Do you speak Danish?

Benoit and I set out on our world tour by bicycle, leaving Canada in May 2010. Denmark was our second country on the tour. Our friend David, whom we first met back in 2007 at the Havana airport in Cuba, came to meet us for some cycling in Denmark. I kept a daily journal of our travels: where we stayed, how much it cost, and more of what Benoit likes to call my boring details that no-one wants to read. However, in case you are interested in these boring details, here is an excerpt:

David is all about drinking coke and eating ice cream while cycling, so of course we had to stop at a quaint little coastal town that was selling cones at the beach. David went for his ice cream fix; Benoit went in search of a toilet. I waited for them, squeezed between a Danish couple sitting on a bench. The woman spoke to me, but no word she said was familiar. I realized suddenly that I had not prepared my usual communication basics to carry with me before arriving in Denmark. I tried, Do you speak english? Head shake no. Parlez-vous français? Again, no. Hablan Usted espagnol? No. Sprechen Sie Deutch? Still no. I had run out of languages! Even with no language in common, I got out my map of Denmark and we gestured and mimed out a conversation. I found out that they are from Lemvig and that they are cycling around for the day. They pointed to their bikes, the classic sit straight up on the seat style with a basket on the handlebar and a kickstand that matches in colour. The boys returned, missions accomplished, and we were back on the road.

For the whole shebang, I have made pdf versions of my bicycle logs and put them on Box.net:
Denmark, Part 1 of 2: 5 pages, 117 Kb: DenmarkBlogPart1.pdf
Denmark, Part 2 of 2: 5 pages, 117 Kb: DenmarkBlogPart2.pdf
Clicking on one of the links above will take you to a Box.net web page that says that the file has been shared with you. Click on download and enjoy.