Great Danes

...and so I had a lovely time in Denmark with my cousin. They live in the northern part of Jutland, in a tiny, two road town called Ørsø. Very rural. I'm talking 'walk over to the next farm to buy eggs, only one shop in the village' kinda thing. They have two bedrooms, one of which is normally their son Benjamin's, but which (unbeknown to him) he kindly offered to me. This meant, gawd bless 'em, the whole family were squashed into one room for the week.

It was an action-packed week, Camilla had lined up some cool visits for me. For example, we went up to see the birth centre where she had her daughter. I chatted to a couple of the people working there and we talked about work-load etc, whereupon I was told that they had around about 130 births. A month? I asked. No, I was told rather incredulously, 130 a year. Just to put this into perspective for you, my unit back home does 4,500-5,000 per year. There are no doctors there and they have two birth rooms, both with pools. Women and their partners can stay for up to a week following the birth and the food is fabulous and plentiful, as it is all over Denmark. Hmmm. I offered to learn better Danish and come and work there too. Because the weather was so good (it's ALWAYS good when I go to Denmark. I'm beginning to think the climate is somewhere akin to Antigua), we also popped over to have a quick dip in the sea in order to cool off. We paid a visit to one of Camilla's ex-boyfriends (also named Jesper) who is now married to one of her best friends, and who lives on a pig farm. Well, this is Denmark, after all.

On that note, I was disappointed to note that, once again, I came back from Denmark unable to speak the language fluently. Okay, so I suppose one week is not really long enough to learn a language but goddamn it I really feel like I ought to be able to speak this one. Very annoying. I did my best, and picked up a fair bit more than before I went, but still. Gah, as my friend Lisa might write. Maybe I'll go and live there for 3 months or so, that should do it.

Camilla and Jesper have two of the most gorgeous children around, Benjamin & Josefine. To Benjamin, I suspect that I remained 'that weird woman who stole my bedroom and talks funny', but I think I managed to win over Josefine, who, at 16 months old, wasn't that fussy about whether or not I spoke the same language as anyone else as long as I could feed her and help her put her wellies on. It was Benjamin's 4th birthday while I was out there and he had a party with some of his friends from Nursery. The cake was a damn cool giant Danish pastry (known as Weinerbrød in Denmark). The children sang Happy Birthday to him in English, which was fascinating because of course they had absolutely no idea what they were singing and, as a result, some of the words sounded a little odd. But then, I suppose, it's a bit like us learning Frère Jacques by rote...


On the Saturday evening the neighbours came over to throw an axe. That's not a metaphor. I had seen a large target out in the back garden and had idly assumed that it was for archery or something. But in fact, it was for the old Viking art of chucking axes, which is harder than it sounds. They're heavier than you think and to actually chuck it hard enough, and high enough, to get it to spin and hit the target is pretty bloody difficult. My first few efforts were disappointing - thought I should point out that several other members of the party couldn't hit the target either so I didn't feel too stupid - but, as I'm not a quitter, I kept on at it (long after everyone else had buggered off) until I managed to hit it bang on. Then I quickly stopped while I was ahead. I ached for several days following that. Then we played an old Viking game called 'Cube', which was like a cross between cricket, boule and quoits. We played boys vs. girls and although I hate to, ahem, boast, we thrashed them.

I brought my iPod over to Denmark with me and I showed it to Camilla and Jesper one afternoon. They couldn't believe how many songs you could fit onto it - my iPod is actually over four times bigger, memory-wise, than their home computer - and when I showed them my iTrip and began playing my songs wirelessly on their ancient kitchen radio their jaws hit the floor. They got the neighbours over to show them too! I thought for one horrifying moment that I was going to be burnt at the stake as a witch.

Oh one more thing. All week, I saw the kids watch telly precisely once. The rest of the time they were outside playing. Denmark has half an hour's children programmes every evening, between 6pm & 6.30pm. The one night we watched it, it was a Swedish programme called 'Emil' from 1972 (along the same lines as Heidi I suppose), about a boy who lived on a farm with HILARIOUS consequences, which the children watched rapt with attention. It was 25 minutes long and so when it finished, there was still 5 minutes of children's time left to go. So what do you think they showed to fill the time? Five whole minutes of someone stroking a parrot. Seriously. You have no idea just how long 5 minutes is until you have watched someone stroke a parrot for that long. I laughed so hard I thought I'd break something.

My cousin gave me a lift back to Aalborg station for my journey back to the airport, which because of the connections and the fact that it involved both a train and a bus, meant I got to the airport about 3 hours before the plane left. I'd thought that it would be okay, I'd have a wander round the shops. I arrived and looked on the flight board to check the flight was on time: well that was easy, since my flight was the only one left that day. Okay. So, time to hit the shops. Or should that in fact be 'shop'. Three minutes later I'd been there done that and now had 2 hours 57 minutes to kill before I flew... And I'd finished my book. Thank goodness for the iPod and The Geoff Show podcast I say!