biking with vikings

Bremen Freimarkt 2005

A lovely, lovely fall weekend (15 deg C and sunny) so we were off to Germany for Bremen Freimarkt 2005.  It is the 970th year of the festival  – if you can believe that!  Steve, Sarah, Zoe and Kai went with us…

Well my guidebook is old and it said last Saturday was the big festival parade but apparently the parade was the previous week.  Oh well.  We still had fun checking out the town and the kids went on rides etc…. just not the beer bachannal I was prepared to have .  Probably that is just as well.

Bremen is a lovely town though. Classically German: Immaculate, beautiful, medieval town center (the parts not destroyed by Allied bombs) and a great tram system to get around. 

Due to Freimarkt, no hotel space ava in the center of town so we stated at the Innside ‘Space Hotel’ at SpacePark Bremen, which is an attempt to liven up the industrial section otuside of town.

On the way back we stopped at another Hanseatic League city, Lubeck , also very interesting.  They supposedly have nice Christmas festivals there so we may stop back for that.

It was about a five-hour trip, but nicely broken up by the 45 minute ferry ride from DK to DE.  Also fun to exercise the Golf GTI a little bit on the autobahn!

more snaps are here

VideoEgg test: kids on picky

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Dyrehaven and Picky the Pony

We had a very nice fall Saturday (in fact, it has been unseasonably warm and dry according to the Danes) so Malcolm and I met up with Zoe/Sarah/Steve and Kai (who slept the entire time in the Baby Bjorn sling) and went to Dyrehaven for the afternoon.

Dyrehaven ('the deer park') is a beautiful nature area just north of Copenhagen near Klampenborg.  It used to be the royal hunting grounds (there’s a large hunting lodge/’hermitage’ on the grounds) and now it is home to many beautiful and ancient trees, a large herd of indigenous deer and more.  There are many hiking and cykling trails through the woods and there are pony rides for the kids.

This being Denmark (and not the risk-averse, lawsuit crazy US) you ‘rent’ the pony from the stable near the southwest park entrance for 60 kr per hour, they hand you the lead and you’re off.  They assume you know what you’re doing and can control a horse . 

We started with a large, black horse who had a nice temperament but he was “too fat” (as Zoe said) for the kids to straddle, so we took him ack for a nice, smaller pony.

The pony was a good size but “Picky the Pony” liked frequent stops for grass and just to take in the view, I guess .  After a while we figured out the right boundary between authority and permissiveness so that Picky was happy as well as the kids, who alternated riding and walking Picky by the lead.

We saw lots of other riders and quite a few deer, including some with big racks of antlers.  A lovely, lovely day and a great place for kids.

More snaps are here.

getting ready for Halloween

the crisp fall (efterårs) air also signals the advent of Halloween, always my favorite holiday as a kid.  Malcolm is excited about it too!

Here you can see his first Jack-o-Lantern, and the three proposed designs . 

Danish kids don’t typically ‘do’ Halloween in the American sense.  The holiday where they dress up and go door-to-door is Festelavn in February (like German Fasching/Mardi Gras) but more and more kids here are picking up Halloween, probably because there’s candy involved.  The kid’s shops all have costumes and candy for sale.

And of course, we roasted the pumpkin seeds in garlic and oil and ate them up in one sitting!