What's the point?

Today was a dreadful weather day.  Rain, sleet, a few heavy flakes of snow, wind.  Nothing like Seattle's snow and ice storm but I was very happy to be inside.  Inside, doing homework.  I sat with the wind and sleet behind me and dove into prepositions, definite and indefinite articles and verb tenses.  Prepositions are often baffling.  It is a matter of convention that you say you are "mad on someone", "good to Danish" (i.e. you are competent in Danish), "the shoes are too big to me".  And then there is "af" which when I look it up in the dictionary means: of, off, from, by, on or with.

Yesterday's class was a little discouraging.  We studied pronunciation.  Oh those vowels!  There are 3 vowels that all sound like "a" to the untrained (read "my") ear.  Today I heard an Oxford educated translator who knows many languages but teaches here in Denmark who said that the Danish pronunciation is the most difficult of any language he has encountered.  OK, that made me feel better.  Later on in class we worked on rhythm and fluidity of sentences.  Not only does my tongue trip up on words but when spoken quickly, half of the letters and syllables disappear.  "Sig til mig"   (see til my) becomes something quite different when tripping off the tongues of Danes.  I sometimes wish for thought bubbles over peoples' heads that would have Danish subtitles.  Then I would be just fine.

It all gradually improves though.  Yesterday, as I listened to the interview with the translator of Danish poetry, I realized I understood most of the story.   (And they were both speaking Danish).  When I watch the news or listen to the radio,  I am getting the message.  As I read the newspaper yesterday  (the Danish equivalent of the New York Times), I read through a commentary and understood it without frequent trips to the dictionary or asking Nhat, "what does.....mean?".

Classes will for me probably be over after mid-Feb.  I am taking a frequent flier trip back to Seattle to see the kids, grand kids and marvel over Meredith's pregnancy and help her start making plans.  Part of me would like to continue and take the last class in order to pass the national language exam in May and June, the final proof of competency in Danish but I don't think I will be able to stay in the course with missing two weeks of school during my trip home and taking time off for visitors.  That test proves one can speak and write on some adequate level but it takes forever to get the idiomatic language.  Who knew that "join the crowd" here, is "come into the warm"?

So I will continue to sharpen my pencils every morning for awhile.  That is one of the pleasures of school, using a pencil again.  I take these odd triangular pencils I bought from the $2 store (everything costs twice as much here) and watch the shavings drop off and have that lovely feeling of the sharp pencil to the page.  Now if I could just put my brain in a sharpener.  That would be helpful!!

Back in Denmark

 Oh yes, we are back in Denmark.  On our ride to work and school today I saw a man nearly blown off his bike by the gusts of wind which are still blowing outside my window at 4:30 pm.  Our bikes were blown backwards when we were at stoplights and on the way home, I felt a little like a drunk, wobbly bicyclist as I was buffeted by the wind.  And it is dark at 4:30!  And the drizzle!

Recently I read Jane Brody's column in the NYTimes on advice from the elderly.  TRAVEL  they said, when you can, before you retire, before you are too old.  So we did.  Grabbed another inexpensive charter trip to Gran Canaria, one of the Canary Islands.  We left 34 degrees and arrived to 72 degrees.  Not tropical but the sun was out, it had some strength, none of this wan, halfway up in the sky stuff but some real warmth to it.  We had a slightly funky but extremely well-situated hotel 1 block from a 4 km beautiful beach with a promenade along the length of it with restaurants, sidewalk cafes, street performers, etc. It was particularly glorious at night.

 Grand Canaries are part of Spain so we were surrounded by Spanish (and do they ever talk fast, a lot and with their arms waving, quite the contrast from the Scandinavians who are so fearful someone might hear them on the rare occasion that they talk) and Spanish food and culture.  Not to complain, but that Spanish food was delicious but extremely limited for the likes of vegetarian, non-fish eating Nhat.  We kept walking around trying to find something besides grilled cheese (and that's without the bread) and the delicious small potatoes in a special sauce which are the specialty of the islands.  Also, we are Midwesterners, raised by farm folk who ate dinner at the reasonable hour of 6 pm.  We walked a lot waiting for restaurants to open up at 8:30 pm and marveled at the folks who were sitting down to eat at 11 pm.

Walk-Up Window Bar Next to Our Hotel

Though many of the tourists (and there are many, esp Germans and Scandinavians) took to the beach despite rather cool low 70's and some clouds, we explored the largest city where we stayed, Las Palmas.  The original city district was built 500 years ago and we went on a terrific walking tour of the old town, seeing the Christopher Columbus house where he stayed before heading out for the New World and toured the cathedral built around the same time but finished a couple of centuries later, mixing up all the architectural styles that came and went.  They had a mummified cardinal (and I don't mean the bird) in one of the chapels who is awaiting a decision on his sainthood.  We had a wonderful meal in the courtyard of one of those 500-year-old houses, an oasis of palm and fig trees, cacti and
bougainvillea.

 

One day, as there were no cars to rent, we hopped on the local buses to see some of the sights in a couple of smaller towns.  Thank goodness there were no cars to rent as the roads were twisty, often one-lane roads which did not slow down much of the local traffic.  Several times we met another car around a curve despite the bus driver incessantly honking his horn around corners and the other car would have to back up to let us go by.  There was a fabulous Virgin Mary of the Pines sitting on a huge silver throne, dressed in golden robes in this church in a tiny town in the hills.

Another day, we heard about the fantastic, warmer beaches of the southern part of the island.  We took the bus and spent 1/2 hour winding our way through a tourist hell hole, with Norwegian fish cafes and a "Sioux City" area, complete with cowboys and Indians.  As soon as we got off the bus we decided to walk the 6 km to the other end of the sand dunes and beach.  The natural area of sand dunes was beautiful, the tourists streaming along the beach (which was red-flagged because of severe winds) were not.  Extremely large bellies and Speedos don't mix.  Nhat called it "the pilgrimage of the Northerners."
We made our way through the wienersnitzel restaurants and Hooters and made our way back to our beautiful, less crowded and less touristy beach.

And what is a vacation without a parade?  We hit the day before Three Kings Day, which is their Christmas Eve and got treated to a candy-throwing kidfest with camels, cartoon characters on floats, legions of  Roman soldiers, wisemen collecting letters from children concerning their present wishlists, quaint hawkers of sweets on rolling carts, and loud techno-music thumping away as soundtrack.

If the parade wasn't enough, we got to see the Spanish National Synchronized Swimming team do a New Year's Day extravaganza in a cove on our beach to Christmas music!

We got some good doses of sun.  We actually laid on some chaise lounge chairs and read all one day, bestirring ourselves long enough to get a Spanish tortilla sandwich and some beers.  The water was beautiful though cool, probably around 65 degrees so we jumped in but didn't linger long.

So it was a good break.  We saw the sun for at least 3 extra hours a day and felt its warmth.  Now, back to the books.  Nhat is working extra hard to get done and I am back in school.  Enjoyable but we are exploring the possibilities for our next trip.

I think I will take a step back into December.  It was an eventful month.  Anne's 60th birthday, our 40th anniversary celebrated with neighbors and Nhat's pizza, Christmas, and our trip to the Canary Islands.  Seems like no right time to update the blog.  However, we were looking at photos of that time and thought we should share some of them.

Our friends on Dronning Elisabeth's Alle

Christmas is a big deal here.  Lots of Christmas parties, celebrations and 3 days, Christmas Eve, Christmas Day and second Christmas Day lunches.  One of the highlights is Tivoli.  They decorate it with a riot of lights and oldsters, kids, and families stream in every night for the 3 weeks before Christmas.  We did not ride the giant swinging chair gizmo that rises far above the park and swishes you through the cold, biting winter air, but we enjoyed other intrepid thrill-seekers winging their way high above us.   We jumped on our bikes at the last minute one night to admire the elaborate and well choreographed fireworks Tivoli fired off at 8:45 pm during the holiday season.  A cold ride back, but we ourselves were safely lit up with our glowing bike vests, blinking red flashers in back, and jittering white LEDs in the front.

We managed to keep up some of the traditions, making lefse and a braided bread ring for dinner.

A delicious dinner.  The Danes eat duck and roast pork with red cabbage and small browned potatoes for Christmas dinner with rice pudding and cherry sauce for dessert (with a hidden almond and whoever finds it gets a prize-  Anne was the winner!)

We sang songs trying to keep a semblance of a tune and danced around the tree (yes, those are live candles on the tree), as much as one can with 2 teenage boys who imagined themselves way too old for such nonsense and then opened presents with an extended family from 1 year old to 80.  We anticipated a little homesickness and certainly missed kids, grandkids, and friends, yet our Danish Skytt Andersen family kept loneliness at bay and us in the gravitational field of belonging somewhere.

The next day was clear and lovely and we walked for 4 1/2 hours around parts of Copenhagen we hadn't ever seen: houseboats tucked away in backwater canals, abandoned warehouses sporting outstanding grafitti art, artfully restored old warehouses to hip modernity on canals close to the downtown harbor, and the brand spanking new wharfside park south of Nyhavn that has- we kid you not--four trampolines set in the stone/concrete boardwalk that you can bounce along a good 25 yards just for the nonsensical heck of it.  And these 60 and nearly 60-year olds did so, even while fleeting thoughts of osteoporosis, concrete, and trampolines not mixing well ran through our minds.  

We ended up in this bar on the harbor for a reviving beer and made our way home past the lights of Christmas trees and snug, inviting neighbors' windows which we will miss.  They made the blanket of 4:00 pm darkness and evening cold that much warmer and friendlier.  Hope your holidays were good!

Copenhagen Town Hall

Happy New Year from the Canary Islands

Happy New Year!  At 10:30 am this New Year's Day 2012, we jumped into the Atlantic Ocean in solidarity with our good friends on Crystal Springs and farther away.  Didn't have the aquavit to encourage us but then it wasn't 32 degrees out.  Not tropical here but warmer than CPH.  Hope everyone had a good time ushering the new year.
Love,  Anne and Nhat

Sent from my iPad

Happy Solstice

Today is the darkest day of the year.  The official daylight is 6 hours, 56 minutes long.  Sun up at 8:39 am and down at 3:35 pm.  It is dark.  The Danes fight off the dark with light, especially "living lights"  i.e. candles.  Candles are everywhere.  We see them in the windows of beauty salons,  great big candelabras burning away.  Candles and lanterns are outside the doors of shops, the most ordinary taverns and restaurants and often at every cash register in stores like this big department store.

People burn lots of candles in their homes.  One can see the flickering light as we bike home in the dark.

Also in the depths of the dark time, there is Tivoli.  This is the over hundred-fifty-year-old amusement park/ park in downtown Copenhagen.  

At Christmas, they light up the place with incredible colored and white lights.  People flock to the place, riding thrilling roller coasters in the cold and dark  (I can't imagine it), eating out at the many restaurants, drinking down hot-mulled spiced wine, and trying their hand at the games of chance and skill.  It is a pretty magical place this time of year and it does cheer the soul.

So tomorrow the days begin to get longer.  We will still burn the candles for much longer.  They are a source of light, warmth and "hygge", the Danish concept of enjoying the coziness of being together.  We are in the midst of  "hygge" these days.  Hope all is well out there.

Min 60th Fødselsdag (Birthday)

Today was my 60th birthday.  Oh yeah.  I am getting older.  I celebrated by going to Danish class.  But first I was feted with raising of the Danish flag by our friends downstairs.  The Danish flag is used as a symbol of celebrations, more than nationalism.  It is traditional to raise the flag on one's birthday.

 Our old upstairs neighbors dropped some poinsettas off for me to open before breakfast.  I went to school, bringing a Danish pastry called a "Christmas Star" for my classmates.  Then at 12 o'clock on 12/12  ( the symmetry is nice), I joined Nhat, Paal and Mona for a birthday luncheon at Ida Davidsen's.  It is an old-fashioned smørrebrød restaurant.  Smørrebrød is the high art of Danish sandwich making with fine ingredients and sculptured toppings.  And all is accompanied by aquavit and beer.

 We spent 4 hours lingering over all of the above, savoring the flavors of the various sandwiches, skåling one another with our beer and snaps and talking in the cozy small restaurant.  It was a delightful way to celebrate my 60th birthday.

 I should feel kind of old, though this year, living in a small apartment with a minumun of belongings,going to class and spending a few hours every morning with 25 year olds making my mouth and tongue do impossible things trying to speak Danish, and living with skinned knees just like a kid after I dumped my bike on slippery cobblestones and train tracks,  I guess I am not too old.  I miss everyone there but am enjoying this time and celebration here.  Who wouldn't be thrilled to be eating smoked salmon and drinking snaps on  a Monday afternoon.

Life- December 1st

Life has taken on a routine these days.  After breakfast we head out. I bike to school, Nhat bikes the long way to work to get his exercise in for the day (see previous post!).    I have started biking along the main drag to town.  Nhat doesn't like it for there are so many bicyclists and the exquisite choreography demands maximal attention.  First you merge into the bike path and then pedal.  Always looking over your shoulders,  "Can I pass this old man wearing a beret and smoking a pipe?"  "Can I go around this girl not paying attention and talking on her cell phone?"   "Is that some buff young dude bearing down on me and wanting to pass?"  "Oh no, there is a delivery van in the bike path"  and we all must slow down and go single file.

The other day I was able to take advantage of the "Green Wave".  The traffic lights are timed so that a cyclist going 20 km/hr can make each light.  Sometimes it works great.  The other day I put my foot down once in the 15 minute bike commute.  Well, actually twice because a woman 3 bikes ahead stopped suddenly and inexplicably in the path and the 2 behind her and a couple behind me slammed on our brakes, just gently bumping each others wheels.  It is something to experience the peloton that is the bike commute in Copenhagen.

So school has started for me.  I was very worried for when I interviewed for class placement, the not extremely friendly school counselor after reading my little essay and hearing me speak, put me in the class I would have continued to 6 years ago, i.e. level 5.  This is the last level before the exam to prove you have the language skills to become a citizen.  I haven't spoken Danish for 6 years.  However, the first day, I knew I could hold my own and didn't get demoted as I had feared.  We have a wonderful teacher and a fun class.  Two men- Holland and Chile.  Two women from Italy, two from Spain, one from Russia and one from England.  Already 2 others have dropped out.  This is the level where people often stop.  They know enough Danish to get by and they have been here long enough that they need to get jobs.  I thought I was older than most by 25 years but there are some who are 35 years younger than me.  I am definitely the old lady in the class.  I am getting better but what a job to learn a new language, especially one so hard to speak as Danish.  Lots of swallowed words and syllables, gutteral sounds that are really foreign to my throat.  Idioms-  tons of them in every language and how to remember them.  I did learn that "hulter til bulter" is topsy-turvey, helter-skelter.  I hope it comes in handy now and then.

The companionship is quite delightful.  I realized I needed to go to school after a Saturday when I spoke for a maximum of 2 minutes all day to the shop clerk at the grocery store.  I wasn't practicing my Danish and I was pretty lonely.  We have a good time in class and today one of the Italian women offered to take me with her to the Royal Theater to watch a final dress rehearsal of  The Nutcracker.  It was wonderful.  The scenery, the costumes and the dancing were so delightful.  The theater was started in 1748 and the building is from the 1870's.  I only wish I had Clementine there who would have loved the ballet.

It was a fun afternoon but as I made my way around the city and home, with candles burning in windows and Christmas decorations everywhere, I got a little homesick.  Holidays are hard to be away from friends and family, especially here where there is an explosion of "Julehygge" or Christmas coziness.  We miss everyone.