Our first view of Denmark from the plane was exactly what I remember it like here: wet, flat and misty.
Stepping off a plane in a foreign country is discombobulating, especially when you're on the other side of the Prime Meridan and your limbs are still numb from being folded into a plane seat for eight hours. When I located a Mendy's Alcohol-Tester in the airport bathroom vending machine, I had to take a picture just to prove this wasn't some magical, wonderful figment of my imagination.
Not sure how it works or if you supply your own balloon or whatever. But it seems like certainly a useful tool. My sister and I are trying to gauge why it would be in an airport restroom of all places--maybe for deplaned passengers to see if they've had too many mini bottles to drive?Anyway, luckily, my mom does this trip three times a year, and she's any bewildered traveler's dream. She always speaks the language (especially when it's her first language), and she knows how to navigate airport, customs, passport control, whatever. Then there's car rental and figuring out the roads, which were amazingly clear at 9 a.m. on a Tuesday morning heading south to Greve Strand.
We landed in drizzle and fog, but the sun was out by the time we reached the Karlslunde center, another name for the
Karlslunde Folke Ferie, where we're staying. Not recommended--poor service and in need of a higher standard of cleanliness--but they're comfortable enough apartments and right on Køge Bugt (the bay stemming from the Baltic that hugs the eastern coast of Sealand, the island where Copenhagen is). 
Free wifi (hence the blog) and convenient to my grandmother's house, 5 km down Køgevej (that's "the road to Køge," duh!). My mom, who's Mrs. Magic No Jetlag Lady, immediately took the car to the bakery and to stop and say hi to her mother, who she calls Mor and we call Mormor ("mother's mother"; Danish is an easy language to figure out, just not easy to speak). My father and I raided the coffee stash at my oldest sister Kirsten's apartment (or Sister #1, as we call her), where my brother-in-law Mike and nephew Gus were also staying.
After gabbing for half an hour, red eyed and hopped up on caffeine and marzipan, we took a quick walk to the beach and then back to the apartment to crash for a few hours, circumventing the worst of the jetlag. It's a five-hour difference right now between Denmark and the U.S. Eastern Time Zone. Usually, it's six hours, but Denmark didn't extend Daylight Savings the way we did in the U.S., so they're back on the normal schedule. Around 5 p.m., which is way after the sun set, we packed into our cars and visited Mormor. If you ever wonder why Danes are so svelte,
I think it's because gas is 10 Krone per liter, something like $8 a gallon. They bicycle. They even have special tiny traffic lights for their bicycle paths. Very cool. Also, their dishes are tiny, so they probably eat smaller portions. I'm kidding. But their dishes really are small.After the visit, we grabbed three pizzas at a parlor just across the road from Karlslunde center (the pizzas are also small). YUM, they do cheese right in Denmark. During the pizza wait, we went into Aldi for two bottles of beer, meatballs, a carton of milk and some other items.
The Danish money unit is the Krone [crow' na], and right now, you can figure out roughly how many dollars you're spending by dividing the Krone amount by 5. So this is worth $90-$100. Thank you, Mor! Mormor's birthday is actually on Halloween, so we'll be doing plenty of visiting Wednesday, but after that, it'll be castles, museums, family pictures, tasty food and more words with consonants and vowels where you'd never expect them. Stay tuned!
B
