Bringing it up to date......

Helmer, Birgitte and Dorthe (from L to R) relaxing in the winter house in Älmhult.

As I noted above, the last couple of weeks have been more about settling into a bit of a rhythm than anything else. However, the need to find a new way to procrastinate has meant that I need to bring this up to date a bit on some of the smaller things that haven't warranted their own post.

Firstly, two weekends back, Dorthe and I went to Älmhult, which is a small town in southern sweden. Älmhult is famous infamous as the birthplace of Ikea (if you're looking for an interesting story, here's a good one about the history of Ikea from the Guardian) but that's not why we went there: rather, Dorthe's parents have a winter house about 15 mins outside of the town. This house is quite different to the summer house in Torup: its larger, warmer and tucked away on its own in the woods. The five of us went up there: Dorthe and her brother, Morten, Dorthe's parents Helmer and Birgitte, and of course me. There's not much to say about the weekend, apart from that it was very nice and relaxing, and I enjoyed it a lot. We mainly just lazed about, and did some work around the house. The highlight for me (and Morten too, I think) was felling a couple of trees near the house: the chainsaw wasn't working, so we decided that we would do it the old fashioned way - with an axe! And so the two of us spent about two or three hours taking turns at swinging away, and finally felled them both. They even landed in the right spot, avoiding the power lines and the house! Very satisfying. By then Helmer had the chainsaw working again, and so we were able to then cut it up and split it for next winters' firewood (I was amazed at how easily you can split wet silver birch with an axe. It's easier than the driest pine you'll ever find!). But yes, just a nice relaxing weekend lazing around the house, and cooking and eating lots of good danish food!

Then last weekend was the "tour de chambre" (TDC) of our kitchen. The dorm that we live in is divided up into seven floors, and each floor has 60 rooms, which is divided into quarters. Each group of 15 rooms is centred around a kitchen and TV room - no Ihouse kitchen preparing your food for you here, (which is a good thing!). Those other 14 people are who that you cook with and socialise with in the dorm most of the time - its kind of like a 15 person flat really, with everyone coming and going all the time. Now, the TDC is a rather epic danish drinking fest that they carry out here twice a year, and as the name implies it basically involves going around everyone's rooms. Each room has a different theme, with a different drink and usually a game that you have to play of some sort. It is preceded, in true danish fashion, by a large dinner that everyone cooks together. And then the madness just goes from there. Themes this time varied from echleon to danish hip-hop (yes, it exists) to George Bush's reelection campaign and there was general drunken debauchery. We even had a fourth and one tournament, for those of you from Ihouse that remember what that is, with the resulting standard amount of injuries and damage! If its one thing that I have learnt about the danes, it is that they party VERY hard, and, well, I kind of struggle to keep up - poor little Mark had to be put to bed early... Ummmmm, yeeeaaaaahhh. Suffice to say, there shalln't be any pictures of that up on the blog!

But that's about it really. We are now on the run into winter here. The days are getting shorter, the sun is never really gets all that high in the sky, it's dark at 5:30pm (soon to be 4:30pm when we move off daylight savings tomorrow) and 10°C is now considered a good day. Still, no signs of those 340 days of fog in Denmark that they seem to be talking about on NZ telly, eh? Rain, yes. Grey skies, yes. Fog, no.

Rightio, better do some work. I'm off to Sweden again to visit Sarah Baird in Linköping this weekend, so check back middle of next week for some pictures of her and Sweden. I'll leave you with a somewhat more typical Copenhagen scence than what I've been showing so far! Ciao.

A typically grey day in Fælledparken, as winter starts to descend on Copenhagen. The large boxy building to the right is the local chapter of the masons (where we visited a few weeks back).