Denmark

I have been home for almost two weeks now, but mostly at the cabin. My flight from Amsterdam was cancelled so Delta put everyone up in hotels. I took the train into the city and spend a lovely evening walking by the canals and enjoying the elegant tall narrow buildings there. I also spent an hour in the morning following a footpath along a canal near the hotel with houses whose backyards with flowers were next to the canal.

The time in Denmark went quickly with my three mini vacations there. I spent the first days in Copenhagen with my friend, Corinne, later I went to her summer house right on the coast one and half hours south of Copenhagen, and the last few days I spent sailing with my former sister-in-law, Janne and her partner, Søren, on his yacht.

The Swedes celebrate Midsummer on a weekend and it was the weekend after I left Sweden, but in Denmark, Saint Hans (John the Baptist) Eve is celebrated on the 23^rd of June with huge bonfires in parks and on beaches. It originally was a pagan festival when bonfires were built to protect against evil spirits and witches on their way to meetings. It is also in remembrance of the witch burnings by the church, 1540-1693. In the evening I walked to one of the artificial lakes within Copenhagen, gathered with a group of people and watched a huge bonfire with a wooden cut out of a witch burn out in the lake. There was music and singing – people come together to be with their neighbors and friends.

After Copenhagen I spent a few days at Corinne and Leif’s small summerhouse in Faxe Ladeplads. There are many roads with summerhouses, but their summerhouse is among a few that are right on the sand next to the sea. They have water, but no electricity. In the spring they often have to shovel out the sand that comes in during winter and spring storms. I took a quick swim every day and walked and biked in the area. There are some old villages that I biked through with lovely churches and cottages. This was typical Danish rural countryside, nothing dramatic, but with rolling wheat and rye fields, old farmhouses and barns, some with thatched roofs. In Denmark you can take your bike on the trains and subways, so it’s easy to have your own transportation with you.

I spent another day with my friend, Jacqueline, in the suburb of Herlev. Sarah and I went to Odense for a day and walked the streets where HC Andersen had once lived. It’s a lovely town with beautifully preserved small houses and cobblestone streets. A day later we met Janne, and Søren in Vejle where we boarded his lovely yacht with three cabins. We sailed out of the Veijle fjord and to a small island that is a nature reserve where we anchored the first night. We took a dinghy in to walk on the island where we saw many deer and long-horned sheep. We stopped at another island that was a farming community. Summer finally arrived; it was warm and many people were out in their boats. Swimming in extremely cold water and sailing past rolling countryside was a great way to spend my last days in Denmark.