Day 17 - In Danish, Bacon means Bacon

Not too much going on today, a bunch of cleaning and laundry. I've been messing with some stuff here as far as layout goes. Today's best thing happened this morning at Føtex.

The Danish don't mess around when it comes to bacon. Can. Not. Wait.

Pork seems to be the most cost effective meat product here. Chicken and beef are pricey. Fish is surprisingly so, especially shrimp. This nice little slab was the smallest one they had. It's about a pound. Most were three times this size.

Additional shopping tip - the two  for / three for one deals at Føtex are amazing. Today I focused on sale items and did very well. You're welcome.

Klippekort info will have to wait until tomorrow. Emily is headed home shortly and I'll have to get her insights on the ins and outs of metro travel in Copenhagen. Farvel!

Dryer Update

As will likely be a recurring theme of this blog, now I get it!

So, the water. That's not a tray that you put water in. It's an "exhaust" tray for the dryer. As it spins / heats / etc water gets deposited there. When it fills up, it needs to be emptied.

I'm not sure if this is the way all "inside vent" dryers work.

It still doesn't really dry anything, but at least I know what the tray is actually for.

DotW #1 - Tycho Brahe

Tycho Brahe, 1546-1601

At once a nobelman, scientist, astronomer, noseless dueling mathetician, and extravagant party planner, Tycho Brahe's obscenely accurate - in a world that was yet to see the telescope - astronomical observations provided Johannes Kepler with the data he would need to construct his laws of planetary motion.

Brahe was born in Skåne, which is now part of Sweden. This was part of Denmark during Brahe's life and thus, the Danes claim him. He was born to a high ranking Danish noble family and was later kidnapped by a wealthy uncle who would send the young Tycho to study to become a lawyer. Oh the fun of 16th century nobility!

When he was 13, Tycho witnessed a solar eclipse, learned that they could be predicted, and was hooked on astronomy for life. When he was 20, he had a duel over a mathematical formula (!) and lost part of / most of his nose. Being a man of wealth and taste, he fashioned a prosthesis out of - what people at the time claimed - gold. It was more than likely brass.

He spent the rest of his life amassing astonishing wealth, building larger, more accurate, and more expensive observation equipment, and partying like it was 1599. He even had a tamed elk that would accompany him to parties. He built a massive observatory on the island of Hven, Uranienborg.

Tycho essentially enslaved the people of Hven, forcing them to build and operate and the observatory. They were not allowed to leave the island without either his or the King of Denmark's consent. In Tycho's defense he probably wasn't any worse than other nobility of the time. It is estimated that at one point his wealth was equal to that of 1% of the entire Danish kingdom.

Brahe may be one of the last great astronomer / astrologers. His work bridges the gap between pre-telescope and telescope as well as mysticism and science in astronomy.

Today, the planetarium in Copenhagen bears his name, as well as craters on the moon and Mars.

To read more, check out any / all of these sources.

- Carl Sagan's, Cosmos: A personal Voyage, Episode 3

- Courtney Seligman's excellent biography

- The Tycho Brahe wiki

It's fairly likely that I got things wrong, please correct me where need be!

Day 16 - Kommune Registration

When I was in middle school, maybe grade school, there was this TV mini-series called "AmeriKa". The premise was essentially this; the Soviets won World War Three, or something similar, and as such became the rulers / overlords of the United States. This is what life would be like in America if the Russians had won. Sorry AmeriKa.

I don't remember much about it other than the title. I'm pretty sure we were all forced at AK-47-point to speak Russian. Everything was pretty gray and / or brown. I think there was lots of standing in line. Possibly for bread. Maybe potatoes.

All, or at least most of the hard C's in Denmark have been replaced with K's. The word "commune" seems much, much harder as "kommune". A commune is a happy place for sharing vegetables and unwashed patchouli stink. A KOMMUNE sounds far more nefarious. Who knows what could happen?! I was certain that I'd have to stand in line, possibly all day. I was certain there was no potato at the end of said line.


Diversions aside, the kommune is really just the area we live in and the associated government agency / building where we have to do any kind of local bureaucratic stuff. I DID have to stand in line, but everyone was friendly in his / her very Danish way. Everything was very organized. Our fixer / handler / mobility person Susan guided us through the process.

When you walk in there's an electronic podium with an electronic touch-pad. Here, there are a number of options to choose from. Pay parking. Get a drivers license. Change your address. Register.

Depending on which service is chosen, a ticket is printed with a letter and number. The letter describes the type of service chosen and the number is your spot in the queue. We sat and waited until our number popped up on a flat screen television and we were off to the "bord" - table in Danish - number displayed.

This all felt very futuristic.

I'm amazed that this kind of line waiting / bureaucracy center didn't have more yelling or more security or even glass between the kommune representative handling my paperwork and me.

The Danish consulate in NYC was very secure. Thick plexiglass between the employees and the applicants. Security guards. Multiple locked rooms. It was also very futuristic, but very high grade research facility futuristic.

The kommune office here felt more like the circulation desk at a library.

Emily and I were given our CPR numbers - similar to a social security number - and assigned a doctor. Our kommune, Fredriksberg, didn't have any information on the doctors other than name, so Emily picked her favorite of the three.

If I understand it correctly, the assigned doctor is sort of like a PCP. They are the first contact, and can then refer the patient to a specialist and so on and so on. There's even a number to call when something's wrong but the patient isn't sure if he / she needs to go to the doctor. The doctor on the end of the line will determine if it's even necessary to come in. Phone triage!

So that was it with the kommune. It even has its own shield / seal / coat of arms!

With registration complete and CPR numbers in hand, we made our way to Danske bank to open a bank account. They don't really do checks here - everything is done with a debit card / online and there were three different options for debit cards.

One that only works in Denmark and works at every shop / taxi / service in Denmark.
One that works everywhere but only 98% of the shops / taxis / services in Denmark.
One that works everywhere and works at all of the shops / taxis / services in Denmark.

The first two are free and the third cost something like 150 dkk a year - about $25. We opted for the third.

They are very strange about credit cards here. We won't be able to get one until we "build credit" which I guess means until they see that we're actually depositing money into our account on a regular basis. Sussane - our contact at Danske - told us that Danes typically use their credit cards for "things they don't have money for". Small adjustments. We'll see if we qualify in a few months.

Another weird thing is the time table. It may take up to fourteen days to completely open our account. We may be able to wire in money in three days. Oh well, we'll just have to roll with it.

Things do seem to move more slowly here in general - after all of our paperwork / etc we went shopping again. Checkout lines are long and slow.

We also needed to pick up our mass transit passes. 7-Eleven must have some deal with the Danish transit system as that's where the passes are purchased; at a 7-Eleven adjacent to the metro station. Emily bought a month pass that will allow her to travel to and from Maløv for work and I purchased a two-zone klippekort, which allows travel for a maximum of 20 klips.

Confused? Of course you are. Stay tuned, tomorrow I'll break down - if I can figure it out by then - the klips, klaps, and klops of the Danish metro system.

Adventures with Laundry

When we made the choice to move to Copenhagen, I knew that things would be different and there would be a number of things that I'd miss. I also knew that there was another class of things that I'd miss. The things that I didn't even KNOW that I'd miss. The things that I took for granted. Stupid ungrateful Collin.

 So, laundry. Here's my machine.

So, standard stacked, low capacity washer / dryer. No worries. We were spoiled by our last set, no big deal.

So yeah. From what I was able to gather, these labels look like they're in Finnish. I think that klar is "ready", aktiv is - as you might guess - "active", and færdig - given process of elimination - must be "finished" or possibly "done" or even "stop". All good.

The numbers must be time. I definitely know "centrifugering". Easy enough.

On to the materials.

JELP is the detergent. I'm mildly amused by Danish brands in a way that shouldn't be amusing at all. Mostly I'm easily amused.

One issue here is hard water. You have to add de-calcifier-stuff to reduce scaling, lime build up, etc. This is the KALK VÆK. According to the box, our island has the hardest water in Denmark.

I gather from the box that you add a tablet per load. Done.

Little known - at least I didn't know this - fact about Europe; dryers are hard to come by and when they're available they're often next to useless. Our dryer is no exception.

Many settings. All bad. At one point, I felt that the dryer was making things more wet. There's a place to add water. What does a dryer need with water?

More discovery to come.

Day 15 - god morgen, er, god eftermiddag!

It's a new day and the fireworks have slowed in frequency and intensity. At this point I'll hear a random explosion every hour or so, just enough to keep me on my toes.

It's another lazy, late rise today. At some point we need to acclimate ourselves to Dansk time, but today is not that day.

Today is a day to sit, enjoy my instant kaffe - thanks Michael and Emily, and do next to nothing. As I mentioned before, virtually everything is closed. I think that I'll attempt to do some laundry and then perhaps a little sight seeing in central Copenhagen.

We'll likely walk to Nyhavn. Click the play button below for a pronunciation.



I think that this illustrates the difficulty of Danish. Just for fun, here's how you pronounce "Happy New Year" which is "Godt Nytår"



I need to figure out how to embed these audio files directly to links. It will likely be far more useful for quick translations / pronunciations in the future. I'm almost certain that these won't work. If they don't, here's my apology in advance.

Day 14, OT - Did I mention that the Danes like fireworks?

It's virtually impossible to paint a picture of tonight's events, but I'll be a good sport and give it a go.

Imagine a quaint old world city. Add, seemingly, all of the fireworks in Europe. Mix with a wealth of fireworks enthusiasts from the whole of the continent. Remove any level of general rules / oversight / good sense. Watch the show.

Young people. Old people. Children. Men in suits. Well dressed women. In the middle of the street. Lighting giant, professional looking, fireworks.

I'll try to set the scene in a couple of places. 

To make this clear, I live in a very nice part of the city called Frederiksberg. For our Chicago and Boston folks, I think it compares reasonably to Lincoln Park or Brookline. When we went to dinner at around 8PM, a well dressed grandfather and his grandsons were lighting things on fire and watching them explode.

After dinner we made our way to Rådhuspladsen, the main square in the city. It was crazy.

When I think "city" fireworks, I generally think of a bunch of people standing and watching some sort of municipal extravaganza. The fireworks are lit from a boat, or up on a hill, but most importantly, somewhere far away and out of any reach of spectators. Things last around ten minutes, there's a big finale and we all cheer and go home.

Every single firework in the following videos / pictures was lit by, well, just some guy / gal. It was amazing. As we were walking in, I said to Emily, "Why isn't anyone standing in the square? Why are they all surrounding it?". Because Collin, that's where the maniacs light the fireworks.

And just FYI, there isn't any rope. There are no cones or barricades. There really aren't any law enforcement types. At around midnight, I did see a couple of riot squad dudes, but it's entirely possible that they were just in costume.

Here's the scene around midnight.

The other amazing thing? It didn't / hasn't / probably won't stop. Everything smells like gunpowder.

So, do you like fireworks? Do you like danger? Do you drinking outside? Come to Copenhagen next Nytår, everyone should do it at least once.