Monday, February 15, 2010
Well, if you have read about our trip to Switzerland, then you know that both Jacob and I have ancestors from the same town in Switzerland. We also have ancestors from Sweden. To further the irony, as we were planning our trip to Sweden, we were surprised to find that our Swedish ancestors were from towns nearby each other! It was a wonderful feeling seeing these places and imagining what life would have been like so long ago for members of our families.
The rest of our day in Sweden was spent frantically trying to visit what we could in massive Malmo. The kids and I loved seeing the height of the Turning Torso and Jacob enjoyed Malmohus Castle. We didn't get there till 20 minutes before it closed, so they let us all in free. While there, a kind and knowledgeable historian gave a quick 1o minute tour of the castle. I especially like the story of this prisoner who sent letters complaining of a wailing cat ghost. Everyone thought he was crazy but modern historians found the remains of a cat within the walls of the same area where that prisoner was held.
We had a fantastic Christmas break. The kids absolutely adored having Jacob home for days at a time. Jacob took Ben and Lizzie sledding and built a huge snowman and bear with Benjamin while sick Lizzie watched from a window. We all went to a park next to the Viking Ship Museum where there was this cool hampster cage-ish swing that was really fun (but the fun ended when I crash tumbled after getting too ambitious and injured my back). I guess I just can't be a kid anymore! We spent Christmas Eve (the biggest part of Christmas in Denmark) feasting with our friends Eva and Martin and the missionaries from our church. We danced around their Christmas tree singing carols, and finished with generous presents for everyone and the incredibly delicious risalamande. Christmas Day morning was spent quietly at home, and Christmas afternoon our friend Theresa came over bearing gifts for Ben and Liz. Good times!
We later went on a canal boat tour of Copenhagen. If you ever get to Copenhagen, the canal tours are the way to go. You get to sit and enjoy the views as the boat takes you from one main point of the city to another, where you have the option of getting out to explore and then catching the next canal boat within the hour. The tour finished just as the sun was setting so everything was incredibly beautiful.
On New Year's Day our family visited our friends Kirsten and Peter and their family. While there, they offered to babysit on the spot. So we left our kids in capable hands and zoomed off to see the Vor Frue Kirke, or the Church of Our Lady of Copenhagen Cathedral, that houses a series of famous sculptures: Christ, the Twelve Apostles, and a Guardian Angel baptismal font. The sculptures were spectactular and in the appropriately reverent atmosphere of a church.
This statue of Peter holding a set of keys holds a special place in my heart because of a church talk I heard in 2008 General Conference of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. In this talk, Elder Boyd K. Packer tells a story of President Spencer W. Kimball visiting the Vor Frue Kirke in 1976 and telling a janitor there that there are living apostles today, just like there were apostles in Christ's time.
All of the statues are wonderful works of art. The Danish sculptor Bertel Thorvaldsen produced hundreds of beautiful sculptures during his lifetime, which he left to the people of Denmark at his death. Among his works is the Lion of Lucerne, which we were able to see on our Switzerland trip.
