A Sceptical Mind

It’s time for the last blog post in our series of wedding related posts. After a great wedding day, a few days went by with organizing gifts, figuring out who bought what, cleaning up at home etc. etc., and then on July 14th we jumped on a plane headed for Dalaman, Turkey.

We were going on a fairly expensive 8 day trip to Marmaris in Turkey, where we were going to be staying at Turban Palace down by the shore. A 5-star hotel resort complete with All-inclusive concept, 3 pools, private beach, 4 restaurants, 7 bars, a water park, mini golf, huge apartment area for the rooms and.. well – a shit load of other things! The all-inclusive concept means that we don’t have to pay for food and drinks at all. Even several of the activities were included in the room price! So 24 hours a day, we could go to any bar and ask for a coke, a beer, a whiskey or whatever, and get it for free! Even the restaurants were free (however with special rules for the ala carte ones – more on that later).

So we got down there sometime around 1 am local time on Wednesday the 15th of July and quickly proceeded to our hotel room because we were so tired. Here we were met with a fantastic room, complete with a huge bed, a guest bed, a balcony, a flat screen TV and a lot more – and we even found out the mini bar was a part of the all-inclusive concept, so we were happy to be able to drink the few waters that were in there at this point.

Next day, we woke up and went down for breakfast. Here we saw how nice this all-inclusive thing really was! Huge buffets, specialized cooks standing around making specific meals (i.e. omelets or pancakes), free beverages and all you can possibly eat! It was great and you quickly started eating a lot more than you probably should. I’m pretty sure we gained quite a lot of weight down there! The same principle held for lunch and dinner, however with a lot different kinds of food and changing from day to day. You could even change your normal Main Restaurant meal for a ala carte restaurant once a week, so that you could get i.e. a five course meal in Italian cuisine or Turkish cuisine.

So the first day, we didn’t do much. We went for a small strole down Marmaris towards another hotel where we had an info meeting with the travel guides and where we also needed to pay for a few extra trips we wanted to go on. But all in all the first day was mostly relaxation in the resort. The second day was pretty much the same. We simply used our time getting used to the weather, enjoying the pool, the all-inclusive stuff and basically just relaxing. I also used a bunch of my time reading Seeds of Terror by Gretchen Peters – a book I recommend to anyone who has an interest in criminal finances, specifically how heroin is bankrolling the Taliban and Al qaeda.

But then on Friday, we went to something called Haman, which is a traditional Turkish bath at a spa house. The bath consisted of several things. We started off by changing clothes to bathing clothes and we then proceeded to sit in a sauna for 10 minutes (as if the 40 degrees Celsius outside wasn’t hot enough). After these ten minutes, we were guided to a big bathing dome where there was a large marble round table in the middle of the room and a bunch of fossets around the walls in this very damp room. Here we received a bath and scrub by a trained Haman specialist and were afterwards sent to a shower and rapped in a bunch of towels and stuff – basically like a mummy! Last but not least we received an oil massage for something like 20 minutes and was then finished – clean, relaxed and floating a bit!

On Saturday, we had planned to go on a boat trip with Star Tours – so that’s what we did. We joined another group of Danes on a small boat lead by a local. Here we proceeded out from the harbor and sailed to different bays in Marmaris, where we stopped for around 30 minutes and jumped of the boat to swim in the bays. I was a bit hesitant to begin with, as I knew the bays had some tiger sharks and white sharks, however both were very very seldom seen. The first time I didn’t jump in the water, but as Sara was pressuring me a bit, I finally decided to give it a try. I however got up quite quickly again, as did Sara – it was simply too creepy! I prefer swimming in pools! Later on in the day we stopped for some food on the boat and finally sailed back towards the harbor. We had however gotten seriously sunburned from lying on the boat during the siesta hours, so we were in a bit of pain the rest of the day and the day after that.

On Sunday, we were simply relaxing most of the day. Only in the evening did we do something special – we attended Turkish Night at a local restaurant where there was music, dance and food. All in all the entertainment there was great, since they had a bunch of dancers some of which were extremely talented. However the food was in no way something we can recommend. They market it as a real traditional Turkish three course meal, however in reality only the first course was Turkish and only the first two could even be called courses. A few water melons cut out does not constitute a course! However, as I said, all in all it was a good evening. Especially the male belly-dancer was cool – that guy is completely psychotic.

Monday, we once again mostly just relaxed and enjoyed the pool. Only during the evening did we do something special. We used up our ala carte reservation at the Italian ala carte restaurant at Turban Palace. Brilliant food really! Five courses, all of which were traditional Italian meals. Complete with a brilliant view of the mountains and the local bay – simply beautiful! Monday evening we started packing, because we had to go home the next day, and we did a final attempt at using our all-inclusive rights by taking up something like 8 drinks to our room.

Tuesday, the last day of our vacation, was used to the max by a trip with Star Tours. We began the day by packing everything and going down to eat. After having eaten, we checked out from Turban Palace and was picked up by a Star Tours bus. With this, we drove to a fishermen city called Dalyan were we would try a mud-bath, see ancient burial monuments and even visit turtle island. An island that’s special because it has fresh water on the one side of it and salt water on the other side. Also, turtle island should be the home of Caretta Caretta, an endangered species of sea turtle – however we didn’t see any. After the days activities we got a shower at a local hotel, got something to eat and then proceeded to the airport for our plane home.

All in all it was a great trip with a lot of experiences. Obviously I left out a ton of details here, because I’m trying to describe a week of activities – but I hope you got somewhat of an idea of what we did in Turkey.

Also, last but not least. A cute Turkish kitty cat we saw relaxing under a tree!

As I said in my last post, I’m currently doing a small series detailing the activities involved in my recent wedding to Sara Lind (now Sara Lind Mortensen). After having covered the bachelor party in my last post, it’s time to cover the actual wedding.

On July 11th 2009 I woke up after having slept at my dads house. As you may know, it’s customary the couple don’t sleep in the same house together the day before the wedding, so I had gone home with my dad to Haderup in Midwestern Jutland. I had slept fine really, however when I woke up I was oddly dizzy and was bleeding from my nose, so I was probably more nervous than I was aware of! After having eaten breakfast and gotten ready, we drove towards Silkeborg at around 11 am, stopping on the way to drop off a few things where my dad was sleeping the next night.

When we finally got to the church, it was around noon and only a handful of people had shown up yet (the wedding was at 1 pm). So we simply waited and said hi to the people who had shown up already, before we went into the church to sit up by the alter at around 12:40. At this point I was quite nervous! Time went by, as people slowly arrived and filled up the church. My best man, Michael Dahl, however hadn’t shown up yet. And even 5 minutes before it all started, he still hadn’t shown up. Apparently there had been some trouble with getting all people in the car from Aarhus fast enough, so they had arrived just a few minutes before the wedding started and Dahl came rushing in, apologizing straight away. At this point everyone was pretty much there and now we were just waiting for the bride to walk in.

And then, the music started and in came Sara! Smiling, happy and beautiful as ever. If there ever was a time where I was truly fucking nervous, this was it! A very odd feeling really. One that I don’t think most would understand unless they’ve tried it. You feel oddly overwhelmed and confused..but in a good way! So well, it’s fairly hard to describe – however what I can say is that for once I actually felt like crying because of something else than sadness.

So there we were – sitting across from each other, listening to the priest’s speech (which was surprisingly good.. she even dissed religion at one point: “We all know nothing in the bible is science and nothing should be taken literally” – I like her!). Things happened fairly like you would expect, with everything going smoothly. We even had two professional singers sing “Come What May” from Moulin Rouge as a duet – something that actually did prompt a tear from me – again.. overwhelming. All in all, a brilliant ceremony where everything worked as planned and everything was great!

After the ceremony, we had a small photo session with a friend photographer, a few pictures and greetings from guests outside and then onwards to our reception next door with champagne (imported from Italy), cake and other food and beverages. The wedding cake was even made by Sara’s little sister Anna, who has used the last several months figuring out how to make the perfect wedding cake (sshh: Don’t tell anyone, but I think she nailed it!). Anna is the girl to the right of here, the one in the red dress. After having eaten and greeted people, we got picked up by a white limousine, so that we could be transported to our photo session with a professional photographer by the name of Lars Lærkesen (www.laerkefoto.dk) – a thoroughly brilliant photographer, that did everything exactly like we wanted it, who was extremely professional, funny and creative.. basically the greatest pick we could have made! We highly recommend him! Also the limousine firm DanLimo (www.danlimo.dk) was very professional and the driver was very cool.. he even came up with great picture ideas!

After a great photography session at Gl. Skovridergaard and Lunden in Silkeborg, we drove to Funder Kirkeby, where the rest of the wedding would take place. Here we started out with a few more pictures (your face feels quite numb after smiling that much) and then proceeded with a welcome drink and food.

Our Toastmaster was my brother Lars Bruun-Mortensen, whom handled the assignment perfectly, timing every speech, song etc. efficiently, so that it never seemed stressed and always seemed like everything was going smoothly. The first speech was mine, which I had initially written a lot for, because I was so nervous about it and wanted it to be perfect. But shortly before the wedding I threw out speech after speech, starting from scratch over and over again, simply because I didn’t know how to express everything exactly like I wanted it and exactly the way in which Sara would understand what I meant. In the end I ended up with not really having a speech.. I basically only had a baseline of what I wanted to say and then let it come out naturally on the spot. I even sang a song for her, because that’s something she loves – even though I’m no Sinatra! So I sang “You Belong To Me” by Jason Wade from Lifehouse (accompanied by Mads Noe on guitar).

Sara also gave a speech and a song – specifically “Everything” by Michael Buble. Something I enjoyed very much! On top of this my brother Lars, my dad Steen, Sara’s mom Karin, Sara’s sister Anna, my grandparents, Sara’s half-sister Birgitte + her family and a few others I sadly don’t remember right now, all had either a speech, a song or a complete musical piece.

All in all it was a brilliant wedding with everything you could expect! We even had a great band called Rockfathers (www.musiknu.dk) whom everyone loved – even the oldest of the guests praised the band for being very comfortable, varied and talented – so if you’re planning an event and need music in Denmark, consider Rockfathers!

After having danced the first and last dance, having eaten and drunk a lot, and having had a fantastic time – Sara and I jumped into a car and was driven to Gl. Skovridergaard where we stayed in a suite for the night!

In all regards – it was a great day!