Denmark

I have mentioned being in Denmark last week, but I didn't say much about what it was like there.

First of all, I have a friend who lives in Hamburg. We've been good friends since we were at summer camp together when we were 14. Though we have never lived in the same city (or state) our families both spent parts of their summers in Maine, so we saw quite a bit of each other each year, even outside of camp. After college, my friend moved to Germany to be with her German boyfriend. A few years later they married, and now they have two little boys, aged 5 and 2.

That is why I am here, and for so long. We hadn't seen each other since they came to Philadelphia for Christopher's and my wedding in October 2006. We were both feeling the separation, so I got a fairly inexpensive ticket to see them. They had already planned to go to the western Danish coast for a week in March, so I followed them there. And now we're all back in Hamburg, where they live. Christopher joined me here last Friday.

It's really nice be here. I feel very much away from my life in New York now, maybe too distant, since I have been getting emails from friends and people I'm working with and I need to keep connected. (Unfortunately, the work stuff is important, and I can't just ignore it.) But no one has called me here, and my cell phone has been turned off for almost 2 weeks now. It's great.
Anyway, back to Denmark. My friend and her family rent a house in a town called Henne Strand every year. It's on the western coast of Denmark in a beach town, the type of place you'd find on the Jersey Shore, fairly new and overpriced, touristy. Stores are geared towards the vacationers and everyone speaks German, since most of the visitors are from Germany. Things to do include walking to (and along) the beach and relaxing your rented cottage. The little cottage they'd rented had a fireplace and cozy living room, which was perfect for reading and knitting in. This is the house we stayed in.

It is March, not exactly the time of year to lay out in the sun on the beach. In fact, it was rather rainy for much of the time we were there. And windy, but apparently that is very normal for Denmark. The coast might just be super windy all year round. Check out these stones. I think they might actually be like that because of the wind. The land was also interesting because for about 1km in from the coast there were terrific dunes. Tall, tall dunes. I wondered a little if some of them (like the ones betweeen the houses) weren't manmade, but others were clearly natural.
Here's a question: does beach vegetation look similar around the world? I couldn't help being reminded of New Jersey, but that is the sandy beach I'm most familiar with.