The Wayne and Tanya Tour

Michaels mom and stepdad, we will call them, "Tanya and Wayne" got here on Tuesday and we have been busy having fun since. As each day passes we are all quickly getting more and more red. The weather has been more than beautifully perfect. It's mind boggling. Today the high was 70 degrees, tomorrow 72. Last year while Mary and Jason were here at about the exact same time, in fact, actually it was a few days later, we were still in warm jackets and it was quite cold. brrr...

Day 1: They arrived and we took it easy. :)

Day 2: "Lyngby Fest" (as Mary called it)
We gave T&W the grandtour of "Our Lyngby". It mostly included the main street that we walk on daily and the things we see and do around town. We got to visit inside the Church, which Michael hadn't done before, and we took a little tour of Michaels office. They got to meet several of the Danish students that did the DTU/TTU program that lived in Lubbock and Dallas for a while. After that we went and showed them some of the forest and the older area of Lyngby. While we were walking around town these loud strange sounding sirens started going off. Michael and I mentioned to each other that it sounded like something from WWII warning of an attack that you might hear in the movies. We asked one of the Danes at work about it and sure enough, they test these sirens every year at this time to make sure they are still working. They were put in to say, "The Germans are Coming!!" For me, that was something pretty cool to hear.

The forest in Lyngby

Forest

Day 3: Copenhagen
We spent Thursday showing them what I call, the city section of Copenhagen. They saw the main train station, The Town Hall, Strøget, Kgs. Nytorv and Nyhavn. We drank coffee at one of our favorite cafes, ate lunch at Nyhavn and stuck them on a canal tour while Michael and I baked in the sun on the canal ledge. We finished the day with a nice cold, "Soft Ice".

Tanya found a new favorite chair at "Illums Bolighus"

Flowers at Kgs. Nytorv

Tuborg Man and horses

T&W on the Canal Tour Boat

Sun-Burning

The Must Have Shot at Nyhavn

Day 3: Beach, Bakken and Dyrehaven
Anyone that knows Tanya knows she loves, loves, LOVES deer. The first time we lived in Denmark we knew she would love "Dyrehaven". We were lucky enough that today the deer were out in full force and we were able to get quite close to them. We spend much walking through the park and a lot of time watching the deer walk about.

At Bakken

Stopping for Lunch

Michael and the statue

This Picture is for Mr. Jason Graduated from Law School today loves the hunting lodge Partney!
Congrats from the Hunting Lodge Jason!

Chillin' with the Deer

Still Chillin with the Deer

Michael pretending he is on Safari

We have a ton planned for the rest of their trip. I'll try to get stuff up here more often especially for Nana and the rest of the Family in Lubbock! :)

Wet Day in Copenhagen

Yesterday I went to the city. Much to my happiness, the clouds have been disappearing a couple hours a day for the past few days. But of course, the one day I decide to go spend the day in the city, this is what the weather looked like:

Nice, Real Nice. (said with ample amounts of sarcasm)

I have been wanting to go to the "Danish Resistance Museum" for the past 5 years, and finally I made my way there. After my high school band was invited to Russia to help celebrate "Victory Day" I became absolutely fascinated by WWII mostly on the European front. I have over the years learned a lot about Denmark at this time. Denmark was occupied by German forces during the war. I have found the rescuing of the Jewish people in Denmark to be one of the most amazing stories I have read from WWII. So I was disappointed that there was only a small 6 ft case with artifacts from the rescuing of the Jews and hardly anything written about this. There was an extensive amount about the underground press and the different resistance groups which I found quite interesting. I spent about 2 hours in the museum learning even more than I had previously. It was a very well done museum, but when I left I didn't have a sense of satisfaction that I usually get when I leave a great museum. Perhaps it wasn't fair to this little museum because deep down I think I was judging it against the other INCREDIBLE WWII museums I have been to. All in all I'm glad I went and it made for an enriching day. If someone were to ask me if it was worth the time to pay it a visit, I would unfortunately have to say no. Which is too bad because I had high hopes for this museum. When we went to Jutland for the first time in 2002 we visited some German Bunkers that line the coast. We were able to go inside some of the bunkers where they had information and pictures and other stuff about them. That was really cool and that I would say is YES worth paying those a visit.

Pretty window at "The Danish Resistance Museum"

German Bucker on the Coast of Denmark in Jutland in 2002

Back at the beginning of January there was a HORRIBLE incident of a 19 year old boy that was stabbed to death at the entrance to Strøget. This is right at at some of the the big sites in Denmark like the Royal Theatre, Kongens Nytorv, and Nyhavn. I've talked about this street numerous times. It is the huge pedestrian street that stretches through Copenhagen. Anton was on his way to the Metro at about 6am when 3 others come up to him and wanted his hat. He said, no and a fight started. Then the worst happened. One of the guys took out a knife and stabbed him repeatedly. It was so sad to read about and hear about all of this. The place where he was stabbed has since been covered in flowers, candles, beer bottles, and letters to Anton. I knew I would walk past it today as I had a few places to go on Strøget. Ugg, SO SAD! And to think, it all started because some stupid kids wanted his hat!