When life gives you hippos

Author's name: Annette Bergfeldt

When Esther's grandfather, Hannibal, bought a house on Palermo Road on the Danish island of Amager in 1921, he pictured a house filled with opera, bohemians, and unconventional love, radiating from the Song of Solomon. But for his Russian bride and circus acrobat Varnika, the age of miracles he dreamed of ended the moment she saw her lover fall into the throat of a hippopotamus—a hippopotamus that was supposed to be an elephant, to fill the circus with the majestic animal's gait. Varnika and Hannibal's daughter, flight attendant Eva, found a more passionate love story when she fell into the hands of Swedish pigeon tamer Jan Gustaf. Hannibal's love story was passed on to his grandchildren: the twins, Olija and Esther, who compete for the title of Young Artist of the Family. There remained their third and eldest sister, whose mind was occupied with nothing but becoming the first female astronaut, before illness took her life, of course.