Workplace birthdays

This is a short note on workplace in Denmark compared to Canada.

Let me first of all discuss birthdays in Canada. At my last job in Vancouver, one person was asked to keep track of all office birthdays. A couple of days before a birthday would occur, this person would be responsible for emailing everyone in the office to remind them of the upcoming birthday and ask for a small donation towards a cake and a card. I think the standard was about $2 a birthday. That person was then responsible for purchasing the cake, ensuring utensils and plates were available and organzing a time when everyone in the office would be around to enjoy the cake (which is actually the trickiest part given meeting commitments). The objective is to surprise the individual celebrating the birthday with song and cake. My office mates in Vancouver would often go out for a birthday lunch for that person, where someone would usually pick up the birthday person's tab.

Sounds pretty normal to all Canadians, right?

In Denmark, things are a little different. Luckily, a coworker had his birthday a few days before Ben so he go to see how it was done. In the Denmark case, it is the responsibility of the birthday person to provide cake for everyone in the office. Thus, on the day of his birthday, Ben's coworker sent out an email to everyone informing them of available goodies in the lunchroom. The office staff shared in quite a feast of cake! So, while in Canada an office birthday is prepared for by someone not celebrating the birthday, in Denmark you are responsible for your own event. Apparently this is also true of birthday lunches (where the birthday person would pay for the tabs of all individuals they invited to the lunch).

I think both strategies have their merits; while it is nice to have others take care of everything for your birthday, it is slightly more complicated than every birthday person providing their own goodies.

So what did Ben do? As we are still not familiar with what a good Danish cake is, we went right off the map and bought Baklava from the local baklava bakery that makes ONLY baclava. It was quite a hit. Below you can see the 3 kg of baklava that was sent into the office.



Future visitors to Copenhagen: we will definitely make a trip here!

A Gourmet Downpour Garden Experience

As many of you know, I have a special place in my heart for festivals and experience that showcase food, wine and/or beer or a region or regions. When living in Vancouver, I had the chance to attend several really neat venues and festivals in Canada and the US. Some of my favourites include:

• Vancouver Playhouse International Wine Festival
• Seattle International Beer Festival
• Lunch at Miss Mary Bobo's in Lynchburg Tennessee (an absolute MUST if you are in the area)
  
• Slovakia House during the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Games
  

I hope to continue exploring the food and drink of Europe while over in Copenhagen. And, just my luck, I stumbled across the Copenhagen Cooking Festival that is taking place right now in my new city. This festival takes place over the last week of August and offers foodies a great opportunity to explore all aspects of Copenhagen's cooking culture; from special set course meals at local restaurants, including the current best restaurant in the world Nomo, to tapas tours of some of Copenhagen's more unique neighbourhoods, to crayfish festivals to wine tastings...this festival has it all!

In honour of Ben's birthday week, we selected a couple of events to attend. The first event was a gourmet hotdog competition in Tivoli Gardens. We chose this event because Tom and I share a love of exploring local street meats and neither of us had visited Tivoli Gardens. The second event (on Ben's actual birthday) is an organic beer tasting extravaganza at the Cap Horn .

Despite a late start to the hotdog event due to a torrential downpour, we were happy to see they wer estill serving hotdogs at over half of the booths. Competitors were required to supply 10 hotdogs for judging and at least 40 hotdogs for purchase by the general public. Proceeds from the event also all went to help a local charity. The first line we selected ended up being the creme de la creme hotdog line - we had a hotdog where the meat was foie gras! each hotdog cost 100 kr (I will let you do the currency conversion to see hwo crazy we are). Remember....for charity!

The next several booths we visited had much more reasonable hotdog prices of about 30 kr per dog. We sampled a traditional danish hotdog that was delish (and a lot more filling than the previous one) as well as two more gourmet dogs. Below are pictures of the final two gourmet dogs we sampled.

Notice the watermelon and egg on this one.

This hotdog had grapes and caviar on it. (note that I am hiding under a
tent because the rain came back and a wet hotdog is not good)

Vancouverites are probably wondering how the infamous Japa-dog would have fared with the tough European competition. Apparently there was a China-dog at the competition that was very popular that Ben and I did not have a chnace to sample. So...if the whole 'finding a job' thing does not work out for me perhaps I can just franchise a Japa-dog in Copenhagen. Any investors?

Here are a couple more photos of the line ups at the event, a general picture of Tivoli at night as well as the awesome hotdog we did not get a chance to sample.



The beer tasting took place on Wednesday. While it was an event advertised on the Copenhagen Cooking website, I was surprised to see there were only 3 other couples at the tasting. Thankfully there was another table on DSL (danish as a second language) folk, and the gentleman hosting the event was kind enough to repeat everything in English. the event focused on the brewing process of two organic beers that are made in denmark: Cap Horn (a lager especially brewed for the specific restaurant we were in) and Fynsk Forar ( a wheat beer made with elderflower).


A representative from the brewery explained the brew process to us. Ben and my previous visits to breweries such as Granville Island and Big Rock were useful in helping us understand the technical terms that the representative did not know in English. All in all it was a very good presentation and the two beers were excellent.

The beer tasting was followed by a traditional Danish meal of trout and carrots brazed in the Fynsk Forar beer. a big pot of new potatoes were also placed on the table for us to share. I guess new potatoes are the Danish equivalent of a french fry starch at a meal. This amazing bowl of potatoes was also endless...ensuring that you did not leave the table hungry.


All in all, we felt that the Copenhagen Cooking events we attended were well worth it. Next year we will be sure to sign up for some of the premiere events that sold out very quickly this year.

My first week in Copenhagen...

It is official! It has been one week since I have been living in the exciting city of Copenhagen and, with my borrowed internet connection from our all too kind Danish neighbours, I am now able to start blogging about my experiences over here.

Ben, the reason I am being thrust into Europe, met myself, my three suitcases and our dog, Mr Quigley at the airport last Thursday afternoon. It had been 12 hours in a crate for Mr Quigley and I imagine he was itching for some water and a bathroom break - however, he seemed genuinely happy to see both of us (forgetting that I was the one that put him in his crate in the first place). After finding a cab that was large enough to fit us all, we ventured over to the apartment. Ben found a lovely, brand new, pet-friendly apartment in an area of Copenhagen called Norrebro. The apartment had everything that we could have asked for: dish washer, washing machine, park outside, near public transportation. The area of Norrebro, however, is known as one of the troubled neighbourhoods in Copenhagen. From what I can see so far it is a very diverse neighbourhood with a strong middle eastern makeup, which means an abundance of shawarma and falafel restaurants as well as small markets and halal slaughter shops. I cannot wait to explore these!

Ben's goal was to have me stay up until 10pm that night and I surprisingly almost made it! That afternoon/evening we ventured downtown for some beers at some sketchy bars in the tourist area followed by pizza from the local pizza joint 'Di Minutter'. Then bed. FINALLY!

My actual first week focused on getting our apartment set up (when I arrived we had no furniture, no kitchen supplies, etc) and getting all the necessary paperwork in order to be covered by Danish healthcare.

Day 1: It rained. Ben and I spent 8 hours at the local Ikea. After carefully picking out all the items we wanted, we were disheartened to find out that some of the major pieces we had picked out were not in stock! I check the Ikea website every day and still, one week later, the items have not arrived. Hopefully when we go back to Ikea we will not have to spend another 8 hours perusing the racks (although this did allow us to have two trips to the ikea cafeteria. mmmmm meatballs).

Day 2: It rained. I set up Ikea furniture. I am sure you can imagine how exciting this was.

Day 3: It rained. I continued setting up Ikea furniture. I bought a bike. There are bike stores on every block, a very close example of perfect competition I would guess. However, it was Sunday and the majority of the bike stores were closed. While I could have waited until Monday, I just wanted to get 'buying a bike' off my list and ended up purchasing my bike from a sketchy shop. It is a used red bike (pictures coming soon) and we will see how it holds up. I have named him Old Red after the 1990 Acura Integra I learned to drive on. Ben and I did take a quick bike ride to visit Hans Christian Andersen's grave that is conveniently located in a nearby graveyard/park. We are planning a picnic by his grave on a less rainy day.

Day 4: It rained. I set up Ikea furniture. I bought patio furniture. It rained a little more. Frustrated by the lack of internet, I ventured to a nearby internet cafe to check my email. The rain, however, must have been interfering with the signal and I could not get it to work, so I ventured to Ben's work where I was graciously allowed to check my emails and plan my next two days.

Day 5: It rained. I set up my final piece of Ikea furniture (until we make our next trip of course). My main task of the day was to get my danish permit inserted into the passport. The immigration office is open from 8:30am to 12:00pm - I only made it there at about 10:30am which was likely a mistake. I took my number from the ticketing device - #125. They immigration staff were currently serving number 54 (ugh). I jostled a seat from an old lady (joke) and made myself comfortable. I waited. and waited. One hour later they were serving number 62. Then a magical announcement was heard over the loud speaker saying that individuals who only required the insertion of their permit in their passport could come to Desk 9. That was me! All that time sitting there for nothing! I ran up to desk 9 and presented all of my paper work and was asked to give them the pictures I had brought. Pictures? Apparently the pictures I had submitted with my official application were somewhere else so I would have to run out and get pictures, in the half hour time slot prior to closing, for my permit to get processed that day. While I have not been training lately, I will say that I had a good run in flip flops to the local fotoshop and 100 Krona and another sprint later I was back in Immigration with 5 minutes to spare. All in all I did get my permit added today! I bought a shwarma as a reward and bussed home in the rain.

Day 6: Still raining. Now that my permit was complete I had to go down to the local Kommune to get my cpr number. Each resident of Denmark has a personal identification CPR number that is necessary to do almost anything here (including getting a haircut which I will have to find out later). Once I found the Kommune, it was fairly effortless to get the CPR number. I was also assigned a doctor for my time in Denmark. With all the trouble Canadians have in finding a family doctor, I found this system absolutely amazing. Better yet, her office is 800 meters from my apartment! Hopefully I will not have to see her too often though. I walked home from the kommune (it had stopped raining) and spent some time perusing the local clothing stores. Ben left for Paris at night and Mr Quigley and I spent a relaxing night at home.

All in all, my first week in Copenhagen has been wet and busy. At least Vancouver helped me prepare for both the rain and the business. I still have a lot to do before I leave for Italy and Greece in early September...so hopefully this couch arrives at Ikea ASAP!