there is no danes with disabilities act
Darin, Sophia, and I flew to Denmark and back within the past week (and boy, are my arms tired). I do not recommend flying halfway across the world and back within a week, and I especially do not recommend this with a 13-month-old, unless you bring along someone to keep an eye on said 13-month-old when exhaustion overwhelms you on the plane.
Anyhow, here are some of my comments about Denmark:
- There is clearly no Danes With Disabilities Act.
Darin was at GUADEC (some LINUX conference -- go ask him what it is) during the days, so I hung out with Sophia. Copenhagen is a beautiful town, and it was fun walking around with her, except for one teensy-weensy little thing. It became really damn obvious why Danish babies in Danish strollers get parked outside of restaurants and shops while their mommies are inside: There are stairs into just about every damn shop and restaurant.
And no other way to get into them.
Which left me and Sophia (who does not get parked outside of buildings, no matter how many babies she has around for company) not visiting a lot of places.
Do not even get started with "Well, they're old buildings and changing them would destroy their historic charm." Gee, that's nice. It's not like the place isn't lousy with historic old buildings or anything. No attempt has been made to update any of them. I'd hate to be a handicapped Dane.
The apogee of the stairs madness was the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, a sculpture museum across the street from the Tivoli Gardens. There were two steps up to the plaza. There were eight or ten steps from the plaza to the front door. A tourist helped me carry the stroller up to the front door, thank God.
Then, inside the museum, I had to transfer Sophia to one of the museum strollers -- same deal as at the National Museet, so that was fine.
Except that once I actually got walking around the Museum, I discovered something very, very interesting.
Every single room, without exception, had stairs leading in and out.
There were stairs to the elevator, which deserves some kind of award.
After about half of the first floor I said, "To hell with this," and we left. With help from a German tourist who helped me carry Sophia's stroller down those eight or ten steps at the entrance.
- Despite the hassles, Copenhagen was really great.
The downtown is great for walking. Everything is (more or less) close together. Everybody is friendly, and nearly everybody in the central area spoke pretty good English. And many people helped me when I was confronted by a non-stroller-friendly facility, which I was surprised and touched by.
The city was cool (literally and figuratively) and neat (literally and figuratively).
- The Danish national fast food treat? Soft ice cream.
Has no one told these people that where they live is cold? Brrr.
The ice cream was very tasty though.
Another popular treat: the Belgian waffle. I'm not exactly sure how that happened. These Belgian waffles were much more like the Belgian waffles I used to get at my Belgian friend Ariane's house, though, so I was sure they were the real thing.
And almost every shop in Stroget (the main shopping district, with the world's longest pedestrian shopping street) offers soft ice cream on a Belgian waffle, which is almost like one stop shopping.
- I was there for three or four days before I saw my first Danish cop.
Which is pretty damn impressive. I'm just saying.
- Who is Peter Lundin, and why is he determined to see his son?
I could read some Danish headlines. I don't know who Marguerite Viby was, but she's dead now. And "Peter Lundin: Jeg vil se (my son -- don't remember the Danish words, but the man was holding a baby)" -- what's that all about?
- I did not see the Tivoli Gardens.
They were closed. They open next week. Waaaah.
- Danish strollers are huge.
Not only do they have killer wheels on them -- to cope with the cobblestones, most likely, and the huge amount of walking Danish mommies probably do with their tots -- but they were these huge wide body things. The better to get lots of blankets in there, I think. Most of the time I'd peer in a stroller and there'd be so many blankets and windscreens in there I didn't see a baby. So I'm not actually convinced every stroller had a baby.
Also, all the strollers faced the parent. Sophia, once she was old enough to sit up, would not stand for that and demanded we turn the stroller around so she could see what was going on. Maybe if she had a brisk breeze blowing in her face all the time she'd change her tune about that. And demand one of those cool windscreens.
- Danish hot chocolate? It rocks.
If you're in Copenhagen, you must must must go to La Glace conditori (on Skoubogade). Forget the cakes -- they're too sweet, and the slices are too damn huge. Go straight to the hot chocolate. You get a pot with two cups worth in it, plus a side dish of fresh and totally excellent whipped cream. And the most totally amazing thing about this? The free refills. Which I couldn't even take advantage of, because I would have gone into diabetic shock if I had. The chocolate was excellent. Yum.
- Most hilarious Danish TV moment.
Darin turned on the TV one night (not that we watched much -- way too tired) and it was the Danish version of "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire." He changed the channel...to the German version of "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire." We found this hilarious. It might have been the jet lag.
One thing I did not find while I was there but now must have: lots of strollers had string bags attached to their handles, which must have made shopping convenient. Not having to pack everything into the undercarriage -- nice. Anybody know where I can get one of those?
Anyhow, I had a great time there, and I'm very glad I went. I'm just not sure I'd do it again, because doing two 13-hour trips in less than a week -- one of which stretched to almost 20 hours, because of delays -- is a killer. Poor Sophia. She doesn't even know what jet lag is.
We saw The Tailor of Panama today. In a nutshell: there are some hilarious bits and it's got a Serious message, but the tone and pacing are uneven (to say the least), and it had that grating quality sitcoms often do (for me, at any rate) where things just keep getting worse because of people lying or misunderstanding or not saying what they could when they could. But this movie proves (once again) that Geoffrey Rush could read the damn phone book and he'd be absolutely fascinating.
I haven't seen many movies in the past year. It takes a lot more to get me to see a movie than it used to. Today's excuse was: we both have jet lag and Brent's here, let's go see a movie. If we're going to see one on the weekend, look out: massive planning required.
This experience--of needing to be absolutely compelled to leave the house to see a movie--has led me to rethink what I consider really good reasons to see a movie. Which has affected my ideas for what I consider worthwhile subjects for screenplays. I haven't come up with anything particularly brilliant yet. I'll let you know when I do.
I read two books on the Denmark trip: The Garden of Iden by Kage Baker (which was recommended by Lucy), and Set In Darkness, an Inspector Rebus novel by Ian Rankin.
The Garden of Iden was excellent -- a great science fiction milieu, wonderful voice, compelling story. Highly recommended.
Set in Darkness...well, maybe I just picked up the wrong Rebus novel, but I was underwhelmed by it. Not only did I get a little tired of Rebus's moody act, but the story was annoying, with various subplots (some of which went nowhere) and a series of coincidences that almost had me throwing the book across the plane.
For a much better tale set in Scotland, I recommend Denise Mina's Garnethill (which was not the greatest mystery but evoked life in Scotland wonderfully). I didn't like the follow-up, Exile, very much, because I thought she didn't justify why in the hell the main character was spending any time at all on the mystery.
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Copyright 2001 Diane Patterson
Send comments and questions to diane@nobody-knows-anything.com