling. Look at this amazing bike parking on the train!
This lady is like, "Really, this is worthy of a photo? It's just bike parking on a train." (Or whatever that translates to in Danish.)
A 45-minute train ride outside of Copenhagen there is a castle called Frederiksborg. I'd read that the grounds were spectacular, so we decided to do a day trip. The kids love gardens, so I figured this would be fun for everybody. This castle ended up being a trip highlight for us all. The exterior of the castle is pretty amazing, as you can see here.
The gardens were meticulously manicured, just as the descriptions had said.
It takes a special person to want this job!
But it was what we found inside this castle that made it so memorable. We were outside, debating whether it was worth actually touring the inside, when one of the kids had to go to the bathroom. We followed the signs down a winding staircase.
And next to the bathrooms was a children's exhibit! The kids got to try on these costumes, which we thought were just for display, but which Joe later figured out you could try on with assistance!
This was when we thought we could just look at them, and we still thought they were amazing!
When you found a costume you wanted to try, you could ask one of the ladies, and they'd help you put it on and take it off.
There was a writing station, where you could try out a real quill pen. We sat and did this for almost 40 minutes. It was such a fun thing to try!
Treasure!
And there were even adult-sized costumes, which you already know if you received a Christmas card from us this year. The lady who took the picture told us it would be more authentic if we didn't smile, so we followed her instructions.
This is the version where we did smile. The non-smiling one is just so much more awesome!
The costumes were perfectly crafted to make them easy to get on and off.
This children's exhibit was by far one of the cooler things we did on the whole trip, and the crazy part is that it was free! We stumbled upon it heading down to the bathrooms, and it didn't even require a ticket to get in. The family photo turned out so unique that we'll always have that wonderful memory, as well.
On our last day we returned the bikes and walked along the Nyhavn Promenade, with its colorful buildings and boats docked everywhere. This is probably the most recognizable scene from Copenhagen.
Below is a picture I took of one of the meals we had in our Copenhagen airbnb. Before our trip I had a lot of worries about what the kids would eat. We'd been working so hard on 'supertasting' in preparation, but I just knew that it would be hard for them. I remember saying to quite a few people, "I'm not packing peanut butter in my suitcase just so they'll have something to eat!" Well, folks, this is a peanut butter sandwich. We did do peanut butter and jelly quite a few times, and that's just the reality of traveling with kids. But the side benefit to that is that PB&J is really cheap, so it saved us some money along the way!
The pic below is for transit nerds like myself and Joe. The public transportation in Copenhagen (and Europe in general) is incredible. I liked this view of the trains intersecting at one of the stations not far from our airbnb.
So, on to Sweden! For a long time I'd wanted to cross the Øresund Straight, via the Øresund Bridge. Here's how wikipedia describes what this is:
The Øresund Bridge is the longest combined road and rail bridge in Europe and connects two major metropolitan areas: Copenhagen, the Danish capital city, and the Swedish city of Malmö. It connects the road and rail networks of the Scandinavian Peninsula with those of Central and Western Europe. A data cable also makes the bridge the backbone of internet data transmission between central Europe and Sweden (and, prior to 2016 also Finland).[2]I don't know why, but ever since I heard about that bridge, I'd wanted to cross it. So here are Joe and the kids getting ready to take the train across!
I have to imagine that driving across this bridge is much more interesting than taking a train across. The only thing we could see was the view out our windows, which was a view of water. I wanted to see the road ahead and the new continent approaching, which is not possible on a train. But hey, I still get to cross that one off my travel wish list, so I'm not complaining!
Our first stop in Sweden was Malmö, which in retrospect we totally could have skipped. It wasn't that interesting, but here are a few highlights.
Cool playground.
Nice central station.
Interesting DHL delivery truck.
One of the best meals of our trip.
A cool garden.
Ivy-covered building.
Amusement park with a fun fountain.
And a mini-golf course. Desmond got a hole-in-one!
One of the coolest things in the whole town was its public library. This is the outside.
This is the children's area, which was so well thought out that I had to take multiple pictures. This area is a small kitchen where you can feed your child, and it includes a sink, microwave, tables, chairs and highchairs. So smart!
This is the entrance to the children's area. No shoes allowed!
They had books in every language you could imagine. This is the Arabic section.
English section.
Reading cubby.
This is another section of the library, with meeting rooms.
This is a view of the main area of the library. I don't know why, but I kept picturing how awesome this room would be, with all this lighting and all these windows, on the dark, dreary Scandinavian winter nights.
Tweens section.
I thought this poster was really interesting. (If anybody out there speaks Swedish and wants to correct my translation, which is entirely based on my knowledge of other languages and may or may not be entirely accurate, go for it.) This says 'Learn Swedish with us." They offer language lessons with native speakers, reading groups, 'speaking cafes,' and help with reading. Gosh, doesn't socialism just suck?
On our way to the train station at the end of our stay, we got to ride in my dream car, the Prius +, which is not available in the US. This is basically our Prius, but with a third row. Another job well done, Europe!
This is a park near our hotel.
This little playground was so fun! It was so different from a playground you'd see here in the US.
This is the main part of town. Note the nautical flags, which you can't really miss!
This was a fun little restaurant where we ate down in the cellar and had a great meal.
We walked around the bay in search of a beach where we could swim in the Baltic. It was around this time that Molly and I realized we'd left our bathing suits in Reykjavik!
We found the beach!
There was no lifeguard on duty, but they'd left us our own life-saving boat. Haha!
At this point in the trip we knew we only had about 2.5 more days with Joe, and we were all starting to feel it. The plan all along was that after 3 weeks, Joe had to return home to work, and the kids and I would stay on for another 3 weeks. It was to be the longest time we'd all been separated -- in our whole lives -- and we were all dreading it a little bit.
But we tried not to let it put a damper on our fun!
The next evening we boarded our overnight ferry across the Baltic. The kids had never been on a boat overnight, so they were really excited. It had cruise-like feel, with upbeat music playing when we boarded, drinks being served, and kids being greeted by the StenaLine mascot, who appeared to be a tuna.
We really only had time to sleep on the trip, which lasted from about 9 pm to 7 am, but Desmond and I stayed up a few minutes late so we could explore the boat.
This was our tiny little room, with two additional beds that fold out on top.
And in the morning, we woke up in Poland!
Ok, that's it for this epic post. More to come...hopefully sooner rather than later!
What a great adventure. Love the costume photos, what a great find!
ReplyDeleteNow who is ashamed! Ashamed it took me so long to look at your fascinating blog!I hope to revisit it again later but first off to Poland! Thank you so much for sharing your great adventure. I feel like I'm there with you.
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