Words Fail Me

As I've been blogging our trip, I feel like there's an essential quality of Copenhagen I've failed to convey here. I kept getting flashbacks to other cities - the island skies are England; the classic architecture reminds me a bit of Paris, but without its formality and fustiness. The charming squares are Roman or Florentine. Randy confirms my suggestion of Amsterdam, although I never been there. I got flashes of Austin, Texas and San Francisco in the pocket pleasures of luxurious parks and cute shops. The appreciation for both clean modern design and child-like whimsy evokes Japan. But there's an unapologetic pleasure in comfort and company that seems at odds with what I think of as typical Scandinavian austerity and is perhaps uniquely Danish.

At Valbyparken, I saw an unfamiliar structure with open walls and a steeply high roof of dark shingles. Once inside, I saw the benches ringed around a fire pit and the hole in the roof. I saw other smaller versions of this in the backyards of houses next to the canals and I could imagine the heat and light on snowy nights. Bonfire culture is big in Denmark. So is that of the cafes, where coffee drinkers hang out in the late September chill, wrapped in blankets printed with the restaurant's name and warmed by overhead heat lamps. I can find nothing of Lars Von Trier's anguish here, but the life-affirming portions of Swede Ingmar Bergman's films come to mind - the happy celebrations of Wild Strawberries and Fanny and Alexander.

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Valbyparken

Sunday afternoon, September 27. Copenhagen, Denmark

I left an exhausted Nora with Randy to sleep together in the hotel and put Mia in the bike trailer to find Valby Parken. I'd found an article on the web (your first clue this will not go well) that raved about the park's natural playground and the fun sound of the name was making the place bigger in my mind than it probably needed to be.

Mia in the trailer and I huffed and puffed up that beautiful Frederiksberg Alle to the lovely park Frederiksberg Have, once the palace grounds. Mia ran down the steep grassy hills behind Frederiksberg Slot, a yellow stucco palace that she refused to believe was a king's castle - no moat, I suppose fueled her doubt, nor turrets. I ooed and ahed at the ancient alle of perfectly groomed lindens. Once we were at the zoo next door, my map ended and the man I asked said it was a distance.

"A kilometer?" I asked, all Euro.

"More like three or four," he replied.

But the days are long here - dusk doesn't come until eight and Wonder the rental bike still feels great so we head out.

Mia was a trooper with few complaints. Whenever the neighborhood looked a little sad, (we were far from the ye olde tourist district) we would pass a beautiful furniture design store or a cozy pizza sandwich shot or a home with a sweet garden. Industrial suburbs and enormous soccer fields, a few wrong turns, but I was determined to make it. After the second time I asked for directions and had to turn around, I started to think of the Youtube video of the man who runs Ironman triathalons with his son - who has cerebral palsy and must be carried and towed the entire way. That tear-inducing image was hardly helpful; I replaced it quickly with a more cheering memory of carrying Mia on my back in the Tetons when she was nine months old.


We approached the park from the opposite side of the playground, I was steering sort of by instinct, but once we sighted the overgrown hills and child-sized towers, we cheered. The nature playground here was designed by Helle Nebelong, a Danish landscape architect and artist.

Mia ran across a soccer field to reach it while I rode parallel to her down a gravel path lined with narrow trees. Although she was 50 yards away, I could see her laughing, like I was, at our race.


The playground had teepees of reeds and willow, canoes roughly carved out of logs in sand lakes, climbing poles and ladders and rope steps to help you up the steep hills. A tower of light with slots of colored plastic that let in cathedral light and feel inside, an aluminum two-story tower with a slide from the second floor. One tower with a tree growing inside.


I wish I had my bird book that Kristen gave me. Strange black and white birds and the largest dove I've ever seen - it that what a rock dove is?

Squirrels with pointy upturned ears and shaggy brown fur.

We played until nearly dark and the ride home, of course, was much shorter when you know the way to go.

Happy Birthday, John Adams!

Born today in 1735.

"I am well aware of the Toil and Blood and Treasure, that it will cost Us to maintain this Declaration, and support and defend these States--Yet through all the Gloom I can see Rays of ravishing Light and Glory. I can see that the End is more than worth all the Means. And that Posterity will triumph...." John Adams, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, July 3, 1776

The Day the Wallet Was Lost

Sunday afternoon, September 27. Copenhagen, Denmark.

Yesterday morning, Saturday, Nora kept sleeping as Mia and I puttered around the hotel room, taking baths, eating breakfast and playing with her new paper fairy treehouse. My little blondie radiated heat and slept on as I changed her out of her diaper and jammies, gave her a sponge bath and put her in warm clothes.

Our room has a four poster bed with beautiful Balinese details, pillow-like white feather duvets that housekeeping fluffs and makes into long rectangles, one on each side of the bed. At the foot of the bed there is room for a tiny desk, which sits against a room divider, hung with a beautiful silver-framed mirror. Beyond the divider is a futon on which the kids sleep. We have a sweet balcony with table and chairs, an enormous armoire for clothes and a small fridge packed with organic sodas.

I checked my handy map, already well-used, put hats and gloves in my backpack and hoisted Nora to lug down to our rental bike.

The trailer was left overnight in the courtyard. We were lucky with clear skies last night. Next time I'll fasten the plastic cover in case of rain or heavy dew.

Nora slept on on the lobby couch as I struggled with the trailer lynchpin on the sidewalk. Mia stood by, then volunteered to go back to watch Nora. I let the girls out of my sight. What else to do, honestly? The women at the front desk have all been very warm and helpful. I am steps away.

We finally took off down Frederiksberg Alle, a lovely street tree-lined that was once a private drive to the king's palace, then east down Gammel Kongevej, a street of beautiful shops and restaurants, then turned at the dramatically brickworked Planetarium towards the lakes. (Or are they canals? I've heard these lovely lakes were dug as water reservoirs, but another more romantic story says they were a means of hiding ships during take your pick of the Danish-Swedish wars.) Swans and ducks.

Left turns are still difficult. Friday I nearly got caught in a stream to traffic while trying to negotiate a crossing.

A man passes me on the left in our narrow bike lane and says something in Danish, his hand weaving like an unsure snake. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry," I call and try to keep evenly to the right.

I count no helmets yet but for one woman and an adolescent in a German soldier style one.

We pass the Botanic Gardens and there's Staten Museum for Kunst, the National Gallery. Nora's still groggy, I carry her as much as I can up the entrance stairs. We get tickets and wash up and deposit my backpack in a locker in the whitewashed catacombs below.

I put my wallet and map in my pocket.

Lunch is in the beautiful Republic Cafe. The "kid's menu" offers fish cakes with remoulade or dark bread with pate. The room is part of a modern glass walled addition built on the back of the old brick building. They retained the old facade, so you walk out the old doors to an atrium of light, huge glass walls facing a lake and tall trees.

Nora put her head down on the table and Mia picks out chocolate milk with me. When the beeper chimes, we approach a counter where the man smiles and begins to explain our brunch, served on triangular plates and in tiny glass dishes.

"Cheese?" is all I can say.

"Oh, sorry," he smiles and explains again in English. What a country. They apologize for not recognizing your Americanness.

The girls' plate is a little man made of brown bread and butter with cucumber spear arms and legs, carrot stick hair and a cucumber bit face. When I cut off his head to eat, Mia says, "Give him a sad face." I turn over his cucumber curve of a mouth and we laugh.

Nora eats nothing and lays in my arms while Mia jumps on a blue and white striped platform in a kids' playroom on the same level. No cushioned walls.

On a chalkboard platform, Mia draws and smiles while a little nearly one-year-old in cords, vest and shirt climbs on her to touch her face. "I have to teach him woman like some conversation first," says his friendly father and we laugh.

Upstairs is an art workshop with hot glue guns set out. Mia glues beads and matchsticks to a square of cardboard and uses pastels to make a garden. Nora sleeps on.

When we go down to get my backpack from the catacombs, I throw my wallet in the pack instead of carefully zipping it in my purse as usual. It's the last time I'm aware of where it is.

We bike south to the Nyhaven district where Randy is working. I wonder at how compact this efficient city is. We pass through tiny St. Anne's Passage, a twisty bricked bike and pedestrian street laid between beautiful doorways. Dad's workplace, Duckling, is a warren of locked doors, alleyways and passages into a dim room of computers where he sleeps on a couch. Before this nap, Randy had been up for 56 hours. The film has been cut down to 5 minutes from 15, then back up to 6. Audio has it now. Dad can't give us much - he's a zombie. We only wanted to say hi, so we leave after a few minutes.

We reach two deadends as I try to leave with the girls - I need to reach through a locked gate and ring inside again to ask to be let out. It's fresh air outside where a playground in the middle of the graceful Saint Anne's Place waits for us. Nora sleeps on. Mia is sad I am too tired to be lively but more children appear and cheer her. The kids here stare at our strange talk but have the universal language of play. "I think this will work, don't you?" I asked the boy who stopped to watch Mia attaching a mini car to her tow truck. "Ja," he replies.


I return to the playground at Skt. Anne Plad in my memory, trying to realize some important detail that might give me more information about the wallet. But the pack in the park was on the bench next to the sleeping Nora. Did it bounce out of my pocket as we rode home down charming narrow streets parallel to the Stroet? (I have no Danish keys on my keyboard so you will need to picture struck Os and As with haloes littered here and there in the Danish names.) Did someone reach in and take it from the bag that I left on another bench in the late afternoon gloom as Nora slept on in the trailer and Mia played again at the Castle playground - her favorite, the one I had promised her? It was dusk now and this neighborhood, Vesterbro, is a tiny bit rougher than Duckling's by the Royal Family's residence. Again, I picture Wicker Park - there's graffiti on the back of the churches and boys running with jeers away from their friend walking his pit bull.

It's the only opportunity, the only time I turned my back and if I wove the story in this way you would stop wondering before I did. But I had no funny feeling. There were only families at the park. I never felt jostled or bumped. And this is Denmark. Incredibly helpful, kind, good-humored Denmark.

The bus driver essentially said, "your money's no good here" and waved us to sit down. And when security at Staten Museum for Kunst carries the wallet to me today around noon, two hundred dollars and five hundred Kroner, the three credit cards and my driver's license are undisturbed. I'm glad the man at the travel store at Old Orchard taught me "magna tak" (many thanks) before we left.

"We take care of each other," said the woman on the bus who offered help when she saw my map. Perhaps she has been reading about the 43 million uninsured Americans and the reluctance to reform. Perhaps Obama will get a breath of relief when he comes this week and meets some of the sensible Danish with their matter of fact shrugs, "Of course we take care of each other."

Disasters in Baking

Have to interrupt our thrilling tale to show you the punishment for my baking hubris. I can make pies like nobody's business, and had plenty of confidence when I planned making cakes from scratch for Mia's school carnival. Oh, Joy of Cooking, you let me down.
Swamp monster boy and girl. Their recipe was the Blitztorte, or "Lightning Cake" which tasted delish but failed to retain the face detail from the boy and girl molds. Then I made the dubious decision, based on limited ingredients, to cover them in a brown sugar icing.

Not only did the icing resemble so much drippy mud, its recipe called for adding raw egg yolks to a simmering sugar mixture. I removed the pan from the heat and whipped like crazy, but the bits of scrambled egg in the icing cooked to a hard consistency that felt like flecks of plastic. Or baby fingernails.

So I let Mia eat the boy and tried again. This monstrosity is the 1-2-3-4 cake which I'd love to say referred to some cutesy ingredient mnemonic, like "add one cup of sugar, two teaspoons vanilla, three cups of flour and four eggs." Nothing so simple. There was egg separation involved, and whipping of the whites to soft peaks and adding of the cream of tarter that I did not have on my shelf. The cakes looked pretty good, but the clock was ticking, I had to pick up Mia in half an hour and Joy didn't mention that their "quick" powered sugar and butter icing would have major lumps.

I can't blame the cookbook entirely. I splashed in some extra milk when the icing looked too thick, rendering it just drippy enough to ooze off the still warm cake. Here you see my attempt to doll it up with organic sprinkles. When I tied the plastic wrap above the cake with a little red ribbon, you could hardly tell there was a hot mess underneath. And in the hot gym that hosted our aptly named Fall Frenzy, no jazzed up grade-schooler cared.