they went to the art gallery and came home with

a bike. Of course.

Hugo has ridden to preschool a couple of days this week. Considering his generally cautious nature he does quite well, he is learning Left and Right and so far hasn’t accidently careered off the path into the lake. (Concerned grandparents, please don’t fear, I walk closely behind him, he knows where the brakes are, and we don’t ride on roads, just the footpaths and the pedestrian/bike paths around the lake).

I’m not stupid, just monolingual.

I was riding down to pick Hugo up from preschool today and I pulled up at the traffic lights in front of a taxi (an aside - thank goodness the taxi drivers are less … insane … than Sydney taxi drivers, or I may not have survived the experience). I noticed he had a sign in his window saying “FRI” and I wondered what strange community service this was that required taxis to advise people of what day it is. Five minutes down the road, I realised it’s actually the Danish word for “FREE”. Of course. Even when nobody witnesses my moments of d’oh! they are still embarrassing. (Not so much so that I won’t blog it though. Obviously).

This morning I got a drink for Hugo and he took it without saying “Thank you” so I prompted him “Tak, Mor”. Rather than repeating me,  he said “no Mummy, you say it MOR” (it sounded exactly the same to me) and so I tried to say it right several times until he told me “Don’t worry Mummy, you just speak English”. *sigh*

I was buying some flowers (very cheap here!) this afternoon, and the florist asked me something in Danish - unfortunately, she didn’t speak English … though I have a funny feeling she was asking me if Sophie is a boy, or a girl. Hmmm. I still like her haircut.

The graffiti seems to be in English often, though. I’ve been watching this Obama graffiti over the past month or so. I think HOPE is winning.

Have I mentioned how different Hugo and Sophie are?

Sophie had her first proper haircut today (as in, not just me grabbing a hank of her fringe and chopping it off). It was a much better experience for everyone than Hugo’s first … and second … and third etc haircut. Perhaps it was the chocolate bribe that helped? (PS Thank you so much Aunty Livvy! Your Easter parcel was very fortuitously timed!).

FRONT

BACK

Legoland!

We spent two days over the weekend at Legoland, Billund. Billund is a short plane ride from Copenhagen but taking into account getting to the airport, and the inevitable delays, not to mention crazy security at the airport, next time we will probably just hire a car and drive.

Hugo’s favourite part of legoland was the mine train (a nice, sedate ride that didn’t quite meet adrenalin junkie Sophie’s excitement expectations). She preferred the pirate boats (with the scary dark tunnel). Daddy loved the brick shop (which was just like a lolly shop, where the bricks are sorted into colour and shape, and you buy them by weight) and my favourite part was the Bob the Builder 4D movie (yes, there was a 4th dimension!).

Miniland was strangely similar to Cockington Green in Canberra.

So much lego! One of our meals even had lego shaped chips … it was a lot of fun and we seem to have doubled our lego stash (Daddy got a bit carried away in the brick shop :P).

More photos at flickr.

Tivoli

Tivoli Gardens is one of the oldest amusement parks in the world, right here in Copenhagen. It opened for the new season on Wednesday and we have been looking forward to this since we arrived in Copenhagen! As the Thursday before Easter is also a public holiday here, we caught the bus into town to visit. The weather was fantastic, the rides were fun, and the fairy floss was enormous! We have season passes, so we will definitely be spending a lot of time there over summer.

More photos at flickr.

language

Danish is a really, really difficult language to learn. The pronunciation isn’t intuitive, and almost everyone in Denmark over the age of seven knows how to speak English (luckily for me!) so as soon as it’s obvious that your Danish is ‘not so good’ - an understatement! - they will automatically use English. My ‘functional’ (and I use that term very loosely) Danish consists of “Hej” (Hello), “Hej hej” (goodbye), “undskyld” (excuse me/sorry - I use this a LOT) and “tak!” (Thanks!).

Hugo goes to a Danish preschool, so all the teachers speak English as well as Danish but all the children speak Danish (so of course most of the day is done in Danish). He has been picking up words here and there. Last week he asked for a “vegemite smørbrød” and as I went to the kitchen he called out “that’s a sandwich, Mum!” … although I should have realise he meant the Danish open sandwich because he was quite offended when I brought him a “proper” sandwich, and not just vegemite on bread. When I arrived to pick him up from preschool one afternoon, all the children were playing in the playground and Hugo was babbling a very Danish-sounding babble (the same way babies, when they start to make speech sounds, babble in English).

Sophie’s English is exploding - we’re in that awkward stage where she is saying so many new words and phrases that I can’t keep up, and although she knows what she’s saying I can’t always understand what she means so it can be frustrating for both of us. But it’s really exciting as well as she starts to use longer phrases and her ever increasing vocabulary. (And she does have a few Danish words as well).

the little mermaid

We finally went to see her - a bit sad that it’s taken over three months even though it’s only a ten minute ride away.

Edit - I’ve come back to say, yes - she’s not quite as exciting as you’d expect but compared to the Mona Lisa (queuing for hours, looking at this postage stamp sized painting enclosed in a huge glass box for 0.3 second before being shuffled on) it wasn’t to bad. The weather was lovely, there were other things to look at, it was close to home and no queues! (Although a busload of tourists arrived as we did … they all stood looking at it, vaguely puzzled like perhaps they were expecting something more? bigger? different?).

Easter

I am learning about Danish traditions through Hugo’s børnehave activities. The preschool is on Easter break now, so yesterday (the last day of the term) they had a ‘formal’ lunch together, which is how many Danes celebrate at Easter. Each student brought food to share, and they dressed up in their nice clothing. They also had a short Easter service at the church next to the preschool (I think it’s a Lutheran church) and each child put a daffodil onto a wooden cross.

Daffodils (according to wikipedia) are traditional table decorations at Easter lunch.

Remisen

This afternoon we spent quite a long time playing at Remisen which is a big indoor playground right here in Østerbro. The building is the old tram depot, so it’s enormous and it has heaps of activities, but Hugo loves the lego - they have eight enormous crates of lego! Sophia, blatantly flaunting the “not for under 5s” rule for lego with just a small amount of it.

Remisen is run by the local Kommune/council and is free of charge! Great for days when the weather isn’t good enough to play outside.