Above - An Arriva Trains Wales... in Denmark!
Above - The centre of Esbjerg.
Above - The centre of Esjberg. Was there an evacuation we didn't know about?!
Above - The audience.
Above - The stage.
Above - Esjberg.
Above - Danish postboxes and flag.
Above - Tonder.
Above - Alex and Sam in Tonder.Denmark, I found, was, in many ways, quite German. It was neat and tidy and clean. We went in the luxury of a German train to Tonder - a Danish town just over the border. There was me, Alex and Sam - also an English assistant and friend of Alex's. We walked around Tonder - there was a market and tourist information as well as a museum. It was upon purchasing postcards and stamps that I discovered that the Danish currency somewhat resembles polo mints - the coins have holes in the middle. Athough everything was in Danish it seemed the majority of people, or at least those who we interacted with at any rate, also spoke German. Handy. Particulary when buying lunch. A Danish cheese salad sandwich and muffin. We went back to the station to catch a train to Esjberg - deeper in Denmark, and, much to my surprise (like with the Oxfam shop discovery yesterday) I saw an Arriva train. Exactly like the ones which pull up at Ludlow station. Arriva in Denmark! How bizarre. On the train eating my lunch I discovered that my raison muffin was infact chocolate chip. Not all that great when you've given up chocolate for lent. I had two options. 1. Eat the muffin and forget lent. 2. Pick out the chocolate chips. I went for the latter getting some strange looks in the process!
When we got to Esjberg (a vibrant university town, apparently) it was raining and cold and dull. It also appeared to have been evacuated. There were no people. Anywhere. The place was empty. The shops were closed. You didn't have to be fluent in Danish to understand the opening times displayed on the shop doors - the sixth day down, Saturday, closing time - 14h. I want to work in Denmark. Everywhere, and I mean, everywhere closes at 14h. The place was empty -had they heard we were coming! We managed to find a café in which we somehow managed to order hot drinks to warm ourselves up. The poor man serving us - first asked if he spoke German and then I came along wanting to order in English. We sat upstairs looking out over the empty central square listening to English songs on the Danish radio. I wrote my postcards and realised that although between us we had a good grasp of multiple languages (English, German, French, Swedish, Frisian, Russian...) we didn't have the Danish work for 'France' for my postcard. I asked the man downstairs before leaving. Goodness knows what he thought of us - ordering in German and English and sending postcards to France! We left the empty café for the empty square. It was raining. There were a couple of people who we passed. Yet none of them had umbrellas. Infact, I don't think I saw a single umbrella in the whole of Denmark. Maybe they're banned? Maybe they don't yet exist in Denmark? I wonder whether the Danish language has a word for 'umbrella'. Well, at least now I'm able to tell a Danish person from a non-Danish person in the rain - the presence or not of an umbrella!
Whilst walking around Esjberg we stumbled across a few random things including a sign signposting 'England' as just round the corner (this was presumably a nearby town that coincidentally had the same name as what the English call their country...). We also came across a stage at the bottom of lots of steps leading up to a tall tower. Cue performances. That was my 15 seconds of fame - on a wet and soggy Danish afternoon in a town that appeared to have been evactuated I made my debut.
And that was Denmark. My everlasting impressions will be that it is clean, tidy and cold. It gives up at 14h. Oh and umbrellas just don't exist.
