Ah, Denmark - the happiest place on earth! We landed in Kobenhavn, found the parking office, paid and picked up the keys to the two awaiting cars Nicolai had left for us (something we could never do at a US airport). Both cars (a SmartCar and an MBZ) were both equipped with GPS so the girls wanted to drive the SmartCar while Bill and I got the Mercedes. Naturally the girls' GPS worked perfectly, and ours probably did as well, but of course the two macho guys decided to use the map because that felt like the right thing to do (we didn't admit until later that we couldn't figure out our GPS).
We found our delightful little village of Glumsoe, about 45 minutes outside of Kobenhavn, and drove right up to our home for the next month. A neat place - better than the pictures on HomeExchange - we are going to be very comfortable here. It's an older farm house type home, but has been completely modernized and sits on about an acre of well maintained land with fruit trees, lawn, and a very nice brick patio with table and umbrella. We can walk everywhere in town and have done so on a daily basis. We found an excellent and surprisingly large market, a scrumptious bakery, an ATM, several small restaurants, a pretty little lake, and walking paths
everywhere. We shopped and began to settle in. Nicolai is Director of IT for Metropolitan University in Kobenhavn and his home reflects it. I went for the computer system while Bill took on the Sonos music system - suffice it to say that both are still works in progress.
Bill and Micki had been to Kobenhavn several times, but had never spent any time outside of the city, so we decided to focus their week on the surrounding environs. Wow, what a terrific choice that has turned out to be! Over the next week we explored by setting the GPS to the next town of our choice. We had breakfast in every morning, then took off. There are helpful
tourist offices everywhere and we can always find someone who speaks English - good thing, as Danish is an extremely difficult language to learn and especially to pronounce. The sea is within a 1/2 hour in just about any direction so we explored ports, harbors, islands, cliffs, gardens, castles and manor homes, museums and managed to find an outdoor cafe whenever we were hungry for lunch where we explored the quite different food options which were always washed down with a cold Tuborg. And for dessert, Bill and I ogled and confirmed that there are many, many beautiful, blond Danish women. We generally drug ourselves home in the evening, cooked out over an unusual BBQ and ate and drank good wine on the patio until 
quite late as it doesn't get dark here until close to 11pm. The countryside is just beautiful - very agricultural inland with fishing and harbors along the coast. It is also the cleanest, neatest, most organized place any of us have ever seen. For one whole week now, and we have driven many kilometers, we have not seen one slum, no abandoned cars nor farm equipment, no untended lawns or houses, no homeless, nothing to discredit the "most happy" claim. Granted that Denmark is very expensive with a VAT of about 25% and total taxes pushing 45%, but they seem to accept that price for full medical and educational plus a nice retirement. They seem to feel that they all contributed, so they don't seem to have the haves and the have nots. We may be heading that way in the US, tax wise, but we sure won't be able to get over the fact that way too many of our "citizens" have never contributed anything.
Bill and Micki left yesterday for home and BJ and I took today as a much needed down day after two weeks of non-stop touristing. Tomorrow we are taking the train into Kobenhavn to celebrate BJ's birthday - dancing under the stars at the Tivoli.
We found our delightful little village of Glumsoe, about 45 minutes outside of Kobenhavn, and drove right up to our home for the next month. A neat place - better than the pictures on HomeExchange - we are going to be very comfortable here. It's an older farm house type home, but has been completely modernized and sits on about an acre of well maintained land with fruit trees, lawn, and a very nice brick patio with table and umbrella. We can walk everywhere in town and have done so on a daily basis. We found an excellent and surprisingly large market, a scrumptious bakery, an ATM, several small restaurants, a pretty little lake, and walking paths
everywhere. We shopped and began to settle in. Nicolai is Director of IT for Metropolitan University in Kobenhavn and his home reflects it. I went for the computer system while Bill took on the Sonos music system - suffice it to say that both are still works in progress.Bill and Micki had been to Kobenhavn several times, but had never spent any time outside of the city, so we decided to focus their week on the surrounding environs. Wow, what a terrific choice that has turned out to be! Over the next week we explored by setting the GPS to the next town of our choice. We had breakfast in every morning, then took off. There are helpful
tourist offices everywhere and we can always find someone who speaks English - good thing, as Danish is an extremely difficult language to learn and especially to pronounce. The sea is within a 1/2 hour in just about any direction so we explored ports, harbors, islands, cliffs, gardens, castles and manor homes, museums and managed to find an outdoor cafe whenever we were hungry for lunch where we explored the quite different food options which were always washed down with a cold Tuborg. And for dessert, Bill and I ogled and confirmed that there are many, many beautiful, blond Danish women. We generally drug ourselves home in the evening, cooked out over an unusual BBQ and ate and drank good wine on the patio until 
quite late as it doesn't get dark here until close to 11pm. The countryside is just beautiful - very agricultural inland with fishing and harbors along the coast. It is also the cleanest, neatest, most organized place any of us have ever seen. For one whole week now, and we have driven many kilometers, we have not seen one slum, no abandoned cars nor farm equipment, no untended lawns or houses, no homeless, nothing to discredit the "most happy" claim. Granted that Denmark is very expensive with a VAT of about 25% and total taxes pushing 45%, but they seem to accept that price for full medical and educational plus a nice retirement. They seem to feel that they all contributed, so they don't seem to have the haves and the have nots. We may be heading that way in the US, tax wise, but we sure won't be able to get over the fact that way too many of our "citizens" have never contributed anything.
Bill and Micki left yesterday for home and BJ and I took today as a much needed down day after two weeks of non-stop touristing. Tomorrow we are taking the train into Kobenhavn to celebrate BJ's birthday - dancing under the stars at the Tivoli.
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