Copenhagen

A busy few months since I last posted, and it began with a visit to Denmark, my first, as I tagged along on Gerald's work trip and we took advantage of the weekend prior to explore Copenhagen. Though he'd been to the country twice before, he'd never had a chance to see the town. It's lovely - like a combination of Amsterdam and Stockholm. Our hotel (thanks again, K!) had a tour bus leave from its front door so we started with that as it was unusually cold. We then saw the changing of the guard at the royal palace by chance - it was not on my list. I have to say that, unfortunately, their bear-fur hats reminded me of the Wizard of Oz witch's castle guards, so it was hard to take them as seriously as they took themselves. No disrespect intended. This royal pomp is just rather foreign to me, and I do wonder - why? - in these economic times. But such is tradition in these older lands. Not Finland though. They chose not to have a king. As we've traveled around Europe, it's astounding how much money has been sunk into nobility, and the disparity would have been so much worse in centuries past. Still intriguing, nonetheless. I'm such a peasant. That and the Danny Kaye song "Wonderful, Wonderful Copenhagen" was looping in my head the whole visit. That's because it is wonderful.

Big news in Copenhagen is the first journey of the Little Mermaid. We managed to catch her prior to her trip to China a week later, where she is featured in the Danish Pavilion of the World Expo for six months. For those of you trying to lose weight, go ahead and grab a few of those chocolate eggs. That svelte little sea nymph actually weighs 385lbs! As an April Fool's Day joke, a museum put a skeleton of her on the rock and made the following statement: "...it was the only remaining complete skeleton of a "Hydronymphus pesci", a species said to be extinct since the end of the 17th century. It claimed to have acquired the remains at the beginning of the 18th century, and that the only other skeleton of the specimen, in Saint Petersburg's Hermitage museum, was "not as complete as Copenhagen's" because of its missing tail." Love that wry humor!