Denmark 2023

Most people seek out warm beaches for their summer vacation. We are inclined to go the other direction and escape the heat rather than seek it. This year we went to Denmark in July. Ecological considerations meant we intended to avoid flying and booked a night train from Zürich to Hamburg half a year in advance. A week before departure the railway company informed us that the sleeping coach we booked would not actually be on the train. WTF? Faced with a twelve hour train ride through the night with kids in a regular coach we ended up booking a flight after all. So stupid. Talk about making it hard for people to do the right thing. First, the railways of the two countries we meant to travel don't actually offer night trains (neither Switzerland nor Germany have any), so you book with the Austrian railway. Then the offer is so popular that you need to book on the very day they enable it, half a year in advance. And finally they don't actually deliver. Anyway. We made it to Hamburg by plane and got a rental car for the last leg of the journey to our rented vacation house Juelsminde in Denmark.

For us this location had another benefit besides the cooler climate: we could have friends from both Hamburg and Stockholm visit us. Having an entire country between us means we get to see each other far too rarely and this offered a great opportunity to spend a few days together. First, Linus, Gintare, Upe and Elve visited from Sweden. Then Thomas and Stine drove up from Hamburg. Of course we had to go see Legoland with both of them. So our poor kids had to endure that experience twice ;-P

Very hygge two weeks!

Lukas first flight and Leonie's third.

First glimpse of the sea.

Juelsminde adventure playground.

Linus, Gintare and kids show up from Stockholm.

Cold!

Soccer match.

Bedtime episode.

Legoland Billund. Massively overcrowded on this visit.

Leonie underwater.

About to be eaten by a spider.

Great live show. Leonie is into horses at the moment and real life jousting left her open mouthed.

Fishing for crabs.

Success!

You needed to catch a few so that you could make them race one another.

Harbor food.

Adventurous slide!

Legoland again. This time less crowded and with our friends Thomas and Stine from Hamburg.

Stine and Thomas.

Leonie and Lukas.

Horsens prison museum. Luckily we didn't have to stay ;-P

Exploring the old harbor area.

Yoga time.

Thomas brought some board games and Leonie was all over them. We had to play multiple sessions a day, whether we wanted to or not.

The weather wasn't always great...

...but we still went exploring.

Jelling viking museum and village.

Game of Kubb in our yard.

I placed a sun umbrella on the grass for a single day. Enough time for the ants to build an entire mound under it.

Givskud safari zoo. One of the best we've been to.

Tall (!) climbing structures on the playground.

Apparently this kind of ice cream sugar overkill is a tradition in Denmark?

The zoo had the largest and best dinosaur exhibit I've seen.

The kids loved it.

Driving right up to lions was also an unusual experience.

Horsens museum of industry. A lot of hands on experiments for the kids. And as an engineering geek I was pleasently surprised that they actually fired up all of their steam engines! An amazing and amazingly noisy exhibit. Loved it.

One just has to appreciate the steam punk aesthetic.

Anita and the kids.

Some hygge time.

This image has special significance. If you squint, you can see that I accidentally captured the exact moment the wind blew Leonie's baseball cap into the water. By the time I had undressed and reached the end of the pier I had to swim quite a distance to retrieve it. Cold! With a long hike back home.

Hamburg Miniatur Wunderland.

This thing is amazing. The hobby of two random dudes turned into a major attraction for Germany's second biggest city. Not quite the Eiffel tower, but also not too far off.

The attention to detail and craftmanship that went into this thing is mind blowing.