I've had another week of adventuring since leaving Krakow - I stayed overnight on the Baltic coast in Poland and then took the ferry across to Copenhagen. Now I'm in Århus, and this afternoon I took the bus no. 6 out to the Moesgård Museum of Prehistory where a long awaited meeting with the Grauballe man took place. It makes me want to track down a copy of P.V. Glob's "The Bog People" even more.

Denmark is beautiful - everything is so clean, people so friendly, and I've waited a long time to see the prehistory artefacts both here in Århus and in Copenhagen. I managed to get to the museum in Copenhagen the same morning I arrived in Denmark, after an overnight ferry trip which found me sleeping in a chair and later on the floor because I didn't have the money to pay for a cabin, and didn't really need one anyway. Iøve found my ability to sleep almost anywhere is becoming more and more pronounced - others appear quite jealous when they emerge from a bad nights sleep due to the traffic noise and I ask, "Oh, were there cars?". I'd been a little sick leaving Poland - a boring cold, fever etc - and so my day of getting up to the coast, then not being able to find accommodation there and eventually staying in a small town 15km away (which was lovely) ended up being an adventure, followed the next day by the adventure of getting to the ferry terminal and then sleeping anywhere I could find space to spread out!

I went to Elsinore, to the art museum Louisiana and Karen Blixen's home, now a museum and national parkland for birds. I also ventured into Tivoli where I heard the Kronos quartet play. Before all the musicians start cursing my very name, I have to say the concert was a bit of a letdown (though I can't complain too much, as I'd managed to get a VERY cheap ticket). The program mostly consisted of arrangements of the work of Mexican - composers. Except there wasn't a lot to the music, or the arrangements. A lot of the pieces were accompanied by an electronic backing, that seemed to be there only because the logistics of transporting the live players was too difficult. The pieces themselves didn't make a very sophisticated use of Mexican or European musical materials, though they were referred to in cliched ways. I was sitting next to Chris, a boy I met at the concert who is currently studying composition as a postgrad student in the UK, and after the first half of the program was over, all I could do was turn to him and say "That was all a bit kitsch." And no, it wasn't kitsch in a good way. The second half of the program, a single piece by a Finnish composer, was much more interesting, and I don't have a bad thing to say about that. They also gave, for an encore, a tribute to Jimi Hendrix's rendering of the American anthem at woodstock. I won't say much about it but that it was kitsch - in a good way. At least, it made me smile and not cringe!

I've been reading Karen Blixen since getting here. (I also stayed up till 3am one night last week reading Virginia Woolf's "To the Lighthouse." Like so many other books I've read while I've been away, I was so grateful so open this one up and find so much in it, that it's quality hadn't been exaggerated. I read "Out of Africa", mostly in a gorgeous park in Copenhagen near my hostel. Am now reading Judith Thurman's biography of her, "Isak Dinesen". Should last me most of the week, as, like her biography of Colette, it's a rather hefty volume!

Getting home is growing closer - possibly closer than previously planned, as I'm thinking of changing my flight to arrive home a week or two earlier, so I can start working and putting things together in earnest. I've got so much to go through, to think about, and Iøm very eager to start! But I've still got my trip to Hanoi, and tonight I've got to try to track down a few days accommodation in Cologne. We'll see how I manage.