| Friday, May 14, 2004 |  |
| Blogging in London |
 So, I spent a couple of days in London, having some productive meetings and going to a blogger evening initiated by Loic Le Meur. Many good people there. Not a particularly good venue, as it was very noisy with so many people in a small bar and hard to hear what everybody was saying. And difficult to get to know fifty people, even if they all have blogs. But a good thing, nevertheless, and good to meet some new or old friends. See some pictures here or here.[ Diary | 2004-05-14 16:28 | 3 comments | PermaLink ] More > |
| Royal Wedding |
 Today the Danish Crown Prince Frederik got married to Australian Mary Donaldson. Or, rather, from now on she is Crown Princess Mary.
Of course, nowadays monarchy is sort of old fashioned, royalty has no real power, and it is in danger of being completely irrelevant. But Denmark is not only the oldest kingdom in continous existence, the royals also happen to be unusually popular and well fitting their jobs. Queen Margrethe II is smart, articulate and artistic. She paints and designs stamps and costumes for theatre performances. She can sometimes be found walking around town like an almost normal person, even while much of her life is occupied with stiff public ceremonies. Little of the kind of dirt and scandals that plague royalty elsewhere is found in Denmark. They're just a mostly positive and harmless focal point. The two sons of Queen Margrethe and Prince Henrik (who's French), Frederik and Joachim, are extremely well educated and enthusiastic representatives for their country. Joachim is married to Princess Alexandra who's from Hong Kong. And now Frederik finally got around to finding the right person. Which is no easy task when all the interests of the country and the monarchy need to be weighed against each other. Some royals decide to just go their own way, whatever public opinion thinks about it. But in Denmark they take it very seriously. Meaning that even though they no longer have to marry only members of the aristocracy, they still have to choose well. So, even know it has been known for a long time that Frederik and Mary were an item, nothing was officially admitted before everything checked out all around. And before Mary already could speak Danish. We were glued to the screen all day. Luckily the Danish TV2 had a splendid video feed of 225kbits/s, which was almost as good as seeing it on TV. It was an elaborate fairy tale arrangement, of course, with much pomp and circumstance, carriage rides, parades, fancy dinner, wedding waltz, etc. And they just finished the fireworks [ Information | 2004-05-14 17:12 | 8 comments | PermaLink ] More > |