Jacob Christensen

This year’s vacation was a bit of a Tour d’Europe.

Böttcherstraße in Bremen. A curious mix of gothic and expressionism. This quick visit left me with the impression that Danes tend to overlook the city in favour of Hamburg and Berlin.

Bruges, boats, canals, cobblestones. And with a little effort, you can in fact lose the masses of tourists. By the way: The Italian and Spanish economies may have tanked but there were loads of Italian and Spanish tourists in Belgium. And the British were less obnoxious than in Amsterdam or Prague.

An intersection in the Upper Town in Bruxelles, officially the weirdest city in Europe.

More photos will be posted here.

PS: I do not have any original or profound thoughts to share about the attacks in Oslo and Utøya. If you read any of the Scandinavian languages, Johan Karlsson Schaffer and Marie Demker have written posts worth a read.

“There’s an age when boys read one of two books. Either they read Ayn Rand or they read Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings. One of these books leaves you with no grasp on reality and a deeply warped sense of fantasy in place of real life. The other one is about hobbits and orcs.”

Paul Krugman has more.

And yes, I read the one about the hobbits and the orcs.

Having my office in a container does have some advantages.

Occasionally, Danes go a little crazy.

On Sunday there was a balloon race over Copenhagen to commemorate that it was 200 years since the first Dane took off in a balloon. One of the balloons rather unexpetecdly took a northerly route and flew over my mother’s house and landed somewhere in Vangede.

A surprising and impressive sight.

In Denmark Maundy Thursday is a holiday so I’ll sign off the blog until Tuesday at the earliest and enjoy the hot spring as much as my hayfever will allow me to.

Comple’ely unrela’ed to anything to do with poli’ical science or politics in general. But a great song and a hilarious video.

The late afternoon sun gave some fascinating perspectives.