So I (that is, Karmen, your faithful typist) actually arrived in Denmark nearly a week before Alan and Sean, but as I spent much of my time and all of my energy for that week lecturing and leading a completely awesome seminar on, because you all want to know, nonreductive materialist theology, there is not a great deal to report prior to the onset of the trip proper. However, even in my limited interaction with the environment, I’ve of course made a few terribly important observations to share.

First, transportation here really seems to work. Okay, part of this impression is derived from all my flights and luggage being on time, and since that was Air Canada, I suppose it doesn’t really reflect upon the Danes, except insofar as they were speedy with my luggage. But from the Copenhagen airport, one can catch both local trains and the trains to the main station, and there are tidy little maps and helpful agents. Granted, my train from Copenhagen to Aarhus was about half an hour late getting in, but there was track work. I think. The only word I actually got from the announcement was “track,” so I am speculating a little. I can tell you that the train people update the passengers very conscientiously, and I probably would have appreciated it more if I had understood some other words too.

Before that, however, is a mighty fine stay at the airport Hilton. The hotel is actually attached to the airport, such that I will get from Syracuse to Aarhus without ever going outside. The Hilton is very very comfy, and I get to check in right away. I therefore take a wee nap, because sleeping on planes never really works. My wee nap is seven hours long. (How is this possible? After I submit a very favorable comment to the hotel, I get an email from the manager thanking me and telling me that the hotel is almost entirely soundproofed. All airport hotels should do this.) After getting up, in a furious burst of activity, I take a lavender bubble bath, get dinner from room service, and go back to bed until late the next morning. Whereupon I make myself a cup of instant coffee (not so great) and go catch the train at the airport, and am on the train for kind of a long time (about 5 hours). The high point of the train trip is probably that something dayglo yellow is growing all over Denmark. Later I ask one of the seminar members what it is, and learn that it’s a variety of mustard that is used for oil to fatten animals. A fine point about Danish trains: the next stop is clearly displayed in each car, and every once in a while a list of the remaining stops goes by in order. This is reassuring for someone like me, who spends a lot of time thinking that she might be lost, and no small amount of time being right about that.

Upon arrival in Aarhus, I immediately spot the seminar organizer, whose photo I’ve checked online (yay Google-stalking!). We walk to my hotel, which is only a couple of blocks away, and he helps me take my bags up, which causes the nice woman at the front desk to ask if we are staying together. I find this funny; he seems to find it embarrassing, for which I suppose I can’t blame him. The room is not up to the standards of the Hilton, but it’s perfectly fine (well, aside from not having a tub so that I can take more lavender bubble baths). The blinds do a good job of blocking the sun, which is handy since the sun rises before 5 and sets about 10.

I’m tired enough that many of my meals in Aarhus are composed of snacks from the counter near the check-in desk (I highly recommend the Matador Mix, which consists mostly of chewy licorice bits). But one of the hotel highlights is the free breakfast, which is serious. There are rows of breads and rolls; my favorite is a very dense dark bread with sesame seeds on it. There are eggs cooked various ways, tiny whole potatoes, grilled tomatoes, various cheeses (things Danes do well: trains, cheeses), yogurts, juices, tiny pickles, fresh cucumbers and cherry tomatoes, all sorts of fruit. Plus some things in which I’m less interested—sweets, cereals, many meats. Coffee—another thing Danes do well, may all the gods be praised. So every day I get up in time to have breakfast (also, it’s a three-hour seminar, and I think I would not do well unfortified). And every day the organizer brings to the seminar pots of coffee brewed in the department kitchenette, and cookies; and sometimes other people bring cookies, and on the last day people are so determined to be sure that there’s coffee that four pots of it appear. For seven people. One day there is a friendly argument among most of the participants, with the two Danes, the two Israelis, and the two Italians all defending the superiority of their countries’ coffee. I agree that all of these places have excellent coffee. The quiet, tea-drinking Japanese woman in the seminar has no opinion. On the penultimate day, one of the Danes brings pastries, including Danishes, because he says that it would be a pity if I left Denmark without anybody offering me any—although here they are, in fact, called Vienna pastries. Perhaps nobody wants to claim them. And there are plenty of refreshments, including particularly chewy brownies, at my public talk, where I get lots of good questions and only one indicating that the person perhaps didn’t fully grasp what was going on, a far better ratio than usual. I decide to be in love with Danish universities.

The seminar goes absurdly well, but the details would only be interesting to those in it. (Except that I got two free books. Some of you know that this is exciting. Some of you do not. “Oh god,” says Alan. “More books.”) So I will mention other things about Aarhus more generally. The town is very quiet, because there is so little traffic. People ride the bus, which is very easy (I take it to and from campus each day, using the bus pass that the organizer thoughtfully provided, and it’s almost as cool as in the ads—look for “Danish bus” on YouTube), or they ride bikes. Though Copenhagen is larger and busier, it too is much quieter than one would expect of a city, and for the same reason (plus tram lines).

I spend most of the non-seminar time lying in my hotel room prepping for the next day, relaxing, or recovering, but I do manage a couple of nice walks. On one of them, I come across a tiny nineteenth century Jewish cemetery right next to the sidewalk. Nobody I talk to knows the story of it, but it’s lovely and I snap a few photos. (Many things are lovely here, which fact is much assisted by the rainfall that keeps it verdant.) On another walk, I encounter various shops, including one that offers in large letters FOD BEHANDLING, but I think that I ought not to have my fods behandled without  my husband at least being present, so I go on.

On Thursday afternoon, a few of us go to the Aarhus museum and to lunch at the museum restaurant. The museum is quite cool. It is circled above and around the roof with a rainbow-hued panoramic walkway, from which one can see out over the city—and on to the roof, which that day features about a dozen teens practicing what looks like Jerome Robbins choreography, which is not what you necessarily expect to see on a roof. The exhibits are all very good; I’m especially drawn to a room that is set up simply with rows of steel shelving and all kinds of art, including paintings, sculptures, video installations on small television monitors, and creepy things in jars, like the world’s very best thrift store. An exhibit called “Out of Darkness” is inspired by “The Bible and action films,” but is much better than that Mel Gibson crap about the gospel of John. A lot of it depends upon illusions of perspective, so it doesn’t make it into the photos, but there is a room of colored smoke (by the color-obsessed artist who created the panorama, and you’d think maybe I’d bother to get a name, wouldn’t you?) in which one can only see a couple of feet at most. If one is me and inclined, as previously noted, to get lost even in perfectly clear spaces, one might surreptiously check occasionally to make certain that one’s left hand is still near the wall. There are many displays that include Danish furniture and other design, and to my great delight, visitors are not only permitted but encouraged to sit in all the chairs. Some of them, such as the Eames chair and the bubble chair, don’t look especially comfortable, but as it turns out, they all are. Especially the bubble chair. I’m pretty sure I need one.

The museum restaurant features New Nordic cuisine, which you can look up if you’d like, but the short version is that it features creative use of all local ingredients, with one small cheat for chocolate, because it doesn’t grow everywhere but really should. One person’s lunch features potato stones, potatoes charred on the outside to look like rocks on the plate (next to the slice of ox); another gets crab under a sauce frothed to look like sea foam. The other vegetarian and I have big excellent salads. Desert is inspired, the menu informs us, by the forests. I eat twigs made of chocolate, pine flavored ice cream, and pine needles made of—huh, I eat pine needles. It’s actually quite good. They are young and still tender.

On the way back to the hotel, university, and/or bus, a trio of us passes a fountain sculpture of happy pigs. “My son enjoys the fact that one of the pigs is urinating,” says the organizer. I admit that I too am rather entertained with the urinating pig, not bothering to add that I have been accused of being an eight year old boy at heart. So we all wait while I try to get a picture of the peeing pig, who of course stops peeing every time my camera/ phone focuses.

I am kind of sorry to leave Aarhus. The university is really good—the Danes value the heck out of education (not only is it free; there are free continuing ed courses that people can take all their lives if they want, and if there has ever been a finer notion, I haven’t encountered it). There are all sorts of neat interdisciplinary projects going on. But alas, I must go, and besides, on Friday when I go my spouse and brother await in Copenhagen, which is a good reason to be there. At the train station, I buy some seltzer and fruit at a place called Kvickly, which amuses me. There is a big model train set up that can be set going for a 2-kroner piece, but it’s clearly made for children and I don’t overwhelmingly want to be seen crouching down at it. I am therefore very pleased when an actual child plops in a coin and then runs around the display after the train each time. She’s young enough to find it amazing that the train comes out of the tunnel every time, and why not, really? The return ride goes altogether smoothly, except for a panic when our pet sitter calls, and I have to try to work out what to do about it while I’m on the silent car of the train. Luckily, it’s just that one of our cats is in hiding.