Merry Christmas and Happy New Year (God Jul og Godt Nytår)

Christmas has come and gone. Hopefully it was merry for everyone reading this. This year we stayed in Denmark over the holiday. We missed our family and friends in the U.S., but we happily also missed the blizzard that would have greeted us the weekend before Christmas. Anya enjoyed the holiday, especially anything associated with Santa. Several stores in our area had mechanical Santa figures which caught her attention. We may have encouraged her by stopping to see them when we went out to walk. The best part was visiting Santa in his sleigh at Tivoli. Anya was amazed to finally meet the "real" Santa. Santa/Julemanden was very nice. He told us that he's going back to Greenland on the 31st and will take a week-long nap.

The focus of attention here before Christmas was the COP15 climate conference. There were lots of protests and noticeably more people in town. Copenhagen is not a big city, so the addition of 50-75 thousand people makes quite an impact. Only once did I get close to a protest. I was on my way home from working on a Sunday (a rare occurrence) just after noon and stopped at the grocery store by the train station near our apartment. When I came out, there was a protest march passing by, surrounded by police on foot and in police wagons. Shortly after I saw them, the protest was broken up and many of the protesters detained.

One trend that was noticeable during the climate conference was that it steadily got colder during the talks. By the weekend after the conference, the lake near our apartment had frozen over and the swans and ducks were reduced to either sharing a patch of water the size of our kitchen or waddling across the ice to scavenge for a bite to eat. It stayed frozen over Christmas. The day after Christmas, we went out with some stale bread to feed the ducks. With the ice on the path, the cold weather, and many people being out of town for the holiday, the ducks and swans (and coots and gulls and terns) were not getting the handouts they've grown accustomed to. They got assertive and some ducks even climbed up on the backs of swans to try to get some of the bread.

-------

In closing, we'd like to wish you all the best for a happy, heathy and peaceful 2010.

Godt Nyt År

Our Christmas holiday has been a bit of a wash with us both managing to catch colds. It remains to be seen whether it is the same cold or two different ones. We did manage to hold a dinner party for friends on the one day (Thursday) we were both healthy. We had a Latin-American themed dinner with Cuban black bean soup, tacos with corn tortillas, guacamole, and salsa (all from scratch), among other toppings, along with Mexican beer and Argentinian wine. It took almost the whole day to prepare, but it was worth it. We also had leftovers for the next two days.

On the Danish front, we've been reading a book I received/won in the gift exchange during our choir dinner. It is Kunsten at Græde i Kor which was the basis of the movie, The Art of Crying. We read a couple pages aloud and translate while taking in the rays of our "happy lamp" each morning. We're almost through chapter 1 and we're enjoying the quirky view of late 1960's rural Denmark.

Baby is growing and kicking and preparing for the world outside. We're still expecting her at the end of January. With that in mind, and aware that our expectations on timing may be optimistic, we bought a bunch of stuff this week and populated the baby room with what I blandly refer to as the "software". We've had the "hardware" - furniture - since October. Some of this stuff is impossibly small and the rest is just too cute. There are two days left in 2007, and I'm still mulling over Mom's suggestion that a 2007 baby will give us the tax deduction for the whole year. Alexa was not impressed with my fiscal responsibility after I proposed that option.

I'd like to end by saying "Tak" to all who have checked in on us. It's nice to know people care enough to click on our site and see what we've been up to. As always, you're welcome to email or call with your news (no pressure). If you need our contact information, just post a comment and I'll send you an email. Best wishes for a happy, healthy, peaceful, fulfilling New Year!

Glædelig Jul

The darkest day of the year is behind us, and it's a good time to revive the blog after our hiatus. It has been nice to see that people have been checking in. Don't take this the wrong way, but it reminded me of operant conditioning (the only thing I recall from the Psychology 101 course I took at Bucknell) to see that the number of "hits" remained similar, despite the lack of a "reward" in the form of a new update. Anyway - that unintentional experiment is over and I appreciate that everyone cares enough to check up on us once in a while.

Today is Lille Juleaften, or Christmas Eve Eve. Since presents are traditionally opened on Christmas Eve, there are lots of children (and adults?) at the height of anticipation. Shopping has been crazy and since everything shuts down for the 24, 25, and 26th we were out yesterday stocking up for our meals so we don't go hungry. Grocery stores and restaurants are closed, so there's a risk of going hungry if we're not prepared. We did however see a deli today that will be open all three days, so it's not as dire as we imagined. In any case, everyone was out stocking up. Since shops are all in walking distance and driving and parking to go grocery shopping is not practical, we normally shop every day or two for the next day's meals. This week we carried a large load home and it should hold us for a while. The biggest scene was at the butcher shop where I took my number and discovered there were 34 people ahead of me. Normally, there are one or two people there at any one time, so this was definitely the Christmas rush. This was one day I wouldn't be bringing home the bacon.

Being the last Sunday in Advent, we went to our first full Danish church service this morning. It was at the Kastellet church and the service included a baptism. There were six hymns, three of which had eight or nine verses which allowed me to figure out the tunes by the end. The hymnbooks lack music notation, so you have to recognize the tune for each hymn by name. The service was very traditional and outside of the hymns, not very participatory. Our Danish is still not good enough to catch everything, but it was worth a try.

Last week our choir held it's Christmas concert. We both sang, and there was a full house in the church. The encore piece was "When You Wish Upon a Star" which is associated with Christmas here because for years the only time Disney cartoons were played on television was Christmas morning. Another highlight for me was "Glæde Jul," the Danish carol to the tune of "Silent Night" which was arranged by our director. As with last year we had Christmas dinner with the choir and lasted to around midnight, though the party continued to 5AM. We just don't have that stamina.

We're looking forward to "en dejlig jul" - a Merry Christmas - and we wish everyone the same.

Glædelig Jul!

We are enjoying the Christmas season in Copenhagen. We took another walk last night to see the skating rink at Kongens Nytorv and browse the Julemarked along Nyhavn. Next time we may actually rent skates and try out the ice for ourselves. The lights around the square are beautiful and it was crowded on the ice and on the streets.

Last weekend we attended our choir's Julefrokost. We had traditional food including a herring course (three kinds + marinated, roasted, and "curry" - in a mustard sauce). Second course was various kinds of pork including the traditional flæskesteg. There was a dessert of rice pudding and beer, wine, and snaps. The meal was catered in a badminton clubhouse. Badminton is big here, not just for picnics.

During the meal we sang a few songs including "Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer" in Danish, Whisky in the Jar, When you Wish Upon a Star, and some others I have since forgotten. We also sang "skål" songs for the frequent toasts during the meal. We held a gift exchange after dinner where everyone brought a gift then people took turns rolling a die (have to roll a six) to see who could pick a (wrapped) gift from the gift table. When those were gone, the game continued with people stealing gifts from other people until time expired. I ended the game with a DVD ("Phone Booth") and bubbles. Between activities and songs we got to know some of our fellow choir members better. Much of the entertainment came from the other group in the room, 20 or so new aspiring police trainees. They had started before we arrived and were still going strong (more or less) when we left. So, we survived Julefrokost season. It was fun and we look forward to it next year.

Julefrokost

Here in Denmark people follow traditions which are suited to surviving the dark winter months and enjoying the long summer days. Christmas and the preparations for Christmas are an important part of making it through the dark days. This time of year, people attend Julefrokosts. Julefrokost literally means "Christmas lunch" often in the form of a buffet with traditional Danish fare, beer, and aquavit. These are held by employers and other community organizations. Alexa and I both attended Julefrokosts on Friday, I with my work colleagues and she with hers. Spouses do not attend these parties as they did for Christmas parties in the U.S. We have another scheduled with our choir, but they cannot find a place to hold it so it will probably fall through. Alexa will go to one more next weekend for her other job.

At my Julefrokost on Friday we went to Sankt Gertruds Kloster, an old convent turned into a restaurant lit entirely by candlelight. We had several courses, appetizer (veal and pickled fig), starter (salmon and salad), soup (sea bass and scallops), main course (veal and buttery potatoes), and dessert (apple pastry and ice cream). Each course accompanied a wine selection. We sat down at 5:30 (17.30) and I stayed until some people started leaving around 10:00 (22.00), others were making plans to go to a bar. It was a nice time to talk with colleagues and get to know people better. These events have a reputation for getting out of hand, but that wasn't the case here.

On the language front, we have had our employer-paid Danish instruction extended by 5 more weeks. After that we'll try out other options. We've also discovered a group of international people trying to learn Danish that meets monthly for Danish conversation. That might be fun.