In Hans Christian Andersen's home

The journey begins in Hans Christian Andersen's living room decorated with large and colourful paintings showing how he looked on his travels by mail coach, train, and steamship. Here you can see the train as a fire-breathing dragon and the steamship as a dolphin whereas the mail coach becomes a slow snail after he has travelled by the lightening fast train. 

 

Hans Christian Andersen was fascinated by the speed and power of trains and steamships, and his description of a train ride almost makes you think of a time machine: "It has got something quite magic about it; I imagined I was a magician who had hitched a dragon to my carriage and now dashed past the poor mortals whom I saw on the byroads with their vehicles as if they were snails". The fantastic speed of the train was 30 km/h.

The Mission

Hans Christian Andersen loved to make paper collages, even when he was travelling. He often had a pair of scissors in his pocket, but accidents could happen. In 1836 Hans Christian Andersen recounts that on one of his stagecoach journeys the scissors fell out of his pocket and when he entered the coach again after a break, the scissors had turned "so that I sat down on it - a full inch. I could feel the blood running and I had to go in and bathe my posterior with vinegar and water ... it was a brilliant scene". 

Before we can begin our journey with Hans Chris-tian Andersen, we must hear what the fairy-tale writer has to tell us. At a listening post placed in the first room we have asked Hans Christian Andersen to tell a sad story about his most beautiful paper collage. During one of his many journeys it went to pieces and even though the poet tried to keep the pieces, he lost them one by one. The only way to assemble it is by following the same route that H.C. Andersen travelled and pick up the pieces for him. NB! The listening post is in Danish, but a written English translation is available. 

Go Exploring

The adventurous journey can now begin! We follow in the footprints of the post rider when he delivers Hans Christian Andersen's letters, and we travel with him by the mail coach in which he gets the idea for one of his beloved fairy-tales which the children shall try to guess. We hear how the post horn always made him want to travel although the journey by horse-drawn stagecoach was not always pleasant. The children are all the time given tasks of helping Hans Christian Andersen send telegrams or find a hidden trunk with his letters. 

Guide

With them on the journey the parents get a printed guide telling how people wrote letters and travelled in Hans Christian Andersen's time. Here you can read about Hans Christian Andersen's first journeys which took place by mail coach and how he could send letters by the post service. His travel activities are followed until his last journeys which were made by train and when the telegraph enabled him to send telegrams that reached their recipients by lightening speed. (NB! The guide is available in English). 

 

The guide contains the tasks to be solved along the way and gives examples of possible topics of discussion. Transcriptions of three fairy-tales printed at the end of the guide may be told along the way or they can be brought home for a later fine hour in the company of Hans Christian Andersen.

Finale

When all tasks have been solved, the children are given the pieces of a large jigsaw puzzle which they can do in Hans Christian Andersen's living room. The paper collage can then finally be assembled and the pieces of the journey fall into place. 

The activity is for families with children at the age of 5-10 years and is available in Post & Tele Museum from 12th February 2005 until the end of the year. When you have bought a ticket for the museum, you can make use of the offer for free. Larger groups can book a guide at the museum to conduct the tour.

Go on adventure already now by visiting our website "Hans Christian Andersen - Adventures with the Post" at www.ptt-museum.dk.

The illustrations are made by Lasse Jacob Middelbo Outzen inspired by Hans Christian Andersen's own paper collages.