Glad Påsk

A giant papier-maché egg filled with candy.  All this candy is giving me a rather uncomfortable gut.
 
Glad Påsk! = Happy Easter!

In Sweden, Easter lasts for almost a week, which is strange considering that the vast majority of the country is secular.  Even stranger, Thursday is Skärtorsdag, where little kids dress up like witches from Blåkulla (Blue Hill, a mythical place) and ride brooms while going door-to-door for candy.  Then there's Good Friday, then Easter Saturday, which is some other big candy day, and Easter Sunday.  And today is Easter Monday.  What?  I know. 

I'd have more to report on Swedish Easter, but instead of doing my due diligence here, I skipped town and spent a few dreamlike days in Copenhagen with my dear friends Sarah and Helen.  Sorry.



Actually, I'm not really sorry.  I had an awesome time.  Highlights:

• An EPIC bike ride up the water and into some enchanted former hunting grounds.  The trees aren't awake yet, and the grass grows tufty like choppy waves. We rode thisclose to herds of grazing deer in hazy, golden sunshine.  So alien, so awesome.
  
• Ate lots of ice milk and sorbet from Paradis.
• Easter lunch at Helen's friend Christina's house
  
• Had a dinner party at Helen's house with the clan Lookofsky.
• Saw the zoo's elephants and monkeys from gorgeous Frederiksberg Have.
  

 
Before you write letters, I know that's Swedish.  Denmark is allowed to show Swedish art.

Following the recommendation of the guy I rented my bike from, we also went to Cisternerne.  It's an amazing underground museum in an old water cistern in Frederiksberg Have.  The water still seeps from the ceiling and walls, so, brilliantly, somebody decided to make it a modern glass art museum.  It was quite a warm day, but the minute we stepped into the cavernous cistern, we could see our breath.  It's really one of the coolest museums I've ever been to.  It'd be the perfect place for a satanic choral music concert.  The light!  The echoes!  The wet glass!  The weird creepy room of greenish townspeople statues facing every which way!   



By the way, if you need a bike, go to Baisikeli on Tursensgade.  Not only is the guy who rents the bikes cute, but proceeds go towards providing bikes to poor villages in Africa.  Plus, the guy suggested I take a red bike because, as he said, "It matches your jacket.  In Copenhagen, we like that extra little touch.  It's style over speed."