“The grandkids are coming in August. I think you should build them a play kitchen,” Anne said to me a few weeks ago. ”Now, what does this have to do with Ten Centuries?” you ask. Well, the basic Ten Centuries philosophy is that life is more fun if you do stuff. That even includes building a play kitchen from scratch.

I decided to make three pieces: a stove, a sink and a refrigerator. But where to start? Going to the internet, I looked up play kitchen plans and was astonished to see that the plans showed the stove and sink base to be 18-22 inches tall. I grabbed a tape and measured 20 inches from the floor, “That is tiny,” I thought, “it must be a mistake.” But before making them bigger I called my daughter, Marion, the proud mother of a 3 ½ year old. “Monette is only 36 inches tall,” she replied, “20 inches is past her waist.” I forget just how little a little person is.

Building from scratch.

No, this isn’t about religion. It is about ways of thinking. The main argument for intelligent design is that organisms are too complicated to have developed through a series of random mutations followed by natural selection: the world is too “perfect” to have developed by evolution, it needed a designer; i.e God.
Now what does that have to do with our stay in Denmark?

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We arrived back in Copenhagen from Bornholm on Friday afternoon, June 28th, the day tens of thousands of Danish 19 year olds celebrated their successful “Studenter Exams” and graduation from Gymnasium (high school). On this auspicious day, tradition calls for each student to wear a white, maroon and gold “Studenter hue” (cap) and for each class to pile together in a vehicle and visit the home of every student in the class; partying loudly from beginning to end.

In the olden days, students used horse-drawn carriages. This is the modern conveyance that was parked across the street from Lise and Vincent’s. There were three more in the immediate neighborhood and hundreds more throughout Copenhagen that night.

We arrived in Denmark this morning about 9:00 am. Our friend Lise Hansen picked us up a bit later.

It is overcast/sunny/occasional showers here in Birkerod, a suburb of Copenhagen.

I have nothing new or deep to say. We are both tired because of the time change. The fight left Boston around 4:00 pm. and we got here about 3 am body clock time, both with an hour or two of sleep total.

Tonight is Saint Hans Evening when the Danes celebrate midsummer. We will be going to one of the many bonfires throughout Denmark. Lise says that they will be burning a witch (a doll) as part of the celebration. Fun.

Saint Hans Evening bonfire at Lise and Vincent’s boat club

There was a pretty big crowd when Vincent and I arrived. We got there late thinking that they wouldn’t start the fire until after dark. Well at 10:30 pm the fire had pretty much burned down and it still was light out. Daylight goes from about 4:30 am to 10:00 pm at midsummer.

Anne and I will be heading to Denmark tomorrow. Total travel time will be 24 hours or so. We won’t be making any new posts until we get settled with our friends Lise and Vincent.

When we flew to Kenya, getting to the airport in Boston via public transportation almost made us miss our flight. Well, not to be dissuaded by our experience, we once again opted for subway and bus upon our return from Kenya to get from the airport to Pam’s house.

The harrowing tale:

Exiting the plane, Anne and I found ourselves near the front of the customs line. After a 5 minute wait and 2 minutes with the agent we headed down to baggage claim to collect our checked luggage. Baggage claim took a grueling 5 minutes. Well, somebody has to have their bags come off the carousel first, ours were third. We went to find ground transportation.

Anne, “I’m willing to get a cab.” John, “Let’s try the subway one more time.” “Okay.”

We walked through the airport to the Silver line bus stop. As we approached, the bus drove up. Boarding we were surprised to find that there was no charge to board at the airport. Leaving, the bus efficiently cruised to South Station for our switch to the subway. There we transferred, still no charge, to the Red Line. The sign read, “next train 4 min.” Six stops later we exited at Harvard Station to catch the 73 bus. The clearly marked sign directed us straight to the bus stop where the bus arrived less than 5 minutes later. Hopping on, we took the short ride to Cushing square. There we were charged the outrageous 🙂 price of $2 each. Then a short 2 block walk later we were at Pam’s house.

It was, maybe, a total of 1:15 from departing the plane, going through customs, getting our bags and traveling to Pam’s house. 45 minutes or so was the transport part. Awesome.

So, Boston, about your public transportation, when it works, as it did yesterday, it works well.

Thanks

We are going to try to add more pictures to the blog from here on out. We have added a Pictures page so we can post pictures that are not necessarily associated with a specific blog post. They won’t include a lot of text or explanation but hopefully some of you might enjoy them. The link is “Pictures” in the header.