You learn something new every day

Did you know that Peruvians have mummies just like the Egyptians?  I didn't.  From 600-1000 AD, the ancients buried their dead in the desert sand.  The bodies were placed in a squating position and wrapped in cloth and dressed in a feather costume.  

Signage / cultural norms?

Came across this special niche in the National Museum for nursing mothers.

You've heard of James and the Giant Peach..

But how about "Hans and the Giant Orange"?

Apparently fresh squeezed OJ is a big deal here.

Disappointing grocery store experience

We stopped by the grocery store in Copenhagen to find (a less expensive) dinner last night.  The displays looked like the store had had a rather hectic day, bins with random food items here and there, picked over 'sale' racks, etc.  I was very disappointed by the food options.  The very handy single serve, to go (or 'take away') foods that we had found elsewhere are clearly not as popular in Copenhagen as elsewhere.  

Danes obviously have very different food tastes as well.  The cheese and fish sections were well stocked, but the cracker and chocolate sections were very unremarkable.  Snickers and Twix bars were abundant, but there were only a handful of other chocolate choices.  Two were Danish and one was German.  We got both to sample.  The German mint chocolate bar was very good!

There are a suprising number of 'Chinese' food places here, and lots of South and Southeast asian foods in the store. "Thai Cube" brand.

Not a lot of chocolate options.  I wasn't about to spend money on snickers or twix.

German mint chocolate was good.

 (I like the Danish word:  Pebermynte)

Funny food products

Some of the food choices at the grocery store cracked me up.

"Icy snowballs and snow flakes" cereal from Kelloggs.

Not a lot of chip options, but these sounded interesting

Vampire gummies??

Doll houses!!

The National museum has a special section on toys, including a room devoted to doll houses.  Delaney was in heaven.  Not only did you get to see the front, but they had a window you could see through behind them to see the details of the interiors.

Can you find Delaney in the picture?

Would you like to use these old roller skates?

Favorite museum of the trip

We spent the morning in the Nationalmuseet (National Museum) with artifacts dating back to the stone age and moving forward through history to the present day.  I really enjoyed this museum.  The  bulk of the artifacts were from Scandinavia, so everything was laid out chronologically and you simply moved from room to room through the entire building, slowly moving forward in time.  There were some other exhibits from other regions, but they were much smaller and featured a rather electic mix of select artifacts.

I learned a lot more about earlier eras on earth.  Back around 6000 BC, much of Scandinavia was not islands, but was connected by land to the rest of Europe.  Below is a fishnet that was preserved in the sea sediment, dating back to 6000 BC.  This was one of the oldest artifacts in the museum, along with some skulls from cro-magnon man.  Each section and room of the museum had a special description that put the artifacts in the larger picture including how various early human ancestors developed (or not).

Stone battle axes dating to 3600 BC.  I really liked how they had well preserved artifacts that were nicely displayed.  They were easy to view and were not haphazardly placed in cases.  Instead of bits and pieces on display, they were nearly all whole pieces.

This mumified woman was amazingly well preserved.  Dating back to 1300 BC.  If you look closely, you can still see the fancy coifs of her braided hair.  She has on a wool shirt with embroidery on the sleeves.  The burial rites during this time were to create barrows (dirt mounds built up over oak coffins that were surrounded by cut peat with stone walls built around them.  The low oxygen meant there was no decay.

The horse pulling the chariot of the sun across the sky (dates back to 1300 BC).  Found in 1902

Gold bowls in beautiful conditions.

Locks of hair from Ilsa (from Frozen)...kidding.  These braids of hair were part of a sacrifice made in a peat bog and preserved (dating back to 350 BC)

We skipped a few rooms and jumped ahead a few years.  These are Viking runes (alphabet).  There are only 16, so some of them have several different sounds.

Christianity came to the region in the  Middle Ages and there were a lot of artifacts from early churches.  I liked this carved oak piece dating to 1250 AD.

These pitchers were fun - lions and dog shapes.

There were a number of carved ivory pieces.  This was about the size of my two hands.  Very detailed.

This is a woman's woolen garment dating to the 1400s.  I can't believe such common garments that are so old are so well preserved.  I've seen royal clothes in collections, but not a common woman's woolen dress. 

A  shield used in battle.  A triangular hole for the spear and a metal piece with holes poked in it to see through.  Men would advance in a line like a wall against the enemy.

We saw similar collections of "hoards" of coins buried in the ground in the British Museum. This urn has 16,000 coins in it.

David's new plumbing skills

The toilet in our room would not stop running last night.  Its design is a button on the wall that you push to flush and a seat only.  No  valves visible for shut off, no handle to jiggle, nothing mechanical that you can reach.  David reported it to the staff this morning and learned that the fitting around the button can be popped off and you can reach the mechanical parts to get it to shut off.  You learn something new every day.

Cash or Charge?

I used to think I knew Europe pretty well with regard to expected financial transactions, but not any more.  All of my normal expectations have been turned on their head with no perceivable pattern or trend.  

David and I purposely brought both our 'swipe' debit card and our 'chip' credit card to make sure we would have access to our personal funds, but the group travel card only comes as a 'swipe' card (without a chip), which I expected might be a problem.  It was.  None of the automatic ticket machines would take a swipe card, although most of the stores could do both kinds of transactions.  It was never predictable which card would work for any particular transaction.

My previous experience is that European vendors prefer cash to cards, but apparently not in some venues.  The church we toured in Amsterdam had a large sign on the door "cards only, no cash"  ( I had just withdrawn a lot of cash from the group account to pay for the church entry, so this was annoying).  It happened at one other venue we visited as well.  I speculated that perhaps it was linked to problems with counterfitting, but a cashier seemed puzzled when I asked about this, so maybe not.  When I went to the grocery store to get food for our next day on the train, it was cash only (no cards!).  This was also annoying because I had just spent my last euros planning to move on to the Danish currency and not wanting any left over.  So I went to the ATM and got more cash, and ended up having some left over.  

Traveling with 18 people

I have gotten some very interesting looks throughout this trip when I approach various ticket booths and ask for 18 admission tickets.  The salesperson usually repeats in a somewhat incredulous voice "18??"  It is good that they double check since language barriers with counting can result in misunderstandings, but it puzzles me that 18 should be surprising to them.  There are many other tourist groups moving around Europe, not just us.

It is also a bit irritating to have to use ticket machines (which are increasingly common in all the different transit stations, often without the option of a staff person at a window).  Many of the machines will only sell a limited number of tickets to you in a single transaction (often capped at 5), which means that I have to repeat my purchase multiple times in order to get it to spit out all the tickets I need.  London was the exception and made the purchase of group tickets very easy (and always had a staff person on duty to help if needed). 

The biggest challenge with a large group is trying not to be in the way of locals on public transit.  The group has gotten very good at spreading out on the platform in the metro to board by multiple doors, and exiting the train and standing against the wall to let locals go about their business while we wait to move out as a group.  This is not so easy to do however on a small tram (Amsterdam) where you have to enter ONLY by the front door, and are crammed in a narrow tram with your luggage.  Also not easy on a bus in Copenhagen that also requires entry at the front door.  It was much easier the second day when we boarded a bus without our luggage, but we still took up a lot of room on the bus.  (The locals were very tolerant and nice to us though, giviing us tips about getting on with our passes, etc).

Checking in at hostels with 4-5 rooms is also a bit on the time consuming side.  The group is very patient in waiting for their keys to be ready, but running the transaction and getting everyone to the right room takes a while. 

Pace of the city

I think London was the most fast paced city we have visited.  Even on the weekend people walked like they had somewhere important to be all the time.  Even walking in the parks was faster paced that one would expect.  Paris was also fast paced, but fit my own speed well.  Amsterdam felt busy, but it wasn't because people were walking quickly but because they were moving by us quickly on their bikes.  We did notice that there seems to be a 'common speed' in the bike lanes.  Most people move at a similar moderate pace, fast enough to get somewhere, but slow enough to stop suddenly if tourists accidentally step in front of you.  Copenhagen is much slower and less crowded.  Our group has not been so much in the way (except when we all try to step on a bus with our luggage).  The streets are less crowded and the bikes are around, but not everywhere.  There are no tram tracks to contend with in Copenhagen which makes crossing the streets much easier.

Prices

Everyone knows that London and Paris are expensive cities, but there are places where you can eat cheap if you look a bit.  We weren't in Amsterdam long, but it was not quite as expensive.  Becaause of the exchange rate being 6.5:1, Copenhagen feels expensive to begin with:  burger for 60 crowns...but when you do the math, its still expensive ($10 burger).  When you tack on taxes to various purchases, they get even more expensive.  In Paris, there was about a 30% tax on food (but not apparently on non-food items).  The wait staff made sure to communicate that the tax was NOT a tip, so add another 5% on top and you increase the cost of your meal by 1/3.  There are also taxes on the food in Denmark, but the receipts are harder to decipher (my Danish is non existant compared to my French and there are not nearly as many cognates in the language that look familar to English speakers).

Other worshipping communities

Just a short note to say that we accidentally stumbled across a mosque in Amsterdam in our walking around.  There were quite a few women with hijabs in Paris, which is not surprising considering 10% of the French population is Muslim.  There were not as many in Amsterdam, but they were still around.  We've seen very few in Copenhagen, although our navigations have been limited to a small part of the city.

We did walk past a Jewish synagogue yesterday and our guide at Rosenborg noted that Christian IV was responsible for allowing/bringing more Jews into the country in the 1700s (this was said as  point of pride), although it was done for the practical reason that as a christian he was not supposed to borrow money from other christians, but he could do so from non-christians (ie Jews that were wealthy).  Not quite sure what biblical reference this was, but that was the perspective at the time.  I have seen very few hijabs in Copenhagen.  In fact, I was quite irritated by a guard in one of the royal museums who seemed to think some of our group was not behavioring respectfully enough and came to report it to me as their leader.  His description included the girl with the scarf (made as a gesture of a head cover).  I suppose that is a physical distinction, but it smacked of a personal bias as well. 

Migrant crisis

I wasn't sure how the migrant crisis that Europe is facing would manifest itself on the trip, but it was quite evident on the train when we crossed from Germany to Denmark on the ferry.  After  the train pulled off the ferry, a troop of border patrol agents came through the train asking for passports.  This was done between London and Paris because the UK is not part of the Schengen common border zone like most of the rest of the EU, but did not happen between Paris and Amsterdam.

I pulled out my passport  and managed to open it when he waved at me that I didn't need to show Delaney's.  She was clearly with me and legit.  He passed through our group quickly, but at the end of the train several more agents joined him and they had an extended conversation with a group of young men seated there.  In the end, four of them were escorted off the train.  Several members of our group were close to the conversation and said all the parties were speaking in English and the men did not have identity papers.  They said they were not staying in Denmark, but continuing through to Sweden.  The agents said that the Swedish border also required papers and they would need to get off the train.  One of them requested a lawyer and was told again that in order to speak with a lawyer he would need to get off the train.  The lady sitting next to us was from Sweden and confirmed that Sweden had recently closed its border.  This conversation was all done quietly and they all got off the train together.  The men were well dressed and clean and had several bags with them, so they did not look deseparate, but they had clearly reached the end of their journey.  I was curious how they had managed to get so far north without getting stopped sooner.

Other than the 'info booth' on Dam Square in Amsterdam with Syrian flags flying, and a few homeless people on the street in Paris who might have been immigrants, our group has not come across any other obvious signs of this crisis (although I was worried that our delayed train from London to Paris might be llinked to protests at the chunnel in Callais).  

There was a display at the Copenhagen national musuem:

Royals attire

The royal family in 1952 (King Frederik IX) dressed in traditional Greenlandic clothing (Greenland is an old Danish colony and was given autonomy in 2009, but the Danes still have very close ties to Greenland).

Baby strollers!

Boy do kids ride in style around here. We saw several of these 'play pins on wheels' throughout the day yesterday.  Two of them were together with 3-4 kids inside.  It looked kind of like a daycare group out for a stroll.  Another group included 4-5 women with these large strollers parked in the shade in the gardens, clearly enjoying each other's company while the kids collectively napped in the afternoon. 

Energy observations

Gas station (in a seeming back alley).  Unleaded 9.97 crowns/liter = $5.67/gallon. Definitely a good plan to bike, walk or take the bus and not drive around here!

Fancy padded front bike seat.

You can see the wind turbines on the horizon, what you can't see is the power plant just to the right of the photo frame.  Natural gas powered most likely.   I was a little surprised that the lights/electrical sockets in the hostel room don't require your card key to activate them.  This is an energy saving device I've seen lots of other places that prevents you from leaving on lights when you leave the room.

Amalianborg Palaces

To end the day we made our way across the center city to the current royal residences.  Theree are four palaces that face each other across a large square.  One is the home of the Crown Prince (who was in residence with his flag flying), one is the home of the Queen (who was not in residence), one is used for ceremonial functions, and one is for ceremonies and has a museum of royal artifacts.

I thought they did a very good job with their short write ups about the various historical rooms, artifacts and royal figures.  Just enough to be interesting, but not to glaze your eyes over.

This  is Frederik V who built Amalianborg.  His statue is in the center of the square between the palaces.  He is ALSO wearing a Roman toga (complete with lace up sandels on horseback).  Its so funny how I'm seeing lots of these statues now that it has been pointed out to me that they purposefully chose to be attired this way.

The museum had several different rooms where the living space for the royal family was recreated.  They apparently LOVE portraits (and more recently photos) of the family.  The walls and desk tops are covered with them.  We speculated that this was just for display purposes, but a photo taken of the Kings study in the early 1900s confirmed the accuracy of this clutter.

A reminder that Denmark is a Nordic country - Polar bear rug.

The ball room was lovely.  Elegant but not gaudy, large but not overwhelming.

The ceilings in each room were quite pretty (mostly with gilded geometric shapes, not paintings.

Royal Jewels

The last thing we saw at Rosenborg palace was the royal jewels.  This was the crown that King Christian IV was crowned with, but he had to sell it, along with nearly all of his other things of value in order to pay for his building projects and wars.  His son Frederik III was able to buy it back and was himself crowned in it.  This was unusual, most new kings would melt down the gold and fashion a new crown for their coronation.

The crown has lots of symbolic details.  The pelican seen below represented a figure that would tear out its own flesh to feed its young, very self sacrificing.  This is how the king wanted his people to think of him. 

The crown below is more typical in style.  It has a closed top instead of an open one.

These jewels are still 'borrowed with permission' by the Queen from time to time for special events. 

Its not royal jewels, but it is a silver baptismal font that all the members of the royal family are baptized in.