Europe been fun, and its hard to explain the feeling now, being torn away from it all. The polite people, the horrible ones, the clean and shining cities, the dirty and smelly ones each place has history and each place has modern breakthroughs.
Anymore time i would've begged to go home any less and I would you've begged to stay, but our last night was with family at least.
Ulla, Desiree (Ulla's sister), Hans, Mingus the dog, Mum, Dad and Drew were at Desirae's house for a farewell barbecue on the roof - with bubbles!
its something unpredictable, but in the end its right - I hope you had the time of your life.
Our mum's dad (my Grandfather) was born in Denmark and had relations there (and relatives - Ed).
His name was Praben Sprogoe and there also happens to be an island called Sprogoe island in Denmark. Coincidence? I don't think so! Turns out that some ancient relative of ours used to protect the queen and as a reward got an island named after him! Neat huh! Some of his descendants have moved all around the globe but the majority stayed in Denmark. We met only a few but they were all lovely and I would like to see them again.
As you have read from some of my previous blogs we have often taken a Red Bus tour in some of the cities we have visited. HEre we did it slightly differently, we took a boat tour as the city of Copenhagen has a system of canals running all the way through it which are very frequently used by the Danes. The bridges are incredibly low so going under some can be a bit of struggle - ie. do not stand up!!!! The person who recommended and took us on this great canal tour was Ulla - my Mum's second cousin. She loves Copenhagen and pointed out lots of extra things while the tour went on.
Some of the things we saw included the Black Diamond building - which is entirely covered in black slate which had to be imported from Zimbabwe, the new opera house which is a bit too modern for my taste, a big Copenhagen shopping mall, the dock used by the Royal family in Denmark, the Copenhagen harbour, Nyhavn, the most famous place to sit and have a beer in Copenhagen.
We got off the boat to take a picture of the statue of the little mermaid - maybe the most famous icon of Denmark. She is very small and i'm not sure how she got there, but I do know that her head has been stolen on 2 occasions - and replaced.
Half way along we had a quick lunch with Ulla and the menu was completely in Danish - lucky for us Ulla was there to translate.
After the tour we climbed "the Round Tower" which was built by King Christian IV (who seemed to spend half the country's money during his reign but is also remembered with great fondness - I thought that that would be impossible to do). The thing about the Round Tower is that when Kind Christian built it he wanted nothing else to be as grand or stupendous - so he made a law stating that no other building could be any higher than the 6th floor of the Round Tower. So now all the buildings in Copenhagen are almost all exactly the same height.
We walked home along the Strogget - Copenhagen's version of Las Ramblas. Filled with design and clothing stores from cheaper stores to some of the world's best known brands. Denmark is where Lego was invented just before the Second World War and we saw the main Lego store on the Strogget and it was the best store for Lego I have ever seen. The whole store was just covered in every kind of lego you could possibly imagine.
Great first day in Denmark.
The next day we decided to drive to an art gallery called Louisiana and then to the castle that Hamlet was based on. First stop at the art gallery was amazing.
While mum and dad went and looked at the art work Drew and i had great fun. Three floors of things for kids to do. First floor was painting and clay sculpture where I spent most of my time. The next floor was making paper pop-art and the floor on top was for making crazy things with wool including making spider's webs. There was also one more thing for kids (and adults) to do - write a down a wish and add it to "the wishing tree". A normal tree which, when we got there, had already had thousands of wishes tied to its branches. Some of the wishes were hilarious. One person had written "I wish that Darth Vader would be killed by Dumbledore".
Louisiana is a modern art gallery its in a building which was once an old manor house and surrounding the house was lots of water and garden. And it was one of the nicest galleries i have been to in Europe. Below are some of the pictures that my Dad took of the art (its a bit kooky) and the clay model that I made.
My clay model
After Louisiana Ulla drove us to the castle that was the inspiration for Shakespeare when he wrote Hamlet. In actual fact, Shakespeare never even visited the castle, he just heard about it. It is called Kronborg and it is in the town of Helsingor (Shakespeare called the town "Elsinor" in his play) There was a lot of things in there, but my favourite was the great hall which was a massive room which could have been cinderella's ballroom. in the fireplaces in the rooms around the castle they had put in speakers that made a crackling noise and in one room they had a whole room which could simulate and make you feel like you where in a room that was on fire depicting when the castle burned down at one stage. It was kind of bizarre to be thinking about Tudor England in the middle of a small town in northern Denmark. I'm really looking forward to doing something "viking-y", and i'll hope we'll get to something soon.
Did you know that in Denmark, they like to eat their icecream cones a bit differently. By differently I mean massive - 2 scoops of ice-cream in a cone, maybe 5, covered in whipped cream and strawberry jam and a massive thing that looks like horse-poo but is actually chocolate covered marshmallow. I know this because I tried one. You have to eat it with a spoon!
TIVOLI
The next day we went to one of the best theme parks ever. It is where Walt Disney got his inspiration for Disneyland. It has been around for more than 100 years. The front gates look like a roman arch on the inside but on the outside are made of brick. Some of the rides are so old that there is even a person operating a manual brake while sitting on the roller coaster ride as you go around. Another one of the old and popular games works the same way as a chocolate wheel spinner... except it involves three little danish postmen dolls riding little bicycles and if they happen to stop on your number you win whatever they are delivering in their basket. In most cases this was either Toblerone or a box of chocolates. We tried several times to win but each time the postmen passed us by. if that doesn't make sense, i think you should ask me about it.
Another popular ride which was Ulla's favourite was a horse race of sorts. By throwing balls into a series of holes with different values, you pushed your particular horse forward in a race against all the other horses. The more accurate your throws the better your horse did. I didn't win this one either.
Accompanying us to Tivoli was some people from my Grandfather's family. Some had caught the train from a long way to meet us and say hello. Kate came, she is my Mum's cousin and she brought her Dad, Finn who is the oldest living Sprogoe we think. He is 87 years old and my Mums dad's cousin. Ulla came too and her friend Peter who was really great and shared lots of enthusiasm about the high powered rides. Finn was very generous and gave us a hand-drawn picture of a clown - apparently the clown helps you sleep at night and he has drawn them for all his neighbours too. Kate has been to Australia before so she was familiar with me and Mum and Dad and Drew. She is a kindergarten teacher. For the rest of the day we played at Tivoli and lets face it, who wouldn't have fun at a fun park. I can see why Walt Disney liked this place so much.
Tivoli is full of gardens and lovely spots for kids to play and there are lots of restaurants which are all part of the scenery. for instance, there is a seafood restaurant which is on a giant pirate ship on a lake. There is also other things there like an aquarium and its a massive concert venue. Sting was singing the day we went there.
Tomorrow we head off to see our friends in Odense ("oh-den-sa") Aia and Julia and their parents Bo and Elsebeth. Odense is where my Grandfather grew up ----- and it has some old viking stuff as well!!!!
Aia and Julie (pronounced you-li-a) are sisters. They live in Odense a little town just west of Copenhagen as seen on this map:
Aia is 7 and Julie is 4, they have VERY different personalities for such little girls, Aia is very sporty and loves the great outdoors. She loves catching bugs and is abousuloutly FEARLESS! Julie however is a bit more shy and loves playing with toys, dancing and drawing. She is known at her kindergarden as "the little draw-er" for all there differaences however, the girls take very good care of each other.
DAY 2
LEGO - LAND!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
It was UNBELIEVABLE!
Lego Land has just launched their new bit of the park, Polar Adventure World! To celabrate anyone who brought a picture of a polar bear would resieve FREE entry tickets. Wicked!
The whole thing was amazing - here's a map of the park.
MAP
Here's a summary in pictures.
ohhhh!
My favourite part of Legoland was earning my driver's licence. Each of the cars looked as though they were made out of lego and each of the cars had a spot at the front where we could each put a flag showing where we came from made out of lego. This is so the traffic instructor could talk to us in our language. The traffic instructor could speak about 10 languages - I wonder how long that took to learn. There were flags on cars from: Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Canada, Great Britain, Italy, Finland, Germany and basically everywhere else in Europe. First we learnt the rules of the road, then we each choose our car and off we went - around roundabouts, through intersections, traffic lights and even a car wash.
aprox. time: 30 mins
You remember how I was saying that Aia was fearless - this is how I know. In Polar land there is a new roller coaster called the Polar Express. It looks scarier than Big Thunder Mountain in Disneyland. Aia had already joined the queue and has dragged me in behind her. Nooooooooo! My stomach ran away at that point. By the time we reached the front of the queue and the roller coaster had come around the corner I was thinking about what my brother had said that morning. "Did you know that they have just added a roller coaster with a vertical drop in it - I mean the roller coaster comes to stop, the floor falls away underneath you and you land on a new track?" This was freaking me out because I figured out that THIS was the new roller coaster.
Aia did not scream - I DID! In fact in the photos you can definitely see the difference in how we felt.
We played for 7 hours in the park. By the time all the rides finished and we went looking for dinner all the restaurants had shut as well! Luckily Hotel Legoland had a buffet open until 11PM so we were OK. This might sound really late, but in Denmark at this time of year it stays light until after 11PM so it doesn't feel like its late at all. So when you eat dinner at 9PM it feels like dinner at 6PM. And the hotel is still full of kids of all ages running around at 10PM. The hotel is amazing. They have taken the theme on board and even have chips shaped like lego bricks.
When we finally left, we were the last people to go home and the carpark only had our car left in it.
Viking Museum
I wont say much about the viking museum the next day except that its run by volunteers who love everything about vikings and their way of life. They are making a full scale replica of a viking ship and also run great activities for kids such as painting your name in runes (the viking alphabet) onto bark, making viking figure heads for ships and playing traditional viking games (they even had REAL knuckle bones - creepy huh?)
The coolest things of all were for little kids - they had made mini viking ships on wheels and axles so you could pull your children along in a little ship. cute.
The site of the museum is chosen because a farmer actually found a real viking ship here with a man buried in it - and his slave, and a bunch of dead horses to help him in the next life as well as food and tools.
Crabbing
On our last day with the girls we drove to a little harbour town with a beach and a massive dock.
The Danes are extremely nice people who dont vandalise anything - proving this point - someone has made and donated to the general public a "crab racer" - which you can see in the video.
To "crab" we found a couple of mussels, squashed them under foot and put them on a peg tied to the end of a length of wool and dangled them in the water. The crabs literally came running, grabbed the mussels and held on while we pulled them out of the water. Here's what we did next.....
Goodbye Aia and Julia - thanks for giving us such an enjoyable stay. i hope we'll see you sometime in the future - hopefully sooner than later.
I was super tired from watching HP 7 part 2 the night before but I didn't want to get any spoilers at Harry Potter World so I had to make sure I was up to date on the movies by watching number 5 and 6 again, then both parts of the Deathly Hallows. I also re-read book 6 and then book 7 twice. It's been an intense week or two but I was up to the challenge.
So here it is, Harry Potter World, a re-cap of our tour.
After picking up our audioguide, we went into a small cinema experience involving the 3 main characters of Harry Potter....... wait I can't reveal to much!
Explored the real Great Hall of Hogwarts from the Harry Potter movies. It's a lot smaller then I expected and the ceiling isn't enchanted. The hall itself however is magical in its own way.
Moved into the big room, a room that covers a quarter of the building. It includes most of the sets from Harry Potter, and no, I don't mean tea sets, I mean the real deal, the GENUINE Harry Potter sets. My favourite sets were the potions classrooms because of its genuine feel of a dank and dark dungeon feel. The potions room also contained the moving pictures from the castle walls and basically all the props. Then there was the green scene area where they made the quiditch scenes and some of the sets from number 7 part 1.
After the set room, we moved on to the backlot where we saw number 4 Privet Drive, for real! I went and knocked on the door but nobody was home.
Thirstily we had a cup of frothy butter beer (so yummy) and also found Hagrid's motorcycle and the night bus.
Then, back to the tour, we headed into creature effects, a whole section of rooms dedicated to the art of making Dobby and Arogog and heaps of others. We saw all the wax figures from scenes where that character had been "stupefied" (spell) or killed, such as Fred (from a scene in Harry Potter number 7 part 2) and Hermione (from Harry Potter number 4).
Creature Effects also make all the masks, like the gringots goblins, Fenir Greyback the werewolf from no.7. The workers at Creature effects must be very busy as they also are in charge of Animatronics which is where tehy use mechanical costumes / masks / creatures etc to help with the special effects. Some little robots look exactly like animals, some as tiny as Scabbers (Ron's rat) and some as big as Buck Beak the Hippogriff. They even had an entire animatronic Hagrid's head which the Hagrid actor double who was very tall (good to play the giant scenes) was almost bald and looked nothing like Hagrid.
Then we headed into the model room, to see the REAL castle they used for all the wide shots of Hogwarts. It's not a real castle but it could've been, its just perfect. It's about as big 2 small cars!
Ok now I've got that covered let's begin in detail......
As we queued up to enter Harry Potter world (HPW) , we were thoroughly entertained by our audio guides - narrated by Draco Malfoy! It was really odd not hearing him malicious and mean. So odd it took me 2 minutes to recognise his voice!
The layout of the HPW building was fairly large and pictures from all the movies lined the walls. The flying car was suspended with its lights flashing and wheel spinning. There was a giftshop on the left, and cafe on the right. They had Harry's cupboard under the stairs next to the queue as well, for people to take photos and gawp at while they waited.
As we entered we were given a brief intro by a Potter nerd and then ushered into the cinema, where we saw a movie shot outside the great hall doors. Hermione/Emma, Ron/Rupert and Harry/Daniel meet us there (on screen) and gave us another quick intro. As they opened the doors to the great hall and stepped inside, something amazing happened. The screen rose and behind it were the real great hall doors - in real life! A second HP nerd opened it and we where bustled into the great hall, for real, the ceiling was a maze of wires and cables but that didn't matter. What mattered was
The REAL tables
The REAL benches
The REAL pitchers
The REAL crockery
The REAL cutlery
The real everything
Surrounding the tables are some of the uniforms worn by the actors. For HurfflePuff, Cedric Digery's Yule ball robes and his tri-wizard tournament uniform. For Ravenclaw, Cho Chungs uniform and Yule ball stuff is there as well. For Slytherin a couple of scarves and proper uniforms. Gryffindoor was coolest though, they had HP's first grade uniform and 6th grade uniform as well!
For the 1st time I saw the house points, sitting in the corner. Tiny little beads represented the points. They looked like little hourglasses, Ravenclaw was coming last, which is odd, I thought that you got points for wisdom.
Our nerd started getting a little bit impatient as she had another group in the cinima who, would not be pleased if there were people in the room when they entered so we were moved out of the Great Hall, into the big room and were instantly overwhelmed.
The wig of Bellatrix LeStrange
That's right! All of the HP wigs and most of the HP costumes they used in number 7 part one and two. There were loads of props from number 4 Including goblets, cups, astronomy equipment, Dumbeldore's office, temporary props and a couple of costumes. Next was the REAL boys dormitory including the beds and decor of Ron, Harry, Neville and Dean Thomas. A chudly cannons poster is hanging on the wall, on a high shelf are some of the knitted jumpers that Harry and Ron wore in number one
Harry's bed
Ron's bed
The coolest thing lay on the right a few steps away. Green screen technology has come a long way in the past few years, so much that you can actually keep filming a normal screen and then, have a character wear something green and POOF on screen they're invisible!
Why do I mention this?
just because Harrys invisibility cloak lining is all green. On it goes and off he goes!
notice how the lining to the cloak is green,.
On we moved to display case after display case, heres a summary in pictures and captions
the Gryphindoor common room
the entry to Dumbledores office
the big Ds office
the entry to the chamber of secrets
Harry's gringots vault door
the Weasly's kitchen: cereal
the weaslys kitchen
Potions Lab
The "magic is might" statue at the ministry
Personally my favourite set was the potions lab. The mechanics team had created "self stirring cauldrons". It was really freaky just watching them spin round and round with no one stirring them! Magic?
Now we entered the world of green screen technology, Quidich
This is really difficult to explain, but I'll give it a go
Now when I watch a Harry potter movie I've always wondered how they filmed the quidich scenes, I mean the actors can't actually fly right...
No of course not, so to make the illusion real, the director uses a green screen. Firstly the camra crew move Harry through the air on a metal beam with a broomstick on top. This metal pole can dip fowards and backwards and on full 360 spin rotation. This is behind an bright electric green green screen. That green is then easily removed from the footage to leave only the moving Harry. Then after pasting Harry into a new background of the Quidich pich, Harry looks for all the world like he's flying!
They also used green screens for the flying car and for the Gringots vault racer. Wow!
Here's a video, look out for Harry on a treadmill.
Then came all of the background artwork and design and the tapestry of the Black family (strictly no photos)
Weasley's Wizard Wheezes price list
The 1st letter Harry receives
The daily prophet ( numerous additions)
They even had Voldemort's robes!
After that we headed to the backlot for some time outside.
Here's a summary in pictures
In the flying car
Did you know that harry potter world is the only place you can buy...
BUTTER BEER!!!!!!!!!!!!!¡!!!!!!¡!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The beer itself is honey brown and tastes like vanilla creaming soda mixed with ginger bear, the cream on top tastes like whipped cream mixed with honey and sugar, mint and butter
So YUMMMMMMMMMY,
Then I stopped in at Privet Drive
After 10 minutes looking round we headed into the creature effects Series of rooms dedicated to the likes of Dobby, Buckbeak and others. This is called Animatronics.
Animatronics are basically mechanics that look like animals. They range in size from as tiny as scabbers to as large as Arogog, This section also included all of the masks that they use throughout the movies such as the goblins of Gringotts, Lupin the werewolf and wax figures such as Dobby and Fred from number seven part one and two.
Hey and did you know that Hagrids head is actually a fake! Well it's often a fake. The animatronics Department made it for when they did wide shots of Hagrid because the actor who plays him is normal size (not a half giant). the tall stunt double looks nothing loke Hagrid so they put him in a mechanical Hagrid Head (cool).
The actor who plays Hagrid
Mechanical Hagrid head
This Animatronics area is full of all the things you wonder how they do. I loved it.
As we stepped out of the animatronics we headed into the set of Diagon Alley - this is the most beautiful set I saw all day. Along the street is Flourish and Blots, Olivanders, an apothecary, Madame Madkin's Robes and of course Weasley's Wizard Wheezes. You can't actually walk into any of the stores though.
Did you know that for Olivander's shop they created over 2000 wand boxes - each was hand labelled. Also, in Weasley's Wizard Wheezes the props department created over 200 items for sale that would demonstrate the boys' wicked sense of humour. This was by far my favourite set because it has the feel that you have actually stepped along the streets of the wizarding world. My favourite thing on the set is the puking pastels bucket in the door frame of Weasley's. They also sell Bertie Bott's Every Flavour Beans.
Now we move onto the most iconic set of all time. The REAL Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry - they used this for all the wide shots (using green screens to create extra the mountainous background). Perhaps if I show you a picture you will see what I mean...
It is obviously not full scale but it is still breath taking and the whole thing would be about the size of two cars side by side with another two cars stacked on top - or maybe even bigger.
And that, my friends, brings us to the end of the tour. Except of course, for the gift shop where I tried on the sorting hat for size and left begrudgingly without a wand as they cost £25 each.
Harry Potter World is amazing - because it is based so little on the actors and so much on everyone else - the rest of the team that makes the movie and who are often overlooked. For example the animatronics crew, the set designers, the special effects, the visual effects, the props people, the costume and wardrobe and make-up people and so many others.
I really loved the fact that they made sure that everything was original and I really don't like the fact that if you look online some people complain about not being able to touch the sets and not being able to get free refills of butter beer - seems greedy to me.
p.s. And if you are reading this PEAC class, this was a really good experience which gave me the opportunity to understand more about HP and about all movies. If you ever get the chance to visit - I thoroughly recommend it.
Swe of the mar
