Bread! Butter!

These are main food groups!

I may have mentioned it, but in Denmark, "danish" pastries are called "weinerbrod," meaning Vienna bread.  I read that in Vienna, they're called "Kopenhagens."  Anyone else seeing the flaw in giving food place names?

I was about to go grocery shopping when I realized all I had on me was a 50 kr. bill (about 10 dollars-- Sept. 17 was the lowest exchange rate of the fiscal year so far).  So I popped into the bakery across the street (so convenient!) and bought "dagen's brod," which may mean "bread of the day."  It's very hearty, full of grains and nuts, and so fresh it's hardly recognizable to an American as a food product.  I grabbed it (16 kr. is  a good deal in Copenhagen) and brought it up to my flat, where I smothered it in smor (Danish butter), also ludicrously fresh.  The butter reminds me of when, as little schoolchildren in Chicago, we'd get to go to the "Farm in the Zoo" at Lincoln Park Zoo and eat the freshly churned butter made by an elderly woman in a pioneer costume.  It's so good you can't even remember how different it is until you have it again.

I should still go grocery shopping (I know my mother reads this blog).  But it's best not to go food shopping hungry, right?  I'll just go get ONE more piece of smor og brod.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY BRUCE BOYER!

Week four, day 23.  Homesickness starting to settle in this week like quiet background noise.  It gets louder when there's less going on, and during classes and activity I can't hear it at all.

The rented closet I call my own has become spectacularly untidy in the past three and a half weeks, and no wonder.  I'm not a neat or organized person even when my bedroom is four times this size, so trying to cram everything I need for school and living into this room is like trying to stuff Marilyn Monroe into the dress Audrey Hepburn wore in "Breakfast at Tiffany's."  Scratch that; it's like trying to stuff Anna Nicole Smith into an Olsen twin ensemble.

Not that I'm complaining.  The quietly bohemian life Mirah has let me into is wonderful.  Last night, we went to Blockbuster and curled up in her room watching "Pretty Woman."  It was a first for me, and I loved it!  In spite of everything I thought I'd hate, not least of which was watching a classic American love story while living in a foreign country, I had a blast.  Mirah had to watch it for school-- she's a graduate student at a Meisner theater institute here-- and prep a bunch of notes on structure and plot for class today.

My classes are just as great.  Favorite so far is definitely "European Film History," during which half the class falls asleep.  It's not their fault; the teacher is sort of quiet and so far we've been studying the silent film era, and if that's not your thing, I'm sure it's boring.  But I love it!  We watched "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari" yesterday and clips from "Nosferatu" today.  Silent film is its own art form.  It's incredible.  I can't believe it took me until now to discover it.  Twenty years, wasted!  I could have been studying Greta Garbo's early work and Melies' film experiments of the turn of the last century for ages.  What have I been studying neuroscience or psychology for?  Everything about human experience is captured on those old film strips.

But this isn't a film blog.  It's not even really a culture blog.  It's a travel diary for the public (also known as interested friends and family; I love you all).  So I will post again when I have more of those stories to share.  As for now, life is a lot of settling in and cozying up as the weather gets chilly and damp, school kicks into high gear, and making dinner and doing laundry get easier (and therefore hideously boring).

Western Denmark

From early Thursday morning until Saturday evening, DIS took each "core course" class on a different itinerary through Western Denmark (mostly Jutland, the region that's always the first to get occupied by Germany because it's a peninsula connected to mainland Europe).  That means I was with 34 other kids and two chaperones/guides/teachers traveling throughout a country smaller than the state of Florida for two and a half days straight.  

[Needless to say, I needed a lot of alone time and sleep after that; it's exhausting to me to be with Americans and exhausting to be with people my own age.  They're nice enough people, but a girl needs her peace and quiet-- especially a girl like me, who is internally a lot closer to a 65-year-old tee-totaling librarian than a fun-loving twentysomething.]

This is a small Photoshop experiment combining a few of my favorite pictures from the weekend.  We visited a castle, the tip of Jutland (Skagen), an art museum, a prison, a folk high school (nothing like our high schools), the place where the North (Atlantic) Sea and Baltic Seas meet, a bowling alley, a hostel, a motel, a brewery, and Odense, the town where Hans Christian Andersen was born.  I think my favorite part may have been the ferry ride from Zealand to Jylland, pictured above.  I was reenacting a scene from "Yentl."

Things To Miss and Giving Directions

Sometimes, being an expatriate is thrilling and exotic.  Today, en route to my flat from DIS, I passed by an Indian couple speaking in perfect, lightly accented English, arguing about which way to go.  I stopped and asked if I could help, and pointed them towards the pedestrian street Stroget (pronounced Stroh-gill).  It felt really good to help people who are probably not my fellow Americans but with whom I share a linguistic identity.  I'm making a point to help as many confused English-speaking tourists as I can.  They don't have to know that I've only lived here 16 days, as long as my directions are right.

But today also marks the first day of public school back home, a day I was a part of for thirteen Augusts and Septembers.  To recognize the start of the year, President Obama is giving a speech to American students today.  It's the first time in my life I'm not one of them.  Even though it's been three years since I attended Chicago Public Schools, I'll always be a product of them.*  Maybe that means that every fall, I'll miss those years, but the feeling was definitely underscored today by being altogether on a different continent.  It's also the first time in my life I'm homesick for a president!

*Whitney Young High School and LaSalle Language Academy shaped my life in ways that would be hard to summarize in a short blog post, especially one that's focused on my college travels.  

Warning: Angry Danish Twentysomething Sings

My Danish Language and Culture professor, Nina, believes in teaching us about Danish Language and Culture through pop songs.  I love her for this.  Well, less today when she made us listen to a really crummy rap duo known as Nik og Jay, but more last week when she introduced us to the hilarious and genuine Sys Bjerre's hit song, "Malene."  

I've included a YouTube cut of the song with VERY roughly translated English lyrics from a bilingual Danish fan.  The gist is that the singer's boyfriend cheats on her with a girl named Malene, and she (very justly) dumps his possessions all over various parts of Copenhagen (the words that aren't translated are streets and neighborhoods here) and burns down his flat.  But saves his cat.  (I love their sense of humor here.)

The hook is a mix of Danish and English, with Sys Bjerre asking the nameless boyfriend if they can agree that it's the last time he...messes with her.  There is some strong (English!) language, so if that offends you, you can skip this post.  Or just listen to the first minute or so of the song in Danish.

Some pictures and a song

In the spirit of my mother and two musical-loving friends who read this blog (Holland and Niki), I think I'm going to do my best to include whatever song I'm singing to myself during my varied adventures in these posts.

Edit:  I meant to write more and post pictures, but my internet is pretty sporadic and I couldn't.  Here, at least, are the pictures.  I'm going out now for a walking tour of "Hans Christian Andersen's and Soren Kierkegaard's Copenhagen."

Some excellent graffiti by DIS and the bakery across the street from me.

Laundry!

Laundry here is, by the way, completely impossible.  It's like an obstacle course, full of physical challenges I'm not good at and with the power to break even the strongest will.  For one thing, we have to hook the machine up to the only kitchen outlet and to the only sink in the flat for the entire two hour ordeal.  And when I say "hook the machine up to the only sink," it is as inconvenient and as industrious as it sounds.

There's a part that detaches from the regular tap, and another part that you attach to the faucet so that the doohickies on the washing machine connect properly.  These are far too complicated for me to ever do quite right and well beyond my ability to describe, but the main bit involves a spring, latch, and ball screw.  You then turn on the faucet and, if all goes well, the pressure DOESN'T fling the pipes off and spray you and the kitchen with water.  But of course, it's a learning process, and that must happen several (dozen) times for you to learn your lesson.

There's also the matter of dragging the machine out from under the minifridge in the first place.  It looked easy when Mira did it on my first or second evening here as a demonstration, but like all Danes, Mira is several times more fit than me, and the process of unlocking the wheels at the bottom of the machine and dragging it the three feet to the sink was an arduous fifteen minute task itself.

But even if you manage to move the machine, hook it up to the outlet, and attach it semi-correctly to the faucet, there's still the fact that its powder detergent, liquid additive (still don't know how to translate the bottle-- maybe fabric softener?), and every itty bitty button are in Danish.  And don't be fooled by the numbered dial, because that's not minutes.  The Danish measure laundry time in SPINS.  Cycle spins.  Of your clothes.  Consequently, the numbers on that dial stand for degrees.  Celcius.  The temperature that the machine will turn your tap water in order to properly wash your clothes.

I just did my first load of whites, and so far so good.  I'm more apprehensive about the darks.  We shall see.  

DIS gives us Wednesdays free, which are usually to be taken up with field studies, but which for me today is entirely devoid of activities.  I've contented myself with wrestling the washing machine for three hours and singing "I Have Confidence" from "The Sound of Music" loudly to myself when cheerleading is needed.