Day 268 - Danes and Pop Music

When Emily and I started to consider a move to Denmark, my knowledge of the country was fairly limited. I knew about Lego. I knew about Søren Kierkegaard. I was pretty sure that Lars Ulrich was Danish.

That was about it.

So we did some research. One of the first things I learned was that the pop group Aqua was from Denmark. Yes, this Aqua.



Aqua is the most successful - in terms of record sales - Danish musical act of all time. Let that sink in. Aqua, the Danish equivilant to their Dutch cousins the Vengaboys, is the biggest selling musical act in Danish history.

I didn't think much of this at the time. I figured that it had more to do with the fact that Aqua is probably the only Danish band to successfully sell records in America and that aspect alone put them well ahead of some other more substantial Danish bands.

I've reached the conclusion that this probably isn't true.

Let's go back a bit here. My first clue was when Robbie Williams played Parken. A few people in my lab, around my age, had tickets and were super excited. It was a little weird that a 40-ish year old straight man with a family was pumped about going to a Robbie Williams concert, but different strokes for different folks.

Second clue. Novo Nordisk has a big summer party every year. I'm talking big. At some point we'll probably have an entire blog post detailing the event, but I'll just mention a few things about music here. While I was just chilling with my department, drinking some Danish beer, we got to talking about music. One of the older guys in my lab got to talking about pop music.

Basically, it came down to this. He likes to listen to music with great hooks and, in his opinion, pop music offers the best version of that. While we had this converation, Alphabeat hit the main stage.



People of all ages were very excited to listen to / watch Alphabeat. I mean, all ages. One of my coworkers, who has worked at Novo for 25 years, was right up up against the stage, rocking out to Alphabeat.

Final - and possibly most important - clue. This morning I rolled into the office, sat down with my cup of coffee, and started putting my day together. My coworkers - who are both older than I am - asked if I was going to see One Direction. What?

Here is the actual conversation.

Coworker 1 : Are you going to get tickets to see One Direction?

Me : Um, no.

Coworker 2 : Why not?!

Me : Um, because I'm not a 15 year old girl.

Coworker 2 : What do you mean by that?!

 I actually felt bad for hurting their feelings. I didn't even take the question seriously! How could I? I really thought that they were joking. I had to cover things up with, "Ah, it's not really my thing. I'm not really in to pop music".

Maybe it's not Europe / Denmark that's weird. Maybe I'm the weird one. Maybe I should buy tickets to see One Direction.

Day 2920 / 264 - Lykkelig Jubilæum!

That Danish is courtesy of the folks at Google Translate, so who knows what it actually says.

As to what it means.

Life is pretty weird sometimes. I couldn't imagine navigating that weirdness with anyone else. I look forward to a day 50 years from now when, sitting in our hover rocking chairs, we activate the GoogleNanoBots® implanted in our brains, browse to an archive of this blog, and think "did we really do that?". Of course we did. Together.

To eight years. Happy anniversary Emily!

Day 262 -- Emily's Function Day

A while ago Collin blogged about his function day ("Day 160-161 Funk Tur").  Yesterday was my department's turn.  Ours was not an overnight driving extravaganza like Collin's.  Ours was just one day.  For those of you that don't remember Collin's, the function day is a day (or two days) where your "function" (which means all the departments under the same director/VP) spends time together team building etc.  My function consists of two department with about 45 people total.

Our day was held at one of Novo's meeting sites called Favrholm.   This is also were Collin and I attended our introduction day for all new employees but I couldn't find that in our blog.

photo courtesy of favrholm website

Favrholm is about a 30 min drive from our house; 1 hr and 15 min via public transportation (with many changes).  Luckily my department manager offered to give me a ride which was much much nicer than last time we went there!

Unlike Collin's day of Danish hijinks, driving, and alcohol, our day actually involved work-related activities.   The morning was spent on introduction to the importance of our function and a lot of group work about improving how we do things.  Favrholm is known for their emphasis on food, so lunch was delicious, putting our pretty good work canteen to shame.   The buffet included roast lamb with baba ganoush, an assortment of salads with nuts, fruits, cheeses, some sort of fish with roasted tomatoes, the normal assembly of danish Smørrebrød toppings and bread, roasted vegetables, and an array of cheeses.   After filling ourselves we went back to more discussions/group work on innovation; and then the fun really started....if you speak Danish...and if you like a more "low-brow" type of humor, from what I could gather.

The next 75 minutes was spent listening to Connie Svendsen: flight attendant-turned-humorous-motivational-speaker.

photo courtesy of Connie's website

Now maybe if I had some more Danish skills I would have gotten something out of her presentations.  Did I mention it was only in Danish?  But I have a feeling even if I understood what she was saying, it might not have been my sort of style.  I'm pretty sure there were fart jokes in there, and there were definitely pictures of half-clothed overweight people.  and some story about Denmark's second largest baby (I understood those words) and props.  including a clown nose, an oversized pen, glasses with eyes painted on them, and much much more...all of which were used in succession.  In my opinion she could have spread them out a bit more.

So after an uncomfortable 75 minutes of not smiling when everyone around me was falling of their chairs with laughter, she finally finished and we all headed outside for some healthy exercise.  We broke into 8 teams for a mini-tournament of "Kubb" aka "kongespill" aka "Vikingespill".  According to the Danish wiki, kubb was invented in the middle ages, but not documented until 1990. and probably invented in Sweden.  It can be played by 2-12 players.  It kind of reminded me of a Danish version of cornhole, in that you have teams that stand opposite each other and throw things...a good tailgating/picnic type of game

the kubb box....hasn't anyone told them vikings didn't have horns on their helmets?

the playing field mid-game

Kubb consists of 5 pieces of wood ("kubber") lined up across from 5 other kubber.  In the middle of the field is the crowned wood ("konge" or king).  The object is to throw fat sticks about a foot long ("kastepinde") from one side of the field and knock down the kubber on the other side of the field.  Once you have knocked down all 5 kubber on the other side, you have to knock down the king.   You take turns back and forth in throwing and the first team to knock the 5 kubber and king over wins.  If you knock the king down at any point in the game before you knock all 5 kubber down, you lose automatically.  I believe there are more rules than that, but we played an abbreviated version so that was all we did.

My team won our first round but lost in the semi-finals (to the eventual champions).  I am proud to say of the 10 things we knocked down in the two matches, I was responsible for 3.  It's harder than it looks.

After the kubb tournament we had a final work-related seminar and then dinner.  This was a sit-down meal starting with roasted beet root salad with crumbled rye toast and blackberries and a tarragon emulsion.  The main was venison with hazelnuts, freeze-dried celery, a plum vinegrette, some other sauces and parsleyed potatoes.   Dessert was buttermilk sorbet with torched meringue, salt and lemon verbana marinated raspberries, and freeze-dried white chocolate.

After dinner the fun continued with beers in the lounge but I was exhausted and had an offer for a ride home so I took it.

Day 260 - It's beginning to look a lot...like...

Christmas?

Americans get a lot of - to use a favorite British phrasing - stick for ramping up for Christmas waaaayyyy too early. I have no problem with that. It's a justifiable criticism.

This morning on the S-Tog I saw not one, but TWO advertisements for julefrokost. For those that can't remember all the way back to the early days when this blog crawled out of the ocean to wreak havoc on unsuspecting plant life, the julefrokost is the Danish Christmas party. It literally translates to Christmas lunch because, shockingly, that's pretty much what it is.

Well, I guess it's a lunch in the sense that everyone sits down to eat food during the day. That's where the similarities probably end.

In an effort to spice up this blog entry I attempted to find an appropriate picture. Aaaaahhhhh, too spicy! Note to others, do not do a GIS for julefrokost at work. Warning! Julefrokost may contain nudity. And possibly vomiting. Julefrokost at your own risk!

From what I can gather, the julefrokost involves sitting down, eating mammoth amounts of food, drinking mammoth amounts of schnapps and beer, and mostly not getting up for any other reason than to go to the toilet or the bar. Did I mention that Danes like to party?

Good news, Collin's work julefrokost - yes my American friends, in Denmark you get paid to do this - will take place on December 13. Two friday the 13ths in one year?! Wish me luck.

Day 256 -- København Zoo

Day 288 256 is somewhat of an estimate now exact thanks to Collin...it's been a long time.  We apologize for those that look forward to reading our blog.  August was a pretty busy month for us.   We have a lot more to update...I went to the US, Novo had a pretty big summer party, and Collin and I went to Barcelona.  But for now I am going to skip ahead to the more recent past and blog about our trip to the zoo this afternoon.


Collin and I live down the block from the København Zoo...this seems to be a regular occurrence for us as we lived in walking distance to the zoo in Boston as well.   As this weekend was gorgeous and sunny, and maybe that might not be so common in the upcoming weeks/months, we decided to take advantage of the weather and visit the zoo.

The star is our house...I circled the zoo location

The zoo was actually one of my favorite zoos I have been to in recent memory.  There was a huge range of animals in really neat habitats with lots of interesting information.  We were impressed by how happy and animated all the animals looked.  Again, a big difference between Denmark and the US...it was amazing how close you could get to the animals in some of the exhibits, even touching them and feeding them, despite it not being a "petting zoo".

Case in point:

I also saw people petting the camels, but only got a picture of them before that happened.

These birds are also visible from the park encircling the zoo.

A few more random animals

Here is a selection of frogs and lizards and the like...

 The elephant house is amazingly huge.   These guys can also be seen sometimes from the park encircling the zoo, but I never imagined how large the enclosure is from the inside.  There is a new baby elephant who was pretty lively.   We were there during feeding time.

I think this may be first toucan I have ever seen in person.

Collin was a big fan of the leopards.

We were also there for the feeding of the brown bears.  They seemed to enjoy the ribs more than the celery that was thrown at them.

The newest addition to the zoo is the arctic circle.  The highlight of this is the polar bears.  We missed them swimming but did get to see them being fed fish.

This is a pile of lions.  Although it is hard to see, they are just literally piled on top of each other sleeping, including two new little lion cubs.

We also got to see the hippo exhibit.  I don't think either of us have ever seen such HUGE hippos.  There was a little baby and two giant adults.  These pictures are of the big guy that was closest to us.

In addition to these we saw giraffes, zebras, chimps, a baby monkey of some sort that was born THREE DAYS ago and many many more.   If anyone ever comes to Copenhagen, we highly recommend visiting this zoo.  I will try to close with two videos...of some playing chimps and strolling elephants.

Day 224 - Smukfest

Today marks the end of the first week of Emily's adventure in the US as well as the beginning of Smukfest 2013, a five day music festival in Skanderborg, a small town in the north of Jylland. Folks go and camp for five days and enjoy all sorts of "older" Danish bands and a handful of big American bands. Smuk means, essentially, beautiful in Danish.

Tonight's headliner is Prince. This affords me the opportunity to post perhaps my two favorite Prince clips ever.






That's George Harrison's son on the acoustic guitar. I love how happy he looks watching Prince shred.

The festival doesn't have a ton of money to pay performers, but rumor is that Prince loves playing here and as such, waived most of his fee. Prince's bass player is from Denmark, so that probably doesn't hurt either.

Other American performers include Alabama Shakes, Kings of Leon, and MC Hammer. Yes. MC Hammer will be shutting things down.

Anyway, my colleagues Anders (pronounced Ahn-ahs) and Charlotte (pronounced Char-lot-ah) made their way out to the festival today. Apparently one can earn free admission to the festival by "working" at various tasks. Anders will be charged with assisting concessions / etc for a 24-hour period. It doesn't sound very fun, but it saved him 2000 crowns and he assured me that it's super easy. He will spend most of that time sitting on a couch. Drinking beer. He hopes to take an extended bathroom break to check out Alabama Shakes.

There is an additional 16-hour option which involves toilet duty. I think Anders chose well. Best wishes Smukfesters!

WotD #24 - Muslinger

I always thought that muslinger meant mussels. In the way that I use the word mussels. This delicious sort.

In reality the word means most shellfish that grow in, get ready for it, a shell. Our mussel is really the blå musling. We totally talked about this before! Scallops are called kammuslinger and clams are hjertemuslinger. No worries Roy, oysters are special enough that they get their own name. Østers. As in, Roy og Collin kan spise mange østers.

Our Danish teacher Andreas tried to explain kammuslinger to us, but both Emily and I failed to understand what he was talking about. Later in the lesson we asked how to say scallops, as in, jeg kan godt lide scallops. After a bit of fussing around we realized that he already taught us the word for scallops. We are smart.

Quick Danish lessson. Most - and I say this loosely - Danish words can be pluralized by adding an -er at the end. Musling. Muslinger. Confusing fact. Most Danish present tense verbs end in -er. Fun times.

This follows in what I've learned about Danish and English while I've been studying Danish. We have so many words in English. So many. Too many words! Danish, eh, not so much. I don't know what this tells me about the Danes and the English / Americans / Canadians / everyone else in the world that speaks English.