渡: 2008

Long before I knew the capital of Denmark is Copenhagen, I knew that there is a fairy tale writer in Denmark whose name is Anderson. We thought there must be a big museum of his, and his residence must be well preserved. But there is actually not. One reason is that he was not that famous yet when he was alive, another is that he was a great explorer: he traveled enormous places and cannot stand staying at a place for too long. We only managed to find this, his statue by the city hall. He is looking to the direction of the Tivoli park, an amusement park in the center of Copenhagen. Before amusement park was invented, his books are the best friends of children.

This is my mom sitting on the floor of Anderson's Fairyland, listening to the story of Thumb Girl.

This was in front of the Ameilienburg, which is the royal palace. Denmark is a constitutional monarchy. The monarch of the Kingdom of Denmark is Queen Margrethe II. Her eldest son, i.e the Crown Prince married a non-royal lady years ago. She is from Tasmania, Australia, which is probably the farest place away from Denmark on the earth . They met in a pub when he went to Sydney to watch the Olympic Games. Alas, what can you say, that is fate. Their marriage is the modern fairy tale.

This is the Rosenburg, the catsle where the royal family reside in winter.

I call it the American junk food building: McDonald, Burger King, KFC. But someone is delighted at this I am sure.

I didn't know what Denmark is rich in amber until I got there. They call amber "gold of the ocean" since it is mostly collected by the sea. I in this picture was standing outside the Copenhagen Amber Museum. In the exhibition held there, we see ancient insects trapped in amber, and I started imagining that if there was a mosquito which just had a big bite of a dinosaur and was trapped by an amber right after, then perhaps we can extract from the mosquito the blood of a dinosaur, and then obtain its DNA... why not?

I find this cart/bike very clever!

Here is the most famous spot of Copenhagen -- almost its landmark -- the little mermaid. To be honest, it is not a really splendid sculpture, but it fit into the context and environment well. Well, The Little Mermaid, I remember I was so sad after reading or being read this story. That was perhaps my first enlightenment that love can be tragic.

My mom and I in front of a nice and powerful fountain.

Nyhaven is a very vibrant place. A lot of fashionable restaurant cluster along the street. As you can probably recognize, Nyhaven can be directly translated into New Haven, and it reveals that there is a port nearby. I wonder if the New Haven in America was named after this place by early Danish explorers.

We took a canal bus, aka boat, at Nyhaven to tour around the city.

Copenhagen is very chilly. The outdoor thermograph on the wall of a building says that the temperature is 15*C.

The weather in Copenhagen is as changeable as that in London. Minutes ago we were wearing sunglasses, and then when a cloud came it poured! This is my mom getting shielded in an Afghan Market. I was reading The Kite Runner on the trip, and I couldn't help wondering what a life did the owner of the store had? What drove him come to such a faraway land? Does he/she still have friends/family in Afghanistan? Are they still alive?...

Copenhagen is also a city full of canals. I say "also", because there are quite a number of cities with such traits in Europe. The most famous one among them are Venice, but Copenhagen feels more like Amsterdam, with the boat houses in water and buildings in red bricks by the canals.

This is Copenhagen Stock Exchange. It has a history of over 400 years. I like the pinnacle of the tower

A second-hand market

Copenhagen has many towers with intriguing pinnacles.
I gave the bird its credit for choosing a nice

Outside the Royal Library

A yoga practitioner in the garden of the royal library

I run into some good performance in the street of Copenhagen the afternoon we reached there. This is a string walker from San Fransisco. I took 2 videos clips of his performance, and I will upload them when the internet is not so shaky.

A band from Peru. Their music is soul touching.

A rock band performing in the City Hall Square for blood donation.

Outside Trivoli Park there is a "Build a Bear" workshop. I thought it is something special about Trivoli Park, therefore it would be meaningful to build one there as a Copenhagen souvenir. Only later on did I realize that it is a international chain store. Never mind, it is the experience that mattered. It is rather I pressed some decorative buttons rather than I built a bear. On the buttons there are words like "love", "courage", "knowledge".. therefore pressing them means that these qualities are built into the bear when it is being stuffed with the machine. And then I need to put a little clothing heart into its body before it is sowed up, but there are a series of actions attached to the "put": I am instructed by the lady to rub my hands with the heart inside to make it warm, to give the heart a kiss, to tell the bear in its ear a secret that only we two will share, and hold the bear and run around in the store to make it energetic. I did all these with a number of kids, whose ages are at most half of mine. After quite some exercise, the lady said solemnly to me: "Now you must promise me one thing." I was struck by the sudden seriousness in her tone, and then I heard she saying " You will take good care of the bear." In the end, I need to fill in a birth certificate for it. I named my polar bear Dan, for the sake of Denmark.

Woody and Buzz Lightyear!

One of the nuisances of going back working in Beijing is that I won't be able to write on or read my travelogues on blogger.com. For some only-god-knows reasons, all access to blogger.com is blocked - well, I certainly am not saying that those who blocked the access are gods. There is of course methods to log on, as some of my friends in Beijing gave comments here, but some complicated process may be expected.

In view of this, I am hesitating if I should continue my travelogue here, or go back to my old msnspace. I prefer the layoff here a lot, and it's much more convenient to add pictures and videos in between text. But would I be frustrated if I know that I am writing something that only few, almost nobody, will read, since they, or we, cannot? Probably yes.

I am never an avid blogger. The easy reason is that I am busy -- well, I have to admit that it's more an excuse than a reason. The harsher reason is that I am lazy -- it's more true, but still not in-depth enough. I am not a very "public" person. It always amazes me to read the blogs of those who expose every bit of their life and thoughts (if they have any) in the writing. It amazes me so much that I almost feel ashamed, to be so intimate to people's thoughts, especially those I don't know so well. I think there must be a narcissus inside themselves. Besides, I don't want to throw myself into the dilemma between a) writing dishonestly, either in terms of the content or in the tone of expressing the content, and b) dealing with the frustration of nobody understanding me or identifying with me. Last but not least, once I have a blog, I would be like "Oh, this is interesting. I need to write about it in my blog" whenever I see something nice. But the update of my blog never catches up with my seeings and feelings, then they accumulate into a mental burden.

I however don't have the courage of completely abandon my blogs, because I dread that my memory will fade, then I at least have the words and pictures to remember them for me. And in the most unfortunate case that some day I am buried in life bitterness and am at the verge of becoming a cynic or a whiner, I at least have my blogs, to remind me of the days when I am young.