Travelogue Amsterdam: Hippie Haven

Travelogue Amsterdam: Hippie Haven Or Travelling with elderly parents

A panoramic shot taken by Belly Boo, view of the Jordaan district with Dad in the background.

Welcome to Amsterdam- the amorous city!

These days hippies aren’t hip anymore but clearly the paraphernalia that hippiness is associated with– grass/weed/ free love/flower-power and a perpetual blissed-out stupor is still what you will easily find in Amsterdam. We found ourselves in this bustling and crowded Dutch capital on our last leg of our Euro tour this summer- a little tired, a little ready to go home but still excited to see what this city of canals and bicycles has to offer. It was actually my filial duty to ‘bring’ (not that my parents still need us to ‘bring’ them anywhere) my Mum to Amsterdam, as she has always expressed an interest in seeing this city. And why not? It’s always fun travelling with my parents and they are not going to be around forever and if you’re going to book accommodation for 5, you might as well book it for 7! Those of you who know us well know that we take go on at least at least one communal holiday a year with my folks. The children love bonding with grandma and grandpa and as we don’t live in the same city, my other half adores them to bits and there’s always that extra suitcase space in my Dad’s bag in case I have bought too much!

Happy signs like this abound in Amsterdam!

After failing to secure a canal house that I liked in the Jordaan distrct, I settled for an inexpensive 3 bedroom apartment which boasted a very convenient location- right next to Chinatown and near the red light district. What I didn’t know about Amsterdam is that every turn and corner, IS the red light district. Like many European nations, the world’s oldest profession is a LEGAL one, but nowhere does it become as entertaining as you would find it in Amsterdam. So we found ourselves thrown into the heart and soul of the RED LIGHT district on our very first evening in Amsterdam. After a hearty Chinese meal- the proprietors were from Hong Kong, and my dad had enjoyed himself ordering in Cantonese and speaking his native tongue, we found ourselves on a cloudy summer dusk walking the red light district, with 3 children aged 12 and below. I think if social services had been with us, we’d have been arrested for sure.

Moulin Rouge of a salubrious kind.

My other half had visited Amsterdam, years ago as an inter-railing university student and back then, the flesh trade was as active as before. These days the ladies are still at the windows and they do come in all shapes and sizes, colour and ages. While waiting for customers at their glass cubicles, they entertain themselves on their ipod, iphone or ipad! Dad was discreetly trying not to stare( so obviously), while my 9 year old popped this question to me: Mummy, who are these ‘creatures’ at the windows? I got flummoxed and told a BARE- FACED MUMMY LIE: Err, err sweetie, you know the wax creatures in Madame Tussauds? Yes, they are like that. But why are they dressed like that? For a show, sweetheart. What show? Our ever sensible and straight-laced twelve year old then turned around and whispered firmly to me: This is NOT a place for children, mummy, let’s get out of here, so there endeth our tour of the red light district at the strict behest of our very proper 12 year old.

Near the Red Light District in Amsterdam with my parents

After the kids were deposited back to the apartment which was very lovely and above board, despite its location!-with signs everywhere saying “we do not solicit sex or drugs in this premises”- M and I went down for a romantic walk. And like any curious tourist, we walked around to see what they had to offer. There was of course the sex museum. And countless sex paraphernalia shops. And there were live shows. None of which interested us. Scores of tourists were queuing up for that but to pay 36 euros to watch people simulate a sex scene in public, no thank you. But it was a fun walk with your other half, while the kids got babysat by the grandparents.( see the benefits of travelling with your parents?)

If there was ONE glaring thing that stood out between Amsterdam and Paris, it the LACK of pharmacies or apothecaries in the city! My half French friend, P told me that the French love their tablets. His grandparents would line up all their tablets next to their wine glasses at meal times. I guess the Dutch don’t need to be medicated as much, as they have fun things like cannabis tea, or happy cookies, and grass weed pizza to feast on. In Paris, every three steps you turn in a glaring green sign of the cross calling out to you- ‘drugs, drugs, drugs’. In Amsterdam, you couldn’t see a SINGLE pharmacy! I guess if just get the REAL stuff so easily, so no one ever falls sick, or needs eye drops or eye wash!

The next morning, I was adamant that we find our way to Anne Frank’s Huis. This wonky-eyed girl still loves her ambly walks everywhere and kinda didn’t think that her 68 year old dad who doesn’t like walking as much might not feel quite the same way. We did have fun on the walk from central Amsterdam to leafy Jordaan where the Frank hideaway house was situated. It’s not far away but canals after canals and houses that look the same after a while can make even the best street navigator get disorientated. We walked about 100m past the house before we realized we had to turn back. But that’s the joy of walking you find yourselves in places or SHOPS that you normally wouldn’t stumble upon. And there was a lovely, kitschy homeware store that I popped into to buy some really cool vintage cups for le abode.

Most people would be taken aback by the LONG QUEUE outside the museum and we almost didn’t go in, but I am a determined cookie and I queued up while dad and mum could wait in the shade. Within 30 mins, we managed to get into the house. For those of us who have read the Diary of Anne Frank, it’s a must see. The Jews were a persecuted lot and Anne's diary shows, just a fraction of that time of horror, torment and emergency that all the Jews felt under the terrible spell. It’s a humbling place- especially when you read snippets of her diary and see the windowless quarters in which the Frank family found themselves hiding for 2 years before they were betrayed and sent off to Auswitch and Bergen Bergen. The best thing for me was that mum and dad were really keen about the history, as they had been to Austria and Germany despite earlier misgivings about yet another museum with their Renie. For our children, it was an amazing living history lesson. Our older girls were especially keen! After all, what better juxtaposition of the social fabric is there in Amsterdam between the red light district and the house of Anne Frank?

We couldn’t take any pictures inside the house, but it’s definitely a must-see while in Amsterdam.

Queueing up at the Anne Frank Huis- uploading photos on my daughter's ipod.

Holland is a very compact country. To get outside to the “country” it’s 20 minutes away. It’s got to be one of my favourite cities in terms of accessibility into the city centre from their main airport. (Hong Kong is my second favourite city in terms of airport to city centre accessibility.) But Amsterdam tops it for sure as in 20 minutes from Schiphol, you are in the heart and soul that is Amsterdam. And onwards, if you hire a car or take a tour bus, you will find yourself in quaint cheese, clog, windmill, seaside village just minutes away.

My mum is mad on canals so we thought it’s be a great idea to go on a canal cruise and give my Dad a chance to nap. He loves his naps. The canal cruise itself was a bit of a disappointment but you will find on a warm summer’s day (25 celcius), gorgeous Dutch girls in skimpy bikinis will be riding on little boats sun tanning their torsos and drinking Heineken. The tour droned on for a bit after a while but it’;s not hard to understand why Amsterdam is known as the city of canals. Like arteries, they form the main mode of transportation, next to trams, around the compact, and rather picturesque city.

Lovely canals like this is found all over this beautiful city.

It’s easy to get a tram, across to Museumplein, where the magnificent and under-restoration Rijksmuseum and the Van Gogh museums are situated. The green open spaces in front of the Rikjs is enough to lift anyone’s spirits. It was here that we took photos of the very aptly placed logo of IAMsterdam- the city’s proud logo! We managed to get into the Van Gogh museum using the shorter senior citizens queue( again the benefits of travelling with parents), and the children were really into the life and works of Holland’a most famous artist who actually spent most of his time in France. It was here, that we cemented the fact of returning to France this time to see the two key places where Van Gogh was inspired by, worked, tuned mad and painted- Auvers-sur Oise and Arles! The kids counted the number of sunflowers but I fell in love with the turquoise and gorgeous Almond Blossoms which were immortalised on mugs, plates, bags and what not at the museum gift shop.

Family at Museumplein.

The kids had a lovely play at Vondelpark, which is really lovely, green and such a nice green lung for the city. We wished we had more time to speand there as it was the sort of park that you could truly enjoy a gourmet picnic in. They ate Stroopwaffles like there was no tomorrow and we bought about 8 packets of this Dutch specialty home as they were really good. Like hardened pancakes with melted honey.

Here's our cheeky boy enjoying a stroopwaffle on the canal cruise!

Possibly my most favourite photo of the THOUSANDS we took in Europe! Grandpa with grandson!

Our Euro tour ended on a high note actually; well, due to some boohoo, Malaysia Airlines/KLM bumped us off our flight- and we had no seats on our intended flight to go home on. Every cloud had a silver lining, we managed to get seats the next day, which meant an EXTRA day in Amsterdam with my partying parents (who were leaving for Croatia the day after) and getting bumped UP to Business Class! For a girl who had had eye surgery less than 3 weeks before, it surely was a LOVELY & NOVEL way of getting home in style!

All of us at Zaanse Schans- the windmill village just 20 minutes away from Amsterdam

On our bonus day in Holland, we joined my parents on a tour!!! ( we don't do tours, I hate tours and once when the girls were very little, we got off a tour bus in the middle of Hong Kong’s Peak as I couldn’t stand the tour/guide/bus but we felt this was the easiest and most novel way of seeing a bit of Holland outside the capital). The bus driver was a bit of a jerk and bigot( the only unpleasant encounter we had with Europeans the ENTIRE time we were there) but the tour guide was useful enough and Zaanse Schans must surely be the most commercialized, most visited, and most photographed Dutch windmill village there was! Our whistle-stop there only produced some quick snaps shots and speedy information about the history and uses of traditional windmills. We then proceeded to Volendam, a quaint seaside port where we sat by the harbourfront to write postcards- the only time I sent postcards from Europe to anyone, and to the island village of Maarken where clogs and cheese were made.

My four favourite people feeding ducks in Maarken

It was a lovely half day tour which ended at 2pm and Mum and the girls and I managed to do some very last minute shopping at Amsterdam's main shopping district- Kalverstraat, which again is no different to Stroget in Copenhagen and to a lesser extent, though much less picturesque, like Champs Elysees in Paris. At Bijenkorf department store, I managed to spot some cool Jean Paul Gaultier designer diet coke bottles and got one each for the kids. (though I oppose to them drinking coke- ahh, the paradoxes of being a Tiger Mum)

I must say the KLM staff was ever so professional and helpful with us over our flight debacle home but it’s not bad at all to spend your final evening in Europe in Schiphol Airport’s (which to me is one of the most agreeable airports in the world) KLM’s Business Class Lounge, sipping champagne & eating gourmet cheese and watching the Olympics ( in English) before boarding our direct flight back to Kuala Lumpur. And on the plane, we met the nicest Dutch-Indonesian businessman lawyer fella who told us where to find the best Indonesian cuisine next time, and it’s NOT in the red light district.

Till next time, Europe. We’ll be back sooner than you know it!

Amsterdam July 30- Aug 3

R- Sept 2012

Diary of a Wonky-Eyed Girl

17 Sept 2012

Possibly the most unglam photo of me online-just before my discharge from the American Hospital of Paris. But with my seeing eyes wide open and oh so happy!

It has been exactly two months since my delicate emergency eye operation in Paris. How fast does time fly? Some of my lady friends are still teasing me about being 'fancy', to end up in, of all cities, gay Paree, with a surgery. After the surgery, I still had about 6 weeks’ worth of holidays, half of which was spent mostly in Europe. I had three weeks left upon our return to KL which was spent with follow up check-ups with my KL doctor then a few relaxing days in Singapore with my second sister and a couple of precious nights in Phuket with my husband sans children. Despite the one long haul flight home and 6 short haul flights that I had undertaken since my surgery, I am all good.

My eye about 2.5 weeks after the surgery- in Amsterdam.

Apart from that I have been home, trying to do what I DON’T do best. Relax, rest and stay still. About 3 weeks ago, I went back to work, and though challenging, I am getting used to it by now though it involves a lot of fine eye work!

On a daily basis people, I have colleagues and students asking me about my eye. People are quite sweet and very genuine with their concerns. Some are quite direct, others, nosey. Like one day last week, the library girls asked me why one eye was smaller than the other. It’s so Malaysian and so in your face and I patiently explained to them the lazy eye syndrome as I am not using my right eye as much. They looked shocked & almost felt sorry for me! Or when an elderly church member exclaimed loudly, ‘Wah, your eyes are still red, ah, you poor thing! You must Lie Down, Lie Down!” or this other person who kept making MY eye problem HER issue! or they stare, and ask if I am in pain. I am not! I think next time, I’ll just keep my sunglasses on and spare people the awkwardness. But mostly & thankfully, people are kind and concerned.

About 4 weeks after my surgery, back home in KL.

So I thought I’d write a diary.

You know that endearing classic Van Morrison song, “Brown- eyed girl”? Now hubby sings that song to me except he has changed the lyrics to ‘you’re my WONKY eyed girl. It’s one of my all-time favourite songs, so I don’t mind. “Wonky”, my eye still is though my visual acuity(with silicone oil) is now about 6/12 or 6/15 on most check -ups. I had to go off my steroid drops because my ocular pressure shot up so now I am steroid free. However at the last check up, my opthalmologist has detected that I am starting to show signs of cataract. I wasn’t surprised as my dad had his cataracts done when he was only 38. I know cataract problems are usually linked to geriatrics. I am hardly one, YET, but my eyes apparently are. SO he will monitor it at my next retinal examination, and he may just FIX ME UP at my next surgery when he removes the silicone oil. And NO, I am NOT going back to Paris for the second surgery and to do a spot of shopping, ladies! Though it's very tempting!

Every day is still a blessing. I did not go blind. I am blessed. I can see! Medical science and amazing surgeons do exist and they are great.

I have heard of WORST cases of retinal detachments.

I have been lucky. Last week I stumbled upon a blog by a guy in Canada who had 4 successive retinal detachments on the same eye and finally, he had a similar eye operation as mine, but he kept going blind. He stopped updating his blog at the end of Sept 2009, so I shudder to think what would have happened to him. I only hope he’s fine.

My scary wonky eye look!

I have got used to relying on my untreated eye MORE which has become a habit, which is bad for my treated eye, so I had to change the prescription of my glasses temporarily to even out both eyes. Hey, bring it on, last week my GOOD eye came down with conjuntivitis, as though saying “GIVE ME A BREAK!” Sometimes I go without my contact lens on the untreated eye so I use my wonky eye so it doesn’t get lazy or smaller. I try to read with only my wonky eye only for at least 20 minutes a day. I also test my eye sight by closing one hand one each eye on a daily basis, sometimes a few times a day! :) At the back of my mind, I worry a little bit about my 'good' eye too. The French doctors have discovered that I have signs of lattice degeneration( where the periphercal retina becomes atrophic) on that eye. Laser thereapy has been recommended but my opthalmologist here says to leave it alone at the moment. Let the macula-off retinal detachment eye recover as much as it can first.

As I shared in my poem, I am VERY paranoid of floaters now- any spots, or flying mosquito or black dots in the distance can sometimes shake me to the core. At my morning hill walk today, I saw a bird in the distance, and thought it was a floater in my eye, that’s how scary it gets, sometimes. But mostly I am very calm. I am very conscious of my head position especially when lying down. I try not to look up at the ceiling AT ALL COSTS. I still sleep on my side, or on my front, very conscious of the viscousity of the oil in my eye. A couple of weeks ago, I made the mistake of looking up into the sky when taking a shower, and saw bits of floaters ABOVE the silicone oil level, and panicked. My dr here says it’s ok, it’s the oil that’s causing the instability inside my eye. It looks like we are going to have the silicone oil removal surgery on the first week of Oct. My KL surgeon is going to France for most of September and he shoots off to Italy for a congress in mid Oct and he wants be around from early Oct till mid Oct to monitor me in case there are any complications post-silicone oil removal.

Fingers crossed. SO my next surgery using local anaesthesia will most likely be on Oct 3.

In these 2 months, I have heard of 3 other people having retinal detachments over the summer. So I know I am not alone, one man is in his 50s, a lady in her 30s and a young man, just 22. So it’s not exactly an age thing. One guy I know can't play tennis anymore as he keeps missing the ball! Thank goodness I am not into contact sports.

I have gone back to most normal activities. I can drive easily but gently with one side of my contacts. I have resumed my weekend 12km hill walks by mostly looking down, and I stop myself from running on rough pavements. I haven’t started swimming again, at least with my head fully submerged in the pool. Because of the incisions in my eye, sometimes the redness flares up, especially now that I am off my steroid eye drops. I am not sure how chlorine will react to it but I am sure it will be ok.

The specialist eye centre that I go to in KL is always FULL of patients!

I still daren’t go for my monthly facial yet, lest the manipulations cause any redetachment. I can’t walk our big dog Sparky, as he’s huge and he might yank my eye off. Luckily, I don’t wear any eye make-up so that hasn’t been an issue at all. I have been taking more berries of all kinds- goji berries, blue berries, eye berries:)and been drinking copious amounts of fresh carrot juice. For whatever it’s worth, if they don't help my eyes, I am keeping my other internal organs healthy. It's funny that it takes something like this to force me to keep my head down, literally!

I miss, miss, miss CARRYING my 5 year old and swinging him about. He’s about 20kg and that’s the weight that I am not supposed to haul, at least not yet until I am a 100% sure I am ok. My greatest struggle really is to remember that I need to take it easy. But sometimes that's easier said than done.

My students, bless them, are used to seeing me teach in my shades as sometimes the glare from the sunlight outside or the florescent lighting in the classroom can be unsettling. There is no pain, but just a mild discomfort when the glare hits my eye. I can also feel that my cataract is setting in. Oh joy!

I still hate getting my eyes dilated every time I am at my eye clinic. The KL dilation drops seem to be so potent that I feel awful for hours on end- and can’t use my eyes to read for at least 6-7 hours afterwards. The nurse says it's because my iris is too small that they have to top up the dilation dose for me. The ones in Paris were fine after just a couple of hours. I am not comparing.

As for reading, it’s part and parcel of my occupational hazard so how do I cut down on that? I must know when to rest my eyes when they get tired.

In the meantime, being wonky-eyed has its perks- I get to wear my Chanel shades all the time, get cat-whistled, “Hey, Jackie O,” and my Year 7s think I am a dictionary with cool shades, and best of all, my other half has hired a personal driver to chauffeur me around. What more could a girl ask for?

I could SO get used to THIS! Wonky eyed tai-tai!

And please don’t laugh at my eye pictures here- they were a personal photo journal to track the progress of my healing!

I am keeping everything crossed & praying that Oct 3/4 will be a success!

Till then, c'est la vie!

A bit of wonky-eyed glamour!

R- Sept 17 2012

Confessions of a "granny" blogger!

OR WHY I WILL NOT END MY SENTENCES WITH WTF!

My (ten years junior to me) baby sister, whose opinions I regard highly, has said that my blogs are too long. She was trying to get me to add ads into my blog and use more photos. Apparently, people who have nuffnang-endorsed blogs are the successful bloggers. I clearly am not. I have a grand total of 14 followers, many of whom are close friends and some sweet students whom I have bribed. I am hardly a serial blogger. Though I love writing, I hardly have time to update my blog posts especially during term time when I am juggling with planning, teaching and marking on top of the kids and our hectic social life and other side secret projects that I seem to get myself embroiled in. And I write in long form.

So I went into these so called popular blogs that she told me about. The ones that NETizens on Blogosphere are raving about. And it’s confirmed, I am definitely OLD(er). And I can’t bear the acronyms that they use, or the poor grammar that sometimes comes along with it. And the incessant camwhoring! ( but that’s another blogpost altogether!) I blame it on politics which has destroyed our education system and has annihilated a whole generation of potentially strong writers in Malaysia. C’mon, we have been a British colony until 1957. In 55 years, we have managed to lose potentially the most important legacy that colonialisation (sometimes) bring- a strong education system- and with it, a nation of competent, if not fluent speakers and writers of the world’s most important language (no, it’s still English, not quite Chinese , yet). And I don’t think adding wtf at the end of a sentence is cool, or right, at all. Perhaps it’s because I am a product of an all-girls school that was started by very proper Catholic French and Irish nuns. Perhaps, I am an ole grandma when it comes to writing conventions. Or as my hubby often says about me, you are an old soul.

I am human. Of course, I cuss, but if I am going to add wtf at the end of every sentence, I might as well slash my wrists. That’s not blogging. That’s writing poorly, in bad English. (That’s a redundancy). I may THINK WTF in my head, sometimes,( or all the time if my thyroid is on overdrive), but I don’t need to put it at the end of a sentence.

Which comes back to my main point, I am NEVER going to get thousands of followers for my blog, because I sound, old, archaic and wordy. And I use real humour, irony, sarcasm, hyberbole, persuasion and rhetoric, which I guess can be summed up with one acronym- WTF- by the generation Y bloggers. It’s almost a professional hazard: being a teacher.linguist.grammarian.writer.editor.critic type person that I am, which finds me English knickers knotted in this manner. I admit, I even cringe when the Jesuit padre in church makes subject-verb agreement errors in his sermon, and I am in church, for God’s sake.(no pun intended). But I do calm down after a vigorous prayer session, and ACCEPT and understand that many EAL English learners of the world do struggle with English, particularly of the written form; if it is their second or additional language, hence they will not write or speak in that fluency that is required of a first language speaker. I still blame it on the education system.

Often, I get asked, how are you an English teacher, Miss. You don’t have an accent. Aren’t you Chinese? Aren’t you Malaysian? Being stereotyped and sussed out at the same time. I tell them, my dear students that I am a citizen of the world, and as long as I dream, and cuss in English, it’s my first language. Never mind that it’s the only language that I really feel comfortable ranting in or grew up writing the most in.

So, back to my long-winded blog- I think it’s the age thing, but I am also a very detailed person. I process things chronologically, and I pay attention to detail in everything. Hence I can arrive at a 5000 word blog entry (worthy of one chapter in a Master’s dissertation without the citations) in an hour if I set my mind to it, and this is excluding all the wtfs that I have omitted! Perhaps I should go for a course in concision, precis and "less is more".

So, dearest sister, I am definitely a confirmed Generation X. I think , if I I may say so myself, a pretty cool one too, considering that I own a blog, know how to run it, have facebook, ( but stops at twitting), is on instagram and now use google+ and googledocs and use email daily. I also teach a large number of very young people on a yearly basis, and from them, I have struggled to get the point across that if you do not know your parts of speech, your articles and prepositions and your clauses and what not, FIRST, before anything else, there is little point in going WTF, BRB, LOL or NP with me. As for people of the younger generations whose blogs get all the followers and hits like crazy because they use wtf at the end of every sentence, I am sorry, I shall be happy with my 14 followers and odd and rare comments or limited likes.

I am NOT from generation Y or Z and proud of it! Now excuse me, as I GTG and LMFAO cause YOLO!

R- Sept 2012

On Blindness-An Ode to Milton

On Blindness (An Ode to Milton)

I wonder when Milton wrote about his blindness

If he ever worried about not

Being able to do power-point presentations anymore

Or those whizzy Prezi slides

Or read the fine-print of his students’ essays

In sometimes unintelligible handwriting.

Of the words of yet another brand new author or endless lecture notes and lit crit.

Or whether he knew that retinal detachments

Can be 50-50 though more likely 85% these days

I so thank the good Swiss doctor in the 1920s

For inventing the surgery that has saved many eyes

But I’ll bet you Milton didn’t walk out of Chanel

On Avenue Montaigne weeping, salty hot tears

of uncontrollable sobs, in thankfulness, of his eye sight saved

But I wonder too if he ever felt paranoid

About spots on his windscreen, or a buzzy mosquito near his eye

Thinking NEW FLOATERS have appeared

Or any little black dots set off new alarm bells

Sending him on a mini-panic of something being wrong with his eyes(again),

Nor wake up in jolts sometimes, testing if he could see in the dark,

But I know for sure I am just

Thankful, grateful and humbled that

I can see my salty tears; I can see the redness on my pupil,

I can SEE!

And even when that little boy

in the paediatric opthalmological suite next to mine

who was bawling with his unseeing eyes,

which made me sad,

But I feel doubly humbled and crushed in my humility and smallness

That other problems- glaucoma, cataract, ptosis

Seem pale in comparison,

For I’ll NEVER ever take for granted again,

The beauty of a simmering sunset, or the radiance of my mother’s smile,

Or the majesty of the sky slowly opening at dawn

And the intricate motifs and patterns on a lovely sheer softness of a silky scarf,

Or that I can still tread a needle, or buckle my son’s sandles,

And see, watch, witness, capture, behold

In the beauty of my children’s innocent love or watch them slowly grow

Or forsake the simple pleasure of reading them a bed-time story

And mostly see, freeze, frame the generous and vivid love,

Glowing in my man’s kind and earnest face,

How can you take such beauty for granted?

So, I thank Science and a God who loves me

For saving me

from blindness.

R-September 2012

Travelogue Denmark: The Happy Nation

Travelogue Denmark: The Happy Nation

The magical Tivoli Gardens at dusk

I think if my sister wasn’t living and working in Copenhagen for a couple of years, we wouldn’t have gone there on purpose. It’s a bit removed from the rest of popular Europe, and it’s a very expensive city. Yes, it’s one of the happiest countries in the world. They seem really happy. Always polite, smiling and are very friendly. Fit as hell too considering the number of bicycles there are, all beautiful and blonde and very young. If Danes were my type, I’d be ogling, but I think they may be a little too tall for me, plus I had a wonky eye, so I let my Dad and husband do the ogling as they saw scores and scores of immodest sexy young female Danes just with bare naked torsos and sexy bikini tops out in the summer sun, down by Islands Brygges’s harbour -front where my sister lives.

The Harbourfront at Islands Brygge

I am full of admiration for my baby sister( nearly ten years my junior). She’s an expat heading a change management department in a huge Danish shipping conglomerate, she is newly married, and has lived separately from the beloved other half for almost a year, had survived a winter bike accident, which saw her being operated on in Mumbai, and would cycle to work, like a native about 8 km away in her office suit and does all the DIY herself. And she makes chicken rice from scratch, and this is someone who has lived in Singapore since she was 14!

So Copenhagen was our most special destination. Our eldest girl, S, ever the sensible one, upon seeing Chinese food being sold by the weight in Paris opted for ratatouille, steaks, mussels & frites and double cheeseburgers & escargots for a week, and patiently waited till we got to CPH to have a taste of home. And it was truly home, as Nana and Kongkong were there waiting for us. They had just arrived from Penang via Singapore the day before we did and it was almost like Chinese New Year! Mum was dishing out all sorts of Nyonya delights in E’s compact kitchen- kapitan curry, dark soya sauce pork strips, sweet & sour fish, you name it! Dad, bless him, finally realized that I had had a delicate and an open, invasive eye surgery, not just a laser one, and we had many a long chats about my recent scare, and eye issues, from his 5 operations to mine and both of them fussed over me as any retired parents would their 40 year old daughter. I wasn’t allowed to do anything or lift a finger. It was as if I was suddenly an invalid, with a wonky eye! And at my sister’s apartment in Copenhagen, I slept and slept and my eye healed and healed.

On our first evening, we had the most magical evening at Tivoli Gardens, the world’s oldest theme park. Walt Disney apparently was so inspired by Tivoli that he based his Disneyland theme parks on this. While M and the kids with my sister E went on all the rides, I sat in between my parents, just like I was 5, and listened to live, DJ-spun music from the fairground in Heineken sun-loungers under a twinkly tree and watched the sun set on a lovely warm summer’s evening, feeling cocooned and protected. It was heavenly, and one of the most memorable nights of my life.

We took it really easy in Denmark. We ate at home, both lunch and dinner and Mum made sure we got our fair share of home cooked food for me to recuperate!( I didn’t tell her about my mussel eating and beer drinking habits in France and Belgium!) Given the fact that eating out in Copenhagen is rather expensive, it worked well for us. At the request of my dear husband one day, I accompanied him to the Carlsberg Brewery by foot!( The kids opted to stay home with grandma and grandpa to play Scrabble and to bond with their beloved aunty.) It was a complete letdown to him( compared to the Heineken Brewery in Amsterdam he had gone to when interailing as a student), but I enjoyed the slow 5km walk that I did with him to get there. If it’s one thing I LOVE about Europe, is that I can walk everywhere. The weather is (mostly)always lovely to walk.( Except this one time when we were bracing hail and wind walking from Marie- Antoinette’s playground back to the main palace of Versailles one wet and freezing spring day, and I had worn boots that heaped blisters on my blisters!) But, mostly, it’s therapeutic and a wonderful form of exercise. It’s bracing if it’s windy, and it’s not humid and even at its sunniest, you don’t actually get HOT. After my brief love affair with Belgian beer, Danish beer was just plain awful! As Carlsberg is freely available in M’sia, I have never liked it. And my opinion didn’t change in Denmark either. The best part of the brewery- seeing my man enjoy himself so much, trying out the different kinds of drafts. I realized it doesn’t take much to please him. Just his beer and his Malaysia Airlines ‘kacang’ that he’d packed in his back pack. A Malaysian true and true. And seeing him completely relaxed and away from work and business calls is a pleasure in itself. After my Paris scare, he, for one, completely deserved to have a break from any form of stress. And I got to see the sculptures in the garden. That was my high point. And we found out that the family who founded Carlsberg are also big advocates of the arts, and they had donated the Little Mermaid statue to the city of Copenhagen, so they aren’t just plain, greedy beer barons after all.

A man and his beer is a happy man!

The next day, we managed to drag Dad( who isn't fond of castles and museums) and Mum with us to see Hamlet’s Castle called Kronborg, an hour away by train. The castle itself wasn’t great as far as European Castles go, but as an English Lit person, it wasn’t to be missed. Nope, I didn’t see or feel Hamlet’s ghost nor hear Ophelia’s cries but there was a boutique on the Elsinore high street named Ophelia, so that'd do I suppose. We could see the ferries going back and forth the harbour to Helsingborg, Sweden. There isn’t really much of a difference between the two neighbours as we discovered. Both citizens speak excellent English, they both love fish on Ryvita (a phrase I shamelessly borrowed from Bill Bryson) and the use the same currency. But Elsinore is a quaint little town and the market square was atmospheric and being another sunshiny summer’s day, the kids had ice-cream and I did a bit of shopping!

Mum & Dad in their element at Kastellet Park

Following that, we also managed to see Kastellet Park and the Little Mermaid at dusk, and it’s really a pleasant stroll through verdant greens and grassy knolls. We had a fresh and dewy sun blessed evening, one of the loveliest of the year in all of Denmark which made it all the more pleasurable. My sister says mostly she gets home and stays as close as she can by the heater. We also saw Amalienborg Palace in the night which was another lovely jaunt through one of Europe’s most agreeable capitals.

With my baby sister by the little mermaid- I used to read aloud Hans Christian Andersen stories to her as a child!

My sister then whisked us off to the island of Bornholm, by bus, then ferry, which technically is on the Baltic Sea and south of Sweden and not far from the German coast. A sun-kissed( on the day of our arrival), windblown isle, the day we arrived was the sunniest it had been all year. I think we Malaysians tend to bring the sun with us wherever we go. (Someone said the same to us in Paris the morning we arrived, for it had been chilly and cloudy in Paris right up to Bastille Day weekend). We hired a car and drove around the main key spots of Bornholm. There is nothing more joyous than squares upon rectangles of bright yellow rape fields and pine forest whizzing by you as you drive along Bornholm’s picturesque and rural country roads. The views from the ruins of Hammerhus Castle was particularly arresting.

Belly Boo atop the ruins of Hammerhus Castle in Bornholm

We enjoyed a family picnic by the grass. Mum was taking it easy as she was still recovering from her recent asthma flare up. It’s quite rare for us to be able to explore castle ruins so openly and for the children to be able to climb trees in the shade. As my sister had booked our accommodation rather late in Bornholm, we ended up staying in a family hostel in an 8 bedded room, so we had a bit of a George & Lennie kind of adventure on bunk beds with sheets and pillow cases that we had brought with us from Copenhagen. Of course this was Scandinavia, so the rooms and shared bathrooms were really pristine and hygienic and we all fell into a restful, communal sleep that weekend on Bornholm. On our last day on Bornholm, it rained and rained and all the shops worthy of going into were shut and we had a few hours to kill before the next ferry to Sweden, so we went to the cinema instead. The one theatre cinema was so quaint and empty during the mid-afternoon showing of the Miley Cyrus-Demi Moore movie set in Chicago, screened entirely in English that we felt that we owned the cinema!

Bornholm's wild coast on the Baltic Sea

A visit to Denmark is not complete without mentioning their much-loved royal family. The Danish royal family has got to be one of the more popular blue-bloods left these days. Their Queen Margrethe II is very much loved and revered though lately, it’s good ole Princess Aussie Mary who hog their headlines on Hello. It’s Mary in her new trench coat, or it’s Mary- pregnant again with Princess number ???. It’s Mary- shopping at Illums Bolighus for a new cot!

In all seriousness though, the Queen, in her 41st year as Head of the Monarchy is very much loved and her recent ruby jubilee was well celebrated and the people of Denmark love their royals, who seem so well behaved in comparison to the other royals in the region. As a European country still holding on to their kronors, Denmark is one of the countries in the world who give the citizens an incentive for recycling! Every tin can returned with the code still intact fetched 1 kronor to 2 kronors each. To our horror, the only people bothered about recycling were the Asian immigrants, carrying large empty recycling bags around and ensuring that they fill them up to the brim so that they collect 50-100 kronors for their ‘recycling’ effort. The Islands Brygge harbour-front and Nyhavn after a big night are pretty lucrative recycling hauls. It’s a huge shame that the Danes, who are well-noted for living well, are not partaking in this recycling endeavour initiated by their government.

No visit to Copenhagen is ever complete without a stroll through Stroget, their popular long pedestrian mall now chock full of fast food joints and fast food takeaways which brings the tone down a little, which made it look like any international high street in any majot European city. It was in Illums Bolighus, the Danish homeware department store that is appointed by Her Majesty the Queen of Denmark that I was in retail heaven, looking at designer lamps and furnishings and all gorgeous house things! It's hard not to fall in love with Danish design. They are clean cut, very swish and really beautiful. Every piece is a work of art.

It was full moon at the tail end of our week in Denmark and we were on the beach near the serene & tranquil deer park where the former king used to hunt and play, and as you know, kids say the darnest things. My little girl pointed to the full moon, and said to me: “Mummy, you didn’t turn into a were-wolf this month!” Haha! Perhaps it was the easy going atmosphere of being in Denmark, the world’s happiest nation. Perhaps, I was still high on eye drops of all kinds, but mostly, it was such a special week, of family closeness and love and just catching up with my baby sister and my parents. So, I didn’t turn into a werewolf as I sometimes do when I am particularly stressed out.

Full moon in Denmark near the deer park.

We left Copenhagen for Amsterdam, our final European leg with stuffed up bags- the kids had discovered 'Tiger', A more upmarket Danish equivalent of Daiso, a really cute 5 dollar shop if you like, with anything under the sun done in kitshcy, cutesy Scandinavian designs and I discovered their designer homeware, especially the lamps!( that I wasn’t allowed to carry at all), heavy hearts and teary eyes. It’s hard saying good bye to family. And in Copenhagen, it truly felt like home, one away from home. R- August 2012