Party time!

Jonathan's summer course is wrapping up. The students have one last exam tomorrow, but they have turned in their assignments, and the course is pretty much done. So Jonathan decided to invited his students over to our place to celebrate the end of the course, and to have some informal, relaxing time with the students. Mio and Yuto had been so excited since yesterday that we are going to have a party today - even Yuto knows what "party" means by now... 

Seven students came over, and because we all know them from the Western Denmark trip we took with them, the kids were immediately all over them and they loved hanging out with the big girls and boys. Both Mio andYuto had their own seats when we started, but before we know it, Yuto was eating on the students' laps, and even sharing a cake with them (I'm afraid he ate most of it!). 

Tomorrow, we have another party. It is the official end-of-the-semester party organized by the school, and it happens to take place in the courtyard of our apartment building. Over two hundred students are supposed to show up, so it is going to be a pretty big party... 

Off topic, given that I only have less than two weeks left, I am starting to get a little anxious about buying things to bring home, as I have hardly bought anything since we got here - though I have been eyeing some things that I might get... 

This is something I got yesterday. These wooden egg holders designed by Lucie Kaas called Bordfolk ("Table People"). We bought a nice set of egg holders in Denmark last year, but they are porcelain, and it always make me nervous when I serve eggs in them to the kids, though we have been lucky so far. But with these, no more worries, as they are made of wood! There are many other kinds in this Table People collection (and all so cute!), but I think we picked the ones that resemble Mio and Yuto the most?  

  

Vesterbro tour

We followed a suggested walking tour from the travel guide we found in our apartment, and explored the Vesterbro neighborhood on our bikes.

Our first stop was Carlsberg. It is the place where Carlsberg beer was born and had been produced for many many years. But in 2008, the brewing facility was moved to somewhere else, and now there are plans to redevelop the whole area into a new district of Copenhagen. As part of the redevelopment plan, there are a lot of cool installations in the area to encourage people to come visit. Jonathan took us to one of them. This is called the "Rope Forest." Some 3,500 ropes hang from the ceiling of a structure I don't know what it was formerly used for. A loading area? Parking lot? I don't know... The ropes are quite long, and it's not really suitable for small kids to play, but we still had quite a bit of fun as you can see...

Here is another installation. 

Then we biked through some old Carlsberg buildings. There is a visitor's center and a museum, but we are not really interested, so we didn't go in. But we went under the Elephant Tower, which is the most famous landmark of Carlsberg land. There are four elephants carrying a small tower on their backs. I liked how the front two elephants are standing straight, but the two elephants in the back are tilting their heads.

From the Carlsberg, we took a short bike ride to a park called the Sondermarken. The park was really beautiful, with a big lawn leading to a fountain, and also nice tree-lined paths. One of the tree-lined paths reminded me of the famous tree-lined street in Tokyo near where I grew up (外苑のイチョウ並木), though this one is much quieter and more peaceful...

Under this beautiful lawn is a museum for modern glass art, Cisternerne. It used to be the site of three underground cisterns which used to be part of Copenhagen's earliest water supply system. The glass and steel, pyramid-shaped structure you see on the lawn is the entrance to the museum. We decided to go to the museum. While it is a great use of the underground space, and pretty cool to be underground, the floor is all wet and muddy, and chilly, and the collection of glass art was, for me (and probably for Jonathan as well), pretty disappointing. Mio especially did not like the museum, and she kept saying that we would "never-ever" go back to this museum again... But at least we've done it once. 

Sondermarken and the entrance to the Cisternerne museum. 

It was a great weekend. And we only have one more weekend left... :(

Summer day

Another beautiful summer day in Copenhagen. I know it is "real" summer for sure, because I am developing a rash on certain parts of my arms and legs. Every summer, I get this rash whenever I get exposed to strong rays of sun. This year, however, I hadn't had this rash, so I was secretly thinking that somehow I have overcome this "allergy." But I was wrong. I guess it just hasn't been sunny enough in Copenhagen until now!  

Anyway, it was quite warm, and it seemed like the pool was the best place to be, so I took the kids to the same park we went last week where there's a little pool. I put my feet in the pool, and was surprised at how cool the water actually was, but the kids had so much fun. Last time, we didn't have anything to play with. But this time, we were well prepared. We brought a beach ball and a squirt toy (Mio brought them from the US...), and also some tupperware and a measuring cup - of course they were the only kids playing with tupperwears, but they had just as much fun as the kids with colorful buckets, I think...

The park is called Skydebenen, or the "shooting range". Apparently this place used to be where the Royal Copenhagen Shooting Society gathered back in the 1800s. What looks like a castle in the background of the park, is actually a wall erected in 1887 to protect people in the streets from stray bullets.

After the fun at the pool, we had even more fun in the afternoon. We got together again with our friends, Michael and Joanna, and showed them around Copenhagen. Before we started our long walk, Jonathan and the kids got to try their rented bike, which is a very common type of cargo bike here in Denmark.

After we locked their bike, we walked through the Rosengborg Palace's King's Garden, then walked about two kilometers to Kastellet (old fortification), and then finally to the Little Mermaid. The Little Mermaid was crowded with lots of tourists as always, but I was pretty happy to get a shot of just her in the picture... 

Then we walked about another two kilometers back to the Nyhavn area for dinner. Yes, we did a lot of walking! Nyhavn was very busy, and we had dinner at a pizza restaurant, which was a perfect choice for a party of two families with four kids. We really enjoyed hanging out with Michael and Joanna, and their boys Charlie and Pete (who is only six months old!). We were also very happy to see Mio getting along with Charlie, because back home, Mio usually only plays with girl friends - perhaps another sign of her growing up...  We look forward to seeing them again when we are both back in New York. 

Malmö, Sweden

Jonathan's former student Michael, who lives in Hamburg, Germany, came to visit us with his family - his wife and their two beautiful boys - for a few days. 

Today, Michael had a business meeting in Malmö, Sweden in the morning, so we all decided to go there and spend the day in Malmö. Malmö is a third-largest city in Sweden, and it is only a short 40 minute ride on the train from Copenhagen. It is a beautiful city, and just like Copenhagen, it is very walkable. 

We got there around lunch time, and all we did was have lunch, and go to the playground, and before we knew it, it was time to head back to Copenhagen. 

Charlie and Mio soon became good friends.

A very nice park in Malmo.

The inevitable ice cream...

Amazing tomatoes in the market. 

I really like the ultra-modern, steel and glass structure of Malmo station, but the platform of the station is particularly cool. On the wall of the platform, you see these series of moving landscapes - it feels like you are sitting in a train and looking out the window while the train is moving. Turns our that this a permanent video installation by the artist Tania Ruiz Guierrez, showing landscapes from around the world. According to a New York Times article I found, apparently you can take the train every day for five years and not see the same scene! Very creative and fun!

The Malmo station video installation.

Summer is here! (finally!)

Since the day we returned from our western Denmark trip, it is finally summer here in Copenhagen. It's been sunny and warm for the last few days and it does feel like summer! The high temperatures are in the upper 70's (25-26c), and it feels quite warm by Copenhagen standard. But I know this is nothing compared to what it is like back home in New York or in Tokyo if it feels totally comfortable in the apartment without an air conditioner - in fact, most houses here don't have air conditioning. We'll see how long this "summer" will last.

Anyway, we've been busy going out and having some fun to take advantage of this weather!

On Monday, we visited our favorite park from last year in our old neighborhood. The park, so-called the "Farm House", has its usual playground amenities such as a sandbox, swings and bikes to ride, but it also houses some farm animals such as goats, chickens (roosters), pigs, rabbits, and a cow. You can go in the fence to pet and feed the goats as you wish (people usually bring uncooked spaghettis to feed the goats). Mio was too afraid to do this last year, but this year, she voluntarily went in, and she showed no fear - she was happily petting and feeding the goats. What a difference a year makes!

Yesterday, I rode the bike with the kids in the trailer for the first time this year, and ventured out to a park in Vesterbro area. Vesterbro is an area that used to be the red-light district of Copenhagen, but it has been cleaned up to a great extent in the recent years, and it is now one of the hippest and trendiest places in Copenhagen - not that I got to explore the trendy shops or restaurants or cafes...

Back to the park. I went to the park because it has this nice toddler pool right in the park, and it was a perfect day for it.  The playground part was great, too, and the kids enjoyed going back and forth from the pool to the playground. 

Today was back to our old standby - the Ørstedsparken. But it was quite special because....

  

Mio rode a two-wheeled bike, unassisted, for the first time!!

Check this out!

And the thing is, neither I or Jonathan once helped her ride a bike without the training wheels. She just learned it by herself! The key is, the "balance bike" - a two-wheeled bike without the pedals. She has been practicing riding those in the park since we got to Copenhagen in June, and a month and a half later, she can ride a real two-wheeled bike! We were so proud of her, and she was very proud of herself, too!   

Western Denmark Tour - Last Day

Last day. Jonathan and the students started the day early again, breakfast at 7:30, but because today, the students were going to visit a couple of sites still in Aarhus, it allowed us to let the kids sleep in a bit. Mio and Yuto slept until ten o'clock! They must have been really exhausted. I thought we would have some time to walk around the city one last time, but the bus was actually leaving in an hour or so, so we rushed to the Aarhus City Hall (designed by Arne Jacobsen), which was where the study group was visiting (one of the most important pieces of modernist architecture in Scandinavia according to the study tour handbook), and also where our bus was leaving from.  

Aarhus City Hall. 

We rode the bus for about an hour, and stopped for lunch, a traditional Danish open sandwich at a hotel. I don't have any pictures from the lunch, as I was busy eating, but they had a big selection of sandwich toppings (?) to chose from, and it was quite good.

Then we were on the bus for another two hours or so to get to our final stop, the Sorø Art museum. Pictured below is the museum's original building converted from a residence in 1943. It has a new addition on the other side of the museum, which is a nice modern building that was completed in 2011. The weather was gorgeous, and everybody was quite relaxed at this final stop, and we all enjoyed sitting in the courtyard of the museum. 

Mio and Yuto really enjoyed hanging out with the students throughout this trip, and some of the students took really good care of them among the other more important things they had to do such as studying the sites, taking notes, and also getting some rest on the bus rides. That helped us a lot, and we are very thankful for that. 

After another hour on the bus and we were finally back to Copenhagen! It was a busy three days of traveling, but I enjoyed myself tremendously - I got to see some great art, and visiting a city that otherwise I would probably never visit was really cool. And even though it wasn't always easy for the kids, overall I think they had a good time as well. So "Thanks DIS!" and "Thanks daddy" for taking us along! 

Western Denmark Study Tour - Day 2

We had to get up early in the morning for breakfast at the hostel at 7:15 am. It was hard for us but even harder for the kids as they totally did not get enough sleep. But we dragged ourselves to the restaurant, in the cold rain, and had our early breakfast.

We first stopped at Birk Sculpture Park and Geometric Garden in Herning, located in the central part of Jutland (one of three lands of Denmark). The park consists of geometric shaped tall bushes, and if you saw it from above, you will see circles and triangles and squares, etc. As you can see in the photos, they are quite tall, and it was pretty fun to walk through it.

The Geometric Garden.

Geometric Garden from the outside.

But it was raining lightly, and also windy and cold, so we quickly walked through the park, and went into our next stop, which is the Herning Museum of Contemporary Art, or the HEART museum. The museum was completed in 2009 and its collection consist of international conceptual and experimental arts. The building's design was inspired by Herning's long history with textile manufacturing, and the "textile" theme is supposedly carried throughout the building - hard to identify it from the inside... But the kids were pretty tired and bored at this point, we spent most of our time in the cafe, which was also a very nice space. 

Inside the museum. 

Hanging out in the cafe.

One tired kid.

After a group lunch at the museum cafe, we were on the road again, to Aarhus. Aarhus is the second largest city in Denmark after Copenhagen, and is located on the east of the peninsula of Jutland. The students had a walking tour and presentations to do, but the kids were too tired to be part of them, so we broke off from the group, and checked into our hotel (yes, a hotel this time), and took a short rest. 

We met up with the group again at the ARos Museum, which is the largest art museum in Northern Europe.  There is a panoramic walkway on the roof titled "Your Rainbow Panorama" by Danish-Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson, and it was pretty amazing. The view from the walkway is spectacular, but to view the city through these rainbow colored tinted glasses was a pretty sensational experience. 

We also saw some very interesting art. This is a five meter tall sculpture titled "Boy", created by Ron Mueck. I had never seen anything like this! It is pretty creepy (if you are alone in the museum with him!), but really amazing at the same time. His flesh tone, eyes, nails, hair, all look so real, but just gigantic! He used to be THE landmark of the museum, but once the "Rainbow Panorama" was completed, it took over his place. But I think, it is still worth visiting the museum just to meet this Boy.

After the museum, we walked through downtown Arhus. This Aarhus Creek is one of the popular attractions of the city. It used to be underground, but was uncovered just a few years ago. Since then, so many bars and restaurants have popped up along the creek, creating a really vibrant environment. We sat on the steps and had some ice cream.

For dinner, Rasmus (Jonathan's co-teacher) took us to a nice restaurant called Komfur in the Latin quarter. The dinner was very nice, but the kids were really exhausted by then, it was a pretty stressful two hours trying to keep them quietly seated. We rushed back to the hotel as soon as our meal was finished.

Overall, we had a great day. I wish I had more time to explore Aarhus.