Thailand 101

Nursing a slight hangover this lazy Sunday, after a fine night out on Copenhagen with Anders and some of his Art Gallery friends... shot some pool, drank some beer and swapped some tall tales and caught up on whats been going on while I have been away.

Now the sun is thundering down outside but I simply can't be bothreed to go out and enjoy it... come on, in less than 2 weeks I'll be back in Thailand and there will be more sun than I will know what to do with. So to avoid doing anything useful I'll try to get a blog done, and hep hey now I'm already 2 paragraphs into it ;)

Some weeks a go we packed our stuff and jumped a plane home to Northern Jutland for an extended weekend with my family. My youngerst nephew Victor had a date with the church for a Christening and his brother Sebastian had a 2 year birthday to focus on.

The whole weekend overall was a smash hit, we both enjoyed kicking back in good company, and I particularly enjoyed borrowing a car to cruise around old patches all saturday. We visited my old place by the water and saw the brand new dream house the owner put up after tearing down my belowed old cabin... I'm happy to say they did a spectacular job on the new house and landscaping so it was not for nothing I had to leave the place back when they decided to stop renting it out and instead make it their retirement home. We got a tour of the house and the gardens and all was well... perhaps one day I'll return with a big bag of cash and see if they might be persuaded to sell ;)

Misty eyed and filled with envy we left the place to pick up my brother in law at the airport and only slightly delayed we hit Hjallerup Marked... the biggest junk market in this part of Europe. Growing up this annual market was the place to get drunk and hang out at the bumper cars picking up girls. Now it's just a slightly distorted view back in time, spotting old companions you never really knew and avoiding akward situations with old drinking pals you can't put a name to anymore... guess I still would need to be blindingly drunk to enjoy the place. Heh but at least they still got the biggest hotdogs on the planet and the various stalls still carry more junk that even the worst Thai market ;)  The two openminded out-of-towners in my company seemed to enjoy it, but we ended up cutting the visit mercifully short and went home to feast on dads BBQ instead and then for an early bed so we could be ready for the highlight of the weekend, the dreaded trip to the church.

The proud parents and a newly Christened Victor.

We are not big on going to church in my family, actually we are not even members of the church and none of us siblings have been Christened.. so my impression of chruch is something to do with funerals or christmas where you sit on a hard bench trying to maintain an alert posture while counting candles or wondering why the heck Christianity has a tortured guy as their main logo and brand. Could be better for business if they showed a happy smiling loving family instead and said "This is what you get if you live by these pretty simple basic rules and treat each other with empathy and respect" Ah well, seems they did somethign right since they are into their third millenium now, so perhaps I should just drop trying to give advice on their marketing strategy ;)

But.. all blasphemies aside, a church is an interesting place and one that grows on you over time. It's quiet and instills a great sense of spirituality if you let it, so I'm not going to point fingers at people who are better in tune with that part of themselves than I am, and who understand how to truly enjoy the sense of community that can be found in religion.

Long story shorter, the mass was much more endurable than I had expected and I almost enjoyed some of it. 2 hours went by very quick and Victor did his part by screaming like .. well.. like a baby throughout much of the proceedings. The minister did a fine job, the songs were not half bad and I'd not mind doing one of these things another time ;)

But church being over and done with we could all pile into our cars and head off to Aalborg Tivoli, the local amusement park where lunch was served. Good thinking from Lasse and Sandra to pick that spot again, the gardens in Tivoli are beautiful and the place has a lot of memories from childhood trips there. I very vividly remember the days of anticipation before the annual family trip to Tivoli back when I was a kid. It was a HUGE magic wonderland, second best day of the year, only narrowly beaten by Christmas Eve.

Sebastian digging in...

Evil Emil stealing my sausage and getting away with it.

Dudes discussing balloon animals... oldest story in the book.

Now Tivoli looks decidedly small and some of the rides look a bit rundown and not nearly as magical as they appeared back then... but it's still Tivoli and it's still a great place to go with the family, enjoy the garden and especially see that the kids in the family are not too ruined by Playstations and cellphones to be enchanted by the place, same as I was all them many years ago. Guess I just needed to come to terms with the idea that Tivoli now is most fun through them and their perspective on it, not through my own.

Mum, Dad, Marianne and myself going for a ride

Jabob and Emil being chased by Alfred.. looking very intent on mischief.

Katrine and Alfred in the caterpillar.. I remember enjoying that very ride 25 years ago, it did look slightly bigger back then ;)

But of course that is a thruth with modifications, because besides being a haven for kids, Tivoli is also still the place to work up enough of a hype to get on the stupid high rides that I hate with a vigor. Noooonononono Mikkel cannot back down from something that scares him senseless, it's a challenge from life, a dare and a perfect chance to slap fear in the face.

So trembling with pre-vertigo as ever I got in line for the Golden Tower thingie, the now standard fair ride that lifts you straight up for about a billion metres and then lets go so you fall weightless for a few eternal seconds before braking to a halt jujst before impact. I had made a firm decision to go on the ride and bloody well enjoy it, take in the view, instigate some witty banter and absolutely not scream like a girl when the drop started.

Going up things went according to plan, I actually enjoyed the rapid ascent and the view over Aalborg, out over the water and all the way out to the distant horizon.... and thing things got slightly sticky. The damn thing jammed and instead of hanging suspended in 3-5 seconds before the plunge we just hung there. Guess it took a few seconds before I realized things were not cool anymore, the sound of the hydraulics letting go, bracing for the fall and bracing and bracing and bracing and.. hmm... oh crap.

Marianne in the seat next to me was cool as ever and I think she may have tried to comfort me, but I'm not entirely sure, all I know is that keeping sane demanded my full concentration so I was not about the be distrated by some female cheerily saying that things were "just fine". No things were NOT fine, we were hanging 70 metres above the ground in some faulty old ride and the staff supposedly saving the day consisted of one teenage girl who had her first day running the ride. Crud what a way for things to end.

After the initial wave of discomfort subsided I decided to go along with the pland and just enjoy the damn view, but it is a bit tricky getting it all inwhen your arms are going into cramps from holding on to the safety harness for minutes on end. We never knew what was going on or if we would get down in a matter of minutes or hours, but I clung to the damn seat like a spidermonkey.. no way the thing would suddenly unjam and start the fall without me being very very ready for it ;)

When, after 5 minutes or so, the thing finally let go under us and we achieved a few precisous moments of weightlessnes barreling towards the ground, it felt great and I DID manage to have fun going down. Just the sheer elation of not being stuck up near the clouds anymore was enough for me to consider it the best ride ever. And true to form I got back in the saddle again an hour later and took the same ride again, this time with no twists to the story. I kinda had to, had I let the bad trip settle in I would never have worked up the courage in the future.

Coming down after the ride from hell... and my dear family were of course there to document it. Thanks.

Please note the raw animal panic on Jakobs face as we reach the end of the fall... he makes me look at ease in comparison :D

Heh and with me on that second trip was Jakob who's fear of hights makes my slight vertigo issues look like a walk in the park. Pale as a sheet he climbed in the seat and did it... and he walked away smiling like a man who had conquered something important that day. Or perhaps he was just to shellshocked to control his facial muscles, we'll never know but I was impressed with the size of his brass balls on this occasion ;)
We'll do it in the taller on e in Copenhagen before I leave.. or what Jakob ?

So, thanks to all who participated in this great day... hope to be hope for Sebastians third birthday celebrations in Tivoli next year, it was a well organized and smooth operation, congratulations to the proud parents.

Fun was had, gravity suspended and a budding tradition started.
Btw. many more pictures from the day can be found here: http://picasaweb.google.dk/jegrjegr/20090607VictorsBarnedab