The Barber Visitors, 2025 (and Our Summer Holiday)

I can't express how much we love visitors. We love seeing familiar faces, and we love sharing this amazing country with the people we love. This June, we got not one, but two sets of Barber visitors!

First, Nate and Maggie arrived mid-June. We picked them up the same day that we sent Harrison off on his school trip, so we actually had a couple of kidless days to hang out. The first evening was very casual. We went for a walk through the forest near our house and out to the lake. The baby swans were out with their parents!

On Day 2, we walked Nyhavn to Amalienborg (the royal residence), cruised Kastellet, saw the Marble Church, ate at Gasoline Grill, walked to Broen and got Aperol Spritzes, wandered Christiania, took a canal boat tour, and ate dinner at Pico Pizza before heading home. Daaaaang! What a day!

Yes, we were pretty worn out from our big day in the city, but with limited time and lots to see, we kept going! The next day was a trip to the Botanical Gardens (with the kids!), and it was nice to spend some time with them since it was Father's Day (U.S.). We walked around the paths, admired the plants, relaxed in the park, and ate some ice cream. (To be transparent, I tried to find ice cream everywhere we went, and we ate a ton of it.)

We also got to go to Onkel Dannys Plads near the Meatpacking District to pick up our armbands for Copenhell! I thought it would be fun to attend a little preview of the festival when Maggie could join us. Kaden and Harrison took a train home, but Khloe stayed with us. We traveled over, picked up our armbands, and went into the square. Dying Hydra was playing (Tejs's band), so we got drinks and stayed for several songs.

We were pretty close to Sound Station, so we *had* to take Nate to the best record store in Copenhagen. When we were done adding to our collections, we found Maggie at the bodega and enjoyed beers from Bryghuset Møn.

Were we exhausted? Yes. Did we keep going the next day? Also yes! The next day was Viking Ship Museum day. The Viking Ship Museum is in Roskilde, Denmark. We had been there previously with the kids, but we thought it would be fun to go back when we could spend more time looking at the exhibits, and since it was cold when we went before, none of the outdoor stuff was going on. We got to see it all this time!

We also tried a new thing - rowing a Viking ship on the fjord! In true Danish fashion, we were given life vests, minimal instruction, a short list of commands to follow, and then our motley crew was out on the water (with a Korean film crew in tow, as they were making a documentary on tourism in Denmark)!

We rowed, we raised a sail, we beat the hell out of each other on the boat with our oars and our fists because no one could row in unison, but we made it out and back in again. The blisters were worth it - we had a total blast!

We drove up to Kronborg Slot the following day. There was a nice intro tour in English with recommendations, and we followed their suggestions for the most part. We saw the Casemates and Holger, we walked through the chapel and the banquet hall and all the other open rooms. We didn't climb to the top of the castle to look out over the water, but we did get to see the exhibit that was on: Fest!

There was a dressing room where you could try on period-style clothing and cloaks and crowns and all kinds of things to "get ready" and take selfies. We chose not to because it was reeeeeally hot in there and we assumed everything was incredibly sweaty, but it was fun to see other people doing it. You also walked through a very dizzying, slanted room with a checkered floor pattern and lights spinning around to simulate the way guests of the king's royal parties were often just hammered the entire six days or whatever. There was a large banquet table that you could walk beneath and poke your head up through to see the kinds of dishes and decorations and menus and stuff that were traditional. They had fake puke and pee buckets everywhere to show how they would accommodate their guests by ensuring they could relieve themselves as needed. There was a "party guest" sleeping by the toilet behind a curtain, and cushions all over the floor because it was socially acceptable to pass out or take a nap wherever you could find space and then wake up to continue partying. It was all really nicely set up and it was a fun exhibit.

The best part was the big party room with shadow guests dancing across the walls and a huge domed cushion in the center of the room for resting. Maggie and I participated in the dance party for a moment. Good times.

We saw a lovely art shop on our way out (The Pinecone Project). Nate and Maggie got some prints and I got a really pretty print of an Orange Tip!

When we got home, we went for a walk through Elleskov to hear the cuckoo bird and see the logging area. Nate enjoyed trying to figure out the tree markings and tree species that had been logged. I had a lovely time finding the good beetles.

* * * PAUSE HERE TO SPEND FOUR DAYS AT COPENHELL WITH US * * * 

The Sunday following Copenhell was, undoubtedly, the roughest day of the vacation. We spent the entire day driving to and from the airport! What should have been two easy airport pickups turned into 5 hours and 44 minutes of drive time due to a number of unfortunate miscommunications.

Zac and Kaden and I drove to the airport to meet Wade and Lisa (Zac's parents). I had their arrival time and flight number in my calendar since September when they booked the tickets. We heard from them when they left home and when they were laying over in MSP.

At this point, I should have considered that the arrival time in my calendar didn't really match up with the time that they were leaving MSP, but when you are thinking across 9 time zones and you just came off four days of Copenhell, the brain can have a little trouble. We saw their plane come in on the Arrivals board, watched their luggage carousel assigned, noted when all luggage had been delivered, and waited outside the Arrivals hall for them to emerge. We waited about 45 minutes before I said, "You know, I never got a text from them when they landed in Amsterdam, and they haven't messaged since getting off the plane here. What if their flight changed and they forgot to tell me?"

I messaged Lisa but it didn't go through, a solid indication she was still on a plane somewhere. I messaged Zac's sister and Maggie to see if either of them had heard of a flight change. Katie (texting from a work trip in Asia, no less) said that their flight had been cancelled and re-booked at some point, but had no info on it. Kaden and Zac and I went out to the car with no actual knowledge of what time we should return to the airport. Zac started driving home while Katie and I texted back and forth to try to figure out a best guess. We settled on a time about 20 minutes in the future, so even though we were about halfway home, we turned around and drove back to the airport.

As soon as we got to the parking garage, I got a message from Lisa that they had landed in Amsterdam. I got their new flight number and looked up the arrival time, and then we headed home from the airport (again). Everyone was pretty confused when we showed up without Wade and Lisa, but we explained and then went back a few hours later to get them.

Lisa had arranged to rent a large van so that we could drive around with the kids during their visit (since our car only seats five), so Wade and I took the luggage in the car and headed home while Zac and Lisa went to get the van from the rental car desk. As I got off the freeway near our house, I got a call from Zac. The plan had been for Zac to register as the driver of the rental van because Wade and Lisa weren't comfortable driving it in Denmark, which was fine. The person Lisa talked to in the U.S. to reserve the van said that would not be a problem. Only, in Denmark, it was a problem because of something with the way the van is registered, and Zac, being a resident of Denmark, couldn't use it. They didn't have another vehicle available with a registration that he could drive, so Wade and I had to turn around, get back on the freeway, and go to the airport for the fourth time that day.

Maggie was scheduled to get in later that evening. Her flight was delayed a bit, she said, but the arrival time was still showing up the same. Nate and Zac and I arrived at the airport parking garage to meet her, but before we went in, I checked her flight number and saw that arrival was now delayed 50 minutes, so we hung out in the car until she got in and then drove home.

So, that was Sunday. :)

* * *

We took an adults-only trip to the National Museum in Copenhagen on Monday while the kids were in school. There was a fun exhibit on the Viking Sorceresses, and there was far too much other stuff to see in a single day, but we all got to visit the parts we wanted to see and learn a lot more about Denmark's history.

We also had tasty smørrebrød (Danish open-faced sandwiches) at the nice restaurant in the museum. It's important that our visitors try some of the Danish cuisine while they're here!

Monday was also Sankthansaften, a Danish holiday to celebrate mid-summer. The solstice is actually on the 21st, of course, not the 23rd, but Danes celebrate the 23rd. I think it's because the solstice was a pagan holiday and when Christianity came to Denmark, there was a celebration of John the Baptist's birthday on the 24th of June. Danes celebrate things on the eve of the holiday (like Christmas Eve), so the 23rd became Sankt Hans aften, or the eve of the celebration of Saint Hans, or John the Baptist, and since Denmark isn't actually a very religious-practicing country, they use it to celebrate the solstice. Phew.

Most towns or communities celebrate by building a very large bonfire on a beach or on a platform on the lake. Sometimes, there is a little straw witch on top. When the fire is lit, it's supposed to send away all the evil or bad or negative things and renew all the good. Since the witch-burning thing can be a little reminiscent of burning women for knowing how to read and stuff, a lot of people don't add the witch anymore. Usually, a community figurehead will give a speech before they light the fire, and everyone in attendance will sing some traditional songs. There are grilled sausages and beer and sometimes snaps, and it's a nice time.

There were a lot of us and without the van, getting to the Sankthansaftenbål (the bonfire) that I had planned for was logistically challenging. On top of that, the weather was not being very cooperative. The wind was gusting pretty wildly, there were torrential rain showers off and on, and some of the communities were canceling their plans anyway on account of the weather, so we decided to celebrate at home instead.

We built a little campfire in the backyard. Zac grilled sausages and bought snaps. We drank beer and made s'mores. Some of us crafted little witches out of natural materials we found in the backyard and threw them into the fire as symbols of evil, not as symbols of scary women who knew math or anything.

No, we don't have little drams for drinking snaps. We have Children's Motrin dosage cups.

We played the Midsommersang from Shu-Bi-Dua and tried to learn the changing chorus. The weather held out pretty well for us, and it was a super nice evening.

* * *

Nate and Maggie had a long list of Viking stuff they wanted to see while they were here. We couldn't make all of it happen since some of it was much farther away than we could go in a day, but we tried to hit anything within 2 hours of our house! Zac stayed home on Tuesday to recover and rest so that the other five of us could take the car. We drove to the Ladby Viking museum about two hours west of us. We packed a picnic lunch and ate outside at the tables near the roses before we started exploring. It was so lovely!

The Ladby museum is fairly small, tucked way out in the countryside, but its big claim to fame is the Viking king burial mound. A Viking king was buried in his actual ship, along with many treasures, nine horses, four or five dogs, weapons, the ship's anchor, and all kinds of other things. They drug the boat onto the land and built a burial mound over the top of it. Over time, the land was kind of farmed over, but in the early 1900s (I think...you can look it up if you want to be specific), someone started finding iron nails and suspected a Viking ship was underneath. They unearthed it, and while the tomb had clearly been raided, the treasures taken, and the king's body removed, the ship was still there, as were the skeletons of the animals and the ship's anchor.

The powers that be decided to preserve the actual mound, climate-control the interior, and leave the ship exactly where it was unearthed. It's encased in a glass chamber, and you can walk into the Viking burial mound and around the entirety of the ship. You can see the bones (which I didn't take photos of, out of respect) and the anchor. It was definitely something to behold.

Inside the museum, there is a great tapestry created by a group of seamstresses. It tells the story of the Ladby Viking ship along the length of it, and you can sort of "read" the story from left to right like a comic strip. Along the top, the tapestry shows how Viking ships were built, and there are a lot of incredible details interspersed, like Viking-age tools, mythological figures, plants from the area...it was one of the best parts. A panoramic photo won't do it justice, but here it is anyway.

Outside the museum, you can walk to the fjord, where there is a recreation of the Viking king's buried ship in the water.

We ended up spending more time than we thought at the Ladby Viking Museum, but we still had time to drive the hour to Trelleborg for a visit, rocking the Eurovision 2025 playlist all the way. Trelleborg is the site of the best-preserved Viking fortress in Denmark. The Vikings built circular mounded enclosures around their longhouses, which were set up in four squares of four houses each, for a total of sixteen houses within the fortress. There were ramparts along the top of the fortress mounds for lookouts, and it was these fortresses that helped the Vikings defend their land from the German armies.

The stones on the ground mark the areas where the longhouses once stood. The "hills" in the back are part of the circular ring fortress.

From the ramparts on top of the ring fortress, you can kind of see the outline of the longhouses better. The circular stones around the outside of the longhouse mark where the roof support posts were positioned.

Walking into one of the two entrances through the ring fortress.

It was rainy, but we had fun anyway.

A scale model of the ring fortress, longhouses, and outer longhouse buildings.

As you may have noticed in one of the photos above, they don't mow these lovely, protected UNESCO World Heritage sites. They have sheep for that.

The museum at Trelleborg, like the museum in Roskilde, practices experimental archaeology. That means that when they find something like pieces from a Viking ship or longhouse, they examine it, along with the pieces of tools and clues from other findings, to determine how it was made. When they have a hypothesis, they test it to see if they can recreate it in the same manner with the same tools. This is one of the ways we have learned so much about the Vikings, especially since written records are scarce.

At Trelleborg, they recreated a Viking longhouse as best they knew how. Since it was built, they have actually learned more and found it to be incorrect in some ways, but it does get the idea across.

Side view of the Viking longhouse

Front entrance to the Viking longhouse

Interior recreation of a Viking longhouse

Sample of the roof construction for the Viking longhouse

There is also an indoor section of the museum, with interactive exhibits and artifacts from the Trelleborg finds. The coolest thing is that they have the only preserved wooden shield from the Vikings found to date in Denmark.

Outside, there is a little Viking village recreation as well. It was cute, but it was starting to rain harder on us, and the museum was getting ready to close up. It was still fun to see. They hold the Viking Festival there later in the summer!

Before we left, we sampled the different meads in the shop and went home with a few bottles.

It was a long day of driving, but it was well worth the trip!

* * *

The next day was the kids' last day of school and the day we had to take Nate and Maggie to the airport for their trip home. We hope they come back soon! Wade and Lisa needed the day to relax anyway, so we didn't plan a super aggressive agenda. We made up for that the next day, though!

I knew Wade would love Christiania, Zac thought his parents might enjoy the king's garden at Rosenborg Castle, and Wade and Lisa wanted to see Nyhavn in the summer when it wasn't all closed up and cold, so that was the plan for the day.

Christiania was great, and Wade said it was his favorite activity of the trip. We also drank the absolute best coffee I've had in Denmark! Nyhavn was beautiful in the sunshine, and we stopped for lunch at one of the outdoor cafe spots along the canal.

We didn't spend a long time at the gardens outside Rosenborg because fatigue set in, but I did get to smell my favorite roses, and we took some time to just sit in the park and enjoy the weather.

In case our guests didn't get enough castles-and-gardens in Copenhagen, we took them to Hillerød to visit Frederiksborg Slot and the baroque gardens there the next day. The castle is literally situated in the middle of Hillerød, but you'd never know it (except for the studentervogner (student wagons) honking and blasting loud music, but we'll get to that).

The Airbnb they were renting was just on the other side of the woods where we live, and though most days, we drove back and forth in the evening to avoid wearing anyone out, we decided to take advantage of the proximity and the beautiful weather that evening. We took a family stroll with the kids and their grandparents along the path, out to the lake, and up to the Airbnb.

I promised I'd get back to the studentervogner, so here we go!

I'm sure I posted about the student wagons last summer, but we got an up-close-and-personal view this year since our neighbor became a student (that's what they call it when a kid passes their exams and gets their student hat after gymnasium, which is kind of like high school. After they get their student hats, they move on to trade school or university or a special nursing program or whatever they will do).

As a recap, the students get their hat placed on their head by someone close to them after they pass their exams. The hats have different symbols and ribbon colors on them to signify what the student is planning to do next, and their names are embroidered in a lovely script across the back of the hat. After the little ceremony at school, the students pile into a giant rented truck with fencing around the back to make sure no one falls out. The kids make signs beforehand to hang on the sides, and the trucks have giant sound systems and colored, flashing lights. It's a big party bus, essentially, and since the kids are of drinking age, they drink to their hearts' content in the back while a safe and sane driver chauffeurs them from one student's house to the next. At each house, they disembark for a brief bathroom break, or to eat some food and get some water, or whatever the parents have put out as part of the welcome spread. Then, they load back on the truck and party down the street to the next student's house.

It's a really fun tradition, and the whole community celebrates them. They honk and wave and shout congratulatory messages to the kids. The students continue wearing their hats for a few weeks afterward, too, and the congratulatory shouts and waves continue all over town, on the train, at the grocery story, etc. But I digress. Here's the studentervogn after it backed up our street. Our neighbor's house was the last stop on the tour for the evening. It showed up around 10:30 p.m. Don't be fooled by the daylight in the video.

On Saturday, Kaden had his DDL tournament, so we camped out at the baseball field in Lyngby. His grandparents were glad they got to see him play, and he was happy that they were there, too.

Photo credit: Kaspar

Photo credit: Kaspar

Photo credit: Kaspar

He played well and got an RBI, but unfortunately, his DDL team didn't advance, so we headed home to relax.

We took a little trip into town to eat a burger and visit the local ice cream shop, Madsen's Is Cafe. Wade wanted to get a milkshake, so we got milkshakes and ice cream and ate them in the park.

The kids sat home enjoying their summer break screen time the next day, but Zac and I took Wade and Lisa on a driving tour along the northern coast of Sjælland. We stopped at a few of the beaches to see the ocean (and get abused by the wind), drove through a bunch of the seaside towns, and looked at the pretty old farms in the countryside. We made a stop at a little campground on Arresø and ate really great pizza at Il Terrazzo Heatherhill. We're definitely going back there.

We had planned a beach day at the Airbnb, but the scheduled check-out was a day earlier than we thought, so we had a beach day at the lake instead. Well, we tried to have a beach day. It was a little windy, which made it a little cold. We fully planned to swim anyway. The insane wind on the day prior had blown down a lot of trees, so we had some trail maintenance to take care of before we could pass.

When we got to the beach, the Swan Family was using the swimming area, and, ya know, we didn't want to encroach on their space.

They did finally shove off a little bit, but we started seeing the goopy slime balls indicating the lake quality was heading downhill for the summer (toxic algae), so mostly, we just waded a bit, sat on the dock, and the kids played in the sand. We had a picnic and wrapped it up when a few other groups came down to use the space.

On the last full day of Wade and Lisa's visit, we decided to visit the Frilandsmuseet (The Open Air Museum). It's a large area dedicated to showcasing the homes and lives of people in Denmark over the last few centuries. There are classic breeds of farm animals, reconstructed homes from the many corners of the country, and tiles, beds, tools, wood stoves, mills, and other things that have been donated. The homes are set up to show the different building styles of the period and allow visitors to see how people lived on farms and in rural areas.

I used to follow the zookeeper for the hippos at the Copenhagen Zoo on Instagram. He worked for the zoo for many years and was really good at community engagement and info sharing. I was sad to hear he was leaving the zoo, but he actually went to work for the Open Air Museum. He's been caring for a little goat whose mother can't recognize him anymore: Lille Hans. So every day, he goes out in the golf cart to make his rounds and wake up the pigs and all that, and he calls for Lille Hans, and Hans comes running, jumps up in the cart, and goes around with the animal caretaker all morning. It makes me really happy to open Instagram stories and see Lille Hans almost every day because he's so gosh dang cute.

Anyway, I was disappointed that all the goats were in a big heap away from the pathway under their shade cover because I couldn't pick out Lille Hans. I called for him a few times, but none of the goats could be bothered to even look up. Lisa and the kids were resting on a bench on the other side of a row of trees, so I went over there to tell them I failed at finding Lille Hans, but then, on the other side of the trees, I heard the voice I knew so well from Instagram the past two years. I walked over and, in Danish, asked him which goat was Lille Hans. He asked if I followed him on Instagram and I said yes, and he tried to pick him out but couldn't because of the pile and the fact that all three little goats look almost identical. We switched to English and I thanked him for trying, but then, he went back into the goat pen, found Lille Hans, and brought him out so I could cuddle him for a bit! Yay!

There's a large area for kids to run around and do different activities as well, so we made sure the kids got to get some ice cream and goof off a little before we headed home for the day. They had these little push carts that were really fun to race. We all took turns.

The kids went through the labyrinth, climbed on the bouldering wall, tried to stay up on the giant rolling pin log roll thing, and played around in the circus arena. Frilandsmuseet was really cool, and I hope we go back so we can see all the things we missed!

We said goodbye to Wade and Lisa early the next morning so they could continue their travels. We went back to sleep for a few hours, knowing that we had to return to work the next day and that this was the last day of our 3-week vacation, but the day wasn't over yet!

Zac loves cooking and baking, as you probably know, and one of his burger heroes, George Motz, was doing a European tour at different host restaurants. I had seen on Instagram that he was coming to Gasoline Grill in Copenhagen for a block party, where he would be making his famous grilled onion smashburger.

We rounded up the kids, took public transit into the city one last time, and headed in the direction of the party. Of course, we had some time to kill, and Kaden hears me talk about Østerberg Ice Cream all the time but has never had the pleasure himself. Since there is an Østerberg location near Gasoline Grill, we stopped there for ice cream first.

We were a little early to the block party still, but we had a beer and watched the birds milling around the little street park nearby, then we got in line for our burgers.

It was a really fun event, but we all agreed that Zac's smashburgers hold their own, so it's OK that George's restaurant is in NYC and not Copenhagen. Plus, we have Gasoline Grill, and their burgers are awesome, too!

* * *

Thus ends our exciting adventures with family visitors and our summer vacation time from work. We have a pretty great workplace to return to, and the free ice cream didn't hurt, either!