A Danish Christmas

This past weekend was my last in Copenhagen, and my host family and I celebrating by having an early, traditional, Danish Christmas: jul. For dinner my host family invited friends and family, and we enjoyed roast pork, red cabbage salad, sugar potatoes, regular potatoes, and brown sauce. And my cranberry sauce!

We decorated the tree with candles, real ones!, and lit them after dinner. Everyone held hands and "danced" around the Christmas tree while singing Danish Jul songs. Some of us sang anyway...I either mumbled the Danish lyrics (which I could look at in a songbook) if I knew the melody, or just concentrated on walking around the tree without hitting it and lighting the house on fire. I was proud that I knew the final song "Nu det jul igen" -"Now it is Christmas again", at least somewhat. For this song, we all put down the songbooks and RAN around the Christmas tree. Everytime a new chorus started, we quickly switched directions, much to my surprise.

After all our dancing, we needed dessert. Nina had made the traditional Ris a la mande. It's a sort of cold rice pudding, with lots of crushed almonds and whipped cream in it, cherry sauce on top, plus one whole almond. The person that gets the almond has to conceal it somehow until everyone is done eating. Nina won the "almond gift" by getting the almond in a hiding in her port wine until Stine noticed.

After eating, around 11:00pm or so, we played a gift swap game. It's a little like our "Yankee Swap" but with dice. A 6 gets you a present, and after the presents are distributed a 6 or 1 redistributes the gifts. It was a great time, with a lot of presents, a lot rivalries and some bribing.

One Last Adventure: Budapest

Stine and I took a weekend trip to Budapest, Hungary this past weekend. I had just finished my classes, exams and papers for my DIS classes, and that evening we jetted off on Malev Airlines. I was amazed that this cheap airlines that still serves free meals, drinks, and even free wine on a 2 hour flight!

After getting into the airport, we found a taxi driver with my name on a sign, and hopped in. Unfortunately, it turned out he didn't know English and he didn't even know what hotel we were staying it, which was a bit discomforting as the hotel booked the ride for us! But we got there OK, and for a very cheap price.

I was lucky to meet up with Alex Howard on Saturday morning, an old friend from summer camp. She took Stine and I to breakfast and shopping at the huge Christmas market. The market was fantastic, with rows and rows of little shops. Everything had to be handmade and authenticated, but it was still very inexpensive. There was so much pretty jewelry, ceramics, candles, food...everything! Needless to say, I spent a lot of Hungarian Forint.

Hungarian food was really nice to try. We sampled goulash soup right away for lunch the first day. The cookies, "chimney" cake, potato pancakes and chicken dishes were all delicious too. And the hot wine and hot chocolate!

After a busy day of shopping, Stine and I retreated to one of the famous Turkish baths. We got half hour massages and a nice, but limited, time bathing outside in the hot baths. It was so pretty, the snow was falling, lots of steam coming off the water, and a beautiful old building surrounding the courtyard. The whole evening didn't go so smoothly though, we got lost, went to the lockers too late, made the towel-return lady mad, and finally had to get a security guard to unlock the door and let us out. That's the short version anyway.

Sunday was our sight-seeing day, and a rainy day. We walked across the Danube and to the "Buda" side of Budapest. We saw the castle, Fisherman's Bastion, and lots of old beautiful buildings we didn't know anything about! Across the river we could see the huge, gothic building for parliament.

It was a wonderful, but short weekend. I'm glad to be back in Copenhagen for my last week in Denmark. Since I have no class, I'm spending my time shopping, sight-seeing, and finally celebrating a little Christmas on Saturday night. My host family will show me all the Danish Jul traditions, I can't wait!

Mine Venner i Danmark- My Friends in Denmark

I have been so lucky this month! Usually November is sort of a cold, boring month except for Thanksgiving. But this year, I've spent my November with my whole family, and several friends from home coming to see me in Denmark.

For Thanksgiving, Eliza Giroux flew from Vermont to Copenhagen to see me! She spent almost a full week here at my host family's house, and I got to show off my new city.

The day after she came, Krysti and Jessica came to Copenhagen! Krysti has been studying in Berlin, and Jessica flew out to have a tour of Europe with her. So the four of us girls had a lot of fun seeing the sights of Copenhagen, trying all the Danish food (smørrebrød, pastries, Christmas treats, cider, pølser...), and trying out a Danish club. I took them to see the Little Mermaid (Den lille havfrue)--which I still hadn't seen! She's been in Shanghai up until recently, at the World Expo. We walked on Strøget, checked out the Nyhavn Christmas market, visited Christiania, the Black Diamond, and the Danish Museum of Resistance.

Then, to continue my fun week of visitors, Marion came to Copenhagen on Saturday! She could only stay one night, but it was a good night to pick :-). Eliza and I made an entire Thanksgiving Dinner for 8 people. Neither or us had cooked a turkey before, or several of the other dishes. There weren't any big catastrophes- actually it was quite a success! Some little things went wrong...like I bought some weird vegetable when I thought I was getting sweet potatoes. But it was still delicious! For dessert, of course, we had two pies: pumpkin and apple.

The day after Thanksgiving, Eliza, Marion and I spent a great day in Tivoli. Right now, it's completely decorated for Christmas. There are lights everywhere, a Christmas market, elves playing Christmas songs, ice sculptures, Christmas glog and æbleskiver (a Christmas dessert/pastry), and many other things!