A Day in Denmark

It was easy to rent a car with a forgiving clutch and zoom around Zealand for a day. We saw sand sculptures that can withstand the rain and a castle made for fairy tales.

Sand is mixed with about 10% clay and then compressed into blocks at Hundested. Artists then take about two weeks to carve their sculptures, smoothing or scratching the surface of the blocks to create texture.

The Frederiksborg Slot is an overwhelmingly large, ornate, decorated, and portraited castle. It was mostly destroyed in a fire about 150 years ago and then lavishly rebuilt, replastered, rebricked, repainted to golden glory. An organ built in 1610 is still played weekly. And the gardens were lovely; a study in symmetry with some wild areas, too.

Thatched roofs are also a splendid feature of the semi-rural landscape of northern Zealand at Hornbæk Havn.

The stone buildings and cool weather in Copenhagen remind us of Edinburgh. The main highways could be I-40 in North Carolina, except
with fewer pines, fewer cars, and more wildflowers. The seaside villages and gently rolling green fields call to mind Ireland, except the roads are wide and fine and there are fewer sheep here. The blonde construction worker who plays on the DanScaff scaffolding like monkey bars as he scampers down the ladders joining floor to floor, hanging onto a bar and swinging his body from the rungs to jump onto the boards of the level below, is a Danish novelty seven flights in the sky.