On Wednesday, we drove across another connecting bridge to the big mitten portion of Denmark (Jutland) that connects to Germany and the rest of Europe. The Kingdom of Denmark includes 406 islands floating around like cornflakes in the Baltic Sea; only about 70 of them are inhabited – we were going to The Big Island, to a town called Kolding (hold the “d” – much like the way the Danes pronounce “Odense” – as if you started to say the word, and decide, nah…forget it, so the town comes out like “Kolling”). Danish is a language you need to learn by sound, since many words have a lot of extra letters in them standing around doing nothing but taking smoke breaks or drinking coffee, and other words have unique sounds that require special characters like the O with the slash through it, as if they started off wanting an “o” sound and thought better of it: Ø. And then there’s the clownish A balancing a ball on its head: Å, which actually represents sort of a gargling “O” sound. Many Danish words and phrases can be figured out with no problem – “parkering” in the parking lot for example – but it always startles people to see “slut soldes” in the store windows (which means “final sale” and not that they have sluts for sale in the shop).

Starbucks in Denmark is Baresso Coffee but it doesn’t open at the Mall until 9 am – three hours after the desperation for coffee has begun in the USA – and there is nothing but sugar on tap to go with it. Great sugar, to be sure – you can get a twirl of dough the size of a truck tire to go with your coffee, and unwind a twist of cinnamon and melted vanilla cream or have a donut or a cupcake or an iced cookie, but there are no powerhouse sandwiches or bagels or breakfast muffins with eggs protein…just sugar. I’m starting to understand the relationship with the cigarette smoking…it might be a defense mechanism to keep from flying around Denmark like kites….?

In Kolding, we went to a furniture museum called Trapoldt, where we saw an impressive display of Danish design in chairs, including Arne Jacobsen’s Ant Chair, Swan Chair, and Egg Chair. It wasn’t all furniture; there were other exhibits of fashion design, painting, and sculpture. One of them, the Claydies, were ceramics made by two women (the Clay Ladies) who made weird and wonderful things that could be hats or bowls, depending on your mood.

Outside was Arne Jacobsen’s futuristic Kubeflex summerhouse, which we could walk through, which I thought was kind of an interesting idea in architecture:

http://www.trapholt.dk/00258/00402/

Of course, the best stuff was in the gift shop :) I wanted everything in there.

On the drive back, in the pouring rain, we stopped to let a girl on a bike know that she was on the wrong road – that she was about to enter the main highway (similar to I-95). She had an old map, and couldn’t find the right route. She was biking 70 miles that day (50 miles for us non metric people). She turned down a ride, probably thinking we were a van of serial killers.

Biking 50 miles…in the rain…? Just driving 50 miles in the rain when you don’t know where you’re going is intimidating. I’m not sure I’ve biked 50 miles total in my entire life...(!)

Maybe you stop at Baresso first and down a sugar bomb or two…?