Solvang, Capital of Denmark... say what?
Wednesday, December 4th, 2008
Today we were off to Solvang. Solvang is a small Danish colony founded in 1911, and located around 70 kilometres north of Santa Barbara.
My mom told me that my parents' friends Vibeke and Benny has been there, and had described it as "weird". I can find no better one word to sum it up. It is a very weird mix of old style Danish "bindingsvaerks huse" (pardons to any English readers, I have no clue how to translate that), and Californian masonry. Everything looks Danish, as if they had attempted to recreate the old town of Aarhus, but in a slightly cartoony way. Lots of old style windmills, but not quite large enough to be believable. It was like seeing Denmark, recreated as a Disney theme park. Very weird.
However, there was also a lot of good stuff. For example we went to a restaurant named The Little Mermaid, where I had some smoerrebroed. Obviously it was nowhere near the quality of the stuff you get in Denmark, but it served to illustrate the point to Rosie, so she could see what I'd been on about. In fact I had already made her smoerrebroed a couple of weeks back myself, but it was kind of hard since it was impossible to find some of the ingredients I needed. I think I managed a decent substitute all things considered, but the ones at The Little Mermaid were more true to the form, if a bit lacking in quality.
All in all the town seemed like an extremely quiet and peaceful place. Everything seemed very idyllic in the warm afternoon sun, with kids playing in the little park, the farmers market on the side, and a Jazz band setting up for later in the evening. We had a look by the church as well which, true enough, was almost exactly like a normally Danish church - just slightly smaller. It even had the model ship with Danish flags all over it hanging from the ceiling. It was funny because we had just been in a Christmas shop to grab a few ornaments, but at the church in the warm air with a strong smell of pine and dill (wherever that came from), it did all of the sudden seem like we'd walked from Christmas into a Danish summer. A weird but welcome sensation :)
After all this, we swung by n Ostrich farm just outside town. You could pay to get to feed them. By the way, did you know that hungry Emu's sound like you would imagine angry dinosaurs do?
We didn't; Temporary but hasty retreat ensued.
As for the title of this post, we bought a Danish cook book for Rosie. One of the pictures' caption stated proudly that Solvang is the capital of Denmark. Did I miss something in geography?
I'll add a few picture's later, it's been a busy few days. Stay tuned...
It should also be noted that Rosie thinks Mads looks like Rick Astley [...]
Sorry dude.
Today we were off to Solvang. Solvang is a small Danish colony founded in 1911, and located around 70 kilometres north of Santa Barbara.
My mom told me that my parents' friends Vibeke and Benny has been there, and had described it as "weird". I can find no better one word to sum it up. It is a very weird mix of old style Danish "bindingsvaerks huse" (pardons to any English readers, I have no clue how to translate that), and Californian masonry. Everything looks Danish, as if they had attempted to recreate the old town of Aarhus, but in a slightly cartoony way. Lots of old style windmills, but not quite large enough to be believable. It was like seeing Denmark, recreated as a Disney theme park. Very weird.
However, there was also a lot of good stuff. For example we went to a restaurant named The Little Mermaid, where I had some smoerrebroed. Obviously it was nowhere near the quality of the stuff you get in Denmark, but it served to illustrate the point to Rosie, so she could see what I'd been on about. In fact I had already made her smoerrebroed a couple of weeks back myself, but it was kind of hard since it was impossible to find some of the ingredients I needed. I think I managed a decent substitute all things considered, but the ones at The Little Mermaid were more true to the form, if a bit lacking in quality.
All in all the town seemed like an extremely quiet and peaceful place. Everything seemed very idyllic in the warm afternoon sun, with kids playing in the little park, the farmers market on the side, and a Jazz band setting up for later in the evening. We had a look by the church as well which, true enough, was almost exactly like a normally Danish church - just slightly smaller. It even had the model ship with Danish flags all over it hanging from the ceiling. It was funny because we had just been in a Christmas shop to grab a few ornaments, but at the church in the warm air with a strong smell of pine and dill (wherever that came from), it did all of the sudden seem like we'd walked from Christmas into a Danish summer. A weird but welcome sensation :)
After all this, we swung by n Ostrich farm just outside town. You could pay to get to feed them. By the way, did you know that hungry Emu's sound like you would imagine angry dinosaurs do?
We didn't; Temporary but hasty retreat ensued.
As for the title of this post, we bought a Danish cook book for Rosie. One of the pictures' caption stated proudly that Solvang is the capital of Denmark. Did I miss something in geography?
I'll add a few picture's later, it's been a busy few days. Stay tuned...
It should also be noted that Rosie thinks Mads looks like Rick Astley [...]
Sorry dude.
posted by Jonathan at
9:14 PM
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