Observing Changes and Meeting Old Friends

Saturday, July 9, 2016--Copenhagen

Grethe was out early to buy a few things for the dinner she is having tonight--a special bread for the salmon open-faced sandwich, her favorite breakfast bread, and a Danish pastry that I like.  Then she went out later to buy the freshest potatoes (dug up this morning) possible. While she did things she needed to do, I went out to explore the old neighborhood.

Unless someone from another continent returns to the same city in Europe over and over, I think there is probably the tendency to think that everything in the older parts of town has been there for a long time and stays the same.  And it is true that there are shops and restaurants that have existed for decades and even centuries.  But things are also constantly changing.  I was first surprised by that myself when I used to return to Copenhagen twice a year.  Even though I had been gone only 4 1/2 months, I would walk down the streets in the center parts of the city noticing what was gone and what had replaced it.  I remember people here being surprised that I noticed the changes.

This morning I walked through Valby, the neighborhood near where Grethe lives and the one that was closest to where Arne and I lived.  This time, it has been 8 years since I was here, so there were quite a few changes.  Most evident to me was that Arne's favorite shop--Hansen's which sold kitchen wares--has disappeared to be replaced by a Netto low-priced grocery store.  I was sad to see it gone, but I figured I knew the reason.  Valby had a huge piece of land between the main street and the train station that had been occupied by a chocolate factory and a porcelain factory.  Those properties were being redeveloped into new shopping areas and housing developments the last time I was here.  Sure enough, as I wandered through them I found two chain stores similar to Hansen's which have opened in the shopping area.  So another long-time, locally-owned neighborhood shop has been displaced with modern chain stores.

There were other changes--a new Indian restaurant where a branch of a bank used to be, a new Irma supermarket where a Kvickly supermarket used to be,  a modern building where a gypsy van used to be, a new performance hall in one of the old chocolate factory buildings, etc.  Of course there were many of the old stores that have been there as long as I have been coming to Copenhagen (since 1984) as well as ones that had risen as new shops during the years I was here and remain in business.

Although it makes me sad to see it, I did walk by our old apartment building.  The lower floor of it had been a small shopping district for the neighborhood.  It has deteriorated greatly.  Gone are the electronics store, the bank, the furniture store, the laundry, the pharmacy, etc.  The supermarket, a flower shop, and a small convenience store are all that remains.  Even the apartment offices are gone.  Much of the indoor ground-level area is boarded up and looks abandoned.

Returning to Grethe's, I walked through the nearby cemetery where great change was evident.  In Denmark, there has been a program for years to gradually turn cemeteries into parks.  They do this through a policy that restricts grave maintenance only to the length of time that someone who remains alive continues to pay for the maintenance.  The original period is 10-15 years, and extra periods that can be purchased may be for even shorter periods of time.  When maintenance is not renewed by anyone who remembers the deceased, the administration removes the gravestone and the plants and it becomes a patch of flat, green grass.  Eventually, almost all of the cemetery becomes a park.  Only a few graves of highly respected citizens or graves with truly unique sculptures or headstones are allowed to remain as a part of this process.  The nearby cemetery seems to be at the level of 40-50% parkland, whereas it was probably only about 20% parkland 8 years ago.

In the evening, Grethe had a dinner party with 6 of our common friends as guests--Ejgil and Preban, Jens and Robert, and Torben and Erik.  Jens and Robert came early, because I had brought their iPad back with me to try to figure out how to get their e-mail on it.  It was a complicated process due to the language on the iPad being French, the language of their Internet provider being in Danish, and the fact that Robert did not have complete information regarding accounts.  (The man at the store where he bought the iPad set it up for him and gave him only his account number for the Internet provider rather than also giving him the user name and password he needed to use to connect to the service.)  Anyway, I had already figured out the simplest way to read the mail would be to log onto the webpage of the Internet provider rather than doing the more complicated process of entering all the details of the mail provider.   Therefore, when they came early, we called the service and they confirmed his account number we gave them and set up a new temporary user name and password.  Then we had to go into the account and establish new ones of his choice (since the temporary ones would last only two hours).  On a daily basis, they read all their news on the iPad.  They sometimes don't get on their computer more than once in 2-3 weeks, so having the iPad set up for reading e-mail will make it easier/faster for them to communicate.

Fortunately, it was warm and sunny for the party, so the eight of us sat outside on Grethe's balcony after everyone arrived having a gin and tonic along with pork rinds, garlic-flavored potato chips, and roasted peanuts and catching up on the news about each other.  Then Grethe served a DELICIOUS Danish dinner--smoked salmon with dill over a special seeded bread as a starter, then roast pork with salted crispy skin with brown gravy, boiled new potatoes, pickled cucumbers, pickled rhubarb, and green salad.  Dessert was a generous slice of strawberry-topped cream pie with a thick layer of marzipan below the cream.  Then she served coffee with after-dinner liqueurs and floddebollers--another type of sweet that has a thin wafer cookie on the bottom, a huge pile of fresh, creamy marshmallow on the cookie, and the whole concoction dipped in a dark chocolate coating. 

The whole night was a great success with good conversation, wonderful food, and old friends catching up on things in each others' lives.  Everyone left about 11:45 so they could catch buses and trains back home before regular service for the day ended.  (Danes do not typically drive to parties, because they want to be free to drink alcohol and enjoy the evening to the fullest.)

With Grethe and me working together, it took only about 30 minutes to clean up the place and wash and dry all the dishes and put them away.  Therefore, we were able to go to bed by 12:30 and have a good night of sleep.