Not Quite Danish

Desperate times, desperate measures: Gateau des udlændinge

2010-11-16T07:08:00.005+01:00

For one reason or another, I've had to start cooking my own cakes lately. :-( But this is an ideal, healthy recipe that's especially easy. It's brilliant because it combines cake with orange juice! (Well, a whole orange actually.) The key to its success is to cook it stark naked.

INGREDIENTS

1 medium (240g) whole orange
200g butter, melted
3 eggs, beaten lightly
1 cup (220g) caster sugar
1½ cups (225g) self-raising flour

METHOD

Preheat the oven to moderate (180°C/160°C fan-forced). Grease a deep 20cm cake pan, line base with baking paper.

Process the orange in a small food processor.

Transfer orange to a medium bowl, stir in butter, eggs, sugar and sifted flour until smooth. Pour mixture into prepared pan. Bake in a moderate oven for about 50 minutes or until cooked when tested.

Use a creme fraiche icing, with lemon juice and icing sugar added.

A place to call home in Denmark - I.

2010-10-22T13:00:00.006+02:00

In a moment of madness at the beginning of last year I added up how much money we’d spent in rent since we’d come to Denmark. After a quick trip to Rigshospitalet for some critical coronary care, we decided it was time for us to check out the real estate market in Copenhagen.

Fortunately for us it was right down. Unfortunately for me, job security didn’t seem quite so positive. But, as we had decided to stay longer – indeed we had already overstayed our original plan by a year, we figured we would risk taking the plunge.

And so a most unusual process began.

In Australia anyone can buy property. So much so that most of the crème de real estate is owned by exceedingly rich, dreaded…foreigners!

In Denmark, a land not backwards in coming forward as far as rules and regulations go New in Denmark , aliens must apply to this place: Justiceministeriet for permission to buy a property.

As any self-respecting and law-abiding visiting alien would do, I rang justiceministeriet, expecting this call to be the first of many long, convoluted and frustrating conversations to the relative body who would, over the many months of squabbling ahead, finally become as close as kin. So I was quite surprised when I was given the go ahead to find a place during a conversation that lasted all of 83 seconds.

Next hurdles: Find a nice bank. Find a nice flat.

Ridiculous airfares from Copenhagen

2010-10-22T11:38:00.000+02:00

I was considering going to Singapore for Christmas to see my family – until I checked the airfares. For CPH-SIN-CPH it is roughly 5,000kr if I leave before 9 December – can’t do. But wait there’s more! It’s just a paltry 12,000kr if I go after that date. More than double in price. You can actually find flights to Australia for less than 12,000kr.

Not. happy.

Dragør- Fl 101 on runway 3, clear for sightseeing

2010-10-20T13:13:00.004+02:00

I’m thinking I might start carting visitors after their long-haul flight to see me straight over to the old fishing village of Dragør. There are two schools of thought on how it should be pronounced, so I won’t confuse it by adding another in my bastardised Danish. Suffice to say, neither is easy.

Anyway, Dragør is literally located next to the airport but surprisingly quiet. I suspect this is due to the aeroplanes taking off straight over the sea. There are also a couple of good restaurants and at least one smoke house.

You can walk along the coastal strip, which with a mini dyke running along it feels as if you’re actually walking below sea level. The track seems to go quite a way but I didn’t venture that far. I did, however, amuse myself at the image of carting jetlagged weary friends a kilometre or so along it from the airport to check it out before taking them home – with me impressed and them glazed-eyed and care-factor-zero interest.

Summer

2010-09-04T16:59:00.005+02:00

It was brief. Winter ended in around about June and summer started immediately. If you ask Danes, they summer was lovely but analysis of this is required to read between the lines. 'Lovely summer' pertains to roughly weeks 29 & 30 when most people go on summer holiday.

However, these first few days of autumn have been beautiful. In Scandinavia, that equates to an Indian Summer, Scandinavian style. You can tell good weather days by the amount of people slouched in their seats at cafes, staring up to the sun, and by the activity in parks and by the lakes. This group of kids were going out on the lake with their barrel and plank raft. No idea how they got it down to the lake - it looked very heavy. Suffice to say, there was a lot of Danish joviality going on.

Due to popular demand!

2010-09-03T16:54:00.004+02:00

Christmas time at 'home' in country Australia

Well, one person missed it actually, so I am biting the bullet and starting up again.

It's been pretty close to a year since my last riveting post and quite a bit has happened. Not all interesting. Apart from managing to survive that dreadful year - still haven't forgiven global greedy financiers of all sorts and nationalities but particularly certain American ones - but not completely scarless. Lots of people I know lost their jobs, not just here in Denmark but all over. This year has proved slightly - so far - less dramatic.

I went back to the Antipodes for Christmas and a month's 'holiday'. A term as an expat I can now see why others use it loosely. There's no such thing as a holiday when you go back to where you came from. It was busier than work and, while great catching up with people, very, very frantic. Weird too. If you've never been an expat, I can tell you such a trip is a surprisingly strange experience. You're in the place you've known a gazillion years. You see the people you love, eat at your favourite restaurants, can pretty much find places while driving blindfolded, again in an odd way, you don't really feel like your belong - the other part of your life is thousands of kilometres away. It puts you in a challenging position. You like where you grew up but you also like where you live now.

The reaction probably depends much on where you go. I've known people who've been posted to places they hate (and not everyone likes Denmark btw either). When that's the case, the going home for Christmas is probably trying in another way, knowing you have to return to a place you're not mad about. But for someone like me, who pretty much needs Prozac to get me on the plane on holiday over day, I was surprised how good I felt walking through to no man's land at Melbourne Airport.

I read a book called - strangely enough - Almost French by Sarah Turnbull. She's an Australian who ends up marrying a Frenchman and they live in Paris. But in the story, she talks about a trip prior to that, to Greece. She meets a older Greek Australian who says that he is torn between two places. She doesn't understand what he means until she finds herself, eventually, established in Paris. And that painted a very clear picture to me.

Ok, we get the message :-)

2009-09-01T18:52:00.002+02:00

Seriously, we missed the last one for a valid reason - not because we couldn't read the notice! :)) No calls between 10 and 12 on Sunday please!

Get ready for Sunday

2009-06-06T08:09:00.004+02:00

You know how it goes about New York, the city that never closes or sleeps? Well, Copenhagen does. It's mad scramble on Saturdays to get everything done you need to do before the shops shut. Except for the first Sunday of the month. This sends everyone into a fevered frenzy and for some really odd reason, that includes me. Even weirder still, is that I get something on the lines of excitement building when I rarely make use of the day retail-wise anyway.

On Thursday night at Føtex (the supermarket) the staff were even wearing badges saying, 'Don't forget we're open this Sunday'. As if...

European rivalry

2009-06-06T07:07:00.004+02:00

I wasn't going to write about this because I thought it a bit too provoking but seeing the EU elections are tomorrow, I thought I may as well.

During a recent trip to Germany, I went to a party. Over the hours, I was introduced to a number of people and twice, had I been easily offended, I would have been. I was introduced as having come in from Copenhagen and talk turned to Denmark. I actually didn't get a chance to point out that while, yes, I had come from Copenhagen, I wasn't Danish. But here are the excerpts of two conversations:

German 1: I used to spend a lot of time in Denmark. I had a Danish girlfriend for a while. I even started learning Danish but it was such an ugly language, I stopped.

....righhhttt

And half an hour later:

German 2: I go to Denmark often for work. I don't know how you all understand yourselves. Danish is such a mess! (laughs) Next time I'm there, we should have some beers.

... let me think about that for a minute. ah...Let's not. (I didn't say that)

Now, maybe I am biased but I don't think Danish is an ugly language. Sure it's a bit garbled sometimes, but it's very soft and these days, if I've been out of the country, it always feels good to hear it again, even if I don't understand most of it! So, I felt a bit protective after these conversations.

I think what was interesting was two-fold. Firstly, that someone - indeed, two different people at different times, would make such comments to people they had only just met about an aspect their nationality. (Okay, I'm not Danish, but they didn't know that). I mean would you do that?

The second interesting point is that considering they thought Danish was not the most beautiful language in the world makes me think they thought German was. Now, I like German because it sounds very precise and you do say every part of the word but I'm not sure I'd class it under 'beautiful', but that's just my opinion.

This was brought home to me the next day on a suburban train when the door wouldn't øpen at the station and a very helpful old German women pointed to the next door down and in German said, I guess, 'Run to the other door, schnell! Schnell!

Once safely on the platform, I did have a bit of a laugh. When being told to 'Schnell' - you Schnell!

I also think this situation shows how different it is when you cross borders. While Europeans live pretty close to one another, mindsets and personalities are vastly different. I've learned Danes, on the whole, will go out of their way to be polite, even if you can tell they're thinking something different to what they're saying. Whereas Germans maybe seem to say honestly, exactly what they think. I dunno which is better but each is certainly different!

You know when you freak yourself out a bit?

2009-06-06T06:50:00.006+02:00

I woke up yesterday morning and got ready for work and left at 7:40. Immediately the world felt different outside. As you can see from the pic, the main drag where I live was virtually deserted. My neurons zapped into action. Was it Saturday? I wasn't sure. Had I already done that work I'd planned to do? I didn't think I had, but maybe I did. Or had something happened like in The Day of the Triffids? Were the few people driving and cycling like nothing was wrong just in denial?

After a quick google of dates on my iPhone I discovered it was Grundlovsdag - Constitution Day. Then I remembered my company doesn't take the day off, but obviously the rest of DK does. Phew.

In May, there's a long weekend just about every week, which is great. The down side is, now there's nothing until Christmas and getting through the transition from light to dark in Oct/Nov is made all the more difficult. The government should remedy the situation. I must write to them.

Worse still, Føtex was closed and that meant I wouldn't be trying Hansens vanilla after work.

Ingen reklamer tak

2009-06-05T07:04:00.005+02:00

There's something about me and the post office that doesn't marry. It never works out. Like the important document I posted 'express' at a ridiculous amount of money, back to Melbourne that took two weeks to get there.

Growing tired of coming home and finding much of the world's forests jammed through our front door, I decided enough was enough and headed off to Dansk Posten to remedy the situation.

In Denmark, you have to have an official sticker saying you don't want junk mail. You can't just put a sign up. So, off I traipsed and dutifully filled out the appropriate form and handed it over. I eagerly awaited the for the sticker to arrive so I am not quite sure what's gone wrong, but something has. That's because rather than a sticker arriving, I received the form I filled out - not in an envelope, just whacked through the door. No further instructions noted, no...nuffin.

Hmm.

My new Danish best friend

2009-06-05T06:34:00.006+02:00

I wondered if I'd make a best friend in Denmark. I have. I just didn't think our first encounter would leave me feeling happily sickish the next day. In a few minutes, they helped me forget about the nagging back that's annoyed me this week, and while not saying a word, somehow completely won me over with a smooth, tempting manner - even the smell - and the way they made my mouth feel. Our encounter went on for over an hour. I was insatiable and couldn't get enough. I could almost do it all again this morning but I should resist...

And yes, I borrowed these photos of them

I may have to move to Jægerspris...

Who's better? Boys or girls?

2009-06-03T19:22:00.010+02:00

Now I know every single member of the Danish royal family intimately, thanks to Se og hør, which gets delivered along with similar magazines to our office every Thursday, I've come to take an interest in what they're all up to, considering some of the 50+% tax I pay is helping them live the kind of life I am glad someone does. I quite like them, well most of them, although my opinion is only made up from what I see and read. But they help Denmark work the way it does, so I am glad they are here.

This weekend is a bit of a milestone, because there's a vote, along with EU elections, as to whether first born boys should be given precendence over first born girls in the line of succession to the throne.

I thought the answer would be a done-deal but not so. For the referendum to pass, 40% of the population has to vote and according to the newspapers it's very borderline this would happen. This surprises me. Firstly, because I come from a country where it is illegal not to vote (yes, it is) and secondly I thought at least 50% of the Danish population, the women, would be would be looking at their watches every few minutes the night before.

Now, for a minute, think about Christian and Isabella (Isabell?). Some 30 years ago, across the bridge in Sweden, there was another two royal children, Victoria and Carl Philip. Victoria, the eldest. After they were both born, the law was changed removing the title of Crown Prince from Carl Philip, because he was the second child and giving the title to Victoria. I don't know whether that affected their relationship as siblings but it seems a bit rough to have it decided after they were both born. Apparently the King of Sweden wasn't, and still isn't, too impressed by the move, so I can't quite work out why, considering about 98% of Danes are in favour of the monarchy, why they're not that eager to vote.

Furthermore, I've also heard and read that a lot of people are up in arms about the government's campaign - see it for yourself here (and see the film). Apparently people think the governments shouldn't side with one sex or another, however unfair it may seem. Of course, the government have sided with the female of the species. Usually I would be the same about government interference but not in this instance. I mean in Australia/NZ/Canada/UK there hasn't been a vote, but if there was (republicanism aside)...

What's a 'bogan' in Danish?

2009-06-03T19:08:00.004+02:00

In Australia, we call a certain type of person a 'bogan' . I think Americans say redneck. In the UK they say 'yobbo' but that get's a bit confusing because a 'yobbo' or 'yob' in Australia is someone who's very aggressive, as well as lacking culture and has no social skills and doesn't want them.

I have to admit, I haven't come across many in Denmark but I can't believe there's not a slang Danish word for them. The closest I've found is 'bisse' but someone told me that's not really right either.

So what is it?

Bornholm, bornholm, bornholm

2009-06-03T18:44:00.003+02:00

Du, min dejlige ferieø... or something like that. That's the song they play on the ferry over to this rather special Danish island. I spent the last long weekend there. Unfortunately, because we're busy at work, I came back on Monday, while NQDII is staying for the week with Hamish.

Anyway, I digress. Everyone told me Bornholm was 'special', so I couldn't wait to see it, albeit briefly. And it really was. They weren't kidding - fantastic beaches, great food, super countryside and lots and lots to do - if you have the time, which I didn't.

Lots of artists live there so there are plenty of glass works, studios etc, not to mention some really fantastic food - from homemade chocolates, ice cream and smokehouses to some really, really good restaurants. This one for instance: Æblehaven It really was tremendous, probably the best food and wine I've had in DK so far.

The beaches, as you can see from the pictures, are fantastic.

We took the train to Sweden and then got the ferry across, both of which Hamish thoroughly enjoyed. But I flew home which cut the travel time door-to-door from 4 hours to 1.2 hours. If you come to Denmark in summer, it really is worth a visit and the air fair is dirt cheap.

I wonder what NQDII is doing now...

Excuses, excuses

2009-06-03T18:39:00.003+02:00

Okay. Again, it's been a while. I was only thinking today, why? Well, the reason is, with this bloody crisis (thank you, certain CEOs, stockbrokers, dodgy money lenders and greedy people in general), many people have had to work longer hours than usual. That includes me. While I love what I do, it's not that much of a chore but it does cut into one's 'life' - such as it is. And, to be frank, after hours typing away at a keyboard, the last thing I want to do is come home and write more. So that's my excuse. Let's just hope the world starts turning again shortly.

The park is full of surprises

2009-03-30T20:03:00.003+02:00

So far this year there’s not been that much to laugh about. Apart from everything else I’ve written about, I also had a DKK 7,500 bill from the tandlæge. However, I did get a good laugh yesterday.

We organised to meet a friend and her dog at Frederiksberg gardens to have a run around with Hamish. The dogs had a ball (literally) for around two hours and were absolutely exhausted by the end.

When we go to the park, we take a few of those black doggy poo bags and stuff one with treats.

NQDII asked both dogs if they’d like a treat.

Tails wagged at a million miles an hour.

‘Okay,’ said NQDII. ‘Here you go.’

And put his hand into the bag to get them.

While his hand was still in he said quizzically. ‘That’s odd, these strip things have melted or something.’

Or something.

Our friend and I looked perplexed until a mortified look settled on NQDII’s face.

‘Oh nooooooooo! I’ve got my hand in dog shit!’

Poor NQDII… What a dreadful experience. And for a virologist, even more so. I could see an encyclopaedia of pathogens running through his brain.

It was a 300m dash to the loos to clean up but he couldn’t really relax until he came home and doused himself in disinfectant.

O..M...G.. Thanks heaps Telia

2009-03-27T22:45:00.006+01:00

For those of you who don't know, Telia- Tee (hard sound at the start) - li - ah, is the equivalent of, I guess, Telstra in Australia. A really big telecommunications company.

Unfortunately for me, when I had to rush back to Australia, I had no alternative but to take my Danish mobile. I went straight from the airport to an aunt's who kindly loaned me her car so I could try and find out what had happened to the place where I come from.

As you may imagine, given the roadblocks because of fires etc, this took some logistical work and, as I had no word about my father - or brother from Singapore at that stage - it took quite a lot of telephone calls to come to grips with what was going on. I knew in the back of my mind it would be a hellish bill because of all of this BUT I wasn't quite prepare for the almost DKK7,000 bill I noticed on my bank account today!

Yes, I made the calls and yes I knew they cost money but DKK7000??

Anyway, suspecting I might get a large bill, last month I emailed them hoping they may take some mercy on me - given how much these sorts of companies CEOs are paid and the size of their Golden Handshakes/Parachutes. I certainly wasn't asking to pay nothing but I thought they might take some mercy on a rather dire situation. They didn't (obviously as my bank account will attest). In any case, I wasn't completely surprised when I got this response from www.telia.dk :

"Thank you for your email

It is very unfortunate what you've been going through. And you have our deepest sympathy.

But we can not fulfill your wish and wtrie down this bill. We have many customers that use their phone in other countries than Denmark, and if you choose to use it, you will also have to pay the bills."

Thanks Telia - that first sentence had me reaching for tissues... And, at that stage, I didn't even have the bill - which btw, has taken over a month to hit my account. But firstly, I didn't ask Telia to 'write down the bill'. I'm not a tight-arse. But knowing for how little you can call anywhere on Skype, I kinda figure they make a decent profit and, at a time of catastrophe, they might take of 10% or so, given that I wasn't in the frame of mind, nor did I have the time, to rush of somewhere and organise some sort of Australian pre-paid thing when I arrived.

Anyway, I kinda figured I'd be up for DKK3,500-4,000 but DKK7000! I guess it's my own fault but really, I didn't expect it to be that much!

DKK7,000!!!!!!

Seriously, just kill me! :)

And I had to come clean about it to NQDII tonight. :(

Apart from 'Baronessen' ...

2009-03-27T09:59:00.006+01:00

Here another example of typical Danish television. The good thing about this show is I doubt fluent Danish is needed to view it. I don't watch it, someone just sent me a link - but I just might from now on! There's apparently a US version but I seriously doubt it would be...anything like this!

Hjælp os baroness!

2009-03-27T08:54:00.002+01:00

NQDII and I desperately need to cultivate a friendship with Baronessen – aka Caroline Fleming. If anyone can help find this aristocrat, we would be forever in their debt (literally, judging by the life her friends probably have to keep up with!) And no, we’re not social climbing but having recently watched the programme, Baronessen flytter ind (The Baroness moves in), we’ve finally found a show we can watch and understand.

I’ve no idea what sort of Danish she speaks but she says whole words and says them clearly. I did hear once that they speak the best Danish on Fyn. I don’t know whether that’s true or not because I can’t recall if the person told me was ‘Fynsk’, so it could just have been a biased opinion. But, as her family estate, which she now runs, is on that island, perhaps it is why…

Nevertheless we find ourselves glued to a programme the likes of which we normally wouldn’t watch.

Spring has sprung

2009-03-23T18:55:00.003+01:00

Self explanatory (And Hamish behaved himself)

Never seen one of these before - and it only has one wheel at the front
Copenhagen really is wonderful in the spring. A few quick snaps I took on a walk yesterday

Yeah, okay, I'm a bad blogger

2009-03-23T18:12:00.005+01:00

Metal garden furniture melts in bushfires!

My old house on the farm - or what's left of it

This was a mini rainforest on the farm - very lush with tree ferns and a stream

Thanks May for the kind inquiry. Had it not been for you, it would probably *be* May by the time I got around to posting again. Like going to the gym, it's a classic case of once you stop it's very hard to get going again.

In a nutshell, the end and the beginning of the year weren't exactly great. People at work got retrenched - luckily I missed the first round but it's just dreadful watching people you know and like leave under such circumstances.

Then came Christmas and my long-awaited visit from my brother, his wife and three kids. And wow, was I excited. Howeverrrrrr, this was more than somewhat marred by every one of us coming down with influenza at the same time, so it was not exactly the fun and wow of a time we'd all planned. In fact, more a case of 'who plays nurse today' kind of holiday.

Then, of course, in February the bushfires hit Australia and my entire town, or village I guess you could say, was wiped out. So I made an emergency trip back for a few days to be with my father and also my brother who'd flown in from Singapore. With our property completely destroyed - except for the main homestead which miraculously survived, it was an extremely surreal time. And then of course, the people I knew who fared far worse and lost their lives.

That was me from Christmas till now and I do hope everyone else had a better time!

But onwards and upwards! Spring is finally in the air - save the occasional snow flurry and it's getting light, light light! It's 18:30 right now and it's still daylight - a couple of months ago it was twilight at 14:30... I'm coming out of the den and hungry for life! :)

God Jul

2008-12-24T20:37:00.001+01:00

You know, in the twenty and a bit since this Christmas song came out, I just realised nothing much has changed. We're still at war, people still starve and there's still a lot of hate and greed around.

Although next year doesn't look like sunshine and lollipops (a term I borrowed from friend back home), from the heart I hope you all have a peaceful, happy and healthy year and enjoy it with everyone you love.

Julefrokost

2008-12-24T19:52:00.006+01:00

Julefrokoster have been going on for weeks and there have been a LOT of very happy Danes around town.

And I know I’ve been a very absent blogger lately. I have many excuses but, I suppose none that good.

Last weekend, my work held its Christmas party. Unlike most, for our Julefrokost, the Big Boss flew all 200 of us all down and back on a charter jet to Majorca, that popular not-so-little island off Spain to celebrate the end of the year.

Not, in my opinion, that it’s one to celebrate. But, for 24 hours I forgot about a certain international crisis, crumbling shares and house prices and potential unemployment and simply lapped up about 10 hours of sunshine, temperatures of a comparatively heatwave-ish 15C, seafood and the most magnificent 5 star accommodation in an old castle perched up on top of a hill.

Yep, this was the room

The terrace - and from what I read, I sat in places Onassis, Pss Grace and Claudia Schiffer sat. I could get used to the lifestyle, I can tell you!

I had three baths - I hadn't had one for 6 months, since Stockholm

I guess I couldn’t have asked for much more

Pavement pizzas

2008-12-01T19:04:00.003+01:00

Now, I know some of you think it is becoming my 'fetish' but over the the course of the weekend, there are a lot of 'pavement pizzas' to be found around Copenhagen.

This one greeted me and my bike as I was parking it this morning.

I'm just perplexed about what made it purple. Was it the purple Slurpee from the 7/11 or a cocktail concoction? Or beetroot salad and 83 beers?

Fascinating!

And how did they feel yesterday?? :(

NQDII thinks I'm sick, but I can't help it!!

Vale Jørn

2008-11-29T17:32:00.010+01:00

Considering we’re so far away from one another, it’s a bit odd to me that two countries with not much history in common actually share two rather prominent bonds. Mary, of course is the latest, and tragic misfortune pushed well aside, will undoubtedly find herself consort with a few pages of world history in her name. But long before her, there was a Danish architect who entered a competition to design an opera house on Sydney’s harbour.

While other would be iconic artists furnished complete specs into the competition Jørn Utzon threw in a few sketches – and won. (I dare say much to the chagrin of lots of snooty architects around the world). Jørn, the man of that moment, and as it turned out, many difficult and contentious moments, died today in his sleep. (I think that’s an excellent way to go – I must note it down for later).

I’m not overly sad for him. He lived a long life, has a nice family and, happily, has something that will, possible terrorist attacks aside, last much longer than most of us. What a legacy he leaves – his Opera House – something his grandchildren and great grandchildren and those that follow them will always be able to sprout with pride.

I’m a bit of an architecture snob. I’m not mad on many modern constructions and the only modern building I’m proud of in Australia is the Opera House. It’s daring. It’s clean lined and it suits its site spectacularly. Sadly, it’s the only one in the great land down under that’s worth mentioning. Some talk about Parliament House in Canberra but it’s interior is really, really dismal and uninspiring. The ceilings are disgraceful. To be frank, I’m not mad on the Opera House’s interior either but it’s better than Parliament House.

But I digress. Jørn Utzon’s relationship with Australia was fraught with controversy and he ended up leaving, rightly or wrongly, rather peeved. You can read the scandal here. I still can’t work out the whole drama but I do want to thank Mr Utzen profoundly for giving us such a remarkable building.

The term, ‘Danish Design’ is these days a bit of a cliché – it’s used so often but there is something special about it. Even today, cycling around, I always look at the Opera House here and the Black Diamond. They have an appealing presence, to me at least. On a clear day with no clouds and a bright blue sky, these modern buildings on the harbour truly shine. My only concern is that Greenland ice shelf melting and they’ll all (and us) be half submerged in seawater.

From the Marble Church, looking to Amalienborg Palace and then the Opera House

If you want to see some very interesting pictures of the design and building process of the Sydney Opera House, look at these

Poor India

2008-11-27T18:29:00.004+01:00

I guess everyone is upset about the events in India.

It makes me angry.

Then I read a headline in a newspaper today where these ridiculous fantatics claimed:

'Stop hating us!'

- I couldn't help but think:

'Well, stop killing us!'

I wonder where this is?

2008-11-23T10:02:00.002+01:00

You may or may not have notice I have this map widget on the blog. A dot has appeared off the east coast of the US, out in the middle of the the Atlantic, I guess. It's intrigued me because I didn't know there were any islands around there. Anyone know?

Snow casualties

2008-11-23T09:08:00.002+01:00

Not a high-brow post (are there ever any?) but taking Hamish for a walk yesterday, I felt a bit sorry for this freezing freezer and electrical companions. I hope they were meant for a hard rubbish collection and not part of a real-estate move with someone, probably me-like, thinking: 'I'm too tired for more. We'll move those inside in the morning.'

Science in art

2008-11-22T10:01:00.003+01:00

NQDII is currently in a frenzied state of creativity - again. The dining room, after what seemed a too short break, is once more covered in canvases, brushes, plastic on the floor, scraps of planning paper and lots of sounds of someone talking to themselves.

Believe it or not, commissions are starting to flow in and there are now seven or eight adorning walls over the Danish Empire.

I'm rather hoping it all takes off in the ilk of Lucian Freud, who recently sold his latest for GBP 10 million.

Most of this sloshing and slapping has a science tweak, which I guess adds something unique to the subject. The latest, done for his CEO, is entitled 'Encephalitis'. Possibly not the most romantic of subjects, I nevertheless feel it is the best so far. This picture doesn't do it justice because in real life, it has lots of depth and very good light variations and it's a very big painting.

On that note, I guess I better hit the real estate websites and start looking for a suitable, ancient rambling retreat. I'm thinking Lagio Maggiore, Lombardi or even Corsica...

First snow

2008-11-22T09:04:00.003+01:00

It started yesterday, melting as soon as it hit the ground but by last night it had got better at it. Needless to say, the air is decidedly chilled at the moment. I wonder whether we'll have a white Christmas? That would be good.

Welcome to my world

2008-11-18T17:44:00.002+01:00

This is an actual picture of the sky in Copenhagen at 5pm. This sight greets me when I wake at 0600 and when I look out my window at work at 1600hr. Inspiring, eh? Actually, I don't mind it that much, except that my body want's to do a lot of sleeping at the moment.

I start yawning at about 3pm.

And, for instance, last Saturday, when we went to that wine tasting, it started at 7.30pm. At 5.30pm I said to NQDII, 'It's too dark to go out. Let's just go to bed." Seriously, by 8pm I am ready for bed at the moment!

Condition yourself NQD, condition yourself NQD...

Don't succumb to the darkness...

Don't succumb to the darkness!

Can't..fight..it

Can't fight ittt...

,,,Too....tiiirrred

Okay Barack and Michelle, I dare ya!

2008-11-17T19:20:00.006+01:00

To be honest, before we got Hamish I was never a doggy person. We always had dogs of the farm growing up but they were farm dogs. But, when I bought Hamish, I immediately fell in love with him. Must be old age.

Looking through The Times online early this morning, I found this pic in an article about hypo-allergenic dogs for the new Presidential family in the US. He or she is the same 'breed' as Hamish - a labradoodle. I use the term 'breed' loosely because there's a lot of hoo-ha about labradoodles and their authenticity as a breed, because they're so new. I don't worry about all that because in that respect, I'm not a snob.

Not a day goes by in København when I take Hamish for a walk and someone comments on him. Seriously. 'Hvad er han for en race?' I get. I think he's the only one in Denmark. He's hugely popular and laps up the attention. I think the Obama's could do worse.

I mean, can you not be affected by this pic or am I getting sentimental in my own age?

I wonder if the Fogh's have a dog?

Labradoodles!

Wine, the consummate diplomat

2008-11-16T12:05:00.003+01:00

Up until this week ago, the only Australian I’ve spoken to in Copenhagen is…NQDII. Seriously, I hadn’t met any. So when an American friend of NQDII invited us to an Australian wine tasting night at some fellow-American friends of hers, I was rather excited.

And then yesterday morning (before 2pm, of course!) I went to buy some new glasses at an optical shop near here.

This place sells frames that are much cheaper than anywhere else I’ve found here in KBH. I was served by a Danish woman, ordered the glasses and then the very tall man who ran the shop walked up to me with some machine and said something in Danish. He was an older guy and I had no idea what he’s asked me. He repeated it in English in what I thought was an Australian accent. It transpired he’s been here for 30 years! Imagine that. Up until then I’d met no other Aussies here I suspected there weren’t many around, let alone one who’d been here that long.

Then last night we cycled off to the mainly American expat party and were told about the wines produced by the Portet family in the Yarra Valley. The vineyard is named after the father, Dominique Portet and one of his sons sells the wine over here in Copenhagen. In another coincidence the winery is only half an hour away from my family’s farm and I’d been there a couple of times to buy wine.

The chef of the night was also Australian and amongst other Australian-themed food we tucked into crocodile (really does taste like chicken) and kangaroo, which I should add, I’m not to keen on. What was interesting was hearing the accent again after such a long time. It felt quite weird – but nice.

The interesting titbits about wine sales in Denmark are that Danes are very conservative about how a bottle is sealed and tend to hold up the crucifix to screw tops, although, I was not surprised to hear that 97% of the wine sold in Denmark is consumed on the same day! ☺

Nu har vi vært et år i danmark!

2008-11-14T07:11:00.002+01:00

Yep, this week mark's a year. Hard to believe, it really does seem to have gone very quickly.

Of course, as is usual in my life, it all happened in a rush. From applying for the position here in Copenhagen to arriving was all done in four weeks.

In that time, I had to say goodbye to everyone back in Australia, pack up the house, organise visas, organise travel etc. It was like a dream but I still remember coming into land at Kastrup and when water gave way to the runway. Suddenly my thoughts were, 'WTF have I done!!' :) It must have been the twelve hours sleep I'd had on the plane after not much of it in a month.

Suddenly, I was sane again.

But, what an experience, what a thrill. Sometimes you just have to hop in and go for a ride.

Creativity

2008-10-30T17:29:00.001+01:00

I shall preface this by saying it’s my own fault, by publicly declaring I hadn’t had a cold or bug for more than a year. So from my semi-sick bed I’m writing this after leaving work early. I didn’t feel great but I was more worried about kaste op-ing in full view of my workmates.

But this piece isn’t about me (not everything is). It’s about creativity.

I work in advertising so it’s full of creative minds. We had the creative department’s annual seminar last week in Sweden. Set in an area not dissimilar to New England or Vermont in autumn (of fall if you’re a US-er). Unfortunately, we didn’t see much of it except from the bus because the seminar was very intense apart from the place we stayed at: a ‘four star’ spa-resort that, I have to say, reminded me much of the hotel in The Shining. Pics on that later.

In the middle of two full days of presentations of what everyone had been up to for the year, about half of us had to do a five minute presentation on something creative. The theme was ‘I like this because…’. For me, it was undoubtedly the most fascinating part of the seminar because I gained insight to people I work with every day but know not much about.

What it did show me was how many creative minds are about. One had taken a photograph everyday of somewhere in Copenhagen, for a year. Another, a keen surfer and skateboarder showed an amazing film of skateboarders in action. An art director picked apart a bit of old print advertising which was hysterical, someone read some clever prose, another displayed a sporting arena they had designed. That’s just some – but they were all amazing.

One person showed this piece. A talk by Sir Ken Robinson. It was not only funny but poignant. It’s a talk at a seminar called, ‘Do School’s today kill creativity’. What he says is so true. As we age, life can really suck the creativity out of us. We push people into boxes and for so many, in the end, daily life just becomes a goal of survival, rather than following dreams and talents.

Have a look and see what you think. There are some really funny bits around the 3.49 minute mark – but the whole video is worth watching.

Who turned out the lights?

2008-10-28T18:07:00.004+01:00

1630hr/4.30pm today

We turned back the clocks on Saturday night and, while the mornings are suddenly a wee bit lighter (not for long) darkness has set in pretty quickly at night. This pic is 1630hr from my office window. And, it's decidedly chillier all of a sudden - like minus at night. Suddenly, I understand why everyone has autumn and winter coats. I'm about to ditch the autumn one soon if this keeps up! BTW. It's 6.30pm / 1830hr and it's gone from 10 to 2C :(

Hvor Små Vi Er

2008-10-19T17:57:00.001+02:00

Well, I recognise Lina from Aqua, the guy from Flammon og Citronen and Rene. Dunno about the others...

Ugens danske - the week's Danish

2008-10-19T10:07:00.003+02:00

Okay, I'm sure for those of you who don't speak Danish, listening to those of us who are learning it and complaining about the difficulty of it must lead you to think, 'Oh stop complaining, it can't be *that* hard!' Well, we went to friends for dinner last night and learned this gem. And yes, it does mean something:

Far, får får får?

Nej, får får ikke får, får får lam.

Translation:

Dad, do sheep have sheep?

No, sheep don’t have sheep, sheep have lambs

Money vs Humanity

2008-10-18T13:19:00.005+02:00

The Worship of Mammon (the false god of greed) by Evelyn De Morgan

I received an interesting email from Australia yesterday. It was from someone talking about structure – or current restructuring – of the company they work for.

Recently, a new CEO was appointed who is based in the US. The new CEO has decided to implement what’s apparently called, ‘The American Model’, at the company. The effect of this new implementation has so far included:

• Several retrenchments
• Accepting a drop in pay or face the axe
• Accepting a drop in work hours or face the axe
• Swapping from full-time positions to consultancy or casual contracts

Sounds enticing, doesn’t it? It’s also important to keep in mind that the positions in question are pretty much all very highly skilled, as is the industry.

What it also means is that these staff members will now enjoy no real job security.

More than that, the Australian manager, who has always been regarded very favourably – indeed I thought so myself – has now become not only quite disliked for what he’s done but apparently changed markedly and embraced this ‘new regime’, espousing its merit to those who are, unfortunately for them, affected by it.

At first, I didn’t think much of him either but then I realised in this current climate, he’s a husband and a father with a family of his own to maintain. I guess he really doesn’t have a choice because he needs his job. But then from what I’ve discovered, he has used terms like, ‘now that we’re embracing “The American Model”’, which doesn’t make it sounds like he’s losing much sleep over it. Who knows? Maybe it has something to do with self-preservation.

Certainly, the American CEO couldn’t care less. He’s only interested in the bottom line, which is what life has seemed to be about up until now anyway.

What I do find remarkable is that it’s CEOs like this dickhead who, in my opinion, have helped bring the world to the state it’s in anyway. And not just American ones. They’re a global breed but you rarely see them suffering even if the company they run strikes difficulties. For some reason for which I don’t have the answer, they quite often end up resigning with enormous, actually obscene, handshakes. It’s criminal.

But that’s what our Western World is like. There’re great elements to it and there are also very ugly elements to it. We’ve become obsessed with materialism – and I’ve not been immune to this at times – and now the party’s well and truly over, especially for those who’ve over extended themselves.

I read this week where in Australia there is a glut of used Ferraris and Aston Martins for sale, selling for far under the price they were formerly worth. Suddenly, all these hotshot guys – and maybe gals – have crashed into a wall and the seams of their affluent (on paper) lives have become unstitched. It’s utterly humiliating and terrifying for them and I really do feel for them and their families if they have them.

The trouble is we place so much value on the material things we have in life. We’re wanters by nature maybe and, like sport, it’s very often a competition to see how much of it you can grab. I don’t know whether that is right or wrong but I know that when you read about fathers committing suicide because the money is gone it’s both tragic and ridiculous. I suspect they do it for a few or reasons: the personal humiliation, the failure and the desperation of not knowing how they’ll go on – not just for themselves but for their families.

While you can argue that the effect of losing everything material is worth ‘totalling’ yourself over, the ludicrous and frightening point is this particular act suggests, directly or indirectly, that we value money over humanity.

Something's not rotten in Denmark

2008-10-15T19:08:00.006+02:00

The fathers of the Danish Constitution 1848 by Constantin Hansen

I check Melbourne’s online newspapers regularly and apart from Mary, there’s never news about Denmark. Therefore, I was surprised to find this article, touting the virtues of Denmark’s Welfare State that has, over time, become a Welfare State with a capitalistic slant.

It’s surprising because the journalist shares some of the views about the merits of the Danish system. (Because I am linking the article, I have to say I have no affiliation with The Age or the journalist). But, I have to say, it’s one of the parts of Denmark that I’ve really come to love.

The gist for non-Danish residents is that in Denmark you pay A LOT of tax. Not only is the average tax 50% but there’re taxes on just about everything else you do or buy. You don’t come to Denmark for its tax benefits – that much is sure – unless you’re on the Postive List, which means you do get taxed on a lower rate for a few years.

But, while the benefits to me don’t really mean much – I have no children etc. etc., a look around Denmark will show you that there is very little poverty, illiteracy or wanting compared to just about any other nation on Earth.

Denmark isn’t Utopia. They have their problems. They’re having a hard time reconciling how to deal with the offspring of immigrant workers who have trouble ‘assimilating’ into Danish society and ‘multiculturalism’ isn’t a term you hear – at all. And, I feel, some of these non-WASPS probably have a very hard time.

But, at the end of the day, everyone has a chance. You don’t have to live in Hellerup or to have gone to Bernadotte (or Le Rosey or others) to do something with your life. I like that. The crime rate is extremely low compared to most other countries, even taking into account the current gang warfare going on in Copenhagen and other parts of the country. I should add, however, that child care, from what I've seen, isn't completely free - although it's still very much cheaper than other Western countries.

So, all in all, maybe there are some lessons for we of the US/British backgrounds to learn.

A nice relaxing Sunday/night

2008-10-13T10:42:00.002+02:00

After a walk and throw of the ball on Saturday, I let Hamish play with it in the house for a while. I thought he was particularly quiet and went to check. I found a 20 crown sized piece of the above ball on the floor but not the rest of it. He looked very sheepish and I immediately knew he’d devoured all but that piece.

Consequently, much of yesterday was spent examining ‘exiting material’ on our trips outside, which were many. At least it’s coming out because I was wondering if he’d suffer some sort of blockage. I suspect more is to come, judging by the surprise that met me on the floor this morning - something he never does.

Iit’s not how I planned to spend my Sunday.or morning before work today.

Why do they do it?

Kartofler ferie

2008-10-13T10:05:00.002+02:00

Just about any excuse is a good enough one to call a holiday in Denmark and Kartofler Ferie is no exception. That’s what this week is all about, judging by the list of people at work who’ve taken off for their autumn break to sunnier climes.

Believe it or not, Kartofler Ferie means ‘Potato Holiday’. It comes from the days when kids were given time off school to help harvest the potato crop. Today it’s still a school holiday period but you won’t find many people pulling potatoes from the ground – unless of course they’re Majorcan or Santorinian potatoes ☺

And the speech

2008-10-13T09:59:00.001+02:00

When this was live, I have to admit I was at a party and a bit..drunk so didn't really listen to what he said. Having watched it again now sober, it was a very good one - certainly not a 'Danish Tragedy'.

The Waltz

2008-10-13T09:56:00.001+02:00

Not quite sure why these wouldn't play before. Hopefully will work this time. As I said, having done a lot of sightseeing lately, you realise the DRF are an integral part of life in Denmark. So here's one other Aussie expat's wedding waltz...

Travels with my aunt

2008-10-12T19:07:00.003+02:00

The 'Seat' of Danish 'power'

Actually, the aunt featured in the book is not dissimilar to my own and while I had literally aged another year by the time she arrived, NQDII and I had to work hard at keeping up with the seemingly limitless energy of a woman in her sixties. We had lots of fun but by the time I dropped her back at the airport on Thursday morning for her to take the plane back to Singapore, I felt like I had jet lag myself!

She was the first family member we’ve had come to visit, so we were pretty excited about her arrival and keen to show her the highlights of this small but ancient island. I had worded her up not to expect the grandness of London or Paris because while Copenhagen has some very lovely buildings, they’re comparatively compact compared to those of the big cities of Europe.

Okay, so twelve guards and a local bus isn't quite London...

She didn’t seem perturbed and keenly embraced every bit of information about Copenhagen and Denmark she picked up on certain tours. By the end of the five days, she considered herself an expert, although I fear the phrase, ‘a little bit of knowledge is very dangerous,’ could be appropriate, as she coined her own expression, ‘It was a Danish Tragedy’, after listening to certain aspects of Denmark’s history.

There were quite a number of ‘Danish Tragedies’ to which my aunt was privy from various tours:

“Nelson almost levelled Copenhagen in an attack to disable and capture the Danish Navy”

Aunt: “Oh how awful, how tragic.”

“Christiansborg Palace burnt down three times”

Aunt: “What a shame, rather a Danish Tragedy.”

“Danish soldiers were rationed on 10 litres of beer, per soldier, per day”

Aunt: “Oh, well, tragic but they must have been the happiest army in Europe.”

“King Christian and Queen Louise manage to marry off their daughters to the heirs to the British and Russian thrones.”

Aunt: “Oh that was good.”

“But they could not afford to attend the wedding.”

Aunt: “Oh, what a Danish Tragedy.”

“During the German occupation in WWII, King Christian rode out on the streets of Copenhagen to boost the people’s morale”

Aunt: “Oh, how lovely.”

“…until he was one day thrown from his horse and ended up in a wheelchair.”

Aunt: “Oh how awful. What a Danish Tragedy.”

The lake at Fredensborg

And then we had our trip to Fredensborg. We left early one morning with NQDII as he made his way to work (he takes three trains and rides the bike he leaves at that end the rest of the way!). We arrived early at the palace, about 9.15am. So early, there was no one else around.

Out of nowhere, I heard a car coming so went to stand out of the way. I looked up, and there was a Rolls Royce coming towards us.

“Look, it’s the Queen.” I said.

Sure enough, it was.

My aunt was busy talking to a rubbish bin at the time (seriously) and only just looked up to catch the Queen exiting the palace gates at great speed. She was suitably impressed.

“Although, I’ve heard you do see the royal family all the time here.”

(Umm, yes, like everyday – not!).

Then we went for a walk around the park of Fredensborg.

It really is quite beautiful, lots of space and a fantastic lake.

One of the ‘highlights’ was the pier or jetty built for Prince Henrik, the Queen’s husband for his 70th birthday or something. Unfortunately, part of it had collapsed.

Aunt: “Oh dear, another Danish tragedy.”

Poor Henrik's recent 'tragedy'

A couple of days later, we had a three hour walk around Djurehaven - an enormous old hunting ground with herds of wild dear. It was spectacular. Including walking from the station, it only took us half an hour from Frederiksberg to get there.

3 hours of walking in the wild and only 15 mins from town

Det er min fødselsdag..

2008-10-06T09:01:00.002+02:00

Well, yesterday actually. I'm not into birthdays actually but in 40 odd years, I have only ever had four rain-free birthdays. So just as well I don't expect much. Given Saturday was a glorious day, I kind of figured Sunday would not be so much different. Wrong. The wind howled all night (and I mean *howled*) and it poured torrentially, so I was not disappointed! I'm starting to feel even if I went to Dubai for the day, it would rain.

Nevertheless we had fun. A sodden trip to Rosenborg and dinner last night. Today, we're off to Malmo and the sun is shining.

Interesting comparisons

2008-10-03T21:42:00.003+02:00

PM Anders Fogh Rasmussen

It is interesting.

In Australia, the near collapse of the US and thus global market has seen headlines in the past couple of weeks like: ‘Market Crashes!’ In Denmark, we get headlines like: ‘Unhappy morning on stock exchange.’

Hear the difference?

It is possibly just me and the fact that Australia is, these days, pretty much a new state of America, so when the US sneezes, Australia is rushed to casualty. On the other hand, I know, while things aren’t great in the big countries of Europe, they don’t historically act like there’s a coma coming on.

Today, the Prime Minister , Anders Fogh Rasmussen (born on Australia Day, oddly enough) told us all in Denmark we have to work more. I was well prepared to do this, yessir Mr FR, until I read further and he qualified this by saying, ‘to counteract the labour shortage in coming years’. This pleasantly stunned me because I was thinking more along the lines of, ‘to try and hold your jobs and not join the unemployment queue that is likely to grow, possibly in the coming few weeks’.

So if Mr FR is optimistically planning ahead like this, I think I will too ☺

Countdown

2008-10-03T19:11:00.002+02:00

Istana

My aunt Egg would be just about to board the plane in Singapore after visiting my brother, his wife and children. Very exciting. We've bought lots of wine and chocolate (her favourite things).

Funny Friday

2008-10-03T18:47:00.004+02:00

Very cute

I am delighted to introduce Australia's former Treasurer (facing and in ecstasy) and former Prime Minister (looking busy) - obviously pay-back for some deal

Umm. Probably X rated but, really, who did think it up??

The way I am eating lately, I'd probably have to think hard too

I usually don't take much notice of these sorts of emails but a few of these pics were pretty funny - and after my doom and gloom post, I thought I better balance it out.

Doom and gloom

2008-10-02T18:41:00.006+02:00

While Hamish carries on eating his dinner tonight totally unaware of the possible chaos that could befall us any moment...

And speaking of the demise of the world’s economic system, is it just me or is everyone else ‘over it’ already? For some reason, recessions seem to follow me around wherever I go and I’m totally sick of them.

To cheer myself up in bed last night, and after many complex monetary calculations, I came to the following conclusions:

• If I lose my job, we will have to rush to see NQDII’s visa is changed to the main visa holder
• If NQDII loses his job and I don’t, we will not eat much because my (almost equal salary) doesn’t seem to last as long for some odd reason
• If NQDII loses his job as well as me, we will have to leave pretty quickly
• This will be a headache because…
• It will cost us a fortune to go back to Australia
• Hamish is pretty much the cost of a first class ticket
• Our house is rented out and we will have to live in a government run shelter for the homeless (read St Vincent de Paul bin)

Possible solutions:

• Apply for refugee status but I am at a loss as to what we could apply as refugees from…
• Ask Mary if she needs a gardener or two

Grumpy Denmark

2008-10-02T18:20:00.002+02:00

I dunno what it is but this week everyone seems rather grumpy, especially at work and including me and NQDII. Maybe it's the change in the weather - because the cold and dark has hit pretty quickly or maybe it's the seeming demise of the world economic system - I dunno, but I hope it ends soon. It doesn't inspire me to get up every day, that much is certain.

Midsommervisen - Vi elsker vort land

2008-09-27T21:07:00.001+02:00

Or this version, if Shubidua aren't your cup of elderberry... :)

Okay, and if you're a Dane living in Australia or elsewhere...

2008-09-27T21:01:00.001+02:00

...maybe this makes you think of 'home' - and who better, than Shu-bi-dua! :)

The 'I Am Australian' song

2008-09-27T18:35:00.001+02:00

I guess really, this could apply to anywhere these days - even Denmark. I guess it's about diversity but about belonging.

Okay, so you get a bit torn between two lovers

2008-09-27T18:22:00.001+02:00

Note that we changed they lyrics - Rio to Rome, because Qantas don't fly to Rio but anyway... This is a good ad. For me, there are three songs that make me feel 'Australian'. This one, from Peter Allen, who barely lived in Australia, Waltzing Matilda - I dunno why but it does and We are Australian.

I don't know what song/s make Danes homesick...

To be Danish

2008-09-27T18:00:00.008+02:00

I’m starting to feel Danish because:

1. Australia really does seem a very long way away now

2. I feel good about paying 50% tax and see the sense in it (Well, it really does have its merits!)

3. It’s important to learn Danish because so many people in the world don’t speak it

4. I can now (if I sprinkle methamphetamine on my rye bread and chocolate flakes) get every bit of household shopping done on a Saturday before the shops close at 2.30pm o’clock

5. I finally know who every member of the royal family is, including cousins

6. I loved summer and the almost constant light but am looking forward to candles and darkness

7. If the train stops, I just sit there and don’t complain – even if it’s for an hour

8. I think it is a shame Denmark lost Southern Sweden to the Swedes 300 years ago

9. I now believe Hygge is untranslatable and I don’t screw up my face when someone says so

10. What’s wrong with spending DKK800 (AU$200) on drinks on a Friday night? Really??!

11. I take pride in my once-every-nine-week duty to clean the stair well and basement. (Why would you pay someone to do that?) ☹

12. Social smoking is good. It makes you happy

13. Smoking full time makes you even happier

14. Drinking till you throw up, on a Friday and/or Saturday night, is an excellent idea and I wonder why I’d never thought of it before. (Although preferably not a Sunday, from personal experience)

15. People who have a couple of glasses of wine every night of the week are alcoholics. Those who drink until they are comatose on the weekend, are not

16. Flats having no numbers but only ‘to the left’ or ‘to the right’ makes perfect sense

17. It’s not a funny question if someone asks you do you go ‘to the left’ or to the right’

18. If it’s 1st June, you wear shorts, even if it’s -1C

19. Ærter doesn’t mean artichoke

20. I can’t understand why AustraliaPost men/women don’t deliver mail right to your door

21. Pharmacies should always have queue numbers

22. Leaving your baby snuggled up in a pram to sleep in the back yard in mid-winter does them the world of good

23. It’s better if you live ‘North of Copenhagen’ – even if I don’t

24. Even if nothing is organised, it will be okay

25. A CPR number is essential, it’s not in any way a Big Brother thingy

26. Five or six weeks holiday time a year is bordering on unreasonable

27. People who say ‘hello’ or ‘undskyld’ on a bus are probably deranged

28. Crown Princess Mary is Danish, not Australian

The golden rules of cycling

2008-09-27T09:37:00.000+02:00

We’re lucky in Copenhagen that just about every street has a bike path on both sides of the road. These make travel around the city a breeze and you can easily get from one side of Copenhagen to the other in half an hour or less. (Yes, it’s a giant metropolis) But if you are coming to live here, or even just to cycle around on your holiday, here are the rules of the road I have picked up over almost a year’s cycling. It’s vital you follow them:

The Copenhagen Cycling Rules

1. Always wear your iPod. You get fined if you don’t. You also get discount bike servicing at bike retailers if you wear big earphones.

2. When entering from a side street, look hard to see if there are any other cyclists coming. If there are, look them in the eye and merge out anyway – let them work out the rest.

3. Cycle slowly and let everyone pass you but once you catch up at the red traffic lights, swerve around them all so you are in front again for when the lights turn green. Other cyclists love it when you do this.

4. Unless it is a major intersection – and sometimes even then – amber means pedal for your life to get across, even if you haven’t quite made it onto the crossing yet.

5. A red light at an intersection only means stop if there’re so many cars coming there’s no way you could get across and live.

6. Talk as much as you want on your mobile telephone and meander from one side of the path to the other – especially in peak hour. The politi encourage it.

7. Pedestrians are trash. If they inadvertently step onto the bike path (usually a tourist) take your week’s frustration out on them verbally. That way, they learn who’s boss.

8. If you see a friend walking on the footpath, stop immediately and talk to them. Don’t bother lifting your bike up 10cms onto the footpath. You won’t cause any crashes.

9. If a bus stops to pick up passengers, slow down a tad but DO NOT stop completely, even if old ladies and women with prams are disembarking. It’s your path, not theirs.

10. Ring your bell frequently to let others know you have one. After all, you paid for it.

Ushi Heiku mets Zindy Laursen

2008-09-25T18:24:00.001+02:00

Coat time

2008-09-25T07:20:00.005+02:00

Tree giving a big yawn

It had to happen eventually I guess but I now officially need a coat when cycling to work. The mornings are darker (read pitch black) when I wake up and my enthusiasm for early morning gym sessions have thumped to a dismal end. Similarly, taking Hamish out for his final toilet expedition of the day now requires a torch and usually a long-winded game of find the turd - not really something you feel like doing at 2200hr at night, I can tell you.

The leaves are starting to change everywhere but at least we have been blessed with some beautiful autumnal days with clear blue skies.

I better start buying candles and wait for everyone to start getting grumpy. :)

Happy drunks

2008-09-21T09:09:00.002+02:00

Danes love booze. Seriously. I thought Aussies were good guzzlers until I came here. It’s not uncommon to see people wandering the streets drinking beer first thing in the morning and you can buy liquor from any supermarket, although you have next to no hope of finding Aspirin or Panodil.

Anyway, I digress. In Melbourne at the moment, quickly rivalling Johannesburg in terms of street violence, there’s pandemonium about binge drinking youths picking fights and bashing each other to death at nightclubs.

I’m sure there’re booze-inspired punch ups here in Denmark too (I’ve been told Aalborg is good for a fight, if that’s what you’re looking for) but what I’ve noticed here is that groups of merry young-ins also seem to sing – at the top of their voices – late at night while they meander home. I used to will them to shut up but I’ve become quite used to it and, when you think about it, it’s far more preferable than beating each other up.

Last night was almost a concert performance. A boisterous group made their way along our street singing a song from that Whoopi Goldberg film, Sister Act, where she finds herself in a down-and-out school and miraculously transforms a class of dead-beats into and American equivalent of the Vienna Boys’ Choir.

So there I was, sitting watching a British crime show when they started up. ‘La, la, la, laaa!’ a few of them belted out, while they took turns doing shouting the next ‘La’ bit in the lead up to ‘Oh Happy Day’. They were really very good, especially considering they were pretty drunk.

Now that would never happen in Melbourne on a Saturday night, unfortunately.

The downside to the concert is I will have to dodge the usual selection of Sunday morning ‘pavement pizzas’ when I walk the dog. Hamish loves them and thinks they’re there just for him and can’t quite understand why I don’t let him eat them.

Two big peas

2008-09-19T18:13:00.007+02:00

Imagine for a moment, going into a busy green grocer and asking if you could have 'to stora ærter' (two big peas) instead of two big artichokes.

Think about that.

I am. :(

East Germany meets Denmark

2008-09-19T18:13:00.006+02:00

I really like Denmark, it’s very quirky, so this post is really not disparaging. Denmark has its faults but where doesn’t? One thing other expat friends and I laugh about is the supermarket. Especially ones like Netto. Sometimes the shelves are stocked, sometimes they’re not. But what makes you realise you really do live somewhere different is the pharmacy or apotek.

In Australia, we have *very* strict rules about Rx drugs and OTC drugs. At least I thought so, until I came here. In Denmark, a visit to the pharmacy is like a trip through Australian customs. It takes hours of negations to get anywhere. There are just so many drugs you can buy OTC in Australia that you can't buy here and browsing, is most definitely not allowed. Everything is situated *behind* the counter.

You have to be 16 to drink and 18 to smoke (or is it the other way around?) but you certainly can’t buy eye drops if you think you’re getting conjunctivitis as NQDII (who is too much of a medico for his own good) suspected he was.

Nope, you definitely can’t buy slightly antibiotic eye drops OTC. You need to go to the doctor and get a script. Of course, he didn’t have conjunctivitis but he may have and a few drops would have helped fixed it up. But here, regulations rule.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

2008-09-17T19:50:00.006+02:00

Wow. It's been a long while since I've read a thriller that really distracted my from life. This one did. It's the first of a trilogy written by a Swedish chap, Stieg Larsson, (Steeg Lar-shon) who, poor bloke, wrote the books and then died of a heart attack before they were published. He was only 49, not much older than I am. (Well, okay, I give in. Quite a bit older - years even)

This one went on to become a best seller and his family are apparently squabbling over the incoming fortunes, as we tend to do as humans.

Nevertheless, this book was completely wonderful - if you are into thrillers.

I heard a lot about it, ordered it and started reading. For about twenty pages, I was almost asleep, wondering if this was yet another book millions had thought magical, except me. But a couple of pages later, I was enthralled.

Quickly, bedtime got earlier and earlier and it was one of those books I didn't want to end. The language is superb and the character developments are beautifully done. The suspense is fingernail stuff and the plot really engages you and compels you to read on and on.

I really loved every character - and there are quite a number of them, each described beautifully. Of course, you can't help but fall in love with Salander.

I just keep thinking what a shame he died. And, once the next two books are published and I read them, what will I do?

I regret two things about reading it. First that it ended and secondly that I didn't read it during Hygge season.

On the road again.

2008-09-13T10:17:00.004+02:00

We’ve been travelling a lot these past months and rarely seem to be home. This weekend is no different.

NQD went to Berlin yesterday for work and is staying today as well.

I, on the other hand, had my own little adventure. I walked about 800m down the road to this place, to have my first experience (well, second if you include the consultation) with the Danish health care system for which some of my 50% tax pays to run. I was also about to become a movie star of sorts.

I wasn’t going to write about this but I figure its probably the sort of thing no one likes to discuss or do and really can’t compare to a weekend in a swish hotel in Berlin, drinking beer and eating delicious German stodge and strolling Unter den Linden. Only that it might save your life.

My mother died of bowel cancer at 61, which isn’t very old, as did a very dear friend and she was far too young, with a 12 year-old son. As my mother’s side of the family also has several cancer genes as family members, I thought it was probably time I should be checked-up.

There’s a system to this procedure. It involves drinking a litre of the most revolting drink you can imagine and spending most of the night on the toilet. Just when it’s over, at around six in the morning, you drink another litre and the fun begins again.

Still, at least now I now know how many tiles there are on the walls in our bathroom.

All that finally over, I marched off to Frederiksberg Hospital, feeling like I was washed out (I guess I was) and suffering jet lag from tiredness.

In my best (don’t get excited) Danish, I announced who I was and what I was there for – a colonoscopy – or ‘Koloskopi’ på dansk. A very sweet nurse told me I was expected, which was all well and good, except ‘to be expected’ wasn’t something I’ve covered in Danish, so I stood looking at her wondering what she’d just told me about myself.

Next I was whisked off, told to change into some very unfashionable hospital clothes and plonk myself down on my bed – which happened to be down the end of a hall, actually in the hall! I was too tired to care and the nurses were so lovely I couldn’t bring myself to question anything and I figured this was the simple part of a day of saying goodbye to my dignity! I couldn’t have been too concerned because I fell into a deep sleep, apparently snoring.

An hour or so later I was pushed on said bed up to the procedure room to be met by another nurse. She had a gravelly voice and joked and laughed away in Danish most of which I didn’t understand. Slightly sedated, before I knew it the doctor was in and with a rub and a push, a very long looking hose venture into a part of me I’d never seen before.

Certainly looking at the inside of your bowel on a TV screen isn’t quite as exciting as watching a foetus in an ultrasound but it did feel like that 70’s movie where they went inside that scientists body.

You can feel the camera work it’s way around, which feels weird but not painful and then it’s all over – in about ten minutes. Really, it’s that quick. I’d expected to be in there for hours.

And that was it – all over. So really, it’s so easy today to get checked, it well worth the effort and the sacrifice of a little dignity as others gaze up your nether region, because if you happen to become symptomatic from one of these cancers, you might have a bigger struggle ahead.

Yeah, okay, your dignity flies out the window for ten minutes!

September 11th

2008-09-11T19:16:00.008+02:00

I might be in Denmark and I might be Australian but for me 9/11 (or 11/9 as it should correctly be referred to!) is ingrained in me forever.

For me, it was the very day, in my eyes, the world really and truly lost its innocence. It was the day when anyone who really and truly believed in good, was shocked and devastated and you knew, or at least I felt, that the world would never be the same again.

Two rather prominent but unassuming buildings changed our lives forever. And it realised some of our (or at least my) greatest fears: to be stuck on a aeroplane where you had no control and were at the mercy of the pilot.

It changed our view of humanism. It changed the way most of us look at Moslems. And I feel really sorry for that.

I don't know many Moslems. I know three. I know the one who runs the Turkish restaurant across the road from where I used to live and a girl I used to work with - and one of my best friends, a Persian, who lives in the US.

None think like these people.

But, whatever we may think, 9/11 changed us. We will all remember where we were that day/night. I remember my brother ringing me, very early one morning, saying nothing but, 'Turn on the TV, turn on the TV'.

And I remember feeling numb. I remember almost crying when I answered a call from my father whom I was talking to as I drove to Melbourne from our farm. He was upset that I was upset that I had just listed to - I think his name was Mark? - his mother talking about the conversation as his plane was about to plough into an unremarkable field somewhere in the US. I remember the girl from Prahran - a groovy suburb in Melbourne -who had only started working for some company in the towers that week.

Wherever we were at that moment.

We will never forget.

Lest we forget.

I always remember what the Queen - of the UK (and Australia) said after the attack:

'Grief is the price we pay for love.'

- Isn't that true?

It's herring day!

2008-09-11T19:02:00.008+02:00

Yayyyyy! The poor un-sung, humble herring.

I have no idea why. The Copenhagen Post just said so - but I'm getting a 'Rose from The Golden Girls' feeling about it.

Personally, in Denmark, you can't ever have enough herring -or 'sild' (silth) as it is called here (don't question the 'th' for 'd' - just do it...) Herring just about goes with anything - hors d'oevres, frokost, brylluper, æblekager og Lambourghini-er.

Nu kommer Sverige

2008-09-06T15:01:00.007+02:00

Town Hall - where the Nobel Banquet is held
This last weekend we went to Stockholm, although it’s taken me all week to write about it.

Unfortunately, I spent the first day recovering from an historic hangover. A workmate was finishing up on the Friday and as I was taking the Friday off, we went out Thursday night for goodbye drinks. In retrospect, I think she and I had it in our minds it was also the last time in our lives we’d ever see alcohol. It was such fun at the time but not so bright at 4.30am on the Friday morning when NQDII and I got up to catch our flight. I thought, once we were at the airport, a coffee may have helped. It didn’t. So then I thought perhaps a nice, fresh orange juice would cleanse my toxic body. I guess at least it had an effect because two minutes after I downed it, my stomach told me to find the bathroom quickly.

Anyway, I digress. You don’t want to hear about that, but suffice to say, my first day in Stockholm was a write-off.

By luck, we managed through logging on at the right time to Sterling to get 0.00DKK tickets and only paid for taxes. It looked like a super cheap holiday.

Not so.

While very beautiful, Stockholm must be one of the most expensive places on Earth – and we expats thought Denmark was bad…

Our first battle was accommodation. We quickly discovered that August is one of Stockholm’s most expensive months hotel-wise. Not only was everything booked, but it was hellishly expensive.

We ended up here at Hotel Stureplan.

I had many misgivings. I paid a fortune for something I’d never seen and the website didn’t offer that much about, so I expected to have paid what felt like a month’s salary for something very average. Luckily, I was proved wrong. It was a fantastic room done, appropriately enough, in Gustavian style with great attention to detail.

The room

Basin (and we had a huge shower!

View from bed
NQDII had trouble working out why they call Sweden, Sverige – or Sverge as he pronounced it but which is actually pronounced, in Swedish, ‘Sv-er-i-a’. So in our house, Sverge it has become. Much like Rockslide for Roskilde, Van-loser for Vanløse and Codge for Køge (Kooa).

Anyway, it will be a very quiet month here because we spent enough money to have had two weeks on a Greek Island.

Stockholm is in a beautiful natural setting. Rather like Sydney, except in Scandinavia. ☺ The buildings in the older part of the city that aren’t on Gamla Stan (which is really, really old) are very grand. Much grander than Copenhagen and it’s a pleasure just to walk around the streets. However, there is a really ugly, modern part of the city that does let it down. I was surprised there were not more interesting modern buildings like in Copenhagen. While I’m not a huge fan of modern structures – unless they’re extra special, Copenhagen has some really lovely modern buildings. Stockholm doesn’t.

The latest in tourist attire - Freezer Bag wet weather gear

That said, the lake and archipelago are magnificent. One day we went by boat out to Drottningholm, where the royal family lives. It was a fantastic trip and I can just imagine how much fun it would be to have the water around you in the height of summer. As it was, it was two days before the end of summer and the weather was a balmy 13C that day.

Drottningholm

You definitely feel the ‘Us vs Them’ in Stockholm as far as it and Copenhagen are concerned. Our guide around Drottningholm took great (tongue in check) pleasure in saying at one point to the group how the area (southern Sweden) used to be part of Denmark and if they hadn’t won that war, she would be Danish, ‘Which would have been terrible!’ We heard things like this a couple of times and it reminded me very much of the Sydney versus Melbourne game.

If you have a lot of money to spare, Stockholm is a must. It was interesting seeing the difference between Copenhagen and it’s rival for capital of Scandinavia. Stockholm is very..hmm. Posh? Yes, I guess posh. The people dress like the Sloane Rangers of London or the BCBG of Paris or the Preppies of NYC. You really notice it. They must spend a fortune on ‘the look’. Copenhagen, on the other hand, is more cool and hip. Stockholmers are very friendly but they have a more British-style reservedness. They’re very efficient but, I think I’d miss the kind of bamboozled, all-over-the-place kind of ‘organisation’ you get on the streets here of Copenhagen.

The Swedes are happy to talk about the success of historical Sweden, whereas here in Denmark, the usual tours include such gems as, ‘That’s the navy ship that accidentally torpedoed a famous Danish summerhouse. It was decommissioned – probably a good thing.’ ‘That’s Christiansborg Palace that burnt down and was rebuilt a gazillion times and the last time the royal family didn’t even bother moving back in.’ ‘This is the little mermaid. She’s been beheaded four times.’ ‘Nelson bombed Copenhagen to buggery and the navy never recovered.’ ‘And, King Christian’s daughter married the heir to the Russian throne but he and the Queen couldn’t afford to go to the wedding.’

- I fit in perfectly with those sorts of continual misfortunes.

A really cool bar

2008-09-05T09:11:00.000+02:00

Haven't been here yet. Has anyone else?

Guilty

2008-09-04T18:55:00.002+02:00

Yep. I feel a bit guilty at the moment.

This is why.

During the first couple of months after arriving here, I did feel a tad homesick. I missed the familiarity of life in Melbourne – friends, language, geography, the Aussie way etc.

Now, NQDII is feeling homesick.

He dreams about Melbourne frequently, so I’ve told him to go back after Christmas for a holiday. Seriously, I’d go with him but it would be a waste of money because I have no desire to go back at the moment. I feel awful that he feels like this because I don’t know the cure. I know he loves his job here but he says he misses the familiarity of living back in Melbourne.

But this has got me thinking rather traitorous thoughts. The thing is, while I did feel homesick, I honestly don’t now. Apart from our actual house, a few friends and family and SAIGON ROSE food, I don’t miss Australia at all. I don’t miss the endless obsession with sport, the ridiculous fixation with finding fortune and celebrity, the macho aggro, the boganism or the ‘Australia is the best country in the world’ bit.

I feel quite comfortable where I am.

I don’t ‘belong’ here but now, weirdly enough, I’m starting to think I really don’t belong anywhere. Sure, if I was popped back on a plane to Melbourne I’d survive but I don’t know that I’d really feel I belonged there. In retrospect, I’ve wondered lately if I ever did. Then again, I’m not-quite-Danish either. I do enjoy life here but I don’t know the words to the national anthem/s.

Gosh.

Maybe I’m destined to live as a displaced person. ☹

Danish irony

2008-09-04T18:37:00.002+02:00

Look at my new text book from Danish class. This morning, I started learning Danish at work, rather than the two nights a week, which I found very inconvenient.

For those who have no idea about Danish, the title translates to: 'Danish is not so difficult'

Hehe. Now that is a sense of humour (at least I hope it's meant to be!)

Right hemisphere vs Left hemisphere

2008-09-02T18:21:00.006+02:00

First, let me tell you a bit about me. I am, in my own way, organised. However, I am a typical right hemisphere thinker. I tend to ‘feel’ my way to a destination. I don’t like to be hemmed in too much and I love adventure. Not following exact itineraries makes me feel free.

NQDII, OTOH, is the opposite. One must always know exactly where they are going and getting lost is about the worst than can ever happen. The only way to enjoy something is to have it completely planned from whoa to go.

This picture below will give you an indication of what I’m up against. I could easily (and love) being an adventurer. He would hate it.

Tired of looking on rejseplanen (‘not always the most efficient route and doesn’t show an alternative should a train be late’) every morning to check the train timetables, he’s created his own train (and one bus, as he pointed out) schedule, showing, and I quote, ‘the most efficient way to get to and from work everyday’. Apparently it shows an example for any given hour of the day, with times of operation on the far right column should it not actually be applicable all day. The rows in bold show the most time efficient way to get to and from work. Highlighted in orange and trains and buses are ‘critical’ because if they are late, ‘one should immediately change routes’.

I had to scan it in and show the world. For a start, I could never be bothered doing it and secondly, I don’t understand how it works. Still, it works for him and is, as a scientist, I guess apt.

You shouldn't laugh...but

2008-08-27T19:32:00.002+02:00

And I feel even worse because this lady was Swedish and you know how it is between Swedes and Danes. Nevertheless, it did give me a giggle. Only because I could see me doing the same at that age...

It's a whacky world

2008-08-27T15:43:00.002+02:00

This was brought home clearly to us last night as we scoffed dinner in front of the television. (As you can see, we are highly civilised.)

If cameras were aimed at us it would actually make interesting viewing. We lean our heads in from opposite sofas, squint, screw our faces up, look at each other and every fifteen seconds ask in frustration, ‘Hvad siger han?’ (What did he say?).

Often, the reporter or whomever looks very serious. You know, lots of bobbing of their heads as they tell us to prepare for the Russian invasion in 48 hours time and we sit there certain they’re talking about one of the new pieces of legislation made in Denmark every two working hours or the latest from the nail-biting world of badminton.

Anyway, last night we were engrossed when suddenly there was a knock at the door. This is a highly unusual occurrence and piqued our interest immediately.

Within seconds NQDII had banged the plate on the floor and rushed with Hamish to confirm that another human being had actually put hand to wood – unexpectedly – at our door.

I heard murmured voices as I continued eating. (I was curious, but not enough to stop devouring my second enormous meal of the day). Plus, I couldn’t hear much because we have the television up so loud so we can hear the words more clearly.

NQDII duly returned.

“Who was it?”

“The television police.”

“Oh no! What did you say?”

“What do you think I said? I can’t bloody lie and say we don’t own one when all you can here in the background is someone yelling, ‘…og om lidt, Airline’ at a million decibels.”

And, while there is a happy story to this (he’s only charging us as of yesterday) it does seem a bit whacky to be paying for something when all we can understand from what we watch amounts to a total of 27%.

Here's a happy story for the day

2008-08-21T06:47:00.001+02:00

I'd never heard of it before.

Denmark, land of the Olympians - sorta

2008-08-17T18:37:00.006+02:00

Well, two of them, up until now!

For nigh on a fortnight I have been scanning the results, desperate for a medal. My anxious moments were met with lots of “Don’t worry, we’re a very small country.” Small?? There’s 5,475,791 and with NQDII and I, plus two.

We have to win something! I mean, I come from a country that would rather see children starve than not have a decent medal tally.

What about the shooter? He seemed confident. “No. He missed 5 out of 20 shots”. Hmm. What about Caroline Wazniacki (ancient Danish name??). “Hmmaybe…”

Nope. In the end the first medal went to the dressage girls, one of whom happened to be Princess Nathalie zu Sayn-Wittgenstein-Berleburg, the Queen’s niece. (What was it about that dual citizenship rule?)

Let’s face it, if you had a surname like that and had to pronounce it everyday you could certainly hold your breath and stay saddled on a horse for ten minutes. Thankfully, she did and Denmark got its first medal.

A bronze.

Finally, my adopted homeland was right up there and equal with Togo and Takijistan – two countries I’ve admired for one reason or another for many years…

And then, Lotte Friis surprised the world (no joke) by winning the 800m freestyle

And then!!!

Yay!

Thomas Ebert Moreten Jørgensen, Mads Christian Kruse Andersen (who cares if he has four name’s, I just hope he doesn’t marry Nathalie zu SWB and have children) and Eskild Balschmidt Ebbesen won the lightweigh coxless four!!

The Queen's Danish

2008-08-17T17:52:00.008+02:00

Judging by the mailbags of emails I get (what do emails come in, btw?) a lot of people wonder how my Danish is going. As said in an earlier post this week, it wasn’t the best week in the world in any respect of my dismal life and here are a handful of this week’s Danish disasters (keep in mind they all occurred in Danish):

---

Me to workmate: What does the word kludder mean? I can’t find it in the dictionary anywhere and I keep getting emails about it.

Colleague: It’s X’s nickname.

----

Me to lady from power company: I’m not sure what this bill is for – or what months.

Lady: How can I help you?

(Deep sigh and intake of breath) Me to lady at power company: I can’t read this bill properly. Can you tell me something about it?

Lady: Yes. But I can do it in English if you like.

---

Me to shop assistant: Do you sell needles? I have to sew on some buttons so I can fuck them up.

Shop assistant: (Wide eyes)

Me: I have to fuck some buttons.

Shop assistant: I think you mean sew on buttons so you can do them up.

---

Me to lady at stall: Is it okay if I take a picture?

(Lady has bewildered look)

Lady: They’re DKK480

---

Me to waiter: Two white wines please.

Waiter: Sure

later: two red wines arrive

---

Me to workmate: So where is the 20th anniversary party?

Workmate: I just told you 30 seconds ago

Me: I said where this time. Not when.

Haha! I got one back!!

---

Me to colleagues in office: Gosh. It's very hot in here

Workmates: (sniggering)

Me: What?!

Workmates: "Meeaathhhh" - just like the Queen!

Job hunting for English speakers in Denmark

2008-08-17T12:40:00.004+02:00

Here's a new site specifically for English speakers looking for work in Denmark. It's appropriately called careerguide2denmark

Kunst hændværker markedet

2008-08-17T11:37:00.008+02:00

Our main reason for going out yesterday was to visit the crafts market on Domkirkepladsen. While I am a bit marketed-out – what with Brick Lane in London, one in Brussels and a recent one in Frederiksberg – I’d read this particular one was very good.

I’m a bit ho-hum about such events. You can only look at so many knotted leather bracelets, macramé and run-of-the-mill seascapes. Thankfully, there was none of that here. Indeed, it was undoubtedly the best I’ve ever been too. There was also the most delicious looking ice cream stand. Unfortunately the queue was so long and disorganised we gave up on it but even now, I feel quite cheated.

The general standard was absolutely superb. It’s utterly mind-blowing how talented some people are. I have trouble drawing stick figures.

It was really the Harrods of open-air markets.

I was impressed with everything – the silversmith work, ceramics and even the clothes. There were so many outstandingly beautiful pieces. I really wish I’d had my real camera and not just the one on the phone.

It’s too hard to really pick favourites but the kiln-fired glasswork by Jørgensen & Mørch Design was exquisite. The plate pictured here in the photograph was amazing and there was a pair of delicate candlesticks by Dorph-Jensen that were simply magnificent. The glass of Marie Petpen was extremely interesting as was the jewellery from Galerie Metal. Really, there was lots of others too - I just didn't grab all of their cards.

When you hear about Danish design, this is what they mean. It was the market’s 25th anniversary and I can’t recommend a visit to next year’s enough.

Really cool pots with rock lids

The plate we're starting to save-up for

Pride Parade

2008-08-17T09:29:00.007+02:00

It was a very busy day in Copenhagen yesterday. We set off for the arts market on Frue Plads and unexpectedly happened across Gay Pride’s parade. This went some way to explain the pub we passed that was covered in pink tinsel.

The parade apparently started in Norrebrø and worked its way down to Rådhuspladsen, which had been set up with a huge stage, Thai food bars and, of course, several booze bars gearing up for all night partying.

Well, let me tell you there was something for everyone. Handy and glamorous fashion tips for women courtesy of a smorgåsbord of tuled and crinolined drag queens, enough tanned and buffed male torsos to set off a stampede of last-chance 40-something men (like me) to Denmark’s health and fitness centres, a float of smurfs (gay ones, I guess) for the kids and, naturally, for any hate-crime and neo-nazi enthusiasts I suppose an overwhelming feeling of being a kid in a candy shop.

But, for me, smile of the day was the at least two-metre tall drag queen shuffling along in black boots with roughly 30cm platforms and not much else. It must have been a very, very long walk for her from Norrebrø and I dread to think of the state of her feet today!

There were lots of laughs and a very large crowd. Even the weather turned on a perfect sunny and warm late summer performance.

Rådhuset

A rainbow for the rainbow parade

Whatever you do, don't ask for her hairdresser's name

Drag queens

More of Paris Hilton's cousins

There's a bear in there

Some Smurfs 'come out' to play

These boots are (n't) made for walking

...and a wedding at Mary & Fred's church

Wing the interview

2008-08-16T03:38:00.001+02:00

Superb. I've never heard anything quite like it.

I wonder if there is a Danish equivalent??

2008-08-16T03:29:00.001+02:00

Jeg skal taler dansk riktigt godt (eller rigtig god?), hvad!

2008-08-14T19:11:00.003+02:00

In light of this article, I thought I should announce that the company I work for is starting Danish lessons for all we 'forrij-ners'. This means I won’t have to try and fit Danish in after finishing work, which rarely happens because I can never get away in time.

I am extremely grateful. My boss was very good about it. I was going to ask others if I they'd like to attend a Saturday morning class I'd discovered but he said no one would be interested and, consequently, these in-house classes transpired thanks to him.

They're in the morning from 0800 until 1000 (on hour or mine, one of their’s), and I can’t wait.

I find I can understand so much more than I did but actually speaking gets me befuddled. It will be brilliant just getting it over and done with in the mornings without the stress of wondering whether I’ll get to class or not.

The week that's almost over

2008-08-14T18:52:00.003+02:00

The sky tonight

This is what the sky looks like tonight, on Little Friday 14th August at 6.34pm. Still, daylight but it is getting darker earlier.

For one reason or another I will be glad to see the back of this week. I think the stars must be strangely aligned or there’s a full moon brewing or something because it’s been a very shitty week one way or another. Work has been frantic, which I don’t mind usually but I was working on a project I’d not been involved in that much. The presentation went well but more due to the quality of the work than my presence. I am on the booze right now, as I feel it calls for a stiff drink!

I am looking forward to locking myself inside tomorrow night and just hygge-ing (new word?). Plus, the weather has been crappy and believe it or not, no matter what time I left for work or came home (in degrees or very early or late) the rain started midway through my cycling. The dog had diarrhoea for two days, which didn’t help and literally put the shit into a shitty week.

Don't think I'm depressed - I'm not, it's just one of those weeks!

Hopefully next week will prove nicer. ☺

Goodbye summer

2008-08-09T13:16:00.005+02:00

I thought the farewell a little early myself but looking at a few trees around the place, perhaps not. Some are definitely starting to change. Plus, it's getting darker at night. It's still light until late but nowhere near so. In fact, if you read this chart, you'll see that here in Copenhagen we're now losing at least four minutes of sunlight a day!

An insight into life in Copenhagen - from another ex-pat

2008-08-09T08:37:00.002+02:00

One of the best and certainly most comprehensive blogs about life in Copenhagen is this one: The Copenhagen Report. The owner of the blog was recently interviewed by CNN about his life here and it's a terrific read. So, if you want an overview of what it means and feels like to live in CPH from someone who share's my view about about place, read here.

Margaritas anyone?

2008-08-09T08:14:00.006+02:00

There are lots of Mexican restaurants in Melbourne. I’m not a huge fan of Mexican but NQDII loves it and because I’m such a good partner I agreed to dinner at one we spotted on Gothersgade a few weeks ago. It was rather nice, especially the margaritas and the waiter was kind enough to give us double shots – something I’d not experienced in DK before. They were quite delicious and the more heady I became, the more eager I was to brush the exorbitant price of them away in my head and order more. What’s money? I thought. Until I got the bill. The effect of these four margaritas went some way to softening the blow but, as I have no self-control, NQDII subtly asked if I had bought my Dankort (that is, insisted I paid the bill). ☹

I can't blame the magaritas but probably the beans and a still-warm building that made for a... rather uncomfortable night's sleep for both of us. I still can't make up my mind whether the midnight addition of our 'Melissa' fan was a help or hindrance but even the dog eventually ended up exiting his basket and the room...

Still, it was nice sitting outside in this late part of summer and, while, as I say, there are lots of Mexican restaurants in Melbourne, none of them overlook a royal castle. I must admit this week I was happy to see the end of the work-week and it took the view across the road to make me realise that I do now live somewhere rather different.

Guess what I had for dinner last night...

2008-08-03T17:34:00.002+02:00

The not-so-good-news about eating chicken in DK presently.

Apparently salmonella is having a ball in chicken from SuperBest, Kvik Spar, Spar and SuperSpar at the moment with a lovely strain resistant to antibiotics. I think what we ate came from Føtex. Yes, I'm sure it did, I think...

Tim Tams are coming!

2008-08-03T17:25:00.005+02:00

My Aunt Egg rang today to say she was coming over. She's having a quick trip in October once the footy season is over and before the real cold hits. She's spending a few days in Singapore visiting my brother and his wife and kids and then a few days here in Denmark. She said did she want us to bring some Tim Tams? Like, is she for real?????? Is okay. I will have lost the 7kg by then.

Street performers

2008-08-03T17:10:00.004+02:00

I'm a bit of a street performer cynic but I had a quick walk along Strøget this afternoon and came across this terracotta warrior. Quite well done, I think.

There was a little old man back in winter when I was getting the metro from Frederiksberg. He'd be there at 0730 playing his accordion in dark, freezing, sleeting temperatures and always playing the same song - Oh how we danced on the night we first met - with great gusto and smile on his face. No one else was smiling at that time of the morning in those conditions, I can promise you that! I guess he's in St Tropez enjoying the summer now.

Anyway, this young guy today was very realistic. I really did think it was a statue at first and I wouldn't want to be him trying to get that sludge off tonight.

TV DK

2008-08-03T10:24:00.005+02:00

Yes, it’s a Sunday and what better time is there to talk about television viewing in Denmark.

In Copenhagen we get four channels (well, at least right here in this flat we do). One of them is called Kanal København. It’s turned into one of our favourites, as it’s full of community-based programmes that are rather endearing to watch because they have more than a touch of an amateur production to them. You can see such specials as: Saturday night at the local community hall’s big band get-together, visits to local old age centres that (literally) go on for hours [Super Senior TV], home interviews with pensioners about KBH in the old days, interviews with artists, café owners and trips to Islands Brygge (the swimming centre located right in the harbour). A great one this week was a televised run down of some church’s fete.

Originally, we used to give each other raised eye-brows from our respective sofas and giggle away at the dodgy camera work or the occasional interviewer who seemed suddenly to run out of questions for the guest, which would leave the camera focussed on two tentative, faces obviously hoping something from somewhere would intervene with some inspiration.

Now, I really get into it for another reason. It gives you an overview of a really nice part of the Danish psyche. Firstly, that a channel like this even exists and secondly that there are obviously people (other than us) who tune in to see these very normal, unspectacular events in the day to day lives of some Copenhageners. I suppose an equivalent table of contents in Melbourne would be seeing Mrs Anna Old-School from Kew prune her roses, Mr Gino Italia’s family busy processing their tomatoes into sugo and preserving them in old beer bottles or interviewing the old fisherman on St Kilda pier. A little bit of Kanal København can go a long way but in a very dejlig way, it’s a pleasant alternative to sensationalist current affair programmes or some of the banal American sitcoms that air everyday, and sometimes twice day.

My biggest surprise occurred one night when we arrived late home. NQDII headed straight for bed but I flicked on KK to see a naked man passionately kissing a just-as-naked woman who was in some degree of ecstasy if her moans were anything to go by. I thought it was part of a normal movie until seconds later we had close ups of a very beside-itself penis and an equally happy vagina. I couldn’t believe my eyes but I had to stay tuned to find out what happened next in the plot. After speaking to workmates about it, I discovered one early morning the techies allegedly inserted the wrong video into the player so pre schoolers were given a glimpse of part of their lives to come. If it’s true, I’m not sure what they thought about it but apparently there were lots of telephone calls to the station from frantic parents.

Things you miss

2008-08-02T10:29:00.003+02:00

I share an office with three others. We all get along really well and have lots of fun. The one who is intent on improving my Danish, by speaking to me in Danish, said yesterday that she really is surprised how I and NQDII have settled into life in Denmark. Her husband has a job where they can always be posted away too, so she knows very well what it’s like to be an ex-pat. Then I happened to say I really missed our house sometimes and she said, “Finally! You miss something.” It made me think I must be all sunshine and light, which really isn’t the case and I’m sure a couple of my blogger mates must think the same.

There are lots of things I miss about Australia, but I know they’re not here and Denmark has it’s own plusses that Australia doesn’t have. I don’t expect my life in Denmark to mirror my life in Australia. It’s impossible. I guess how I approached the move was to literally just jump into it and let fate steer the course.

But, straight after that talk with my workmate, I received an email MMS from a friend in Australia who’d just driven past my family farm and stopped to take a photograph of the driveway. I haven’t seen that view of the place for almost a year and I must say it did make me a bit melancholy. It’s winter there now and I could see the wet ground, the gum trees with all the fallen summer bark around them and I could almost feel the frigid air and smell the eucalyptus and yet, it is all literally on the other side of the world.

The farm

So, here’s a list of things I think about almost every day.

1. My brother, his wife and kids – who live in Singapore anyway
2. My father who I dread something happening to while I’m here
3. My best friend Steve
4. My other best friend Salome, who lives in Texas and has also developed an admitted email-writing phobia
5. My dear friend Carolyn who died before I came here but I bought her photograph because I knew she would have enjoyed the trip
6. Other friends, Bruce, Joe and Francesca, Joy and Peter, Jan and Cameron, Yvonna
7. My crazy aunts and cousins
8. My house – it’s nothing really special but it’s bigger than this flat and has its own tiny front and back gardens.
9. Saigon Rose – Vietnamese restaurants in Prahran and Richmond, and the family who run them
10. The huge selection of vegetables and foods we have in Australia (plant variety, not idiots)
11. Melbourne water that requires no de-calcing to run the dishwasher or washing machine and tastes delicious. The only trouble is, there's hardly any left...
12. Cheap, great restaurants
13. Being only 5mins away from the beach

And here’s a list of things I don’t miss

1. Bogans
2. Excessive heat and all the dramas that go with it
3. Sport taking up two thirds of the nightly news
4. Aggro on the streets
5. Yuppies
6. Listening to Australian politicians
7. Driving – this has surprised me

Et voila! See, I am human.

Nørrebro nights

2008-08-02T09:11:00.004+02:00

Entrance to the local gym. Sorry, my phone cam doesn't like twilight, but you...get the picture

Nørrebro is the city area next to us. It has a lot of bad press, often deservedly, and it’s where some disgruntled youths got their knickers in a knot over their community house being torn town last year and set about tearing the rest of the area down. Many people call it Nørrebronx.

Personally, I rather like it. I don’t know that I’d want to live there. It’s a bit like a very big Brunswick Street, Fitzroy and, as good as the restaurants are along that strip, I wouldn’t want to live in Fitzroy either. Certainly, I don’t feel unsafe there, which is interesting, although the place is thriving with the usual street-types you find in ‘grunge’ areas. Ya gotcha drunks, ya gotcha druggies, ya gotcha gangs etc. but compared to other such areas I’ve been to in other countries it’s, thankfully, pretty tame. The VisitCopenhagen website describes it as a place for 20-30 somethings (they didn’t include me in this statistic) full of hip cafes, restaurants etc, shopping and exotic food. It’s also probably the most graffiti-ed place in Denmark.

All that said, it really does have some cool places to eat. Last night we went with some of NQDII’s workmates to – wait for it – Pussy Galore’s, which is right on Sank Hans Torv and surrounded by other cool eating and drinking venues. It was a beautiful night and perfect to sit outside drinking and eating. I think you know you’re starting to adjust to life in Denmark when you think nothing of spending DKK500 on a few drinks!

Funny, cause I just watched Goldfinger last weekend

We sat at a table almost in the middle of the square, right beside the park bench, inhabited by two not-so-happy-with-the-world vagrants. But they kept to themselves and seemed quite happy to watch everyone around them and duck of occasionally for fresh øl supplies. At one point, one of their bottles fell over and beer quickly poured out. I’ve never seen someone who can barely walk, move so fast to upright a bottle!

Of course, our final stop was one of my favourite places Paradis who have, I believe, the best ice-cream in town and, having managed to keep to a diet for the entire week (I’ve put on 7kg since November last year) I felt I’d earned a splurge. I’ve just got to learn to fight the nagging withdrawals that really want me to go back and get another one today!

Summer in Copenhagen

2008-08-02T08:43:00.001+02:00

Sun and Denmark are two words you usually don’t think of putting in the same sentence but this week you can’t not. While 25C or 27C doesn’t sound that high for Australians, I can promise you that for some reason in Denmark it feels like 35C.

My first week back at work after two weeks off saw the few of us who were at work sweltering in a lovely old office without airconditioning. Indeed, it seems there is NO airconditioning in Denmark. While that’s good new for Global Warming, it’s not so good news for workers – expat ones particularly. It didn’t help at all that I spent the entire week working on a project about central heating! By the time I cycled home every day I was literally a sweaty, smelly mess and headed straight to the shower.

I dreamt of the beach all week and fantasised about swimming in the clear, cool waters of Amager Strandparken today only to wake to an overcast sky and bad beach day weather.

I feel cheated!

Boring Brussels? Not at all.

2008-07-27T12:35:00.004+02:00

My temporary addiction and the reason I am wearing cargo pants rather than jeans

Simply beautiful architecture

What did we do with detail?

A fresco down a laneway

There're lots of 'renovator's dreams' like this

Much has been said and written about Brussels, the Capital of Europe; that funny, bureaucratic, predominately French-speaking city stuck whack in the Flemish part of the country. I wasn’t expecting much, apart from possible riots, given recent news and perhaps being caught up in the dissolution of a nation.

I stayed here and booked it with wotif for around €65 a night, which was pretty cheap for somewhere near the centre. Given the price, I wasn’t expecting much in that way either but was pleasantly surprised. The room was a decent size but the bathroom, by European standards was huge. I have a big, big-bathroom fetish. The staff were also really helpful and friendly.

The train trip from the airport was about 15 minutes to Gare du Nord. I’d read the hotel was only a ten-minute walk from the station but, of course, I walked out the wrong door (I thought it was the right one at the time) and was besieged by a woman begging me for money. The usual, not-so-original someone stole her purse on the tram story.

Off I went in full confidence of knowing where I was, only to end up in a street that resembled a Turkish bazaar in Istanbul and actually in the complete opposite direction to where I should have been. Good grief. There was so many people I thought I’d never find my way out. And, it was an introduction to something else I didn’t know about Brussels – it’s a melting pot of races and nationalities.

Finally, desperate to get to the hotel before my bladder exploded I back tracked to the station and asked some police where I was. They were very helpful and studied the map rather excitedly, arguing about which way I should go.

Eventually, I arrived.

I won’t bore you with an epistle about tourist attractions. Suffice to say there are very many beautiful buildings in Brussels and not just the Grande Place. The food in my experience was really delicious and it’s fascinating watching the diversity of the people.

The only down side is that there are lot of beggar/dodgy types, which I have to say put me off a bit and I can’t see how this still happens in such wealthy countries. It’s rather depressing. There’re also continuous warnings about pickpockets on the metro, although I had no trouble at all.

If you're after a cheap bicycle...

2008-07-18T09:18:00.005+02:00

This is the place to go. NQDII recently bought an extra bike to leave at the other end of the island to save catching a bus from the station to work or a 20 minute walk after an hour's trip on three trains. All up, including the DKK20 to cut the old chain off, it cost DKK520. Not bad when you consider we paid around DKK4000 each for new bikes at the beginning of the year.

'Fascinating' sex

2008-07-18T09:08:00.002+02:00

Occasionally you come across articles that really make you read the headline twice. This did. Now, I can imagine mammalian beastiality. I don’t think it’s in any way right but this article really made me think. How on earth do you have a sexual relationship with an octopus? Would I not be hauled before the courts for doing so, I’d download a picture just to see. Plus, I wonder what makes someone think, “Yes, I must have sex with an octopus,” and why they would even begin to get the idea for it?

The Mother Country (Mother City?)

2008-07-18T08:02:00.004+02:00

Yup. A Whirlpool at Windsor - courtesy of an Eastern European lady. I didn't realise Whirlpool still existed.

These memorial benches are a great idea

London. What can you say? It must be one of the world’s most remarkable cites. A literal melting pot of people from all over the world and, in warm weather, it felt like it. There are just SO many people it boggled my mind. I’d not been there for eight years and last time, I was there in winter which I suspect means fewer tourists. Not so this time. I felt like I was living in a sea of people every time I went outside.

I know the theoretical city area is quite small but Greater London is massive. As you fly in, it seems to go on forever, and coming from Copenhagen – with a grand population of some one million souls – the contrast is marked.

Luckily for us, our friends live in a swank part of town and we had the choice of four spare bedrooms spread over five storeys. Direct from Copenhagen where the average abode is relatively small, we felt like we were staying in Buckingham Palace. Even more startling was the house was no different from the hundreds that surrounded it and it made me think just how much building must have been going on around the turn of the 20th century. And, how ‘Great’ Britain must have been and the wealth it must have drawn in from its vast Empire.

I’ve been to London quite a lot but I’ve never ventured into the East End. This time our hosts took us to an area called Brick Lane. Here, you could really feel the melange of different races and cultures all boiling away together. It was fascinating, as were the choices of foods from the street stalls and the cross section of people. It’s definitely worth a visit.

At the other extreme, one day we went to Windsor Castle. None of us had been there before but each of us was overwhelmed by the sheer size of the place and the grandeur of the state apartments. Seriously, I’ve seen no other palace – even Versailles – that you could compare it too. No amount of explanation would describe the enormity and detail of these rooms. You really have to see it. We all agreed it’s a place you could really go back to and look at just one or two rooms at a time. I couldn’t help but think it must have been fun for the four royal children growing up there. Hide and seek would be exciting, if a futile holiday game.

But, it was refreshing to get back to Copenhagen. Sure, it’s small but it’s so easy to navigate and taking the metro from the airport was effortless (although NQDII and I had one of our notorious airport altercations so we came home on separate metros!)

And here I am almost halfway through my two weeks of mandatory, yet unpaid sommerferie. I made a spur of the moment and perhaps imprudent decision last night (given the state of my bank account) and booked a few days away in Brussels from Sunday. I hadn’t planned to do anything but suddenly thought the week would go and I’d have done nothing, especially since NQDII will be back at work.

Brussels was the cheapest flight I could find. Considering it was voted Europe’s most boring city there might be good reason for this but as yet another Belgian government recently resigned, I am interested in taking a look at this Flemish-Walloon situation myself. It seems odd that such a tiny country has trouble holding itself together. Who knows? With my vast experience in smoothing relations, I might be able to fix the whole thing for them ☺

A bit of end of week fun

2008-07-11T08:50:00.001+02:00

Eight hours of work and then I'm on a two week break. Have Dankort, anything is possible!

Hej! Jeg. er. dansk!! Det er jeg!!

2008-07-10T19:45:00.003+02:00

It arrived - and I've used it twice!! Tusind, tusind, tusind tak!!