The Things Kids Say

This morning, Lilja and I went to wake up Max. As I normally do, I talk to Max a bit to start him waking up and then I lay Lilja down on his bed so she can do the rest. Today, she crawled over to him and lay her head down next to him. Max slowly opened his eyes and he said:

"Hello Rainbow Dynamite!"

I said "Rainbow Dynamite? Where did you hear that phrase?"

He said, "I just made it up."

Ken

Happy Anniversary!

Happy Anniversary to my Mom and Dad! They celebrate their 40th wedding anniversary today!

They are honoring the occasion by having dinner with my brother and sister and their families at the Mission Inn in Riverside, California (which is where they have lived in their current house since 1983). Leysia and I like the Mission Inn a lot because its a beautiful place with quirky architecture and an interesting history but mainly because that's where we got married in 1996!

If you have never been to the Mission Inn, it is worth the trip!

We wish we could be there to celebrate today! Mom and Dad have fun and here's wishing you many happy anniversaries in the future!

Ken

Catching Up: My Birthday

I turned 37 this past Thursday and had a fun time celebrating my birthday here in Denmark.

The morning of my birthday started with Lilja singing me her version of "Happy Birthday" which consists of her saying the phrase "Happy... To You" over and over again in her cute sing-song voice. After getting ready, we then stopped by our local bakery to order a Danish birthday cake for my birthday party. This was followed quickly (well, after dropping the kids off at school) by my Danish language class singing me the Danish birthday song, once Leysia revealed to the class that it was my birthday. Our teacher, Charlotte, wrote the words of the first verse on the board and then led the class in singing the song for me, which was quite nice!

That afternoon Leysia and I headed to the local shopping mall to buy me a birthday present and round out the shopping for my birthday party (we had bought most of the food for the party the day before). I ended up buying two books that I've been interested in: "Velocity" by Dean Koontz (Warning: previous link should not be traversed by those adverse to hyperbole) and "The Algebraist" by Iain M. Banks. Banks is an insanely great writer of science fiction and I highly recommend all of his books. Despite currently also reading "Olympos" by Dan Simmons, I've started Velocity because Koontz stories are easy to read fast; his stories are never all that deep, but he knows how to maintain suspense and he knows how to scare people, and I like him for that. Dan Simmons is a staggeringly good author; indeed, most authors would be satisfied to be as successful as Simmons has been in just ONE genre; Simmons has been successful writing horror, science fiction, AND fantasy stories and his latest two books, Ilium and Olympos, are simply put, masterpieces.

But, ANYWAY, later that evening, my Mom, Dad, and my nephew Anthony set up a video conference with me (via Apple's iChat and Apple's iSight) and sang Happy Birthday to me from across the Atlantic! It was nice to hear their voices and to let Max and Lilja say and wave "hi" to their Grandma and Grandpa! My parents even got to see me open the birthday card they sent me since I simply held it up to the camera as I opened it. My Dad says that buying the iSight to allow us to have video conferences while we are here in Aarhus has been the best purchase my Mom and he have ever made! :-)

On Friday, we had a birthday party at our apartment that was attended by the ever-present and always welcome, Niels Olof Bouvin, by Martin Brynskov and his family, and, of course, by Ilene (who is about to leave us after helping us settle in for the past month!!). Martin came to visit us in Boulder along with Niels Olof, a few months ago when they attended a conference held at CU Boulder. Martin has been unbelievably helpful with getting us settled here in Aarhus, from scouting out schools for the kids before we arrived, to providing advice on cell phones (which will be the subject of an upcoming blog), to loaning us a cell phone (and purchasing a SIM card for it) for Ilene to use on her big trip through Europe. Martin has a lovely family including his wife, Cecilia, his daughter Anna, and his son, David. Max and Lilja had a lot of fun playing with Anna and David!

In fact, a really funny thing happened just after our guests arrived. Anna was dressed very nicely for the party and one aspect of her outfit, her poncho, reminded Lilja that she also has a poncho. All on her own, Lilja went into our room, opened up the closet, found her poncho, and returned with it, asking for it to be put on over her dress. This led to the following picture...



...which I think can easily be used to define the word "cute".

Leysia and Ilene created a wonderful dinner that started with rolls and a pinon salad. This was followed by shrimp pasta accompanied by green beans and a grilled eggplant and tomato salad. Finally, the Danes sang the Danish birthday song for me and we then had the cake ordered from the bakery the previous day:



I had an excellent time and I really appreciate Niels Olof, Martin, and his family coming to celebrate with me!

I also wanted to say thank you to my family for all of the electronic birthday greetings and to my Mom and Dad, in particular, who sent a very nice care package that contained a "Happy Birthday" banner that we put up for the party.

Thanks to all for giving me a birthday to remember!

Catching Up: The Paper Museum

As I suspected, our life is way too complicated to post regularly. I don't know how the "A-List" Bloggers do it; I'm too busy living my life to blog it each day!

However, I will attempt to catch up every now and then.

One step towards doing that is documenting (briefly) a trip we made to the Paper Museum in Silkeborg.



We found this museum quite by accident. We were actually on our way back to our car, ready to leave, when we noticed that the town's performing arts center was open and we went in to prepare the kids for the drive back to Aarhus (i.e. take Max to the bathroom). Inside (in addition to the bathrooms) we found a cafe that was busy serving a late lunch to people and the paper museum.

The paper museum is situated where Silkeborg's paper factory used to be and this was the site that produced all of the paper used in the creation of Danish money for quite some time (that responsibility has since moved to Copenhagen) in addition to other paper products, specializing in the creation of paper with watermarks, such as the one shown below.



The museum was filled with examples of the types of paper created by the factory as well as all the machinery needed to make the paper itself. Indeed the page above was created by Max, as shown below:



The pool of water in front of Max in the picture above is filled with cotten fibers; those fibers set quickly (something that needs to be seen to be believed) when the tablet is lifted out of the water. You gently shake the tablet back and forth to get rid of excess water and then move the tablet to a table with a specially fitted hose in the middle of it. Once the tablet is placed on top of this hose, you push a peddle under the table to turn on a vacuum (powered by the pumps below) that finishes the setting of the fibers and causes the watermark to appear.



The watermark appears because the bottom of the tablet contains a metal plate with the watermark cut into it. When the vacuum is applied, the fibers above the watermark "hole" are pulled down further than the rest of the fibers causing the watermark to appear in the paper itself. After the watermark has been created, the tablet is placed upside down on a thick piece of wool where the newly created piece of paper is transferred out of the tablet.



Here's a video of Max making a piece of paper starting at a point where he has just pushed the peddle to create the watermark until the paper has been transferred to begin the process of drying.



Once they have created a stack of 100 of these things (with two pieces of paper each) they are apparently pressed to remove any excess water still remaining in the pages and then the paper is placed either in a drying machine or hung up to dry.

We found the process of making paper fascinating and really enjoyed our unplanned trip to the museum!

This Way To...

Hi,

During a day trip yesterday, we spotted this sign:



It essentially says "turn left to go to Sweden and Norway". We were travelling through the city of Frederikshavn ("Frederik's Harbor") which is on the east cost of Jutland and is a place where you can catch ferries to Sweden and Norway.

We were returning from visiting Skagen, pronounced SKAY-EN (sort of), which I will write about later today (hopefully). If you visit the map above, our trip took us from Aarhus through Randers, Hobro, Aalborg, Frederikshavn, Skagen, and back again. The trip one way takes about 3 hours.

More later!

Ken

Our First Day Trip

After visiting the open air market, we took a road trip through the Danish country side and visited (sort of) the towns of Skanderborg and Silkeborg. (The first map below should be placed to the left of the first map.)



We started by travelling soutwest from Aarhus to get to the town of Skanderborg. It looked like a nice town but we didn't get to see much of it because it had been invaded by a music festival and closed to automobile traffic as a result. Instead, we got to see a lot of tents and just a glimpse of the lake that is visible on the first map above.





The tents were there because the music festival lasts for a week or two and people camp out in order to attend the whole thing. The city provides a bus service that goes between the festival and the tents and this keeps the attendees from trying to drive, which is a good thing because we saw a lot of tipsy attendees getting off a bus, beers in hand! (I thought it was a nice juxtaposition of the Dane's ability to party while also being very organized; speaking of parties, this morning, all of Denmark was celebrating their 4-1 football victory over England . It was an especially hard day for the English foreign exchange student, Matthew, who attends our Danish language class: The German students couldn't stop smirking at him, and the Danes were letting him have it!)

Since we couldn't actually get into the city, we decided to visit Skanderborg at a later date. Therefore, after dodging a tent or two, we headed northwest to Silkeborg, enjoying the beautiful countryside (see below) and the multiple lakes that exist between the two towns.



Lilja especially enjoyed the scenery, as shown below:



When we got to Silkeborg, we discovered a festival of some type that seemed to be related to rowing and/or drinking beer.



We spent some time watching the boat races and eating a snak and then walked around a bit. During our brief walk, we ran into the (unfortunately closed) Silkeborg museum.



However, the true jewel of the day was Silkeborg's paper museum whose description I must delay to the next post (since its way past my bedtime). Then, I will have to find time to blog about Tivoli, our day at the beach, Max and Lilja's school (synopsis: "They love it!"), and Ilene's second trip to Copenhagn! (I wish life would take a break, so I could catch up in my task of documenting it.)

Stay tuned!

Ken

Open Air Market (Continued)

As mentioned in the previous post, we really enjoyed going to the open air market in Århus.

The first thing to say about it is "It's big!" It reminded me of the famous farmer's market in San Luis Obispo that I've had the pleasure of attending twice in my life. The one in Aarhus has lots of vendors, lots of food, lots of flowers, and lots of people.

Leysia was blown away by the number of choices she had as well as the prices! She was easily able to stock up on what we needed for the coming week (with a few exceptions, of course, but a quick trip to a grocery store filled in the gaps). We stocked up on vegatables and fruit and the pictures below do an inadequate job of conveying the scale and activity that surrounds you as you move around the market.









One vendor specialized in salt and seemed able to make several different types of salt using the salt shown here as a base. (That's just a guess, I didn't have time to talk to him while keeping an eye on the kids while Leysia shopped.) He had a big scoop that he would use to put the salt into bags, which Max thought was pretty cool.





Of all the flowers on display, I liked these roses the best...



... but, as we said in the previous post, there were plenty to choose from.





Finally, the market also featured textiles of various sorts, including both raw materials and finished products. Leysia especially liked the work of this vendor, and plans to buy one of her table clothes before we leave Aarhus.



We look forward to making many trips to this market throughout our stay here in Aarhus!

Ken

Open Air Market (Intro)

Just a quick post to say that we went to the open air market in Århus near (or in?) Ingerslevs Plads. I thought it was neat but Leysia LOVED it! Looks like we'll be coming here to get our groceries every week since this market is open year round!

We took a lot of pictures but I only have time to post four. We'll do a longer post on the market later.

As you can see, this market has plenty of veggies...



... and cheese!



It also has beautiful flowers.



Here's a close up that Leysia did on one bunch that she really liked.



Unfortunately, we bought a bunch of flowers only to discover that our apartment doesn't have a vase to put them in! We've improvised with large beer glasses for now and we'll have to by a vase or two soon.

We're going to have a quick lunch and then head out in the car to explore the countryside around Aarhus.

Have a good saturday!

Ken

Busy Week

Apologies for not updating the blog this week... we've been busy!

Leysia and I are taking a course called "Denmark Today" that has Danish language instruction in the morning and Danish cultural activities in the afternoon. In addition, our language teacher is assigning one to two hours of homework each day. Between that class and taking care of the kids once we get home, I've had almost no time to update the blog.

So, lets do some catching up.

First, the kids and Ilene have been having a fun week, seeing Aarhus, going to Tivoli (a local amusment park that just had its 100th birthday... indeed, Tivoli in Copenhagen just had its 150th birthday! Take that, Disneyland, a relative newcomer at the age of 50!), and exploring the paths through the parks near our house. Max and Lilja keep Ilene so busy during the day that she needs a break by the time Leysia and I get home, so the other day after dinner, Leysia and I took the kids on a walk through the forest, past the Queen's house, through a beautiful park, stopped at an impressive World War 1 monument, and then down to the beach to look for cool rocks. Yes, all of this is within walking distance of our apartment! Of course, we were stupid enough to forget our camera (typical) and spent a good part of the walk saying "We should have brought our camera!". We have promised ourselves to do the trek again and to take lots of pictures to share with you at a later date.

Second, our language class is good and we are learning a lot. Indeed, I can now say "Jeg verstår ikke Dansk" which means "I do not understand Danish." Leysia and I are in the same class with ten other students who are all in their early 20s and who (I suspect) think its kind of funny to be in a class with two people who are so old that they actually have real jobs and two kids. The students come into the class (we start at 9 AM) all tired from too much partying, and we come into class all tired from helping Ilene start her day with the kids which involves getting the kids up, getting them fed, getting them dressed, changing Lilja's diapers at least once and sometimes twice, and particpating in whatever games Max has dreamed up for that morning. (Never mind that we also have to get ourselves ready as well!) Still, the class is fun and we have a good teacher (also younger than us) who speaks Danish really really fast. :-)

Third, our afternoons. The cultural activities that occur in the afternoon for Denmark Today have so far been a bit of a mixed bag. We had a bus trip through Aarhus that was good in pointing out some of the more interesting aspects of the city, including that the Ring Road that we use to get back and forth from our apartment to the department and our language classes was actually conceived and first built by the Vikings around the city center. The Vikings felt (I'm paraphrasing here) that transportation should occur outside of the city, allowing the rest of the city to be traversed on foot. We had an excellent lecture on Danish politics by a 31 year old man, who was first elected to the Danish parliament when he was 27. The Danish parliament has 179 members from 7 different political parties. 37% of the members of parliament are women and 18% of the members are under the age of 35. The seven different parties in order from left wing to right wing are: the Unity List, the Socialist Peoples Party, the Social Democrats, the Radical Liberals (neither liberal or radical according to the speaker), the Conservative Peoples Party (just right of middle), the Liberals (more conservative than the Conservative Peoples Party), and finally the Danish Peoples Party. I was reminded during his speech that the US has got its political colors mixed up with respect to the rest of the world, where the color red is associated with left wing / liberal views and the color blue is associated with right wing / conservative views. Ah well, we call soccer by a different (wrong?) name as well! :-)

My use of the phrase "mixed bag" above comes from the most recent activity that we attended which was supposed to be a lecture about the influence that H.C. Andersen and his fairy tales have had on Danish culture. Unfortunately, the scheduled speaker could not make it due to illness and so they had to get a last minute replacement. The man who spoke instead presented a lecture on H.C. Andersen's use of the Arabesque, a lecture he admitted he had last given to a conference of his peers (i.e. people up on Danish literary criticism)! Leysia made a brave attempt to try and understand what he was talking about; I took a nap. :-) He was so deep into his work that he had no clue that he was incomprehensible to his audience (foreign exchange students and two visiting professors learning Danish for the first time). Indeed Petra, a woman in our class from Croatia, said to Leysia afterwards "I don't even know what a fairy tale is!" So, that was too bad. Future activities include a visit to the ARoS art museum (which we will probably skip since we've already been), a visit to the university library and the Aarhus town hall, and a lecture on Greenland (a country with two members in the Danish parliament).

Fourth, Leysia and I have finally been able to put some appearances into our new department. This is good, as most Danes are finally returning to work from their vacations in July, and so things are starting to pick up here. Indeed (I like that word) Leysia is attending two meetings today related to the work that she's going to be doing here for the next year and I'm finishing off a few last things before Niels Olof, Kaj Grønbæk, and I figure out what WE are going to be doing for the next year! :-)

I've got a few more things to discuss, but I'll put them in their own separate entries.

Feel free to call us, write us, or send us care packages filled with cookies! (You get to choose!) We would love to hear from you!

Ken

Max the Designer

While Max was waiting for us to sign the paperwork for our new car (our third car in two weeks!), he created a spaceship out of legos. As you can see, he's quite proud of it.



I said to Max, "That's nice that you gave the spaceship a face."

He said, "Papa! That's not the spaceship's face, that's the driver!"

Papas can be so dense at times!

Images of Aarhus

A colorful bus.



The city's cathedral. (It used to be Catholic but is now Lutheran.)



The city's theatre. (That's a gargoyle on top; it looks directly at the cathedral.)



Our house! (Note: we don't live in the whole thing... most of it is meeting rooms and office space that is closed off to us.) (Note 2: our new car is parked out front.)



All pictures taken by Ilene!

A Day At the Races

We may have mentioned in previous posts that our apartment is located near (among other things) a race track. Well, last Sunday, the race track was open for business hosting a "grand prix" event for people who like to ride horses while seated in awkward mechanical contraptions. (I'm told the word I'm looking for is "trotter"; don't believe me? Look it up!)

We decided it would be fun to attend a horse race, so Leysia, Max, Lilja, and I took the two minutes it takes to walk down our driveway to get to the race track. (Ilene was out running errands that day, making reservations for her upcoming trips to Norway and Italy.) We got there around 1 PM after having gone out to pick up our third car in two weeks (and hopefully the one we will have for the rest of our stay in Denmark) and so we first set about acquiring lunch. The race track was serving up hot dogs outside and had a "cafeteria" and restaurant inside. Cafeteria was put in quotes in the previous sentence because what we found inside is not what a cafeteria is like in the U.S. Instead, it was essentially a small group of tables where you could buy sandwiches, drinks, and desserts. The restaurant took up most of the space inside and you could have anything you want, as long as you ordered the buffet. Max opted for a hot dog (see below) while Leysia and I got sandwiches and beer. This is funny because we NEVER drink beer at lunch time in the U.S.! But, hey, "when in Rome, ..."



Lilja wasn't all that interested in lunch, instead she kept leaning over to view the TV screens to see how her horses were doing. She's only 18 months but her knowledge of the various riders and horses in the Danish trotter scene is astounding. She made a killing that day and we were happy to let her do her own thing.



After lunch, we dragged Lilja away from the TV screens to view a horse race with our own eyes. Leysia discovered that its very difficult to take a picture of a trotter moving at full trot. Her best picture is shown below, featuring the winner of one of the races that we saw. (It was quite remarkable in that it was the first time a horse with no head had won a race in Denmark.) Max was disappointed that his horse wasn't the winner while Lilja was using the winnings of that race to bet on her favorite horse for the next.



After Lilja was finished, we walked over to the children's section of the race track and let Max have a high speed race of his own.



Following this, he demonstrated his ability to dive right into new situations by making friends with some kids while bouncing to their hearts content.



Lilja would have joined in, but she was too busy studying the races planned for the next grand prix event.

Ken

Max and the Boy

Yesterday, we visited the ARoS Art Museum and got to see a very cool exhibit called "The Boy". Its a statue of a boy about 15 feet tall that is incredibly realistic, down to veins under the skin, the spine up his back, rough skin for his elbows, and piercing eyes. It is an incredible piece and has become a symbol of the city of Aarhus.

Max had some fun with him, as you can see below!

Sea of Bikes

Bikes in front of Aarhus Banegård (train station).

Ready to Face the Day

Got a slow start this morning... because it was the weekend, we ALL slept in. Nice.

Leysia and Ilene prepared an excellent brunch of cereal, eggs, fruit salad, bread/butter, orange juice and coffee. It was wonderful!

Now its noon and we are going to head down to the city center and see the ARoS Aarhus Art Museum. On cue, it has started to rain. (It has rained every day since our arrival, and, at the height of summer, been downright chilly each day too! As a Dane told us yesterday, "That's Denmark, get used to it!")

Anyway, here's a picture to show that Leysia and Lilja are ready to face the day. Hope you all have a good weekend!



Ken

Ilene's Birthday

We were pleased to be able to celebrate Ilene's birthday with her yesterday! She wasn't going to tell us, but her son told us that her birthday was coming via e-mail. He gave us just enough time to order a traditional Danish birthday cake and to invite some people over for dinner to celebrate!



We were joined by three people from the computer science department of the University of Aarhus: Niels Olof (on the left) and Eva and Andreas (on the right). Niels Olof and Eva had recently visited us in Boulder while attending a conference at the University of Colorado at Boulder and Max was very exicted to see both of them again.

Leysia and Ilene prepared a dinner of salad, salmon, mashed potatoes, and vegetables. This was complemented by three bottles of red wine (life is too short to drink white wine) purchased at our local supermarket and much fun was had by all!



The traditional danish birthday cake made for Ilene was a pastry in the shape of woman, covered in candy, saying "Congratulations Ilene!"







One of the highlights of the evening was when Niels Olof and Andreas sang the traditonal Danish birthday song for Ilene after we had finished singing the traditional U.S. "Happy Birthday" song for her.



Ilene said that she had a great time and we were glad that her son gave us the "heads up" we needed to throw her this party! Happy Birthday Ilene!

I Love You

Den Gamle By

Den Gamle By is a tourist attraction in Aarhus that contains numerous examples of Danish buildings across a wide range of time periods. Each building contains the recreation of some aspect of Danish culture, such as a carpenter's workshop or a merchant's home.

Below are various pictures we took while visiting Den Gamle By today. One picture shows a map of the entire attraction; another shows a description of the first building created at the site.












In additon, Den Gamle By includes a (very) small amusement park. Here's a movie of Ken and Max enjoying one of the rides at this park. Its essentially a swing that comes in the form of a boat. Max had a great time!



Take care,

Ken