Shared stories, shared meals; family and countryside show off the real Denmark

Most tourists to Denmark don't leave Copenhagen.  Here's what I learned when I did.

• It's not the flat, Netherlands-like landscape I was expecting.  Quite the contrary.  A gentle, rolling countryside alternates farm fields with strips of forest and charming villages advertising prosperity with their grain silos.  At times, it reminded me of mid-Missouri.
• Denmark may be edging out Germany in my best bakery products race.  The stuff we had in Copenhagen was good; the cakes that came out to grace family tables were astonishing.
• Undulating coastlines and abundant valleys mean lots of lakes and marshes.  Ergo, lots of birds.  No wonder the Danes are so fond of eating duck.  (My husband tells me the same conditions breed monster mosquitos in the summer; that's still to be discovered.)
• Danish vernacular church architecture is beautiful and worth exploration.  A distinctive look combining stepped gables, interesting towers and decorative brickwork creates the focal point for rural views.  

First, a bit of geography.  Denmark is comprised of one big peninsula pushing north from Germany, plus a bunch of islands.  Copenhagen is on the east coast of the island of Zealand; our travels were confined there.  The roots of the modern Bencards lie in farming country to the south, on a big bulge of land that pushes eastward beneath the long bay that sits south of Copenhagen.  We spent one day exploring there.  Another trip took us northwest to a summer house -- now converted to year-round use -- in a nature sanctuary brought to life by some of those previously mentioned wetlands.

Our southern swing was exciting as it brought all the family stories I've heard for the past five years to life.  Here was the rambling farm at Hojstrup, where my husband's grandparents ... like so many Danes ... helped their Jewish fellow citizens to escape the occupying Nazis.  Seeing the farm and its outbuildings, with the Baltic Sea and the tiny port of Rodvig in view over the field, it was easy to imagine the fearful, fleeing refugees hiding, then slipping away in the darkness.  And to both wonder at, and admire, the risks those helping them took.  As the invaders started to suspect something was up, the Bencards eventually had to leave the farm and go into hiding themselves.  After the war they returned, and continued as tenants here for decades.  In typical Danish fashion, nobody in the family finds this particularly extraordinary.  It's just what the Danes did.  Others work this land now, but family members still own farms in the area.

We gathered at one of them for dinner ... a table groaning with delights, surrounded by cousins of our generation and the one below.  You'll get plenty of traditional Danish seafood in Copenhagen: fish roe, pickled herring in multiple varieties, salmon.  It might taste similar to the "at home" table, but the tourist will never be able to match the family experience of toasting.  The Danes love to raise a formal one.  A tap of silverware on crystal demands silence.  Then a raised glass, the spoken toast, an exchange of glances with everyone around the room (no clinking, heaven forbid!), then a sip, then another exchange of glances before conversation resumes.  This takes a bit of getting used to, and the regular injection of silent pauses within a dinner party adds an interesting dynamic.  But I found it an excellent way to bring a big table together.  Because just about everyone at the table gives a toast

over the course of the evening, you get to know them ... and get quite merry!

Get past the nuances of language, food and tradition, of course, and people are people.  By the time we moved past the lip-smacking venison stew, into a decadent stack of dessert pancakes, it could have been a farm table in the American Midwest.  A feeling exacerbated by the fact that the next generation, who studied English across the pond, have flawless American accents, and the cousins put classic country onto the sound system to make me feel at home.  (Except that this was the tidiest farm I've ever been on, from the raked gravel of the courtyard to the gleaming surfaces of the combine harvester to barn floors swept clean enough to eat off.  I'm not sure if this is all Danes, or just the cousins, but I suspect even Marie Antoinette's play farm at Versailles was never this pristine.  Yet this Danish model produces mountains of wheat and barley.)

While in this part of the world we also had a wander around Vemmetofte, the former royal country estate that spent time as a retirement home for genteel ladies in the last quarter of the 20th century.  Though she only occupied one apartment, the American in me ... still delighted and impressed by all things royal ... loved the idea of my husband's grandmother living in a palace.  The grand building also had lovely formal gardens and an historic chapel where the cousins showing us around got married, so it was a trip down memory lane them all.

Should you be heading this way as a tourist, however, the most significant sight is Stevns Klint.  Those are the cliffs where the county of Stevns drops into the Baltic.  Yes, cliffs.  Think Denmark is flat as a pancake?  Think again.  These white chalk walls rise up to 130 feet and, like their geological cousins in the UK, are topped by protected countryside.  The area is a Unesco World Heritage site and the length of the cliffs is a popular and picturesque walk.  On a clear day ... which our visit was ... you can even see the suspension bridge to Sweden hovering, ghostly, on the horizon.  The most popular stop along the cliffs' length is Hojerup Church, where half the ancient monument tumbled into the sea in 1928.  It's been restored and shored up since.  Now you can see medieval wall paintings revealed in the restoration, but the real point is to step onto a balcony occupying the space where the rest of the church would have been, and take in the view.  Locals know that this is a top picnic spot; we observed many families sharing a meal amongst the nodding spring flowers.

Our weather held the next day as we headed to a point on the coast almost diagonally opposite.  Here the landscape was more wooded and, being that much further from Copenhagen, more populated by small summer houses than permanent settlements.  It's easy to see why people would want to spend time here.  Spring bulbs dotted the forest floor with colour, light glinted off watery inlets, reeds danced in the marshes and birdsong combined with the wind and creaking branches to create a calming soundtrack.

Two generations under the benign gaze of another

Before our walk through this sylvan peace, we had another traditional Danish lunch.  The Bencards have a long history and plenty of good storytellers to relate it; much of this visit was spent sharing those tales.  And now I'm finally starting to grasp why my husband doesn't immediately open the pickled herring I occasionally buy.  Like any country's sacred family lunch traditions, it's only half about the food.  Without the family, the conviviality and the toasts, it's not the same.

These are the truly Danish experiences a tourist will never have.  I'm delighted to have "married in", and am appreciating the country, its people and its culture more each year.  My prized souvenir from this visit?  A rullepolse press. This item of kit will allow me to attempt the spiced, rolled pork belly sausage that is an element in many of those festive meals.  Now ... I just need the convivial table companions ready to raise a toast or two.  Who's in?