Billund, Denmark.
Home of the Brick.

 OK, I’ll confess: I didn’t get around to writing the travel post last night.

I could take the high road and say that because today is going to be mostly a “packing” day and we leave early tomorrow, that it made sense to delay the nightly post so as to stretch it out a bit, since there won’t be much so say about “packing day” anyway.
But the truth is I was just tired and didn’t feel like it, partially because of the Log Lady and Two Socks.
You’ll have to keep reading to figure that one out.

Yesterday (which I’ll probably misidentify as ‘today’ a few times, because that’s how these emails usually work and because my fingers are going to go there) we went to Billund, a small town about three hours from Copenhagen.
If you know, you know. If not, let’s just say that we visited a site that is architecturally significant and also involves one of my other passions.
Yep. Billund is where Lego started and where they still have their HQ. It’s also home of Lego House.

I visited here on a lark back in 2018. I say, ‘on a lark’ because I was on a coaster trip with European Coaster Club and one of the stops was Legoland in Billund. Nice park, but we got early entry for the club and so I’d knocked out everything I wanted to do in the park pretty quickly and the crowds of kids were getting to me. That’s when I remembered hearing about Lego House and wondered if it was close enough to walk to. It was.
The place had only been open a short time at this point - it didn’t even have the name on the building yet, nor had they put up the big blocks out front. Here’s a pic from that visit:

Also notice the lack of people. On my first visit, there were only a handful of people in the place, hardly any kids, and everything was accessible and easy to photograph.
That’s not true any more. The LOBBY of the place had about twice as many people in it as the entire 12,000 sq/m building had on my last visit!

No matter. Lego House has set itself up as a “play date” area for kids from all over the world and in that regard, it’s working out for them spectacularly well. Each of the “experience zones” has a central area with fantastic display pieces, both created by Lego designers (like these Dinos)

…and by regular fans, who were asked to submit pieces of their own for inclusion in the House for this year (Lego’s 90th birthday). Some of the user-created stuff were our favourite pieces. Rob and I both LOVED the giant toothbrush/razor/matches set

Under each model is a photo and short bio of the fan who created them. Nice!

Around each display area are play zones where kids can work together or separately to build stuff that interacts with the House. Keeps them busy - keeps them out of the way for folks who want to look at the displays. Brilliant!

Speaking of displays: the 90th year birthday cake was on display.

Impressive enough viewed like this - but each vertical ’stripe’ of figures is slightly different than each of the others. Arms are moved, other things repositioned - and the whole thing is SPINNING at about a million rpm, making the static figures appear to move, like those old “flip-books” where you rifle the pages quickly and the drawings seem to move. The farther down the cake you go, the more elaborate the ‘movement’ of the figures. Mesmerizing.

Back to the toothbrush and razor- the realism was absolutely amazing…
But there’s a paradox in Lego building… the larger the model, the easier it is. When you create large models, every detail becomes easier to suss out, and you usually have several pieces that can work to duplicate whatever look you want to achieve. The opposite is true when you create micro scale stuff, as your list of available piece suddenly becomes short and conveying any sort of detail gets seriously difficult. In that regard, one of the most brilliant use of just a handful of bricks that was saw were these adorable little sheep in a farmhouse display.

But the real star models at Lego House are in World Showcase. Here, imaginary places spring to life in astonishing detail.
…and they are in minifigure scale!

I should explain: if you’ve ever been to a Legoland park, you’ve likely been mesmerized by “MiniLand” displays - replicas of real-world places. They’re awesome. Here’s their replica of the queen’s palace in Copenhagen

And here’s the real one:

But those models are upscaled beyond mini figure scale because it allows for more detail AND because you usually view these from a distance, so they need to be bigger.
Miniland ‘people’ are more than twice as big as the mini figures that come in store-bought sets. So can they shrink the models down to less than half the size of the Legoland ones and still get any kind of detail?
Boy, can they.

You could spend hours on each model and still discover new details in each one.
Rob discovered that Statler and Waldorf from the Muppets are sitting in the box seats at a theatre

That’s obviously a new addition since my last visit, as those Muppet mini figures only came out this year.
I’m sure they are constantly updating the models to keep them fresh.
Every five minutes or so, day turns to night and all the models light up and give a whole new vibe

The one jaw-dropping thing that the House is most famous for sits right in the middle of everything: the Tree of Creativity. It’s a 4-storey behemoth made of 6,316,611 bricks. At the time, it was the world’s largest Lego sculpture - and might still be. I checked, and can’t find any that list with more pieces - but as for SIZE, the tree is eclipsed by a replica of London’s Tower Bridge that was built by Land Rover to launch a new model of their car. The cars on the bridge are actual Land Rovers. The rest of the model is Lego. It was about a million pieces less than the Tree to build, though.

I mentioned that the place we went was architecturally significant. It is.
Designed by Bjarke Ingels Group - the same firm behind Telus SKY - it has won a metric shit-ton of awards, for design, functionality, green construction, and other things. Also on several “coolest places to visit” lists from travel sites.
When I was here before, I checked out the store inside and saw that they had a set of the House itself. Neat!

With no room in my suitcase, though, I figured I’d just get it online when I got home.
But when I tried that, I discovered that the set is ONLY available at the store inside Lego House. I wrote to them and begged them to sell me one and ship it, and I could prove I’d visited. No can do.
I said, “then can you make it super-obvious that the set is only available there? I’d have for sure gotten one if I’d known.”
Voila!.
There is a separate section of the store now with clear signage that “these sets are only available at the Lego House” - and in addition to the Lego House set, there are three more limited edition sets as well. I picked up all four.

One is a replica of the wooden duck pull toy, which was the first thing Lego made. (FYI, if you aren’t aware, “Lego” is a portmanteau of “leg godt” - Danish for ‘play well’).
Also, if you aren’t aware, the plural of Lego is not “legos” - it’s Lego. Just like deer or shrimp. But I digress.
The green one is a replica of the brick making machine you can see in the Lego House. (More on that later)
The third is a tribute to the first Lego Master Designer, Dagny Holm. Nice that the very first one was a woman. Lego is very progressive in their inclusivity. While (thankfully) it’s not that much of a surprise that the first designer would be a woman, remember that this was back in the 1950s.
She was the lead designer for the Legoland park in Billund and most of the original Mainland creations there are hers.
The trip to Lego House was pricey - even after “buying” our tickets with VIP points. We had to rent a car, drive three hours each way, and pay to cross a toll bridge - which was $43!!!!!!! Each way!!!!!!! Sheeee-it.
Totes worth it, though. It’s a singularly unique experience.
Back in Copenhagen, we decided to try out this funky little bar we passed earlier this week.

It’s a funky little spot with lots of quirk and old, lived-in furniture.

We only stayed for one drink, though, as there’s no food menu (even though the place calls itself a café) - and if you were wondering about the name of it, yes - it references Margaret from Twin Peaks, often referred to as The Log Lady. There’s nothing else in the place that invokes the series, though - save for a photo of Margaret and her log hidden amongst a wall of unrelated photos, plus the fact that the passage into the store room requires that you go through the Black Lodge.

We left there and went to Two Socks Ginbar.
They had some super-fancy grilled ham/cheese sandwiches that were delicious, plus some serious variety in the gins they offered.
Here was the gin menu:

Here was the selection on the wall:

We both had martinis, Rob got a Swedish gin where the distilling process included months in a juniper barrel - very strong on the juniper, obviously, and really nice.
Mine was a gin made by the restaurant’s own distillery and it was also nice and dry and juniper-forward, but it was also 41% alcohol. Yeah, I felt that one.
So if I didn’t get around to writing the post last night, blame it on The Log Lady and Two Socks.

…and now we pack to go home. It was a fun trip.

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