07-07 Hans Christian Andersen in Odense, Denmark

We walked over to the childhood home of Hans Christian Andersen. Their home was really small, but they were a poor family. They shared the right hand door with the family in the middle. A third family lived in the left 1/3 of the building. They lived in the right 1/3 of this house.

He lived here in this small two room section of the home with his mother and father. The table was his father's work bench; he was a shoemaker. His mother was a washer women, standing in the cold river, washing clothes all day.

There was a bed in the corner for his mother and dad and he slept on the settee.

This was their kitchen.

The lady here was very friendly and shared more information and answered our questions. There was no running water and the outhouse was out back. They went to the town square to draw the water.

Next we split a chicken burger, onion rings, a chocolate banana shake and a Pepsi Max at Burger Anarchy.

1pm, on to the other museum. We started with the film about his life. It showed every 15 min alternating from the Danish and English.

This museum, after the film, was mostly reading through his life. There were manuscripts and paper items he had cut out. Half way through his life you went through his grandparent's house where he was born.

Then we continued reading through his life.

Interesting fact is that HCA never "owned" a home of his own. His last flat in Amsterdam looked very nice though and they had a re-creation of it in the museum.

HCA wrote his last novel, Lucky Peter, at the age of 65 in 1870 and commented afterwards, "My writer's flame has got out, my time is over...". He died in 1875.

After we finished here, we walked around town. It's a very walk-able town.

Here's a building from 1646.

We walked in a couple of shops, then had dinner. We split a pizza at an Italian place.

Walking home, we bought some water for tonight and tomorrow morning (we still have one more chocolate muffin each for breakfast) and ice cream bars, which we ate while we walked to the train station for the last Hans Christian Andersen statue.

Entitled, The Trinity, it is HCA sculpture showing his three sides, The Shadow, The Improviser and The Travelling Companion.

Lastly we bought our train tickets for tomorrow. It will be an early day tomorrow, as we plan on catching the 8:10 am train to Billund, Denmark, where Legoland is.