Klastrup's Kig

The princess' hand or the moment that almost wasn't there...

Like quite a few other Danish women my age, I had a serious crush on Crown Prince Frederik when I was a teenager. So this friday, the day of the royal wedding, the choice was clear. I opted for the full wedding experience! And started the event by cuing for free "wedding cake" at the most famous cake-house in Copenhagen, La Glace - together with approx. 1000 people...:



Then watching tv for several hours to see the wedding:



And then, the most amazing moment: going directly from the apartment, where we partied right in the middle of Copenhagen, to High Street (aka "Strøget") 100 meters away and cuing with all the other Danes and some merry Danish police men, waiting to see the newly weds pass by in their carriage:


We brought a ladder, so a friend was able to take these nice pics of the horse guard approaching:





And they drew nearer; notice her hand in the far right side of the picture (behind the dominant bodyguard in the front):



And then....MY CAMERA FAILED ME...so much for the slow reaction time of digital cameras. However hard I pressed the release button nothing happened, because the camera was still adjusting. And of course I was so busy looking through the camera display, that I hardly saw the happy couple pass me. Somehow this just added to the surreality of the entire experience, which felt beyond reality anyway because we had gone directly from watching the wedding on the tv down to a street scenery which buzzed with mediahyped exitement and everything happened so quickly...

I could have stopped here, but I just have to add the next picture, courtesy of my friend Kirsten, who had a much better hand with her camera than I. We were just a few meters away from the couple. And another friend standing next to us (without camera) claims that Frederik almost for sure winked at her... Despite the romantic hype and despite the royal conformity of it all, for all it's worth, I'm immensely grateful to be living in a country when you can still experience moments like this without being afraid of bombs or gunshots. However surreal they feel, these moments are, after all, still lived and breathed fearlessly, and shared with a lot of other naively happy Danes.



- and then we went back to the apartment to drink more champagne and watch more tv - but those pictures will remain the property of a very small circle of friends.

Oscar's world...



Oh, to be able to look at the world with the wide-nostrilled curiosity of a young dog...