"There is no bad weather. Only wet clothes."

As we were caching in the rain, our friend Simon repeated, "There is no bad weather. Only wet clothes."  Ours were very wet.  By the time we'd cached a couple of hours, we looked like three drowned rats.  Or perhaps I should say, three very satisfied drowned rats.


We'd arranged to meet Simon at the Hareskov train station, about 30 minutes from central Copenhagen and visited the Hareskoven forest.  It was in a "natural area" not unlike Portland's Forest Park with lots of trails, though much more level.  But since we arrived early, we wandered over to a nearby cache ourselves, and spent awhile looking.  Long enough to apply insect repellant.  Long enough to check the hint which was "under stub."  Hmmm, we can translate under but wonder what stub means.  Checked our travelers dictionary which is useful for translating restaurant menus but turns out to be utterly useless for translating geocaching hints.  Is stub a stump or a stone or branch or something else?  Turns out it's a stump, which we guessed after finding the cache, and which Simon confirmed for us later. 

It was misting when Simon arrived at the scheduled time, he parked his bike, and we set off on foot.  Over the next 10 or so kilometers and 9 caches together the weather worked its way through drizzle, sprinkle and was well into rain.  Keeping glasses dry and un-foggy was a losing proposition.  At least it was reasonably warm.  We wandered through a very nice deciduous forest, on trails that had recently been flooded.  There were many slugs of two endemic varieties: one a deep rich black, the other a vibrant orange.  We never encountered the non-native "killer slugs" which apparently have stripes. 

We then went to the restaurant Simon had selected, which was pretty much in the middle of nowhere.  Simon's wife Berit joined us, as did another geocacher, Anders, who is Swedish with a Danish wife and who lives in each country part of the year.  The restaurant makes beers from the local area; the strawberry one indeed had a hint of strawberry.  After a tasty dinner Berit and Simon invited us to their place.  Berit biked home and prepared coffee, tea and more dessert (not that any of us were hungry after a tasty all-you-can-eat buffet).  The rest of us walked there, and found a cache on the way. 

We got to meet Simon and Berit's two teenagers.  And spent a wonderful and memorable evening chatting about many things.  Everyone's English was amazing -- probably better than ours.  Anders and Simon said that they learn British English in school (they mentioned driving lorries, for example), but have much more exposure to American English through tv and movies.  They teased each other good-naturedly about Denmark and Sweden, and later acknowledged that the countries are likely family: when among themselves they argue but in front of the rest of the world they're a united group, along with Norway.  We also learned a bit about the differences: Danes have higher salaries but pay their own social security with a 50% tax rate; Swedes have lower salaries and taxes but their companies pay their social security.  Denmark is more expensive, so many people live in southern Sweden and commute to Denmark for work. At the end of the evening, Simon walked us to a different train station and we rode back to our hotel basking in the glow of a fantastic afternoon and evening with our new friends.