Wednesday, June 28, 2017

Travelogue 758 – June 28
Sandy Feet


This is Baby’s third summer. She’s only two, but was born in summer. We took her to the beach within her first months of life, to the beach at Scheveningen. We sat in the sand and held her. Last summer, we travelled with Troy, and we rented deck chairs and umbrellas. We sat for hours and enjoyed the sun. Baby was curious about the sand. She stood in it with uncertainty. She tried rubbing it from her hands. She cried when she couldn’t.

We went early this year, still only June. The waters were cold. Menna and I jumped in anyway, gasping at the shock. There is that exquisite pain that comes with an icy water dive. I was breathing through it and shouting all the way out past the other swimmers. I wanted to find that place of silence, where I could tread water and look out to sea, feeling momentarily lost. I was finally accustomed to the temperature. It’s only from here that one can study the sights in silence, the blue horizon and its ships, the beautiful old Kurhaus hotel by the beach.

I carried Baby out into the water. I stood against the incoming waves, and we both were soaked by the spray. She watched the water intently. This is the personality that Baby is developing. She is very serious about her fun. If I brought her back to the sand, I knew she would hold her arms up in appeal. She would want to go back. That’s how she is with her friends who live downstairs. She is quiet and staring. She finds her own toy and seems oblivious to all else. But when it’s time to go, she cries. For days, she repeats the name of her best friend, as though she is bereft.

She does have those moments, though, of heart-breaking sweetness, when she picks a small daisy from the lawn and offers it to a friend.

Menna and I jumped into the water, despite the cold. When you live here, you take every opportunity at sun and fun. That wasn’t even a week ago. Already it seems surprising we had such a hot day. The chill and the clouds resumed almost within hours of our beach trip. Today, there’s a mist. The air is cool and crisp. It’s only June, but we worry that summer is already over.

I held Menna in my arms in sea waters up to my neck. She’s still learning how to swim. I held her, and she lay horizontally at the surface. She was buoyant. There were cycles of stillness and cycles of waves. When the water was quiet, she rocked happily in my arms and we could hear each other talk. When the waves came in, she screamed and we laughed. We held each other tight.

We could see Baby playing in the wet sand at the water’s edge, overseen by Oma. She was digging with her plastic shovel and pail. She was making piles of sand and then pushing them down. She had that expression of concentration. I could see that from our place in the sea, and I could tell she was having fun.

Tuesday, June 20, 2017

Travelogue 757 – June 20
City Steeples
Part Three


Cycle wheels keep on turning. Bikes are streaming past at all hours now, summer in full stride. We wake up in the heat, blue skies in the western windows, sun beating against the eastern ones. We jump on the old bikes, and we join the stream.

I had forgotten how hectic the teacher’s life is just before the summer break. There are piles of documents to review. There are meetings and meetings, assessments and planning. The sun taps at the windows, reminding us of the time.

Still I find the occasional hour for the Pelgrim, claiming some time to sit under the steeple of the Pelgrim Fathers Church in Delfshaven. It’s as near perfect a summer spot as I can imagine. Canal side you face the brick lane and the canal in the afternoon’s final sun. Customers sit under parasols that become useless as the sun angles lower over the gabled roofs across the canal. In the back is the shaded courtyard, all churchyard peace. The beers are brewed right here at the church. It’s a refreshing taste in summer. The history of the place among the cool brick is good company, faithfully present but quiet while I read.

I have been writing about last month’s visit to Copenhagen, about my trips up and down the towers of the town, up and down the map. At the northern end of the city map is an area called Østerbro. The theatre is there, the stage where we perform Matteo’s little piece. The neighbourhood provides a stark contrast to where I’ve been staying. Giuseppe lives in a western district that lies at the end of a long road that seems exclusively dedicated to doner kebab places. Finally, far to the west, you mount one long, lone hill and the atmosphere changes, and you feel as though you are in the suburbs. I arrived early on my first day and I searched the neighbourhood for somewhere to sit. There is nothing. Off the doner kebeb road, there is only residential desolation. I am seized by suburban panic, an involuntary sympathetic response, in which I am isolated here for life with nowhere to go.

Østerbro, by contrast, is well-to-do and replete with food and entertainment. The streets are lively, and there is no impending sense that I may be stranded without coffee or company. The theatre is located across the street from a football stadium, a massive sport facility that seems both monolithic and irrelevant, in some strange way. Stadia like this usually dominate their surroundings, but this neighbourhood has its own spirit. On the other side of the theatre is another lovely park. The theatre itself looks like a humble park building or community centre. The posters are the giveaway. Prominent is the poster for the fringe festival. We travellers are the internationals. We enter the back door and set up in front of the long mirror.

I’m happy for the excuse to cycle around town. It must be said that the cyclists in Copenhagen are the politest I’ve encountered. It may be more accurate to say they are law-abiding. The Dutch are more liberal in their interpretation of the law. They drift through lights and around cars. The Danes, from my observation, pride themselves on their decorum. They wait patiently for the lights. There are even turn lanes for bicycles.

The trip up to Østerbro takes me by the old fortress, or Kastellet, near the mouth of the harbour. It’s one of the best preserved in northern Europe, I have read. It’s a star fortress, with five stone points. Inside, there are lots of sombre old military buildings, quiet now but retaining their dignity in the midst of the big park that the Kastellet has become. There is a beautiful church, St. Alban’s, that reminds me of Southwark Cathedral with its walls of knapped flint.

Of course I visit the Little Mermaid, the iconic statue of the character from the tales Hans Christian Andersen. There is a crowd gathered to take pictures of the sad little mermaid staring wistfully out to sea. She is separated from her admirers by a gap of only a few metres, set just outside the Kastellet. She languishes there on her stone in the harbour, day and night, no one to protect her. She has been victim to an unusual amount of vandalism since she was set at there in 1913. She’s been decapitated twice. She’s lost an arm. She’s been bathed in paint many times. She’s impervious, longing for her prince and her eternal soul.

I bid the mermaids good evening, and I set the wheels turning again. The long afternoon has spent itself, and I have a plane to catch in the morning. I’m traveling south to join again in the sloppy bicycle traffic of the Dutch. I’ll bike to the Pelgrim church, and I’ll reminisce about Denmark in the pleasant courtyard of the brewery.

Friday, June 02, 2017

Travelogue 756 – June 2
City Steeples
Part Two


The most recognizable landmark in Copenhagen’s Latin Quarter might be the round tower. Another project by the great Danish king Christian IV, the tower was built to be an astronomical observatory. It was completed in 1642, and serve as an observatory until the nineteenth century. It’s squeezed in among the busy streets and university buildings, a beautiful specimen of the glory years of old King Christian.

I admired the tower during my meandering tour of the district, but I didn’t know I could make the climb. It was a nice bit of good fortune that I found the tower open one evening, after the climbing theme had clearly emerged for this trip.

I’m cycling across town, and I’m circling under the tower, when I see the door open for a group of uncertain tourists. I shrug and stop. Their uncertainty works to galvanize me. I pay for the ticket, and it’s not much. It’s a worthy stop, after all, ascending one more height in steeple-happy Copenhagen. It’s a worthy stop, if only for the fun of running up the circling ramp that takes you up to the top, best done on a summer evening with a pint of good beer rising to your head and feeding an exhilarating dizziness.

Memorable are several stops on the way up. There is the window niche near the top, where you look out over the peak of the tiled roof of the old church that adjoins the tower, and over the city beyond that. Nearby, there is the small chamber with a floor of glass, in which you can look down the entire depth of the central core of the tower, the central column you’ve been circling on the ramp. The tower is an observatory, but I never saw any stars, even the cartoon stars of exertion. The tower isn’t really so high. The view from the top was enjoyable was not overwhelming.

A better view of Copenhagen comes with the spontaneous climb up another tower. This one is over in Christianshavn, the neighbourhood I visited on my first day, the city’s settlement on the other island in the harbour, in the waters between the big islands of Zealand and Amager. Here, not far from the café where I stopped for warmth on my first day, the Church of Our Saviour rises above the neighbourhood of canals built to mimic Amsterdam. This church (and the neighbourhood) also date back to the busy reign of Christian IV, though the majority of the construction happened after his passing. The steeple I climbed wasn’t finished until the middle of the next century. The steeple was built to a daring helix design, with an external staircase turning anticlockwise. The direction of the stairway apparently fueled speculation about the orthodoxy of the architect. The seventeenth century was fond of its demons, and artists seem as vulnerable as children in the lore of the times.

It’s a beautiful day, and there is a line to climb the stairs. We have to climb all the way from ground level, a total of four hundred steps. Initially, we are climbing up a tight internal staircase, steep wooden steps originally the territory of lonely sacristans. We pass by caged little niches like small neighbourhood attics, where pieces lie in positions of neglect, plaster angels and church bells.

Then we are outside, climbing the final hundred fifty steps, steps that narrow as we approach the gilded globe at the top. The winds are blowing, and all that stands between us and flight is the small gilded railing. We stand close to that railing to let people pass on their way down. I’m surprised by the nonchalance of parents letting their children run ahead up the tight spiral.

It’s exhilarating. There’s a wonderful view of the city and harbor. I stand a while at each corner of the compass, letting people squeeze past. Fortunately, the temperatures have risen considerably since my first day. Finally, I pull out the camera. I ask someone to take my picture, profiled against the free sky and Copenhagen’s horizon, my hair blowing in the persistent wind.

Thursday, June 01, 2017

Travelogue 755 – June 1
City Steeples
Part One


The spokes are turning, and I’m still humming the song from ‘Joshua Tree’. I can’t remember where I picked it up, but I haven’t been able to let it go. And I still haven’t found what I’m looking for. The refrain seems appropriate somehow to long bicycle journeys in new cities. I’m perpetually on the lookout for something, a pleasant cafe, the perfect photo, a bathroom. It’s a restless profession, tourism. Human and on vacation: biology, curiosity and the appetites all vie for attention, and none are set aside with complacency.

‘Can’t get no satisfaction,’ the 60s generation famously sang. It was a call to action. By the 80s, the anthem had softened into a wistful and wise ‘still haven’t found’. Relate this to travel – and life is travel: we never quite recover from our first trips, the highs and the disappointments. Some of us perennially chase the highs. Some of us give up travel, in pouting surrender to the disappointments.

I’m still cycling. Even after the cold start on my first day, I’m still on the bike. Cycling really is the best way to see a new city. You are free to meander and stop anywhere, which is especially useful when the guide books or sites recommend an area of the city, as opposed to single sights. There is the Latin Quarter in Copenhagen, for example, ‘Latin’ for its association with the medieval university. It’s fabled to be colourful and eclectic, medieval and modern, full of cute cafes and shops. Fabled and true: general recommendations leave one unsure how to capture the place. Have I seen the most colourful and chic cafe, or is that hidden over on the next block? Shall I check? When do I know I’ve seen it all?

I have seen a good slice of it. I’ve pedalled along a number of quiet streets adorned with colourful old houses. I’ve stopped in a few cafes with character. I’ve found a bar-in-bookstore that feels like a university study hall. I’ve stopped in the fifteenth-century St. Peter’s church, a pretty church in a picturesque, walled-off compound. The original church interior was lost in a fire, but interesting is the old Dutch painting of the sixteenth-century leaders of the Protestant movement. The church became German Lutheran during the seventeenth century, and was a centre for the Germans in the city until the nineteenth century, when a unified Germany became a threat to Denmark.

The church building has a striking steeple. Church towers in Copenhagen are unique. They spiral and they rise in intriguing elaborated sections, sometimes incorporating gilded spheres like shiny ball bearings set in a ring and holding up the rest.

The church-steeple tour of Copenhagen will eventually lead you to Slotsholmen, the privileged little island in the harbour, separated from the city only by canals now, the site of the city’s first fortress, and where the centre of Danish government has resided for centuries. Christiansborg Palace has another distinctive steeple, with three crowns and a set of those ubiquitous revolving golden spheres. Slotsholmen has another, far more intriguing tower, within sight of the palace. This one rises above the seventeenth-century Danish bourse, a steeple made of the intertwining tails of four dragons.

It’s an occasion for climbing heights and plumbing the depths, this trip to the flat capital of a flat land. My hosts have recommended climbing the tower at the Christiansborg Palace for a magnificent view of the city. I stand in a line a while, but I lose patience. Instead, I go the other direction. Underneath the palace, as it happens, are ruins form the first two fortresses built on this site, discovered in the beginning of the twentieth century. The first was built by the warrior bishop Absalon in the twelfth century. The second was built several centuries later, after the jealous lords of the Hanseatic League torched the first one. Soon afterward, in the fifteenth century, the castle became the principal residence of Danish kings.

So there in the basement of the kings, tourists can amble among the remains of the stone walls of the city’s first buildings -- essentially, remains of the city’s emergence from nature and from the forgotten quarrels of local tribes. Absalon was a steely character, the type who, if he survives his own aggressive exploits, leaves his stamp on the map. And this Absalon did. It takes a bit of imagination to interpret the broken walls, dull stones abandoned in the dark under the palace. That’s the challenge posed by all ruins. But here was the birth of the city. These are the traces of history. It’s humbling and inspiring both.