we are home now
Yesterday evening, I said goodbye to Michelle misread_. We had a lovely, lovely little holiday, over too soon. A short reprise;
I picked Michie up at the airport after almost being late due mainly to the fact that all the trains to the airport were cancelled. I'm still considering this a personal affront on the part of the train company. We went to set up camp in my mother's apartment in the center of town, generously tolerated by her (she did psychoanalyse Michie a little; it's a family failing. We mean well). We virtously went to bed earlier than five am.
Monday we meant to go to Kronborg Castle and Elsinore, but we slept late and so decided instead to simply go outside because the day was beautiful. We went to sit in a park nearby, eating mediocre pizza, absorbing the sunshine and shuddering a little at the occasional cold wind. We'd brought a blanket to sit on, and eventually settled down to read Good Omens, with pauses for giggling and general agreement on the Gaiman genius, drunk angels and demons, and the fact that it is impossible NOT to love Crowley, even though he's theoretically evil (The point is... bloody big sea full of brains!). We spent most of the day there, in the sun. On the way home, we concluded a hunt, started earlier, for strawberry pie (my mother's british friend, who was there and cooked lovely dinner for all of us, says it's called 'flan', at least in England).
After dinner, we were slightly puzzled as to how to occupy ourselves (since my mother was commandeering the computer and all the kingdoms thereof, including all the downloaded tv series). This lead to the inspired decision to go see if there was a movie we might catch at the cinema, specifically TMNT.
This movie was unexpectedly, outrageously and amazingly good (re: this post of squee). That being said, i should probaby add that noone who doesn't have 1. A deep and sentimental love for the teenage mutant ninja turtles, 2. a deep and sentimental love for All Things Angsty Even If It's A Mutated Amphibian and 3. A squeeful, gleeful companion to watch said movie with would probably have appreciated it at all. As it were, we shrieked, we stuffed our hands into our mouths and whimpered appreciatively at the antiheroic, motorcycle-riding, angsty, BADASS Raphael and the tragic, sighful, angsty, arrogant, heroic Leonardo and their Eternal Angsty Brotherly Love. We were probably the eldest people in the cinema, too. Don't judge.
Tuesday was the long awaited daytrip to Elsinore, Kronborg Castle and most specifically the casements beneath the castle. These are breathtakingly scary. Low, arched stone hallways deep beneath the ground, some of them going under the moat, moisture running down the walls, the white walls blackened by the soot of the small laterns which is the only light down there. Some rooms and halllways are entirely dark; black openings branching off from the marked path and it's cold, cold, even when the sun is bright and warm outside. We clung to one another's hands and snuck around, exploring and marveling in hushed voices at the feeling of the place, the fact that soldiers used to really live down there 400 years ago, and how the casements were without any shadow of doubt the perfect DE war hideout. There was one room, a dead-end room lit by a single lamp, in which the air was dead. You choked, going over the threshold, and it made your skin crawl; I don't scare easily, but that room felt as if someone died in there (which, considering the castle's history, is entirely possibly). We hurried out, and did not return to it.
We came out into the sunlight again, wideeyed and breathless, and went to sit in the sun in the courtyard, trying to get warm and shake the vague feeling of horror (scary but thrilling, all save that one terrible room which was just sickening). We agreed that we had never ever been in a more IC place, and that we ought probably to go see the actual castle as well, since we were there, even though really we were eager to go back down.
The Royal Rooms of the castle were about as far from the icy dungeons as it is possibe to get; heavy carved wooden furniture, priceless tapestries, high white ceilings, delightful round tower rooms that we agreed would make excellent play rooms for pureblod children (this was a day very much occupied with imaginary people and places; being in an actual castle gave it a kick). We took pictures, regarded the actual hogwarts-style fourposter bed with amusement, twirled in the ballroom and got very politely accosted by one of the guards who seemed to think we might be up to something because I was wearing my cloak. Privately I rather think we gave the stuffy atmosphere a certain je-ne-sais-qoui in the way of cloakiness.
Having dutifully finished our tour of the upper rooms, we descended with no small amount of glee back into the casements. This time we were roleplaying, switching between DE war era Regulus and Rabastan and present day Blaise and Theo (Me and Michie, respectively). There was distressingly crowded by then, and a lot of the tourists were rather startled when they happened to turn thir flashlights into the dark corner where we'd settled and saw us huddled there, freezing our asses off and hunched in my cloak, all for the sake of some of the most realistic roleplaying I've done in a long while. We stayed more or less in character all the way trough and into the courtyard again, as well as out onto the battlements overlooking the sea. Angsty, naturally, but delightful. In fact, we stayed IC all the way to the station and a good part of the train journey back to Copenhagen, at which point we broke character to eat something, and to talk freely (Blaise and Theo are ridiculously silent characters).
Safely back in Copenhagen we had dinner and then I had to head on home for the night, and for a curious poking around online, which resulted in me not getting enough sleep at all, of course.
The next day we took Symon and Gabriel to the zoo, which was lovely, but it was the kind of day where things kept going a little wrong, and thus was tiring, though the kids had a very good time. We did see the penguins, to much amusement, and Gabriel gleefully pointed at every animal he saw with happy cries of DOG! DOG!, especially the llamas of which he seemed particularly fond. We retreated back to base camp (aka my mom's apartment) where we were joined by Robert who came to pick up Gabriel and spent an hour on the nearby playground eating absolutely delicious pizza and frolicking on the swings (this to the somewhat more accurate shouts of SWING! SWING! from Gabriel). Michie is a wonder with children and has seemingly endless patience and Symon, of course, did not fail to recognise these qualities and adore her accordingly.
Robert left with a happy baby and Michie and I sprawled on her bed, there to be diverted by my mother's Enneagram personality type charts which we devoured keenly and proceeded to make gleeful and incomprehensible character notes off, throwing astrology in for good measure, with the occasional correction from my mom (who's something of an expert on both).
My notes on Blaise read: 4w3, SX, (L3-9) - scorpio/scorpio, C Pisces, and I swear that makes sense in my head. Also, for anyone who doesn't know, apparently the key thing to know about a person with Moon in Pisces is 'they're probably abusing something.
After my mom went to bed we ended up roleplayig, picking up on Blaise and Theo once more, and after getting my character pwned, much to my amazement, we went to bed rather late, feeling accomplished.
Next day was Michie's last day, and we slept late and spent a lovely and very lazy morning and early afternoon cuddled in bed (couch, actually, but I keep telling myself it's a bed), picking up the character discussion from the night before. We managed, impossibly, to work out the dynamics between two amazing, beautiful male characters and not slash them in the slightest. I'm a little proud of this. We also worked through three generations of characters, dynamics, drama and storylines and all in all were happily occupied and totally obscure (my mother merely smiled tolerantly whenever she entered the room and heard us throwing around sentences such as Draco is really a rather testy baby or You can trace the Black sisters' eventual murder of Abraxas back to Silene seducing him). Evenually we poked our noses outside and went to sit in the sun by the nearby lake, watching pigeons and gulls being ridiculous and making the most of the last hours of the holiday. A pitstop at an extremely shady little store to buy soda, another round of heavenly pizza and we were off to the airport and another sighful leavetaking. I do have high hopes, however, that Michieface will be returning on a more permanent basis come autumn, though I've warned her that she'll tire of me and my dramatics eventually.
Till then, I had a lovely, lovely, lovely holiday. ♥
There will be picspam. Still working on that.