Happy drunks

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

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

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

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.

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

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!

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.