Saturday 10 November 2007

Denmark a child friendly nation...not!

My best mate invited us to attend his son's christening and his girlfriend's birthday (not too sure if girlfriend is the right word, as that makes it sound like we are 12 again), back home in Denmark.  Of course we wanted to attend the parties.  It's not often we get invited to parties, and then two parties at once, absolutely...rock on!  So, we planned to go home for a long weekend, staying 5 days in the exclusive destination of Espegærde.

Espegærde is home to some of the rich and beautiful people in Denmark, but the village is no larger than the main street of a small Irish village, and has a couple of take-away places (that also acts as sit-in restaurants), a corner shop, DVD rental,a weird art gallery and 7 real estate agents - due to the amount of money property costs in this area.  So, a fairly small spot.  The posh people tend to go to Copenhagen when eating out.  Not to insult any residents, and least of all my mate, but so would I after our experience.
- unless my mate invite us for dinner that is.

Anyway, we stayed in this lovely B&B along the coast and had a nice room for the four of us.  We used this room as a base to venture out and see the country side and various attractions with the kids.

As for a car?  Well, let me just say that we were very fortunate that the car rental company had to upgrade us to a Volvo XC90, instead of the Volkswagen Polo I had booked - they had nothing left, so I had to take the Volvo - "damn"!!

I'm actually not going to tell you anything about the christening or the birthday party, other than we had a lot of fun and enjoyed ourselves tremendeously.  We always enjoy spending time with our friends.

When growing up, I was convinced that Denmark was one of the most (if not the most) child friendly country in the World.  The Danes just built everything with kids their in mind, or so I thought, and the service in restaurants would be top class to families with kids.  And, to shatter my illusion even more, I thought ALL Danes loved kids and enjoyed being around them no matter where.  I even have this picture in my head, from visiting Danish people with kids, that they would almost place their little fecker on a pillow, sit in a circle around it and talk about it as a group.  Man, how naive was I?

One evening, my wife and I decided to have dinner in the local Italian restaurant, instead of eating rice crispies and baby food in the room, and to enjoy our holidays.  So, we booked a table for a Sunday evening, for 4 people (2 adults and 2 kids), for 18.00 (6pm).  Let me just explain, we were there end October, so it is not like the place was swamped by tourists, but we booked anyway.

We parked the cruise ship (XC90) in front of the restaurant, for a quick getaway, and walked in to claim our table.  The waiter, a 17 year old spotty girl trying to be a professional waiter.  She was probably just a student at the local college.  Anyway, she showed us to our table and gave us the menu cards.  The place was empty, except for another party with 10 people, ranging from the age of 16 to 60 - probably a family get-together.

It's funny, small town restaurants always think or pretend to be a lot more posh than they are.  The interior is a wannabe Italian restaurant, with wine bottles hanging under the ceiling to create an Italian atmosphere (but they failed to see that all the labels were actually authentic Danish!!) and red/white table clothes.

It was pretty obvious that business was a bit slow, as the restaurant tried to add to its income by selling pizza as take away.  That meant you had this influx of people picking up their Sunday evening sofa dinner.  The restaurant had room for 60+ quests, and there were 14 including our little family of 4, so not exactly jammed packed and busy.

Some kids do cry when they are hungry, but ours of course doesn't.  I have to say that, they are my kids and they always act exemplary and other kids should learn from our kids.  Doh!!  Of course they get a bit upset, but only, if they haven't eaten for more than 4 hours or if they are really really really hungry and in physical pain from hunger.

We ordered pasta for the kids and steak for us grown-ups.  6 minutes after placing the order, the waiter came over to our table, looking slightly nervous, and offered us some toys to keep the kids quiet.  They hadn't had time to say anything at this point.  Another 4 minutes passed and she was back, this time looking anxious as if she had been told what to do or pack up her stuff.  She gently asked if we would mind taking our food as take away.  Somewhat bemused, I asked her to clarify, as I speak fluent Danish, and she informed me that other guests had complained about the noise level!  "What other guests?" I asked.  There are only 14 people in this restaurant, two dinner parties, and the other was a family dinner party too.

I thought about it for approx. 0.0025 seconds and said "NO!".  I told her to get our food quickly, so we could feed our kids (as my son had started chewing on the menu card and the table) instead of arguing about noise level.  She couldn't really hear because of the noise level of laughter from the other table.

But, it freaked out our waiter and she rushed into the kitchen.  Perhaps also because I asked her, to tell the other dinner party to keep it quiet as we like to eat in peace  :-)

A few minutes later we got our food and ate in relative peace.  Stubborn as we are, my wife and I, we took extra long to chew and digest our food, obviously to the annoyance of the other dinner table.   "Ha ha ha, you cannot win a battle of stubbornness against us, petty fools."

After an enjoyable dinner and wine (we needed to make the kids sleepy, you know), we ordered dessert and coffee, and the other dinner party left.  We had the place to ourselves.  So, we left too.

That experience surprised me in a bad way.  How can people be so rude, not even talking to us directly, and complain about kids.  For God sake, they had kids themselves.  And, the restaurant tried to give us a table at the very back, far away from the main restaurant.  From talking to friends with kids, this is apparently fairly normal nowadays in Denmark.  It saddens and disappoints me, but that's probably because I had this inflated illusion that Denmark were super kids friendly.

The entire stay in Espegærde was wonderful, apart from the La La Trattoria experience, and we would certainly go back to visit our friends anytime (hint).