The Danish Adventures

One of my best friends, Jess, is studying Social Anthropology in Copenhagen this semester (the lucky duck). As soon as I realised I could just about afford the plane tickets I booked my weekend away to visit her. Finally last Friday I was on my way! For some reason it didn't occur to me to get the bus from St Andrews to the airport, but instead I took a bus, a train and another bus to get there... I do love my trains though. I was three hours early for my flight which I discovered is very much a rookie mistake. After reading for an hour I checked in and then spent another hour and a half wandering the airport before I could board my flight. The plane was the smallest I've ever flown in - I've only ever taken airbuses before and I'd never flown on my own before this weekend so I had a little panic when climbing the tiny staircase into the tiny aircraft. There were only 12 of us on the flight, though, so I could sit pretty much wherever I wanted.

I landed in Copenhagen at about 7pm and bought myself a klippekort, a ticket that you punch in a machine whenever you travel on the Metro, and this one had 10 journeys on it but it was a significant cut out of my budget at 145 kroner. Jess called me and told me to take the Metro to Frederiksberg rather than Lindevang where she lived because she was baking pies for thanksgiving with a friend.

When I came out of the Metro station at Frederiksberg I got my first real impression of Denmark (besides the Christmas tree all lit up beside the runway, how lovely) by way of a shitload of bikes locked up (and unlocked) outside the station. I have never seen so many bikes in one place before. Jess came to meet me, we hugged etc etc and she bought herself a hot dog from the 7/11. It was raining when we began the walk to her friend Yolande's house which turned out to be much longer than Jess realised, but we got to see some pretty cool things - a maze (which we ventured into but only a little way in the pitch black), a church and an ice rink among other things. We spent the evening baking pies and souffle in Yolande's flat, Jess failed to convince us to go out drinking, and then the two of us headed back to her house.

In the morning we agreed to get up early, hop on a train and head to Elsinore (anglicised - Helsingør in Danish) i.e. the home of Hamlet! We were up by 9 and out by 10, queued in the ticket office at Norreport in the centre of Copenhagen to find out which was the cheapest way to travel out there. We got on the train carrying a pie plate and all the ingredients for a pumpkin pie, including a 2kg bag of flour in Jess' backpack. Her shoulders were really starting to hurt so she dumped the flour in a bin on the train and decided to buy more later. A good decision.

We could see Kronborg Castle as soon as we left the train station at Elsinore and we made our way over. Probably because we hadn't eaten or drunk much since waking up we started to feel pretty faint and hungry as we came through the gate... in fact my legs started to buckle with every step, so we decided we'd have to lunch first, explore later. After a seemingly endless but actually pretty short walk into Elsinore we found a hot dog stand where I decided to try a Danish hot dog, since I was in Denmark. I'm usually a vegetarian but that's a story for another day. It was good. There was something crunchy on top along with mustard and pickles... yum. But I wasn't sent exactly into a meat-craze.

Then I had my first Danish Danish... and half a piece of cake, some crisps and a drink. We have pretty big appetites for a couple of young women. With snacks in our bags for later, we headed back to Kronborg, took a scenic walk around the outskirts of the palace grounds and then bought our tickets for a guided tour. A very charismatic Danish woman led us around the royal apartments and the ballroom (my favourite part). Little dioramas showed what certain rooms looked like at different times.

After the tour we had a little wander on our own, then went down to the casemates to explore. The casemates were at one time used to hold prisoners but had other functions as well that I've forgotten. In the underground labyrinth there was a huge statue of Holger Danske, the sleeping Danish king who will awake to save Denmark in a time of crisis (as if anyone will ever pick on Denmark). We wandered through narrow, pitch-black corridors with only Jess's bike-lights as torches. A little girl walked out of a dark room and made us both lose our shit at one point. On the whole we were pretty darn brave.

Before we left my phone sent me another roaming charges text and I realised I was on a Swedish network. THEN we realised we could see Sweden across the bay! We considered getting a ferry across to have a cup of tea in Sweden but we were already going to be late for Thanksgiving so (after a visit to the gift shop) we got back on the train to Norreport. Jess took me along the main shopping street and sadly had her iPhone stolen. We spent a few hours agonising and trying to track it down but to no avail. She had a Danish phone as a back up but unfortunately the mystery is still unsolved...

Finally we arrived at Thanksgiving, a couple of hours late. The meal was just about ready to be served. I met a few more of Jess' friends, all international students who have their own awesome multicultural community in Copenhagen. Several different languages were being spoken. Michael, the Thanksgiving host, was from Australia and had never cooked a turkey before. The spread was amazing. Yams, stuffing, carrots, cranberries, souffle, two turkeys and then for pudding there was an apple crumble, ice cream, the pecan pie that Jess, Yolande and I had made and finally a pumpkin pie that we set to cooking at 11pm when about half the people had left so there wasn't too much competition for a slice!

Certainly the most diverse Thanksgiving I've attended so far. We stayed until the clean-up was done and everyone else had left. I was worried about only knowing Jess and Yolande but Jess has the uncanny ability to make friends with people who will instantly get along with each other... or maybe her presence is the catalyst!

The next morning there was some debate about whether we should go out of Copenhagen to a deer park to have a picnic with the others, but in the end the heavy rain settled that. After a slow morning of drinking hot chocolate and chilling out we took the Metro into town and made our way to the National Museet with a guidebook and a compass to replace the Google Maps on Jess's iPhone we relied on before. We ambled around the exhibits on the Iron Age, the Stone and Bronze Age, the Vikings, Peoples of the World and Renaissance Denmark before deciding we'd better move on as we only had a couple of hours to visit the art museum too. After a sandwich each in a cafe and the purchase of a bag of pastries we headed over to the Ny Carlsberg Glyptoteket and devoured as much art as possible in the hour we had left.

A gallery announcement telling us that the museum was closing forced us to leave but we were very excited about our final adventure. The Tivoli Gardens in Copenhagen were blown up by the Nazis in 1944 to crush Danish morale - that's how awesome this place is. They're pleasure gardens, with rides and restaurants, trees and a lake, but it was after dark and late November so the place had been transformed into a winter wonderland (with the theme A Russian Christmas).

We spent three hours and more browsing the Christmas market and ate some æbleskiver (which we thought translated as apple cider but turned out to be a waffle-like ball that you dip in jam). After finishing off our plates we made to leave the little millhouse restaurant where we'd eaten them but a man called us over to his table and insisted we try his aebleskiver. 'What's the difference?' he asked Jess. We weren't sure... but it turned out he was the chef (phew) and had cooked these ones for as long as possible so they were crunchier on the outside and softer inside. He was very proud of himself. We also drank our first glogg. Grund glogg is similar to mulled wine; it's three different types of wine mixed together with raisins and cloves and more, heated and with a shot of rum the vendor suggested we add. My feet had been soaking wet and freezing cold all day but the glogg warmed me right up, and got me fairly drunk too. We staggered home (not really, loped is probably the word) with bags of Danish Christmas decorations, made ourselves a curry, watched a couple of Disney films and fell asleep.

fuelled by Glogg

I love Denmark. The following morning I took the Metro back to the airport and flew home but I will definitely be returning. Jess is even considering moving there and I wouldn't blame her. Copenhagen is such a friendly, beautiful city!

Greece Diary, Part Eight: Farewell, Greece

On our last day in Greece I worked with Piros and Ira in the school and groomed the stallions for the last time. The farm was really beginning to feel like home and we probably spent a little more time dozing in the hammocks than usual.

Amanda had suggested that for our final afternoon we take a drive round to the other side of the island and have lunch at a taverna there, so after we'd done the midday muck-out we piled into the van and set off in a direction we'd never ventured in before. I sometimes wonder if we should have explored the area more while we were there, but we were always so hot and tired in the afternoons that it never seemed feasible. Just around the first corner I discovered there was a taverna at the end of the road which had been practically in sight the whole time, but I'd been so happy in my bubble I hadn't thought to go looking for anything else nearby.

Amanda's partner Stathis is an artist and the town's sign-painter; on the way to the taverna, Amanda took us to an art and ceramics place where there were beautiful statues hidden in amongst the shrubbery. The statue pictured above was by Stathis; he'd never sculpted before he was asked to produce something for them but he managed to carve this incredible Skyrian out of the rock.

We arrived at the taverna. It was in such a beautiful place, nestled in the trees on top of a hill. An evil eye looked out from one of the stairs leading up to it. We sat under a canopy at the very edge, looking out at the landscape. The boy who took our order was one of Amanda's English pupils - everyone on Skyros seems to know each other. We ordered a load of different dishes but the boy brought us extra dishes as well. The food was delicious and the flies had almost stopped bothering me (almost). After we'd eaten as much as we could handle we were brought rice pudding, on the house.

I don't think I will ever be able to forget this rice pudding... goat's milk with cinnamon sprinkled on top. Ben ate his practically in one mouthful. Just... yum.

After our meal we headed down to a nearby beach. It was so stunning... the huge waves, the islands, and we set off exploring the hills beside the beach.

I thought this huge rock out to sea looked like a horse emerging from the water. But I did have horses on the brain.

This beach is the way I'll always remember my first experience of Greece. For a lazy hour or so we stood in the water, sat on the cliffs and wandered through the shrubbery. The whole time I was debating the likelihood of Amanda allowing me to adopt Orfeas. (She did.)

After we returned to the farm, I was walking across the yard with Amanda when she said "Oh my God. Artemis has had a foal."

And it was true. Artemis, who wasn't supposed to be due until the end of the summer, had a tiny little foal at her feet. She looked pretty rough from lying in the dirt and having suddenly lost a huge portion of her body but she had a foal! We got to work putting up a fence in the straw field so that they could have some privacy - they were currently rooming with two stallions. In the end though we moved them to the school for the night as it was quite late by the time the fence was up and Amanda didn't want to disturb the neighbours by bringing them through to the back - the other horses would have been pretty noisy in greeting the new arrival. Amanda wanted to get a headcollar on Artemis before the morning so that she'd definitely be able to catch her the next day, as she'd get pretty aggressive in defence of her foal once she regained her strength, so I spent the evening, even after it became dark, sitting in the arena with the tiniest foal I'd ever seen and his cautious mother, feeding them pony nuts.

Then we all cooked up some toast and boiled eggs and had a very late dinner. In the morning, we said our goodbyes and headed to the airport. Because of the recent vote in Greece everyone had returned to their hometowns, so strangely enough the tiny airport was packed and we even panicked we wouldn't make our flight (but we did, of course).

Farewell, Greece. I'll be back next summer - you can't get rid of me that easily.

P.S. Congratulations to Amanda and Stathis because The Katseralias-Simpson Project will soon be a registered charity, The Skyros Horse Trust!

Greece Diary, Part Seven: Regressing

When I was a kid my walls were plastered with posters from PONY magazine. My ceiling (I had a bunk bed) was stuck with newspaper cuttings of racehorses. Essentially, I was horse-crazy. In Greece, I could feel that same single-minded obsession resurfacing.

That's me in the volunteer room after having discovered Parelli. I found these boxes on the bookshelf. I'd heard of Parelli back in my PONY magazine days but I'd never really known what it was. Over the next few days I devoured the books of the level one course. Parelli is all about approaching a horse as if you are a horse - not quite literally, but behaving in a similar way so that you can understand your horse, and it can understand you, better. It was a revelation. The more I read, the more I realised how much people in the UK casually neglect their horses without realising. Our attitude is so outdated. I've been guilty of it too. People inadvertently treat horses like cars ... forgetting they're animals who don't exist solely for our amusement.

This is me with Ira, one of the two regular-sized ponies who live on the farm. I was lucky enough to get to practise a few of the Parelli games with her. In the morning on our final day I worked with her a lot until we were actually starting and stopping in unison, without any commands. It's amazing how easily you can get onto the same wavelength as a horse once you actually try. Amanda was telling me about how she ran about with Piros until he started to treat her too much like another stallion - play-fighting with her! - the moral of which is don't get too playful with stallions! I genuinely felt like I connected with Ira and got a little bit giddy about it. It was such a good end to my experience with horses in Greece.

And here again is my baby Orfeas. I loved this little guy so much I officially adopted him. When I return in June I'm hoping to do some Parelli with him as Amanda suggested and maybe even complete level one. He won't be such a baby then and will probably be much more comfortable around people! I doubt he'll remember me, but I haven't forgotten him. :)

I became so horse-mad when I was in Greece that when I returned to the UK I enrolled on a distance-learning course in Equine Behavioural Psychology, so now I'm learning about equine behaviour in the wild and in domestic environments, and even more about the casual neglect that causes so many problems. I've even begun to think that I might complete my English degree and then just go into equine welfare.

Next time... Hello, Goodbye (Or: Unexpected Births and a Farewell to Greece)