Cheese Danish

One of my blog groupies asked if we could find out whether or not Danish cheese is better than a cheese Danish (just to let you know what type of discerning readers we're dealing with here). And, of course, we will certainly have as a goal trying some Danish cheese over the next two days. My niece, Charlotte, who has been in Denmark "studying" for the past four months, tells me that the Danish pastries, cheese and otherwise, are delicious. Charlotte and her mother Beth, my sister, are pictured above, studying the guide book to decide where we'll go to dinner. My family is always concerned about where their next meal is coming from; I don't know why that is. We've always had enough to eat, but our favorite subjects are usually 1) the meal/snack we've just eaten, 2) the next meal/snack we will have, 3) food in general.

And that brings up one of the main reasons I was so excited to go on this trip: Denmark is part of my heritage. My maternal grandfather and grandmother came to the U.S. from Denmark. So I was eager to learn a little about the character of the Danish people. My helpful sister told me that she read recently that the Danes are the most satisfied people in the world, perhaps mainly because they have very low expectations. This actually fits with a prevalent attitude in my family, sort of an Eeyore outlook on life: "Well, things aren't very good, but what do you expect, it's probably what we deserve..."

I've noticed a few things about Danes. Their language, for one thing; they have no words for "please" or "excuse me". I don't think they're rude, because I've had some very nice encounters with Danish people. I've asked for directions and they've asked to look at my map, and together we've found the right way to go. They could have just said, "I don't know where that is." Maybe they're just blunt, and they don't need all these niceties. The other thing is, everyone speaks English, maybe with the exception of really old people. I haven't encountered anyone yet who didn't slip easily into English when I spoke a few words.

They have bike lanes on all the streets in Copenhagen, and lots of bikes everywhere! Stay out of the bike lanes unless you have a desire to be run over. I prefer to think the Danes are healthy and 'green', but maybe they just don't have the gas money. The hotel rooms, restaurant bathrooms and other public areas are spotless, yet there's a lot of litter in the streets. I can't explain that. They seem to dress for comfort; it's been very cold here, and I'm not seeing flip-flops, but rather good, sturdy boots, coats and scarves. I've seen a lot of drinking (almost everyone in the restaurant has some kind of alcohol), but I haven't seen any drunks.

So a lot of contradictions, and no real good feel for the character of the Danes. Just a wonderful place to visit; another good day today. After changing hotels today (we decided not to go to Sweden since there was so much we had not seen in Copenhagen), we headed to the National Museum. It's Danish history, a free museum, and well worth a visit. We spent hours there, and especially enjoyed the "prehistoric Denmark", and "Denmark, 1660 to 2000". Excellent.

Then we met up with Charlotte, did some shopping and had a nice dinner. We walked Charlotte back to the train station where she got her train for Helsingor and we got our bus for the Avenue Hotel. We didn't realize you had to press the button when you wanted the bus to stop, so we went a little beyond our stop but had a nice walk back to the hotel. Tomorrow we will go to Helsingor to see the castle and Charlotte's school for the past four months. And we'll try some Danish cheese.