Karla & Dave's Ed May Sem 2012 Blog

May 24, 2012

Odense is the birthplace of Hans Christian Andersen the famous fairy tale writer, so this morning we went to his museum, which incorporates part of his boyhood home. Then, after some more exploring and/or shopping, we hopped on the train for Copenhagen. After checking in to our hotel rooms, we went to Sari's for a group dinner. Later in the evening we all made it to Tivoli gardens, the first amusement park in the world. It has rides and carnival games, but it also has lots of free concerts (swing, classical, jazz), a pantomime theater, many eating places (restaurant style, not just deep-fried-Oreos-on-a-stick types of foods), peacocks, thousands of flowers, a huge pond with a pirate ship, and many other things.

Breakfast at the CabInn in Odense is on the 7th floor with a great view of the city.

We're missing Sting in Odense by a month.

A sculpture of H. C. Andersen in the museum. He was self-conscious about his looks, so he reportedly spent considerable time finding a good pose before sitting for paintings and sculptures.

H. C. Andersen's handwritten first draft of The Little Mermaid.

A recreation of his writing room.

This display showed many of H. C. Andersen's contemporaries to give a sense of his world and when he lived.

He always carried this rope with him when he traveled. Back in those days, if a hotel caught fire from a careless guest's candle or the fireplace, many guests were consumed by the flames or smoke. The rope was to help him climb down from an upper floor room in the event of fire.

H. C. Andersen remained a bachelor his entire life. In a letter to a famous Danish opera star, whom he had known personally for a long time, he proclaimed his love for her. She responded with a letter in which she said she loved him as brother.

H. C. Andersen Museum with a class of Danish school children eating their sack lunches before going in for a tour.

There are many Muslim immigrants and refugees living in Denmark.

1,408 cyclists so far at 11:30 a.m. The count for the entire year will surpass 1 million.

A sculpture suggesting that people have a greedy side.

This is an old diesel engine factory that closed and has been reopened as a bazaar for the many Middle-Eastern residents of Odense.

When this Turkish place in the bazaar opened, we tried one of their pizzas - it was pretty good.

An Indian eating establishment in the bazaar.

Just like the Shriner's Circus in the States.

Sculpture of a mechanical camel (notice the windup key in its back) outside the bazaar.

Lots of bikes in Odense.

A grotesquely ugly statue across from the train station in Odense. They have many, many gorgeous statues of famous people and scenes from the fairy tales all over Odense, but this on and one in the central town square are real puzzlers.

The Odense Theater appears to be doing a motorcycle gang based version of The Three Musketeers.

Karla and Olav walking down a side walking street.

Kairsten, Paige, Nicole, Laura, and Joni in Copenhagen for an outside dinner at Sari's.

Moriah, Danielle, Karla, and Kristin

The restaurant is really across the street on the left, but their outside table were very nice.

Kristin can't believe the size of her burger.

Neither can Danielle.

These three girls saw me with my camera and asked me to take their picture. They are from Palestine.

A bicycle that could have been built by the guys from American Chopper on the Discovery Channel (it would have been Senior, not Junior because it is old school).