Home Again

We've returned to Copenhagen. Jenifer and I spent much of our honeymoon here four years ago, and it's great to be back. It's also quite excellent to be out of a train. The Ribe station is closed on Sundays, so we prevailed upon the heavy-metal teen who'd made the mistake of sitting too close to the ticket machine for help with getting us across the country. After multiple attempts with three different credit cards, we secured our tickets and made our way north to the Bramming station, where we needed to transfer and head east all the way to Copenhagen. Fine in theory, but once again our lack of reserved seats meant we had front-row tickets to that cubicle-sized space between cars. Add in a platoon of German nature scouts (some even wearing lederhosen), a couple of bicycles, and a camel (okay, I made that one up), and we were a tad tight on space. But Denmark is a small country, and one can take anything for a few hours.

We called our bed-and-breakfast hosts from the Copenhagen central station upon arrival, and then headed out Hans Christian Andersens Boulevard to a section of the city called Islands Brygge, which means "Iceland's Harbor" -- our host Jens's grandfather used to pilot ships for the two- or three-month trip to Iceland. The strip of land along the water looks in every way like a beach, but with brown grass instead of sand and bicycles everywhere. There, in all their glory, the layabout Danes lay about, soaking in the short-lived summer's precious rays.

We walked past Reyjaviksgade, and then past Njalsgade, finally reaching our street, Egilsgade. Perfect, as Egils Saga was the first Norse saga I read when beginning my research. We were five stories up in a building from the 18th century. We met Jens, who gave us a lay of the land, and then we set out for Strøget, the world's longest pedestrianized street at one kilometer.

We ate at the Cafe Nytorv in the wide, cobblestoned plaza also called Nytorv ("new square"), where a local jazz troupe performed a blend of experimental and traditional jazz. Our trip happened to coincide with the Copenhagen Jazz Festival. Jen was met with a dearth of vegetarian fare, and so resorted to the Greek salad (supplemented later by ice cream). I decided to finally attempt the traditional Danish fare called smørrebrød, literally "spread bread." Smørrebrød, as I understand it, is a catch-all term for open-face sandwiches that can hold any number of toppings. In this case, it was three varieties of pickled herring. Along with a packet of butter, I was also supplied with a container of pure lard. I'm not normally a big fish eater, but the meal was excellent, and I was sure that the ancestors were smiling upon me.

Today was essentially another travel day, but tomorrow we return to Roskilde and its Viking Ship Museum.

Excellent Style

Greetings from Ribe, Denmark's oldest town. We got to Copenhagen from Helsinki yesterday morning, and then took a train to this sleepy tourist town near the west coast of Jutland. Tip: get reserved seats, or you'll find yourself standing in the space between cars for the first three-and-a-half hours.

Today we saw the middling Ribe Vikinges Museum and the excellent Ribe Viking Center. The museum wasn't up to the standard set by the Historical Museum in Stockholm, but then its collection of artifacts is far smaller. The center was a recreation of Ribe from 750 CE on, and is a fine example of how to do things in a decidely non-commercial, non-cheesy way. The falconry demonstration especially was excellent.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. On Tuesday I worked out with Jouko. Now, I lift heavy and am pretty good in a few movements, but heavy is relative and I knew there would be nothing I could do to impress this guy, who set a world record in Atlas stone lifting. Of course, I had nothing to prove, but I also hadn't hit the gym in a couple weeks.

We started with deadlifts. I was excited to do this movement, but also a little apprehensive since I hadn't done proper deads in several years and for some reason my back had been bothering me every now and again during the trip. We used Jouko's special Chinese bar, which he actually uses as the strongman in Invincible. We did several warmup sets, and my back seemed fine. Jouko did his top set with well over 200 kg for 10 reps, and at the top of each rep he sang the number in Finnish. Hilarious. I ended up pulling 140 kg for five reps. Jouko said I could have done another 40 kg, which is probably true, but I was happy to keep something in the tank and not stagger through the rest of my trip crippled. And Jouko said, "You have excellent style." I was pretty pleased, since it's not every day you hear that from someone who's pulled 435 kg for a single.

The rest of the workout was pretty straightforward: two or three sets of pulldowns, rows, overhead presses, tricep pushdowns, and curls. All machines or cables, which was interesting since I usually do free weights. I'm still pretty sore.

I was honored to lift with Jouko, and afterwards I realized that this was our version of golf.

The computer is about to shut down -- so I'll catch up in Copenhagen.