STEEPLES AND STATUES AND FLOWERS

DEAR DENMARK WEATHER, 

I would love to pack my winter coat and boots, put away my warm scarves and mittens, and wear my light jacket, but you are not cooperating.   SPRING NEEDS YOUR HELP!  Unfolding buds and splashes of yellow daffodils and forsythia push the cold spring limits without your warmth, and the days are noticeably longer.  But you are stubborn. You are hanging on to the cold like a sticky-fingered child. Even the sun has retreated and hides most days behind fat clouds.   Really?

Defiantly, we spent a morning snapping pictures in the cold. (Don't let the blue skies fool you.  Blue does not equal warmth.)  Some of our favorite Copenhagen sights can be summed up in three words: red roofs and steeples. From the air, red dominates the roof scape; but add copper turrents  green with age, and  black slate towers poking up like hat pins across the skyline.  Some steeples are stiff with importance while others are pure architectural whimsey.  All are beautiful.  Here is a smattering.

Three for one - Statue,  Steeple and Red Roof

A few of the steeples in Copenhagen, plus one church in Iceland

Copenhagen is also full of statues.  Hundreds and hundreds.  Many tower majestically in the streets, on squares and waterfronts and in parks; others are hidden inside museums and churchyards or cluster around fountains.  Bronze statues oxidize and turn a dusty green shade; marble statues, smudged dark in the folds with age,  still blaze in the sun.  In the collage, you will notice the absence of the most advertised statue in all of Copenhagen: the little mermaid. Pure tourist PR and most unimpressive.

E V E R Y W H E R E

At least the flowers can brighten the cold weather, and the streets of Copenhagen have an abundance. Every single street has a flower shop with racks of flowers trundled out every morning, every day, all year round.  And every grocery has flowers spilling out the door to wind through on your way in.  No matter the season.   And they sell them all.  Most customers leave with a grocery bag looped over one arm and a bundle of flowers clutched in the other.    I have never been in a Danish home without fresh flowers or small plants lining windows and table tops.  Tall, lanky, huge orchids are a particular indoor favorite. Flowers are definitely a blessing in this cold climate even though they are grown in greenhouses.

I WILL MISS THIS

Monday we start training the new office couple and I am counting on the weather to  be on its best May behavior so they don't get scared off.  They are coming from hot Arizona and spring here can be a shock.  Just saying.........