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!

Too much to say, so far behind

So I've missed about a month's worth of events on my blog, sorry that I'm so far behind! I had a couple of weeks of school that were hectic because we had a lot of duedates then. I enjoyed a fun weekend with Fiona Allen, who came to visit for the weekend. It was so nice to see another Vermonter!

Then I enjoyed TWO WEEKS of break! Mom, Dad, Brian and Emily all flew to Copenhagen, and I spent half a week showing off my new city with them and my host family. There was much tower climbing, a lot of eating (including a big brunch with my host family), a lot of Danish beer sampling, and not nearly enough sleeping.

In Norway the five of us explored Bergen, Oslo and Drammen. We took trains, busses, and a boat to explore the Norweigan fjords which were gorgeous. It's a completely different kind of beauty from Vermont, with lots of waterfalls, lakes, tall cliffs, cute houses with grass roofs, and a very old feel to everything. We all loved it! And of course, getting to see Mom's Norwegian host family was a highlight. We met and remet so many friends, enjoyed lots of big Norwegian meals with reindeer, salmon, pølser, goats milk cheese and of course aquevit.

Then it was on to see our next adopted European family! We (except Brian, he had to fly back to work) stayed with Marion and her family in Northern France. Again, everyone was so hospitable. We spent days in Bruges, Paris, and Lille. While we were there, we celebrated Marion's birthday with her family! This included a surprise (surprise for my family, everyone else knew what was going on!) dinner at the cabaret! What an experience, everyone had a great time singing to the songs, waving our napkins, and watching the performances.

And now I'm back in Copenhagen with my host family, and starting to realize how much work I have to do in the next couple of weeks! I miss the Colorado College block plan, where we only have one big thing due at a time. But, I have Thanksgiving to look forward too, with visits from Eliza, Marion, Jessica, Phil and Krysti!!!

I'm only putting a few pictures on this post, but there are ton on my facebook to see.

***To get a much better, much more detailed, post on our trip, look at my Dad's blog. He's way better about blogging than I am!!!***

Min Danske Fødselsdag

My Danish Birthday was very memorable! I woke up at 6:30am for my early class on Monday Morning, October 18, and by the time I was ready to go upstairs and eat breakfast, Nina, Brian, Stine, Lasse and even Lasse's friend who'd spent the night, were all awake around a beautiful breakfast table. As soon as I got upstairs they started singing the Danish birthday song...I was just amazed, and so happy! And this was on the first day of vacation for everyone, but they still got up and ate breakfast with me while it was still dark out, so that I could experience a traditional Danish birthday breakfast.

When I got home from class, Nina and Stine immediately took me in the car for a surprise trip. We ended up at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, and spent a really nice afternoon wandering through the galleries together. We had a really good time trying to "interpret" the modern, abstract art...it was really funny :-). In this picture, Stine and I are enjoying the cafe with a view of the strait between Denmark and Sweden. I tried some delicious "kage" and "varm chocolade".

For dinner we used the really cool grill you put in the middle of the table and cook as you eat...I can't ever seem to remember the right name for it, but I had this type of meal once before at the Destoops house in France. It's so much fun, and a great social way to enjoy and cook and meal. Then for dessert my host family made me the traditional "lagkage" which means layer cake. They make theirs with raspberries and blackberries, it was very "lækker"!

Legoland: Being a Kid Again

In case it wasn't obvious, LEGO is a Danish Company! It started production in 1923, and the same family has owned the business the whole time. I visited Legoland in Jutland with DIS October 17th. It's a themepark, with lots and lots of examples of the amazing things you can do with Legos. Below is a model of "Nyhavn" in Copenhagen. It looks exactly right!

Fun facts about Legos: there are about 62 bricks per person on this planet - LEg GOdt= play well - won "Toy of the Century" - about 7 Lego sets are sold each minute - children of the world spend about 5 billion hours a year playing with Legos - there are 914 ways to combine 6 Lego bricks

Brunch!

Food is always a fun thing to talk about. I had my first Danish brunch on the weekend I got back from England. It was so pleasant, and a LOT of food! The Danes all think it's very American to have big brunch, which I agree, but I can't say I've ever had one this big. My picture is from before the table was fully set, so you can't quite see the extent of the dishes. The plates didn't all fit on the table, and throughout the meal more things kept coming out the ovening!

I contributed by cooking American pancakes, with apple, and banana bread muffins. They were enjoyed, but the Danes don't eat as many sweet things for breakfast as we do. Our dishes included the typical "bøller", which are a certain kind of rolls, omlette, a chorizo, egg and cheese tart, scrambled eggs with smoked salmon, fresh fruit, homemade juice, bacon, bacon wrapped around chorizo with mushrooms. Then we had to have four glasses for the juice, water, coffee/tea, and champagne.

Notice the Royal Copenhagen dishes! That's what we use for company.

We had so many leftovers we had all of this again for dinner...though I wasn't hungry again by evening!

I'll be "retailiating" with a traditional American Thanksgiving in a month :-). Marion and Eliza will help me cook up a feast, I can't wait!!!