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hans christianspiration andersen

Tuesday, September 4th, 2007

We’ve been reading aloud some Hans Christian Andersen classics this week, and today picked up a simple biography to learn a little more about The Man.

“At the age of fourteen, Hans climbed aboard a coach clutching a bundle of clothes. Soon he was rattling out of Odense. He was on his way to Copenhagen, Denmark’s capital city. He was bursting with hope and excitement.”

“By the summer of 1829, Hans had earned enough money to take a holiday. He made a tour of Denmark.”

Now here’s a sponsorship deal:
“Over the next three years, Hans became a well-known writer. His poems, plays and stories sold all over Denmark. Now he wanted to see more of the world. The Danish king granted him enough money for a long trip abroad.
“So Hans set out on his next great adventure. First he went to Germany, then to France. Paris, the capital of France, seemed to be a wonderland, with its grand buildings and milling crowds. Here, Hans met other famous writers and composers.
“He travelled on to Italy. This was even more wonderful! Hans loved Rome so much that he stayed there for four months, looking at the churches and ancient ruins. He told a friend that the city “has opened my eyes to beauty””
He didn’t stop there though. He made it to Greece and modern-day Turkey, before taking the then-dangerous trip up the River Danube.
At a later date he even recahed the shores of England and Scotland, where he met Charles Dickens (and in preparation for his trip, he learnt English!)

What inspiration. The book may not have been well-written, but the ideas it contained sparked imaginations round here. Where’s Odense? Is the statue of Andersen still around? Is there an Andersen museum anywhere?
It just so happens that Odense is right on the train line that we are planning on taking from Copenhagen to Esbjerg. We might have to stop. There’s a museum to visit and a walk to take.

Boots-n-all Plug

Thursday, August 23rd, 2007

Time to rave about Boots-n-all.
They’re a friendly bunch over on the fora….full of good ideas and just as opinionated as I am;-)
Said fora are well-organised, easy to negotiate and there’s something for everyone -and I mean EVERY-SINGLE-BODY.
You post a question and you get a few replies.
Even if you ask a question that’s been asked seventeen times before, someone jumps in with a polite and no-less-informative-than-the-first-time-the question-was-asked reply.
You start up a blog (this one), you run into a few inevitable-for-newbies-hitches and someone waves a magic wand or kicks their computer harder than you kicked your own and ~ voila ~ fixed!
Did I mention friendly replies to posts?
They make you feel so at home that last night I found myself posting the wildest of questions.
Wild – not in the African safari sense – wild in a I’m-a-product-of-an-individualistic-independent-I’ll-do-it-my-way-society kind of way…..and there I was asking total strangers where we should go after England.
I mean to say, what would they care?
For gooness sake, if you can’t decide *where* to go, how on earth do you think you are going to manage to get there? That woulda been my answer;-)

But you know what?
They told me exactly where to go (and it was not in the slightest impolite!)

“They” – yes, “they” – “more than one” sent a reply flying through cyberspace.

Here’s my favourite one:

Personally, I think you’ll know what you want to do by the time you get there. I know you’ve got a lot of kids so you probably have to do more logistics up front than most, but there is no reason you can’t decide this later on in your trip. You’ll hear about a lot of other places from the travelers you meet along the way. Something you hear will inspire you.

Do you see what I see? For a start, even though I’m fairly new to the board, he knows a bit about me. That sense of community is really rather endearing! Secondly, he is realistic (or more to the point, he’s not a total head-in-the-clouds-fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants guy – well, he might be, but at least he understands that travelling with a bunch of kiddos = some constraints). Thirdly, he leaves me a sense of anticipation, intrigue, excitement (in spite of his American spelling!). And, finally, though I didn’t realise it when I posted my “where on earth to go?” question, he said what I deep down wanted to hear!

Of course, it would feel frivolously irresponsible to leave home not knowing where we’re going, especially with eight kids in tow, but oh the allure!!!!! I suspect we’ll end up doing just that!
What’s the worst that could happen? If we get stuck, we can log on to Boots-n-all and *someone* will have some good advice to get us unstuck. And whatever “it” is, it’ll make interesting reading on our blog!

*plane* rhymes with…….

Monday, August 13th, 2007
Last week we realised our plans included arriving in Beijing when the Olympics are on. We're not snobbish travellers, but we'd really prefer not to be where half the world is at one particular time! Given that the Chinese academic ... [Continue reading this entry]