First Week of Work

I have officially survived my first week of work at my new place of employment. Here are a couple of things I learned from my first week.

1. It is very rare that your computer is fully operational when you start at a new job. I spent the first few days going back and forth with IT to obtain access to the necessary systems. It took three days, but by Thursday I could really start playing around with the systems. And I am happy to report that I now have Microsoft Office 2007....no more Access 1997 for this kid!

2. I have joined a dynamic group of people that have been coined by others in the workplace as the 'Cake Section'. At my last workplace, I was always the first person to the tray of goodies when they arrived in the office, so I guess I will fit right in at the new job. On my first day of work, cake and flowers were waiting for me on my desk. I was told by a co-worker that it was customary as well for me to bring a cake during my first week...so I baked a banana bread. Some of the other reasons that people bring a cake into work include: going on vacation, coming back from vacation, birthdays, weddings, showers, babies...and the list goes on and on.

3. With all this cake I guess you would imagine that the section I joined is fairly lethargic....not true. In order to eat all this cake, they have developed a strong fitness regime where they go out running together on a regular basis. I have heard that they usually run about 10km at a pace of about 5min/km during their workouts. Unfortunately I will have to train for a month or so at least to be able to join in the group. But with all this cake around, running will be necessary.

4. My job offers a fantastic lunch program (which is of course another reason for running). For the price of about $65 Cdn, I have access to the wonderful breakfast and lunch buffets. In the morning I pick up fresh baked bread with jam and cheese...mmmmm. There is always something different to try at lunch, as well as an assortment of fresh salads, a couple of meat dishes, and all the fixings so you can make yourself smørresbord! There are also huge baskests of apples, pears, bananas and...carrots! The carrots are a little strange to me, in that they are peeled whole and put in a bowl. Danes eat the whole carrots just like an apple. Us Canadians tend to cut the carrots down into little sticks, so the full carrot is a little different.

5. My job is not located in Copenhagen. I have to take two buses to get to work. And it is quite an expensive bus pass from what I have been used to paying in Canada. The most expensive pass you can get in Vancouver costs $151 a month. I am currently paying $200 a month and I have much more limited access to the different zones. The Copenhagen bus area is divided into 9 zones. I live in zone 2 and have to travel to zone 7. I also added zone 1 to the pass as it is the downtown area. You would think that buying a pass of zones 1 - 7 would cover a lot of the area? The issue is that each of the zones starting at zone '3' are divided into 'sub' zones. It turns out that I am only allowed to travel in the sub zones that are connected to my place of work. This means that if I have to go to the airport, which is in zone 4, but the opposite direction from my house, I will have to use bus tickets because my pass does not include the subzone...even though I pay for zone 4 access. Does this make sense?

6. I currently work in the town of Hørsholm, in a place called Science Park. It is very remote and I will have absolutely no desire to spend money at all the fun shops and restaurants as was the case when I worked off Cambie St in Vancouver....there is nothing around! My co-workers tell me that I will be able to see deer and other wildlife from the office windows. We will not be in this location forever though. Sometime this summer, our office will be moving to an area called Gentofte, which happily lies within 5km of my house. This means I will be able to ride my bike every day...and save the high bus fares. Gentofte is a little more 'happening' then Science Park. Specifically, the Ikea is located in Gentofte and I am sure I will be spending many a afternoons there (sorry in advance Ben).

7. My workgroup is very international. There are Swedes, Danes, Germans, an American and myself. The business language is English but the social language seems to be Danish. Finally I will have a chance to put to use these Danish classes that I have been, and am still, taking. So far my limited vocabulary has not been very helpful. I can get a couple of words from sentences and can tell when people are talking about numbers.

8. One think that I think is very interesting is the internal smoking ventilation chamber. I will try to get a picture of this to add to the blog so you can see what I am walking about. Individuals are able to smoke inside the building as long as they are in this area. I think it is a highly ventilated area, but am confused because it is actually entirely open. I have seen a couple before in different bars around the city. In general, I find that Danes smoke a lot more than Canadians.

I look forward to having my second week at work. Everyone has been amazing so far and I cannot wait to become fully integrated with my new job.

A Cana-DANE Christmas

This year we chose not to stay in Copenhagen for Christmas rather than making the trek back to Canada. This ended up being a really good idea when we started seeing all the flight cancellations all over Europe due to the bad weather. Another Canadian friend of ours also chose not to fly home for Christmas, so we decided to have a Danish/Canadian Christmas together. While we did not have any Danish friends to help us plan a perfectly Danish Christmas, we spent a lot of time with our good friend Google to find out all about the Christmas Day Danish traditions.

The first big different between a Canadian and Danish Christmas is that Christmas occurs on the 24 rather than the 25. Presents are opened on the 24th, but not in the morning like in Canada. Children have to wait until after dinner and after dancing around the Christmas tree to open them. Ben and I decided early on that we would open our presents on Christmas eve. I missed the magic of having one last sleepless night before Christmas. It was a different experience waking up on the 24th and having to wait all day to open them. Ben and I also did not end up dancing around the Christmas tree. Our tree was siting on our window sill, making it very hard to dance around. Maybe next year....


Another magical fact that I read about Danish Christmas was that on the 24th of December, animals can talk. One of the biggest omens of bad luck for the coming year occurs if you hear an animal speaking ill of you. To ensure that the animals do not speak ill of you, you are supposed to feed the animals on this day (even birds, squirrels, etc). We had two dogs, Mr Quigley and a friend, staying with us over Christmas and I did not want to take any chances of them speaking ill of me. So they were given treats all day long. Later on I asked a couple of Danish friends about this tradition. Neither of them had ever heard of this tradition and thought it must have been a more prevalent 100 years ago, when farming was more prominent.

The dogs were even allowed to open the above early
Christmas gift.

A typical Danish Christmas dinner consists of either duck or pork, potatoes cooked in sugar, red cabbage, and brown sauce. This meal is eaten on the 24th. We decided early on that we would rather experience our little Christmas on the 25th, so on the 24th Ben and I enjoyed some steaks with Montreal steak spice. Our day of eating on the 25h with Kelly bringing over a gourmet afternoon of five wines paired with small courses. Included in some og her amazing courses were: salmon and dill spread, fantastic french cheese and cherry sauce, and all the cured meats Ben could ever imagine.


We were hardly hungry for any dinner after eating Kelly's amazing food all day long, but we did our best to cook and eat a Danish-Canadian dinner (after of course watching the Chevy Chase Christmas Vacation movie). We decided it would be fun to make cornish game hens for Christmas (we had been eating a lot of pork and duck lately). I was, however, unable to find cornish game hens at the grocery store and picked up instead a couple of French Yellow Chickens. We used one of our favourite recipe databases, the LCBO online resource, to find our Christmas recipes. We stuffed our yellow chickens with a portabello mushroom stuffing and made a plum salsa to accompany them.



Last year Ben and I prepared the entire Swedish Christmas dinner menu outlined in the LCBO 2009 Holiday edition. The saffron dinner rolls turned out so well that i decided it would be a shame not to make them again. But just like everything else that I have baked lately, they turned out much drier than the previous year...still good though. For the Danish part of our dinner, we made the sugared potatoes and the red cabbage. I made the red cabbage from scratch last year for the Swedish dinner and did not like it one bit. This year I opted to buy a jar of it pre-made (what most Danes do) and I will admit that I liked it much better than my version. The potatoes were awesome!


The highlight of the night for everyone was the traditional Danish dessert, ris ala mande. Not because it was good, it actually did not turn out as thick as it was supposed to, but because there is a special present associated with the dessert! There is one full almond place inside the pudding, and the person who finds the almond in their dish receives the 'almond present'. I bought the present this year and made sure one of the three bowls had the full almond inside. I let Ben and Kelly pick their bowls first and was ultimately very luck that neither of them picked the bowl with the full almond inside...meaning I WON THE ALMOND PRESENT! Here is a photo of Ben and the almond present below...I let him take it into work to hang in his office, to give it a real Canadian ambiance.


Merry Christmas and God Jul everyone!