Odense

On Friday, after school, I went to Odense. Lasse, Anke, Kito and me, left around 12 o'clock. Odense is a 1 hour drive from Haderslev and it is the 3th largest town in Denmark. The reason why it is so special? It's the birthtown of a famous Danish writer. The ugly duckling, the princess and the pea, the emperor's clothes,... Rings a bell ? It's Hans Christian Andersen.
When we arrived we first had lunch because we were quite hungry. We ate kebab with French Fries. This was one of the few times the French Fries really tasted like the Belgian ones!
Then we went to the H.C.Andersen Hus (=museum). It was quite impressive. It is a really big museum and I learnt a lot about H.C. Andersen. There was a room introducing him, who he was, how he looked like. Then there was a library with his fairytales in  different languages.(I have no clue how many languages, but there were a lot !) Even Dutch was presented ! H.C. Andersen travelled a lot, so there was also a room with a giant map where you could see where he has been already. He has been in Belgium 6 times, but never in Hasselt :(.
There was also a room with his special attributes. There was one thing I will never forget. H.C. Andersen travelled a lot and every time he travelled abroad and stayed in a hotel, he had a rope in his bag. Why ? Because he was afraid that there would be a fire in the hotel and by having that rope (9 meters) he could always escape.
They also built a replica of his birthhouse. It was quite funny because it was quite small and definetly not made for large people.
H.C.Andersen is not only famous for his fairytales. He also made amazing papercuts. There was a small room where children could make their own papercuts and watch the fairytales. We also tried it :), but we will never be as good as the master himself.

After spending a lot of money in the museumshop we went on. We went to see the H.C.Andersen's garden. It would be very pretty in Summer. We also saw the cityhall of Odense, a magnificent church and another statue of H.C.Andersen. While walking through the shopping street we also found some statues representing the fairytales of H.C. Andersen. To be honest, I really like the fairytales but I didn't know any of the 3. The woman with the eggs, the flying trunk, the shepardess and the chimneysweeper sounded quite unknown. After a tour in Odense we went to the birthhouse of H.C. Andersen. We already saw a replica in the museum and know we saw the real one.
After some walking around (seeing the Odense Theatre and the trainstation), we went back to Haderslev. We had dinner together in a Chinese restaurant and then we ended our night in the Fridaycafe. It was really a great day and I had so much fun !!

   

 

 

On Saturday, Anke came to pick me up to have lunch in the Dampark. The weather was really nice so excellent timing. There was also another Erasmus student from the Dominican Republic joining us.
Then we went on foot to Starup, the town where Anke lives. It's 4 kilometers from Haderslev. It was all the way up hill so I was so tired when we got there.
We watched a film together (17 again) and later that night we had dinner.
Lasse had invited some friends and we had a cosy evening with candles, fire and other good things.
So we also participated in Earth Hour. no lights on, only candles. Hygge !! (a typical Danish word but it's difficult to translate, but if I really have to translate it, it means cosy.)
[Anke is the Belgian Erasmus student who stays with Lasse, my contactperson and also a teacher at Sct. Severin ]
On Sunday we were invited for a Spanish lunch with the parents of Lasse's girlfriend. We had paella and it tasted really good !!