Danish Factoids

I was going to do a long post about how EVERYTHING went wrong today, but I decided not to burden ya'll with my problems, because they won't feel so heavy tomorrow, so what's the point?

Instead you get to see a list of cool Danish stuff! I love lists.

Famous Danish Companies
- Lego: little toy blocks that people love well into adulthood
- MAERSK: a cargo shipping company, for those of you who don't live on the ocean or have never seen one of their containers.
- Haribo: they make super delicious candies. Not totally sure they're Danish, but whatever.
- Skype: cheap/free online communication program. The guy who started this also did Kazaa, a program to illegally download music.

Famous Danes
- Hamlet: fictional Prince of Denmark, main character of the most performed Shakespeare play
- The Little Mermaid, Thumbelina, and Beowulf: three more fictional Danes
- Viggo Mortensen: Technically half-Danish, but who cares? Most famous as Aragorn of the Lord of the Rings movie trilogy, also my future husband. Not that he knows this.
- Saxo Grammaticus: a historian I've never heard of, but I saw him on the wikipedia list of famous Danes, and he has the coolest, most badass name ever. I am going to change my name to Saxo Grammaticus.
- Niels Bohr: physicist. Worked on the Manhattan project, did some other stuff.

Other
- First country in the world to refer to the union of two people of the same gender as "marriage." This was in 1989, only 20 years ago! Still got a lot of work to do, world!

Okay I can't think of anything else. EXCEPT! this doesn't have to do with Denmark as a whole, but whatever. Last night I spent about 2 hours chatting with Nicolaj over the Danish beer, Tuborg, and after all the stories of my mother during college, he proceeded to tell me that someone died in the bathroom that I use. In addition to the colony of spiders living outside my window and threatening to eat my soul, I am now supposed to fear the ghost haunting my toilet. Naturally, I slept with the light on last night.

You may be thinking, 'don't be such a baby, people die in places all the time.' No. The man was burned alive in the bathroom, unable to escape a house fire. When Nicolaj visited the house for the first time, they had not yet cleaned up all the soot, and the outline of the man's body remained on the floor. Now YOU sleep with the lights off.

conGRADulations

I forgot to mention a special Danish tradition I witnessed today while wandering the streets of the Copenhagen suburbs. When students graduate from high school/secondary school over here, they have a special little parade that they do to celebrate. First of all, each student receives a special graduate hat, that kind of looks like the French Legionaries or some kind of naval cap. They must wear the hat at all times to signify their accomplishments, and you must compliment them.

To seriously celebrate the graduation, large groups of students rent trucks for the day, kind of like how in the US we hire limousines to go to prom. The students then pile into the backs of the these trucks, and I'm talking military style trucks, not pickups, and they drink and blast music while dancing, yelling, and blowing whistles. The proper response from everyone else is to honk their horns and yell in approval - traffic comes to a standstill while all surrounding Danes recall their own graduation and respond with memories of their own delight. I saw at least 15 of these trucks go by, the most recent one only 15 minutes ago, at 11:30 pm.

When I brought this up to Nicolaj and his family, they slipped into reverie, and his dad, Giacomo, recalled Nicolaj's graduation and the grand celebration they had for it. I asked them if they still have their hats, and they do. It seems like a truly special, Danish tradition they have going on here, and I am happy to have witnessed it. I can't say I'm not jealous, because it looks super fun, but I can gloat in the fact that where I'm from, we have sunlight all year round. Take that, Denmark!

Tip for Danish living - respect the flag. The flag is very important to the Danes. Even tonight at a dinner where the patriarch is Italian, the dinner table was littered with small Danish flags. Their national identity is very important to them, and since the flag represents that, they put it everywhere, as you can see in the picture above.

And then the loneliness sets in...

I am a crier, and I know that. But I have not cried yet on this trip, which surprises me. Perhaps it is because, up until now, I have been sharing rooms with other people, and I have been to proud or too ashamed to cry in front of other people. Now that I have settled into a home with my own bedroom, I have started to feel the itch of missing home.

Being in a hostel means having a constant flow of friends, people who are as alone as me and so always wanting to hang out. Now I have barged into a very busy family whose main concern is not finding friends, and it is a very different experience for me.

However, the party tonight was very fun. I realized at once I would not be experiencing a typical Danish dinner, which is stereotypically very organized, calm, and clean. Nicolaj is half Sicilian, and that heritage was the one present at the dinner table. There were 8 children, 9 or 10 adults, 2 large dogs, and lots of good food. I had a really great time, and it was nice to be welcomed into the family. It was hard though, because their fun made me truly miss my family for the first time since I left. The dinner party tonight reminded me of the dinner part at home, only with far more small children. Chances are I miss my family less than the au pair misses hers, as she has two small children at home. Anyway I am sure I will get over it, but the first few days of moving are always hard, especially when you are providing your own emotional support. Plus there are a lot of big spiders outside my window, and I am arachnophobic. That sucks.

In less depressing news, I figured out the extremely complicated train systems (there are 3) and went to find the place where I will be working. They gave me a tour of the hospital, and it seems really nice. Unfortunately it is kind of far from where I am living, but many people commute, why should I be so different?

Dog days

I have been lucky enough to have Nicolaj and Louise, extremely generous hosts - they are treating me like their own daughter. I could not be more appreciative. They invited me to come to a family celebration dinner tomorrow, and my guidebook has said that Danish family events are normally just that - for family only, so I feel pretty special.

Anyway here is a peek into my life for the next two months in Denmark.

View of the house from the backyard.

Here is my room - it overlooks the lake.

There are some beautiful swans that swim around outside my window.

Here is the bathroom. I share it with boys. It is very beautiful and spacious, as is the rest of the house.

Here is the dog, Lucy. She is a great Dane. She is only a 5 month old puppy, but she is massive, as Great Danes tend to be.

Here is Nicolaj's youngest son, Vito (totally guessing on spelling here). He is absolutely adorable, and looks just like his dad. Kind of makes me reconsider my decision to not breed.

Mom's Stories

I think I have said before that the inspiration for this summer's European adventure is my mom's own adventure back when she was 18-19. My mom has always been an inspiration for me in many other ways, but after hearing endless tales of her European travels I wanted to try to get a taste of it for myself, even though I know I could never compare to her (and in some ways I don't want to - you'll see why).


My mom started the trip traveling with her aunt, but was eventually left alone to continue the trip by herself. She was armed with only a Eurail pass and a plane ticket home from London, and money that was very quickly running out. Eventually the money ran out entirely, and began seeking sleep on the beaches of Greece. To drink she would find discarded water bottles along the sand. To eat she would work for a day, dragging bricks up a hill in Corfu, and she would be rewarded with a baguette, which she woud save for days at a time, picking beetles out it to get at the bread.

In Greece she faced many difficulties, including an attempted "taking." If you have seen "Taken" with Liam Neeson, then you can get an idea of what would have happened to her. A man came up behind her with a chloroform-soaked rag and covered my moms mouth with it. Unable to fight, my mom was picked up by the man so he could bring her to his prostitution ring. Fortunately, a good-samaritan stopped the evildoer. My mom woke up naked in a Corfu hospital, with an IV coming out of her arm.

Anyone else would have been phased, but my mother gathered her belongings and headed to Germany for a glass of genuine cow's milk. At this point she had lost one shoe, but if you know my mom, then you know she will go to the end of the Earth for a good cup of milk. Throughout the trip she had waited to go to Denmark to see her friend Nicolaj (the very same Nicolaj I will be staying with this summer), as he was vacationing in Sicily with his family. His parents believed my mom was going to steal him away to Los Angeles where they would become actors. When they returned to Denmark she desperately headed North with no money and no shoe.

When she got to Copenhagen, she was warmly greeted by Nicolaj's parents, prominent fur-traders in Scandinavia (don't be mad, it's REALLY cold up there). They housed her, shoed her, fed her, and even let them spend time with their son. One of the most memorable occurences of my mom's visit in Denmark was Nicolaj pushing her in a fountain in front of a bunch of people. So you can get a pretty good idea of my mom: not bothered by attempted kidnapping, but if you make her recall the fountain fiasco, she turns red with embarrassment.

Since her ticket from London could only be used in a certain window of time, my mom eventually had to leave the warm hospitality of Nicolaj's family. With a now expired Eurail pass she hid in the bathrooms of the trains avoiding tickettakers, all the way to Amsterdam. Eventually she needed to make her way onto the British Isle. So my mom, after so much experience hiding on trains, but wanting to try something a little different, decided to stow away on a boat. She boarded the boat, and hid her things, and when they came around asking for a ticket, she burst into tears, claiming a foul fiend had stolen her belongings, including her money and boat ticket. The captain, brimming with empathy, invited her to the captain's table for dinner, and gave her a room for the evening. Once the boat arrived in England, my mom found her plane ticket and made her way back to the USA.



So there you go. Kidnapping, hospitalization, stowing away, working for breadcrumbs - she did it all. Even though I'm sure these experiences were scary, they have made my mother into the strong, courageous woman I know and love. I don't know anyone else who has endured such trials and come out with any psychological issues.

I know my dad would prefer that my trip be NOTHING like hers, and I don't think it will be, but I have to say, if there is someone whose idea of adventure I would like to emulate, it is my mom.

London Calling

Warning: This post has very little to do with London, I just like the song and its quasi-relevance to what I'm going to say.

I have gone on long enough without actually saying where I'm going (besides Denmark), so here is an itinerary that I can bet you will change almost immediately, as it tends to do.

June 16 - Fly to Europe
June 17 - Arrive in Athens
June 17 - 21 Spend time in Athens
June 22 - June 30 Spend time on Greek Island
July 1 - August 16 - Spend time in Copenhagen
August 17 - Fly to Spain from Copenhagen
August 17 – 20 Spend time in Madrid
August 21 – 22 Spend time in Ibiza
August 23 – 27 Spend time in Barcelona
August 28 – All day traveling to Nice
August 29 – All day traveling to Zurich
August 29 – 31 Spend time in Zurich
September 1 - 3 Spend time in Munich
September 4 – 7 Spend time in Berlin
September 8 – 10 Spend time in Amsterdam
September 11 – 12 Spend time in Brussels/Bruges
September 13 – Take chunnel to London
September 13 – 17 Spend time in London
September 18 - Fly back to US of A

So in a way, London is indeed calling. Also Sicily might be added in there if Nicolaj wants me to go there with his family, or I will just go straight to Copenhagen and begin my month and half of embarrassing myself by trying to speak Danish