The Big Move

Well that’s it. Almost 8 years ago we moved into a house on Gladiolus Way and thought that we would both live to see our last days as old men in that house on Gladiolusvej 4.  Who knew that this house would be too large and a major time consumer and a deep deep D-E-E-P money pit?  Like the movie. You must buy it and see it. You simply must. Even if you’ve already seen it, you simply must see it again.  The Money Pit with Shelly Long and Tom Hanks.  You’ll cry with laughter.

Well……………. all the garden, the weeding, the shopping, the painting, the lack of insulation, out dated and non working heating system and on and on I could go……………. It just simply got to be too much and as you all know, we ended up putting the house up for sale 2 years ago.  A year and a half went by.  Many lookers but no buyers.  So after too low and too few offers, we decided to take a 6 month winter break (even though the winters are 11 months long here) and then try again later.  In the last blog you can see that I had spiffed up the bathroom with new paint and tile.  We tried to get the house ready for the big Easter real-estate weekend.  It didn’t happen - but no biggie; it turned out to be the worst Easter real-estate weekend in Danish history. 

As it turns out, 2 weeks later, a looker was very interested.  He came to the house 4 times.  The 3^rd time was with an architect.  Unannounced the guy had the nerve to show up with an architect.  ‘Well there goes that sale’ – I thought to myself.  The architect even scolded me for doing such lousy brick repair work.  I had to explain that it had actually been done by a very expensive professional brick layer which we paid under the table.  The work was so awful that I had actually considered stuccoing the house to cover up all its ills. 

On the 4^th visit – which I was surprised there would even been a 4^th, the man brought his mom and dad.  Huh? You’re in your 40’s and you’re bringing your parents to check out the house??

We figured it out, the guy was very interested in the house but didn’t have the cash for such a pricey home and mom and dad were going to be financing the place for him and we can just go ahead and consider the house sold.

Days later, our real estate agent called and said the guy would like to make an offer.  3,720,000 was as high as he could go and our agent told us it’s a very good deal and we should consider it.  The realtor set the sales price to 3,995,000 but said that realistically we can expect 3,800,000.  Now here is a guy offering 3,725,000 – what shall we do?  TAKE THE MONEY AND RUN!!!  During the previous sale 3,7 was all we could get and now we know that in a market that is even worse, this is going to be the best we can do and we better take it while we can.

I’ve been following the market closely in terms of buying.  Jens and I have agreed to several places but only to see them sold before actually selling our place.  We had 4 favorites.  All 4 sold before we could get a chance. Then a 5^th favorite in the same building as the 2^nd favorite was for sale with an even better view for just a few bucks more.  The apartment was so fab and the price was so low that the apartment in the worst economy sold in less than 3 months.  Then our house sold just days later so now we absolutely had to find a 6^th favorite here and now.  We actually found an ok 6^th and ok 7^th favorite in the same building as the 3^rd favorite but the 6^th favorite has a very worn down kitchen and the 7^th favorite had a black kitchen.  But this was it – we either had to choose between the worn down kitchen apartment or a black kitchen apartment.  Before we decided I took one more look on-line and found a new listing with “photos on the way” notice.  That was on a Friday and I had a very strong feeling that the apartment photos would be up loaded late Sunday evening.  So just before going to bed I took a look once again on-line and sure enough there were the pix of the new listed apartment.  “Take a look at this”, I said to Jens.  I had to go to work early Monday morning but I had Jens call the realtor Monday as soon as the office was open and book a viewing of the newly listed apartment.  On Tuesday morning we were able to see the apartment and after just a few minutes we said, “We’ll take it”.  We didn’t even bother to offer less as I knew this was a low price and we didn’t want to miss this chance.  There are actually other apartments in the same building that go for same price or for more and actually have less of a view than what we have.  And that is why the prices are actually as high as they are; because of the view.

Everybody was shocked.  We were shocked that we were able to sell the house in just a few weeks. It only took as long as it did because the man’s wife was on business in another country and had to wait for her approval.  The realtor of this apartment was shocked as the apartment was on the market for only 2 days and we bought it. 

Now the hard part was that the people who wanted to buy our house had actually sold their apartment already and they had to be out by August 1^st.  And the sale of our home was contingent on the bank guarantee of the person buying the apartment of the buyer of our house.  Sound confusing?  It is.  It is because the person buying the other apartment was weird saying that her money was as good as anybody else’s and that she didn’t need a bank guarantee.  Well… no bank guarantee, no home sale.  So she got dropped and that meant we got dropped as well but magically and mysteriously this buyer of our place had another buyer for his apartment.  And of course I thought that this was all just BS.  It’s the worst housing market ever and suddenly this guy has a second buy for his apartment?  This told me that if there is a second buyer, then it must not be so urgent that the guy needs to be out by August 1^st and that would give us more time to find the right place.

But no – surprise surprise – the guy did have a new buyer and he did have to be out by August 1^st.  Well ok- what ever!  We'll be out by August 1^st.  Oh no no no.  The stipulation for us getting all that money was that we had to be out by July 15 but the house would be there’s on August 1^st.  This meant that we had a double mortgage the first month and they got to live in the house for 2 weeks for free.

See – that was why we absolutely had to have an apartment here and now and why we are so damn lucky to have been following the market; to know what is available where and when and for how much.

And so we used the same tactic when we bought this place – “we’ll pay you the full asking price but we need to move in, in 2 weeks.” Of course since it was the 1^st and not on the 15^th, we didn’t get 2 free weeks out of the deal – we got a double mortgage. The deal was done and the owner of this apartment had to re-book his flight ticket as he was to be away in Oslo on business on the day that we should move in.  Later he came to ask us if it would be ok to have the first few morning hours of the day that we should be moving in.  No problem we said as we weren’t really sure about when we could even get a moving van – but we didn’t tell him that.

As it turns out the guy needed more than a few hours and he didn’t even move out – he just moved down.  He is on the board of home owners and was able to move his stuff into the office in the basement.  OK – it’s a tiny apartment, you have hardly anything here and it’s taking you forever to move your stuff down the elevator?  We started moving in on his last load out.  It was that close. 

Getting a van was a big ordeal too.  In America they have Rent-a-Wreck.  They have it here in Denmark as well but its called Lej-et-Lig which literally means Rent a Corps (and you can rent a Hearst).  So on-line it was going to be no problem to rent a small van.  We needed small so that we could drive into the underground garage and dump our stuff right next to the elevator.  But I waited and what a mistake because it was the 1^st of the month and everybody is moving and everything was rented and they only had one large van left.  Wait! Everybody is moving?  In the worst economy ever, everybody is moving? Turns out the discount auto rental company has a discount website as well and the computer reservation calendar was all discomboobulated.  But I could tell that if I just went down to the office on opening hours it should be possible to get the van I want.  It was so that we were actually able to move on the day we wanted – just 2 hours later than we hoped to start.

Jens was thinking about me and my back and wanted to make it easy on me by getting a moving company to move our stuff.  "Our boxes and boxes and boxes of crystal from around the world and Royal Porcelain?? -Are you nuts!??”  I’m not letting moving monkeys anywhere near my crystal and royal porcelain and I wont even let you move it, Jens.  I trust no one!  So I bought a million small moving boxes and packed each one very carefully and lightly so that $30,000 worth of second hand, hand painted, full laced Royal Porcelain doesn’t fall through the bottom of the cheap 2 dollar-a-box made of tissue paper.  Because I packed every box so lightly, I knew that I could easily move everything myself. It would just take a half million back and forth van to apartment, elevator trips. We got rid of the big heavy sofas and training system before we moved so the only heavy things left were the matrices.  This is the land of IKEA which means all furniture unscrews into flat long boards.

My friend Dan from up the street had just come home and gave me a hand with the beds.  Other than that, it was pretty simple and straight forward – until the rain.

It was our second to the last move of the day.  We decided to take a break and walk the dog so she could pee and poo.  We stopped by Dan’s house and had a coffee on his sofa.  Then it started to rain so we downed our coffee to get home before the sprinkle turned into heavy rain.

Heavy rain is an understatement.  I poured like crazy and then it happened.  The sewers were breeched and the manhole covers in the streets popped off with water bubbling like lazy geysers, inches above the street.  Well………..to get to the point……..our basement started to fill with water.  We did what we could with a little bucket; trying to bail ourselves out of trouble but to no avail.  We were 20 centimeters underwater.  We just couldn’t believe it.  Here we were in the middle of moving on a nice somewhat sunny day and just about completed with just one more move to go and splash! 

It turns out that it was not just our home but just about the entire county experienced some flooding to either a major or minor degree.  It was reported that one of the hospital lost 14 years of cancer research.  Many large business companies had major damage to there computer servers – those with basement computer rooms.  All private homes with plumbing in the basements suffered damage. Our neighbor came home from a canceled concert in Tivoli because the concert hall was flooded.  I saw a photo on-line of cars on the city streets with water above the bottom of the car doors.  I said to a guy at work, “these must be worked photos”.  But as it turns out, one of his friends and another guy at work – his son – both had water in the inside of their cars that were parked on the street.

I am just now seeing these for the first time and by the looks of it, we were not the worst hit.  Vesterbro and Østerbro got the worst.  We are Amagerbro and it was bad enough. Check out the flooding at Amagerbro and other clips on this page for other flooded areas in Copenhagen.

You can imagine how awful we were feeling.  We were supposed to hand over a very nice home to a new buyer and the paper work is still in escrow.  We were panicked with a possibility of the guy backing out.  Thank god he didn’t but still we felt horrible delivering a flooded home to a new buyer.

All we could do was empty out the basement and dry the floor the best we could.  Luckily we had already just about 100% emptied out the basement of all of our moving boxes. Imagine if we couldn’t get the van until a day later.  All of our stuff would be damaged.  We ended up having to borrow towels from the neighbor as we had already packed and moved ours earlier that day.  The rain started at about 6 in the evening and we finished drying the basement at 12:30 that night.  I was so surprised to see that Jens was able to do so much of the work.  But it was not without a very high price and his body was totally out of whack the following 8 days.

The following day we continued with our moving and got it all completed.  As we drove back the rented van to the auto shop it started to rain again.  Then it started to pour.  And when we got home we got another shock.  We couldn’t believe it.  We got flooded out a second time.  We still can’t believe it.  It was and still is the talk of the town.  The rain just wont stop and they say it is going to get worse.  They say that this summer is now in the top 10 wettest summers.  I’m sure before the summer it over it WILL be the wettest summer ever! 

Our home insurance it going to pay for the damage and thankfully our insurance company suggested that they deal directly with the new home owner instead of us.  That would avoid having to relay all questions and info back and forth between the new home owner and the insurance company through us. 

The story doesn’t end here and I will only give you a brief on it but it turns out that they will have to put on a new roof and tilt it out.  It was designed with a tilt in.  It also turns out there was no insulation between the ceiling and the roof of the room that we slept in.  We didn’t know that but now we know one more reason why the house was so cold.  The insurance company also said that they will no longer cover the beautiful wooden floor in the guest room so now they will have to tile that too.  What a shame it all turned out to be.  We really had a lot of guilt about it for many days and still sad that this had to happen to the new buyer and of course to us as we were moving out.  It really took all the excitement out of moving.

After moving out we actually spent the next 2 weeks cleaning up our old home – both inside and out.  I actually cut the hedge in both front and back yard in the rain with an electric clipper and pulled all the weeds in the rain and even edged the grass along the paths and sidewalks in the rain with electric edger but I never got to cutting the mile high grass as it was as wet as a sponge.

Then the following 2 weeks after that, it was like a huge puzzle game trying to figure out where to put all of our stuff.  We moved from 230 square meters (2475 sq ft) to 94 square meters (1011sq ft).  Even though we didn’t have so much and even though we got rid of a lot of stuff before we moved, we still have a wad of stuff to try to find space for. 

What we didn’t know was that Uncle Frank from Michigan and Fabian and Patrick from Paris were going to be coming at the same time we were moving.  I mean we knew they were coming but we didn’t know that we would be selling the house and moving at the same time.  Frank was staying with a girlfriend of his but our time for visiting was too limited. The flooding had ruined any extra time we may have had to visit with Frank.  Fabian and Patrick were to stay here for 5 days.  We were in a mad panic about where to put all of our moving boxes and where were we going to sit.  It was all so crazy and still is.  But now it seems as if a light is starting to appear at the end of the tunnel. 

Patrick and Fabian brought us this fabulous pink champagne in a pink refrigerator.  The gladiolas are all that is left of the old house.  Hey Patrick and Fabian, send me pix so I can add them to this blog.

The whole idea with moving was to create more peace, pleasure and time in our lives.  So far it’s only been chaotic.  But everything is moving in the right direction so we are starting to feel a bit better and more calm.

OK – believe it or not, that was the short version.

Let’s move on to the actual apartment.

First of all…. Anyone who has had the desire to come out and have a cheap visit and stay for free in our fabulous guest room, that window of opportunity is now shut.  You snooze – you lose.  There are however plenty of other options if your dreams should happen to one day bring you this way and we hope its soon than later.

OK - here we go with the photos.  First the problem situations.  Not to freak out but just for fun.

When the guy left his apartment, he was in such a hurry that he just yanked the wires right out of the walls.

 I guess in 5½ years the guy never cleaned a thing.  This oven took me 3 days to clean. On day 2 I actually considered buying a new oven.  The little fan in the back actually had some of the holes totally blocked by burnt food.

 The little orange spot is actually a translucent and almost clear oven lamp - now that I'm done cleaning it that is.  And yes, one of the features of this oven is the self cleaning selector.

 The only piece of furniture that sat on the floor was the dinning table, sofa and bed.  Everything else was hug on the walls.  Thus it looks like a giant size pin cushion here.

Need to disconnect your cable TV, computer or music system?  No problem.  Just give it a really good tug.

Messy cabinets?  That's what mice, rats and cockroaches are for.

Need to remove your hanging lamps?  A single simple snip will do the trick.

Going to a party and haven't got a thing to wear? If you can't find it in the lint basket, try looking in the dryer condenser.

 This is our entry mirror and shelf which looked great in the old house.  Here it is in our dinning area, way out of style and out of place so I will be adding lots of color to it and make a piece of art work out of it.  The shelf actually covers 18 holes that the guy left in the wall for us.  I guess he took is golf game just a little too serious.

 When the photos of the apartment first came on-line, we saw this unbelievable ugly poster hanging above the wall.  We thought for sure it must be a woman living in this apartment.  When we found out it was a guy we thought he must be gay.  Then we heard that he was looking to get a quick sell because he and his girlfriend were building a house.   Well it's no wonder that he left it behind.  It's do damn ugly.  But we don't dare take it down as we are afraid to find what may be behind it.  Plus it goes so well with the red white and blue bed sheets - it's the national South Korean flag colors.  And you thought I was going to say it was the colors of the Russian flag.

 

Sleeping Beauty seems to find everything just right.

Standing at the front door looking in.
Tiny closet on left looks large but is not.
Next door is to the bedroom and the door after that is to office room.
Bathroom with stack washer and dryer on right.

 This is from the living room looking back to the entrance.
Bedroom and office room on the right, bathroom on the left, neighbors door is straight ahead.  The elevator is just between our door and theirs.  There are 3 apartments on each floor.  The other neighbor is in between the 2 I just mentioned.

This is the floor plan and it may help to visualize the apartment layout a little bit easier.

 We left all of our tacky bookshelves at the oldhouse. We used them for our work tools, shoes and wine.  But we brought 2 of them along with us because we knew that we would need something temporairly for our books.
Originally the closet that you see in the picture below, was standing where the book shelves are now.
The man that lived here yanked these cabinet off of the wall and threw out the base.  In it's place he had a humongous closet and understandably so and there are is practically no closet/cabinet space in this apartment.  The only other thing he had in this room was his golf clubs, computer table and cocktail table.  There isn't space for more and that just about covers the basic necessities anyway.

 So we moved the cabinet down to the other end of the wall as this worked best for the space with the little sofa and the computer table.  Eventually we will knock a huge double door in this wall and open it up to the living room so that the light can pass through.  From the start, from the builder of the apartment, it was an option: that is to either have separate rooms or something large and flowing.
I like it large and flowing.

When we knock down the wall it will open up to this view with our back balcony.

 

This is my financial advisor trying to find loopholes so that we can keep this fantastic apt.

This is the back balcony which receives surprisingly lots of sun - when the sun is out of course.  There is enough space for 4 people - if sitting in a row.  Next summer, I plan on putting out a lounge that can lay all the way back with a little side table just big enough for my cocktails and snacks.

 This is the back yard for us - for the other apartments it is the front yard. Notice how cleverly they camouflaged the bicycle parking shed.  The roof is covered with grass so that when you look down on it you see green and not an ugly plastic or tin roof.

 The kitchen.
We will be adding upper cabinets as we have to continuously bend over for everything and desperately need more cabinet space. For some strange reason the latest kitchen trend is to show off your incredibly over priced and super ugly hood over the stove and every Dane re-doing their kitchen does this.
Weird.

 In the living room, looking to the kitchen.

 In the kitchen looking to the living room.  It's that back wall that I want to open up to let light fill in the dead space.

The living room needs an entertainment system.
Doors to the right are to the bedroom and office room.

This is the front balcony.  Looking below or out can be very entertaining.
There is a lot of activity going on around here. Joggers, bicyclist, dog walkers, boats, water taxis, tourist boats, kayaks, canoes, ski-doos and so on.

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So far we have had many meals out here on the balcony.  But we can feel that winter is on it's way so our out door meals are soon over with for this year.  But we are hoping for an Indian summer because so far we've only had rain.

Here we are having a morning coffee with cheese and jelly on toast.
The jelly was delicious, made in France, imported to Germany and exported to a German market in Denmark near the airport.  It's really fruity.  I like it fruity.
Notice the boats in the harbor - it's just like being on vacation (if/when the sun is out).

 

This is the view looking directly out from our balcony
The above and below pix are the same but the one below is with a longer lens.
The Gemini building is a work of art and a blog for itself.
This was Jens number one favorite and my number 2 favorite.
Then later when another apartment in this building went up for sale it became our number 5 favorite.  That's the one that sold in 3 months.  Actually surprised it took that long.  There is one forsale right now at a much higher price and the view is of this building and no water or city view at all.  Are you ready?- the square meter/foot of the place is only 71/765.  It's so tiny, you have to buy toilet paper one roll at a time.

The little boat in the forground is a house boat.  There is a young couple living there with a little girl and the wife has a bun in the oven.  I wonder what it is like to live in such a place. It looks really neat.  I asked Jens if he would ever trade our apartment for the boat.  His answer was that he would like to live in it during the winter first to find out what it is like and if it's not too cold, he would do it.
When we moved from Gladiolusvej, Jens said he would never move again and that this is the last time.
He said that when we moved from Vesterbrogade to Gladiolusvej.
You just never know, we may be moving to a boat one day.
What a deal that would be for you - lots of air mattress space for you to float on.

 And this is even a longer view - so you can see the detail which is easily seen with the naked eye from our balcony.  In the forground is the pedestrian/bicycle bridge - no cars.  The red brick building on the left with the X on it, is at the end of the shopping mall.  The X is for CinemaX.  It's a movie theater in the mall and it's huge.  What is funny about it is that it has a huge glass window that looks out onto the harbor.  The white smoke stack with black tip is a power plant.  The little tower next to that is the clock tower of the city hall in the city of Fredriksberg.  The silver and glass building is The Copenhagen Island Hotel.  Come and visit us and you can just walk to your hotel room in less than 5 minutes.  If you can see a little teeny tiny red sign with white letter S - almost in the middle of the picture just off to the right, that is one of the stops of the city light rail trains that will take you to the central station.  The 2 bigger structures: the black and white to the left  and the green glass structure to the right are office buildings.  More info on them in the next blog.  Buildings in the back ground are old apartments from the 20's and 30's.

Looking off to the right you can see the town hall tower and you can here it chime on the hour and on the quarter hour.  The skinny tower with the gold ball on top of it is a ride at Tivoli Gardens.  In between the 2 towers we can see the fireworks from Tivoli.

This is the view looking directly up the street; looking north.
Both these photos were taken on the same day about 6 hours from each other.
The sky was still hazy in real life but I found a new button on my camera.

 Looking south, a new apartment is going up.  We cold afford 4 of 7 ground floor apartments or 2 of the 1st floor apartment. (in Denmark the 1st floor is on the second floor. They count the 1st floor as the ground floor.  So our address is on the 4th floor but it equals the 5th floor by American standards)  We would love to have a brand new apartment but they wont be ready until late 2012.  It is accross the street from a building where a lot of apartments suddenly went up for sale.  This new building is blocking a small bit of view that many residents have enjoyed for 5 years.  It is also the building that had our 4th favorite and it was on the top floor - the 7th (8th) floor.  We never saw it live.  We only saw it from the Internet but we were ready to buy it if our house had just sold a bit earlier.  It's also the same building with or favorite 6th and 7th apartment: the worn down kitchen and the black kitchen.  There is only one apartment building between ours and that one with the 4th, 6th and 7th favorites.  While we were checking out the 7th favorite we noticed that the Mayor of Copenhagenng south, a new apartment is going up.  We cold afford 4 of 7 ground floor apartments or 2 of the 1st floor apartment. (in Denmark the 1st floor is on the second floor. They count the 1st floor as the ground floor.  So our address is on the 4th floor but it equals the 5th floor by American standards)  We would love to have a brand new apartment but they wont be ready until late 2012.  It is accross the street from a building where a lot of apartments suddenly went up for sale.  This new building is blocking a small bit of view that many residents have enjoyed for 5 years.  It is also the building that had our 4th favorite and it was on the top floor - the 7th (8th) floor.  We never saw it live.  We only saw it from the Internet but we were ready to buy it if our house had just sold a bit earlier.  It's also the same building with or favorite 6th and 7th apartment: the worn down kitchen and the black kitchen.  There is only one apartment building between ours and that one with the 4th, 6th and 7th favorites.  While we were checking out the 7th favorite we noticed that the Mayor of Copenhagen was moving in.  So I like to say that we have the Mayor as our neighbor - which is true.

 Way way waaaaaay down at the end of the harbor (this is shot with a long lens) is this really bizare George Jetson looking building.  When the market turns around and realestate booms again, a new building will go up and block this from our view.  But until then we will enjoy it as we long as we have it.

Here is Jens and Bounty at the front door of our stairway.  From the side walk you have to take the stairway (which is bicycle and wheelchair friendly) to the garden and look for number 73, ring the bell and your face will show up on our little screen and if we like what we see, we will buzz you in.

 Here is a bit more view of the garden.

At the top of the stair way / ramp from the side walk.

Standing just a few meters north of our apt. complex at the edge of the harbor and  looking south back towards the apartment.  Ours is the one just above Jens's head.

 Standing under the first floor of the Gemini Building and looking towards our apartment complex.  Our place is the one with the circle around it.

 From our balcony we can see this little boat harbor.  Our apartment building is the white building directly above Bounty.  It's the south side of the apartment complex.  The mayor moved into the golden building on the right.

 

Directly on the south side of the building are 3 square fresh water lakes.

 Here you can see the back side of the complex and this is where the entrance is to the parking garage.

 Our building is the white one to the right.  Directly behind me at the end of the freshwater lake is the street and then the boat harbor and then the view that can be seen from our balcony.

 The apartment was designed at the Jørn Utzon studios.
Jørn Utzon - Jørn Utzon - Hummmmmm - Where have I heard that name before?
Oh of course! Jørn Utzon - he designed the Sidney Opera House.  And like the many Australian who had their gripes with his design, I've got a few gripes of my own with this place.  Mainly the kitchen and bath.
See the following photos for example.

 I'm not quite sure what it is about the Danes but they love to show off their toilets.
The washer and dryer should be the place where the toilet hangs so that you can swing the door open to hide the bowl.  But no.  This design lets you see that we have top of the line washer and dryer (big deal!) in a stack version which takes away folding space and exposes all the pee stains and skid marks of which there were plenty when we moved in because as I mentioned earlier, the guy who lived here was a total pig.  Seriously, I had to take a hammer and chisel to get rid of yellow lime build up in the toilet and around all faucets.
Anybody got an idea how to get it off tiled walls?

Ok but to clear up any confusions - we really really really love this place and can't believe we have been fighting with the Gladiolusvej house for the last 7½ years.  We've been here 6 weeks and we just love it.  Hope you've enjoyed the tour too.
Hey! Wake up!
The tour is over now - you can go home.

UPDATE  -  UPDATE  -  UPDATE  -  UPDATE

As promised, I said to Fabian that if he sent me the photos he had taken while he and Patrick were here visiting, that I would add them to this blog.  And why not? this blog is already a mile too long.  But anyway, here are a few of the many pictures that he sent to me.  While Patrick and Fabian were here visiting we went to Bakken - it's the worlds oldest amusement park about 465 years old I'm guessing.  This summer was truly lousy (as you recall in this blog i reported on the flooding) but luckily for our guest 3 of the 5 days that they were here were wonderful and basically that was the summer of 2011.

At Bakken and just before boarding a horse and carriage ride through the deer park.

Just passed through the park entrance gates.

A fantastic mood shot of Patrick - but i don't think this is in Bakken.

Standing at the healing waters of an underground spring where the parks has it origins.

A beautiful summer day in Bakken.

After a long carriage ride and walk through the amusement park, we stop for a bite to eat.

The guys are great chefs and love to get down and dirty in any kitchen which instantly becomes their personal property :)

Sunset with the guys on our balcony.