Copenhagen with friends

Last weekend was my third trip to the capital and I had a really great time. I got there around noon on Saturday and met up with Melitka. She works for Vibeke, the woman I was originally supposed to work for just outside Copenhagen. So that's how I know her. She is getting her master's degree in business of some sort from the University of Copenhagen. We had coffee and ended up spending a few hours at the cafe just talking about everything. We have loose plans to go to Louisiana which is a modern art museum about a half hour up the coast from Copenhagen.
After our coffee she had to go to Vibeke's to work and so I decided to check out David's Samling on my own. Samling means collection in Danish and this museum was pretty cool and I'm really glad I checked it out. It's in this guy named David's old house, which he donated along with his art and antique furniture collection when he died. The first 2 floors were kind of boring with a lot of fancy furniture, rugs, china, that kind of stuff but the 3rd and 4th floor consisted of his massive collection of Islamic art. A lot of it was really old and there were tons of different things there jewelry, paintings, sketches, plates, doors, mantle pieces... My favorite thing I saw was this silver Persian lock box. It was really intricately decorated and then there were 4 combination dials and each dial had a smaller one within it. This box had over 1 billion possible combinations!
After my museum jaunt I met up with Nelia (Russian au pair friend from Faxe who is leaving soon) and Jonas, her Danish friend who she met through couchsurfers back in April. We got Indian take out and then we went to Christiania aka "The Free City." Christiania is a town within Copenhagen where a couple of thousand people live. It's a former military base that was occupied by hippies back in the 60's and they basically took it over, built their own houses there and established this commune within the city of Copenhagen. When you're walking through, it's like you're in a small village situated on a lake with lots of trees everywhere. It's a really controversial part of town because the people who live there don't pay a lot of Danish taxes and they get to enjoy the benefits of living in Denmark without contributing to society themselves. But on the other hand, it's a really cool and unique part of Copenhagen. It is currently "occupied" so you will see Copenhagen police walking around. There are also lots of dogs and cats that wander around and they belong to everyone in Christiania and they will stay with a different family every night.
After we walked around there I wanted to go out for some drinks but Jonas and Nelia didn't so we just went back to Jonas' place and watched the movie Doubt, and stayed overnight there. Sunday Nelia and I did some sight-seeing and caught the train back to Faxe with some complications. So normally we take a train from Copenhagen to Køge and we switch trains at Køge to Faxe. It's pretty easy. But...on Sunday our train was 3 minutes late leaving Copenhagen so when we got to Køge it was going to be another 2 hours before the next train came. So it's about 8 pm and it's pretty cold and it's a Sunday so nothing was open. We wandered around for a bit and sat inside a kebab shop, ate some falafel until about 9 when they kicked us out. We went back to the train station and a bus driver comes up to us and tells us that there won't be any trains going from Køge to Faxe for the rest of the night. But we can take the bus to Hårlev, which is about 3 train stops closer to Faxe and a train will leave from there in about an hour. So we get on the bus, wait around in Hårlev and eventually catch the train there and we made it home by 11.
It was a really fun weekend despite that and it was nice to make some new friends. Jonas and Melitka have both promised that they would bring me along to some university parties, so that should be fun.

Weekend

I didn't get to go anywhere this weekend because Saturday was Søren's 6th birthday and I was kind of sick and on Sunday I was incredibly sick so I was pretty much in bed all day.
The birthday party was really fun and very different from an American birthday. Almost all of Anne and Michael's family came, aunts and uncles, grandparents, great-grandparents, cousins, and just one of Søren's friends. I can't remember ever having a birthday party with my extended family there except when I was 2 or 3 and didn't have friends yet, haha. Guests arrived around 3:00 and cake was served around 4:00. The cakes were kind of good, but weird and not at all like the delicious devil's food birthday cake my mom makes. Two of them were 3 layers of really thin shortbread with vanilla custard icing in between and the other one had vanilla with these crumbles of chocolatey sugar. The third one was like a cinnamon roll sheet cake with burnt sugar on top and assorted licorice pieces stuck in it.

The birthday song was at least 2 minutes long and very involved. I managed to get the second half of it on video which I will post below for your enjoyment. There is whistling and people playing pretend intrsuments. Don't say I didn't warn you!

All of Anne and Michael's family were really nice and chatted me up. It's really funny what people choose to mention to you because you're American. Anne's twin brother, also named Michael (weird, right?) asked me if people still drove cars with V8 engines in the US. I told him that I had no idea. Another uncle asked me about Obama and the US Healthcare plan. Luckily no one asked me about Kanye West and Taylor Swift although that definitely was news over here for a few days. Michael's younger brother, also named Søren told me that he knew a lot of young girls in Copenhagen who could take me out. To which I responded, "And why do you know so many young girls?" I guess he didn't think about how creepy that sounded when he said it, and he quickly replied, "I work in a supermarket and a lot of the cashiers are young girls, ok? And they're always saying 'Søren, come out to the club with us!' and then I have to say, no way I'm too old and I'm married!" It was a pretty funny conversation, but I probably will take him up on that. I'm all about hanging out with strangers these days.

It sucked that I didn't go anywhere this weekend but I probably saved some money and the birthday party was a cultural experience that would have been terrible to miss.

So, for some reason I can't post this video right now but I'll try again tomorrow.

Cycling to the sea

Yesterday Nelia and I cycled 6 km to the town of Faxe Ladeplads which is right on the ocean, the Southern coast of Zealand, the island of Denmark I live on. It was a really easy ride there and we had great weather for it. Denmark is really flat for the most part and our ride was no exception. We rode in a bike lane almost the entire way there, which was really awesome and something we don't have in the US. It wasn't just the shoulder of the road designated for bikes, it was like a separate area with a grass divider between the bike lane and where the cars drove. I usually don't really like riding on the road because I'm kind of afraid I'll get hit by a car, but this was way more relaxed and I really enjoyed it.
Everyone in Denmark bikes. Today I saw probably about 5 people in total who looked like they were 80 or older cycling. Pretty amazing. They just think of biking as a necessary mode of transportation where Americans tend to see it as recreational and something that younger people do.
Nelia and I got to the sea in about 30 minutes. We walked around on the beach and in the water for a little bit, and the water was way warmer than I thought it would be. If we get another really nice day in the next week or 2 I may bring my bathing suit and go swimming there. We got back on our bikes and went a little bit past the beach area where we were and biked into some woods, which were also right on the ocean. I'd never really been in a forest like that right next to the sea, so it was pretty cool. We rode back in time for me to go pick up the kids and the one thing I learned on this trip is that I think I need a softer bike seat! Ok maybe two things...
It was also really nice to get out of Faxe during the day and I need to plan more little day trips like this one.

Couchsurfing in Roskilde

Last weekend I had my first official couchsurfing experience. If you don't know what couchsurfing is, check it out www.couchsurfing.org basically it's an international network of people offering up their couches for free to travelers and travelers who are seeking such couches/people. I was a little nervous about it because I'd never done it before and I was staying with someone I didn't know. I stayed with this guy Jon in Roskilde, which is about an hour train ride from Faxe. Roskilde is the old capital of Denmark and it's home to this amazing cathedral/mausoleum where the royal families from the last 700 years or so are entombed. It's also on a fjord and has a lot of ancient Viking history associated with it. Jon turned out to be a really cool guy, super laidback and easy to get along with. He calls himself an inventor and he makes medical instruments for cancer treatment. He was pretty much my personal tour guide for the weekend and we walked all around Roskilde and he told me the history and ins and outs of the town. We made delicious Indian food together and a few of his friends from a few floors down in his apartment building came up to eat with us. Jon's apartment was really small, just a living/bedroom, kitchen and bathroom but it was really nice. All of the windows were floor-to-ceiling and he was on the 10th floor so he had great views of the city and the fjord.
We went out to a concert venue/cafe called Gimle and the music sucked but we had a good time anyway with his friends and we hung out, had some beers and played Ludo (Danish version of Sorry!) for awhile.
The next day we checked out the cathedral which was really spectacular and I took about a million pictures, which I'll try and post here soon. The church area was in the middle of the cathedral and then all of the different rooms with the royal remains formed a big square along the outside. Some of them had really elaborate scenes painted on the walls, showing details from the person's life. I think Jon also had fun being a tourist in his own town. Later that day we drove in his Smart Car (so tiny!) to a forest outside of town where we went on a nicec walk in the woods and then we sat by the fjord and drank tea for awhile on this sandy hill and watched kids try and climb up the hill which was pretty amusing. Overall a really great weekend and I now have faith in couchsurfing!

Why is pee so funny?

Before 2 weeks ago pee did not really play a large role in my life. Yeah it's a necessary bodily function that you have to do a few times a day but it's not really something you give very much thought to since it's an essential part of daily life and it's private. So now I have 2 funny stories involving pee.
On Thursday I had to pick up all 3 kids, Emma and Søren from their daycare and Rasmus from his. I got the older two first and we started to walk home. There came a time in the walk where we had to decide whether or not to cross the street. Søren and I crossed but Emma didn't want to. Søren and I kept walking, figuring that Emma would eventually run to catch up with us. We got about a block away from her and she still wasn't following. Søren and I stop and I call her name and tell her to come. We're standing there waiting when all of the sudden I look at Søren and he's peeing in somebody's hedges. I was already flustered because Emma wasn't listening and I just started cracking up, telling him to be quick, hoping no one would drive by while he was baptizing the bushes. It was a perfect moment where frustration was alleviated by good old-fashioned toilet humor.

On Friday morning Michael and I were getting the kids ready and we were trying to decide whether or not to send Rasmus to daycare with a diaper on. His daycare mom, Tina asked us not to because he had been using the toilet all week. We had him go on his little potty seat and then we took him into the room with his changing table to tell him that we weren't going to put a diaper on him. Upon hearing this news, Rasmus promptly pissed on the floor. I thought it was funny but probably because I didn't have to clean it up.

Never buy bikes you have to put together yourself

Today after Michael and I took the kids to school and daycare we went on an adventure to Næstved (I just figured out how to type Danish vowels, which was another exciting part of my day) to buy new bikes for the kids. We went to this kind of weird store that was combination hardware store, auto parts store and bike shop that was maybe about 1/3 the size of Home Depot. We quickly found the 3 bikes we wanted, got the boxes with the bikes in them and loaded them into the van. Then Michael and I walked around a bit in the town of Næstved which was really pleasant. This town is bigger than Faxe and had a few pedestrian shopping streets, kind of like a mini European Church St. in Burlington. I have pictures but I'm waiting on my camera cord still! We bought some frisk fisk (fresh fish) from this huge fish cart and then Michael went back to Faxe so the fish wouldn't go bad and he had to work from his home office.
I spent the next few hours going into shops and not buying anything and pretending that I spoke Danish. I'm getting really good at the smile and nod ;). I discovered something... they have bagels in Denmark which makes sense because of how much smoked fish and smoked salmon there is. This was a very happy afternoon for me and I sat outside in the sun and enjoyed a sesame bagel with lox, cream cheese, cucumber and tomato.
I took the bus back to Faxe and it was pretty awful. I was really tired and kind of dehydrated and the bus was about a million degrees. It was so hot! They don't have air conditioning most places in DK, which makes sense because it's cold most of the year. But not on a bus?! Really?! There were just 2 hatches in the ceiling that were open and the whole time I was leaning into the aisle trying to catch some breeze. And of course I seemed to be the only person bothered by the sweltering heat. Everyone else looked calm and comfortable. The ride was about 40 min and I nearly kissed the ground when I got off.
Later when the kids got home we started putting together their bikes. That was our second mistake. The first was buying bikes we had to put together and second, we should have assembled them before the kids got home. The whole time Søren and Emma were complaining that we were messing up their bikes and that we weren't doing it fast enough. Whining is truly a universal language. Even though I didn't know exactly what they were saying, their tone said it all! Anway, even after we finished the bikes things continued to go downhill with the kids crying and upsetting each other. We didn't end up serving dinner until an hour later than we normally do and everyone was just so cranky. One of those days, for sure...
Tomorrow I'm going to seriously start studying Danish and use my Learn to Speak Danish book and CDs. I also need to learn how to say "Don't kick your brother." "Be quiet." "Let's go." and most importantly "NOW!"

Day to Day

My regular schedule during the week consists of taking Rasmus to daycare in the morning, just a short walk from our house. Then sometimes I have cleaning to do around the house, but basically I have a lot of downtime from 8:30 am-3:30 pm. Yesterday I was really busy with cleaning and I baked a zucchini bread which was a challenge. Not only was it my first time cooking using metric measurements but I also had to find all of the ingredients in the kitchen and do a little guesswork with "reading" labels. Everything in Denmark is in Danish obviously but pretty much everyone over the age of 12 speaks English. It's been pretty easy to communicate with any adult I come into contact with. I am going to learn Danish though because that's what they prefer to speak and I want to be able to talk to the kids. I'm starting language school next month so that will help make the week more exciting. The zucchini bread came out really good though, which was a pleasant surprise. I also went for a run because it was really nice out, mid 70's, sunny, breezy.
I picked up Rasmus from daycare at about 4 and then we came back to the house and hung out outside. Anne picked up the other 2 from their daycare on her way home from work and I played with the kids while she made dinner.
I was chatting with my mom last night and I was saying that I need to come up with some sort of longterm project that I have to complete while I'm here. Please let me know if you can think of something cool to learn/do that will keep me occupied during the day, aside from learning Danish.