Pickled Herring: It's Not Just Your Grandparent's Fish...Or Maybe it is

Fredricksburg Castle, where we wandered our first morning. That is so not a castle!
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What?  Who goes to Denmark?  To be honest, I'd never thought of going to Denmark before Michelle told me she was going to visit relatives there, but I'm really glad I came.  It's been a fun trip.  We've been here a week, though, so I'll try to keep things short.

When we got to the gate for our flight to Copenhagen, we progressively found out that our flight would be delayed for about 3 hours.  It was alright, though, because some company that made really comfortable chairs had a display next to our gate, and we snagged a couple for about 2 and a half hours.  It was great.

And then we hung out with Michelle's great-great grandpa's great grandson's wife's sister in law...I think

Same castle from a different side.
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In Copenhagen, like every time I travel with Michelle, we were met by her family who picked us up and whisked us away to their house.  Ann and Jesper (pronounced yesper) Grønbech live in a beautiful house in the town of Hillerød, about 50 kilometers north of Copenhagen.  It's very quiet out here, and almost as green as Seattle.  I love breathing here.

The next day we got dropped off by Jesper at Fredricksburg Castle to wander around for the morning.  It's a really beautiful place with great gardens, though Michelle and I still don't agree about whether or not it's a palace or a castle.  I think it's a well defended palace, and she think it's a castle.  You'll have to decide from the pictures.

A pantomime at Tivoli.
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Then Jesper and Ann picked us up and we headed into Copenhagen.  It's a really pretty city with lots of brightly colored houses and canals.  We got a driving tour for a while, then headed up to the top of a church's spire for some great views of the city.  The cool thing is that this spire is black and gold with a spiral staircase on the outside! Nifty, huh?

From there we got to do something very special.  Jesper, aside from being a really cool guy, is the Chief Superintendent of Denmark's National Police force.  It's a pretty hardcore job: he was second in command of the UN force in Kosovo a few years back, and was just in Lebanon for 2 weeks coordinating the evacuation of foreign nationals from the war zone.  He got us in to Copenhagen's police headquarters, and that was sweet.

Us in the comfy chairs. I could've got a better picture, but i didn't want to move.
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The building looks normal from the outside, but inside it has this crazy, neo-classical roman thing going on.  Very surprising.  See the pictures.  He also got us in their command center.  That was awesome.  It was like a movie: tons of computers with enormous monitors, extensive databases, projectors, flat panel tv's, dudes with machine guns, radios, security cameras--everything.  Then he even took us up on the roof for another unique view of the city, and then down to their garage where they have all the crazy police vehicles.  There were undercover police cars and motorcycles, heavily armored police vans for riot control, the mobile command center, and everything.  Definately helped make up for the hours I spent with Michelle while she was shopping.

Very nice lawns. I guess they're the only ones like it in Denmark.
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From there we got to go see Tivoli, a very cool and unique place.  It's a theme park, like a small Disney Land, right in downtown Copenhagen.  It's been in the same place for 150 years, and has this really cool, old-timey feel to it.  At night it's lit up with millions of lights, and it's really beautiful.  It has a ton of rides in a small space, has live jazz almost every night, and a ton of cool buildings and cafes.  Very worth it.

This is getting a little long, so I'll try to keep the next part short.

The same castle. I will admid, it does have the only real functioning moat that I've ever seen on a castle.
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The next day, Friday, Michelle and I took the train down to a small island in southern Denmark, 40 km north of Germany, to a town called Nokskov.  It has about 14,000 people and nine of them are distantly related to Michelle.  I honestly still can't tell you how.  We spent the better part of 4 days with them, having great dinners every night, seeing what there was to see, and generally having a very nice, peaceful time.  We stayed with a very nice lady called Eva who's 79 years old.  Almost everyone spoke reasonably good English, but hers was the best because she lived in Canada for 5 years.

One of the halls inside the castle. Cool, but the original was destroyed in fire and this is just the restored version. I think the original would've been better.
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We saw a small zoo, a really cool ex-sugar factory turned modern art gallery, some churches, and even went out to the beach for a swim in the Baltic sea.  It was very calm when we got there, and not terribly cold.  Good fun.  It was especially nice for Michelle to see all her relatives.

Then yesterday, the 28th we came back to Copenhagen and spent the day wandering around there.  We took a moderately interesting boat tour around the harbor and the canals, which was cool until it started pouring on us and neither Michelle nor I had a rain jacket or an umbrella.  I used my backpack to block most of the rain, but Michelle's scarf was less effective.  It didn't last too long though.  We were fine.

Copenhagen from the top of the spire. Very nice.
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Today we've mostly been hanging out at Ann and Jesper's place, though we took a short trip into town to look around.  I bought an umbrella.

This has been a very comfortable portion of our trip as we haven't really had to take care of ourselves very much.  Tomorrow Michelle leaves for home, and I go off to Stockholm to start a little bit crazier portion of my travels in Eastern Europe, Lord willing.  I'll write more about it later after it's happened.  This will be my last blog entry with pictures for about 2 weeks (probably) because I won't have my camera cable (it's in Madrid with a bag I left there) or a bunch of time to use a computer.  Hope you all enjoy the hundreds of photos I've just uploaded and the stories.  Much love to all, especially those who write me--I think I wrote all of you back--and I will see you again sometime in a couple weeks.  God speed,

The spire we climbed up. Cool, huh?
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-Justin