Danish Gothic

Here’s Louis dressed up for our trip to Sweden yesterday. We took the train downtown then bought an international ticket to go to Malmö. The temperature was right around freezing all day and the wind in Malmö was nasty. We enjoyed some Scandinavian fast food and were back on the train in pretty short order. Once back in Copenhagen, we stopped at La Glace, one of the better Konditorei in town, for some pastries and hot drinks. Then Louis got on the bus and Jonetta & I walked the three miles home to atone for some of the calories. The wind wasn’t as bad over here so it was a nice walk, with lots of window shopping. About half of the stores seem to be devoted to footwear—they like their boots over here.

While in Malmö we found a small store carrying nothing but “American specialties” like Pop Tarts and Jello and McIlhenny’s Tabasco Sauce. It was funny, to see all these mundane products reclassified as exotic items. The walls were covered with memorabilia, like old license plates and posters from John Wayne movies. I felt like maybe I should be signing autographs, or yodeling.

The picture at the top shows the architectural style of our neighborhood. Here’s a picture of our actual house:

It isn't very far, looking out from the front or the back, to the next row of houses. A ‘Rear Window’ kind of thing. Last night a neighbor turned on her kitchen light at 5:21 and it woke me up. I looked over and she was preparing food in her kitchen. I watched for a while, not quite sure I was really awake.

I rode my bike to work on Friday but ran into some snow on the way. I pushed on through but found it rather hard going—the snow gets up under the fenders and it gets harder and harder to turn the pedals. There’s also a kind of buzzing noise as the tire treads rub over the packed snow under the fender. Going home at 4:30 (well after dark) there was even more snow and it was really beautiful out—the snow was illuminating the forest. I rode down to Skodsborg train station and took my bike on the train. I had been thinking of riding the whole way but the wheels were pretty much seized up by the time I got to Skodsborg. It was kind of embarrassing on the train as the clumps of snow dropped out onto the floor and started melting.

Here’s our front yard from this morning:

We’re having Thanksgiving with some friends from work on Thursday, then cooking for some other friends on Saturday. So we get one day in between to maybe eat raw spinach and celery or something, just to give the arteries a break. Jonetta found Condensed Milk at an Afghan Grocery near the train station. Not sure what role Condensed Milk plays in Afghani cuisine. We’ll use it for pumpkin pie.

Here’s the dish that I plan on making for Saturday (along with the pie): cubed sweet potatoes broiled in the over with some butter, served over sautéed chopped brussels sprouts. This is a dish that I discovered by accident while combining leftovers last week. (Both original dishes cooked by Jonetta, of course). It was sure tasty.

Autumn items

September felt like October, October like November, and now that it is November it feels and looks like December. The sun is out some, but very low in the sky and yellowish, even at mid-day.

I went up to the Dyrehaven on Sunday. This is a large parkland north of Copenhagen that used to be a royal hunting preserve. It stretches about two miles inland from the coast, and four miles north to south. It’s full of tame deer and a few stags carrying surprisingly big racks of antlers (sorry for the blurry image):



Are there deer in suburban parks in the US? I tend to think people would treat them as free meat.

When you’re in Dyrehaven you can easily imagine that you’re in a Robin Hood movie—it’s sparsely forested and full of big wide old oaks:



Sunday was the running of the Hubertus Hunt, which is a foxhunt only without any foxes—or hunting, for that matter. It’s about 100 people in red coats tally-ho’ing around the Dyrehaven for a couple of hours. I rode up and stood in the mud for 90 minutes to obtain the following action shots:





I was positioned by a water jump. Some of the horses leaped gracefully over a log into the water. Others stepped more carefully. Some refused outright and so the riders would have circle around and try again. After three strikes they’d open a gate by the side and let the poor animal walk through.

There were Red Cross teams on hand, but fortunately nobody fell.

Friday was Halloween and we actually had four or five parties of trick-or-treaters. I’m not sure exactly what they were saying but it wasn’t “trick-or-treat.” They’ve only been celebrating this “American” holiday here for the past 10 or 15 years, so most of the adults are not in favor. The kids seem convinced though, and I don’t think there’s any way to remove a holiday that’s been cemented to the calendar with sugar.

There’s no such thing as Thanksgiving over here, of course. They do seem to be taking to “American football” however. They show two NFL games on TV Sunday nights—one at 7:00 and one at 10:00. The commentators are the same beefy guys you see doing this job in the US, except they’re speaking Danish. Very strange. But football is as much a television show as it is a sport, so it’s not too surprising that it packages up well for foreign consumption. Baseball, however, the Danes find boring and incoherent. Like cricket.