Tribute to weekdays

A poem by the late Danish poet, Dan Turell.  I've tried to translate it, while still making sure it makes sense.  I'm sorry if it doesn't.

I never really understood or appreciated Dan Turell's poems when I was younger. It is something that changes as you get older as you begin to understand the meaning of his poems.

I like weekdays
Most of all, I like weekdays
Slowly waking up to familiar views
that are not entirely familiar
The family once trustworthy and sleepy and distant strange faces

The morning kisses
The mailman slamming the letterbox
The smell of coffee
The routine walk to the cornershop for milk, smokes, newspaper
I like weekdays
Even through all the irritations
The noisy bus that drives past the door
The phone that disturbs the most beautiful, clearest still moment in my aquarium
The birds squeaking in their cage
The old neighbor looking
The kid you have to pick up in the creche, just as you got started
The everlasting grocery list in the pocket
with the usual requirements for meat, potatoes, coffee and bisquits
A quick drink at the local
when everybody meets with their grocery bags and wipe sweat from their foreheads
I like weekdays
The daily agenda
even the biological agenda
The unavoidable routines in the bath and on the toilet
The mandatory shave
Letters you need to write
Rent payments
Balancing the accounts
Dishes
The fact that you ran out of diapers or cello-tape
I like weekdays
Not in contrast to parties, smokes and dancing
That has to be done
even with all the leftovers
So much unsaid or approached
hanging in the air afterwards
Like a psychological hangover
that only weekday can fix with morning coffee
Great with parties!  Room for euphoria!
Let the thousand pearls bubble
But what happiness to afterwards lay down
the rest of the weekday's bed
to the known and yet unknown forecast


I like weekdays
I love them
Completely and totally love weekdays
I love weekdays very much

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).

Kids, Dogs, Breast Milk and Christmas going mobile

A few years ago, we went home to Denmark for the annual Christmas celebration.  We normally spend every alternate year with my family and the other years with my wife's family.  Despite having the option to be back in Denmark within 3-4 hours of leaving our house, by plane, we opted for the traditional method of traveling - over land.  Yes, you read it right, a road trip.  We decided to cross the ocean using the old land-bridges (ferries), thereby supporting a dying industry, and spent the next 48 hours in a confined area.

I still remember and cherish the road trips I did with my parents, when I was younger of course, driving to far away lands like Spain and Italy.  It took us 2-3 days to get to the caravan park in those countries. We had such much fun driving. There were some challenging times of course when my sister and I were bored shitless.  But, that's part of the experience.

Anyway, when we did the Griswold Christmas Vacation trip to Denmark when we had two very young kids.  They were so young that we were still referring to their age in months. Our daughter was 19 months old and our son was 5 months old.  On top of that, we had (and still do) two rather large dogs.  Keeping that in mind, we had just installed a roofbox on the SUV, so we were ready to rock n' roll ... or perhaps just roll.
- did I mention that my wife was still breastfeeding our son?

The best purchase parents can make, for such an adventure, is a portable (in-car) DVD player.  This can save your sanity.  Just make sure to bring a large enough selection of movies and of course movies that the kids will enjoy watching.  Another benefit is that that my wife and I now know "Sound of Music" scene-by-scene, without watching it.  We even know the various characters and of course ALL the songs.  It has been discussed if we should tempt our faith at X-factor this year!  At least we'd make the outtakes.

Off we went, waiving goodbye to the house on haunted hill, with the question hanging over our heads "Did we lock all the doors and windows, and set the alarm?".

We left early in the morning, catching the first ferry across to Wales and then headed towards Harwich.  All in all, the journey across England took about 7 hours. We had plenty of stops along the way to feed kids, us and the dogs.  We had to let the dogs out too, as doing their thing in the car was NOT an option. It was enough having to change the odd diaper on the driver's seat in freezing winds.  One thing was certain, you learn to change diapers really fast.

To be honest, we were both very impressed with the facilities across England.  All the stops had kid friendly activities and restaurants, and most of them were next to a field, which was ideal for the dogs.  At one of these stops, I went to the local field to let the dogs run.  They did their business and I let them back into the boot.  Suddenly, while getting into the car myself, I noticed a very strong smell of pooh.  Not human or dog pooh, but manure.  I checked my shoes and I was horrified to discover that the farmer had covered his field with manure. Now the car was being filled with a strong mist of cow/pig pooh.  The problem is that there was nothing we could do about it except driving with the windows rolled down for a few hundred miles. At the next stop we (I) cleaned the dogs and the car.  That also gave the rest of the family a chance to defrost, since it was in the middle of winter and we had been driving with windows rolled down in Arctic conditions.

We finally made it to the next land bridge and were happy to find our cabin.  The dogs slept in the car for 7 hours with no accidents, and we made our way towards Denmark; through Holland (Netherlands), Germany and then through Denmark.  My wife didn't have her license back then, so I did all the driving.  The last 100 miles were by far the hardest for me, and to make the journey even more exciting, the kids were extremely tired.  Tired kids = screaming/crying kids clinging to their mum.

Upon arrival, we met up with my entire family for dinner and coffee.  All of us were wrecked, so we only stayed for a couple of hours before heading to my grandma's house. She had kindly vacated her house so we could stay there.  I guess she didn't know we were bringing the dogs :-)

It has to be said that our Bernese is a real lady. She didn't do no.2 for the entire journey, which made me wonder when it would happen.  Just as we arrived at my parents place, she jumped out of the car and ran quickly into the house.  She was happy to be free again and busy sniffing the house.  Suddenly she arched her back and did a huge pile on my parent's persian carpet!  Welcome to Denmark.

The next morning, we woke up to a snow covered landscape.  It had been snowing all night, so the snow covered everything and muffled all sounds.  Snow covered landscapes are beautiful.  So, I took the dogs for a long walk. They loved it.  The labrador was digging tunnels under the snow and the Bernese was doing frog jumps to move in the snow.  She doesn't like to get wet and dirty.

Later that morning, we went back over to my parent's place. They were delighted to spend time with their grand kids.  My sister's kids asked our daughter if she wanted to try the sled, and she said yes.  I wrapped her in her snow gear, which made her look like a sea star. She couldn't bend her arms.  I put her gently into the snow. She looked around and down and to her horror she couldn't see her feet.  She looked at me in despair and let out a loud scream (similar to the scream from "The Body Snatchers").  For an instant, she thought her feet were gone.  I lifted her up again so she could see her feet again, and she was delighted.  The journey in the sled was not as much fun as she expected.  Well, it was her first sled ride, so as she got snow in her face, she didn't know whether to cry or laugh - so, she did both!

The next two weeks was spent mainly with family and friends. That's what Christmas is all about.  We ate and drank every day, as if we hadn't eaten for days.  I probably gained 5kg in two weeks. I was grateful I didn't have to squeeze my arse into a flight seat.  The vacation had ended and we were forced to pack the family winnebago and head towards Ireland.  We said our goodbyes and the grand parents wept a bit.  For some reason they think the kids will forget them, just because we don't see them every day.

The journey home was fairly uneventful. We got to see (and hear) "Sound of Music" a few times.

On the way home, we decided to stop in a little German village, something ending on "stadt" and in the middle of nowhere. My wife had this weird fantasy that the food would be amazing.  I guess it has to do with her summers in southern Germany when she was a teenager. We had lunch in a local hotel, fish n' chips and headed towards the ferry again.

Finally we made it to England. We "only" had a 9 hours left before the ferry would depart.  At this point, we were just following the traffic on the motorway.  Suddenly, the mobile beeped. We had received a text message.  It was an SMS from the ferry company where they kindly informed us that the ferry we were scheduled to sail with, had been cancelled.  They said we could take the one earlier or the one the following morning.  Determined not to spend another night in a cramped hotel, I floored the pedal.

From Birmingham to Hollyhead, the old banger of an SUV clocked 180mph.  The beautiful landscape flew by like a washed out painting and the kids' faces were feeling the pressure of G-force, being pushed into their seats.  My wife's lactating breasts were also suffering. Breast milk squirted out on the wind screen, much to the amusement of the kids.  Soon after, we slammed through the sound-barrier, or perhaps we just dropped the exhaust pipe.  Either way, the parachute was not going to be used until we arrived at the destination.  The SatNav was frantically trying to keep up, but failed miserably, and started to name cities we passed miles back.

Time was working against us, but by some miracle we didn't get stopped by a daring country cop.  Either that, or their old John Deer tractor wouldn't catch the silver bullet.

We made it to the ferry, just as they were starting to board.  Going 60mph again was like parking, so the guys at the port looked angrily at me as they attempted to get me to slow down.  I hit the breaks hard and tires squeaked on the iron floor.  I felt a bump, and discovered that the dogs were forced against the dog guard and the kids were clinging on to the back of the front seats.  2 hours later we were home.

On behalf of my family, I would like to apologise to people living between Birmingham and Hollyhead (Wales) for driving like a maniac.  The car has never been the same and neither have I.  I've now bought a scooter and rule the bus lanes.