Porcelain Dogs and The Oops Missile

Day 10

Copenhagen, Denmark

Over breakfast, we argued about how many locks are on the Mississippi. And how many are on the Tennessee River. And how doable it is to float a raft to the Gulf of Mexico. And the internet was sporadic, so we couldn’t just look it up. So we relied on the old fashioned insistence that we were the only one who was right.

The morning guide was full of remarkable facts and stories. We gobbled them up. Excited children with fairy tales.

We could just see red-bearded Viking men lunking around these delicate, quiet docks. Covered in leather and wool and tunics and flowy shirts. Tough as nails, rugged, innovative. The town, with streets still named after crocodiles and unicorns, mythical creatures and cooking spices.

70% of their food is organic, and Legos were invented here and so was Hans Christian Anderson’s The Little Mermaid, and they have a statue of The Little Mermaid by the water. She’s been decapitated twice so they filled her up with concrete. Now people periodically paint her instead. Crafty Vandalism. Someone should yarn bomb her. The famous Tivoli Garden where they built an amusement park to try to keep people from revolting, figuring they would be busy having too much fun to plan it. The Bella Sky Hotel that was a women-only bar for some time until men went to court to sue for gender discrimination and won. And now it’s just a regular old bar and not nearly as exciting.

The land is flat as a pancake, so 50% of people in Copenhagen commute solely by bicycle. They are famously obnoxious, riding the wrong way on one-way streets and up on sidewalks and wherever they please. Sounds like good fun to me.

Copenhagen saved 7,500 Jews during the occupation. For two days they shipped them by small boats over to Sweden where they’d be safe. Then neighbors took care of their properties and watered their plants for a few years until the Jews could safely return. Denmark even set aside a secret $1 million fund to help the Jews get resettled once the war was over. They take care of their neighbors.

The thatch roofs that were once the cheapest kind, and you only hoped that the cats who snuggled their way into your roof didn’t fall through when it rained. Raining cats and dogs. But now that it’s an iconic look, people pay out the nose for it. Insurance companies hate it and that’s just the way it goes. Linen was treated by laying it on the beach and letting salt water and sun bleach it to a pure white, and rich people paid a bunch of money for that too. And some people bought big houses and some people bought chicken coops and converted them to living space.

My favorite, though, was the Porcelain Staffordshire Dogs. Women would put them in windows, and when their husbands were out to sea, they’d face the dogs outward, longing and looking for the husband’s return. When he was home, they’d face the dogs inward to let everyone know he was back.

Plus, it was a good way to tell her lover(s) whether or not it was safe to come by.

We strolled around and thought about how Great Danes don’t come from Denmark, and neither do Danish Pastries. The Danes are the only ones in the world who don’t call them Danish Pastries. They are called Vienna Pastries here. And how there were geese all over the place once upon a time, so everybody still eats them for Christmas. The old Christmas Goose. We walked to the end of the lane down by the water and had a group coffee-tea-danish-not-danish-pastry party for a while with the other folks from our bus.

Despite all the information, it seemed like a quiet tour. The air was still and so were the leaves and so was my heart. Every single step was a new and fabulous photo op. The beiges and the browns and texture everywhere. We loved this place. We loved how the Queen said, “I’ll stay on my perch ‘til I drop off” and how a giant yacht was one of her official residences. And how a warship accidentally fired a missile into some summer residences while it was in port, but it was February so no one got hurt and after that they retired it and turned it into a museum. And how they still call it the ‘Oops Missile’. And how the old ship-building building was also retired and turned into the biggest indoor golf course in the world. About the cannon that was fired every sunrise and sunset but sometimes the sunrise was at 3:30am and they didn’t want to wake everybody up, so now they fire it at 8am and sunset instead.

The tour took us to a pier and opera house where the whack-whack-whack of helicopters doing military exercises took even the guide off guard. They dropped military guys into the water and had them repel onto boats and swung willy-nilly all over the place. So close and low, we were misted from the sea. We ooh’d and ahh’d and there was some delighted squealing and all the old people waved at them. A couple pumped their arms like they were trying to get a big rig to honk the horn.

But the military guys didn’t respond.

Why would they?

We learned about Hygge. How it means a million things. It means real hot chocolate on a cold winter night. It means lounge chairs by the water with a cool drink in summer. It means the practice of snuggling and love and happiness. It means taking care of each other and giving a stranger a hand. It means doing whatever it is you enjoy, and doing everything the best you can. It means creating.

It’s just the laid back, Lovely Danish Way.