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.

Day 104 - Arrival, Part Two

Hello world traveling dog.

No snags. What a brave pup. For all of his hard work he got to take his first shower in Denmark!

Thanks for all of the well wishes.

Day 102 -- Frederikssund and Viking Settlements

Yesterday I went out to Frederikssund to help a colleague get her sail boat ready for the summer.  Frederikssund is normally about an hour commute from here.

They live down the block from the Roskilde Fjord.

Photo courtesy of the wiki page linked above.

A fjord in Denmark has a different meaning than what we think of in America when we think of "fjords".  In Denmark it just refers to any inlet of water.  It is typically made from glaciers just as the more thought-of Norwegian fjords are but the movement of the glaciers are different (from sea onto land, not mountains into sea as in Norway) and lack the dramatic cliffs on each side.  It was still really pretty and great being by the sea.  I saw lots of swans in the water.

I arrived around noon and we had a delicious Danish lunch, lots of bread, pickled and smoked fishes, cheeses, hard boiled eggs and cherry tomatoes.  After a coffee in their greenhouse (and some rosemary/lemon shortbread cookies I brought) we headed down to the boat.  Our task was to remove the wooded scaffolding on top of the boat which the boat cover rests on.  It is very large and requires one person to hold the beams of wood while the other person unscrews every piece.  We managed to do it without me falling over the side of the boat, without Marianne falling off the ladder, and without me dropping a single beam on either her or the boat.  I'd say it was a success!  The boat is still on it's foundation scaffolding on dry land so it is very good I am not really scared of heights because it was pretty high up there.  Next step is to polish the boat and apply some anti-fungal paint but someone else will be helping with that.  I did offer Collin and my services for any future work, and in return they promised to take us out on the boat this summer.  I'm looking forward to it.

After returning from the boat we shared some beers in their greenhouse again...5 degrees (Celsius) outside but 17 degrees in the greenhouse.  And then went for a long walk along the fjord.  Frederikssund also has a Viking reconstruction site.  These houses are all based on houses that were excavated nearby in Denmark in the 90s.  All the small ones (5 in total, I think) are sunken houses about 50 cm to 1 m below sea level and used as temporary houses or workshops.

There is also a long house which would have been used as lodging, both for people and animals.  The door was really pretty.  We couldn't go inside the long house though.

And there was also a communal eating/lounging area for dining al fresco

Behind the settlement there is a stage (which I did not take pictures of) where in the summer they put on Viking shows including the blowing of Viking horns.

Photo courtesy of Mary Brett from the vikingespil.dk website

After our walk and tour of the settlement we headed back to their house for a delicious dinner of roasted chicken thighs in lemon and thyme with rice, cabbage, salad, and scorzonera (a root vegetable I had never had before).  It was all very tasty.

(photos courtesy of google, and not my actual dinner last night)

The trip back home was easy enough.  It was really nice to get out of the house for the day, do some manual labor, and have some excellent meals with good company.  

Day 98 -- Our "permanent" apartment

I have received numerous requests to see our new place.  This past weekend with Collin away, I worked hard to get the place in order.   So here you go!  We'll start with the outside.  We live above an Italian restaurant and a pizza shop. Our windows are the 5 on the left directly above the restaurant (1st floor for those of us in Denmark, 2nd floor according to you Americans)

Starting at our front door:

Entry way (Yes, mom, I have a bike helmet!)

 First door on the right is the tiny tiny bathroom

View of the bathroom from the door looking right...Shower and toilet 

View of the bathroom from the door looking left...sink and washer/dryer

 First door on the left is the third bedroom which we are using as storage.  It still needs some work but looks MUCH MUCH better than it did a few days ago.  You can now walk in there, and dry clothes in there!

Notice the new wardrobe courtesy of IKEA

Hopefully the movers will return this week to take away these empty boxes.  

Continuing down our entry way we have the kitchen on the right and the living room straight ahead.  First for the kitchen...

View from the door off the entry way.

View from the door to the living room (door to the entry would be on the right)

Our oven, which is opposite the sink and not visible in the other pictures

Newly purchased from IKEA

View from Kitchen window, overlooking outdoor seating for the restaurant

Now for the living room...if we would have continued straight from the entry instead of turning off into the kitchen

View from entry way

View from doors to dining room..more boxes that need to be thrown away

Happy Easter!

View from living room window...two hot air balloons!

Gifts from a friend who is moving away

Doors to dining room

Now on to our dining room.  I apologize for the mess.  It has become my office while I work from home this week.

View from kitchen door

View from living room door

From the dining room we can enter the second bedroom/guest room/office/Collin's clothes storage

View from dining room door

View from master bedroom door

This desk ALMOST made me swear to never buy anything from IKEA again.  But it is standing now.  and yes, the leg on the right is crooked but I have since fixed that.

View from the 2nd bedroom window...more of the Italian restaurant eating area

Home for Collin's clothes.  Pretty, huh?  (he picked it)

And finally on to our bedroom.

View from 2nd bedroom door

View from window...that' the second bedroom you see through the door

My wardrobe...considerably nicer than Collin's...but still IKEA

View from our bedroom window...that's a little grocer across the street.  Haven't tried it yet

And that concludes our tour.   Hope you enjoyed it.  We are open to visitors any time!

WotD # 20 -- Gækkebrev

I'm not as knowledgeable as Collin when it comes to computers so sadly my word-of-the-day is not accompanied by a soundbyte of how to pronounce it.   But the word is

Gækkebrev

and it is pronounced something like

GA-AY-ga-bro   (sort of like that anyway)

It literally translates to "Valentine" on google translate, and looks a lot like a Valentine, but it is actually an Easter custom here in Denmark.  It's a 100s-of-years old tradition where the sender cuts up paper in a creative way (think homemade paper snowflake) and writes a poem around it.  It's important that the poem rhymes.   Instead of signing it, the sender writes as many dots as letters in his/her name and then slyly gives it to the recipient.  If the recipient can guess who made it, the sender has to give the recipient something.  In the  past it was a kiss, now it is a chocolate egg.  If the recipient can not guess who made it, then THEY have to give the sender the kiss/chocolate egg...once the sender reveals himself of course.


Thanks to the Expat in Denmark facebook page for telling me about this custom and for sharing the following video from the Official Website of Denmark (the video is in English!)

Video explanation of how to make a gækkebrev

And thank you to Rikke Storm's blog for the picture!

Day 95 -- More observations from Denmark

Today is just a quick blog before I meet some friends for dinner...and in keeping with the stereotype of Danish friends being hard to come by, these are not Danes, but instead fellow expats.

Anyway. a few notes about Denmark.

Next Sunday is Easter as some of you may know.  I would say Easter is not a very big holiday in the US.  As a kid, of course, it is...easter baskets, eggs, candy, bunnies, etc.  And as a Catholic (and other Christian denominations) it is as well.  But in general, for non children, non religious folks I would say it is not so.  Maybe a special dinner with family/friends, maybe not.  maybe you disagree but that is my opinion.  But in Denmark this is clearly not the case.  Despite being told over and over that Denmark is a VERY secular country, Easter is a B-I-G deal.  The whole country pretty much shuts down for Skærtorsday (Holy Thursday), Langfredag (Good Friday), Påskedag (Easter Sunday), and 2. Påskedag (Easter Monday). Everyone is off work and all stores, including grocery stores, are closed.   Most people take the whole week off work.  I do not have that many vacation days yet so I am still working.   But my lab is also in the middle of moving next week which means I will not have an office to go to for Monday or Tuesday at least, so this means I will be working from home.

Other fun observations.  Today my grocery store was full of free samples...I saw a few cheese stations and some chips.  but my favorite was the shots of Southern Comfort.  I did not partake.

Also, walking home I noticed the following cake in the window of the bakery.  I guess there are some big X-Factor fans here.

That is all for now.  I am off to return the keys to our temporary apartment.  I promise pictures of our new place shortly.  I am still in the process of getting things put away.