Tuesday, October 20, 2009

Ass. 6 Travel Writing

Dear Diary. 17th October.

Our trip didn't start of good. We arrived in Denmark at 20:51pm, five ours later than expected. Charles and I decided then and there that we're never taking a DSB train ever again. Outside it was so dark that the only thing glowing was the moon and one was definitely not in need of a fresh maker, so cold was it. At least our hotel lived up to our standards, or so we thought. When we got to our room we found a saw, a robe and an electric meter. Apparently they had been working on the bathroom just before we arrived, nice!
At Breaking Dawn we decided to visit Skagen Museum and boy was I in for a surprise. Even though we didn't actually see the painting 'the Scream' I felt like it.

The next morning it was raining heavily, so that wasn't much fun, even little Thomas who usually loves the rain said to me that he thought the weather was crappy.
Apparently it rains a lot here in Denmark. Something worth remembering in case I think about coming here again.
When we walked around in the city there was nothing interesting to eat, so Charles had made a small lunch consisting of Oreo's and a Petite D'anon – I was childish food, but anything was better than what they serve here. They actually serve blackbirds, great tits and even eagles at some restaurants here. That's not ideal as Ronald Reagan would have said.
Apparently they hunt a great deal in Skagen. Of course Charles didn't mind, but you know how he is about hunting. At least the only gun we brought along was little Thomas' water pistol *s*.

At one morning when we were standing at the desk in our hotel, we overheard a couple talking about a place in the city where one could go dancing that evening. I persuaded Charles and I took my favorite lipstick on, the Maybeline one I got last Christmas. (I'm not born with it, it's Maybeline:))
The dancing was amazing and I was just lovin' it.
Afterwards we went for a walk around the city and everywhere we looked people where dressed up. We saw people dressed as a red onion, a red tomato and even a garlic. Apparently they were celebrating Shrove Sunday – something similar to Halloween. Little Thomas was so jealous but of course as soon as he got a Happy Meal and a soda everything was okay again.

Well, that was the highlights of our trip to Denmark.
Diana.

- Jeanett

4 comments:

  1. More of a postcard home than real travel writing... Some of the ingredients were well integrated and done with fine humour (the lipstick, the dress-up costumes), but the birds were not done so well, for instance.
    Where is the title?

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  2. I particularly liked the Oreo's and Petite D'anon mentioning. :)

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  3. My title for the ‘postcard’ would be “The non-dramatic life of Diana”. The choice of the title is due to the non-dramatic ‘adventure’ she and her family experiences. The objective of the story was to portray Diana as a woman who, despite the few internal jokes, actually leads a typically boring life.

    I would agree that this short story appears more as a postcard than real travel writing. My intention, however, was not to make it appear as though it was a postcard but more or less like a diary, which apparently did not come across very good My inspiration was Mark Twain’s version of travel writing, chapter twelve of “The Innocents Abroad or the New Pilgrims Progress” which we once read. In this chapter I felt that it appeared to be a diary. In continuance, Diana also held several expectations of her experiences of Denmark, but like Mark Twain they were all shot down by reality.
    In retrospect, I would have made use of quest and picaresque and made the story appear more like a ‘story’.

    I relation to the incorporation of the birds, I found it very difficult to make them a natural part of the story.

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  4. I love the way you describe the trip to denmark as utter failure! And i really get a sense of the Twains story.. ALso i enjoyd to humour which to me really gave it a diary-sound to it. Because to me a postcard is usually about how great everything is and how tanned you are getting!
    So i really got the sense that "Diane" wrote this to herself, and the very personal coments about what the other people would enjoy were also awesome!

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