Odense-- Marathon and Labor talks

One aspect of our trip I am excited about is the marathoning opportunity. I love to run and am always happier when I keep up a training schedule but the variability of the vagabonding lifestyle makes it easy to lose track of training. Marathons will, I hope, motivate me to keep up. Sunday the 24th I ran with about 3000 other people in the Odense Marathon. It was a communal experience, everyone working against the same challenge. The common language was Danish and there were a lot more hot pants (the Scandinavians are ever practical in this regard, lots of spandex shorts) and Danish flag running jerseys but otherwise it felt much like the Seattle Marathon. The weather was 15 C and cloudy at the start of the race and as I made conversation with the only other short guy in the starting area the universal smell and feel of the pre-race was upon us.
Mercy and I arrived in Odense on Friday night after an adventures day finding her family village that she’ll tell you about in another post. We found our Servas hosts, Bo and Eleonara, waiting for us with pasta and many beers for the pre-pre-race dinner. Bo, a solidly built union activist machinist (he works for the Danish company Maersk building the biggest ships in the world) is a beer connoisseur and labor/socialist liberal. Elenoara,(Elu) a tall blond Venus d’Milo lookalike, is a Russian emigrant studying pharmaceutical chemistry at university and raising their two daughters Susan, and Emilia. Their seven and four year old girls kept everyone entertained and fell in love with Mercy even through the language barrier.
Our evening of political discussion, good food, and good beer (I didn’t want to OVER purify before the race) ended early in their little apartment and we went to bed in the girl’s vacated room. The next day Elu guided us across town to the University on the family bikes where she showed us the chemistry department at the university and I retrieved my race number. It was a window into the family’s daily commute. Elu peddles about 5k to the University with the smaller girl on the seat behind her while Bo peddles with Susan on the half bike behind him to Susan’s school and then rides on to his co-workers house to carpool to work about 20k away.
After a ride back to the apartment Elu handed us off to Bo who drove us to the farmer’s market for 4 kilos of organic leeks, great cheese, and more pastries for me. We did a bit more provisioning at the BAZAAR (an indoor Middle Eastern market in an old industrial building where about a hundred merchants sell all the necessary viddles) before returning to the apartment for our attempt at cooking for them. The evening highlight was a walk to their allotment garden (allotment gardens are a throwback of the industrial revolution kept alive in much of Northern Europe. They are surprisingly large tracts of land where urban families living densely in high rise or midrise apartment buildings can have their own garden space to grow their own food and/or to sit sipping tea with friends). Only 600 meters from Bo & Elu’s apartment building we entered an almost rural enclave of about 100 small “city lots” delineated by shrubs and low fences. Many yards had small lawns, patios, fruit trees, some had gardens, grape arbors, or animal pens. It was like a neighborhood made up only of back yards with all the beautiful things people do in the best yards but without the junk piles that end up all over ours. There’s a rule that the hedges and fences cannot be taller than the table so neighbors can always see each other and socialize. There’s also a rule that it must be quiet in the garden between noon and two so one can nap, but I digress. Many allotments had little buildings in the yard where tenants had small kitchens for making snack and tea and a bed for taking afternoon naps. There was even a section of the allotment garden for keeping animals and those yards were full of chickens, passenger pigeons, and ducks. It was a great community space that was part p-patch garden, part country farm, and part picnic in the park.





Sunday brought our lovely stay with Bo, Elu and the girls to a close. Mercy had to tear herself away from her new playmates Susan & Emilie. It was sad to go and we were glad to have the marathon to distract us. My goal for this race was to run the first half of the race under control and to run each 10k of the race faster than the previous 10k. Running negative splits requires self control and pacing through the exhilaration of the start, motivation to push past others in the doldrums of the middle miles, but provides a great boost when you get to pass many at the finish. As most of you know, self control is not my primary virtue (hide the cookies, please) and I am often swept away by the early fervor of the race. This time I ran a controlled race and felt better at the finish than I had in any other marathon. I finished in 3 hours and 13 minutes and in the recovery area was greeted by the my favorite element of a European marathon, a hydration table full of cold beer!

The first marathon of the year was great fun. But now I am looking forward to the Istanbul Marathon on October 28Th!

Havndrup or Harndrup

After leaving Copenhagen we headed for…well, we weren’t sure where…we were ready for a small approachable town and after a bit of last minute guide book review and a visit to the tourist office, we decided on Svendborg. Svendborg is a beautiful small town at the southern tip of the Island of Fyn. Our spur of the moment selection meant a late arrival in town and another night in a Danhostel. Early the next morning, 9/19 we skedaddled out of the Danhostel and found ourselves a precious B&B run by a fabulous Danish couple. The B&B was exactly what we needed, a beautiful room, a light airy communal living room and a kitchen where we could cook some meals for ourselves. It was a joy to settle in for a couple days, especially since the weather was rainy, foggy and cold.

On the 20th we burst out of our cocoon and rented a tandem bicycle and set out for a fabulous exploration of Tasinge, a small island south of Fyn. The tandem was a hoot. We rode through farm lands, castle grounds and picturesque towns full of beautiful half timber houses. After a drizzly beginning, the weather stayed dry for most of our ride until the last hour when the sky opened up and thoroughly doused us. We returned to the B&B wet, dirty and full of laughter. On Friday the 21st we reluctantly departed Svendborg and headed north by bus to find the village where my mom’s father Kai was born.

Before our departure from Seattle, I had found a postcard that my grandma sent to my mom in 1980 with the name of his birth town, Harndrup, written on it. I showed the postcard to our host family in Aarhus and they brought out their Denmark atlas to help us find the town. They couldn’t find a town with that spelling on Fyn, but found a similar name, Havndrup on the Island. We decided that either grandma had misspelled the name or it was one of the many Danish locations that had a couple different spellings.

Unfortunately we never cross checked with any other source to verify that there was no Harndrup. We weren’t too concerned until my aunt Dorine sent us an e-mail telling us that the town was northwest of the main town Odense, while Havndrup, the town our host family had found, was southeast of Odense…curious. Friday morning, as we prepared for our search, we realized the conflict and scanned a map of the island searching the northwest quadrant but still didn’t see Harndrup among the many small towns. Confident with our plan, we headed to Havndrup. After a pastoral ride through many small towns we got off the bus and walked the last 2 kilometers from the bus stop to the seven building village. We saw a farmer at work and asked him if he spoke English. Of course he spoke flawless English and was excited when we asked if he might help us trace our family. His family had lived in Havndrup for eight generations and they knew most of the history. I showed him Dorine’s e-mail and he kindly told us that Harndrup is in fact a town to the northwest of Odense and we were in fact in the absolute wrong place.

Cue the music. . .our mistake turned what had been an hour journey between Svendborg and Odense into a three hour tour. When we finally arrived in Odense we couldn’t give up the pursuit. We stashed our bags in the train / bus station lockers and bought a ticket for Harndrup, a 50 minute journey outside of Odense. We reached the town and disembarked from the bus. As it pulled away, we pondered what the heck to do next. We’d found the town and made it there, but what next…we knew the family graves were no longer in the graveyard and we didn’t know where the family had lived. We wandered a bit and found a beautiful old museum and wandered in to see if we could find someone to give us some ideas. It was the best find ever. The first woman we talked to called another man with better English, he called in another four old timers and the six of them gathered around us to read Dorine’s e-mail and draw on old memories. Just being in their company was a treat, their earnest attempt to help us was marvelous and the icing on the cake was when the man with fabulous English asked, “Does the name Kai Waidtlow ring a bell?” “Why yes” I said, “that’s my grandfather.”

He remembered his mother mentioning the name Waidtlow. He lamented that his mother had passed away and wasn’t there to add her memory to the lot. Though we did not make the fairytale link between our history and her memory, It was a sweet convergence of history and kind people. We bid the helpful museum members adieu and strolled the village and the church grounds envisioning what life might have been like in the 1920’s when Kai was born.

As we finished our tour of town the rain and fog descended on us and re-boarded the bus bound for Odense.
If you just want to see the pictures click here.

The Swine Dine (or, Is it Art? It looks like a table to me.)

On Sunday September 16 we left Århus and took a 4 hour train ride to Copenhagen to meet our old friend, Pete Backus. We lodged ourselves at the new and rather swanky high rise Danhostel and gave them all the money left over from the Malmo hostel. Then we went out in search of food. We learned two important facts on our first food foray:
1) you must sell your first born to buy a meal in Copenhagen
2) even if you sell your first born you may not find a place to spend your new bounty if you’re searching on a Sunday night.

After an hour of fruitless searching and some deft flirting on Pete's part, we found a stylish sushi joint dripping with Feng Shui recommended by a beautiful pair of Danish girls. Thanks to Pete we had our first restaurant meal during our stay in Denmark (where the food was not wrapped in wax paper) and oh what a meal it was! The rolls and sashimi were pure indulgence. It was a deluge after a serious restaurant drought.

To recover from the damage the hotel and the restaurant did to our wallets we opted for all the free activities Copenhagen had to offer. On Monday we hopped on the City's free bikes and tore through the city like a juvenile biker gang.


Our first stop was the hippie haven, Christiania, an abandoned military base that a group of activists occupied in 1971 and never released. Today it is a wild marriage of inspiring commune, happy hippie utopia, and Deadhead style drug fest. We entered through a beautiful neighborhood that reminded us of Fremont some years ago. We walked narrow paths rimmed with houses all nestled together, past the community stable where children were taking riding lessons, past co-op cafes and playgrounds full of kids. The community had photos from the 1971 occupation set up to show the contrast of the stark intimidating military scene juxtaposed with the lively inviting reality of today.

Around the corner the scene changed dramatically. It was 9:30 on Monday morning, the open air drug market was in full swing and the bars were dolling out the beer. We parked our free bikes in the ample bicycle parking and ambled on to grab a cup of coffee. We found no only coffee but also women swilling beer and teenagers rolling the fattest joint imaginable. It was surreal. We finished our coffee, extricated ourselves from a conversation with a red eyed Dane and headed for the hills. It wasn’t until we’d past through the dirt plaza full of booths selling all manner of Christiana logo gear and drug paraphernalia and reached the solid ground of Copenhagen’s upscale Christianshaven neighborhood that we realized that while we were away from our bikes some bad hippie had popped out the deposit coins that were lodged in all of our bikes. It wasn’t terribly surprising, nor too expensive; each bike held a 20 Kronor coin, equivalent to about $4. But it left a sour taste in our mouth, far different from the warm fuzzy feeling we’d had upon entering the community an hour before.

We stuck to the free bikes and our feet for the rest of the trip. We used the bakery symbol as a stop sign and indulged in pastries whenever we got a chance. We lunched on bread, cheese, olives and beer in whatever public park we could find. On our last afternoon in town we stumbled into a glorious cheese shop redolent of mold and bought as much cheese, salami and stuffed tomatoes as we could carry. We wandered into the park outside of the queen’s castle, Rosenborg Slot, and searched for a picnic table…nothing but park benches and beautiful lawns signed “do not walk on grass”. Then, miraculously, across the moat we saw five lonely tables awaiting us. Hmmm…they are on the castle grounds…and there are guys with guns marching around…hmmm…let’s go explore. We approached the metal tables. There weren’t any signs telling us to stay off the grass and the guys with the guns didn’t seem to care so we made ourselves at home and spread out our picnic. It was lovely, divine cheese, beautiful weather and lovely surroundings. Somewhat surprisingly, there was a large pig pen right in front of the castle with a “pig dock” extending out into the moat with several pot bellied pigs roaming around. As the soldiers continued to march and the tourists ambled around the castle, we felt like we had had gotten away with something.

We were just finishing the last tasty morsels when a disheveled man approached wearing rubber boots, a rumpled overcoat, long scraggly hair pulled back in a ponytail, a shaggy ten day old beard and a scarf wrapped around his neck. He looked like he might be asking for a handout from our lunch but his plan was decidedly different. He was all a fluster and blasted us with a tirade in Danish. When we stared blankly back at him he switched to a heavily accented lambaste, “You cannot sit here” he said “this is not a table, this is art.”
We began to apologize and clean up our spread, but the tirade continued; “You come and eat on art. You come with this food and you eat like pigs. You would think that if you were to eat on art you would at least eat beautiful food, but you... you eat ugly food.”

We were struck dumb while he continued, “I suppose you wondered that the chairs were uncomfortable, of course they are uncomfortable…they are art. This is an installation piece and you come and sit on it.”

At this point we were doing all we could to not break into laughter and Pete was quibbling with him about calling us pigs. It was a riot. The vagabond cum art docent finally left us alone to clean up our piggish spread and we laughed ourselves all the way to the train station where we bid Pete farewell before he headed back to London and we were off to the Island of Fyn.

The Traveling Life

After a fabulous visit with Sara, Niklas and Alva, we left the comfort of their home to embrace our new identity... travelers. It felt a little lurching the first day as we navigated our way around Malmo with our packs on and coughed up the Kronar for our first hostel stay. But on day 2 we smoothed out some of the wrinkles striding confidently on our sustainability tour of Malmo.

Our tour included stops at Augustenborg's Botanical Roof Institute and a fabulous stroll through Western Harbor, a recent redevelopment of a contaminated industrial site. (Check our pictures of the sustainability stuff here if you are into that sort of thing.) We loved the throngs of bicycles everywhere and the bus stops with digital bus tracking telling us how soon our bus would arrive to fetch us. Late in the evening we tore ourselves away from Malmo and headed to Århus, Denmark.

Why did we choose Århus? Well that's what everyone we met there asked us. We didn't have a slick answer, but we sure had a great time. We had our first Servas homestay there with Rikke, Keld and their kids Sophie, Julie and Frederic. On short notice (i.e. the same day) they made room for us in by pitching their 4 season tent in their backyard. It was the most plush camping experience we've ever had. PIC Rikke pulled out all the stops with thick mattresses, sheets, feather comforters and down pillows. After our night in the Malmo hostel where we were too cheap to pay extra for sheets, this was heaven!!! Now don't go thinking we're just stingy, although we probably are, you too would have choked at the thought of paying $65/night, not including room cleaning or sheets! We shared dinner with the family one night, the next night they let us loose in their kitchen to cook for them. We enjoyed great conversations, laughs, and local insight throughout our stay.
In Århus, the city described in the guidebook as the cultural capital of Denmark, we took in Museums, pastries and found the most rowdy and welcoming bar since Murphy's (a shout out to all you CC folks).




We borrowed free city bikes and merged into speeding bike traffic to tour the city and explore the coast line. Århus and Copenhagen both provide free bikes from stands throughout the city. To ride, you simply pop in a 20 Kronar coin ($4), unlock the bike and ride away. They keep the bikes from being stolen by making them too heavy to lift, but that didn't stop some guy from boarding a ferry to Poland with one. We even heard a rumor of one bike showing up in New York.













We fell in love with a museum called Den Gamle By (Old Town) an open air historical museum showcasing urban village life from the 1500s to modern times. This village swept us away with its cobbled streets, charming buildings, living history, and tasty pastries.




We were amazed by the visionary leadership of the museum founder, Peter Holm, who recognized in 1908 that Danish village life was rapidly changing and needed preservation. Through his efforts more than 70 buildings dating back to the 1500s have been dismantled and rebuilt in Den Gamble By instead of being demolished. The level of detail, the care and precision in the restoration, was staggering. On one door they scraped away paint layers to reveal 14 different eras of trim colors and based their restoration on that information. These folks made our rebuild at Kilo look like kids playing with legos. If you want to read more, here's their web site.


We also went to the world famous modern art museum ARoS, alas it was pearls before swine. We just didn't know what to think of the dissection of a horse in 90 jars. (Not only were the jars on display, but you could witness the slaughter set to freaky music on spooling video, oh boy!)

Bjørn Nørgaard: Preserving Jar from the Horse Sacrifice, 1970.


To unwind from that experience we took our uncultured selves out for a beer. We stumbled upon Celina's Bar, a hole in the wall at the right place when the sky unloaded on us. We almost turned tail and ran when we opened the door and the wall of smoke from the packed bar hit us. But the regulars, in Cheers fashion, called us back in and urged us toward the bar. The over 50 crowd was packed in elbow-to-elbow in a space the size of our living room. We made our way to the bar and were enveloped in the hospitality of Celina. While her mom tended bar, Celina and her husband introduced us to the regulars. Soon the rounds were flowing. We made friends with Henric the guard, Hans the policeman and the many Greenlanders packing the bar. One even serenaded us with songs of his homeland. We learned a lot about Scandinavian hospitality and relearned that there are great adventures to be had in tiny, smoky, crowded bars in foreign lands. We stumbled out four hours and 7 rounds later smelling smoky and laughing at the serendipity of finding ourselves at that bar.



There were more adventures in Århus, but we'll let 'em lie because we're tired now and you need to get back to work.

Palt Koma

Ohhhh the food... After many years of vegetar- ianism, pescatar- ianism and whatever you call someone who eats chicken and turkey but shivers at the thought of hoofed animals, I have made leaps and bounds towards omnivorism. In the last months I have eaten more meat than I can ever recall eating. It started in Ballard, as all bad habits do, thanks to Piet and Shannon I had bacon wrapped figs stuffed with goat cheese (I thought I had died and gone to bad Jew heaven). The meat fest continued in Arkansas where I had Chili Mac which Angela and Nuche, a combo of Kraft mac and cheese and sauteed ground beef that made me want to run for vegetarian cover. The meat fest really got started in Sweden though. On day one Sara and Niklas humored me with a coconut curry vegetable and Quorn stir fry (Quorn is a fabulous meat alternative made with mushrooms and heavenly other tasty tid bits). From then on it was all about the kött (MEAT). I have eaten smoked eel (head and all), salami, medwurst (sliced cured meat), moose chunks and Roe deer steak!


Today I discovered what the Swede's call "Palt Koma" (the sleepy stupor that comes after eating fattening foods). It started with Fika, a Swedish/Hobbit tradition of mid morning or mid afternoon visit over coffee and pastries. Niklas' parents, Conny & Yvonne Svensson, hosted us for our first Fika. The spread included a basket of cookies and coffee cake, apple pie, vanilla custard, ice cream and steaming coffee. Mind you, we had already eaten lunch, dinner was just around the corner and there were just four of us and one little lass who almost ate her weight in ice cream. Everything was so good, we simply stuffed ourselves. Thank goodness Conny invited us mushroom hunting so we couldn't do anymore damage.

For dinner Niklas made us a devilish combo of bacon, potatoes, cream and mushrooms all baked to a golden bubbly brown. But before that he warmed us up with our collected chanterelles sauteed in butter over toast. I really do think I died and went to heaven sometime during tonight's dinner. But that wasn't all. As a tummy settling interlude, Canuche and Niklas played a few rounds of Nintendo Wii Sports Tennis (would you believe that I played some too?) Then we resumed our Swedish food fest with Crawfish and Schnapps.













Oh did I mention that Conny is the hunter who brought us most of the wild meat we've eaten? He showed us the pelts that he has tanned, badger, fox, martin, rabbit and Roe Deer. Get a load of me petting the pelts;

That is the wild Swedish meat installment to date. Canuche is now plotting all of the pig and beef filled meals he is going to fix for us once we get home. My vegetarianism my be a distant memory...

Big D double L-A-S and Arkansas

Early in the morning on September 4th we left Seattle after an all night packing session for the first leg of our trip. Fortworth, Texas was our first stop. Home of the Stock Yards, big pickup trucks on miles of asphalt, and serious thunderstorms. We chowed on hamburgers at a joint in the much improved and redeveloped downtown with Aunt Kay and Cousin Chris.

The next day we headed for LRCC, Little River Country Club, in Southwestern Arkansas. My grandparents bought a vacation cabin on the fourth hole of the rural golf course the same year I was born. This place is a country club in the gun rack on your four wheeler in your truck context. The whole family crowded in for a weekend reunion. LRCC fills up for Labor Day Weekend, fun revolves around family, golf, gasoline, and light beer. We relished the Arkansas experience while lounging in chairs stuck in the river and floating the cool waters in inner tubes.

The quote of the weekend came from a good ol' boy from Arkansas who, after hearing about our plan, marveled "well I don't know about all that, I ain't seen all of Arkansas yet."

We spent great hours visiting with Grandpa, oohing and aahing over nephews Jake and Logan and catching up with the whole family. After a great and crowded weekend we returned to Dallas for tasty Mexican food and final preparations in Plano. Another great American city, Plano offered all the shopping options imaginable all conveniently accessed by enormous roads and sprawling parking lots.

Thanks to the help of Mom, Kay, Gary and Chris, we got final pant hemming, tamale eating, shopping, banking and packing done in one more jammed day and headed for DFW to catch our flight to Copenhagen.