Tuesday, 8/19
Not sure I can get on line to post this. Our internet worked perfectly yesterday but seems to be down today. We can’t locate where they keep the wireless so we can’t reset it. There is a locked room marked PRIVATE & it may be in there. Someone is coming from Hay4you in a few minutes to help us with that plus several other issues we’ve had here: washing machine instructions in Danish, where do we put trash?, the TV in the bedroom won’t come on, etc. Nothing huge except maybe the internet which I need to get my files for the conference, but a good deal of the mysteries here may be cleared up when we get the letter of welcome with instructions for the apartment that was supposed to have been here when we arrived. Evidently the last guests took it. I would also guess they were the ones who sawed a roll of paper towels in half and left that on the TP spindles. We both found that odd but were too tired to think through what even a bit of paper towel could do to the plumbing, that is until the toilet clogged.
But none of this is a huge big deal; it’s a nice, very large apartment in a good location with more amenities than I usually get on a rental, plus the price was very reasonable, in a city that can give you sticker shock.
Last night I kept waking up so finally flipped on CNN and watched Wolf Blitzer. There was about 15 seconds of Fay coverage—most of it was about the Russians occupying Georgia digging in. Too groggy to follow it, I flipped to the first English thing I found which turned out to be British Animal Planet with something called Pet Rescue which was so sad I had to switch it off.
Later: No luck at finding the router or whatever it is that needs to be reset. The Hay4You guy, Oliver, was very nice. He’s going to get us some sort of USB devices that enable us to get on another network. We left it at that.
Both of us were feeling a little queasy today, Jim much more so, so we kind of took it easy. We went to the Little Mermaid from the front end so Jim could get the photo he promised his wife. Definitely not my kind of thing, but there was a nice park we walked through to get there, a military fort. Next the Museum of the Danish Resistance, which was a puzzlement. The first thing that caught my eye was a manikin wearing what appeared to be a Danish SS uniform. And indeed, it turned out that the resistance was rather slow in happening, so much of the museum was about daily life during the war years. By chance there was a docent giving a tour in English a few minutes after we arrived, so we stuck with him most of the time. At first I had a very difficult time understanding his point of view. He informed us for instance that the Danes provided 1/10 of the food to Nazi Germany, so it was not in their interests to wreak any havoc in Denmark, like bombing. But they didn’t need to bomb; the Danes hardly defended themselves, and it was all over in a matter of hours, and there they were, occupied. I’d say that would put an end to “neutrality.” It’s not mine to judge, but how can you persist in neutrality when you are occupied? Something has to give. Also he told us that Denmark wasn’t really important to the Nazis; they wanted a stepping stone to Norway. But isn’t that important? He also said that England “started the war.” Not exactly, but it turns out he was talking about declarations. And so on. It was stuffy inside, and as I tried to decipher what was going on I began to get dizzy—really, weirdly dizzy. So I’d peel off the tour and get next to a window or go outside and sit for a minute, then back in because I wanted very badly to sort out all the dissonances, and I didn’t want to miss the actual resistance part. The first significant one was narrated more or less as a schoolboy prank. But there were other things: cartoons (reminding us the Danes are pretty famous still for their political cartoons); printing presses jerryrigged for underground publications when the occupiers clamped down, etc.
By the end of the tour I was not just dizzy but queasy. We made our way slowly back, nipped into the Marble Church which seems to be modeled after the Vatican on the exterior but is strange inside. Or rather, it felt strange, because I was getting really sick and someone was playing some sort of atonal headache music on the organ.
I think that in retrospect my experience of this day was entirely colored by feeling dreadful. So please, consider the source.
Back at the Gothersgade flat, we have a note from Oliver that he has poured something down the drain (which turned out to solve the plumbing issues, and considering how queasy I was feeling that’s a good thing). He has left the USB devices as promised but they say on the box, “Requires Windows.” Agh. I am too sick to care. We go back out across the lakes to find some supper, hoping to find a noodle shop since we both feel like all we could choke down is soup. I should say by now that we haven’t eaten much the whole time we’ve been here. I made pasta Monday night but Jim only could eat a few bites. We’ve skipped lunches, and generally just make do on a bowl of museli and some fruit in the morning. This time out we seee a place recommended in one of our books but the menu out front doesn’t appeal, so we head down the block and find a café (never got the name) on a square that contains a concrete-bricked soccer court, where people are playing. I get a big pot of peppermint tea which settles my queasiness a bit, but then it is all I can do to pick at my tomato soup and half a sandwich. Jim eats his half a sandhich, has a beer, and picks a bit at the soup. Our bill for this is in excess of $40—much less over here in Norreboro than it is across the lakes, but really what we have ordered is dinner for one, and nothing too fancy. I gather there is 25% tax added into everything, which explains a lot.
Wednesday, 8/20
We are both a bit better so we grab our chance for an excursion this morning. Before we go I call Hay4You and tell them the internet is still no go, and this time they want to blame the Macs. Well, of course a device that says “Requires Windows” won’t run on them. It’s simply that the modem or router or whatever is behind that locked door needs to be reset. Hay4You can’t get in—the owners are in Africa and out of reach, and their emergency person has no key to the locked room. I listen for awhile to the Hay person grumble about Macs (this kind of thing drives me crazy—no matter what, people like to blame the Mac) and she informs me from now on Hay will advertise “no internet for Macs.” Well excuse me. Nevertheless she agrees to get Oliver, who is very friendly and not at all prone to blaming the tenant, to continue trying things.
Jim has planned our path which I have to say I wouldn’t have done the same way, but I am glad he is doing the planning. He wants to do a stop midway to Helsingor, then up to Helsingor, then another stop back further toward Copenhagen at Humlebaek for the Louisiana modern art museum. I would have started in Elsinore then worked our way back down, but he is afraid Blixen will close early, and Louisiana has a late night, open till 10. My concern is that we have to be at the conference registration by 6 to connect with our third roommate for whom I have left a message.
We buy 24 hour transport passes at Central Station and ride the comfy S train up to Rungstedlund. We walk 15 or 20 minutes from the station to the house which is across the road from the sound, in a sweet little area—the harbor is filled with sailboats.
The curators have kept a nice balance between house and museum –it’s easy to imagine her lving there, with many of her furnishings and objects in much the same places they were when she was alive. I’m not a tremendous fan although I do admire many of her stories. There’s a short film that shows her reading aloud from a story or two—that I like—but it also has the scene in the Meryl Streep film that makes me want to scream, where after we have learned what a fine storyteller Karen is she begins to tell the story and I settle in to have the movie show, rather than just assert, what a fine storyteller she is. But instead they cut to Robert Redford getting wrapt. I think had they let us been seduced by the story, it would have been so much better.
Anyway we walk through her gardens, which are lovely, and visit her gravesite under a sycamore, noting along the way as we have on our walk to the house that there are rose hips everywhere. Our walk back to the station takes us by a riding academy and some cows. It feels good to be sort of out in the country. I’m wondering about the yellow color of many oi the houses, a mystery that will be cleared up soon.
Back on the train and up to Elsinore. Trains are so frequent here it’s really easy and efficient to use them. I grab a Danish pastry (finally, a Danish in Denmark!) from a shop near the station and eat it en route, since my blood sugar is tanking. We walk the 15-20 minutes to Kronborg Slot (everything was that far from the stations, not bad but to keep in mind if you are toting kids or arthritic, since it’s all on pavement and all on main roads) and decide on the #2 ticket for the castle which entitles us to the royal apartments, the casements, and the chapel. No tower for us today. But there are fine views over the sound from the apartments, which was, of course, much of the point of having this castle: to look for the ships coming through so the king could tax them at the gateway to the Baltic. Many of the furnishings are gone and there has been one big fire and several extensive remodels, but it is still very possible to imagine remote times. The most impressive room is the large ballroom, built to do just that. There’s a much-touted canopy tapestry that cost like a bazillion krone and under which Frederik II and Sophie would dine, and we admire its intricacy but I start thinking the nap on it looks rather flat; it lacks the dimensionality of the tapestries on the walls around us. Well, duh, no wonder; we walk around the other side and see that it is essentially a giant photocopy pasted on foam board. The original belongs to the Swedes. They’ve returned some of the things they took from Denmark, but apparently not all, although it is noted that occasionally they “loan” things back to Denmark. Well, I suppose there’s stuff like that all over the world, but since they’re right across the sound and I can wave at them through the Slot’s windows, it seems a little mean not to ship them back to their original context.
Scattered throughout the castle there are some modern art installations; some of the chandeliers in the ballroom are wrapped as if Christo had been there, ands there’s an interesting display of 3 “skeletons” fabricated from dark stone or metal, polished aluminum, and finally electronic chips and switches. This piece connects with Hamlet’s musings in the gravedigger scene. I cannot make out if the displays are permanent or a temporary exhibition, but it appears for the most part that artists have tried to work with contextual awareness. Some of them are frankly very precious and goofy or too high-concept for me, but others are kind of sweetly or playfully worked into the spaces. In the casements (which I may advise skipping, or at least recommend bringing a torch—they are very dark with uneven pavement and lots of hard things to whack one’s head upon one instasllation pressed way back into a corner showed photos of horrific suffering—public executions, Abu Grahib, etc. It was appropriate for the space, but upsetting—which I take it was the point. The chapel was lovely and richly appointed with coffered ceilings and all kinds of ornament.
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I will write more about Kronberg Slot and Louisiana next entry. I am posting this on Friday since this is the first time I've gotten online at the apartment and felt good enough to get a handle on the blog. It may be incoherent, since I am still fighting something. I slept nearly 12 hours last night, was great all day, but it's 6 PM now and I'm ready to go back to sleep. The conference has started as well so I am conserving energy for it.
