Land of Fairy Tales - Denmark VI

Moving back to Copenhagen City in a way marked the last segment of our Denmark trip. In fact, it was supposed to be the focus of my itinerary - I didn't know much about Denmark or Copenhagen and my wife did much research to excite our journey.

We didn't realise that there were Sakura trees in Copenhagen, and we started our craze again. We did some surfing via net and realised that there were sakura trees in two sites that we wanted to explore - one park and one cemetery. 

The first venue - the Langelinie Park, where the Little Mermaid statue is situated.  We took a bus there and it was easy journey.  We strolled and saw some Sakura trees and we started getting close and snapping photos. As there was supposed to be a park with about 100 Sakura trees, we ventured further to look for them.  I suddenly remembered our Japan trip where I took my wife to see similar number of flowering trees in an "ulu" town and ended up with no trees and no tourists. 



Bingo! After viewing the very famous little mermaid statue, we found a park full of Sakura trees. I wasn't sure how many trees were there but it was definitely more than what we have seen so far. I like parks in Europe - locals really make good use of the park for picnic, chatting and gathering. It feels different to the way we treat parks here. We would usually sit down on the grass and under the sakura trees to enjoy the fresh air and at times flowers around where we sat. Of cos, my wife would "feedback" that I am not a "nature" person. Why? Cos I would always ensure "no ants, no bees, no insects" on where we sit. We used to collect the flowers for scrapbook. Maybe we had seen the trees in Japan and they were supposed to grow in Japan and we had collected the flowers before. So, we didn't do so in Copenhagen. Similarly, we didn't do so in Beijing. 

Besides this park, there were some other venues for Sakura viewing.  Yes, cemetery. It was a famous cemetery - the Assistens Cemetery.  It was also the resting place for many famous Danish people including HC Anderson. 

It was a good read in the net to realise that Danish people go to the cemetery for picnics and excursion. Very different from our culture here. We took a bus to the Assistens Cemetery and missed a stop and had to u-turn. 

The place was quite huge with paths and directions to different graves.  It was a tourist place too for people to pay respect to HC Anderson. In fact, there was a directional sign to lead the way.



My wife loved to take close-up shots of flowers. She took one with a bee but she didn't realise that the tree was full of bees buzzing. It was quite scary to see so many bees and she also a bit "scared" after I told her about it. Haha. But it was nice and pretty place.  Locals will paddle with bicycles through the tracks in the cemetery. There were people paying respect to their loved ones.



We saw one lady with a wooden basket attached to the bicycle. This was quite a different type of bicycle that my wife had tried to cycle previously at Coney. Yes, but it matched the whole ambience and I proposed for her to take a photo with the bicycle and the background. After a few shots, the owner asked us if we wanted to take a couple photo together. My wife told her "I am shy" to ask and then the owner helped take a few shots for us.  Very friendly locals.

I guess it is in their culture and way of living. So far, we have met interesting and friendly people in Denmark. Frankly, I started to like the country. It is definitely one place for retirement living. Haha. 

Land of Fairy Tales - Denmark V

We decided to do some trekking after the hearty breakfast on the date of departure from Aeroe Island. Usually, I would be quite careful about the time management but we didn't really walk around our B&B and it was like not really "staying in countryside". Needed to move around to "feel" the local atmosphere.  So, I "okayed" to the trekking and we did our packing before proceeding out. 

Mogen told us to be careful on the trek as there would be rocks - I still wondered why at that moment.  We started along a sandy trek. There were nice small houses along the trek and I was looking for any wild dogs (I heard some barks in the distance). My wife, however, was really enjoying the fresh air and country side trek.   Nice blue skyline, rows of houses and greenery - perfect for a wide angle shot and I had to set up a few tripod points to capture the countryside feel.  

There were trees that looked like Sakura trees, and we were quite fascinated about them. So, we tried to frame them in our photos with the backdrop of all the nice distant houses and greenery.  Even when we were "framing" the photos, I still on a constant lookout for any dogs.  We didn't see any wild dogs though but we saw a "bunch" of chicken.  My wife believed that the chicken were waiting for their owners to feed them - they were quite noisy when we passed by. Maybe they thought we were the owners?  

Besides the amazing trees and houses, there were also something very special and unique to us especially for my wife.  She was very amazed at "barter trade" - yes - there were carts or wooden "shelf" installed outsides some houses and the owners simply just put their homemade items for sale.  If you are interested to buy an item, you can just take and place your money on the "shelf" or cart. This type of trading shows how honest and simple the lives of these villagers on the island. Very interesting, and this was something of an experience - a local living experience that we liked.  Something that was similar here was the sharing of books in some neighbourhood.  

After some walking, we finally reached the beach and the weather was warm due to our exercise. For a moment, I still had the notion that the beach would be sandy.  In fact, it was rocky, and I suddenly realised this was the "dangerous" part of the trek that Mogen warned us.  There were some locals standing in the waters fishing. It was really cold and we wondered if they were going to catch any fish. We started to walk on the rocky rocks, and we weren't sure if the path would lead us back to our B&B.  However, I did recall seeing the beach (or to be exact the sea) when we were at B&B.

We were quite happy when we saw a glimpse of our B&B - we were a bit worried that we might have taken a wrong route.  It was about 10 am, and we supposed to leave at 1030am to catch a bus and the ferry.  It was a nice trek and a trek with my wife, my tripod and cameras.