Operation Copenhagen!

As this post goes on the blog hopefully we’ll be rolling off the DFDS ferry back onto British soil. Then with Roald Dahl playing on a permeant repeating loop we’ll be heading up the British motorways via Cambridge and Birmingham back to Sunny Stockport. I’ve decided to take the Monday off work and return on Tuesday as based on the trip out there, driving 650miles in 24h with a “sleep” on a ferry halfway is pretty tiring.

It’s with mixed emotions that we’ve left CPH behind us; Imogen summed it up best this week. On Wednesday she wanted to go home and was missing her friends, yet on Thursday she didn’t want to leave. Today she was petitioning for a balcony and cargo bike when we get back (both of which won’t happen). Personally I’ve met my two main goals of coming: to support Abi and to spend more time with the children. However I wanted to try and express what our time here has meant in a more eloquent fashion.

There’s been culinary experiences, culture to adsorb and views to appreciate. We’ve cruised in boats, trundled around with the cargo bike and walked the many streets of Copenhagen.  I’ve had tears to dry, sore bottoms to repair and endless why questions to answer. I’ve been there for the bleary eyed nuzzle of my little boy after his afternoon nap. I’ve watched my little girl truly appreciate another culture whilst I’ve witnessed our baby become our little boy (and not so little at that).

We’ve had an incredible time here in CPH and I can genuinely say that it’s the most amazing place that I’ve lived so far. I can’t help wandering though about how much of this is down to the fact that it’s been an  exceptionally good summer here and I’ve not had to go to work. I’m sure when we get back many people will ask us “Would you go and live there given the chance?” For now that’s a question I”m not sure I can answer; What would it be like if we’d come here in winter and both been out at the office? Also I have no idea financially how things would work out.

In the UK I pay ~25% tax on my salary whilst here it would be ~31%. It’s clear that the extra tax buys great facilities, libraries and parks. Also our childcare bill in the UK is £1000 pcm and in CPH it would be ~£300. When the time came for the kids to go to University, it is still free in Denmark; no student fees or loans here. But be wary if you buy a new car, there is at least 100% tax on new vehicles.

Terry Pratchett, A Hat Full of Sky

Random wildlife shot montage:

Peacocks at Tivoli including the baby Peacock

Ugly ducklings at Kronborg and Kastellet

Herons at Heron Island in Fredriksberg Have

And a final attraction at the eleventh hour. Made it to the infamous CPH Zoo. Love the top photo I papped of Abi and Immy’s surprise and awe as the tigers woke up. As with most Zoos these days a bit of a mixture of stunning new enclosure and old style “pits” where the animals look unhappy. Fortunately there were few of the later. 

The three highlights for me here were:

The new Elephant House and enclosure

The African Savana; First Hippo for Abi and I and we saw the baby one swimming under water through a glass wall

The IsBjørn ice tunnel experience: we got to see the male polar bear swimming under water and prowling on land

One of the great things about having lots of visitors was that we definitely made the most of our time in CPH. We haven’t exhaustively done every visitor attraction but we’ve probably come quite close. It’s inspired me to do more back home in Manchester rather than just get caught up in the weekly hum drum. Here’s the full lowdown on what we’ve seen:

The Rådhus

Five art and sculpture museums viewed: Stats Museum Kunst; Hirschsprung; Thorvaldsens Museum; Louisiana; Ny Carlsberg Glypotec.

Four Royal Palaces explored: Rosenborg (With Crown Jewels); Kronborg Slot; Amalienborg; Christiansborg Reception Rooms.

Nine other museums investigated: Experimentarium City; Zoology Museum; National Museum; CPH Museum; Tøjhusmeet; Christiansborg Ruins; Christiansborg Riding stables; Da Vinci Exhibit; Post and Tele Museum.

Five towers scaled: Our Saviours Church; Christiansborg Palace; Round Tower (five times?); Marmorkirken; Rådhus tower.

The Changing of the Guards (repeatedly!)

A fast walk through Christiania

A day trip to Sweden over the bridge

Three dips in the harbour baths at Islands Brygge

A swim in the Baltic at Amagar Strand (possibly two we may go today!)

A drive to Dragør

Fourteen children’s play areas and parks thoroughly tested

One FC CPH victory witnessed

Ten visits to Tivoli (seven to do rides, one aquarium visit and two passing through!)

Time to quickly tell you a last visitor related anecdote that I didn’t fit in earlier. When Richard, Tess and Rebecca were here after checking out The Little Mermaid, we went for a picnic in the grounds of Kastellet. This is the start shaped former CPH citadel which is reportedly the oldest functioning military base in the world as it still houses a barracks. We had an excellent picnic by the old windmill on a beautiful lawn. We’d just finished the picnic and were packing up when a soldier came along patrolling the parameter. He got quite animated and we worked out he wanted us to get off the grass. Apparently you’re not allowed on the grass here and they take it seriously!

The day after we got back from Bavaria we had one final visitor. Following my heat exhaustion this could have been a disaster but thankfully it was Paul who was visiting. Paul is training for a 450mile, five day crossing of the Pyrenees on a bike. So I hired a bike and Paul took charge of the cargo bike. I thought I was fit, but embarrassingly Paul made the cargo bike look like it was a carbon fibre racer. He even made it up Nej Carlsberg Vej without getting out of breath. It was still 27C! Thank you Paul you greatly helped my recovery!

Paul and Albert in matching outfits and with matching ice creams.

We had 24h to whiz around some of our favourite sites with a few new ones sprinkled in. Such is the depth of CPH that there was still new things for us to do with Paul to make his visit unique.

Imogen finally perfected her Mermaid pose.

Whilst looking around with Paul we discovered several more reasons to be happy in CPH. 

Free trampolines in the street (see earlier video)

A free hedge maze in Fredriksburg

Another dip in the free harbour baths. Respsect to Paul for being the only visitor to jump off the 4.9m board!

We’ve had a fairly hectic visitor schedule; this is what happens when you ask everyone you know to come and visit. But we wouldn’t of had it any other way; thanks to everyone who came and shared in our memories of CPH.

Here’s the breakdown of our visitors

25 visitors in total in 11 groups

19 from the UK, 4 from Germany and 2 from USA

A total of 83 “visitor days"

I’ve been trying to find a quote for the blog that I heard once but I can’t find it, so here is a version that I’ve made up.

In January I started a book club at work. This tells you that I have a job that is relaxed enough that we can discuss literature in a lunch break; as the company would have it “It’s a great place to work”. About the third book we read was The Shock of the Fall by Nathan Filer. In the story the main character accidentally kills his sibling in a fall on holiday. As a teen the accident prays on his mind and he slowly develops schizophrenia. In essence it’s a book about both bereavement and mental illness and it’s an excellent read.

Last Friday Imogen and I were recovering from the shock of the fall by Albert Goundry; here’s what happened. I was making lunch in our 2nd floor flat and we were going to eat outside in the garden as it was roasting. Imogen had just gone down to the picnic table. I suddenly heard a distraught howling and knew Imogen was hurt. Without a second thought I ran downstairs to discover Immy spreadeagled on the floor with a bleeding knee. It was a fairly superficial cut, but blood is a serious business when you’re four. Just as I was picking her up with reassurance my brain kicked in: open door; Albert; stairs! Carrying a sobbing Immy I ran back inside and up the two flights of stairs. Just as we were approaching the last landing I heard Albert fall and he fell at my feet. He’d fallen down a flight of eight, fairly steep uncarpeted steps.

This was perhaps one of the worst experiences of my life. No one knows how they’ll cope in an emergency, but it turns out I did okay. Reprioritising casualties, I dropped Immy, scooped up Albert and took him into the flat. A quick 10 second check told me:

He was awake and crying

He was moving all limbs

None of his limbs felt broken

His face was intact

I then retrieved the even more distraught Immy back into the apartment. If you ask Imogen she’ll tell you “It was a bit of trauma”. At least all the crying was in one place! Many people would have taken their child to hospital, but I spoke to Abi and I though Bertie was okay. When he’d stopped crying he ate some lunch and then had a nap; cue some internet searching. The thing with searching the internet is you can find anything to agree with your viewpoint; here’s what I found:

Husbandhood: How to react when a child falls down stairs

Post nap he was back to top form and none the worse for wear. We went for a family picnic tea and Albert did a 30m long bum shuffle as if to prove a point. 

For those who’ve been following this blog off and on you may be mistaken for thinking that I’ve been trying to train Imogen up to be a future artist. Far from it, I’ve just been trying to provide as much stimulus to her spngey little brain as possible. As a scientist through and through, there’s been plenty from this side as well.

We popped into the kopenlab science festival when Grandma and Grandad were here. I wasn’t sure what to expect, but it was free and free science, plus it was in the Carlsberg district which I wanted to look around. The festival was set around zones with names such as Discovery and Explore.

Once I’d managed to prise Immy from the free hammocks (another reason to be happy in CPH!) we headed over to one of the zones which was a mixture of local University PhD an Post Docs explaining their projects the lay public. There was cool stuff to see here:

A beam of electrons bent by a magnet to explain a syncotron

A high powered laser cutter, cutting out MDF prototypes

A camera system to map your face in 3D on a computer

A 3D printer, constructing amazing models

A solar powered car that had raced across Australia

Across the whole site there was too much to see and we couldn’t work out where all of it was, but it was a great festival to dip into.

Imogen had campaigned for a while for me to take her to Experimentarium city. This is the temporary exhibition centre for CPH’s hands on science museum, whilst the main Experimentarium is being refurbed. The entry fee here was a bit steep and I was worried that it was going to be too advanced for Imogen. However I then calmed down and remembered that she can’t read so its all still advanced and that the day was just about inspiring her.

Experimentarium city is based across two large warehouse spaces, with exhibits roughly grouped into themed areas. It was a real mix here across the age ranges and complexity from purely fun games to in-depth explanations. At the one end of the spectrum is the ever popular bubble mixture and the ability to make a giant bubble around your child. Whilst at the tough end was an exhibit, involving a game to explain how catalysts work. The most inspiring for both Immy and I was the model of a beating heart. This was housed in a clear perspex column and was squirting up a fountain of blood with each pump. Ingeniously when you placed your hands  on two handprints, it picked up your pulse and beat to your rhythm. This was unnervingly like watching your own heart beat and it was cool to see the difference in speed between Immy and I.

The big temporary exhibit at the moment is linked to the 2014 winter olympics. Here the science behind every winter sport was picked apart and presented in a fun way. I thought that Albert would make a better driver in the bobsleigh but Imogen wouldn’t have it.

Finally for summer they have a big outdoor water play area. Guttering, buckets, bean-bags and water; it doesn’t sounds that fun, but it was both fun for me and inspiring for Imogen when we got stuck in. Probably one to repeat at home if I can get some guttering off-cuts.

At the moment there is a Da Vinci exhibition in town at the old aquarium up  in Charlottenlund in the North of CPH. This is a touring exhibition showing a lot of models made from Da Vinci’s original sketches. This was very much one for Dad to enjoy but did provide some further inspiration for Imogen.

The octagon of mirrors was proving very popular. This was conceived by Da Vinci as a means to see the same object from all sides at the same time. To those who’ve said I’ve been largely missing from my own blog here I am … repeatedly.

Quick Quiz - Towers of CPH!

I went on a course a few years back with work, one of those courses where you learn about yourself. Through better understanding yourself, you're supposed to be able to better interact with others. One of the things I learnt on this course was that I had two key drivers: Be Strong and Hurry up. This translates to mean that naturally I want to do things myself without help and do them on time or even early, perhaps irrespective of quality. I’ve taken this on board in my working life and taken steps to accommodate my drivers, but how am I doing away from work? It turns out not so well.

During this blog I’ve talked about role reversal, Abi’s at work, and I’m at home, but how much has actually reversed. Strangely enough I’ve still been taking out the rubbish; apparently this is a man thing. But more interestingly looking back over our time in CPH, I’ve still been the strong one in the family; that’s not changed. Maybe Abi lets me take this role, maybe I assume it or maybe it’s predetermined by the man being physically stronger. By being strong I’m using both senses of the word: both physically and mentally. Coming into mission CPH I was also significantly fitter than Abi.

Some examples of me being the strong one:

Doing the heavy lifting fetching and carrying. That’s man stuff anyway isn’t it?

Going out and getting food on our first night here. We were all knackered but I dug deeper to forage for takeaway.

Shouldering the burden of interacting with non english speakers. Obviously not in Denmark but in Italy and Germany

There is a problem here. People in the UK will be familiar with the story of Captain Oates on Scotts fatal attempt to reach the south pole. When Oates was too weak to continue, he walked off into a storm to die so as not to burden the team. But interestingly at the start of the expedition he was the strongest and most physically capable. It’s a fact that often the strongest are the first to fall as they keep doing extra for the team.

Right where am I going with all this. We were sat in Copenhagen airport on the way to Bavaria and it hit me that I was completely exhausted. This was manifesting itself with me being short with the wife and kids. How had this occurred? This was the culmination of 10 (even by our own standards) very hectic weeks. Combine together moving to a foreign country, going on holiday, hosting 25 visitors in eight weeks, double childcare, a cargo bike, watching the world cup in a non-ideal time zone and a self-set target to run 5k in under 20 minutes. To put it more succinctly, as my mum told me on the phone a few weeks ago, plain old fashioned overdoing it; burning the candle at both ends and in the middle. Still we were on the way to wedding number three of the year and there was no backing out.

I think I might just about have gotten away with it if it hadn’t been for the exceptionally hot weather. The wedding was fantastic, but 28c in a suit for a British lad like me isn’t fun. We walked 20 minutes to the reception through some pleasant hilly countryside; I was being strong, the lady couldn’t push the buggy. This was the most amazing view at a wedding that we’ve been to (sorry everyone else).

It was a superb day, although Abi picked up that I wasn’t anywhere near my usual form. Around 21.00 during the middle of the speeches a distraught Imogen appeared (she’d found a gang of older children to follow around) with several splinters in her hand. Luckily the Farther of the Bride is a top surgeon, and a minor bit of scalpel work later and Immy was patched up. We decided to bid a hasty retreat. I attempted to be strong and carry Imogen the mile back to our hotel. At about two thirds of the way home I realised I couldn’t carry her any further and alarm bells began to ring. That night I was significantly unwell, a mixture of exhaustion, heat exhaustion and probably, if I’m honest too much rich food.

Thankfully after 20 hours in the hotel room, five oral rehydration sachets and 1 litre of coke, I was patched back up enough to enjoy the remainder of our break including a trip up the local hill in a cable car.