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. 

Day 110 - Frederiksberg Centret, Brandman Sam, and Mosha the elephant

I know, I know. It has been a while. Blogging ain't easy.

On Saturday, Emily and I did some window shopping / real shopping around København. We had planned to make our way to the strøget to search for a quiz prize to give out for the World Hemophilia Day event that Emily is helping to organize at Novo.

The metro was all messed up at Frederiksberg station. It's never a good sign when you see way too many people waiting for the metro. Rather than try to translate the announcements over the PA, we decided to wander into the Frederiksberg Centret to see if we could find an appropriate quiz prize.

The centret is basically a mall. On the lower level there's an atrium and in that atrium there is generally some sort of bargain area where you can buy stuff from one of the stores in the mall.

It rotates about. On one day it might be Nordic Philosophy and on the next it might be Føtex. On the weekend it's much more exciting.

We have witnessed many different kids events. Sometimes there's face painting. Very very elaborate face painting. Saturday, it was Brandman Sam.



There were two firefighters, one with a Purdue Pete-esque plastic head and one "normal" man dressed as a firefighter. The dude without the plastic head was yelling at the kids in Danish to answer his questions and move the story along. It was all very aggressive. At one point Brandman Sam was trying to get the Danish kids to guess what was stuck up in a tree. Imagine incredibly loud incessant kittens meowing.

Thankfully the kids figured out that it was...KITTENS...stuck in the tree. Good work Brandman Sam. Good work Danish kids. I'm sure that at this point the live actors saved the kittens and everything was back to normal. Emily and I wondered aloud if these two guys get to change rolls occasionally. The plastic headed Brandman is mute, he doesn't get to say anything. He just gets to flail his arms around along with his massive plastic head. I felt bad for him.

At some point they all sang a Danish version of the Hokey Pokey. It's great to know that the Hokey Pokey exists in nearly every language. Non-mute Brandman lead the song, again very aggressively. There was a lot of HEY, HOKEY POKEY. I was terrified.

This week, many elephant sculptures started popping up in and around København. Like this.

Anyway, this is all part of a fundraiser to raise money for the protection of asian elephants. It is called Elephant Parade. The local shops are selling small ceramic elephants painted in all sorts of crazy colors. There were many that had what looked liked casts. Today I learned that what looked like a cast wasn't a cast at all. It was a prosthetic leg!

Poor Mosha lost her leg to a landmine but has now been fitted with this prosthesis. Awesome.