Karen Blixen Museum

Nairobi, Kenya

Nairobi City Tour Excursion

(Karen Blixen Museum is the beautiful farmhouse where Karen Blixen, author of Out of Africa, lived between 1917 and 1931, until she left Kenya after a series of personal tragedies. Karen Blixen Museum has been restored with many of her own furnishings, as well as replicas made for the movie. The Museum has a beautiful mature garden and a superb view of the Ngong Hills, which Blixen described so tenderly in her book. Karen Blixen Museum is located on Karen Road, between the Karen College and Bogani Road in the residential neighborhood of Karen and is 15 Kilometers outside Nairobi City. The Museum is open from 9.30am to 6pm)

Karen Blixen Museum

Karen Blixen Museum; Karen Blixen Museum is located on the outskirts of Nairobi on Karen road. Its history dates back to 1914, during the First World War, with the arrival of Karen Blixen from Denmark. At the foot of Ngong Hills, Karen Blixen established herself as a farmer. After her departure in 1931, the suburbs retained the commemorative home of Karen.

The Danish government donated the house and the surrounding land to Kenya after independence. The house was restored by the Danish government, and was used during the filming of "Out of Africa" which immortalized Karen Blixen's book by the same name. Karen Blixen Museum was opened to the public in 1986. A striking feature about Karen Blixen Museum is the beautiful grounds. The house built in 1910 has a red tile roof and mellow wood paneling in the rooms. When Karen Blixen bought the property, it had 6,000 acres of land but only 600 acres were developed for growing coffee; the rest was retained under natural forest.

Much of the original furniture is on display in the house. The original kitchen has been restored, and is now open for viewing. A Dove Stove similar to the one used by Karen Blixen is on display, as are the kitchen utensils. Reconstruction of the coffee factory, along with other old farm machinery is underway. The aim here is to take an individual back in time, and provide a visual impression of each settler life in Kenya. Karen Blixen Museum has become a herb of various activities including private parties, research and visitation, from all over the world. The income so generated is used to refurbish and maintain Karen Blixen Museum and other regional museums.

Price Per Person

Trip Description (Tour Duration: 2 Hours)

Karen Blixen Museum is located on the outskirts of Nairobi on Karen road. Its history dates back to 1914, during the First World War, with the arrival of Karen Blixen from Denmark. At the foot of Ngong Hills, Karen Blixen established herself as a farmer. After her departure in 1931, the suburbs retained the commemorative home of Karen.

Karen Blixen Museum Nairobi Tour Price Includes

* Price per person

* All Park Entry Fees, Service Charge and Taxes

* Pickup from your hotel in Nairobi and drop-off to your hotel
* Visit Karen Blixen Museum in Langata, Karen District Nairobi, Kenya

* Professional English speaking African Spice Safaris Driver Guide

Karen Blixen Museum Nairobi Tour Price Excludes

* Travelers Insurance

* Personal expenses such as drinks

* Gratuity to your Safari Driver Guide

* Optional activities the stipulated itinerary

* Meals, sightseeing not included in the package

* Communication charges, visas, international airfares and airport taxes

* Transfers to/from the airport (supplement airport transfer cost applies for tours starting from the airport)

Karen Blixen Museum Information

Karen Blixen (1885-1962), also known by her pseudonym, Isak Dinesen, is famous for her memoir, Out of Africa, and for several works of fiction, including Seven Gothic Tales (1934) and Winter's Tales (1942). A 2007 poll of opinion in her native Denmark lists Karen Blixen as one of the most representative personalities in Danish history. She was twice nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature. She wrote in English, after living on a coffee farm in Kenya from 1914 to 1931.

She married her second cousin, Baron Bror Blixen of Sweden, thereby acquiring the title Baroness. Following their separation and divorce, she had a long affair with the safari hunter, Denys Finch Hatton, son of a titled English family. In 1931, after losing the coffee farm in the Great Depression, Karen Blixen returned to Denmark and embarked on the writing career that lasted until her death in 1962. She was played by Meryl Streep in the 1985 film Out of Africa.

Her memoir was arresting in many ways, especially in its oblique references to the author's love story with the English hunter Denys Finch Hatton. It left the reader tantalized by a series of enigmas: Who was the writer's husband, and what happened to him? Why didn't she and Finch Hatton marry? Did she ever plan to return to Africa? What was her life now?

The answers to these questions remained private until after her death. She had married a Swede named Baron Bror von Blixen-Finecke, her second cousin, from whom she took the title Baroness. Bror was the twin of the celebrated horseman, Hans von Blixen-Finecke, the man Karen was in love with in her youth. Bror himself wrote a book describing how he and his wife had set out to run a pioneer farm in Kenya. They divorced after eleven difficult years of marriage. She fought the divorce, and her Letters from Africa suggest that she loved her husband. Bror married again twice, but Karen did not remarry and never had children.

Her talent for hospitality in Kenya attracted a variety of aristocratic and bohemian friends, including Berkeley Cole. She called Denys Finch Hatton the love of her life, but the nature of their relationship has never been clear. She appears to have suffered two miscarriages during the eight or more years of the affair. However, the writer Beryl Markham, a friend of Karen Blixen and Denys Finch Hatton, claimed to biographers that Finch Hatton was homosexual.

Due to the world wide economic depression and miscalculations in pioneer farming, Karen Blixen's coffee farm, financed by her family, never turned a profit. She was homesick much of her time in Africa. Although she had her farm for nearly 18 years, she spent nearly four years of that time in her beloved Denmark. She left Kenya in 1931 and never returned.

Literature:

Karen Blixen [Isak Dinesen] can be compared with no other writers. Her voice was formed by her Scandinavian roots, and influenced by a wide variety of works of European literature. Her writing places emphasis on story, rather than characters, and on the philosophical understanding of personal identity. Her stories underline a fascination with the role of fate in controlling the lives of human beings. She believed that a person's response to the vicissitudes of fate offers a possibility for heroism and, ultimately, for immortality.

A small selection of her literary influences include:

* Milton's Paradise Lost

* Percy Bysshe Shelley

* Shakespeare's plays

* Soren Kierkegaard

* Mozart's Don Juan

* Charles Baudelaire

* Walt Whitman

* Mary Shelley

* Lord Byron

* Goethe