min dansk familie i roskilde

i went to see my 'visiting family' in roskilde on saturday. inge, the mom, met me at the train station along with her kids johanna, 8, and mats,10, and johanna's friend lisa-marie. their black lab puppy fyrre came with them as well. johanna and mats are wiry little towheaded kids with slanting blue eyes and shy smiles, lisa marie a robust, ruddy cheeked redhead who was strong enough to keep the one year old puppy in check.

we went back to their house, an open, breathable and well lit space that makes my apartment look like a matchbox. there i met amalie, inge's 16 year old daughter who is mentally handicapped. she was playing with a helper who is paid by the danish government, a 19 yr old girl named fredericka. inge had made some fresh bollen and mats made waffles. we all had a cozy tea time and a nice chat, said, 'tak for mad' and made our way back out to the blustery outdoors. inge, the kids and i went down to the roskilde harbor, fed some old bread to the ducks, looked at the old viking ships, then went to the park. i kicked around the soccer ball with mats, jumproped with the girls and chatted with inge.

after returning to the house, we played ping pong and then made our own pizzas from scratch for dinner. johanna showed me her 'først rød bøg for dansk-engelsk, engelsk-dansk.' she taught me a slew of charming new danish words and i taught her a few words in english. inge was quite impressed with my danish vocabulary.

after dinner and 'easter beer' we watched some tv. i did my best to follow along with the danish subtitles and was able to tell what was going on most of the time. inge's husband bruno came home and soon after took me back to the train station. i can't wait to slappe af med min dansk familie again.

Skagen - standing at the edge where the world stops

The landscape reflects the Scandinavian aesthetic - flat, white, simple. The fine sand sparkles in subdued ripples marred by smooth hollows of older footsteps and sharper outlines left by today's visitors. The sky is simply too vast for me to bother attempting to capture it in a meager lens, so I don't mourn the fact that my camera died. The atmosphere is a hovering dome, bleached out around the edges. The ships at the edge of the horizon must be immense, but they appear as nothing more than cheap plastic toys bobbing at the other end of the bathtub.

The northernmost point of this country truly ends in a triangular tip at the end of a narrow stretch of sand extending to divide the two oceans. These opposing seas are constantly kissing and slapping like lovers, the dominant Atlantic rushing in from the west with its roaring crests, the gentler Baltic, a shade greener, patting out frothy subtleties on the eastern shore.

Gammel Dansk is passed around to toast this miracle of continuity. I swallow my shot of bitters and, knocked back by the shock of the ancient herbs and the force of the melding east and westward winds, let my travel-sore heels sink into the softening shards of white sand on this Arctic beach.

Aalborg - Valentine's Day 2008

----The sea carries in a sharp chill, a surprising match with the warmth of the subtle corals left by the sun on the narrow horizon. The water smells of something deeper, somehow more primal than the oceans i know. Maybe it's just the cold. This bay is hemmed in by bare trees and large river rocks. The tall, stiff blonde grass leads you to believe it might hide warm sand instead of the dark shifting mirror mosaic of these Northern waters. Its beauty is almost mundane - prosaic and silent. The unchanging pattern of the bay is echoed in the identical red and yellow beach shacks lining the shore. Far from the ideals of societally-imposed romance--my fingers are stiff so I'll stop now----

weekend pictures

skål, queen margrethe

riesen





art & color



waiting for the train



brunch

dinner party at nora's



the nightbus



me and mia and alex



fiske!





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kaffe på studenterhuset/weinerpølse med alting

jeg hav en tømmermænd!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

goshdarn! partying the danish way sure takes a toll on this girl's body. i just did two nights in a row of predrinking at home, going out around 12 and staying out until 4 or 5. friday alex, mia and i accidentally crashed a private party then went to vega. we talked to loads of boys. there weren't very many girls there. ufortunately. and last night mia, francesca and i went out to the vesterbro bars. we discovered this incredible little place called art &color. the walls were all textured and mosaic and mirrored and there were pictures of queen margarethe all over. then we went to reisin. we had to wait to get in for awhile then it was really REALLY crowded and mia met someone but francesca and i were bored/tired/dreading our sunday to-do lists so we left. and now...i've reached the bottom of my pit of despair that is homework and am working my way back out into the real world. i have a gazillion pictures from the past few days. they will be posted very soon.

note: never drink two nights then try to write a paper that's due tomorrow. ugghhh.

sight seeing, hurrah!

SO. i have been going around the city with francesca to certain sites of interest; it's one of her class assignments. we went to the round tower and i am SO glad we agreed to check out the interior of the church...it is exquisitely decorated - tons and TONS of gold trim, an incredibly grandiose pulpit situated well above the pews and not one but TWO enormous pipe organs and, front and center, a glorious portrayal of Christ and his angels, featuring giant "rays of light" coming out behind them. i knelt before it in awe, just trying to absorb the delicious gawdiness of it all. certainly it has been refurbished, polished etc but i could tell by the marble hinges carved directly into the immovably heavy marble gate into the altar that this church has been around for awhile. however, upon close inspection, it was evident that one of the pipe organs was probably circa the past couple decades. it appeared to be made of marble but was in fact wood...painted to look like marble. haha.

next on my agenda...the museum erotica. chastity belts and royal danish dildo, here i come!

danish meatballs and rainy afternoons

last tuesday i was sitting in the student lounge, hungry as hell, and this kid was talking about the meatballs his host mom had given him for lunch. they smelled so good i decided i wanted to make meatballs for dinner that night so i texted mia and asked her what her plans were. she said she was going to her parent's house for dinner but i was welcome to come. a bit disappointed about not making meatballs but excited to meet her baby brother and stepmom, i readily agreed. when i got home and mia and i were talking about going for dinner, she explained that she had called her dad and asked him how to make a particular dish. after he had explained the recipe, he suggested that she just come over for dinner and he would show her how to make it. i asked mia what this special dish was, and to my delight she replied, MEATBALLS!!! so we took the train a few neighborhoods away and spent the evening with mia's father, who turned out to be a wonderful cook, her stepmom, who spoke very good english and was really friendly and sweet, and adorable chubby little victor, whose wispy red curls have never been cut. the curried pork meatballs and basmati rice with mango chutney deviated quite a bit from my american conception of meatballs with tomato sauce and pasta, but were nevertheless the perfectly hot tasty meal for a windchilled danish night.

on wednesday afternoon, i went to the statens museum for kunst with nora and alex. despite my inconvenient tendency to use the met as my standard for comparison for all art museums, i was rather impressed. they had a lot of modern work, some really nice matisses and obviously, lots of danish art that i'd never heard of. we didn't stay for very long, but i'm definitely going back next week. afterwards nora and i went to christiania. it reminded me maybe a little too much of asheville. the weather was really nasty so we just looked around a had one beer. everything was very colorful and artsy, people were selling little bags, listening to their radios, hanging out with their dogs, rolling spliffs and enjoying themselves in spite of the rain. sort of seedy in a charming way. this one gross old man sitting by me and nora kept spitting into a plastic bag over and over. saving it for later? we really didn't know. so i didn't see it all, but i will go back on a sunny day and perhaps it will be more on the charming side of seedy.