Radishes and all that jazz

We're learning this summer why all of our Danish friends were excited by the beautiful weather we had last summer. After record amounts of rain this June and a cool (not yet above 20C/68F) July, this may be a "year without a summer" we've heard about. Things are looking up for the weekend, so we're hoping to get out and explore.

We've discovered another fun way to learn Danish. There are Danish-dubbed Peanuts cartoons broadcast on Saturday and Sunday. It turns out that the Danish word for the Charles M. Schulz creation is "Radiserne," Danish for "The Radishes." I'm not sure why they're not called Jordnødder (peanuts; lit. "earth nuts"). I haven't seen these episodes because they're not the holiday-themed shows that I'm used to seeing in the U.S. All the names have been changed somewhat and we haven't yet deciphered most of them. Charlie Brown is Søren Brun, Peppermint Patty is Rikke Rask (Rask is "healthy" in Danish), and Snoopy is Nuser.

If Schroeder were here, he would be out enjoying the Copenhagen Jazz Festival (rain or shine). We saw a the Anders Larsen quintet on Saturday, and we'll try to catch some more music this weekend. I'm not enough of a Jazz connoisseur to pay for tickets, but there are tons of free performances at indoor and outdoor venues all around town. It is interesting that there are certain parts of US culture that are nearly gone in the States, but have been preserved in Scandinavia in a kind of deep-freeze. Jazz, heavy metal music, and a continued fascination with Cowboys and Indians of the American West come to mind (see this or this).