I Really Want To Tell You About My Sandwich

October 4, 2009. Copenhagen, Denmark.

Sunday we had the hotel spread (granola, yogurt, meats and cheeses, butter, butter, butter) for breakfast. Brazilian delegates were everywhere looking like the celebration was so over. How was I supposed to know Hotel Skt. Petri was the Rio de Janeiro command center when I booked? Eh.

We took the 6A bus from the front of the hotel, easy-peasy, all the way to the Copenhagen Zoo. The girls negotiate who will push the STOP button, who will hand the coins to the driver. We work out a deal where I will whisper to Nora, who will signal Mia with a high five and Mia will push the button. The sky is busy today, the wind brisk. I'm wearing my last clean dress that I packed on a 70 degree day in Wilmette, blue tights, a cardigan and my purple 3/4 sleeve cotton jacket. I have a warm beret but no gloves.

We skip the turn of the century observation tower that resembles a short black Eiffel Tower and right away get an eyeful at a hands-on display of animal skins and tusks. Even the faces of the tiger, the wolf and the leopards are intact, which I find sad, but doesn't bother the girls.


It's a great zoo, with cool new houses for the elephants and hippo (Flodhest is the cool Danish word). In the cold, the animals are frisky and what animals! Huge polar bears and brown bears barely ten feet away from us. Local musk ox, foxes and reindeer get us so excited, we hardly mind the start of the rain. Well, Mia has a pink umbrella, Nora and I wear hats and Dad has his big beer from the kiosk next to the skins display. What a country.


A huge tiger momma and her five kits! And an enormous tiger father! Fighting over a rack of bloody ribs for lunch! A big lion pack watching their wrestling kids! We oo and ah and take refuge from the cold wind in the steamy tropical house. Lunch is in a warm and dry cafeteria with beers on tap. I have four kinds of salad with bread; my plate looks like a rainbow compared to Nora's field of white. A hot chocolate after is warm and just sweet enough - totally satisfying. I swear I can taste the difference between sugar and the cloying aftertasty bittersweet of high fructose corn syrup.


The underground tunnel to the children's zoo has the Danish design touch - cool angular light boxes that shine strips of light on the walls and ceiling. (Have I mentioned that every immaculate bathroom has yet another beautiful sink and faucet and dual flush commode?)


In the children's zoo there are shaggy ponies and a rabbit hill with tunnels where the children can enter, then peek their heads out through clear plastic domes next to the bunnies on the grassy slopes above. It's beyond cute.


Nora falls in love with a black and white goat in the petting pen and pulls a little Heidi, hugging him and caressing his horns. I just want to stand next to his warm body to heat up my cold legs. I had bought some socks in the gift shop for my hands and actually eyed the largest of children's pj pants. The wind is picking up and an ominous cloud is covering the sun when we pull the girls away. Wait -- before we left the zoo Momma needed a bit more sustenance so we stopped at a sweet looking cafe next to the cafeteria where we had eaten lunch.

Warmth inside. A camel in his pen walked by the window and relaxed families around us enjoyed the same spot. The clouds had retreated and the afternoon light was spectacular through the high-angled windows. African spears and tribal standards hung on the walls next to the elaborately carved fireplace. Of course, as always, there were cool Danish lamps and a sweet waitress. Most Danes speak English with a British accent; our waitress had a broad Midwestern twang - she could have been an exchange student in Michigan.

But what I really want to tell you about is my sandwich - my cured tuna sandwich with preserved lemons, cucumbers, tomatoes, dill and mayonnaise. Open-faced and beautifully constructed. Phenomenal and unexpected. Beautiful. This place just has got the love, man.

Mia and I really want to show Dad and Nora the yellow palace in the park Frederiksberg Hav next to the zoo. Dad takes pictures of the surreal linden tree alle and the girls scoot down and climb back up the steep slopes. I feel like we've stepped into a Constable painting.

We try to do a lot on the way home - drop by the miniature model of Renaissance-era Copenhagen in front of the city museum, show Dad the Shooting Gallery Park behind. He gapes at the enormous wall, just like I did, and pushes the girls on a traveling rope swing. They bounce at the end and sail back, squealing.

From the window of the bus heading back to our hotel, I spy a tub filled with flip-flops outside a shoe store. The sign on the tub reads: SLUT SLURP KLAP KLOP.


The girls are tired so we go back to Dalle Valle next to the hotel for dinner. The hostess makes me smile when she shrugs at all the full tables. "People tend to stay here." It's the first time anyone we've met on this trip has been less than accommodating and kindly deferential. I'm amused at the change. We wait forever for someone to come once we get a table and the waiter does not speak enough English to get a girls a pizza but the couple next to us act as if we made their day when I oo over their sweet two year old. The baby has white blond hair and rolls around on her mom's jacket on the floor. The dad had a student's wild curls and a slightly better grasp of English than the shyly smiling young mom. We watch them through the front window wall after warm goodbyes, as they put the toddler in her push cart, wave once more and head out on their bikes in the dark.


You can find all our Danish and Swedish adventures here.

Name This 50's Era Scandinavian Musical Rom-Com Film

Here's me writing the diary entry below in our Hotel Skt. Petri room. Our south-facing view is of said church and the university district. Beats the bathtub.

Saturday night, October 3, 2010. Copenhagen, Denmark

Back in the room, after hugs and affectionate good-byes with Jens Ulrich, Nora is chipper from her long nap. She's entranced by a TV show of children doing flips, otherworldly stretches, feats with hula-hoops, singing and hip-hop dancing. It's kind of Cirque du Soleil-style extreme gymnastics meets the broad smiles and pre-teen peppiness of Irish stepdancing.

Later, the girls and I start watching a 1950's studio-bound romantic comedy musical I assume is Danish (still can't distinguish between the Scandinavian languages) starring what looks like the Northern European version of Doris Day and Rock Hudson.

A young wife asks her husband for more romantic attention, but he's distracted by his new sportscar. When she hears news that he danced at a nightclub with another woman (a racecar driver whom the husband met cute while dragging on the highway), the wife moves out of their modern newlywed townhouse into a bohemian boarding house full of flirty musicians. The landlady's daughter loves one Italian singer but he makes the moves on our young heroine, who resists him a bit and gets a job as a model at the same dress designer's studio where she used to shop. The husband, who finds his wife's whereabouts from their sympathetic cleaning lady, was unrepentantly teasing his wife by showing up for a fashion show with his racer friend when Randy and I told the girls it was time for bed.

The funny thing, every performance was so stylized and every plot point so telegraphed and cliched, I had no problem narrating the entire movie to the girls. They were engrossed even through the yucky kissing.

Afternoon with a Danish Friend

The view from Jens' fifth-floor bathroom.

Saturday, October 3, Copenhagen, Denmark.

Our rooms aren't ready at the First Hotel Skt. Petri so we leave the bags, pick up a rosemary plant gift at a shop to augment the chocolates from the Malmo factory and catch a cab out to Hellerup, a quiet residential neighborhood north of downtown Copenhagen. Flagpoles outside suburban Danish homes fly the incredibly long and thin triangular Danish banner-flag.

Jens Ulrich hails us from six flights up. His all white attic condo used to be drying rooms for the laundry that was washed in the basement. Now it's all cool modern design and snuggly thick rug comfort. Rain batters his skylight windows and drips down in hypnotic patterns as we sit and drink wine and tea around lit candles while the girls snuggle up to Dad. Nora falls deeply asleep; Mia whispers, "Can we go? I want to go," in between dozing.

The grown-ups talk the Danish character ("content with a limited world view" is Jens' verdict), how the differences between the Scandinavian countries matter less than the difference between an international outlook and a provincial view. We talk the psychological affects of good design, and how luxurious a simple space that has been designed with warmth and intelligence can feel. I recall the word "hygge," pronounced a bit like "hoo-klee" with a slight gargle in the throat, a term that I learned years ago from Sally. "Homey" or "cozy" are the closest, but still inadequate translations. It's more a national philosophy of warmth, than simply a feeling. We talk the limits of Danish freedom and the difficult-to-stabilize balance between welfare and wealth.

Jens has his own management consulting company so he feels sorely what he sees as the onerous government restrictions on growth and investments. On the way home in the rain Jens takes us by his new company building, a beautiful remodeled car repair shop surrounded by a gray gravel parking lot and stands of bamboo.

We're talking law enforcement and soccer hooligans on the drive back to the hotel when I get the strongest rush of deja vu - either I dreamed of attending a match or saw a film --no, now I remember, I was an essay from The New Kings of Non-Fiction. The writing was so vivid, I must have imagined the whole scene of drunken fights on the streets, especially the darkness, in my head. Jens was talking about Danish policemen using dialogue with suspects - mediation to get them to wake up to reason - but I could remember so well the feeling I'd internalized from reading Bill Buford's "Among the Thugs" - that the cops had seen nothing but my aftermath and I can disappear into the crowd without repercussions. It was a creepy place to be. "I must have been a soccer lout in another life," I told Randy, as our gracious friend drives us through this most civilized city, in this most civilized of countries.

Chicago Out in the First Round of OIC Voting

Saturday, October 3, 2009. Copenhagen.

Friday, our last full day in Malmo, Sweden, Mia was warm with fever but kept insisting, whispering really, from her bed that she wanted to go swimming again. We shopped souvenirs at the Lilla Torg square and had lunch at a a tiny modern sushi place. The girls drank miso soup out of paper cups.

Lilla Torg, again.

Mia didn't have the energy to go down the water slide at Aq-va-kul again more than once but Nora laughed and laughed at the bubbles and screamed with laughter riding her buoy elephant. On our way out, I lost my locker key somewhere between the pool and the locker room. A little complicated to get the girls to relay the message out to Randy who is waiting for us in the hall but eventually a nice woman from the front desk brings in a bolt cutter and says "this happens every day." She gives me a new lock and key - another "whatta country!" moment.


Outside we spot a rainbow and the famous twisty tower through a break in the trees across the street. When again, we can't hail a cab and everyone looks limp, I lead the way into a corner coffee shop called Pic Nic. The sweet and pretty woman behind the counter has no bread or rolls left but Mia gets some hot chocolate, Dad a beer, Nora milk with the all important straw and I have chai with a side of steamed milk. We sit in a lovely back room with high ceilings and a view of the green and brick courtyard, carved stone faces on the blue walls of the rear building. I'll think of this pretty space the next day when Jens Ulrick, our new Danish friend, tells us Danish law requires all workers have a view of natural light.

Back at the hotel both girls take heavy naps. While they sleep, news of the first round knockout of Chicago from the 2016 Olympics competition slips quietly into some Facebook/Twitter streams I'm clicking through. Not with a bang but a whimper is how we learn via 140 characters. Shock and disappointment, Monday morning quarterbacking. Randy updates he feels like he got a dead puppy on Christmas and continues drinking with the Fleetwood Mac roadies in the hotel bar.

An inside theory is that first round voting often extends a courtesy "thank you for applying, please try again next time" vote to an underdog and not for the first time, the front runner's votes were over-assumed. We also hear of possible resentment over a U.S. loan to the OIC.

I'm still terribly proud of my dear and his good work. I hate the interwebs. The few troll comments I make the mistake of reading say horrible things about our president.

The next morning a pilot from Florida in the workout rooms asks if he can ask me a personal question which always makes me smile 'cause I'm so tempted to say "no" for a laugh. "Do you think Obama ruined our chances with that ostentatious show and all?"

"How do you mean?" I asked, not giving him an inch, which he should have expected from the hometown I told him two minutes ago. He was talking about the television stations following Air Force One's arrival at CPH airport and the motorcade to the convention center - we'd watched yesterday morning. This blame of Obama was the very thing I feared when he got on board the Chicago bid - still, it's shocking to hear it so soon. I counter the pilot with how I'd read the president made sure via Valerie Jarrett that other heads of state were also appearing and how he cannot control his own media coverage. I also understand pilots, with their usual military backgrounds are in general a conservative lot and this gentleman hailed from red state Florida to boot. We parted friendly.

I had packed the night before because we were to get together with Jens Ulrich, an old friend of Sally and Erik's whom I had met at their place years before. I remember well his bubbly self and was looking forward to seeing him again at home and asking lots of questions about what we'd been experiencing in Scandinavia.

We have rain all day so I'm glad our plans are simple. We'll make our way to the nearby Malmo train station, then cross the channel on the Oresund bridge via the quick and smooth train, retrieve our dirty clothes from the Copenhagen Central Station baggage room and grab a taxi to our new hotel, First Hotel Skt. Petri.

On the train, the girls want me to tell them the story of Frankenstein's monster again. I cobble together a PG version from the parts of the book I read in high school, the 1973 movie Frankenstein: The True Story and James Whale's films. "And when the hand crept across the table by itself, Dr. Frankenstein cried out, 'It's alive! It's alive!'"


Mia listens wide-eyed and chimes in "Read it! Read it!" whenever I pause. She improves my story when Dr. F. sees footprints in the snow leading away from the frozen ship and for the first time decides to follow the monster instead of running away. "He wants to tell him he's sorry!" says my wise child. I concur and take the story in her compassionate direction.

Swedish Hotel Room

Friday night, October 2, 2009. Malmo, Sweden

We're watching TV in bed. Sweden's version of "America's Got Talent," is called "Talent 09" and hosted by a floppy haired blond guy in a bow tie and brown-checked suit. Mia radiates heat next to me as she sleeps.

I was lying in this same place this morning when Randy said, "Go time," as soon as he woke and flipped on the news to watch Obama's arrival in Copenhagen via Air Force One for the final pitch of the 2016 Summer Olympic host city contenders. We hung out all morning and tried to keep an eye on the TV while helping the girls bathe and dress.

It was a thrill to watch Randy and co.'s film after Michelle Obama spoke...

(Can you tell how tired we all are? Can you read the fatigue in the writing? Both girls took deep naps today and Mia never really got out of bed after hers except once to stumble confused toward the closet instead of the bathroom she needed.)

More later, although you know where this is going.

Fine Chocolates and First Time Water Sliding: Malmo, Sweden

We're taking another family trip out of the country soon, so I want to tell you the rest of our Scandinavia story before we have another tale begging to be told. If you want to read about our September trip from the beginning, go back to October 2 and then click through the newer posts. Or search for "Scandinavia."

Thursday afternoon, October 1, Malmo, Sweden

The morning of Mia's 7th birthday, we have a good buffet breakfast in the glass ceilinged atrium of the ye olde wing half-timbered wing of the Radisson SAS hotel. Lots of meats and cheeses. I giggle at the little signs with smiley faces pronouncing the health benefits of the different dishes. The ubiquitous slab of butter bears the label "Protein."



As we walk back to our 5th floor room from the elevators, we cross a passageway lined with floor to ceiling windows. We can look down on the grass and trees on the roof of the third floor and beyond to views of 17th and 18th century Malmo buildings surrounding our hotel, west to the coastal industry and the dramatic sky.

After my workout, I write in the bath while the girls play with Mia's new birthday toys. We head out to explore the town. We stop on the steps of a church to take pictures of Birthday Girl wearing her big girl smile and a ribbon to tell the world about her special day.



The girls surprise us by being thoroughly entertained in St. Peter's Church (Sankt Petri Kyrka). There's a tiny Jesus-less creche display whose black and white goats Nora likes and an amazing 15th century chapel with ceiling figures and a dark crypt stone on the floor engraved with a cartoony skull. In another corner we find a small table and chairs, paper and crayons. The girls are engrossed for twenty minutes, drawing Jesus in this airy hushed place.


St. Peter's chapel detail

We walk to Lilla Torg square, a charming cafe-lined plaza of renaissance era buildings. We check menus, head down the cobblestone block and find Gozzip, full of Swedes, where the girls politely eat their mono-meal of pasta and milk and Mom enjoys the potatoes and carrots under my mayonnaise-sauce smothered pollack. As in many Scandinavian restaurants, a table to the side offers self-service water, salad, soup and bread. Even the humblest storefronts with counter service offer their "fast food" on plates with silverware. Little of the casual waste we are accustomed to here in America where single-use napkins, paper plates and excessive food containers are the norm.
Lilla Torg

We grab a taxi to the Malmo Chokladfabrik (chocolate factory) (since 1888!) which turns out more modest than the Willy Wonka meets Steampunk wonderland I was imagining. "Are there tours?" I ask the woman behind the counter. "Well, you can look through that window," she replies. We look up to see three women molding truffles in a kitchen. But the cafe area has display cases of old chocolate bar molds and cool dipping utensils and beautiful antique packaging adorned with faded yet elaborate flowers and rosy baby faces.

When Mia chooses two fresh Madagascar truffles (the Swedes call them pralines) from the immaculate case of treats, the kind saleswoman in an Oompa Loompa t-shirt retrieves them with white gloved hands and serves them to Mia on a three inch round silver tray.

It's raining and this has been the time Nora usually crashes so we divide and conquer, Mia and I taking our suits to Aq-va-kul, an indoor swim park with a name that plays on the Swedish phrase for "what fun." (Sorry the Aq-va-kul website is only in Swedish; click on the "Pa Aq Va Kul" tab to find a video with a catchy and funny song in English: "Water can be found in orchid!/ Water can be found in you!") I'd discovered the pool on a web page about children's activities in Malmo.

A lock costs $4, towel rental is $2, kids swim for $7 and adults for $10. The locker room in clean but not brand new. Mia giggles at the gauntlet of spray, disinfectant I assume, directed at our feet as we walk to the showers. The air is warm in the shower room. The motion controlled shower heads take a minute to figure out but we are game.

The pool itself wowed us right away. A zero depth entry plus tiled little bridges and walks curving around hot tubs and a circular river. Colorful floats made of buoy strength foam and shaped like sharks, crosses, elephants, cars and tubes. Fountains and giant underwater jets go off at unexpected times. A curvy slide. In the second room, a waterfall cascades in front of a small circular grotto with lights and seats. My favorite part of the pool was a circular alcove where jets made the water bubble like bad champagne. Just past it was a plastic covered passageway to the pool outside. I couldn't believe we were going to dip outside in this weather that reminded me more of November than early October, but keeping our shoulders low in the warm water, Mia and I moved past the plastic sheets and out in the cool air. It's Sweden, after all! They're polar bears here. The sensation was lovely - the cool air on our faces only making the water feel warmer. People in fall coats walked by on the sidewalk just past the fence and a few dead leaves floated on the surface.

Back inside I encouraged Mia to try the water slide. I did a trial run myself and the slope was so gentle, I nearly stalled a couple of times. I promise to catch Mia at the bottom but there was no need - she came down grinning and hooting. She slid over and over again, sometimes sitting cross-legged and spinning around and once landing with her arms in the air, making jaunty peace signs. My funny funny dear seven year old.

Yesterday she asked if I was ready for her to be seven and I said I had to be - it was sort of like jumping on a roller coaster - I was out of control so I might as well enjoy the ride. This morning when I woke, her age was perfect. Six suddenly seemed too young for this tall independent girl.

I'd promised Randy we would be back by six but cabs were not coming down this street just west of the shopping district. We walked to a busier intersection and finally hailed one. We had lots of stories to tell Daddy and he had for us as well.

"The wind blew Nora ten feet in the air!" and other less dramatic tales of nice daddy daughter times. We whisper to each other how sweet the girls are when we have one alone. The four of us walk a single block to a small trattoria where men stand at the pocket bar under a line of silver-lidded beer steins and every table but ours is full.

"Prego, prego," says the proprietor. The smells are wonderful. The girls play with Mia's new birthday ponies, Randy has a Carlsburg or three. My caprese salad and pesto salmon are very good but the delicious potatoes once again the stars of the show. The typical Swedish touches of jarred olives and oversoft white asparagus are mystifying.

The skies are dramatic in all kinds of ways here tonight - the clouds are pitch black against a sky that retains just enough light to remain the darkest shade of blue.

You Only Turn Seven in Sweden Once

Thursday morning, October 1. Malmo, Sweden

Mia is cooing and puttering over her new Swedish toys. She's wearing her PJ's (it's 8 a.m.) and a gold crown and a ribbon proclaiming "Birthday Girl" taped to her chest.

Nora plays along. She hasn't had a trace of ego during all the planning and discussion in the days leading up to Mia's overseas birthday ("I'm just worried there won't be cards or toys," Mia confessed, as if we were traveling to a desert island rather than a fertile and highly civilized one.) Nora's wide-eyed wonder without thought for herself broke my heart a tiny bit so I told her last night, "We'll make just as much fuss over you for your birthday!" and you could see the idea dawning on her.

We're in a hotel room in Malmo (they pronounce it with a gargled "r" sound in there, somehow), Sweden. Our room overlooks an anonymous mid-century low-rise wing of the same hotel, but below, there is a pretty courtyard with conifers and lavender and trees going bare. Winter is closer here. Our clothes are too light for the wind off the ocean. We all have coughs except for the birthday girl.

I only have one glove. In the interest of time, in deference to your patience and with all due respect to sanity, I will refrain from describing my fit yesterday morning over the lost purple glove as we packed to leave lovely, beloved Copenhagen and the sweet comforts of the Guldsmeden Bertrams hotel for the unknowns of Sweden. Our Bertram room had a huge bath with organic soaps and lotions, an organic honor bar and a balcony with sights of high pitched red tile roofs and the sweet green backyards of our neighbors. Below was the Bertrams courtyard and its thick willow bushes, teak chairs and de rigeur heat lamps (every cafe has them as people cling to sitting outdoors - red blankets printed with the cafe name are often folded over each seat as well.)

My favorite place to read and write in the Bertrams after the kids were asleep.

I wept when we were checking out in the lobby after Mia signed the guestbook with a huge full page flourish and two dragonflies, the translation of Guldsmeden. Pimella, Meta and Christina were the helpful beauties at the front desk, holding our heavy gold keys while were were out and offering patient advice on bike routes and bus fares.

Now we cab it the few blocks to the Central Station with all our luggage (minus one pink monkey suitcase that we left at the airport on the day we arrived. We don't tell the girls it has probably been blown up in Obamafeber security.) Our cab fare costs more than the quick train ride over the strait to Malmo. Strangely, no customs, although security guards walk the aisles, asking all passengers if the suitcases overhead are theirs and checking abandoned plastic bags.

The train is swift, the water views are pretty and we're in Sweden in 20 minutes or so. Amazing graffiti on the last kilometers into the station. Giant cartoon faces, spectacular tags. The girls have gotten used to pay toilets by now. I'm still amazed at how clean and cute they are and how sweet and professional the staff. We hike a few blocks to the SAS Raddisson, part glassy modern, part 1600 era half-timbered ye olde.

In the main tourist square we have pasta (by this time I'm ready to throw in the towel and just search for Italian restaurants all over ScandInavia - luckily they are everywhere.) The waiter is in no rush to hurry us along and Nora spills her second glass of milk all over her jeans. She cries loudly and I hug her and shush in her ear. I hadn't had my run.

But Dad puts the girls down for a 4 p.m. nap while I walk down to the fortuitous party shop we passed earlier. Banners, balloons, a cellophane fountain to hang from the ceiling and way too many little paper tchotchkes on toothpicks to stick in her cake. I get directions to a toy store, refreshingly Barbie-Dora-Disney free. Sweet Findus the Cat, Prinzessa Lillefree, Barbamama and Barbapapa are the rage here.

I stand transfixed in front of a Christmas crafts display at a hobby store. I think Sally mentioned the all-out decorations Danes put up for the season. I can suddenly understand. When you have hours of darkness to kill in modest apartments, making cunning little snow people seems the perfect way to spend a winter afternoon in Sweden.

They call this the Princess Cake. It would have been perfect for Mia but I miscalculated that she would prefer chocolate. Oh, well.

Olympic Cakes and the Round Tower

Was it presentient they gave Chicago the zero?

Wednesday, September 30. Copenhagen, Denmark

Monday night was bad. Randy went out for drinks with the clients and I couldn't sleep, then when I could, he knocked on the door at two a.m., wasted, and I couldn't sleep again, worried about both of us being grumpy and irritable with our girls who deserve better in the morning.

I had just decided to ignore his pre-bender promise to "take the girls in the morning so you can get a run" and detach with love and take them out for a ride on the Ferris Wheel when I drifted off.

A nice plan but his snores in the a.m. wouldn't let me leave well enough alone and I yelled, "You promised!" And took my run around the lakes. Big swans, bright sun, strange black and white ducks and glimpses into woodsy backyards with roofed fire pits. Cool in the shadows.

I grabbed a vegetarian Vietnamese sandwich on French bread for lunch with what I assume is a birch beer soda. The bottle has a cute gnome on the label that I want to show Mia. After a shower, when I meet Randy and the girls at the Ferris Wheel just north of Central Station, he looks wiped out and pissed off and Nora is exhausted and underdressed for the cold wind. I send them home and perky Mia and I go exploring.

We stop at a tacky tourist store so she can get little gifties for her classmates and I can check out the Royal Family on postcards.


"How about this place for ice cream?" I ask her and my wise one says, "There's no scoops taken out of it. That means people aren't buying it because it isn't good." I look at the untouched mound of gelato and give Mia a big laugh and a kiss. We stroll on until I find La Glace, the famous 130 year old cake and sweets shop. Cakes fashioned into the numbers 2,0,1 and 6 dress up the front windows, each number representing one of the four bid cities. Little marzipan athletes compete in summer events on another set of cakes. Adorable.

A nice woman sees us eyeing the cakes and advises us to go in. We tell her we are on the hunt for good ice cream and she kindly directs us to Paradise across the way, which turns out to have fabulous organic gelato with plenty of telling scoops taken out.

We amble from square to square, stopping at windows we like, ("How many brides can you count, Mia? Now how many when you include the headless ones?") laughing at a drunkard's song to a piece of dog poop in the street. A Spanish jam session serenades us from their cafe seats. We pass a stand of Mediterranean treats; a vat of boiling sugar waits to bathe almonds.


Mia has plenty of energy to climb the Round Tower. We have a few magic moments here - the narrow bricks curving under our feet in a constant ramp that seems to transport us. We're three flights up before I know it. Tiny child-sized alcoves with rounded tops carved out of the stucco walls must have been used for lamps. Now the walls are white-washed, all ancient smoke long gone. The outer curves have larger spaces with seats. Light streams in from the large windows - it's a wonder of simplicity and atmosphere.

We only peek through a door at the church attached to the tower (the entrance is one curve up) but the former library space above the church (another two curves up) has been transformed into an airy gallery with minimalist shop and cafe. Gorgeous and so Danish, but the modern art that resembles children's work without the joy scares Mia.

More curves up, past a funny old loo and the bell room to finally reach steps and the roof. Tycho Brahe had a gold nose and studied the stars here. The heavy apparatus required horses to haul it to the top. I also tell Mia the story of a lazy king who wants to ride rather than walk to the top. A beautiful view but windy. Mia is cold. Students hang out here; the tower is open until ten in case you want to stargaze a little yourself.

It was the climb itself, the circling the center, through the blocks of light streaming in that enchanted me more than this payoff view of the city. "Thank you," I tell the ticket man when we reach the bottom. "That was fun and beautiful."

As we descended, we could hear echos of a band playing in the square below. Now we see they are Hare Krishna sitting on a blanket on the ground. I am transported and ready to convert. Tinkly bells, strumming guitars and a harmonium toy piano with hand-worked bellows accompany the six singers in a lilting chant that I completely understand as the basis for a transcendent spirituality. Mia has to drag me away.

Our last stop is Candy Planet, not a planned visit, but Mia is so pleased to be able to scoop up her choices from the dozens of bins into a little bag that the experience is the first she tells Dad about when we return.

Our last dinner with Ken, who the girls call "Mr. Ken" and Randy calls "Tex," before he flies home in the morning, is at a French bistro on Vaemedamsvej called Cafe Viggo. After a lovely afternoon of exploring with my dear companion of seven years, the day is balanced out with an overlong dinner, overtired parents and kids up way past their bedtimes. Tex is a trooper but I don't know how Job could have stood the never-ending Movie Game as we wait and wait for our entrees (delicious as my butterfish in cream sauce with carrot souffle eventually is.)

Mia drew this face on the butcher paper that covered our tablecloth while we waited for dinner. She copied the image from a cartoon painted on the wall and imitated the emotion when her food arrived.

"When you think of a movie, no one can take a turn until you say the movie clue," instructs Mia which means the grownups sit in suspension, too tired to fight the rules, while the children look upward for inspiration, fingers to chin. The restaurant was described as cartoon-themed French, which sounds kid-friendly, right? And it really was, to a fault, perhaps. The super-kind waiter goes in the back to check if they have pasta when the menu (three choices of starters and five of entrees scrawled on a chalkboard) fails to ring any bells with our children. (See note above about hanging up my dreams of exposing foreign culture through cuisine to my kids)

The chef comes out of the kitchen twice to confirm: "Any meat?" "No, thank you." "Cheese?" "No, just butter."

What appears is a gorgeous dish of fettuccine with a vegetable studded ratatouille sauce, topped with a melty pat of the famous butter. Absolutely delectable and absolutely intolerable to my little demons.

"Yucky!" Mia says before being hushed, then cries at being hushed. The girls eat bread and butter and we sneak delicious bites of their abandoned pasta, spreading some noodles on a plate as if sampled, in hopes the chef won't feel rejected.

A Family Reunited, Plus One

Gefion Fountain

Monday, September 28. Copenhagen, Denmark.

The day dawned rainy but the skies cleared into pretty tattered clouds in time for us to return to Plan A. Randy would do the final clean up at his work, then meet us after I biked the girls to the Little Mermaid statue and the changing of the guard and returned the bike that was due by one.

All worked like clockwork although I could feel Nora's cold in my lungs and had to breath through my nose to keep cooler air out of my throat. I smile as I pedal, despite this. What a city. What a country.

As I take our last bike ride through the city, I worry the puddles will splash up at the girls from my rear tire but they are happy to be out of the hotel room and sing "Potato Butt, Potato Butt!" until the song is interrupted at a stop light by their roller-coaster screams. I look behind me and the plastic rain cover that they refused at the beginning of the ride has flopped down over them. They punch at it and scream happily while the Danish man on the bike behind us smiles.

I do slip in the wet at the Radhaus though, second guessing a yellow light and nearly take a tumble off the bike. I manage to stay upright, straddling my fallen Wonder while the trailer scarcely shivers.

"Are you alright??" asks the Danish woman who rushes to help. "What happened?"

"I stopped too quickly," I reply and explaining to her and knowing she understands as so many of these intelligent Danes (more Nobel Prizes per capita than any other nation, same with candy consumption) is as comforting as her question.

We pass the closed Tivoli Gardens on Hans Christian Anderson Boulevard and catch glimpses of the pleasures waiting inside for our next trip. Ny Carlsberg Glyptoteck has a mask exhibit from the late nineteenth centure to Picasso. Sally said the garden cafe inside is one of her favorite places in Copenhagen. Will we get here later?

Near the Parliment building, Daddy passes us in a taxi and waves. Later, at lunch he'll tell us he thought, "Why that Danish woman looks a lot like my wife." We'll boat together later after lunch in this canal we're passing now. The captain will navigate the low riding tour vessel under a bridge that clears mere inches overhead and to the sides, then negotiate a pivoting turn in a corner only slightly wider than the boat.

"It's a Willy Wonka city," I tell Randy and Ken, his coworker who joins us in the afternoon. "We've got the boat ride through the scary tunnel and a candy factory and even a glass elevator." The last was a tiny three-person round capsule of windows that the girls and I rode at Duckling, Randy's work. It rose through the middle of the spiral staircase all the way to the top of the building, then dropped us with a bouncy thrill on the second floor.

But we aren't there yet. We're still on the bike, heading for our mermaid. The rain spits a little but the girls are tucked in and I have my warm gray beret. I'm wearing a dark dress and textured tights and my purple coat and my lovely Naot Mary Janes so I'm feeling comfy and Euro.

We pass the Royal Theater that displays a banner for the West Side Story Suite ballet - oh for more days and a trusty babysitter.

It's 11:30, half an hour to see Den Lille Havfrue before the changing of the guard at the queen's residence. I plow up to the surprisingly beautiful Kastellet park - a star-shaped set of ancient ramparts are now grassy hills surrounded by a picturesque moat. The magnificent statue of the goddess Gefion plowing the channel between Sweden and Denmark with the four sons she transformed into oxen has Mia begging to get out.

"Look at the snake!" I tell her. Its fanged head is bigger than mine. When we pass the fountain on the way back, water will be gushing from the oxen's heels as Gefion whips them on. Spectacular.

Further, further, the girls are cold and asking when we'll get there and we put on coats and hats and gloves and when finally beyond the huge National Geographic Explorer ship and a curve, I spy her, tiny figure on a rock near the shore, I burst into tears. I'm so happy and relieved and she looks so small and defenseless and the movie got it all wrong cause she failed to win her prince's love.

As we get closer we can see her face is forever turned toward the sea and away from the hordes of tourists taking her picture. Mia climbs down onto the smooth and wet rocks with my helping hand because she wants to get close to the girl.

We go back to Amalienborg Palace and watch a few minutes of the black hatted soldiers presenting arms and clicking their heels. The guard who waits in the rain to be replaced stands in front of a a tiny guard house that resembles a giant upright red crayon - round with a pointed roof and most enchanting and Danish of all, tiny heart-shaped cutouts on the side.

Goodbye bike! Goodbye Wonder, the Amazing Rental Bike, with your single powerful gear and your ratty little trailer! Thank you for your faithful service and speed and ease. Riding you showed me so much of this magical city, up close and personal, and made our last three days an adventure. Thank you for the warming and steady exercise, that stirred my jetlagged blood and cheered my foreigner's heart. Thanks for the intimate views of the city at our own pace. Thanks for floating us past anonymous blocks whose beauty would be too subtle and length too arduous for my little ones.

We take the bus from the Central Station to Kongens Nytorv (costs 21 Kroner, about $4, free transfers within two hours) then I carry Nora to Randy's work. We meet up for lunch with Randy and Ken, who's been my husband's great help through the four day sleepless marathon of cutting and recutting. Ken's easy-going, relaxed about my sometimes demanding girls and funny.

"We must have seemed like machine-animals to the Danish," he said over lunch at an Italian cafe on Nyhaven, the canal-side street lined with bars and restaurants that must be Copenhagen's most visited spot. "We trashed their rooms and broke their espresso machine and never stopped working."

"Did you have sleep deprivation effects?" I ask.

Ken says, "I had to avoid soft surfaces. I would pass out."

When I tell him my wallet story, I include the bit about asking the help of the woman at the front desk to translate the recorded message on the art museum's phone. She had listened for herself, then told me the museum would be open on Sunday, but no one would be answering the phone. Ken says, "that would never happen in America. We'd answer the phone but you'd never get your wallet."

Everyone's elated after lunch. The girls get ice cream. Nora's cone is topped with unsweetened whipped cream that I lick off when she says she doesn't like it. The richness catches me off guard. "I'm licking whipped fat," I tell Randy and Ken. Their adult and familiar companionship feels good.

Randy says, "I finally feel like I'm on vacation" and asks if I want to stay a few more days. Sweeeeeet! I'm jumping up and down and hugging him. Who knows where we'll sleep. The original plan was to leave town before the Olympic delegates arrived since they had booked the town solid. Perhaps they'll leave by Sunday so we'll find a room when we return from Sweden.


Randy and Ken and the girls and I take a boat tour. Fun and interesting, but a bit long for the girls who only want to go back to the toy store I had promised after a visit without any purchase. I'm amused at how the tour guide describes the Nyhaven channel as being dug "by Swedish prisoners of war" with a tone that is so unapologetic it approaches pride. We see the mermaid from another angle, an eye-popping immense yacht that looks like it was designed by Donald Trump for Captain Nemo, the opera house, the new "Black Diamond" library and a crazy twisty church steeple in Christianshavns that Ken wants to climb. He has the opposite of Randy's fear of heights. He does it, too, in a couple of days, climbs the tiny metal staircase that spirals around the outside of the steeple with barely room for one person, let alone the other brave tourists coming down the opposite direction.


After the tour and a visit to a spotless underground pay toilet, it takes us two cabs and one wrong destination before we're all reunited at Gammeltorv Square.

We have dinner at a generic buffet on the Stroget (once again, the wait staff treats us as gently as loved family) and cab home. The girls walk with us through the rain to get dessert of candy at the quickie mart across the street from the hotel.

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.

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.

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."

A Setback and A Rescue

Sunday morning, September 27. Copenhagen, Denmark.

This morning's breakfast in the room is carrots scrubbed in the sink, cold miso soup, the end of a chocolate bar and a few bites of the tart apple we started yesterday.

I'm sure we could go downstairs and ask for breakfast to be billed to our room (there's no room service but there's supposed to be a buffet breakfast in the lovely lounge and courtyard - we have yet to get out in time to see this.)

People have been kind and generous - the woman at the sushi restaurant where I discovered my wallet was gone last night asked if I wanted to take the food and bring the money back later. I should not have refused her kindness but I was struck low and dull with shock. Aware that panic and tears may be on the way.

I avoided the panic but explaining our situation to the girls was hard. I probably shouldn't have referred to the Little Match Girl again.
.................................................

Dad just walked in like Christmas with 7-11 donuts and apple juice for the girls and purple tulips and a passion-fruit (our wedding cake flavor!)/orange yogurt for me. He brings his red laptop with the time (2:39 a.m. Chicago time) and email and the news.

And happy relief just to see him, alive, handsome even with red eyes and four days' beard, my helpmate and husband. (Remember that my cell phone was dead?) He had worked straight through for four days and nights, catnapped on a couch at work and now just walked the 2.5 kilometers home, my romantic husband, his first real look at this beautiful city at dawn. He stopped for coffee at Hotel d'Angleterre in the beautiful Kongens Nytorv square and followed the Stroet to Radhuspladsen, past the shuttered-til-Halloween Tivoli and down Vesterbrogade to our hotel. Reminds me of a walk from the Gold Coast to Wicker Park - from tony shops to working class artsy 'hood.

Left, right, left, right, my soldier back from the wars.

Dad stepping on the ubiquitous cobblestones on his way home to us.

Dad stopped for coffee at the Hotel d'Angleterre on the way home after his last night (of four!) at work.

They give you cookies with your coffee. What a city. What a country.

Our Story Thus Far

On our way! There was not so much smiling on the trip home. That sad story later.


Did you know these days you can watch a view from a camera mounted on the front of the plane? Either terrifying or reassuring, I suppose.

What was most disconcerting was how the view of the runway swayed back and forth in the a way undetectable from the side windows. I always pictured commercial landings to be straight in, like on a train track. Apparently there's a deal of aiming involved.

On the ground. We're in Denmark!

I loves me my maps.

As soon as we arrived at the hotel, Randy went right to work.

While Randy slaved away, this was the kind of thing the girls and I were eyeing. Town Hall and statue of men blowing an Ur horn.