the L.S.S. club

Read the comic strip before the blog post.

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Comic Square 1: 

This is often how an introduction works if you meet someone through the International/Expat Community, because there are a lot of us who have moved to Denmark for love. 

Comic Square 2: 

78 percent of woman work in Denmark,  so when asked, "what do you do?" and you don't have a job or children - they (probably) think to themselves ,"honey, get a job ." If only it were that easy. And anyways, being an accompanying spouse can be made a full-time time. 

Comic Square 3: 

L.S.S woman are able to be the 'perfect' housewife. 

Comic Square 4: 

It will be interesting to have a comparison when we move for Sean's next post doc. 

Comic Conclusion: 

My life in a nutshell. 

If you liked this comic and want to read more, here you go: http://www.phdcomics.com/comics.php 

Ghosts really are invisible in Denmark

Since we left Victoria, even since we left Iceland, in fact, there have now been a total of three national holidays in Canada: Labour Day in September, Thanksgiving in October, and Remembrance Day a week ago. Of course, Thanksgiving in particular is a very North American holiday; so, we never expected to experience it in Denmark.

But what really took us off guard was Hallowe'en. Sure, it is known -- and even celebrated -- in Denmark, but you have to look really hard. The photo to our left was taken from our balcony on Thanksgiving night, about 5pm. I'll be well impressed by anyone who can spot the two pumpkins outside somebody's front door. The amazing thing, however, is that it is easier to notice Hallowe'en in this photograph than anywhere else in Århus.

It's quite a contrast to the Hallowe'en that I spent in Toronto, where on my daft evening run I was lucky not to be hit by errant, unsupervised firecrackers!

The Danes do celebrate some holidays, however. Towards the end of September, we had our first research group, Wednesday morning "coffee meeting." We never had these during my studies at UVic, so I didn't know really what to expect. But what I most definitely did not anticipate was that this was, in fact, our first Christmas Party planning meeting! We have to start early if we're going to adequately prepare for both the December and the February Christmas parties.

The end of October did not pass unnoticed here, 'though. November 1st is a very important day. 9pm on November 1st is a very important time. It's "JD": julebryg dag, the day when all the Christmas beers are officially released (at 21h00) and all the bars are fantastically packed.

I'm not convinced that the Christmas beers are really all that good, or even all that Christmassy, but it does demarcate an important turning point towards the Christmas season, a season that, here, supposedly lasts a solid four months.

I guess, perhaps, this is why they don't celebrate Hallowe'en. Who wants to detract from the real festivities that are only just about to begin? Why dress up like ghouls and rot your teeth out when you can instead build the suspense of Jul for as many months as it is going to eventually last?

Vegetarianizing Denmark

It occurred to me a couple weeks ago that, as proud as the Danes are of their national butter industry, and as delicious as the derivative "small cakes" (i.e., cookies) are, they don't quite constitute a balanced diet on their own. So, I set it upon myself to find some other delicious, veg-friendly, traditional Danish food with which to diversify our diet. So, as Andrea mentioned the other day, we've been eating a lot of potatoes.

But, at least within Denmark, Danish cuisine is known for a few other specialities. One that a fellow sees pretty well everywhere is smørrebrød, an open-faced sandwich with some sort of rustic (and dry!) bread, butter, meat (such as liver pate), a slice of Danish cheese, and perhaps a token vegetable or two. Supposedly it's quite filling, but I've never tried it myself.

Instead, I've designed a new and improved version, one that's probably even kosher. I won't describe exactly how it is created until the patent is approved, but you could probably reconstruct it from the picture to the right. The key insight is to replace the meat (uck!) with delicious little red lentils. And then, presto!, you have vegetarian, traditional Danish food!

Fortunately, we don't have any Danish readers, because I gather from my research colleagues that my claims here are kind of similar to inventing a new improved version of ice hockey that doesn't use sticks.  But at least now on some nights we eat more than just potatoes for dinner and cookies for dessert!

The Potato Holiday

There is no Thanksgiving in Denmark, instead there is the autumn break. This holiday does not have any religious reasons. It is just a much needed break in the middle of autumn, always week #42, a Danish school holiday giving kids some time off from school and families some time off from work. In the old days, schools closed because the extra hands were needed to help with the potato harvest, which used to be essential in the Danish diet. 

Potatoes have recently become a fundamental staple in Sean's and my diet, despite my previous dislike of potatoes and a preference for yams. Sean has made continuous attempts to hide potatoes in various dishes and I have been tricked into eating them time and time again. Now I have come to tolerate them, and even enjoy them, especially since they are cheap and don’t die in the fridge after a week if you forget about them.

The Danes call this holiday Efterårsferie (Autumn holiday) or Kartoffelferie (Potato holiday) and it is the only holiday during the fall. Unfortunately, the university does not officially support this break so I won’t be getting extra play time with Sean.

Since I like mingling among the crowds – I will be out in the streets to enjoy the festivities of this holiday and hopefully collect a couple of cans for my winter coat, as today was the first time I felt a chill in my bones. Rumour has it that many people from the Jutland area come to Aarhus, the big city, this week to shop and enjoy city life and several cultural events for familiars take place. So, the crowds should be really big.

Superstitions and short beds

"Don't step on a crack or you'll break your mother's back" is a superstition or famous rhyme us kids played and tried to do, that is, when we remembered. It was just a childish superstition, as we do not see thousands of mothers walking around with broken backs. I’m unsure this is a game played in Aarhus, as cobblestone streets makes crack stepping unavoidable. So, like many others out there in the world, I still play by the rules with some superstitions such as, not walking under ladders or crossing in front of a black cat or breaking a mirror or spilling salt at the table and so on, as I want to avoid something terrible happening to me.


 These beliefs get passed down from the generation before us; however, we often act without knowing the reasons why. I learned of an interesting superstition, a Danish one, when we visited "The Old City" – an outdoor museum in Aarhus. Here you go back in time between the years 1700-1900 and you get to walk into the houses and shops and get a glimpse of what life was like back then.
One thing that stood out was that in several of the homes the beds were half the length of regular beds, but the adults were not as short as children.
The reason for this is that some of the Danes believed then that if one were to lay down to sleep that the soul would exit the body through the mouth – a tragedy. To avoid this, beds were made short, padded with pillows, and a person slept sitting up.


Personally, I choose to take a chance with losing my soul and like to sleep horizontally but can you imagine if you truly believed this? If you fear the worst, to keep safe it is believed that if you hang a horseshoe above your front doorway it will catch good luck and ward off evil. Sweet dreams.

A New Beginning

Before Andrea and I expatriated ourselves about 45 days ago, we made promises as nonchalantly as we turfed decade-old possessions into the Hartland land fill.  One of those promises was that I told everyone that Andrea would begin to blog of her adventures abroad. But to understand why you're hearing from me instead, and so late at that, I have to share a recent story.

In Denmark, Scandinavia as a whole, in fact, one gets an entire krone (almost 20 cents) for just one bottle or can return.  Find six hundred cans and you can buy a nice winter jacket.  And, by the time you've wandered about enough to find six hundred cans, you've gotten a good deal more exercise than if you'd been busking, instead.

My salary is good, but we weren't really very sure how far it would take us in an expensive country like Denmark; so, based on some conservative preliminary budgeting, we figured it wouldn't hurt if Andrea could scrape together, I don't know, say, $7/day, and preferably without deep-frying cow carcasses inside yellowy-orange, plastic buildings for an hour. Cans seemed like the perfect option.

But after a month in Århus, she still had not found a single can.  This, despite having wandered hours over the city joining Toastmasters groups, volunteering at student bars until 5 in the morning, and searching every alcove for coffee that I wouldn't dump down the sink.  So, on Saturday, I grabbed her by the hand and led her on a short walk through the university, to return the 30 or so empty beer cans that I had begrudgingly produced for her.  She emerged with enough money to buy herself a tasty little cortado, or one twentieth of a jacket, if you prefer.  On the walk home, she found another 30 cans, and had to go back to the return kiosk.  Every day since, she returns from her daily adventures with some four, five, six cans and a clearer idea of which jacket she would like.

So this is what I have learned about her since a fair while ago.  In general, she is very open-minded and enjoys new experiments, adventures, and escapades.  She just needs a good shove from behind to get going.  I suspect that soon now you'll hear the afore-promised stories more often and not written by me.