Stevns

Where to start? We're in the middle of a busy week after a busy weekend which included a very hyggelig choir party and a fun excursion to Stevns Klint with colleagues from my job. Our choir performed its spring concert on Tuesday of last week and it was very nice to have J&P/(Mom&Dad) there to see it. Little did they know when they attended my brother's first elementary school orchestra concert that they would be in for 30 more years of music recitals. I can only hope the quality has improved with time (no offense intended, K). We celebrated Saturday with a barbecue. Tension was in the air because of the ongoing Denmark-Sweden football match which ended in dramatic style with a 1) Danish player punching a Swedish player, 2) a red card from the referee banishing the Danish player, and 3) an assault from a Danish athletic supporter who ran onto the field, took a swing at the referee, and made it back to his seat before security caught up to him. All this after drinking 15-20 beers (by his own admission). This was after Denmark had crawled back to a tie after being down 0-3. We went back home by way of the train station close to the football park, and people seemed to be taking it rather well.

Other enjoyable highlights of their visit include the ballet at Operaen (including the water bus ride across the harbor and the stroll along Nyhavn), the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek (an amazing collection with impressionist art, Greek and Roman sculpture, neo-classical sculpture, and Egyptian antiquities) and visits to Roskilde (Viking ships and dead kings) and Karen Blixen's house. Regretfully we did not know enough to suggest the Glyptotek to G&L, our previous guests, but it's definitely on our to-do suggestions for future visitors. My favorites at the Glyptotek were the coin collection (with all of the Roman emperors over 500 years) and the statue heads. The statue heads reminded me of an Steven Wright line, " I went to a museum, and it had all the heads and arms of the statues that were in all the other museums."

At our outing in Stevns, we first went to Stevnsfort where they are establishing a Cold War museum. It is still in progress, with limited opening times. Summer 2008 will be the official opening. The fort was a secret systems of tunnels dug behind the chalk cliffs looking out on the Baltic sea. The intent was to monitor Warsaw Pact military movements and defend both land and sea against attack. The fort includes two turrets with 150mm guns from the German Gneissau battlecruiser. These guns and other defenses were originally established around Denmark as part of the Atlantic Wall defense system. As occupiers adding insult to injury, the Germans even made Denmark pay to build these defenses. The fort was interesting with long dimly-lit corridors, 80's vintage computer equipment, escape passages to the sea, and cool spiders. The cave spiders there are found only at the fort and on the Danish island of Bornholm. They made me think of Smudge from GoblinQuest. Nearby is Stevns Klint where chalk cliffs and a church perched on the cliff edge are slowly being eroded away. The church was built in 1250, presumably a safe distance from the cliff. In 1928, after being closed for 18 years because of the cliff erosion, the chancel fell into the sea. In the cliff below the church, the Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary, at which time when the dinosaurs went extinct, is accessible. There has, however been significant erosion due to eager geologists collecting samples. I've attached a picture of the cliff compiled from several shots and merged together using the autostitch program (free download). Try it, it's easy.