Greetings from lovely Denmark where I am spending a few days with friends Barbara and Kuhrt. Barbara was, literally, the first friend I made in Washington, DC when I moved there to attend graduate school at American University. She had just completed a semester abroad in Grenoble, France and was preparing to move into a house on Quebec Street, NW, in the city with my friend Nancy who I knew through Gail, fiancée of Al, my best pal from SUNY Oneonta where Al, Gail and I had all become close friends and ‘fierce JEOPAERDY! competitors during after lunch games watched on a TV in the basement of one of our dorms. Nancy and Gail had gone to high school together. But I digress, as I often do. Barbara and Nancy, their housemates and our friends had many great times during the years of my grad school experience. Barbara and I remained friends and I got to know Kuhrt, a dashing Danish chef, with whom she fell in love and married. They started their life together in Bethesda, Maryland and had their two daughters there. But eventually, they moved to Allerød, Denmark just north of Copenhagen. Flash forward several decades and many visits back and forth, including a memorable meeting in Normandy, marriage of their two daughters, and the birth of their 4 beautiful grandkids, and here I am back today.

The flight over from Gatwick Airport was quick! We arrived 30 minutes early! The only issue was that I left my sleeveless fleece jacket in the departure lounge. This is a step up from leaving my winter jacket in Copenhagen airport three years ago. Let’s hope this isn’t becoming a thing with me!

Kuhrt and Barbara have always been incredible hosts. After picking me up at the airport, our first stop was Copenhagen’s famous amusement park Tivoli Gardens. Like several European countries, Denmark has adopted some of America’s Halloween traditions, while keeping their own autumn traditions.

The two pictures above are from Google and give an idea of the kind of decorations that appear throughout the venerable park. Below left are Barbara and Kuhrt. Right are Barbara and me, as always, representing my Alma Mater.

The park has grown and contains quite an array of rides, shops, restaurants and water features, see the boat in the photo. We had a great time walking, talking and laughing, as only old friends can.

Before we went to Barbara and Kuhrt’s home, we made a brief stop at her younger daughter’s home, where their two daughters, their husbands and children were spending a pleasant Sunday afternoon. I hoped my arrival would not disturb the family’s afternoon, but this is a family that defines the Danish concept of Hygge (pronounced hyoo-guh). The two sisters are both wonderful compassionate women who have married men who complement them well. Each couple has a son and a daughter, and all four cousins are a joy to spend time with. Celine, the daughter hosting us, demonstrated that she had her dad’s baking skills serving us a wonderful pumpkin cake.

On one of my first visits to Denmark, Kuhrt told me a famous joke that Danes tell (and I suspect Swedes reword slightly and tell too). “What does Sweden have that Denmark does not? A beautiful across the Öresund. (The sound dividing the two countries). The next day, we had the chance to experience that for ourselves when Kuhrt drove us up the coast and we took a 20-minute ferry ride to Sweden. It seemed to be nearly as large as the ferries I have taken to cross “La Manche” (the English Channel). It even had a duty-free store that only provided the duty-free prices for the second 10 minutes of each crossing.

We were passing the time looking at the various alcohol prices and when, of all the akvavit selling joints on all the daily crossings between Denmark and Sweden, who should walk into this one, but a friend of Barbara and Kuhrt’s! It is a small world!

Upon our arrival, Kuhrt kept to a coastal route, and we saw lovely Swedish villages. Our first stop was at Sofiero, which was one of the Swedish royal family’s country mansions from 1864 until King Gustaf VI Adolf’s death in 1970 when he left it to the city of Helsingborg. It is a lovely, peaceful setting.

Though now used primarily as a restaurant and gallery for exhibitions, the grounds and its famous rhododendron gardens are maintained, as are wooded trails that are open to the people.

Some views of the front gardens in Autumn.

We were able to peek inside the entrance and get a view of a few of the rooms with some of the original furnishings, including the large Swedish heater in one corner.

Views from the Front or the back were quite spectacular.

From Solero, we continued North along the Swedish coast toward our destination, a picturesque village, Mölle. It is the kind of place that brings to mind for me coastal Maine. But it is uniquely Scandanavian.

There homes were built neatly onto hillsides, the streets curved and turned to suggest the homes must have predated automobiles in many cases. As it was midday, we decided we would stop for lunch at the grandest looking establishment in the city and that turned out to be the one pictured in the third photo, above, the aptly named Grand Hôtel Mölle. What a delight!

view. I wish I could have found a photo of the other side of the large room and the cozy fire burning in the fireplace and the nice bar setup. The staff was outstanding. As for the food, oh the food. I regret not being a food picture guy! The cod was so tender and mouth-watering I wonder if I will ever think of my Christmas Eve Baccala in the same way again. Aunt Lena and Aunt Jo if you are reading this from heaven, don’t worry, I didn’t try any eel, I will never cheat on your Christmas eve eel. Anway, the three of all agreed it was a grand meal at the Grand Hotel. The quality of the meal even overcame my disappointment at not seeing a ghost of a Garbo or Barrymore slinking through the corridors.

Before returning to Denmark, though, we had one last important stop to make, the ICA MAXI in Helsingborg. My, word! This was a shopping experience worth having. Not only could I pick up a few odds and ends of toiletries I had forgotten. (Note to travelers everywhere, Swedish dental floss is amazingly strong and effective.) This store had an amazing selection of fresh fruits and vegetables, meats, and canned and boxed products that included names we Americans would recognize from home. Like a somewhat upscale Target, this place rocked.

Then, it was back to the ferry and back to Denmark where, later, not satisfied with all of that driving, Kuhrt wowed me with a light meal of typical Danish open-faced sandwiches. As all of his meals are, delicious. As happens when old friends get together, the talk sometimes turned to times gone by. In our cases, we had all been in Washington, DC in a very special time in our lives and in the life of that city. As the Watergate and Viet Nam eras wrought changes, we enjoyed great freedom, and the city was alive with possibility. We remembered the Georgetown and low-rise Bethesda of those days. a pre-security conscious city where student housing was easy and cheap, and paranoia was treated by professional, not a political requisite. We remembered friends who had lost their way or lost their battles and some who had lost their lives. Barbara and I remembered historical moments that were involved in. Ah, the past! And then we spoke of the changes, but why linger on that!

On my last full day in Denmark, Barbara and I got out of the house to give the master chef room to work on a family meal (the ‘girls’ and their families were both coming to dinner), and we went on an expedition to the Allerød town center that is also known as Hillerød which has a large multilevel shopping mall as well as a lovely, pedestrianized downtown area. We thought we would see if we could find a fleece jacket to replace the one, I had left in the airport in the UK and generally window shop in the town. We parked in the multistory parking garage at Slotsarkaderne Shopping Mall. As Barbara noted to me, you really

couldn’t tell whether you were in the US, Denmark, the UK or wherever from looking at the people. It was a classy looking place. We browsed a bit and then headed outside to the pedestrian zone. There were all kinds of shops that seemed to be doing well (see photo below, taken in summer, obviously). We even found a jacket for me! Barbara did some shopping for some garden accessories, and she even took me to a couple of wildly divergent toy stores. One was a typical “mom and pop” store. The other was filled with

all kinds of Halloween stuff and the kinds of crazy plastic swords and cosplay stuff that kids love. There was a lovely tea-selling shop called Nordic Tea Bar that had brands I had never seen before. We even stumbled upon a delightful family run cafe, Rømers Kaffebar, where we stopped for coffee. As with every shop and store we entered, customer service was outstanding, the people were friendly and kind. This blog is just a labor of love, I don’t get anything from mentioning these shops. If I was local, though, I would be a regular at both.

We returned home and really didn’t have much time before we the fun began with the arrival of 4 kids, 4 adults and one aging Pekinese/chihuahua mix dog. Marina’s (the older sister) son had been at a school party, a big deal for a 10-year-old boy and all four kids were excited about Halloween and the fun of being with their grandparents. And I was the recipient of this special drawing from Celine’s son depicting me with the American flag!

I shall cherish this picture as a special memory of this trip to Denmark. We had another of Kuhrt’s great dinners with Barbara’s delicious salads and the assistace of Marina and Celine. We talked and laughed, and the children kept us smiling with their antics. The evening ended too soon with promises of visits to both sides of the Atlantic and then the old folks did some cleaning up and slipped off to bed. Before we knew it, morning had come, and Kuhrt was up and cooking us French toast with some of the Challah bread I had brought from London as a special treat for Barbara and it was time for us to return to Copenhagen Airport. I’ll conclude with a picture of a Danish magpie that visited Kuhrt’s birdfeeder each day, and with warm thanks to my hosts and dear friends for another memorable visit.

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