Odense Pt. 2

Sunday morning we woke up and Marianne went to get us some delicious 7 grain bread from the bakery. After filling our tummy's Michael and I left for the day leaving Nis, Marianne and Viggo to rest and nap.

The first place we went to was Skt. Knuds Kirke(St. Knuds Church). The church is Protestant, but was formally Catholic. It was named after St. Knud who was a former king of Denmark from 1080-1086. We got there just as the visiting hours started at noon and we had the church to ourselves. By the time we were walking out we were far from alone. I was glad we got there when we did!

Skt. Knuds Kirke

Looking Towards the Alter

H.C. Andersen plaque on the church wall saying he was confirmed here

The reason we wanted to visit here was because of something I knew we would find in the crypt. Behind the alter we found the steps to take us down where we found some old books and two cases that contain the remains of two men. The first case contained St. Knud, former King of Denmark. The second contained his brother, Bendick. They were killed while kneeling at the alter inside the church down the street during a peasant rebellion, where they had taken shelter. Apparently St. Knuds death is said to have been the end of the Viking Era!

Michael looking at St. Knud St. Knuds Remains

St. Knuds Remains

Writing about Benedikt

Benedikt

Literally down the street sits St. Alban's Church, which is Catholic. We thought about going in, but they had masses going on all day, so one church was enough for us. But it was pretty from the outside.

St. Alban's Church

The two chuches covered in trees

From the Church we walked around, looked in stores and window shopped. There is an obscene about of amazing looking wine and whiskey stores in Odense. We were in awe and wondered why we haven't found that many that were that big and so incredible looking in Copenhagen!! We also looking at housing prices and realized that if were were to ever buy a house in Denmark, we would have to move to Odense. The prices were so much more reasonable! We found lunch in a cute cafe where we had some nice warm coffee and tapas. YUM.

Cute Street

My Favorite Little Street in Odense
Notice all the lights in the air

Al Pacino's Pizza and Grill - This made us laugh.

Lovely Danish Buildings

Park in Odense

Cafe where we ate

Our train didn't leave until 9PM so after spending the day exploring we went back to Nis and Mariannes and talked for a little while before we packed up everything and left to do a little more walking, find some dinner and make it to the train station for our train ride home.

Marianne and Me

Nis Marianne and Viggo
Such a good looking family!

Pedestrian Street at Night

Odense at Night

We ate dinner at "El Torito" which was pretty good, the atmosphere made the restaurant. We had some Negra Modelas and tacos and sat for a long time to keep us warm and to pass the time. Our train ride home was pretty uneventful. It was dark but it was fast. We made back to Lyngby about 11pm and went straight to bed!

Odense was a cool town. It wasn't big, it wasn't small either. The perfect size actually. It was fairy tale saturated, but if you don't live there, it is pretty cute. I can see how it might get old after awhile though. Even a lot of the bars and restaurants are named after something of H.C. Andersens. Most of the time I forgot I was still in Denmark even though it seemed so very Danish and everything was written in Danish and people were speaking Danish. As we were leaving to come home Michael was talking and said, "When we get back to Denmark...." We laughed, and about 10 minutes later, he did it again.

Thanks again Marianne and Nis for letting us stay with you and showing us around town! We had a great time!

Meeting Old Friends

Five years ago while planning our wedding I stumbled across a website that made planning our wedding 1,000 times less stressful. It was a forum style website that was very active and I met lots of friends on there that were all planning their weddings at the same time as I was. One girl I met, AnnMarie, is responsible for this blog. She started a blog a couple years before I did and it was easy to keep up with her. She told me a few times I needed to start one, and finally one day I did. I think everyone that has ever read this blog has asked me, "Who's AnnMarie?". Especially when for a year or so she was one of the only ones that ever left me comments. :) She lives in Florida, and unfortunately, we have never been out there so I've never met her. But fingers crossed, one day we will!

Another girl I met on UW is, Marianne (Pronounced: Mar-yanna) is Danish. Her and her family were living in New York for the past few months and just got back in December. This past weekend we finally got to meet in person. Marianne, Nis and Viggo live in on the island of Fyn in the town of Odense. It is the 3rd largest town in Denmark but only has a population of around 150,000. Odense is on the island just west of the island Copenhagen is on and it only took 1.5 hour by train to get there.

Our train departed Copenhagen Central Station at 7:00AM. We left Lyngby on the 6:00 train. and we were up about 5:00AM. When we arrived we stopped for some breakfast and found our way to Nis and Mariannes house. Before arriving they offered to let us stay the night with them, but warned us we would be sleeping in the basement with the spiders their storage and the laundry. We were SHOCKED when we saw such a nice little guest room space set up.

Nis and Marianne's adorable house

The Guest Room

We warmed up (which would become a common theme for the weekend) and all went to a little market set up with flowers and fruits and vegetables.

Market

Odense is the hometown of the famous Dane, Hans Christian Andersen, or as he is known in Denmark, "H.C. Andersen". He is best known for "The Little Mermaid", "The Ugly Duckling", "Thumbelina", "The Emperors New Clothes" and many many more. All around town there were statues and plaques of and about H.C. Andersen, and his fairy tales. I thought it was quite funny to see so much about one person in one town. Nis mentioned that there are only a couple statues in town that have nothing to do with him and I assure you there were a whole lot of statues.

The yellow house on the right is where H.C. Andersen was born.
It is now a museum of his life and works.

Steadfast Tin Soldier

This is the stream that H.C. A's mom did laundry in as her job.

The Emperors New Clothes

The Boat from "The Steadfast Tin Soldier"

Marianne and me with a H.C.A statue behind us

Even the street lights for the cross walk were H.C.A.
See his little top hat and cane?

After walking around a bit it was time to go get little Viggo. He had stayed the night with Nis's mom. We picked him up and headed back home to warm up. He was just as adorable looking in person as he is in pictures. After warming up we ate brunch at a really yummy restaurant, walked around the shopping streets, and went home again to warm up...again. Michael and I left after it got dark to see the city all lit up with Christmas lights, then came back we watched Marianne clean the oven (very well too might I add) and Nis fixed us a wonderful dinner. We stayed up talking for quite a while and then we both passed out and had a spider free, wonderful nights sleep.

The Pates are Great in 2008

We had a SUPER fun travel weekend, but I must wait till tomorrow to catch up on that because I have too much to say and not enough time to do it. So for this year, I leave you with this!

Wishing all of our loyal blog readers a very Happy New Year!!
We are celebrating with Flemming, Maya, Baby Helena and 12 others we don't know in Central Copenhagen.

Have fun and be safe!!!

3 Texans and a Brazilian in Denmark for Christmas

Our Christmas was so nice and relaxing. We woke up in the morning and opened all our presents our families had sent to us and our gifts to each other. We have been talking about getting new knives because ours are getting really dull. Michael surprised me with new AWESOME knives and I got him some coffee cups he really liked.

For dinner we had invited Daniel and Fran over. Daniel is one of the Texas Tech Students here studying at Denmark Technical University. Fran is also a student at DTU and is from Brazil.
Fran made us "Greek Rice" from Brazil. It is a traditional Brazillian Christmas Food. It was cool to hear about her Christmas and New Years in Brazil. It is summer down there right now and she thought it was quite strange to be celebrating Christmas in the winter. She also told us about how they hang out on the beach on New Years. Ah, that sounded nice.

Of course we would have preferred to have been in Lubbock or El Paso for Christmas, but we had a really great Christmas despite that fact.

Fran and Daniel

US!

Dinner

Frans DELICIOUS Brazilian "Greek Rice"
It contains rice, carrots, pecans, raisins, and sliced ham

Æbleskivers for dessert

It was cold and windy on Christmas Day.
This is Fran and Daniel cold before they even stepped outside

Christmas Weekend

Michael came home really early on Friday so we got the gym out of the way very early, came home, ate dinner and went on a little walk around Lyngby to take pictures of all the decorations and shop windows. It was FREEZING out, but we had fun.

Our Building decorated for Christmas
Our flat is on the far right at the very top.

The Window Display at Johannes Fog

Chocolate Shop Window

The Lyngby Hovedgade is the main street in Lyngby where all the shops are. It is an old cobblestone street and located just a block or two from our flat. We walk on this street daily, and Michael walks this at least 4 times a day! Once to get to work, then to get back, then to get to the gym, and back again! In the big intersection there is a big crown hanging. It is usually only up at the holiday time and in the summer around the time of the Lyngby Town Festival.

Lyngby Hovedgade Decorated for Christmas
This one looks better if you click on it to see it big.

Sunday night Michael and I made Chocolate Chip Walnut Cookies and Sugar Cookies together.
The chocolate chips you buy here are much different than the ones in the states and I think are a bit sweeter and bigger, so while they were really good, I prefer them with the smaller less sweet Chocolate Chips. It actually created more of big pockets of Chocolate rather than small little bits of chocolate.

Chocolate Chip Cookies

Sugar Cookies
These turned out awesome!

As we started to make the cookies Michaels family called us on Skype from Lubbock from Nanas house. We were sitting (And by we I mean the laptop and webcam) were sitting at the counter so we had a good veiw of the table. It was so much fun and we felt like we were right there with them. The best was when we answered everyone started singing to us and Nana was in the background recording the whole thing. We talked with them for quite some time, and everyone was walking around and different people would sit and talk with us and it really felt like we were there. It was great.

In Denmark Christmas is celebrated on Christmas Eve, which is really quite funny to us. Flemming and Maja invited us over to their house to spend Christmas Eve with them and some of Mayas Family. It was a lot of fun with all the traditional food and the singing and walking around the Christmas Tree just like last year. Unfortunately, most of the pictures I took didn't turn out so well.

Dinner

Flemming and Helena

Kortest Dag

Oh thank God!!!!!!!!!!

The shortest day of the year has passed!

Now, our days will start getting longer again....even if just by a minute or two each day at first. All that matters is we made it up the hill and now we can head back down it.

The few hours of sunlight we have here at this time of the year have been hidden behind low thick clouds and foggy days, which can really take a toll on a body that's not use to it (and even on those that ARE use to it).

These two pictures are taken at close to the brightest time of the day.

Stupid Clouds

This is our 3rd dark Danish Winter and has been by far the most difficult, so I am happy to know that we made it to the worst part of the year.

I can't imagine living up any further North than we are now. Especially in places with 24 hour darkness. I'm not certain I would survive that without becoming very depressed.