Denmark is real!

No shit. I'm in it right now. There are strange letters on the keyboard, like æ and ø and å.
Glasgow and London and the Lakes District are also real. If you too have been to these places then you don't need my confirmation, but if you haven't then you can take my word as evidence.
We arrived in London after approximately 24 hours of torture under the guise of international air travel. In an eerie reprisal of that perennial Salientin-joke about Wee Hamish who did not stop crying fra' Aberdeen to Auckland, some children several rows behind us screamed the whole way from Singapore to Heathrow. I was welcomed in to London by the worst airport organisation I've yet seen and a terrible cup of tea from Starbucks. We made our way to Euston Station, where we sat on the grass and were stared at, as I tried to properly cognise the fact that I was actually in actual England and everything was twelve hours different and I was suddenly an outsider.
England is very old and very crowded and very manicured. All the gaps are filled in: hedges are clipped, trees have been planted, fences are painted. Nothing is wild except the weeds that grow to the sides of the train lines. We went for a walk when we got to the Lake District; the forest was a plantation and you could watch the 'Squirrel Camera' from the comfort of the cafe at the bottom of the hill (which, by the way, served some of the best hot chocolate I've ever had, an anomaly in this land of surly service and dishwater-strength coffee). And CCTV is absolutely everywhere.
Scotland is a bit rougher. In Glasgow people on the street sound like they are garlging ball bearings when they talk. Too many things have happened for me to bother retelling. Mum says to say that she is in love with Charles Rennie Mackintosh, whom you can Google search if you don't know who he is. I was briefly inspired to relocate to Glasgow University, and am still mulling this option over... Glasgow is dirty in the most innocent literal sense: buildings are covered with a century's worth of coal soot and car pollution. Everything is older, bigger, more beautiful, more awe-inspiring than I could have ever imagined, and by contrast I felt young, small, scruffy and naive.
And now, Denmark, which is even older and several degrees more foreign. The houses have thatched rooves and cars drive on the wrong side of the road and the language is completely different (as opposed to Glaswegian, which admittedly does have a lot in common with English). We are staying with Frede, an old friend of my Dad, in the house that has belonged to his family for a hundred years. Down the road - less than 50 metres - is the church and graveyard where his parents are buried. The town was founded some time in the 12th century.
And this is normal here.