Somewhere on
the shore north of Copenhagen stood an old aristocratic home called Rungstedlund that
belonged to the family Dinesen. In the early
1930's, a middle-aged woman who had bought herself the title "Baroness" with
marriage and money, sat at a desk inside the home writing an account of a life she had
been compelled to leave behind, twice.
"I had a
farm in Africa, at the foot of the Ngong Hills."
Whether you had read Isak (Karen Blixen) Dinesen's beginning words the her
book, Out of Africa, or were swept into her
story as actress Meryl Streep's deep voice brought Karen's story to life in the movie, the
words would prove, to me, nostalgic understatement. She
had a home in Africa.
I did not
realize it now, of course, but I would come to feel at least some of the same passions she
felt for that "still country" and would imagine the echoes of her life when I
wandered around her former home at the foot of those beautiful hills. Baroness Karen Christence Blixen-Finecke, née
Dinesen, was a strong, remarkable woman. In
Africa, she endured loneliness, humiliation and deep personal loss, but she loved and
lived life fully and honestly. She also went
against white colonial society by caring for the people whose land had been taken from
them.
At this moment
on my journey, I was anxious to meet another Danish girl who also cared about people of a
foreign land.
In an
apartment / shopping mall complex in Sobørg, the suburb of Copenhagen where Marie rented
a room, I asked a saleswoman in a pastry shop to point me toward Marie's address. She put the question to customers. No luck. As
I munched on a hollow, flaky pastry, I went outside and asked a bus driver. No luck. Then
I met Otto Sondergaard in the parking lot. He
was was about sixty-five, tanned and wore a cap and a light blue jacket. He was a former West African, a Danish expat who
had come home (most recently from Florida) to retire.
Squawking birds swarmed around him as he broke off chunks from a loaf of
bread and fed them. He had a map book and
located Marie's street. He gave me a bag of
rolls and wished me well.
I found the
house in a suburb of small lots and nice smallish homes that reminded of Agincourt in
Toronto where my cousin Diane lived. There
were two cars in the driveway. I rang the
doorbell of the but there was no response.
I went back to the mall and made a phone call. Ilse, Marie's landlady, answered and said Marie
wasn't home.
"May I
come over and wait for her?" I said.
"I'm not
happy to let you in her room."
She let me
come in and though she was initially nervous, she sat me at her dining room table and
placed salad fixings before me. We ate and
talked and she warmed up. Then Marie came
home. She was blond with blue eyes and had a
nice figure with rounded features. She had the
face of a cherub – much cuter in person than in her pictures. After Ilse saw that Marie was comfortable with me,
she let Marie know that it was okay for me to stay overnight. She left to do dishes.
Marie and I
went to Melawend and unloaded my gear and moved it to the covered patio. We talked over soft drinks then went upstairs to
her room. It was sparsely furnished, in the
way of temporary lodging – a small do-all table, a kitchenette, and a single bed. We ate at the table and then sat on the bed.
I wish I could
quote for you things that we said. My usual
habit was to sit in whatever light I had in the evening and write down the events and the
conversations of the day. But Marie and I
talked and talked until I could no longer hold my eyes open.
She was deeply involved with the Santal Mission, a Danish relief
organization that was active in India, Nepal and Bangladesh.
Marie's four-month work for the mission in India and Nepal had been a
highpoint of her life. She longed to return. She was a warm and caring person but there was an
unfathomable barrier between us. We plotted a
tour of the city and then she accompanied me to the patio.
It rained the
next morning. Marie and Ilse were up early and
we were all out of the house by 7:45 a.m. Ilse
went of to work; Marie had all-day meetings at the Santal Mission; I headed for the city
to begin my diplomatic mission.
"We
already have lots of information on Canada," said Alice Høltzel, Press Officer for
The Danish Tourist Board. But she welcomed the
exchange and gave me a canvas tourist bag.
Copenhagen was
the capital of world's oldest kingdom and I made my way to its Rådhuset (City Hall) and
the Rådhuspladsen (City Hall Square). More
than 16 bus lines gathered in this square. The
square was also the spot from which any signpost or milestone in the country measured its
distance to the capital. The square was a
haymarket until the 1850's. It was established
as site of City Hall in 1900 and was modeled on the shell-shaped piazza of the Italian
town of Sienna – but the shell had been hammered in to a square by developing traffic
chaos that had destroyed its original charm.
The Rådhuset
itself was in traditional red brick and was finished in 1903. It was in the national romantic style, drawn from
medieval Danish and Norwegian architecture with a mix of the palazzo style of northern
Italy. The facade and the interior were full
of quaint details from Nordic mythology and above the main entrance there was a relief
depicting Bishop Absalon. Looming outside was
the tower, at 370 feet it was the tallest in Denmark.
In the square there was the Dragon Fountain – a bull-fighting dragon
and two bronze lur players. And there was a
monument to Hans Christian Andersen.
Inside the
building, the foyer held the entrance to Jens Olsen's masterpiece – the world’s
most accurate clock. It was completed in 1955
had more than 14,000 parts, and took 10 years to make.
The mechanism functioned in 570,000 different ways. The celestial pole motion will take 25,753 years to
complete a full circle. It is the slowest
moving designed mechanism in the world. The
clock is accurate to 0.5 seconds in 300 years, 50 times more accurate than the previous
record.
I changed
money, bought postcards and had a three-dollar hamburger.
I found the 1913 bronze rendition of Hans Christian Anderson's Little Mermaid where it was anchored to a rock
alongside the Langelinie Promenade. The model for the figure had been the Copenhagen prima
ballerina Ellen Price who danced the part of the mermaid in a ballet at the turn of the
century. A vandal sawed the head off one night
in 1964 – but the molds had been preserved and she was given a new head. I watched as a group of Japanese tourists filmed
themselves with cameras and camcorders as they clutched her body. The bare breasted mermaid sat slightly hunched on a
rock, looking out to the harbour, seemingly indifferent to all the fondling by tourists. She had a sad vacant look that seemed to say,
"Leave me alone."
I returned to
Ilse’s home and waited for Marie in her room. Around
10 p.m., Ilse came up with a green apple and two plumbs.
Later, she gave me a glass of milk, which had been a rare treat for me so
far on the journey. Marie came home at 11:15
and we finished our plans to tour the city.
The next
morning, Marie took me to the laundry area of the basement where there was a drain in the
floor and a showerhead in the wall. I felt
strange stripping down in a stranger's basement, but while Marie went out and bought
bread, pastries, biscuits and juice, I luxuriated in a hot shower.
Marie had set
the table in her room. She prepared our
breakfast in her kitchen-in-a-closet: a sink, a coffee maker, and a hot plate on the
floor. We talked of travel, India and the
Santal Mission. Then we took a red train into
the city. We walked and walked, munching on a
kilo of plumbs she had bought for us. And we
took in the sights.
In a
pedestrian precinct, we stopped at the Rundetårnet – the Round Tower – where I
took portraits of Marie. The tower was built
in 1642 as an observatory for Denmark’s world-renowned astronomer Tycho Brahe. It stood 111 feet (36 m) high. Inside, there was a wide spiral ramp 620 feet
(200 m) long designed for the transport of heavy astronomical instruments (displayed in
the tower). Peter the Great was said to have
ridden a horse to the top in 1716 while Czarina Catharine was driving up in a six-horse
carriage. Beside The Tower was the Trinity
Church. – Nordic Gothic style built in 1656 for students of the Regensen, the oldest
and best known of the student dormitories. Here,
Marie and I took in an art display.
We took in
Thorvalsen’s Museum (behind the Ameilborg Palace Chapel) where I marveled statues of
Greek and Roman mythology, all made by Denmark's great sculptor, Bertel Thorvaldsen (1770
– 1844) who had lived and worked in Rome for 40 years.
For a time, my mind drifted to those countries that lay ahead. We took in the Gefion Fountain, put up in 1908 by
the Carlsberg Foundation. (Back in Sweden, we heard the legend behind the statue as the
creation of Lake Vänern and Denmark’s Zealand.) dd
We walked
around the city, listened to minstrels playing in the streets, and passed one of the
Fiskerstones (stone statue of a fishwife) where long lines of fishwives use to offer fresh
fish for sale.
We walked
along a canal street, now a charming pedestrian walk, in Nyhavn – New Harbour. Hans Christian Andersen had lived here for many
years (he had never owned his own home but lived in hotels or furnished rooms). In his time, this was a waterfront area where
boisterous seamen once stumbled ashore to soak up the wild life in the harbour's many
bars.
Andersen had
been a lonely guy too. His diaries recorded
unrequited love, extreme loneliness and a constant awareness that he was "ugly". One such unrequited love was the Swedish singer
Jenny Lind, known as "The Swedish Nightingale".
One of his fairytales, "The Nightingale”, was inspired by her. Andersen died at the age of 70, on the 4th
of August, 1875.
But I was with
a lovely girl, one who, for a change, was completely unattached. We walked in Strøget - a pedestrian precinct that
was full of shops, full of life.
Finally, we
walked over to Amalienborg Palace – which actually consisted of four Rococo palaces
spaced around a vast cobbled courtyard. The
royal family occupied two wings, the other two were for state and official functions. It was late afternoon and the sky had become
overcast. In the dimming light, I photographed
a couple standing by a street lamp. They were
embracing and kissing. They were the only
other people in the courtyard. On a nearby
street, we walked behind a couple who managed to hold each other's hand between them
behind their backs and embrace while the girl pushed a bicycle. Click. I
saw a lot of open affection in Copenhagen. I
was with someone who was very kind to me. She
was a compassionate person. Such people were
often lonely. I was lonely and starved for
affection and I sensed that she was too. I
reached for her hand. She resisted. She explained later that she'd had a deep
three-year involvement several years ago.
"I'm not
looking for it," she said.
Marie treated
me to dinner at the Navoli Restaurant. I had
the Spaghetti Boulonaise while she had a meat dish that had a wine-based gravy. Afterward, we sat on a bench by the harbour ate
more of the plums that she had bought. We
watched a wedding reception that was being held on a two-masted wooden ship, the Lilla Dan. The
bride, still holding her bouquet, spotted me and smiled for my camera. And as the ship pulled out, many of the guests
became aware of my camera and waved. I was
envious of all the obvious love and merriment I had seen on board.
We started to
walk the six miles (nine kilometers) home. The
city gradually gave way to a residential area and then we were walking through a park. We talked more of India and the Santal Mission's
activities. Then Marie became quiet. To
lighten things up, I told Marie about the encounter with what I was certain was a moose
outside my tent near Oslo and about the terror I had felt.
She burst out laughing.
"What's
so funny?"
"You were
scared of a moose?"
"Yes, of
course, why not?"
She couldn't
stop laughing. I was beginning to wonder about
Marie's sense of humour, not to mention her perception of my masculinity.
"A moose?" she said.
"Yes! It was right outside my tent."
This made her
buckle over and grab her stomach. I thought
she was going to go into convulsions. I
grabbed her to keep her from falling over. What
was I in her Danish eyes, a wimp?
"You
know, a moose... It's a bit big…like a
hairy locomotive... "
Then her
laughter subsided.
"Big?"
I spread my
arms and jumped, gesturing its size. She began
laughing again. My masculinity was shattered.
"Tom,
when you say 'moose', in Danish it means mouse!"
I walked with
her to the train depot the next morning. We
hugged goodbye but she resisted any further affection.
Then she was off to Arbus for a seminar.
I returned to Melawend.
You long-time
single people out there who don't want to remain single might know where I'm coming from
when I say that I began writing to my pengirls partly out of frustration – not
meeting Her at home by any of the conventional means.
I grew weary of the shallowness of singles bars and the mind-games so often
played out there. Canada was a polyglot
country – people of over 70 nationalities that now called Canada home. Relative to the Old World, we Canadians were a new
society having come fairly recently from somewhere else.
Part of my goal was to find out something about where we had come from. And what were girls like in those places? What were the customs of couples? The morals?
(As I was to
find out so often, single guys in those other countries, particularly in Asia, would ask,
“What are Canadian girls like?” "Do
they like to fuck?" It seemed things
weren't much different no matter on which side of what pond you lived. I was looking for much more than just a roll in the
hay.)
Marie had been
kind, giving, warm, and yet distant. She
protected herself and I admired her for it. As
I rode out of Copenhagen, I was grateful that I'd had a semblance of closeness for a few
days and that I had not pushed it. I still had
a friend.
Marie had
given me a note written in Danish to give to her aunt and uncle who lived on a little farm
near Stenile, introducing me and asking them to allow me to camp at their place.
It was sunny
in the late afternoon when I found the farm. It
had a modest middle-class home like you would find in rural or suburban North America,
plus a paved courtyard between the house, the barn and a low guesthouse. Peter and Dagny Andersen did not speak English but
smiled when they read Marie's note. They
showed me a spot in the garage where I could put Melawend and then led me into the
guesthouse, near the barn. Inside, there was a
long, narrow room that had summer furniture and a picture window that overlooked a patio
and a field of barley. They showed me a
washroom and left me to unpack. I was about to
sew country crests for Denmark and Sweden onto the Odyssey jacket when Peter came to the
window and gestured for me to come to the house to eat.
Their German shepherd, Shana, who loved to fetch thrown apples, accompanied
us.
Dinner was
wonderful! – breaded ham, potatoes in a white parsley sauce and home canned beets. Dessert was a thin, poured yogurt mixed with dark
brown sugar. It tasted like a milkshake made
with Coke.
Dagny was 68,
Peter was 79. They talked all the time,
smiling and laughing with each other. We would
gesture to communicate: the good taste of the food, the heavy load on my scooter, and the
budgie that flew freely inside the house and loved to play with clothespins.
After dinner,
Dagny ushered us into the living room. Peter
settled into his easy chair and watched a comedy on TV, Dagny went into the kitchen to
wash dishes and I sewed more crests onto the Odyssey Jacket.
Dagny came back and showed me pictures of their family: a daughter and a son
and three grandchildren. She wrote down their
ages – 14, 9 and 3.
Their
daughter, Ellen Eriksen, came by. She spoke
English and we talked for a while. She had
been divorced for about two years. The 14-year
old grandson was her child. We all went into
the kitchen and had coffee and custard cookies. Ellen
would translate. She left around nine with her
son who had come by to go home with her.
I thanked my
generous hosts, retired to my quarters and slept soundly.
I rose early and looked out upon a beautiful, sunny morning. I remembered that Ellen had said that her mother
would be leaving early and would leave breakfast for me.
I got up in time to wave goodbye as she rode off on her bicycle. I had breakfast with Peter: coffee, dark bread,
jam, ham, biscuits and that yogurt concoction. He
kept offering me more food – I was not going to leave hungry. Shana got chunks of bread broken off by Peter and
myself.
Peter watched
and smiled as I packed Melawend. And then I
was away, still without a known word understood between us, but with good feelings and
hospitality and gratitude understood. Even the
simplest of times were worth remembering.
It was sunny
through to Korsør. Except for a brief river
crossing yet to come, a ferry here would put Melawend and me on solid ground right through
to Brindisi in Italy. Ole B. Hansen, Manager
for the ferry between Korsør and Nyborg, spoke English well. I explained the nature of my journey and that I was
not collecting money for charity, so I felt a bit awkward when he gave me not only a pass
for the ferry but also 100 Krone from the till. It
was the first time anyone had given me cash.
Melawend and I
rode east, skirted the garden city of Odense, birthplace of Hans Christian Andersen, and
then turned south toward the Republic of West Germany.
Feeling flush under thickening clouds, I splurged on groceries. I rode south on #170, parallel to the main
southerly highway and rode past farms on my way to the border.
Near Krusa, I
came upon the farm of Parmo and Catherine Nicholson. They
did not speak English but through my gestures they understood that I wanted to camp. They motioned to a nearby field of cut grass and to
a grove of trees. I understood from them that
a combine would be coming in later. It came
and the driver looked concerned. But when I
mentioned the Nicholson's by name, he nodded approval.
I set up my
tent in the grove, which was beside the long driveway.
I retired for the night, never seeing my hosts again. I would be leaving Denmark tomorrow, grateful that
I had had a friend to show me the capital. But
I regreted leaving so much of the country unseen. I
did not, for example, see anything of the Denmark that Karen Blixen knew though I thought
I would come to know this rather remarkable Danish woman more when I visited her farm in
Africa. For now, that remained a distant
possibility. It was hard to imagine myself
scootering in the Dark Continent. My
apprehensions over the immediate future were growing.
That evening,
I slept uneasily, realizing I was about to enter a fractured country. All I really knew of Germany was that within living
memory, it had twice been a fountainhead of death and destruction, a tyrannical sewer from
which so much violence, hatred, prejudice, arrogant nationalism, and genocide had spewed
over so many innocent lives. German aggression had been defeated, and the country split in
two by opposing victors. In my imagination it
remained a land of stoic racists and militaristic music.
The language seemed full of hard syllables that hit the ears like a hammer. Though I had ancestral roots in Germany,
approaching its border scared the hell out of me.
PART IV
Along European Lines
Chapter 17
Benelux and the German
Factor
YOUR feedback is important!
(It is the
main reason I'm doing this.)
As you read
the story, please send an e-mail to me with any
questions or comments you have.
For example,
What things in the
story do you find useful to you? What is your opinion of the writing?
Do you find the story entertaining? Informative? Motivational?
Back to
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Dear Reader,
Now for the
somewhat boring but fundamental part...
Copyright
Notice & Agreement
Here is what you can
and cannot do with this story, website, photos, etc.:
Copyright © 1984 - 2008 by
Thomas Martin Smith. All rights are reserved.
All text and photographs, and associated HTML code - on this website or on any other
website where they have been used and in any other form they take or place they exist -
are protected by Canadian and International Copyright Laws, and may not be copied,
reprinted, published, translated, altered, hosted, or otherwise distributed in whole or in
part, by any means without explicit written permission from me, Thomas Martin Smith,
currently of Victoria, BC, Canada.
You are
hereby permitted to retrieve, print, and store a single copy of any part or the entire
book (IN THE LONG RUN: A Hopeful World Odyssey) contents as made available here,
for personal use only. This permission does NOT extend to producing hard copies or
electronic copies for any manner of (1) distribution, (2) promotion, (3) creating works,
(4) resale, or (5) any uses other than personal use. Nor does this extend to making
the book contents available yourself (for example, you may not post or distribute in any
way any portion of IN THE LONG RUN: A Hopeful World Odyssey or this website on
your website or any other website, bulletin boards, nor by in any place or by any means
online or off-line - without written permsision from me.)
This Copyright Notice &
Agreement supercedes the Copyright Notice on this page: http://www.melawend.com/copyrigh.htm
In other words, if you want to do
anything beyond what is permitted here, you must contact me first and receive my written
permission.
