Day by Day in Denmark

The Little Mermaid ( Den Lille Havfrue)  is perhaps the most iconic symbol of Copenhagen, in spite of the fact that she is surprisingly small (4 feet tall) and unassuming. She was sculpted by Edvard Eriksen in 1913, commissioned by Carl Jacobsen, Danish beer company magnate, after he fell in love after seeing a ballet based on the Little Mermaid story.  The actress who played her on stage refused to pose nude but was willing to have her face on the statue; her face was used together with the sculptor's wife's body. The statue was inspired by Hans Christian Andersen's  famous fairytale about a mermaid who gives up everything to be united with a young, handsome prince on land.  Of course, unlike the Disney version, the story has a sad ending.  Every morning and evening she swims to the surface from the bottom of the sea and, perched on her rock in the water, she stares longingly towards the shore hoping to catch a glimpse of her beloved prince.   She may be s...

We have just moved into our third and final apartment where we will spend the rest of our time in Denmark! With the living room windows facing east, we get a lot of precious sunlight in the morning. And the kitchen windows are facing west, so we can see sunsets.   I like to think of the lawn of the art museum across the street as our front yard, especially because they put out lots of lawn chairs where we can sit in the sunshine.  This art museum and the much larger one behind it, are in the middle of a lovely park with several lakes and winding paths. And a large playground. Several buildings down is a school [actually, as I recently learned, the school where the current King attended when he was young!] so it is common to see a gaggle of kids, holding hands and two by two, skipping down the sidewalk towards the playground or back to the school, with one teacher at the front and one at the rear. View of the Hirschsprung Collection from our previous ground floor apartment...

Today Chuck and I finally passed the finish line that was receiving our Danish CPR (Central Person Registry) numbers!  It is essential for everyone living in Denmark for more than three months to have a CPR number to unlock all the various services that come along with being a Danish resident.  Without a CPR, you can't open a bank account (to get paid your salary), can't access the free medical system, get a library card, etc; with it, you are eligible for free Danish lessons, among other things. There were many hoops to jump through along the way but we didn't realize we would run into the problem of having a place to live.  However, when we asked the owner of our AirBnB to sign the paper to confirm that we were staying at his address for our first 6 weeks, he refused to help.  (He didn't explain so we don't know quite why...)  But this meant we were advised to just wait until we moved into the more permanent apartment that we signed a formal lease for.  O...

We started our stay in Copenhagen in an AirBnB but yesterday was the day to move to our more permanent apartment. Or should I say more temporary apartment?  Our formal lease at Stockholmsgade 19 does not start until October 1st but the owner gave us the opportunity to move into one of his other apartments until then.  So for now we are in Apartment ST, TV (= ground floor, to the left). Yesterday we packed up our suitcases and wheeled them 15 minutes to get to our new home. Our new landlord Niels seems very nice and helpful. He lives next door (ST, TH = ground floor, to the right) but owns all of the apartments in the building.  It has all been in his family since it was built in the 1870s! This apartment has an extra large living room: and a large dining room: a main bedroom:  as well as a tiny maid's room off of the kitchen: It even has a bathroom and a toilet room, but the backyard still has the outhouse that everyone used to use before indoor plumbing was installe...

We didn't plan it this way, necessarily, but our trip to Sweden this past weekend had a lot to do with prizes and ceremonies.  We took the train from Copenhagen to Stockholm on Thursday and met up with one of Chuck's colleagues from graduate school at Stanford: Marty (Martha) Finnemore and her husband David.  We've been friends with them since we lived several blocks apart in San Francisco just after we got married.  Marty and David were there so she could receive the Skytte Prize, a prestigious honor awarded for most remarkable achievements within the field of Political Science.  We joined them for drinks and then a pleasant dinner that gave us the opportunity to get caught up with each others' lives. The next day, Chuck and I took a guided tour of City Hall.  Even though visiting a City Hall doesn't sound very spectacular, it certainly was, partly because the grand Blue Room is the site every year of the grand banquet for royalty and winners of the Nobel Prize...

We had a short adventure this past weekend by spending 4 days in Helsinki, Finland which is a conveniently short 1.5 hour flight from Copenhagen. Right away on the train from the airport, we could see the striking differences from Denmark: there are rocky hills and so many pine trees. And Helsinki itself is different because Finland is the only  Nordic country that doesn't have any buildings that dates back to medieval times, so buildings look newer and streets are straighter.  Even though our intriguing hotel had the look of an old castle, it was actually built much more recently. Our hotel Right after we dropped off our bags at our hotel, we walked down to the waterfront where we were meeting Emma Gier, her (Finnish) husband Konsta and their 3 month old son Onni.  They had suggested we meet at a well-known sauna/restaurant in case we wanted to schedule a sauna after dinner (but unfortunately there were no time slots available). It was a lovely outdoor restaurant on the ...