danmark, part one

we moved from iceland to denmark, as i assume you gathered from the last post of austin's gracious face. this was the main part of our trip, because denmark is where tommy served his mission and where lindsay and travis were moving. we were supposed to be there for two weeks, although our plans changed when lindsay and travis were delayed (more on that later!). dad and austin invited themselves because of my dad's recently discovered danish roots and interest in family history. (austin was just freeloading, along for the ride and the comic relief.)

it was so fun to see tommy in all these cities where he served--places i've heard stories about for years. he didn't have a digital camera on his mission, though, so i've never seen pictures from his mission. so this was a really cool experience for both of us! he had a great time using his danish and showing us all around. denmark was beautiful, both the cities and the country that we drove around scoping out churches for family history purposes.

and now, for a billion pictures (sorry, this might not be interesting to any of you, but i know my mom wants to see them, so there you go!):

we went to the denmark temple (austin did baptisms and the rest of us did a session). thanks to the random man taking a picture not getting the temple in the background, haha.

we did a boat tour through copenhagen.
nyhavn, one of the coolest-looking parts of copenhagen.
the little mermaid statue!

the most famous dane, hans christian anderson. we saw at least three statues of him in different parts of denmark. awesome. now we need to go read his stories.

tommy in front of the apartment he lived in as a missionary in odense! how cute, right?

at h.c. anderson's childhood home.
we went to church in odense, where tommy got to see some old friends and an old mission companion.

and we got to meet a distant relative of tommy's who found him through family history work while tommy was on his mission. he's not a member, but he loves family history, and he was so incredibly nice. his name is also hans kristian, but he doesn't write scary children's stories.

and the other perk about hans kristian is that he lives in the town with the best name in denmark: middelfart. yes, the farting jokes did abound.

one of the days of our trip we spent the whole time driving around trying to track down the churches where my ancestors were christened hundreds of years ago. it was awesome and long. i'll spare you the pictures of every church we went to, but here's one, just so you know.

we also went to a VIKING ship museum where they found five original viking ships in the ocean floor. and we got to dress up as vikings. huzzah!

this was just a funny picture. we had to do laundry so we stopped at a random laundromat we drove by and pulled their chairs outside and sat on the sidewalk because it was too hot inside the laundromat. kind of like a band picture, yeah?

every mormon who visits denmark needs to make this trip to visit the original christus statue at a church in copenhagen. it was totally empty and really beautiful.

the other natural mormon danish pilgrimage to the castle where the original versions of carl bloch's paintings are held. all the paintings were in a tiny little room right off the chapel (in the castle) and all the other tourists just walked right through, but we stayed there for a good 10-15 minutes looking and taking pictures.

(look at us, matchy matchy. it was an accident. and look in the picture above--dad and austin were matchy matchy that day too. we looked hilarious, i'm sure.)

and then, of course, we went to hamlet's castle an hour or so north of copenhagen. did you forget that hamlet was set in denmark? shame on you. "there's something rotten in the state of denmark"--remember? coolly enough, shakespeare even gives the actual name of the city the castle is in (helsingor in danish, elsinore in english), so that's how we know it's the actual castle he was talking about. sadly, the castle is actually really... boring. i wish they would have had a totally hamlet-themed tour, but they didn't really have anything. you just walked through and looked at these near-empty rooms. but it was still cool.

the castle was right on the farthest northern tip of zealand, the island that copenhagen is on. and you could see sweden from it! if we'd had more time in the day, we would've taken a ferry over just to say we'd been to sweden, but we didn't so we didn't. but look--hey sweden!

me and my buddy bill shakespeare. he's a big fan of mine.
the last night we were there, we went to tivoli, the old/famous amusement park right in downtown copenhagen, and walked around. we also paid hundreds of kronur to ride some rides that we could have ridden for much cheaper at any state fair here in america. but it seemed appropriate, you know?

okay, phew. hooray for denmark!