AKTIESELSKAB
SKANDINAVIEN-AMERIKA LINIEN
S. S. "United States"
June 28, 1928
Honey dear:-
I sent you a letter this morning so you would know we had arrived. We've had a grand day - I'm sort of weary, but not extremely and I want to write a little before going to bed. And I'll never get caught up if I don't begin by going back!
First - there was a most impressive old beau on the boat - Mr. Collins - light knickers & pale grey socks to match, white spats on occasions &c - a retired merchant of bags! And he had gotten his bag business prosperous by going to and fro in the earth finding out what folks put into bags and what sort they needed.
Next - that Oslo supper! Alice sat on the sofa. There were three of us beside and we sat around this table about like your desk in size, pulled in front of the sofa. Supplies on a side table. Pretty dishes, pale green clover leaves on them. Lovely flowers from the sweet garden on the table and all around. We ate those sandwiches - a huge plateful - one after another, an anchovy with two slices of egg on a piece of bread, never any covers to them, Norwegian brown cheese, not goat, but made from the whey boiled down, other cheese, sausage made with red wine, oh, many kinds. Tea and cups so pretty. Cake with substance to it, ring like little cakes, pale currant jelly on these and on cookies. All simple enough but very good of its kind. Then we took a trolley in to the boat, though a taxi for the last stretch for it rained hard. We had acquired 20 krone but spent not a cent. Miss Leegaard was so nice about it all.
Well, we came on all day yesterday and landed about eight o'clock. There was a huge mob at the dock - and everybody brings flowers to meet friends, even huge bouquets. We had that religious bunch on board and they sang hymns diligently and the band played. The customs were about as in N.Y. - more than I've met before in red tape. But we survived. It surely does help to have an idea what may happen and not to worry about delay. Our trunks are shipped to Antwerp and we hold no receipts! But it seemed all right. We got a taxi and came here about ten, I guess, weary but cheerful.
It's a simple pension, but the food is good and the view across the Botanic Garden to red-tiled barracks very nice. There are two other Americans here, an M.D. from Virginia and wife, he working in the lab. I want to see! I've sent my letter to Dr. Krogh today. Also there are here English, Germans and Danish, about 15-18 at dinner. Madame Berg speaks English well, husband also. And we bought a London "Times" of this very morning, just down the street - brought by airplane! The account of Houston was better than in our papers in its analysis of the situation.
We went to Bennett's for mail & information, to the P.O. for stamps, we stared at everything - Alice likes it immensely, her first day in a really foreign city, for at Oslo we didn't see anything in the rainy & dusky evening in a taxi. We had such nice little fish for lunch - and then we did a sightseeing bus trip - and once more I saw those elephants holding up the Carlsberg Brewery tower, and the busts of the founders looking at the Royal family, funnier even than I had recalled! They now bottle 1,400,000 bottles daily! And it's so low in alcohol I don't see how it can hurt anybody - I couldn't feel any warm sensation from it, but how folks like it is a mystery.
Then we walked through the shopping streets and the flower market home. Oh - the motor bus trip became a boat trip for a while - highly pleasant! Copenhagen is a great town! About a half dozen of the "U.S." people turned up for the motor trip.
Good-night. I'd like to know what you're doing! A fine letter from the Lund man giving me the Berlin letter I wanted, also one from Margaret Porter all about Prague, where she had seen Rev. & Mrs. Blakely.
July 29, 1928
Honey dear:-
I'll begin to tell you about today but I forget things. This morning there was a note with my breakfast tray (rather slim tray!) from Dr. Krogh inviting us around to the lab. at 4 p.m. So we gave up the Elsinore trip for the day and went to the Thorwaldsen Museum - I'll put in a card for you of the Cupids - and then to the market. I do hope the pictures of the women come out well. They had such fine faces - brown and ruddy and dignified. They sit by the canal side with their messes of eels, soles, and several other fish, also shrimps, crabs and lobsters, in baskets. They wear darkish clothes, blue or gree, and white cotten sunbonnet things, very neat, mostly. The little boats by which I suppose they come are out in the canal. The flowers and vegetable market is near by - so gay and pretty. Alice bought a dozen lovely iris for 1.50 kr (= 41 cents) and a dozen St. Brigid anemones for 0.75 kr I believe - such lovely things. She's spending the $100.00 her brother gave her! She's looking at a Copenhagen porcelain figure, costing about 15.00 but I do think she could buy something she'd like better. I don't think I'll buy you dishes here - they are too expensive for their looks!
We ate lunch at a famous fish place, Krog's Fisk [sic] Restaurant, and one of the chairs at our table had a little silver plate with the three crowns of Sweden on it - saying that the Swedish crown princess ate there. There were several other such plates in the room. There was a menu, but a clever waiter brought along a platter of lobsters - and we chose the size we wished. Awfully good! The same little lobster forks I saw before. He got off on us delectable apple tarts in the same way. Danish pastry is truly great! I'd like one of those tarts every week. Strawberries not ripe yet, but we bought some expensive ones yesterday, and cherries from Italy today - not expensive. There are many Australian apples about. The meals do not provide fruit or any quantity of vegetables, though things in general have a grand flavor. There are real cooks about in Denmark.
Then we ordered our tickets from the S. S. Co. for next Wed. July 4, when we go to Lübeck for nothing, next day on to Berlin. Rested a while at the house and then took a taxi for Dr. Krogh's lab. It is a Rockefeller gift for the medical sciences I think, built like this
Dr. Krogh is head of the Univ. dept. of Zoophys. and not in the med. dept. He has perhaps all one wing - on the left, maybe 4 stories - and it's longer than I have drawn. There is a green plot and a pool in the court. At the ends of the wings are two dwelling houses, one the Kroghs', connected by corridors with the lab. We sat first in a reception room opening into this corridor until Dr. Krogh came in. He showed us around the place for about 1/2 hr or more - and they have been in only 2 months so much is still unfinished. He is the kind to have each piece of apparatus just as accurate and perfect as possible. The centrifuges are swung from the ceiling and therefore quiet. He uses Celotex to make dust-proof covers for fine balances, closets for instruments of precision &c. The floor is covered with rubber, also there is a rubber sink - and glassware doesn't break.
He is using celluloid tubing for gas-analysis connections, celluloid Fabrik Giesingen, Ger. I think he said. It's quite remarkable, softened for adjusting in hot water. There is a big salt water vivarium with many kinds of tanks in which to keep things alive. And he is just getting off the new edition of his book on capillaries in which he answers the work of Lewis I read so eagerly last winter. It was fun to tell him about Gene Landis of whose work he knew - the brilliant U. Pa. boy I may have told you about.
After a time we met Mrs. Krogh and then presently the other men at the lab. Rehberg, Parsons of England whose biochemistry we use, and Mulholland of Va. who is in this Pension. We all went into the Krogh parlor for wine and cakes - simple and good - and for cheerful conversation. Parsons is the gayest lad you ever saw, curly-haired, short and vigorous - absolutely adorable. The girls will be so entertained to hear about him! 'Twas a pleasant walk back to dinner through the Botanic Gardens with Dr. Mulholland, and Alice and I have prowled there since dinner - oh, so many flowers! We must have a rock garden. This is most all rock-garden, for acres! So many arctic things, too. The birds sang, and altogether 'twas a delightful spot - a few quiet folks around here and there. The Danes seem so decent. We're right near big barracks, but don't hear rowdy soldiers about at all.
The bicycles are here, more than ever! This street is torn up - central heat being put through.
July 1. Two days to be accounted for!
This is a fascinating town - we feel quite at home now and "get" some of the signs. Many if not all the butchers' shops have two huge steers' heads in brass (?) one at each end of the sign. The hairdressers all have a huge brass platter with a bit taken out.
We don't know whether it is or is not a basin! There is a pretzel over some kind of bake shop, large, done in gold.
And we recognize "Nyladgte Aegte," and some more. - The towers seem even more entertaining than before! I have a little slip with a lot in outline and we know quitea few, though one big one beats us out.
Yesterday we went in the morning to call on a girl who had studied a while at Simmons. I should judge she was teaching in a Fanny Farmer sort of place - not awfully interesting, and we did not stay long. The other ex-Simmons student lives out about 30 miles and is sending her husband in with a car to take us out there tomorrow! We're much excited.
I've been driven into buying me a watch, and now I have a little nickel wrist thing, cost about 7.00. It has the hours 13-24 on it - amusing - also a second hand. Let us hope it lasts through the summer. I'm irritated that the Ingersoll did not get to the boat. If it doesn't get to So. Hadley, please blow them up! I sent them a letter on landing. They were asked to get it to the S.S. but the time was short. Ingersoll Watch Co. Waterbury, Conn. The one I have of that style goes only when reclining.
We had our hair done by a nice place, little English, but as usual somebody turned up to help us. And lunch at an "Industrie" Restaurant, whatever that means - anyhow we had all the cold junk for about 75¢ - about six kinds of anchovy, herring &c, then cold meats, then our choice of a whole table full of cold hams, beef, duck, chicken, shrimps, jellied salmon, salads, jelly - and I can't stop to put down all I remember! It was most entertaining - and I really like the things.
Along in the afternoon we took a tram for the Dyrehavn (= Deer Park) about 3/4 of an hour out. It is a large tract, formerly a royal shooting preserve, with most magnificent beech woods and open stretches - and with hundreds of deer tame and loose. A funny little carriage carted us around and we had a grand time! Those beeches are as I saw them two years ago from the train, all out of the class of any I've ever seen before - so tall and huge, with green grass below and with such a green light everywhere. Also, the hawthorn is still in blossom, though going by - deep red-pink, pink, & white, big trees like ours and almost no bushes. I doubt if it is often wild. And the thing they call "shower of gold" deserves its name! A laburnum, I judge - perfectly beautiful. We ought to have one. Trees grow about as big as the hawthors, said to be hardy. Do see if Mr. Kinney knows about it - you ought to have seen them in Germany. All the suburban houses have gardens, and that same wealth of blossoms one sees in England. The misty blue of a Veronica is lovely with the oriental poppies. We have been fairy crazy over the things.
Today, being a pleasant day, we used our tickets for the Elsinore round. A big comfortable car, up through the shore suburbs where these gardens just followed each other for miles, with the Öregund and Sweden off to the left - on to Helsingør where Hamlet's castle Kronborg is - a stunning big place, moats and courtyards and dungeons and things. Only probably there was no historical person at all. We ate at a little hotel in the town, took a picture of an old church with such quaint brick ornamentation, and drove on through forming country (land 96% under cultivation around here) to Fredensborg, the country place where the king spends Oct. & Nov. It has the funniest black stoves and delicate carpets and "Brussels" carpets and Royal Meissen stoves you ever saw! Very chilly! But a public group of Americans on some of those delicate carpets would have been awful - one of these folks hurt them apparently! The chandeliers were all swathed for the summer. The park was stunning - those beeches - and vistas - really lovely.
Then on to Frederickborg Castle, a huge, elaborate thing of which there are many pictures. The towers have "ball bearings" like some here in the city. 'Tis Renaissance and awfully ornate, full of pictures &c &c. The carved cabinets fascinated me, though the guide never mentioned them. The church is the place of coronations - and that and the Hall of the Knights are extraordinary in their wealth of ornamentation - with ebony and silver fireplace, musicians gallery in the hall, and ebony & silver & gold altarpiece. We judge Denmark a little country but amazing proud and ambitious.
But it's bed-time. I have a hope there'll be a letter from you tomorrow. Alice got some Friday from Ula, written about three days after we left. We go on Wed. to Lübeck.
We can get London papers here, but I have my doubts about their being abundant in Germany! One says Al Smith is nominated. I hope Hoover will beat him, but he's not a small person to fight at all.
Good-night and much love,
Abby