About 3 weeks ago, on March 25th, we took a trip down to the city of Ribe (pronounced REE-buh), known as Denmark's oldest town. It was established at the beginning of the 8th century as a center of trade and, according to Ribe's visitor's guide, has a “dramatic history [filled with] Vikings, kings, queens, bishops, traitors, witches, floods and fires.”
The most striking part about the city is its old-style buildings, most of them dating from the 16th century, as older buildings were destroyed by a fire that raged through the city center in 1580.
We also enjoyed looking at Ribe's cathedral. Work began on it in 1150 and it took 100 years to complete. (The first church in Ribe was established in 860 nearly 300 years before work on the cathedral began.)
Ribe is a port town situated on the west coast of Jutland, which is what made it a natural center for trade, and allowed us to take some nice pictures of the water flowing through the town.
That last picture shows us playing the game that's described in one of the Winnie the Pooh books that involves throwing sticks into a river on one side of a bridge and the running to the other side of the bridge to see which stick appears first. In the story, while Pooh, Rabbit, and Piglet are waiting for their sticks, Eeyore comes floating out from under the bridge having recently been bounced into the river by Tigger. (Ah, the joys of reading children's stories every night for the past 4 years or so.)
We had a nice lunch at the Quedens Gaard a cafe and bric-a-brac shop located in a building dating from the 18th century. The meal was good and Leysia purchased some nice bric-a-brac there! :-) Max and Lilja were having fun as you can see below!
After lunch we encountered firemen working on another interesting aspect of the city which is its stork nests. The firemen are in charge of maintaining the nests and so in these pictures, you can see a fireman going up to the nest to add material, repair damage, and the like. It must be nice to be a stork in Ribe!
In that last picture, Max is standing behind the trash can, not in it! :-) He sure was fascinated by the whole idea of people maintaining nests for birds!
Finally, the highlight of the day was our chance encounter with Danish designer Bo Bendixen, who is famous for his beautifully illustrated prints, t-shirts, postcards, and the like. We love his stuff and ended up purchasing several of his t-shirts and postcards, and also three sets of his place settings for children. Two we gave as gifts to Katrine (for her daughter Anne and her new baby Signe) and we've kept one for ourselves. Bo was a very interesting guy, who was in Ribe to deliver new products to his store. We very much enjoyed meeting him and he was nice enough to pose for two pictures with Max and Lilja.
We had a great time in Ribe!
Ken
