Category: Life

I’m now in West Seattle relaxing after a long day exploring this wonderful city. This wonderful lady by the name of Pam Earle offered me to stay at her place, and has been showing me the sites, including but not limited to:
* A water taxi ride into Seattle
* Pike Place market
* Coffee at the very first Starbucks
* Fresh crumpets
* A walk through downtown Seattle
* The Elliott Bay bookstore (I restrained myself and only bought $200 worth)
* Pioneer Square

We even talked to a couple of the Pike Place Fish Market guys, and they do seem really happy. The place was kinda quiet when we were there, so I may return on saturday when the fish are really flying.

While Seattle has the urban look of New York city with lots of skyscrapers, the feel of the place is much more relaxed and friendly. And the variety and quality of foods you can get at the Pike Place Market and at Pam’s local market is mind-blowing.

When I got up this morning, I had no idea that I’d end up on the set of director Thomas Vinterbergs next movie Dear Wendy.

I had a meeting at Filmbyen (Film city), and suddenly, there I was, standing right behind the directors tent, while they did a re-take of one of the films final scenes. The film is set in West Virginia, and they’ve built a real slice of america right outside Copenhagen. It was fun to get a glimpse behind the scenes, and to get a sense of how Vinterberg directs his movies. There’s a picture of the back of the set on the photoblog. Notice the american style water tower.

The Haus R 128 by Prof. Dr.-Ing. Werner Sobek.

It’s even better by night.

Last night was “culture night” in Copenhagen, meaning all the shops and museums were open ’till late and there was lots of music, events, sports and other fun stuff going on.

Patricia and I went to see a film consultant talk about “What are movies” illustrated by some of his favourite scenes, including:
* The balloon dance and the barber scene from “The Dictator”
* The opera scene from “Pretty Woman”
* The opening scene from “Atlantic City” where Susan Sarandon rubs lemon juice over herself
* A scene from “The Last Tycoon” with a VERY young Robert de Niro

And then we saw Rune Klan perform his unique brand of standup magic, and I nearly laughed my head of. Apart from being an extremely good stage magician, he has a wonderful hyperactive, happy and extremely funny act. This is a guy who knows great magic, but can turn it to his own use.

I’m in book heaven: It seems that all my favourite authors have new books out right now. I just finished Chuck Palahniuks new book Diary, Douglas Couplands Hey Nostradamus! is waiting for me and, wonder of wonders, I walked into a bookstore today and they had Neal Stephensons new book Quicksilver which is a kind of prequel to Cryptonomicon. I’m 50 pages into it already, and it looks excellent – and best of all: There’s still 900 pages to go!

Today is my first work day after a long and excellent holiday, and MAN it’s good to be back.

Here are a few highlights from our holiday:
* Travelling through Germany, Holland and Denmark without once having to show our passports.
* Goliath and Colossos.
* Amsterdam by bicycle .
* Helping an old man push his ice-cream-cart-scooter up a hill that it couldn’t climb and getting two ice creams for it.
* The small twisty roads in the Harz region of Germany
* Getting in a mile-long traffic jam on a German highway and just riding our motorcycles throught the gaps between stalled cars.
* Portuguese tapas in Amsterdam.

By the way, I kicked of my first working day with giving a speech to 12 employees from Novo about happiness at work, and it went extremely well! In short, I’m back and I’m flying! And thanks to guest blogger Carsten for his blog entry.

The Copenhagen Zoological Museum cut up a whale today. Yep, a small whale (meaning 5 meters long and weighing 3 tons) was found dead in a fishing net, and though whales are normally cut up at the place where they’re found, this one was small enough to load on a truck, drive to the Zoological Museum and dismember in front of an excited crowd. The skeleton will end up in the museum.

This I had to see. I mean, don’t we all secretly wish to see large oceanic mammals be cut up? I certainly do. It was kinda fund to see the inside of a whale, but I’m disappointed that nobody brought rice – it would have made sushi for hundreds of people. I even have pictures.
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