Fairy Tale City

No matter where you are in Denmark, you're not far from the sea.  I was reminded of this on the train ride from Helsingor to Odense (by way of Klampenborg and Kobenhavn--"havn" meaning "harbor") where I got glimpses like this:

This was just one of a row of turbines, but I was too slow on the draw to get them all before the train whizzed away.  There was also field after field of lovely green and golden waves of crops, punctuated by the occasional row of bright red flowers (couldn't tell if they were poppies or tulips).  While Helsingor was charming in many ways, the people there weren't very friendly--they seemed a bit jaded, which, given the amount of tourists flooding in every day, is somewhat understandable.  All the same, it was refreshing (and mood-lifting) to arrive in Odense and find the same level of cheerful openness that I encountered in Copenhagen.  The cab driver who picked me up at the train station seemed rather grim at first, but after I asked a question or two, he livened up, and by the end of our seven minute drive together, he showed me several photos of his grandson on his phone before we got out of the car. 

My room here at the Ansgarhus Motel is very small and simple, but I find it cozy, charming, and the perfect size for being on my own.  It reminds me a bit of my dorm days, which were happy times for me.  I just have to watch my head a little with the sloping walls.

How can you not be charmed by a room with a key like this:

Or a window like this:

Not to mention the artwork (someone really should have told this lady that her breasts were hanging out of her dress):



Though everything was closed by the time I arrived by train, checked in, and ate some lunch (all the museums, etc. shut down here around 4:00), I still enjoyed walking around.  Odense is the birthplace of Hans Christian Andersen, whose collected works I've been reading over the last few days, and it's easy to see where he got the inspiration for his fairy tales.

These houses (near the H.C.A. museum and house) are all very typical of the houses from his childhood.  Sadly, my taxi driver said a huge number of them were destroyed when they built the main road through the city fifty years ago, but at least these remain.

On my walk back to my hotel, I discovered this lovely park with a statue of Hans Christian himself at its center:

I sat down on a bench facing this (above), and seconds later, a bird flew over to the fountain to take a drink.

And here's one of me enjoying the moment.  



I suppose I'll have to get better at having other people take pictures of me in various historic sites, but I generally hate posing for photos by myself and always come out looking as stiff/awkward as I feel.

Today I headed back to the Hans Christian Andersen museum, which is built around the rooms where he was most likely born (his parents didn't have a place of their own, so it's assumed they stayed with relatives who lived here for his birth).  Having read several of his stories in the last several days, I can understand where some of the darker elements come from given a more complete picture of his life.  The mortality rate of infants and children was about 40% at the time he was born, he lived in extreme poverty for his entire childhood and a good portion of his young adult life, and even though he fell in love several times, none of the women returned his feelings and he remained unmarried and childless his entire life, though he longed for a family of his own.  He also lost his father, whom he loved very much, at a young age, and his mother ended up being an alcoholic.  He left home to try and break into the theater scene in Copenhagen when he was just 14 years old.

Below is the home where he lived with his father (and then mother after his father died) from age 2 to 14.  This was not theirs alone, however--two other families also lived in the same dwelling, and each family had only one room to themselves.

This was the Andersen room

And this was the kitchen (no running water--they had to fetch that from the river) shared by all three families.  It's hard to tell from the photo, but there's about enough room for two (maybe 3 if you don't need to mover your arms) in there.



When the woman at the front desk told me that one of the families in the other rooms had five children, I asked how they all possibly fit in one room, and she said that not all five would be home at the same time since it was common practice for poor families to ship their children off at age 8 or 9 to go work on a farm or in a wealthier person's house.

One of the things Hans Christian had an unusual talent for (besides writing) was creating beautiful and delicately wrought paper cuttings, which he would often craft for the children of families he was friends with.  In fact, during his poorer adult years, he would rotate from friend to friend for dinners and then thank them by making these little gifts for the family. 

He would also often paste them into blank journals and add poems and stories.



There were a number of quotes from his various stories, diaries, and autobiography, and below are just a small sampling of some that moved me most.

And for any of you who are writers/artists and face criticism from others, look what one critic wrote about Andersen (and this was one of many negative comments he received from both reviewers as well as personal friends):



Good thing he ignored this guy.  It helped that he had a number of supporters over the years who believed in him and encouraged him.  Something else I was interested to read about him is that he won a travel scholarship when he was a young man, and continued to travel extensively (and for long periods of time) for the rest of his life.  One of his bestselling books (besides his fairy tales, of course) was the one he wrote about his travel experiences.  Perhaps in that regard, it was good that they didn't have blogs in those days since he needed the money.

And before we leave Hans behind, here's a "mental photograph" he wrote of himself (this is the translation of the original document, which didn't photograph very well):

My next stop was the Odense City Museum, which had a great little display on the medieval period in the city.  I took a ton of photos of all the explanations for my own research purposes and the exhibit gave me a great feel for local life in that era, but there wasn't a whole lot that would translate well to this blog.  But if you ever visit Odense and are interested in history, it's worth a stop.  It's also housed in a really cool Renaissance era building that I completely spaced on and forgot to photograph (all this reading and looking and taking in of information is overloading my brain a bit).

Next stop was the Odense Cathedral, also called St. Knuds Kirke ("kirke" meaning "church").  There was a medieval church on the site originally, where King Knute was murdered by some rebels, and after he was canonized, a newer, fancier cathedral was built and his bones (along with his brother's) were put in the crypt.  A third and even more elaborate church was built during the Renaissance, and it was renovated in the 1800s and now looks like this:

What's kind of extra cool is that King Knute's and his brother's skeletons are on display in the crypt.  I tried to photograph them too, but it was too dim to get a decent shot.  Anyway, just picture some old, brownish skeletons.

Tomorrow I take the train back up to Copenhagen Airport to fly to Paris.  I'm excited to meet up with my nieces and brother there to celebrate my birthday (and thus may take another short break from this blog--we'll see how things go), but I'm sad to be leaving Denmark.  Despite how expensive everything has been, I've really enjoyed my time here and hope to return again before too long.  Especially since I've already picked up a tiny bit of the language and can say "hi" and "thank you" and "bye" like a native.  It helps that their greeting and casual farewell is, respectively, "hej" (pronounced "hi") and "hej hej!" ("hi hi!").  Thank you is simply "tak."  A lot of the language doesn't resemble English in the least, but there's a fair amount that does, and it's easy to see how certain words that the Vikings brought over to England morphed over the years.  One of the things that made this visit easy, though, is that pretty much everyone speaks excellent English, which they learn in grammar school.  There have been a couple times, though, were I've seen translations in the museums and churches that have made me laugh a little.  I can't remember a specific example but one the I loved here at my motel is the manager, Kenneth, calling my purse a "lady bag."  Since my own ability to speak with anything resembling coherence and fluency in any other language is pretty much non-existent, though, I must say I have nothing but admiration for the Danish--especially since I've heard many of them break into a third language with equal fluency.

While it's probably a great inconvenience in many ways, another thing I'm going to miss about this country is how much ancient history is literally right under their feet. The main pedestrian street where most of the shops are used to be the main road the Viking kings would use to get around Odense.  In their digging to expand their roads and metro system, they came across these medieval ruins and are now having to pause and excavate:

I am also going to miss all the friendly, helpful people and the amazing seafood and sushi available everywhere you go.  Well, tak, Denmark, and until I visit again--hej hej!