Smores deluxe

We only had a few days in Kolding, but I must say, we managed to do so much. I even got to see Kamilla for a quick coffee as she was kind enough to do the drive over from Børkop to see us.

Lars had to go back to Berlin to go to work for our last afternoon, so we had to say goodbye to him a bit early.

Dinner on our last night got cooked on their fire pit, with some delicious smores for dessert.

Thank you Petersen family for a great stay! Looking forward to seeing you at our place next time!

CLAY Museum of Ceramic Art Denmark

One day Dorte took us on a short drive to Middlefart to visit a ceramics museum called CLAY.
Dorte had been there before, but it has recently been transformed from a small museum located in an old villa, to also include a spacious modern building where the exhibitions are situated both above and below ground level.

I wasn't aware how big it was, so I thought this was it.

I got mighty surprised as we descended down into the basement, and saw how the exhibitions just continued, and continued, and... continued:

This museum specializes in ceramic art and design. It has one of the most outstanding collections of ceramics in Europe.
In 2010 Royal Copenhagen donated a collection of more than 50,000 items of porcelain, stoneware and faience to the museum. This collection had never been exhibited before and now it is kept here in "The Treasury", and it covers more than 235 years of Danish ceramic design and craftsmanship. This impressive collection of royal porcelain is mainly what attracts the visitors here.

But CLAY is showing both local and international artists, historically important and contemporary pieces. I think this is what made it so interesting, the mix!

I was also interested in the displays on different materials, different techniques etc:

This is the only museum in the Nordic region specializing in contemporary ceramic art. It is well worth a visit, not only for its collections and exhibitions, but also for the stunning architecture of the new museum annex. We had stunning views of Lille Bælt through the large windows of the exhibition room.

Lego House

After Koldinghus Dorte and I took Lucas, Linnea and Magnus and went to the Lego House in Billund. This is also known as 'Home of the Brick'. The idea to build this came from a desire to share the history of the company, whilst at the same time inspire the visitors to play and interact with Lego bricks.

There sure was a lot to do, but we will get to that later. There was also a lot to look at! Lots of builds, in many different themes. The photo of Linnea and I is taken in the Masterpiece gallery for example. A big room filled with Lego creations made by adult Lego fans.

Our favourite part of Legoland has always been the miniland, so we spent a lot of time having a good look around in the immense Lego minifigure model landscape called The World Explorer. It was bursting with different storylines, scenarios, fairytales and other stories.

There was also a lot of pop cultural references. Linnea was excited to find a little bit of the Harry Potter universe, and also the Friends fountain and sofa.

This portrait of the actress Samira Wiley was done with 41,000 bricks. It is called Pieces of Me, and its an exploration of how play influences our journey to self-discovery and self-expression.
Look at her hair and blouse, they are made with a special 3D building technique called "greebling". Also the rainbow part of the portrait is built with transparent elements, so that the light can shine through the bricks and "glow" when lit from behind.

We had a lot of fun with our own portraits too! Can you see this is Dorte and I?

Then we got into the playing, creating and building!
Here for example, you were supposed to build a bee - and then set it free, maybe mounting it on the large podium in the middle of the room.

The focus!
It was actually a lot of fun, and it was super inspiring to see all the other bees created.

Here we were building flowers:

The house was separated into different colour zones. In the Yellow Zone we got to develop emotional skills and express ourselves. In the Blue Zones we worked with more cognitive skills, solved problems. The Green Zone stimulated social skills and in the Red Zone the creativity got complete free reign.

The most fun thing with all these builds was that we could see them come alive. For example here, we had built 2D fish, and then we added them into this machine, and they would pop up on the screen in the big blue aquarium!

In another part we built Lego characters, and they got brought to life on a digital dance stage. Check out this clip:

We finished off with a visit to the basement where the History Collection was, the official Lego Museum. It showed the whole history of the company, how it happened that a small carpentry workshop in Billund became one of the largest toy brands in the world.

And when we had finished our visit for the day and were ready to leave, we each got a memento from our day, a bag with 6 red 2x4 bricks.
A mathematics professor once calculated that the number of unique ways to combine these bricks is an incredible 915,103,765. So each guest to Lego House get their own unique combination on a card with their bag of bricks. This was mine:

 

How cool!
This was a great experience, and a perfect alternative (or addition) to a visit to Legoland. We all enjoyed it, I don't think there is an age limit on a visit to this Lego House. A super creative and fun afternoon!

Koldinghus - Royal celebration

Just a few days before our visit, there had been a historic dinner at Koldinghus celebrating that the Danish Queen Margrethe II is now the longest reigning monarch in the Danish history. She has ruled over 51 years, and is also currently the longest serving head of state, and the only ruling female monarch in Europe.

The table setting was now on display, so we could see how it had looked. 

The decoration in the middle of the table is something extraordinary. It weighs 190 kg and it is a 'Godsejerplateau', in corpus silver. It consists of the two candelabras, side plates and the very impressive middle plateau. It was an anniversary gift to King Christian IX and Queen Louise in 1892.

This is very rarely exposed, so it was a treat to get to enjoy it here at Koldinghus for this occasion.