Julebryg dag!

One of the biggest highlights of the Christmas season in Denmark occurs at the beginning of November, almost 2 months before Christmas. On November 5, Tuborg released its official Christmas beer. On this night, all the Danes flock to 170 selected bars in Copenhagen to await the arrival of the Tuborg elves that bring around the FREE Christmas beer. Of course, this was an event that Ben and I had to experience!


Our little group arrived at the bar at about 8pm, a little late to get a table inside. We were relegated to the cold patio. We decided, however, that this would be an ideal spot to see the arrival of the Tuborg truck and the Tuborg elves. The first round of beer was expected to arrive at the bars at 9pm. The truck did not make it to our bar until 10pm.

The Tuborg truck backed down the street to where the bar was located. Once stopped, the back door sprung open while snow fell from the roof of the truck, Christmas music played, and the Tuborg elves danced and sang. Each of the Tuborg elves was carrying a case of Tuborg beer and some coveted blue hats with lights. As soon as the elves made it off the truck, they were swarmed by bar patrons, each person trying to get a bottle of beer and a blue hat. The elves did their best to make it inside the bar before they passed anything out though; this of course was a huge disadvantage to us because our table was outside. Below are pictures of two of the Tuborg elves and the crowded bar (notice the blue hats everyone is wearing).



I tried my very best to get a blue hat and a christmas beer. I rushed into the bar as soon as the elves went in, but it proved to be quite difficult to even get close to one of them. Luckily, I managed to snatch one of the last Christmas beers from one elf. I returned to our table to see if the rest of our group had been successful. A couple people managed to obtain both Christmas beer and hats, however most of us obtained one or the other. While I had gotten a beer, Ben was only able to get a Christmas hat. All in all, it was a highly entertaining evening and we will know for next year to arrive even earlier to get the prime spots inside the bar.


In Vancouver, I always looked forward to the release of the Granville Island Lions Winter Ale. However, I never quite knew which day the beer would released on. I would check the BC Liquor stores daily starting in mid November to see if the beer had been released. When it finally hit the shelves, I would buy several cases before they were sold out. I wish the Granville Island Brewery would make more of a spectacle for the release of their Christmas beer, however I understand that there is a significant difference in the size of the production capacities of Carlsberg/Tuborg vs Granville Island.

Still, the Carlsberg Christmas beer is no substitute to the rich, smooth flavours of the Granville Island Winter Ale...and I can say that right now, I am missing this beer more than sushi.

...and I am back!

I am finally back into the blogging after a long absence. The month of November was particularly busy and I wanted to focus on a couple of really important events. In short, the events were: having my level 1 Danish exam, studying for and then writing the Level 1 Chartered Financial Analyst Exam (which will unfortunately likely prove to be my first unsuccessful attempt), and then successfully getting a job in Copenhagen!

Now that those are over, I will be able to share all our Danish experiences since Canadian Thanksgiving. I will do my best to write something everyday this week. Here is a little taste of what is to come.

1. Julebryg day. The exciting day in early November where all of Copenhagen celebrates the release of the Tuborg Christmas beer.

2. Danish Level 1 final exam. I actually had to speak in Danish with an examiner...ugh!

3. London, England. Ben and I spent three days in a very cold London.

4. Danish Christmas party.

5. Random pictures taken from around Copenhagen.

6. Job interview process.

7. 10 Comments about writing a CFA exam in London.

8. The Hill. A story about the large, awkward mound of dirt outside our building.

9. My first attempt at a recipe from Mormors mad.

I am writing all these down for you as my way of committing myself to writing all these entries. Hopefully I am able to stick with it.

I hope everyone is having a wonderful month of December!

Dog Days of Denmark: Autumn

Here are some photos of Copenhagen in the Fall.

Quigley and Mollie at the campground.

Cesar.

Mollie.

Grøndal Center - sports facility.

Social Housing (I have a lovely view of these 80's era bulindings
from my patio)

Pathway near my house. I have not figured out yet what is written here.

Canadian Thanksgiving in Denmark

Thanksgiving was our first official holiday away from home. While we have lived in different cities from our respective families for several years, we have always had great friends to share this special holiday with (special shout out to Ray and Sally, Jade and Mike for the great times!). This year, to be honest, Thanksgiving was not on the forefront of our thoughts. Ben is busy with his new job and I am busy with Danish and general stuff. Not to mention the fact that we do not have the appropriate cooking utensils to prepare most of the Thanksgiving special dishes. AND....where would we get a turkey over here? Not at the Føtex or the Netto!

Then we received an email from a group of lost souls - or should I say Canadian expats in Denmark announcing the planning of a large Thanksgiving celebration for all the Canadians in Copenhagen! Eureka! Let me back track a bit though....

I joined a group called AllCanucks back in August. This group for Canadian expats in Denmark is a catalyst for meeting other Canadians in Copenhagen through a series of events hosted throughout the year. These events can include pub nights, comedy nights (In English!), and general assistance on working/living/being in Denmark. Ben and I had yet to participate in an event until we received the Thanksgiving email....

For the small cost of 100 kroner each (about $20 Cdn) we would be provided with an all you can eat/all you can drink Thanksgiving celebration! Oh - and we had to bring our special thanksgiving side dish as well. I chose to bring the ever important dinner rolls while Ben (aka Julia Childs) wanted to make his famous scalloped potatoes. The scalloped potatoes went off without a hitch. Dinner rolls on the other hand were a little more complicated. I decided to wait until the Sunday of the dinner to purchase them. I wanted to get really nice dinner rolls so started my search off at the bakery...that is until I realized that each dinner roll cost upwards of $1 Cdn. Each! I was not going to pay $35 for dinner rolls! So I decided to walk down to the big grocery store - the Føtex. 15 minutes later I was outside the closed store (apparently 'Shopping Sundays' means that this grocery store is only open on the first Sunday of the month). Can you imagine a Loblaws being closed on a Sunday? So I walked all the way back home to check out the small, Netto grocery store near my house (I like to call it the ghetto Netto) where I was successfully able to purchase 36 dinner rolls pre-packaged for 8 bucks! Far too much effort for dinner rolls.

So off we went with the dinner rolls and scalloped potatoes to the Thanksgiving dinner. We are happy to report that the Canadians abroad are just as welcoming as Canadians back home. It was great to chat with people in English and learn more from the Canadians that have lived here for some time. Apparently canned pumpkin is quite difficult to come by here (in retrospect I am lad we did not offer to make pumpkin pie!). It was a real treat to have pumpkin pie made from scratch at the dinner though. Turkey is also difficult to come by and has to be pre-ordered. Apparently there used to be an American lady who bred and supplied all the turkey for Denmark. While it is uncertain whether she is stil operating, apparently most of the turkey now is brought in from Germany. I guess that means I will not be having a Christmas turkey in December unless I find out how to order this bird!

All in all, we had a great time and met some great people I am sure we will be seeing in the near future. Thanksgiving in Denmark = Success!

Grandma's Danish Cooking

Ben and I have always enjoyed sightseeing through food. Whenever we visit a new place we do our best to immerse ourselves in the local cuisine. We loved the southern BBQ in Atlanta and Nashville, the fresh lobster in Boston was amazing, and who can forget the fantastic Vancouver sushi! So, it is only natural that we would continue our love of food, cooking and exploration in our new home.

You can expect many more blogs in the future about food. Grocery shopping here is quite different and I have a lot of things left to discover. For instance, someone recently told me that the first Sunday of the month is shopping Sunday; I am not sure if this means longer operating hours for stores or more sales....i will let you know as soon as I find out. I try to buy one random grocery item each week. Last week, i bought some random little fish that were on sale. While I was hoping that they were sardines, and I could replicate the delicious sardine dish I had in Plaka, it was herring. Oh well...they were still delicious in a butter, lemon and mustard sauce. While herring is a very traditional Danish ingredient, I do not think the recipe I used was a truly Danish preparation method.


In an attempt to cook truly Danish food at home, we decided to purchase a traditional Danish cook book. I ventured down to the local Bog&Ide (a much smaller version of Chapters) in search of a cookbook. I easily found the cookbook section, but quickly discovered that all the cookbooks are in Danish (which I should have guessed). When I quickly discovered that I could not pick out a 'traditional Danish cookbook' from the available cookbooks, I asked a store employee to point me in the right direction of traditional danish cooking. His first two suggestions were Joy of Cooking-esque Danish cookbooks; huge volumes filled with many recipes and no pictures. And entirely in Danish. Ugh. I could just imagine myself google-translating pages after pages of recipes, trying to figure out how to properly wash the kartofler.

I think the employee could sense I was overwhelmed with the huge volumes; thankfully he had a third option that was more my speed. The title, Mormors Mad, means 'Grandmother's food while the additional wording on the cover says "food for those who know everything about the wok and pasta, but misses grandmother's pots". He told me this cookbook takes traditional danish recipes and puts a modern spin on them. While the Mormors Mad is also entirely in Danish, it has the fantastic selling feature of pictures with every recipe!


So it was decided: this cookbook would be an integral part of our transition into a Danish way of life, both by learning the language and the cooking. The cookbook is conveniently divided into four sections, one for each of the seasons.

Stay tuned for some yummy cooking in the near future.....

Learn to speak Danish - Week 1

The more and more I search the job forums here in Copenhagen, the more the realization hits that a strong knowledge of a Nordic language such as Danish is basically essential for finding a good job in Denmark. Unfortunately, the majority of us expats that arrive in Denmark have no knowledge of the language. Luckily, it is very important to the Danish government that foreigners have the opportunity to learn Danish to help integrate into Danish society; foreigners who obtain a CPR number have three years to attend free Danish language classes.

I signed up with a language school called IA Sprog which is located a few blocks from my house. Back in August, I met with a representative of the school who helped place me in the appropriate level of class. Due to my lack of knowledge of ANY Danish, I was easily (and happily) placed in Level 1. I chose to be part of the intensive language program; I attend lectures on Monday and Wednesday nights for 3 and a half hours. Each class consists of a test of 15 sentences (oral and written) as well as practicing basic oral Danish and going over written assignments from the previous class. It has been a while since I have been in school and I will admit that three and a half hours of Danish does not go by very quickly....

There are 10 students in my class who come from the following nations: Poland, Pakistan, Norway, Holland, Canada, Germany, and Great Britain. My partners in crime so far are the girls from Poland and Germany. The girl from Germany is in Denmark for 2 years working on a masters degree in biochemistry and the Polish girl was traveling in Asia, met a Danish fellow, and now lives here.

After my first two classes I am able to say the following:

I am Allison. / Jeg hedder Allison.
That is a car. / Det er en bil.
My dog is small and black. / Min hund er lille og sort.

And most importantly....

I do not speak Danish. / Jeg toler ikke dansk.

I have had the opportunity to practice these sayings on walks with Quigley. Everyone I meet is happy to practice with me (and happy to help me pronounce my 'æ', 'ø' and 'å' sounds as well as the awful soft 'D' sound).

I will leave you today with an example of the videos that I use for each lessons to help learn the language. I could not find the first video of level 1, lesson 1 on youtube...so here is lesson 12 of level 1. The setting is a school where individuals are learning to speak Danish. The topic of the class lecture is apples, oranges and bananas. While I unfortunately do not understand everything said in the video (I am only on lesson 4), I do understand that individuals are asked whether they would like a banana, apple or orange, and that Mustafa is sick and was not able to make it into class. Fatma offers to take Mustafa the bananas to help him get better.

Enjoy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=73Nn9N6tShc

Greece

Let me first apologize for my long absence from the blog. In early September I went off to Greece and Italy and then returned to Copenhagen to continue my touristing with a friend who came to visit. I have made a lot of new discoveries over the past month, and will prepare little blurbs about them all over the next few weeks.

Todays topic: Greece. My good friend Kaitie and I decided to venture to Athens and the Greek Islands for a well needed holiday (well, she took a vacation from work and I took a vacation from unemployment). After spending a few days in Italy visiting Siena, Todi, Orvieto and Rome, we flew to Athens. Our trip consisted of the following: 3 nights in Athens, 2 nights on the island of Milos, 3 nights on the island of Santorini, and 3 nights on the island of Crete. I have decided to write about 10 things I loved and hated about Greece (in no particular order)

#1 Toilet Paper System (hated)
While I do not know the precise operation of the sewage systems on the greek islands, it is forbidden almost everywhere to put any kind of paper products in the toilet (including toilet paper). I will just say that putting used toilet paper in the garbage can was a little foreign to me and I am very happy to be back in Denmark which operates on a North American toilet paper-in-the-bowl system. Unfortunately I do not have a p

#2 Greek Salad (loved)
We ate at least one greek salad a day on our trip - they were always amazing and we could not get enough of them! This is actually the first greek salad photo I took, and my favourite from the trip.


#3 Villa Toula - Fira, Santorini (loved)
We both loved staying at Villa Toula in the town of Fira on Santorini. The price was a very very reasonable 30 euro a night for the two of us; it also included a wonderful breakfast on fresh bread and chocolate cakes. Toula was a wonderful host who helped us organize tours for our time in Santorini. The location of Villa Toula is also amazing for being right in the heart of Fira.

Kaitie enjoying breakfast with Toula in the background

#4 Moussaka - Santorini (loved)
Everywhere we went, we checked reviews on tripadvisor for the best sites to see and best places to eat. One place in Fira caught our eye; a restaurant called Naoussa was lauded by many as having the best Moussaka on the island (and even in all of Greece). We had already had moussaka several times, but decided we could not pass up the opportunity to visit this restaurant. We arrived at around 8pm and there were only about 5 tables left empty in the medium sized restaurant/tavern - within 5 minutes there were no more tables and a line was forming outside (apparently many people had read the tripadvisor reviews). While the moussaka was amazing, I kept looking over at all the freshly caught fish dishes on other tables (another specialty of the restaurant). All in all, it was an amazing dining experience that was made even better when we received one of our bottles of wine on the house!

Kaitie and I at Naoussa

#5 Volcanoes - Santorini (loved)
In Santorini, we did a day trip aboard a glass bottom boat that visited the volcano island, the hotsprings and the island across the way. The tour was a decent price for visiting all the sites. We had a guided tour of the volcano by one of the tour leaders; to showcase us how the volcanoes of the area had impacted the landscape he made little mountains out of rocks and would break them up over and over again and spray water all around! It was a very funny to watch, yet quite informative. There are several volcanoes in the area (a red one, a white one, a yellow one, a black one, a grey one and a green one) that have erupted at different points in history and have created the high cliffs of Santorini. When a volcano erupts, it leaves a rock layer with a colour specific to its volcano. So beautiful!



#6 Samaria Gorge - Crete (loved)
One of the most adventurous things we did was hike the Samarian Gorge on the island of Crete. After a later then expected night out (we received yet another bottle of complimentary wine and felt obligated to stay and drink it) we awoke at 5am for an early breakfast at our hotel. A shuttle bus picked us up at 6am and whisked us up into the beautiful mountains. Out guide explained the plan for the day, that he would start the hike half an hour after us to make sure we all made it through. He warned us to NOT walk and look at scenery at the same time, as this would lead to broken ankles and an unnecessary donkey ride out of the canyon. We wee told to ALWAYS be looking down at our feet. Strange - kinda. It all made sense when we started our 16 km hike down the canyon though; stray rocks were everywhere and you really needed to watch every step. Most of the other hikers were very well equipped with hiking boots and other gadgets; Kaitie and I were in sneakers that were not appropriate for the conditions. We managed through the gorge though in about 5 hours and came out at the beach (sea level) on the other side. It was a great hike with scenery so beautiful that no camera could fully capture it. Below is my attempt though.

Most narrow part of the gorge

#7 Stray Dogs (loved and hated)
There were stray dogs everywhere in Greece. Every island, city and region seemed to have its own variety of stray dog. They all seemed very relaxed, content and well fed. Below is a picture of a stray dog in Athens that was disobeying the request of the guards to stay behind a specific line during the changing of the guards ceremony.



#8 Sunsets - everywhere (loved)
Greece has beautiful sunsets. Enough said.


#9 and #10 Boat tours of Milos (loved)
My absolute favourite day trip of our vacation was on the island of Milos. This island is famous for its remote beaches and beautiful waters. While Kaitie and I had debated taking a boat trip around the island, we had initially decided against it due to the possible high price of such adventure (our day trip to Delphi was 100 euro a person). Our minds changed when we met a lovely couple from London who told us about a tour they were going on the next day: only 45 euro a person for a full day trip around the island including a greek BBQ on a remote beach. We were in!

The boat only held ten tourists and it was at capacity. We started by taking a tour by a nearby island. The water was so crystal clear and blue and warm and wonderful! We stopped by a small beach to scuba dive for sea urchins that we would taste later. The captain of the boat was amazing - at one point he brought out special greek melons and grapes for us to try and basically kept feeding us until we could not stomach anymore. We then continued the boat trip with additional stops to venture into some caves where the captain said seals likes to hang out in the winter. We were then taken to the super secret private beach for our BBQ. Upon arriving at the island, the captain began shouting out "Filos! Filos!" and telling us his friend would be joining us. Eventually a wild goat and his family joined us and dined on the melon rinds from earlier. The BBQ consisted of bbq'ed pork, greek salad, bread, potato salad, bean salad, bbq'ed peppers, zucchini and onions as well as fresh cheese made by the captain's mother. We headed back to the boat just before sunset and had a beautiful ride back to the docks....beautiful at least until the captain brought out the ouzo! I was able to down my ouzo but I will say it is not my favourite drink (especially in the very large quantity that we were given).

Snorkeling for sea urchins

Preparing melons

BBQ on beach

Picnic!

My attempt at a Leo moment after the ouzo. Too windy though.

Anyways, this boat trip was the perfect day and an absolute must. Milos was my favourite part of the trip and I cannot wait to return.