Day 130 - Sakura Festival

Today we checked out the Sakura Festival, an event held on the waterfront in Langelinie Park.

We missed most of the entertaining events, I think. Drumming. Ninjas. Martial Arts. There was some good smelling and good tasting food.

There many young Danes - almost exclusively girls - dressed as either anime characters or approximations of what young Danes imagine Japanese youth culture to be like. The whole experience was farily uncomfortable. It made me think of these guys.

Shortly after I took the following picture, a mohawked dude in leather pants jumped into the water. Fun times.

Anyway, we walked around a bit more. It was really a beautiful day in the city. Here are some random pics from the day.

Additional fun fact, I have my digital camera up and running again. No more crappy iPhone 3GS pics for this blog.

Day 129 - Den Røde Cottage

Day two of the birthday feast extravaganza lead us north to Klampenborg for a very special night at The Red Cottage or more properly Den Røde Cottage.

It's about a forty minute or so ride on the train to Klampenborg on the S-tog and about a ten minute walk to the restaurant from the station. My navigation - as per usual - was poor and we ended up having to walk through a field to get to the restaurant. Emily's high heels damn Collin profusely.

Here I am looking smug in front of the Øresund - the straight that separates Denmark from Sweden.

Other than the whole walking-through-a-muddy-field aspect, the walk was great. The owners run both this restaurant and the far more casual Den Gule Cottage just down the road.

To make it perfectly clear, this restaurant is destination / special occasion dining. Not for the feint of wallet. That said, it was awesome. Easily right up there with a handful of excellent places that I've been privileged enough to enjoy. Spectacular service, spectacular food, and a beautiful setting. Well worth the price of admission.

And to digress, that's how I view these kinds of restaurants. You are paying a premium "admission" because the evening is an event, not just a meal. It's like paying through the nose to go to a top sporting event, show, etc. It's more than just sustenance, and that's totally okay. I mean if kids Beliebers - and yes, I absolutely capitalized that - can pay nearly 3000 dkk to meet and greet the one and only, surely I can enjoy my own little bit of non-Belieber related luxury.

I won't go through the entire meal, but here are some highlights. 

As in every one of my favorite restaurants, we were well taken care of. We started with some small bites - amuse bouches if you want to be that way. A lightly cured panko encrusted salmon, a fantastic seared scallop, and an amazing sweet bread. There are so many tiny essential elements and so much care that make up all of these dishes, it's really amazing. 

To jump ahead to more I-love-places-where-I'm-well-treated, after our dessert course they brought out more one bite desserts. Simple things that a restaurant can do to make you feel wanted / welcome / well treated.

And champagne - actual champagne! Again, you know that you're at a very nice restaurant when the wait staff tops off your glass for you as you finish your course. Fantastic. It's the little things really.

We ended up doing a five course tasting with three wine pairing - you choose from eight choices here and we allowed our waiter to choose the three wine courses. The highlight for me was either the roe or the pork, but I'm thinking roe. The quail was also amazing. So many flavors and so many textures. As much as I hate doing it, I had to snap this pic of the roe.

It was just perfect. If there's one thing to which I need to apply further focus in my own cooking, it's the contrast in texture. Just such a wonderful mix of crunch and smooth. Additional note, I think that the common Nordic cure / smoke / pickle flavors are just so in my wheelhouse that I can barely contain myself when I eat at a restaurant such as this.

Here, Emily has snapped a pic of her brill. Also delicious.

Here is us taking it all in, finishing our leek dish, and enjoying the wonderful bread and salted butter / pumpkin seed butter - pictured in the foreground.

And can I express how happy I was about this meal?

I hate having my picture taken at restaurants, yet that looks like a real smile? What is happening?

As far as the wine went, it was all very nice. The highlight for me was a pinot noir that I have since forgotten everything about. Except that it was delicious.

So many wonderful details and such an attentive, caring, descriptive staff. And as expected, a gorgeous water closet! Yes, this is what has happened to me.

I think that Emily was properly birthday-ed. She looks like she thoroughly enjoyed the evening.

We walked back to the train station and - with several dozen drunk teenage girls - headed back to København just in time to catch the Nate Robinson show. It was a win for everyone involved.

Day 117 - Large Malls and St Louis Chic

Ah the posts that fell through the cracks...I started this weeks ago and never finished it. At last here is this boring post.

A few weekends ago, Emily and I decided to venture south to the Field's shopping center in København S. We needed to go to Bilka for some odds and ends. Bilka is sort of a Target / Wall-Mart hybrid. They sell a little bit of everything. We were in the market for some cheap power strips and clock radios so we figured, why not?

One weird thing about the Metro / public transit system - and it's something that we've discussed before - is the zone numbering.

When you buy a monthly pass you have to choose which zones you would like it to include. For example, I have a pass that takes me to Måløv and therefore covers zones 1, 2, 31, 42, and 53. It does not, however, cover zone 3 - that's where we were headed. So despite paying $100+ a month for a metro pass, I still have to pay extra to go to zone 3. Ick.

Anyway, the mall is pretty nice. Tons of stores. They even have this!

If you guessed that it's a place where you can have tiny hungry fish eat the dead skin off of your feet, then you're right! Welcome to Feet a Fish. I am an idiot for not trying this.

Also popular in Denmark...jorts! Way to go St. Louis, you are way ahead of the curve. It is quite popular for young women to combine jean shorts / jorts with tights / leggings. Next time I go back to Champaign, I need to buy some Zubaz at Meijer and sell them to unsuspecting trendy Danish teens. Next step, world domination.

Day 128 - BROR

Emily's birthday weekend meals benefited massively from indecision. Two nights out!

Friday night we checked out BROR - it's probably best filed under new nordic. French in style and presentation, but locally sourced Scandinavian in ingredients. Bror means brother in Danish. The owners are Noma alums Victor Wågman and Sam Nutter. BROR opened at the end of March. Sam - on the left below - was in the kitchen on Friday and additionally helped with the servings. He was a really nice guy - super friendly and helpful.

To start things up, a nice sparkling wine and some tasty bread with a whipped butter / smoked bone marrow spread. Yes please.

Next, pike with cucumbers and pine. It was topped with a broth made from - among other things - the cucumber skins. Very light and fresh with just a little bit of smoke.

Then, on to some havkat - catfish - with two styles of seaweed, and a miso-y broth. One red seaweed and one green, from Sweden and Iceland. I can't remember which was from where.

The main was a hangar steak - onglet - on a bed of spinach with wild garlic and a cauliflower mince. This was topped with a tomato based broth.

We went with the optional cheese plate. This was a wrangeback from Sweden. In my very non-sophisticated take on cheese it was a bit manchego-y in style but a little nuttier. This was paired with multi-grain-seeded toasts and a delicious apple / mustard chutney. Awesome.

Lastly, dessert. I had a very nice rhubarb / ice milk combo and Emily had a sort of sorbet with salsify, reindeer moss, walnuts, and black currants. Yes, we went to a restaurant that served a dessert topped with reindeer moss. We are very fancy.

Everything was very nice. Good casual vibe, very nice food. A great night. I think our only complaint was the plates / china. For lack of a better phrase they felt very old-lady-ish. Pink / red floral pattern. They just didn't fit. First world problems for sure.

Day 125 -- Zurich, Switzerland

First of all, a disclaimer: I apologize in advance because I am not going to figure out where a german keyboard can be found on my computer, so I will write all Swiss German words without any "fancy" letters.

For the past two days I have been in Zurich, Switzerland for a haemophilia conference (look how European I now am, I write "haemophilia" instead of "hemophilia").   I arrived Sunday evening and took a 4 min train ride from the airport to my hotel -- Swissotel -- in Oerlikon which is just north of the city center of Zurich.

After checking into my room I walked around the area looking for dinner but most things were closed with it being Sunday night.  I did come across some men playing on giant chess boards.  The picture is not very good because I didn't want to get too close!

I ended up having dinner at a Mexican sports bar called Cheyenne, where I had a Swiss beer and chicken quesadillas.  After an exciting meal alone I headed back to my hotel room, spent the evening talking to Collin and went to sleep.

Yesterday, the conference started early and went until 5:30.  It was a long but interesting day.  At 6 we all met in the lobby where a bus took us to the city center of Zurich.  There we were greeted by our walking guide (who happens to be the husband of one of the organizers, also pictured below).   He is dressed in "guild" clothes and told us a little bit about the guilds in Zurich in the 11th-14th centuries as we walked to our restaurant.  

I will try to recall some of what he said, but you are better off checking out the wiki pages!  The guilds, or "Zunfte" were established in 1336 as a means to give some voting powers to the tradesmen.  There were 14 original guilds.  Here is a picture of some guild houses.  The red dog represents the Gessellschaft zur Constaffel which was a nobility guild.  I realize the picture is hard to see.

He told us about the Grossmunster church and how the statue sitting on the outside of it would throw bread down at 6:00 to the citizens below...I believe he said this is a tradition that is still carried out at some point

looking up the tower at the statue

Grossmunster from across the river

Some other sites we saw along our walk were the Fraumunster Church and St. Peter Church.

Fruamunster church tower

St. Peter church tower

He also told us about a big spring festival that we just missed (it was last weekend) called Sechselauten.   It has something to do with that idea that in the winter workers would stop when the sun went down, but in the summer they decided to stop at 6 pm since the sun was up for so long.  Now, the big draw is a meterological event similar to our groundhog day.  They build a huge snowman called a Boogg and burn it in a pyre by the lake.   The head is filled with fireworks.  The speed at which the head explodes indicates how nice of a summer they will have.  I believe our guide said it was only accurate twice.  A few times the head fell off and had to be thrown back onto the fire.  

We concluded our tour at our restaurant, another guild house called Zunfthaus zur Waag.

Dinner was a white asparagus salad, veal with mushrooms and crispy potatoes and sorbets for dessert.

After dinner we were taken on a ghost tour of Zurich with Dan Dent.  I don't remember all the details of his stories, plus most of the fun is in his storytelling techniques, but I highly recommend this if you are in the area.   Here are some pictures of the same sites I already showed you but at night.

the great Dan Dent

The Water Church or Wasserkirche

And that concludes my time in Zurich. I have another full day of meetings today and then fly home at 8 pm.  

I apologize if any of this is incorrect...I am basing most on memory which is unreliable at best!

Day 123 -- long overdue update

As I am sure everyone expected, since Collin has started his job, finding time to blog is a little harder, so we apologize for the lack of updates.  We also haven't done too much of interest, but have also been pretty busy.

Collin is slowly getting more accustomed to his job and all the adjustments and newness that goes along with it.  We have a pretty nice routine with Charlie where Collin and I stagger our work days by a few hours so Charlie's not alone for too much more than 8 hours.  I do miss seeing Collin in the morning and on some days when our schedules are busy and we can't grab lunch together I don't see him until dinner time.  But Charlie is seeming well-adjusted and settled in, so that's great.  It was too difficult for us to continue with his old dog food so we have switched him to a Danish brand and he seems to really like it alot, so that was a relief.

This past Tuesday we attended a welcome reception in our neighborhood's city hall (or Rådhus).  It was available to all new residents in Frederiksberg.

There was a 30 min introduction by the Borgmester (kind of like a mayor, I think) in Danish of course.  Collin and I entertained ourselves by watching the accompanying slide show and pointing out the random words we recognized here and there.  This was followed by a singing performance by some kind of choir.  It looked like it ranged in ages from 15 to 60, or so.  The first song was in Danish but the second two were actually in English...odd choices though: one was about a girl who was sweet on a guy who didn't return the affection, but she learned from it, I can't remember the other one but it also involved a crush...they had very 60s/"Bye Bye Birdie" feels to them.  After the concert we were free to walk around booths describing what the city offers to residents.  Again, everything was in Danish, but they did have a crepe booth which was delicious with Grand Marnier and sugar.  They also had snacks available which consisted of chicken drumsticks, carrot sticks and dip, cheese sticks and croissants.  On our way out we ran into a friend (Danish, luckily) who informed us of tours that were going on of the building so we embarked on that and saw where the city officials meet and make decisions and where marriages are carried out.  The "Wedding chapel" had murals around all the walls depicting what Collin thought must have been the circle of life...trees, naked people, a baby being breast fed , more people and more trees.  It was explained to us, but -- say it with me -- it was in Danish.  

Wednesday was World Hemophilia Day.  As the organizer of the event for my site, I was responsible for ensuring the buildings were decorated, educational material was up, a quiz with prize was administered, lottery tickets were sold on behalf of the Danish Haemophilia Society, and the main attraction, a patient with hemophilia was welcomed.  The patient came to give a presentation on what it is like to live with hemophilia and I think he did a fantastic job.  The auditorium was packed and we sold out of lottery tickets in minutes.  It turns out this is the first time my site has ever done anything to recognize hemophilia.  The day was a big success.

Friday Collin and I had our last real Danish lessons courtesy of Berlitz.  Novo paid for us to take 45 lessons when we got here.  We have now completed 42 of them (we do 3 lessons per class session).  In two weeks we have our final three lessons which consist of review, an exam, and then review of the exam.  At this point we can read and write simple sentences with some ease.  Collin can pronounce words much better than I can, and I think neither of us can really hear any thing other than picking out words here and there.  We did sign up to take more Danish lesson through our kommune.  These are also free and available to new residents for the first three years they live here.  There are 5-6 modules, with most of them each taking about 3 months (2x a week for 3 hours at a time) in the advanced track.  Somehow we were both placed in the advanced track.  Module 1 is technically supposed to start this month..actually a few weeks ago, but Danish teachers are currently in "lockout" (kind of like a reverse strike) and that includes our foreign language teachers.  No one knows when it will end.  everyone says 8-10 days but they have been saying that since it started the first week in April.  I'm happy that at least means our Berlitz classes can end before we start the kommune classes.

Today I fly out to Zurich Switzerland for a two-day training camp in hemophilia.  I was hoping a colleague was going to go with me but I am actually on my own now.  I'm excited to see Zurich but not really prepared for being in yet another foreign country with a new language and their own currency.  Luckily it is only a few days!

Thursday Collin and I decided to host a house-warming/Welcome-to-Denmark party in our apartment.  Friday is a holiday (Prayer Day).  We invited way too many people  -- i think about 50.  Right now our acceptances look to be around 30 with about 10 we haven't heard from yet.  Hopefully we have enough food and drinks! (and people don't mind standing...we only have seating for about 15).  We're looking forward to it, it should be a fun time, with a nice long weekend to recover.

Sorry for the lack of pictures/links...I wanted to get a post out but still need to finish prepping for my trip so I didn't have time to make it super interesting.  We hope you are all safe and happy.  Our hearts have been with Boston all week.  We felt very unconnected being all the way over here but were able to follow every minute thanks to the power of the internet (and the 6 hour time difference).

Complaining about Dennark seems really petty today

Thoughts with those affected in the Hub today. Just horrible.

DotW #10 - Adam Oehlenschläger

Adam Oehlenschläger, 1779-1850

Adam Oehlenschläger was a Danish poet and playwright. In 1819 he wrote the lyrics for today's Danish National Anthem, "Der er et Yndigt Land".

Oehlenschläger was born in Vesterbro to a Schleswig father who was an organist and later the keeper of the royal palace in Frederiksberg and a mother that the Wiki page describes as "German by extraction". That sounds fairly ominous. The mother probably didn't enjoy it that much as she suffered from depression throughout most of her adult life and died before Oehlenschläger became - as Esaias Tegn crowned him - the "Nordic Poet-king". This was an era where poets from feuding countries could praise one another to bring the countries closer together. 

Anyway, Oehlenschläger grew up with no formal schooling until he was twelve - he was taught to read and write, but that was about it. At around the time he was twelve, Adam was strolling around Frederiksberg Have staring dreamily at the canals and "attracted the notice" of fellow poet Edvard Storm. Ah the days when a 42 year old man could talk poetry and Scandinavian mythology with a 12 year old he just happened to meet in the public gardens.

Oehlenschläger tried his hand at acting, but was mostly a failure. After the First Battle of Copenhagen in 1801 he set his focus on poetry and new romanticism. Not this kind of new romanticism. 

His plays and other writings drew Danes back to the poetry and religion of their Nordic ancestors, and reinvigorated romantic / nostalgic feelings about those forebearers.

He wrote the lyrics to "Der er et Yndigt Land", today the National Anthem of Denmark.

Der er et yndigt land,
det står med brede bøge
nær salten østerstrand
Det bugter sig i bakke, dal,
det hedder gamle Danmark
og det er Frejas sal

Der sad i fordums tid
de harniskklædte kæmper,
udhvilede fra strid
Så drog de frem til fjenders mén,
nu hvile deres bene
bag højens bautasten

Det land endnu er skønt,
thi blå sig søen bælter,
og løvet står så grønt
Og ædle kvinder, skønne mø'r
og mænd og raske svende
bebo de danskes øer

Hil drot og fædreland!
Hil hver en danneborger,
som virker, hvad han kan!
Vort gamle Danmark skal bestå,
så længe bøgen spejler
sin top i bølgen blå

Roughly / metrically translated...

There is a lovely land
with spreading, shadybeeches
Near salty eastern beach
Its hills and valleys gently fall,
its ancient name is Denmark,
And it is Freya's hall

There in the ancient days
sat armoured Vikings rested
Between their bloody frays
Then they went forth the foe to face,
now found in stone-set barrows,
Their final resting place

This land is still as fair,
the sea is blue around it,
And peace is cherished there
Strong men and noble women still
uphold their country's honour
With faithfulness and skill

This is today's shortened version - the orignal had twelve verses. At football matches and what not, the song is further shortened.

Der er et yndigt land,
det står med brede bøge
nær salten østerstrand
Det bugter sig i bakke, dal,
det hedder gamle Danmark
og det er Frejas sal 

Vort gamle Danmark skal bestå,
så længe bøgen spejler
sin top i bølgen blå

Edit: whoops, that was just instrumental!

WotD #22 - fem tusinde!

I know that we've done numbers before, but small milestones are fun.

At some point during the wee hours of the Danish night, the blog reached 5,000 hits. I'm sure most of them are accidental reloads, people searching for GoT spoilers, or family and friends trying to make me feel better about myself, but who knows?

Thanks to all of you for popping in. It is - despite my constant complaining - a fun thing to put together.

WotD #21 - kælder

Floors in offices / apartments / houses in Denmark have a different numbering system than in America. The Danish first floor or første sal is actually the American second floor. The ground floor or American first floor is called the stueetagen and is abreviated "S" on elevators and in other office signs and addresses. In elevators you may also see "K" which stands for kælder meaning basement or cellar.

Additionally, at least with apartments, each unit is labeled with either a th or tv depending on which side of the stairwell the apartment lies. th is short for til højre or "to the right" and tv is short for til venstre or "to the left". There's a third option that means basically "in the middle" but I can't remember that one.

So if you happened to see an address for an office or apartment that was 2 tv or 2.tv this would mean the American 3rd floor, door on the left. Alternatively, something like K.05 would mean basement room number 05.

Day 112 - Lord loves a workin' man

I can't believe that this blog is something like four months old and I have yet to make any Jerk references. But the word yet...



I'm probably forgetting some sort of stealth Jerk reference that happened back in January. Such is the life of a man without a country.

At any rate, yes, I am now a working man and there is a strong possibility that whitey still shouldn't be trusted. I hadn't really given a broad strokes update of my working situation, so here goes.

My average day runs from 6-2. We have tried to stagger it so that Charlie is only home alone for a max of something like eight hours. Emily takes Charlie out in the morning before she leaves for work - around seven or so. Lately he has decided that he doesn't want to wake up / get out of his crate. Too sleepy.

I wake up every morning at 5, wash up, and am out the door by 5:20. Some days this is more difficult than others. Today I was just dying to hit the snooze. No rest for the wicked. From there I head downstairs, grab the metro at Frederiksberg and take it to Vanløse where I switch to a regional train that takes me to Måløv. Say it with me.



I can take the C or the express version of the C, the H. If everything goes to plan, I arrive at Måløv station at 5:52 and can catch the 5:54 bus to Novo Nordisk. If I miss that bus, it's pointless to wait for the next one, so I just walk. It would be a good idea to have a bike just to travel from the station to work. I need to get on that.

The bus takes me right to the Novo complex. The main gate doesn't open for the bus until 6:00, so it sits there until the clock ticks over.

All of this timing is important b/c now - for the first time since I worked at Best Buy - I have to clock in and out. Every. Minute. Counts. I have a version of "flex time" whereby any hours worked over eight in a day get pooled up to a maximum of fifty. I just realized that I talked about this earlier.

Anyway, on to the actual "work". I work in an antibody lab. Without getting into too much propriatary detail, we are in charge of taking "material" from immunized animals, creating fusions from that material, screening those fusions for antibody producing cells, producing antibody from those cells, and later purifying and characterizing those antibodies for use in other departments at Novo. Some are for theraputic research and others are for in-house assays and what-not.

The name of the game is logistics. You need to know what's happening when and what you'll need both before you start a fusion and after the fusion takes place. It's complicated. There's a massive amount of manipulation and we have all sorts of high tech "robots" that do much of the heavy lifting. Changing media on at least fifty 96-well plates would not be fun to do by hand.

So it has been an adjustment. I've never worked in an industrial setting before and I've never really dealt with this kind of throughput. Baby steps. I'm also one of only a handful of non-native Danish speakers in the larger group of around 45. There's one guy from Germany and another girl from Switzerland, but they both speak Danish fluently. I figured that this would be a problem, and for the most part it isn't but it makes things difficult especially during breaks, meetings, etc. Everyone wants to speak Danish and I'm the reason that they would even consider speaking English to one another.

I stick out horribly and it makes me feel fairly uncomfortable.

There's a certain expectation - and I have been told this directly - that at some point in the not too distant future I will speak Danish passably well enough to not use English anymore at the office. Yikes. Maybe I won't get renewed in November and I won't have to think about it.

Yesterday we took a field trip out to the undisclosed animal facility. The whole tour was obviously in Danish - I had labmates translating much of the information for me. As with most of these situations there's a sort of cursory "well, we could do this in English" but it's not really honestly meant. It usually devolves into doing the presentation in Danish and then catching me up on the "important" details. It makes me feel like a five year old.

In positive news, the facility had Beagles! I got to pet them! Fun times.

Tight, København - Indre By

On Saturday, as recommended by my Spousecare conselour Sys, we treated ourselves to a very nice dinner at Tight. I'm not sure if this is really Indre By, or old town, but it's pretty much on the edge of the strøget.

We went with the prixe fixe - a five course tasting and wine pairing. To start, a French rosé and house made foie gras - I know, I know, I'm a bad person.

Very tasty. There was some sort of port reduction and a pear jelly / jam. Tight!

Next, mussels in a creamy broth paired with a nice balanced riesling - also from France. I guess it's probably not called a riesling at that point, being French and what not. In case it wasn't perfectly clear, I am not a wine expert.

Next, pehaps my favorite bit of the night, a homemade pappardelle with parmasan encrusted oyster mushrooms, spinach, fennel, truffle oil, a little bit of cream sauce, and topped with creme fraiche. Delicious.

We finished with the main, a surf and turf of steak with shrimp, a potato gratin, and a cabbage slaw of some sort. I don't remember the wine it was paired with - something red. :)

The American student next to us ordered his steak well done. I wanted to slap him. Someday, when Collin owns a restaurant, well done will not be an option. I'm sorry sir, if this is the way you want to eat your food you can eat it somewhere else. You will not ruin the things that I serve. Please leave the restaurant.

This is one of the many reasons why Collin will never own a restaurant.

To get all tangental, the "well done is not an option" reminds me of a time at Murphy's in C-U. Mind you, this was the old excellent dingy Murphy's, not the super-sized piss poor Murphy's "are we at Legends?" Murphy's. Yes, I am a cranky old nostalgic man. Sue me.

Someone had selected Bob Dylan's "Hurricane" from the jukebox. This was probably the 3rd to 4th time it had come up that night. Approximately 15 seconds into it, the song stopped, a bartender came on the PA and frankly said "There are nine songs on Bob Dylan's 'Desire'. Hurricane is no longer an option". Unknown Murphy's bartender, you are forever my personal hero.

For desert, it was a profiterole. I don't know if I would call this a profiterole. Too much ice cream. It was still nice. The chocolate was delicious. The final wine pairing was some sort of aged desert-y shiraz.

All told, I'd definitely go back. Great cozy atmosphere, really nice wait staff, and really pretty reasonable for this part of town.