Day 110 - Frederiksberg Centret, Brandman Sam, and Mosha the elephant

I know, I know. It has been a while. Blogging ain't easy.

On Saturday, Emily and I did some window shopping / real shopping around København. We had planned to make our way to the strøget to search for a quiz prize to give out for the World Hemophilia Day event that Emily is helping to organize at Novo.

The metro was all messed up at Frederiksberg station. It's never a good sign when you see way too many people waiting for the metro. Rather than try to translate the announcements over the PA, we decided to wander into the Frederiksberg Centret to see if we could find an appropriate quiz prize.

The centret is basically a mall. On the lower level there's an atrium and in that atrium there is generally some sort of bargain area where you can buy stuff from one of the stores in the mall.

It rotates about. On one day it might be Nordic Philosophy and on the next it might be Føtex. On the weekend it's much more exciting.

We have witnessed many different kids events. Sometimes there's face painting. Very very elaborate face painting. Saturday, it was Brandman Sam.



There were two firefighters, one with a Purdue Pete-esque plastic head and one "normal" man dressed as a firefighter. The dude without the plastic head was yelling at the kids in Danish to answer his questions and move the story along. It was all very aggressive. At one point Brandman Sam was trying to get the Danish kids to guess what was stuck up in a tree. Imagine incredibly loud incessant kittens meowing.

Thankfully the kids figured out that it was...KITTENS...stuck in the tree. Good work Brandman Sam. Good work Danish kids. I'm sure that at this point the live actors saved the kittens and everything was back to normal. Emily and I wondered aloud if these two guys get to change rolls occasionally. The plastic headed Brandman is mute, he doesn't get to say anything. He just gets to flail his arms around along with his massive plastic head. I felt bad for him.

At some point they all sang a Danish version of the Hokey Pokey. It's great to know that the Hokey Pokey exists in nearly every language. Non-mute Brandman lead the song, again very aggressively. There was a lot of HEY, HOKEY POKEY. I was terrified.

This week, many elephant sculptures started popping up in and around København. Like this.

Anyway, this is all part of a fundraiser to raise money for the protection of asian elephants. It is called Elephant Parade. The local shops are selling small ceramic elephants painted in all sorts of crazy colors. There were many that had what looked liked casts. Today I learned that what looked like a cast wasn't a cast at all. It was a prosthetic leg!

Poor Mosha lost her leg to a landmine but has now been fitted with this prosthesis. Awesome.