What's that you say? Odense? That wasn't on the itinerary! Well, yes and no. It wasn't on the original itinerary, but it has been on my horizon for a while because we received an invitation from a La Sierra University Alumni couple to come visit Odense and learn about the Danish church cross-cultural network here, and I've been working on confirming details for that for the past couple of weeks. I'll give you more details on that later.
In the meantime, though, we have ended up spending two nights here for several reasons. It was actually more practical for us to stay in Odense last night than in Copenhagen, because our meeting didn't get out until about 9:30 pm, and the train back to Copenhagen takes an hour and a half. We'd been planning to stay in Copenhagen last night anyway, but when we arrived at our lodgings we discovered that the travel agent (who had assured me that everything was lined up) had not paid for the house, and because the manager of the house had not heard from the travel agent, he had let out the rooms to other people. This was understandably a big concern for us, and you can rest assured that the University is following up on it to determine how this could have happened. In the meantime, our primary concern was to be sure we could provide for the students a place stay that we knew was safe and would have some interesting places to visit and where we could continue our studies. We booked rooms at a hotel in Odense, the third largest city in Denmark. Denmark includes many small islands and two very large ones, and Odense is on one of the large Islands, the island of Funun. Funun does not have an "island" feel, though, because it is big enough that from most places on the island the sea is not readily apparent. We are currently finalizing our hotel reservations in Copenhagen for Friday and Saturday night and will keep you informed about that.
The town of Odense is the birthplace of Hans Christian Anderson ("Ho See Annerson," as the Danes say) and a festival in his honor is being held this week. There are a lot of events going on, including street actors, people dressed in clothes from the Victorian era, a light show, sand paintings, and various companies showing off their goods (there was a Segway practice track next to the Cathedral this afternoon, with lots of people in helmets learning how to drive Segways). Danish flags line the streets, and there are people out enjoying the town.
I must say that families should be very proud of their students. Yesterday was a very long day, with a lot of hauling luggage around (the significance of the term "luggage" is growing on me), and a lot of traveling. We took vans to the Brussels airport, flew to Copenhagen, took the metro and then walked to our intended housing, walked and took the metro back to the airport, took a train to Odense, and then walked to meet the church pastors and then to our hotel. The students were all really good sports about all the traveling and took the need to change locations in stride. This is a flexible and good spirited group of young people, and that flexibility and positive outlook will serve them well in the future. We know they were all tired and hungry and uncertain about how much of the things they were wanting to do they would be able to do, but we didn't hear any complaining or criticizing. Our two kids also managed it quite well, and we were proud of them too.
Because we were all still very tired, we gave the students free time to rest and explore Odense in the middle of the day today. We will still have class and go out for dinner this evening, but we wanted to let them see what they wanted to see of Odense, because today is our only full day here.
My family really enjoyed the cathedral. K'nut IV (sometimes called Canute IV in English) was a king of Denmark in the late 11th century and is the patron saint of Denmark. He was killed in Odense, and his skeleton was moved to the cathedral here when it was built. The original church on this site was being built in 1095, and remains of that church are still visible in the crypt. The current cathedral was begun in the late 13th century, with additions made over time. Canute the IVth was one of my ancestors (less exciting than my kids made it out to be: he's probably the ancestor of a large portion of the people currently living who have any European ancestry at all. The kids were trying to figure out where they would be in the line of succession to a throne. Our answer was rather disappointing, I think).
It's almost time for class, so I'm going to go meet the students, but I will post more later today and include some photos of Odense.
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