Costco Cuckoo

In middle May, my crazy friend Nhu and I were invited to have a nice dinner and visit with Gorm and Stefan in their Copenhagen home just a short bicycle ride away from where I live.  One of the things we talked about was what a nice time Nhu and I had on our last visit to Stefan's home in Sweden in the country side.  He invited us again and we all agreed on a weekend in the middle of July.  

Nhu just bought a fancy new electric car and she offered to drive.  Pretty fancy car I must say and at a very reasonable price.  Very modern, comfortable and high-tech.  Nhu lives north of the city center, I live south of the city center and Gorm lives in the center.  Nhu was going to pick up Gorm and then pick me up after that.  Unfortunately Gorm wasn't feeling well, so he canceled at the last minute. 

At dinner, Nhu was telling us that she needed to stop off at Costco on the way.  Costco? Really?  Stefan was very interested to know what Costco was all about.  So since Nhu has a membership card, we all agreed to meet at the store just before it opens.  Who knew Costco had a store in Sweden?  

It turns out that Costco in Sweden is exactly the same as Costco in USA.  We walked up and down all the aisles looking and looking at all the items you never knew you didn't need.  And of course when you look at all that great food, by the time you hit the check-out counter, you're starving and the smell of the hotdogs and pizza lur the customer almost in a hypnotic trans to spend more money and eat.  So of course we had no choice but to follow the scent of cheap greasy food, order, chow down and eat American hotdogs in the culturally and historically rich country of Sweden.  Yes, a bite of heaven, actually.

After our big shopping tour, we went to the German shop LIDL - which is also a fun store to look around in - to buy more ordinary market groceries so that we had what we needed for dinner, breakfast and lunch.

Then back into the car and off to the potato patch.  We lost Stefan.  But luckily Nhu had previously punched in Stefan's address into her GPS.  "You have arrived" it showed. Wrong!  We were literally in the middle of nowhere.  I knew we had gone too far.  "Turn around," I said to Nhu.  We drove back about 2  minutes to the dirt road closest to the motorway.  "Turn here!"  I pointed from the asphalt road, "There! There's his house!"  I could see it way off in the distance.

We made it. Parked in the garden, unloaded the car and I mixed us a welcome drink.  Stephan dumped chips in a bowl and he set up a few chairs under the "palm" tree, as he calls it.  I thought I misunderstood him but he said it again.  "Gorm and I call it a palm tree because it gives so much shade."  It really does.  It is a huge beautiful walnut tree loaded with green balls that will become delicious walnuts come November.

We had a lot of fun sharing the latest updates with each other.  

It was so warm late into the evening.

Apparently Stefan and Nhu had a lot more to talk about because Stefan gave me the job of grilling the burgers, sausage, and veggies - which of course, I was sooooo happy to do.  Plus Nhu and I had quite a personal chat in the car from Copenhagen to Costco, Sweden.

Years ago, Jens and I visited Stefan shortly after he built his terrace - which is huge and amazing.    At that time, all the planks were wood color.  Years later, the wood has turned silver and the flowering vines have made it really cozy.  The grill was proudly parked on the terrace along side of a huge patio table.  But we ate dinner under the palm tree with tiny green coconuts.  It was so nice and no bugs for all this amazing nature.

The burgers and sausage are almost done.

After dinner it was time for dessert.  Stefan baked

amazing brownie and layered it over vanilla ice-cream.

And we topped that with fresh Swedish strawberries.

Eventually the wind started to pick up and I decided to put on my jacket.  It was still warm but the wind was very cooling.  My sister Jay grows her own potatoes, so I snapped this photo for her to show her that Stefan actually lives in the middle of a potato field.  Well...... this year.  Next year it will be a different crop.  But it is all just wonderful.

The next morning was perfect.  We could feel the day was going to be warm and it did get very warm.  But we started our day on the terrace with a very tasty breakfast and a much needed cup of coffee.  

Eventually the rising sun creeped over the peak of the roof making the shadow shorter and shorter until we could no longer move our chairs into the shade of the house.  So Nhu and I got up again to walk around Stefan's huge garden to admire all the flowers, fruit, trees, shrubs and bushes growing.  The amount of rhubarb was wild.  "Take all you want," Stefan said to Nhu.  "How much do you want," Nhu asked me.  "Gimme 6 stalks!"  I came home with a dozen.  Nhu took even more.  There was so much rhubarb, we didn't even make a dent in the patch.  

Rhubarb in the foreground.

There are several kinds of berries and roses, cherry trees, a pear tree, herbs, wild flowers, amazing vine hortensia in the garden and these Hollyhocks that I snapped for my friend, George.

Then there was this Christmas tree that I gave to Stefan some time ago. 

It used to be a tiny thing on my balcony.

Eventually it was time to pack it all up and make our way back to reality.  We had to cut our trip a bit early because Nhu got a last minute appointment with psychotherapist but I think it's way too late for any sign of  hope.  Costco Cuckoo can be a very serious mental disorder.

As we drove home, I quickly snapped these photos of the pylons of this fascinating bridge between Denmark and Sweden.

Why is it a fascinating bridge, you ask?  Because it doesn't go anywhere.  It just ends in the Baltic Sea.

Thanks for a great weekend Stefan.  Such wonderful hospitality.

Thanks for a great weekend Nhu.  So kind of you to drive and offer positive support.

 

A Very Boring and Farty Vacation

On August 23rd, Gitte and Carlo (Jens' sister and brother-in-law) came to Copenhagen for a little weekend visit and to help us celebrate our 30th wedding anniversary at our favorite local Italian restaurant just down the street. (and No, it is never to late to send a congratulation card filled with $$$)

Chatting over some great food and delicious wine, Gitte mentioned that it could be fun to try to get together again at a summer house to catch the last bit of summer.  I thought that was a great idea.   I told Gitte that I will try to take off Thursday and Friday in week 38 and that would end up giving me a whole week off.

It was just before the beginning of Corona that Gitte and Carlo rented a summer house but then we canceled because we thought it would be best for me and Jens to just stay home due to Corona.  But now a few months later, as things were finally getting better, we decided to give the summer house rental another try.  

It turns out since all the Danes are staying home during the epidemic, most of the summer house rentals were occupied. Gitte found one still available and gave me a call to say she sent me the link to the house.  "Take a look and let me know asap", she said.  

I clicked the link and thought the place looked great so I said, "Book it! We'll be there!"  We had to book Friday to Friday but I had to work the first weekend so we showed up first on Monday afternoon.  It would be only 3 whole days, ½ of Monday and early check-out on Friday.  It was a short trip but that was going to be plenty of time for Jens, however.

Where did we go you ask? We went to a coastal area at Båring Vig.  Say it like: Boring Vee.  And it is in Middelfart county. There's no beginning fart or end fart - just middel fart. 

According to google maps, it is only 2 hours and 4 minutes/207km away from home. But even with the pedal to the metal, it took us almost 3 hours and the speed limit is 110 and 120 in a few places.  In the map above, you can see Boring Bay, the star is where the summer house is located and the town of Middelfart is where we went for a very short day trip.

I will try to make this a short blog - but you know me: TMI

Instead of a million pix of the summer house, I am posting only 4 and a link of the house from the rental company so you can see more on your own if you are interested. Click here to see the summer house photos from the rental website. 

above - The upstairs living room

above - the path from summer house to beach. A 2½ minute walk.

If you haven't seen the rest of the house, go back and check out the other 59 photos from the website.  It really is a very nice place and I am already looking forward to going back again.  

We got lucky as we had lousy weather just the week before and then some very beautiful sunny days while at the house.  I only took a few pix of the area.  Here they are for your viewing pleasurer.

On Wednesday I went to the market to pick up some groceries for dinner from the supermarket in cow town. The village is called Strib.  You can see it as well on the map.  It's just a 10 minute drive away from the summer house.  It was a very nice market on the inside and it had a cute "light-house" design on the outside.

That's our white car in the parking lot.

And when I say cow country, I mean cow country with a capital Moo.  

The photo below is literally across the street from the market.

Between Strib and the summer house is a big hill and when I drove back from the market, this is the view.  At the bottom of the hill and a little to the right is the summer house area.

One the following day, we drove into Middelfart to check out the town.

On the way to Middelfart, we stopped at this rather unusual place called The House.

The House is a conference center for builders and entrepreneurs in that kind of business.

It has a hotel, restaurant and display/showroom.  It's huge.

They sell everything from kitchen cabinet door knobs to bricks from the street to your front door, to an entire summer house.  I didn't take any photos but here is one from the website...

(it's the area in red)
 and here is the link to the site if you want to see more.

It has a nice 20 second opening video, if nothing else.

 

At the corner of the main road and the entrance to the conference center is an ice-cream shop.  

Naturally we stopped in to make pigs of our selves.

click this link to see a "photo in the round" and then scroll with your mouse from side to side.

From the ice-cream pit stop, we drove on to the city center.

Here are a few pix from our quick visit.

As you may have noticed, Middelfart has 2 bridges.  The little bridge is called The Little Belt Bridge.  It opened in 1935 - just 5 years before Hitler occupied DK.  It has one lane in each direction as well as train tracks in each direction.  In 1970 the name change to The Old Little Belt Bride when the new Little Belt Bridge opened.  Cars only - no train.

I have traveled numerus times over the train bridge as this is the way to get to Jens' family in Kolding from Copenhagen.  Then when we bought our car, we always drove over the larger of the 2 bridges.  Both bridges together, I must have crossed them 200 times in the last 30 years always going back and forth between Copenhagen and Kolding.  I've always only seen the town from above.  This is my first time to actually stop and take a look in the town itself.  It really is a very cute place with that kind of Disneyland magic.

Then before I knew it, Friday came and it was time to pack up and check out.  Since check-out was at 10, we still had the entire day to fart around in Middelfart.  I wanted to go back and take a look at the church.  Gitte and Carlo suggested we drive back to town and have a good-bye coffee at the harbor front.  Excellent idea.  So after loading up the car, we drove back to Middelfart to do just that. First we went to the coffee house at the water's edge and then we walked up the street to see the church.  We didn't go inside because it was undergoing extensive repairs.

This is a wonderful café right at the waters edge and just across the street from the old city center.

While sitting at the café, I snapped a few pix of the area on the other side of the fjord.

There are quite a few harbor porpoises here because of the natural feeding availability.

After coffee, we got up and headed just down the street.  From sea-level, I looked up the hill and snapped this.  Then we continued a litter further down the road to turn and walk up the hill.

As we rounded the corner and walked up the street, we are bombarded with a dazzling array of colorful story-book houses.

This house is from circa 1575.

It is now the city museum

Saint Nikolaj Church was built in the 1200's and has been changed and added to over the centuries. 

We'll be back once the renovation has been completed.  

Would you like to join us on our next visit?