CPH

I went to Copenhagen for the second time this past weekend. It seems like a very cool city, though like all of Denmark it might be more fun with a Danish salary. Denmark is known for cool design, and Copenhagen has got lots. A lot of cool modern architecture mixed with historic cool architecture, fun-looking shops, hipster window displays, cozy cafes, and much more.

A few highlights:

Saturday night I went out to dinner with "Cousin Ida", who is actually the cousin of my roommate Tia's mom and good friend of tha Pegsta, Ingrid. Anyway, I like referring to her as Cousin Ida and she has certainly welcomed me like I was a cousin! First we stopped by a very cozy little brewpub with rotating taps and sampled some tasty Danish brews - it was quite a treat to try something different from the Carlsberg (or worse) that I've been drinking regularly in the 'borg. Then off to a tiny restaurant in a funkier part of town (from what I was told), where we ordered the two person menu - a bunch of small plates of whatever they've made that night.  It was very fun and tasty - and to me - danish, alhough Cousin Ida told me that many danish wouldn't even recognize the things we were eating. Some of the plates I remember... beets with creme freche, poached egg with capers and couscous, white fish with crunchy toasted onions and dill, beef, thinly sliced root vegetable with mussles, root vegetables in brown butter... and some other things I don't remember.

Sunday we went to the Louisiana Museum - a bit outside of town but a beautiful setting for a museum, right on the water look across to Sweden. The grounds are an attraction in themselves; see the Calder piece and view above. The Klee and Cobra exhibit was also very interesting though. A big theme of the exhibit was the inspiration these artists drew from children, which I thought provided some food for thought.

Then of course there was a lot of walking around, as there is any time you're in a new city. I tried some of the toasted sweet almonds, which you can smell wafting up the main pedestrian street - the longest in Europe.

The weather was a mixture of sun, rain, freezing cold, hail.... so below are a few pictures of one of the sunny moments, in the park/castle near the hostel, in the latin quarter of town. You can always click the photos to see a larger version. You may notice that with the arrival of the new camera I've been doing some "experimenting", with mixed results :)

Another highlight was thanks to my good friend Amy Chamb, who provided some great recommendations from her many visits - but most important was her suggestion to visit Sank Peder's Bageri. It was so bomb we went there twice in one day. A few photos and the surrounding area below.

I have a lot more pictures so I'll post some more in another post or set up a way to make a gallery or something. For now I'll end with me chillin Danish style.

"it snowd"

I think that's the message that was on a little postcard that Myra (pretty sure it was her) left under my parent's door one time when we were little and it had snowed a bit in Portland. As I recall it also had a drawing of a tiger. Not sure where that came into play, but anyway.

It snowd a bit in Aalborg this weekend, as you can see in the picture below it is just a dusting. That's the area near the university campus that is in the center of town where the planning dept is moving/has moved. Guess there will plenty more snow coming down the pipeline... 

More posts coming soon on a recent trip to Copenhagen and a few other topics.

The mean streets of Aalborg

Happy Thanksgiving!

Well it's 6:30 AM PST so I guess any of you on the west coast are getting that oven turned on and setting to work!! Or sleeping in and enjoying a day off of work...

I've already had thanksgiving AND thanksgiving leftovers, if you can imagine that. I'm friends with an American girl who lives right above me (over my exact room, actually) and so the two of us decided to team up to prepare thanksgiving for our flatmates. She and her flatmates did the hardest part - the turkey and stuffing - along with mashed potatoes, cornbread, and gravy, while I made (with help from the roomies) sweet potatoes, bread rolls, my traditional brussel sprouts with bacon, and of course an apple pie.

Normally I'm really only in charge of the brussel sprouts and maybe some easy popovers, so I had to ask Pegsta for some preparation advice to get everything squared away. I didn't really allow enough time to do everything so in the end it was quite a flurry of peeling, chopping, and cooking, but I think it was a success. You can see my haphazard lattice work (with preamade crust) above.

Here's the gang:

 Kate, my fellow American, is on the front left there. Ervis the Albanian is heading up the table on the other end, and my other roomates are too busy getting to the food to smile for the picture. I didn't capture too much of the action as I was pretty flustered by all of the last-minute cooking activity, but here I am showing off the pie.



In the end it was really a nice way to celebrate Thanksgiving - the food was REALLY good and otherwise it was nice and low key - we talked about our holiday traditions in our countries of origin, and gobbled away. I'm pretty far from home here, but it was fun to get to bring a piece of it over to share. I think Thanksgiving is one of the best traditions we have in a country as diverse, divided, and distracted as the US can be.

Still, I'll be thinking of everyone at home today, especially in Portland. I'll miss the annual game of beer pong, and seeing all of my school friends and other loved ones, but most of all I'll miss hanging out with myzeey and byrno and tha pegsta all day in the Lovell kitchen. Thank goodness for Skype!

Hope everyone has a great holiday!

(not) fitting in

As great as my Danish is... it really only takes me so far. How far? As we've covered previously, it takes me this far:

"hej"
"hej"
"tak"

That's great for the grocery store (really great), but what about when I need to do something crazy, like ask a question? At least so far, every salesperson or clerk I've encountered speaks English really well. So I pretty much know I'm safe. But it still feels weird to transition from the introductory "hej" "hej" exchange, where everything is cruising along like maybe i'm a normal danish person, to suddenly just busting out the ole 'merican. Like, is there any protocol on how to make that transition? Today I went to the post office, and the lady was like "hej" and I was like "hej! .....umm... so I've been tracking this package online and it says they tried to deliver it today but I wasn't there so I can I give you the confirmation number?" The woman didn't miss a beat though so I guess that's just how it's done here.

Actually the more I think about it, the more I think the problem is that "Hi" and "Hej" sound exactly the same. Otherwise I could send a warning signal, like if they said "Bonjour" and I responded with "Hi!" they'd know, OK we got an english speaker comin in hot. Maybe I should be responding to "hey" with something more like "Howdy-do-dee!" or "What's really good?" (said in the myra way, hehe).

Halfway home

I guess I've been here about 12 weeks, and I have 12 weeks left.

Time is going by pretty quickly. Now that classes are finished I have been either "working from home" (that game  again...) or going to our group room to work on the group project during the week. The group room is much closer than the main campus, but it's still hard to gear up to get on the bike when you know the return will be in the dark/cold.

I have a feeling the rest of the time will go even faster - our group project is probably going to take over most of december, then it looks like my parents will be coming in January (!!!!!!) and then I'll pretty much be wrapping up here. I leave here February 6th, then I'll have two nights back in Seattle before heading to Sun Valley for Amy and Johnny's wedding and what should be a good pomona reunion.

Speaking of pomona reunion...  ;)

Reader requests part 1: Dark days

Since most of the other suggestions would be much better accompanied by pictures, and I'm waiting for a special birthday present to arrive, which will launch a new photo-intensive phase over here, I guess I'll start this exciting reader-inspired series (not too late to add ideas!) with a note in response to Mary's question about the length of the day, and the required coping mechanisms.

It's getting dark now around 4:30,* but to be honest it often feels like it never got to be day in the first place. There has been low-hanging cloud cover for the past... 2...3... weeks? I tried to take a picture but it looked misleadingly bright, and I don't want anyone to mistakenly think it is remotely so. I know I've been known to throw around comments about how much I love the weather in the PNW, and how much I love rain, and all that, and so I guess I should be having a ball. But I think its just too dark here (and no pitter patter of rain to sooth the soul - just cold and dark). It's hard to be motivated to do anything, outside or inside the house. Still, the center of town is still a nice place for a stroll, and the christmas decorations are coming out in full force, so I've gotta up my effort to get out and about. I'll have a post on christmas soon (that will be a photo series).

As far as coping mechanisms, I think I mentioned this before, but the Danes do drink a lot. Despite some formidable barriers - to name a few: 1) the cheapest beer is sold in individual cans/bottles which are annoying to carry 2) medium quality beer is about $8 for 6 cans and is not a huge step up fromt he cheapest beer 3) actual good tasting beer appears to exist but is also sold in individual units and is prohibitively expensive 4) beer on tap at a pub run $6 - $10 for a half liter, in face of all the obstacles, the danes really seem to take it down.

Mayhem ensues. For example, one of the first weekends I was here I was taking the bus from a party back to the center to go "out", around 12 or 1. There were a bunch of young drunk danish people on the bus, and after someone started singing a song they all knew, next thing you know the whole bus is belting this song out loud, one of them has commandeered the bus driver's microphone, and you are wondering if you're on a regular city bus or if you've accidentally gotten on someone's privately chartered party bus. Woo HOOO!! (Sidenote to Seattle bus riders - imagine if the 358 were to collide with the danish party bus experience - now that could be crazy!)

* Actually it's 4pm right now and it's getting dark :(

** It's 4:36 now and it is officially dark.