Odense | 2001.08.03

• Breakfast
  - Mango tea, dry cornflakes
  
  
• Photokunst Museum
  - Interesting "self-expression" installation. Actually called Personal Outlet by Mette Bartholin, age 25, who is somehow related to this site. In "Three Months with Tree," her descriptions of watching a tree outside of her window for (yes) three months were penciled in on the walls of the room.
  - Liked Nina Hart's fabric photos. Scottish Tartans, just learned now. They were very close up, colorful and detailed images of plaid patterns. Could not find anything on the web about her.
  - Lisbet Friis's "Ribbons of Knightly Orders" gave me cool, cheap home decor ideas -- cover foam core with canvas or other fabric and paint it. Can't find her on the web, either.
  - Yayoi Kusama's installation was most fun. Yayoi is a Japanese woman now in her 70s who lives voluntarily in a mental hospital. She makes wacky videos and used to be involved in the free love scene during the 1960s. She also does a lot of cool things with light and mirrors. A very interactive installation, and a definite highlight. Chris's and my favorite line from one of her recent videos was, "I will obliterate your life with polka dots."
  
  

Yayoi Kusama pamphlet, Photokunst Museum, Odense.

• Printing Press Museum
  - Probably would have been good if anything had been in English. Picked up some free postcards and print messups.

Printing Press Musem, Odense. This postcard illustrates how a new machine called a computer is making printing easier and faster than ever.

• Bymuseet
  Interesting museum on medieval through nineteenth century Odense. Showed early maps, common life, religious life, children's toys. We saw a movie in Danish that dragged. Chris's head kept dropping. After the museum, I did a mock ballerina performance on a stage in a small, empty park (picture to follow). Then we walked through four miniscule 3-room homes, all attached to each other, that had been lived in until the mid 1950s. They didn't have bathrooms, and I don't remember seeing a sink in any of them, either.
  
  
• Lunch
  Ate oriental pizza with pineapples. Drank Sprite. Wasn't too impressed.
  
  

  James Dean Dancebar, Odense. "It's tearing -- me -- apart!..." James says, "... that you won't visit my dancebar." We passed the dancebar many times on our walks through the streets of Odense, but we made no time to visit it. I kind of regret it, actually.

  
  
  
• Saw H.C. Andersen's childhood home. It was very small. The woman there was very old and enthusiastic and did not speak a speck of English. Chris told her in stuttering, broken Danish that we did not speak Danish. And she looked at me and said, "But you understand it," in Danish, and I understood her perfectly. I said, "ein bisschen," which means "a little bit" in German. Ha.
  
  

  Hans Christian Andersen's Childhood Home, Odense. The quaint look of the building is typical of a lot of the architecture in the historical section of Odense.

  Somewhere in the Hans Christian Andersen area of Odense.

  
  
  
• Tried to see a movie at the Cinemaxx, which turned out to be closed for good. Visited Info Center to ask where a movie theater was. Overhead mention of World Trampoline Tournament. Chris decided we had to see that.
  
  The reason we were staying in the Fangel Kro, rather than in the city, was because of this gymnastics tournament. All hotels and hostels had sold out long before I tried to make a reservation. For the entire time we were in Odense, we saw gymnasts walking around town in team gear. Some were from America. In one gift shop, we witnessed a woman with a southern accent, a relative of one of the American gymnasts, buying hundreds of dollars of junk.
  
  
• Walked about 1 and a half or 2 miles to the Gymnastics Center. It felt like we were going uphill the whole time.
  
  Paid a $12 entrance fee. Sat down in front of the girls' competition, because that's what Chris was most interested in. It was synchronized trampolining. Two competitors on separate trampolines making the same jumps and flips at the same time.
  
  Chris decided to take photos.
  
  "I don't think you're supposed to take flash photography," I said.
  
  "I saw other people doing it," he said.
  
  He took a photo. Right after the flash went off, both of the girls on the floor messed up.
  
  "You made those girls mess up," I said.
  
  "No I didn't," Chris said.
  
  

  World Trampolining Tournament, Odense. They both fell seconds after the flash.

  
  Minutes later, a man walked up to our seats and told Chris that flash photography was not allowed. Chris apologized.
  
  So we sat for about 20 minutes, watching people bounce. Then an announcer came on and told us that they were about to start a three-hour break. Competition would resume at 8 p.m., he said.
  
  Chris fumed. $12 is a lot to spend on 20 minutes and an admonition. I refused to return at 8 p.m. We walked back to town.
  
  
• Ate dinner at McDonald's. Grilled chicken sandwich. Slightly better than cripsy chicken from BK from the previous night.
  
  
• Tried again to see a movie, but nothing good was playing at the desired time. Tried also to visit an internet cafe, but we entered just as it was closing.
  
  
• Went back to the trusty Fangel Kro, bloated and with pained feet.