July 12 Day 29 Fly to Umea, Sweden

When we talked about our summer plans, many people were surprised that we were flying to Umea,(OO-may-o) Sweden. This is north, nearly at the arctic circle. “Why?” We were asked. To visit friends, Elena and Stig-Olaf who had visited us in California as SERVAS guests. We always said they live our lives except in northern Sweden. Stig is a university professor and Elena is a social worker... just like us!

We flew from Copenhagen to Stockholm and then changed Planes to Umea. Julie and Lars dropped us off at the “kiss and fly zone”.

It was raining in Stockholm, but not when we arrived in Umea. The plane announcements in Copenhagen were in Danish and English. Going to Umea, it was only in Swedish. No one goes there who aren’t local.

Stig and Elma picked us up, greeting us with such warmth. We then got a lovely tour of the town. We walked along the riverfront and saw the old buildings. So pretty.

We had the chance to begin to catch up on what had been happening. There are some upcoming huge lay off of Swedish social workers (over 4,000 will lose their jobs in the next 6 months). Elena is also in her final semester of completing her Master’s Degree. Hooray for her.

These two friends are highly involved in their community, especially as environmental and client change activists. We have such respect for them and their work.

After our time in the town, we drove about 45 minutes north to the family farm which had been in Stig’s family for several generations. We would enjoy the next three nights here.

They fixed us a wonderful dinner of homemade pie and moose that Stig had hunted last fall.  It tasted really good and not too strong.

We were also introduced to Stig’s son, Anton, a university student home for the summer. We enjoyed getting to know him and hearing is perspective on Sweden and the world.

We were quite tired and went to bed, happy to have a break for so much time in large cities.

July 11 Day 28 Copenhagen, Tivoli garden

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Dick has been in Copenhagen four times previous to this visit. In all those times, he had never been able to go inside Tivoli Gardens. So that was our agenda for today. Tivoli is the world’s oldest amusement park built in the 1843. It is a wonderful mix of botanical garden, amusement park rides, carnival games and food and entertainment of all sorts. They say that Walt Disney got some of his inspiration from Tivoli.

Patti ‘s cousin, Lars, had a special connection with Tivoli, because he was part of the Tivoli Boys Guard marching band from age 7-17 years old. There he, with his colleagues, basically grew up in the garden. They got free annual passes for themselves and their parents. They had regular rehearsals at Tivoli, as well as two or three times a week during the spring, summer and fall season they would have multiple parades and concert through the park or concerts. So, we loved having the special “insider tour” of Tivoli.

There were so many beautiful areas to look at, and we took a lot of getting pictures. It was perfect weather day to be in the garden. There were a number of thrill rides expected in an amusement park but we just looked at them without any temptation to ride them.  There were some fun opportunities to make music and take fun photos.

We had a traditional lunch overlooking the lake. The food was delicious, while the service was little spotty. A great blue heron kept a good watch over us from nearby where we ate. We soaked in the sun and the delicious food. Tivoli was terrific!

Before we left, we thought we would catch a dance show. However, when the curtains came open it was a jazz band. Tivoli gave its nod to the Jazz Festival. We sure heard a lot of great jazz music this week. We listened to more wonderful music before leaving the gardens. We made an attempt to go hear another American jazz band at a local restaurant, but all the tables were reserved and there were no additional places to sit, so it was not to be.

On our way to catch the bus home, we passed the famous Copenhagen City Hall (Radhus) which has been a local landmark for well over 100 years. However, we had a great walk back to the apartment cutting through another beautiful green park.

And, we had the chance to stop off and visit the Carlsberg Brewery. This was the place where Carlsberg made its start. They are in the midst of a huge construction project so we couldn’t go on a tour, but did have a chance to walk around and enjoy the old mixing with really well-done new buildings. A highlight was the Famous Carlsberg elephants. This was within a few blocks of Lars and Julie’s home and so it was on our bucket list to get over to visit and we had the chance.

When we were back, Dick took a nap, while the three of us sat out on the deck enjoying the sunshine a glass of wine and chatting with some of their neighbors. While we were there Lars shared some of the birthday customs that they celebrate in Denmark. If you are 30 years old and an unmarried woman your friends might take a couple of oil drums and decorate them like a pepper grinder for you. They shared a very long convoluted story about why this might happen. Which led to some very interesting discussion about birthday customs in Denmark and in the states.

The day got cut a bit shorter than we thought but another wonderful, wonderful day in Denmark.

July 10 Day 27 Copenhagen

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Having stayed up so late the night before either playing in the band or being enthusiastic fans, we were all exhausted so decided to spend the morning “chilling.” We were all just tired and it was so nice to lay around and get a few errands done, work on some photos and read. The follow-up of a successful concert.

After a light lunch, we attended one of the really fine concerts of the Jazz Festival. This one was celebrating a jazz icon, “Master Fatman,” who had died this year. This concert was held in a large garden and there were maybe a couple thousand people gathered to pay tribute to this wonderful musician. We spread out blankets and stood and swayed with the audience. The music was fantastic, the sun was shining. The Danes had their beer. A lot was right with the world. Lots of fun people watching and great music to listen to.

Friends from the band, Niels and his wife, Henrietta, joined us at the concert. And then the six of us went off to get some traditional Spanish tapas at a local restaurant. Great, great food and company. Patti was surprised that the waitress didn’t speak any Danish. She spoke English and Spanish. Lars explained that it wasn’t unusual for some people living in Denmark to not speak any Danish, especially immigrants. Danish is very difficult language to learn. As we have been finding trying to learn how to pronounce some basic words. Lots of silent letters and different shapes with your mouth and guttural sounds than we do in English. HARD!

After dinner, the four of them went on to another concert in the large concert hall. Meanwhile, Dick and Patti attempted to buy a train ticket to get back to the apartment. Buying train tickets turned out to be one of the biggest challenges in a very wonderful public transportation system and company. If you are local, you just download an app with your credit card in it you are good to go. Since we decided not to put our phone on international roaming, but use it only with Wi-Fi, this was not possible. There are no longer many machines that really work to sell train tickets. We did find a couple machines but they would not take credit cards from the UK or the US. They also sell tickets in the local 7-Eleven‘s. We went inside and tried to use the machine. No luck. We asked a couple of different employees to help us. It looks like it was going to work, then it wouldn’t take a credit card, or even in the local currency bills. The employee who had worked hard to help us finally said, “never mind. I’ll pay for it with my own credit card.” And he did and wouldn’t accept payment in return.  He said he was embarrassed that the system worked so poorly for people from other countries. For some reason, although there are many tourists in Copenhagen, buying tickets seems to be incredibly hard. But due to the kindness of strangers, we got our tickets, hopped on the train and found our way back home. 

Time enough for some laundry and to work on the blog. Also, a little social media. Another very nice day.