The Ugly Duckling
Odense – 10th May
Today we left Jutland, the part of Denmark joined to Germany, and went to the Island of Funen for our next stay in Nyborg. Our main activities today were touring the city of Odense, which was Hans Christian Andersen’s birth place. Andersen wrote 156 fairy tales, of which 5 are probably best known to my generation, being: The Ugly Duckling, The Emperor’s New Clothes, The Princess and the Pea, Thumbelina and The Little Mermaid.
To get from Aarhus to Odense by our preferred ‘no motorway’ route was going to take about 3 hours so we opted for the Ugly Ducking 130kph motorway. The road was busy with large trucks going south to Germany and Tesla/BMW/Audi cars doing the maximum speed in the fast overtaking lane; apparently following distance rules don’t apply to them.
Our first stop was the supermarket bakery; this is not France so there are no bakeries every 100 metres. I had the traditional Stort Polshorn – sausage horn, or sausage stuffed in a bread roll with tomato sauce, its cold and looks ugly. For my sweet I had a Napoleonshat – Napoleon’s hat which is dry biscuit, chocolate dipped base and almond paste filling. I won’t be repeating the experience.
The next goal was to find a parking spot close to town that was free, so we visited the Munke Mose Gardens and found lots of car parks with a 2 hour limit and appropriately displayed our parking disc. Odense is a pretty, clean and vibrant city. The main centre has lots of green spaces and cafes which were well utilised today by all the Danes bridging the gap. We don’t have a photo of Munke Mose park but here is one of H C Andersen Haven Park’s monastery garden and cloisters.
Today’s ABBA tribute is ‘Suzy-hang-around’ (1974)
Nobody wants you around here and that’s for sure
So get off our playground and stay away
That’s all that we’ve got to say
We were trying to find a geocache at the H C Andersen Haven Park and it appeared to be on a park bench, by the ugly duckling of a rubbish bin, I’m not sure why cache hiders think they are attractive, anyway we couldn’t attempt to collect it because of the loved up couple sitting on the bench. Not having a lot of patience, and an expiring parking disc, we did our annoying geocacher thing and just hovered around them until they felt uncomfortable and left. Photo of the vacated seat is shown, the way we searched it thoroughly I think we put people off from sitting there.
In the bench seat photo you can see a church in the background, this is Saint Knuds Cathedral (pictured above), of not so attractive brick gothic architecture.
There is some gold bling on the inside, a crypt and the ugly ducklings are the bones of St Knud (previously King Knud) and a colleague.
Even they had to contend with square bed pillows.
Some more photos of H C Andersen: his statue, his childhood home and a tourist attraction they call H C Andersen house but is a museum based on him.
This photo is based on a geocache called the ‘Ugly Duckling’, where I had to have my photo taken with H C Andersen outside the Town Hall which is holding an ‘Ugly Duckling’ exhibition.
On the way to Nyborg we stopped to do a geocache in the woods, numerous nettle stings, lots of noise and cursing, we managed to get the cache open about 30 minutes later. That cache gets an Ugly Duckling point. No photo of the geocache but here is the Ugly Duckling feature of our latest accommodation, two flights of very steep, short tread stairs. In hindsight we should have left the suitcases in the car.
[Ed – There are two flights of steps that are so steep they might as well be a ladder. We had to stand on the top step and reach up to unlock the apartment.]
Denmark is a clean green country and encourages recycling, you pay a small fee when you buy drinks in a plastic bottle and when empty you take them and your cans to a machine outside the supermarket and they give you a credit voucher to spend inside. Or if you are the Kiwi who thought the green button with the love heart was more attractive you donate the money to charity, thanks Roger. Our Ugly Duckling moment was having to wait in a queue behind the local alcoholic who had saved up their cans and contend with the floor cleaning staff mopping up all the beer spilling from un-rinsed cans.
