Sweden Pt. 1

So there we went. Sooki, Johan in the company of little Lukas picked us up on the other side of the harbor to take us to their fabulous house in Marstrand (bedrooms circled in red), kinda like the Martha's Vineyard of Scandinavia. It was really great to see them three years after we saw each other last in New York City. Despite major changes in all of our lives, namely (in the order of appearance) Karl, Lukas and Henri plus of course transatlantic moves with the accompanying culture shocks, it was like getting together after just a summer abroad. Kinda hard to follow Sooki's mega-post, but here's a few impressions nonetheless.



Marstrand is kid heaven. Not only because there's a port filled with boats and ships and a town spreckeled with wonderfully equipped playgrounds (here's Swingin' Lukas showing us the ropes to the local landmarks).



The greatest thing is that there's no cars allowed. There's definitely something to be said for a car-less town. City noises in the evening are faint surf, seagulls, the flapping of a flag, somebody watching a movie, the low hum of a Diesel form a boat leaving port late. Karl was tripping on being allowed to run almost freely around town. And of course he had to take a ride on the most clichee of all Sweden clichees.



When not painting the town in all colors of the rainbow the boys loved to hang out at Sooki and Johan's. Entertainment provided by guests (yes, the duck Henri is ogling is the Bavarian duck we have to provide every toddler in our circles with).



Highpoints of the visit were of course the boat trips with Captain Johan, as Johan was christened by Karl.



Henri was kinda weary of the security garments every guest was obliged to wear, but he was really digging the hardcore rocking action in the Swedish surf.



And then there was of course the glamour factor of riding with two stunning ladies in a white motorboat. To be continued...

Five Months

Before we publish the super-mega blog post on our trip to Marstrand there has to be our monthly pic of course! It's getting harder and harder to catch Henri lying on his back, not wanting to go anywhere. He's one ambitious little boy.

Fun & Games (and off to Sweden)

So you think fun and games are just pure merriment and entertainment? Think twice, if you watch a young man build a castle with the earnest ambition of a masterbuilder (with just a little bit of help) that results in pure pride.



Same goes for the very young man and his quest to master his first toy car (that mom bought for him at the museum store). Karl's ambitions have been truly matched by Henri's, who is putting a real effort into trying to move towards desired objects (way too early, but he's been studying his brother's movements quite eagerly and is trying to emulate some of those studies' results).



Tomorrow we'll be on the road to Sweden to visit Lukas, Sooki and Johan on the wonderful island of Marstrand. So no posts over the weekend. Followed by a full report on Monday. Off we go...

Copenhagen

Copenhagen! Another rainy day was used to make a trip to the city. A very distinguished lunch at the Danish Design Center was followed by a stroll through the exhibitions about Danish design history and new perspectives on design. In our book that Danish design has some sutainability issues to solve, since the exhibits didn't quite hold up to the examination by an almost three year old. We're afraid the good people at the Danish Design Center will have some rebuilding to do tonight, since a few props and setups didn't quite make it through the earlier afternoon.

So we hit the Tivoli, the legendary theme park, which featured the travelling Argentinian Dinosaur exhibition we missed in Munich. So after the shock and awe on the Design Center it was all awe for Karl.



The real highpoint of the day was the part of the park where Denmark's kid comic hero a little wool hat and polka dotted overall wearing bear named Rasmus Klump rules. Better known as Petzi in Germany. They carved out a great niche market - healthy junk food for kids. They had a pancake bar where they sold all the official Rasmus Klump stuff like tiny boxes with raisins, whole grain cookies and rice cakes. Karl was in seventh heaven eating original Rasmus Klump raisins while climbing various sets from the Petzi books he knows from his cousin Thora's collection like the steam boat or the lighthouse.

Further plans to explore the hipper sides of Copenhagen were cancelled due to parental fatigue. Well, we're here for almost another two weeks.

Nordic Roots

The fun never stops in Denmark. And it's educational too. You can get your kids in touch with their Nordic roots. You can take a bath in the nice open kitchen for example, which was what our ancestors did, because in the rough Northern winters it was much cheaper to heat the water once and do your dishes, laundry and babies in one swift round of scrubbing.

Then there's of course the great heritage of the Vandals (who needed those snooty Romans and all their anal retentive urban culture anyways). Here you see Karl embarking on a genealogical research project, turning a dull sundeck (standing in for the Roman empire) into a quite colorful affair (standing in for the victory orgies on the ruins of the Forum Romanum) with a set of sidewalk chalks (standing in for the battle axes of our forefathers). We are very sure the sprawling imagery will wash away with one of the next rainshowers. Probably. It must, because we need the security deposit back to pay for Karl's Kindergarten righ away. Oh the Butterfly Effects that can turn a little fun into real havoc for the education of a young man...



The real kicker was of course a visit to the Viking Museum in Roskilde. Did you know Karl's dad is one eigth Danish? That's about as far as we go with our mixed heritage over here in Europe. So anyway, Karl got to climb on the replicas of Viking battle ships. And yes, I think it's very educational to let little boys play with blunt objects that used to be the core of a military technology conquering large parts of Northern Europe not that long ago.

Rainmark

Who says you can't have fun in yucky weather? Tell that to an almost three year old armed with a big umbrella or better even, with bucket and shovel on the beach. Of course weather sucks. We're in Northern Europe after all (that pun in the header of course only works in spoken form and even then it"s pretty lame).



The Danes are a great role model. Just because it pours it doesn't mean you can't lounge out at the small ports and have snacks from the fish hut, stroll along the beach or go on bike tours. Well, we don't go on bike tours. But watching the brave kite sufers is quite something.



And for little Mr. Henri the world is an oyster anyways. No matter what the condition, it's all new, i.e. exciting. Even safely nestled on mom's chest there is always something to peek at.

Happy Birthday, Paule

Liebe Grüße aus Dänemark ins schöne Frankfurt!

Art

Today we spent most of the day at the Louisiana Museum (Karl's looking at a massive Henry Moore in this photo), which has nothing to do with the hurricane and oil spilled state of the same name. It"s about half an hour North of Copenhagen and the first owner of the property named the place after his three wives who were all named Louise. The core of the museum is an old villa that is now annexed by a few very modern wings, all above the Oeresund, the strait that seperates Denmark from Sweden. It is truly one of the greatest places on earth (actually featured in Patricia Schultz's "1000 places to see before you die") and was actually the trigger to make us wanna come to these Northern shores of Europe (I had attended a weekend symposium at the Louisiana during the Copenhagen Climate Conference last year). For New Yorkers - it's like a mix of the DIA Beacon, Storm King and a Richard Neutra case study house all right on the Great Gatsby part of the Long Island Sound.



With a little help of Danish pastry after our museum cafeteria lunch, Karl got all excited and took the sculpture garden in sprints. There was even a mid-day performance of Modern Scandinavian Jazz featuring a bass clarinet and a trumpet in an improvisational dialogue with taped voices of extinct birds, i.e. some pretentious pseudo-spiritual bull with lots of pompous gesturing towards the sky and the sea by the musicians, which of course makes you pause and wonder, if Modern Art isn"t pretentious, pompous bull to begin with. Luckily a surprisingly wonderful and well exectued exhibition juxtaposing Munch and Warhol and the fabulous collection of the museum blew our cynicism right into the waters of aforementioned Oeresund.



Karl's favorites were Tinguely (of course, since you can push buttons and stuff starts to move very noisyly), Dan Flavin (pictured) and the trippy installation of Yayoi Kusama, an artist he already knew from her installation at the Haus der Kunst. He did like the room full of mirrors with the changing lights today even better than her hall full of pink balloons. Definitely a name to rememeber if you want to excite toddlers and kids about art.

In The House

Vacation home horror stories are a European summer vacation classic (Whaaa?! Nobody told us about the sewage plant next door! Why is there no electricity? Are these attack dogs next door really as kid friendly as their drunken owners tell us? When does the outdoor disco across the street stop pumping techno beats?). Well, google maps and streetview sure help sort out the challenging locations. And we kinda lucked out with a groovy "Ice Storm" style 70s bungalow with a massive garden complete with sandbox, swings and a campfire setup. The ocean's a brief walk down the street lined with quaint Scandinavian vacation homes hidden behind lush trees and hedges. And we are definitely the loudest party around here.



Yup, we're definitely enjoying that bourgie beach suburbia lifestyle. Karl loves to just lounge out, starting with some book reading in the morning, raiding the owner's daughter's toy cabinet for puzzles and Donald Duck comcis (the great advantage of illiteracy - it doesn"t matter that they're all in Danish). And then there was of course the other vacation classic - inflating the kiddie pool bought at the fabulous SuperBrugsen. I think SuperBrugsen is Danish for we-gonna-make-your-creditcard-bleed. Everyday prices in Denmark are pretty impressive even by Munich's standards. But it's impossible to resist the local fishmongers offerings down by the little fishing port. So we had some very tasty shrimp dish that was as good but also as pricey as having a similar dish at BLT Fish. Well, Fred deserves a Michelin star, so we won't start to skimp on the shrimp around here.

Tripping Europa

So here we went. Took our trusty company car to the highways pointing North. Karl got to sit upfront some parts of the trip (we had to have a special airbag blocker installed, but now he"s all legit), which was met with great giggling excitement. I guess getting a driver"s view perspective of a German Autobahn is a truly thrilling experience for a three year old who tends to fill his dad with class warfare rage and sportscar envy by pointing out every single Porsche he sees (and on the streets of Munich there are an obsceneley lot around, actually a Porsche is already considered declassé, the new sportscar to have is a Tesla, just to give you a perspective on the kind of wealth swilling around that town).

First stop - Berlin. We stayed at Gabi and Martin's (I"ve known Gabi since the late 80s, Martin since the early 80s, served as Martin's best man when he wedded Gabi, who I introduced to him at Cipriani"s on West Broadway, so I guess this all qualifies as going "way back"). They recently got a really nice pad in the Kreuzberg neighborhood of Berlin. Huge balcony and garden included.



Karl got a kick out of the morning chores that come with an urban pastoral like this. Not that our backyard idyll is too shabby, but watering plants before breakfast hasn"t been part of our Munich routine yet.



This was topped by a bathrobed walk to the garden to harvest some homegrown carrots for an early morning snack. Followed by a first guitar lesson on a vintage 1960s Gretsch. So Karl wants to move to Berlin now (so do we after we heard the square meter price for a choice place like this).



The next morning it was back on the highway, further North to the sinister sounding town of Rostock, where we caught the ferry to Denmark. No need to elaborate on the thrills of driving your car into a big boat"s hull, just to discover that there"s a buffet with adjoining playground on the upper deck.



Henri in the meantime took all the travelling adventures in stride. He is getting sweeter by the minute, developing his very own brand of charm and humor. He was surprisingly mellow for a four and half month old on a multi-day car trip form the Southernmost to the Northernmost parts of Central Europe.

First impressions of Denmark beachtown life to follow...

The End Of An Era

So there he goes - Karl's all grown out of his first step of educational institutions, his beloved Kinderkrippe run by Katja and Serap who adore him (and frequented by a bunch of girls who didn't just adore, but mother him to the point that made us uncomfortable - they brought him his shoes and put them on too?! Well young man, better watch the 30 Rock episodes with Jon Hamm so you learn all about "the bubble"). The girl in the picture below is "kleine Marlene" (yes, all blond girls in Germany are still called Marlene and they are taught how to smoke cigarettes and sing sultry chansons by the age of 3).



Tomorrow we'll be off to a nice vacation home in some Danish beach town with a name that sounds like some Scandinavian tongue twister fish dish. Back in three weeks (yup, this is Europe, just to rub it in for all our American readers, and yes, if you followed our blog closely, this our third vacation this year, so hooray for the unions who fought so bravely to turn us into state sanctioned slackers). And of course there will be a ferry trip across the Kattegat to visit Lukas, Sooki and Johan on that Martha's Vineyardish island they seem to spend quite a lot of time on (well it is Europe, see above).

In September Karl is starting Kindergarten. And to dispel another European myth - no, we didn't just file an application with our local socialist caretaker. We actually fought like getting Karl into some Ivy League U (and some of those Kindergartens were as expensive and they still didn't have a slot). So after applying to 15 different ones it came down to a colleague of mine tipping me off to a suddenly available slot, me calling in a matter of minutes and Fred dragging Karl there a few hours later, naming the right names. Sounds 3rd world? Or Upper East Side? Guess Munich's a bit of both.



In the meantime Henri's gearing up to follow in Karl's footsteps at Serap and Katja's place. But first things first. Not sure about the internet situation in our beach home. So if we don't post we will be devouring juicily prepared crustations in the salty breeze of the Scandinavian seas thinking about you. No, not in a gloating way. Never.

Touring Bavaria 2010

Due to baby having and vacationing we totally neglected to tour Bavaria this Summer season. Luckily we made it out to the Starnberger See last Sunday though. It was a great day and we met up with Opa Paul and Maria for lunch at the Zum Fischmeister. Later that afternoon Andrian taught Karl how to swim. Yeah. Right.



Meanwhile Henri used his photographic memory to internalize all the instructions and will probably be able to swim at the same point in time as Karl will.