Starting Out. (Timeline: 1946 thru 1964)

Jeg var født og voksede op på Østerbro i København, Danmark.

Translation: I was born and grew up in Østerbro, Copenhagen, Denmark.

Through my entire childhood we lived in a one bedroom apartment on the 4th floor. Our building did not have elevators, and we only had a shower, which had been retro-fitted in a corner of the kitchen, so was separate from the toilet. We were close to the duty-free harbour and to Langelinje, where I used to go often, to look at the big ships and dream of traveling the oceans of the world. I have always loved the ocean, and one of my childhood pleasures was the occassional boat trip to Malmö, Sverige (Sweden), which is just across Øresund and which we could se in the distance on clear days. Not much of a trip as ocean travels go, but the only one that was within our reach, financially.

When I say that I was born there, I was ACTUALLY born in that apartment; not in a hospital. The story I got from my mother:

It was during a pretty bad snow storm, and in the middle of a whooping cough epidemic, so the only doctor my mother could get to attend her was a military doctor. My brother was born on 6/6 (D-Day) and I was supposed to be born on 3/3, but my mother was so worried about Bjørn, my brother, who had a bad cough, that my birth was delayed until the 4th. When I was little, the way I understood that was that I was born an entire day later, but in reality it was most likely a matter of minutes, or maybe an hour or so.