Wednesday, 7 September 2011
I'm 20!!!! (about that later).
First, I better catch you up with the latest happenings.
Saturday and Sunday I went on a trip to the island of Bornholm, a little off to the east from København. It's ellipitcally shaped, so it takes 5 hrs to bike from long end to long end and maybe 3 hrs to bike from short end to short end. We stayed at Danhostel in Gudhjem, Bornholm (3 star, breakfast/dinner provided). My only complaint about the hostel is that the bathrooms are so squashed: you can't close the stall door if you're sitting on the pot with your knees facing front. There are CONVENIENTLY lovely bathrooms out by the Gudjem Røgerit 50 meters away.
So everyone had a prepaid bike rental and a map with some tour suggestions. I decided to go visit the North end of the island, but I kept getting distracted along the way. There are so many hiking trails branching off from the main roads and I explored each one a little bit. There's one place behind the Bornholm Museum of Art, called the...Shattered Cliffs??? Can't quite remember, but it's a beautiful small cove, reachable by wooden staircases, next to sheer rock cliffs. The sound of waves slapping on the rocks is very calming. I almost stayed there the whole morning.
That day I was mostly biking along the coast, and there are LOTS of hills, so biking was very difficult going up, but you were always rewarded with a thrilling descent. (It wasn't until the second day that I learned the secret to biking up hills is using a lower gear).
I reached the ruins of Hammershus by lunchtime. It's an old fortress looking out to the Baltic Sea and facing the Øresund (the sound btw Denmark and Sweden/Norway). There's a lot of reconstruction going on (so I couldn't take some pictures without having weird wooden platforms in it), but for 10 min I pretended to be wearing a flouncy dress and being a Danish princess waiting for her prince to come back on a big ship.
ANYWAY, the 2nd day I woke up bright and early and left at 6 am. I was going on the "killer tour", which circles around the perimeter of half of the island, and it took people from yesterday 9 hrs (8:3o to 5:30) and I wanted to get back and have some time to relax before the chaos of packing up and returning. I also went the other way around. The tour is structured so that you glide on the coast visiting port towns Svaneke and Nekso and stopping by the Dueodde beach, and then returning home through the flat/agricultural/boring inland. I did the flat boring inland part 1st to get it over with while I was energized (b/c that was really the killer part of the tour, all of it gently sloping uphill going the true way, downhill going my way). I stopped by a cute cafe/vineyard called Lille Garegård to use their bathroom and get some breakfast (I skipped breakfast in order to leave that early). But they open at 11 am!!!! (It was 8:00 at the time). The guy was very nice and I was kinda intending to come back for lunch (he also had 4 identical super adorable kittens wandering around), but the trip to my real destination (Dueodde beach) took 40 more minutes, and I didn't want to spend 40 minutes returning rather than moving forward. Ah well, if I ever come back, I will visit the nice man and his cats.
In any case, Dueodde Beach is my kind of beach. The sand is white and powdery but it doesn't fly everywhere because most of it is slightly damp (the beach is flat, so I'm assuming the high tide comes all the way up). The water is FREEZING, but I still wished I had brought my flipflops so I could run around in the shallow parts and build sandcastles and everything. It is a must see.
I also got some Bornholm soft ice at the beach. I asked for a lille (small) one. It was HUGE!!! Soft ice is like ice cream but with the consistency of yogurt (but not froyo). Extremely tastyyyyy.
Next stop, Nexø (a.k.a. Neksø). I actually was not intending to stop in Nexø b/c the booklet didn't say much about what there was to see. I DID however pass the Nexø Røgerit (every town seems to have one) and these røgeriet specialize in smoked herring, a Danish favorite second maybe to pickled herring. My host mother had requested some, so I bought some. I didn't want to eat here b/c the booklet advertised the Svaneke Røgerit as the best place, so onwards!
At Svaneke I visited a toffee shop looking for directions to the Røgerit. They were not very helpful. I wandered around the town (which is a very adorable town, all of the houses are painted bright yellow or baby pink, etc, etc) for 15 minutes, but persistence is always rewarded, and I saw a sign with a fish picture, an arrow, and the text "300 m." Yup, there it was, and it was very crowded. I got a smoked herring with potato salad on the side (50 DKK). The way to eat smoked herring: pop off head and tail, split open at the belly (it's already cut for you), extract spine, and presto! You now have boneless fish to dig in. There are still some bones next to the skin, but the skin was a little tough for me to eat. In any case, I don't know how they smoke their fish, but the fish itself is very savory.
So I was a happy camper by the time I returned to the hostel.
Monday: train derailing?? It was not even on the news and it seems no one was hurt anyways, just the rest of the trains backed up and delayed or otherwise cancelled. And that very same day a pack of "vikings" (men wearing horned hats) flooded off the S line, yelling and waving plastic spears. I wish I had figured out how to use my videocamera function at the time, but a lot of Danes had a good private chuckle.
Tuesday: 1st piano lesson!!!!! I had not practiced the entire summer (due to my inability to carry my instrument) so I was very apprehensive. My bigger problem is not being as musically aware as other students MAJORING in music. Professor Niklas mentioned all these possible songs/composers that I'm not really familiar with but should be, etc, etc, etc. I would like to fix this problem but at the same time my time is really budgeted and I rarely get a chance to sit and pay attention to music (i.e. I could set Pandora to play piano stuff while I did hw, but then I wouldn't be listening and essentially the sounds go in one ear and out the other). But in all other aspects I think this semester will go wonderfully. For you music students at there, we are going to look at Schumann's Kinderzenen, Bach's French Suites (no. 4), and 2 of Debussy's Preludes.
Observations and Thoughts on Danish Culture:
1) Sprinkler system! For the fruit/veggies sections, very little is actually placed in cold but open shelving like in the US. They are just sitting there at room temp. The sprinklers are far above everyone's head and spray into the atmosphere, I guess to keep the air moist???
2) Different fruit can go into the same bag. Bananas, pears, apples, everything can go together, even if differently priced! The cashier will take care of differentiation, I suppose.
3) People jaywalking! WHAT???? I was told that it NOT a Danish thing to do and yet there are so many people doing it and equally as many people not doing it. I think it is one of 2 things: a) the younger generation is growing lax or b) the country is being invaded by tourists, international students, and otherwise non-citizens who still keep to the same old habits from home. I think "b" is more likely. To spite them, I wait for the light like a true Dane :D.
4) Danish flags. Did I mention they were used everywhere? Yesterday I saw a group of guys walking around draped in flags (both as cape and as in waving paper flags). The reason?? Last night was the football (soccer) game btw Denmark and Norway. Guess who won? I think the intense partying last night will clue you in. Actually, let me describe what is happening/has happened for my 20th bday before I continue:
So, I am planning to cook a FEAST (chinese style) for friends and host family tonight, (and throwing in a bit of Mid-Autumn Festival). But there is more to a birthday than just dinner, it would seem.
This morning, I heard a lot of clanking in the kitchen and I could hear something sizzling in a pan (it was the very sound of making crepe-like pancakes). I thought, "Oh, they must be making special breakfast just for me, I should probably get up." But I was tired too and drifted off again. THEN the cat Plet jumped on the bed and circled around my head. Looking back, I think after living 15 years with this family she probably knew what was going to happen next and came preemptively. I finally got up and wandered out, and my host mum pops up and says, "Go back to bed! You shouldn't be awake!"
Eh??? I just wanted to go the bathroom and brush up so I could have some breakfast. They chased me back to bed and I had to pretend to be asleep. Then they paraded in waving the Danish flag and singing the fødselsdag (birthday) song. Then they all gave me a hug. And THEN I could get up and go have breakfast, which was a HUGE affair: scrambled egg+cheese, fruit platter, crepe-pancakes with nutella and banana and strawberry, etc etc. Hogwarts feast worthy. I received my present from the family, a necklace made in the style of what the queen wore for her wedding (except her version is diamonds). It's a daisy flower, the national flower. Helle gives this as a gift to all her students (hehe, form of identication), but that makes it no less special to me, and I hope it doesn't make it less special for the others that I get it on my birthday and they just get it later at some point (mostly b/c they have to be ordered since the store only had one). And the family put up their Danish flag outside their home to signify that it is someone's birthday.
SOOO, all this waving of flags got me thinking. Back home, I don't really think waving an American flag is necessary in any way. We don't own an American flag, stores don't decorate with it unless it's July 4th and after high school no one says the pledge anymore. And it really takes an event like 9/11 to bring out a wave of patriotism throughout the country.
Sometimes, I think the idea of American patriotism is construed to include white supremacy, aggression, or something relegated to the backwoods of the "Deep South". I think America is too multicultural to be able to expect that all its citizens will be so supportive, and the way Danes do it is tradition, but it's definitely something that has not existed in America now or in the past. America is also filled with residents and immigrants who have even less of an obligation to feel anything towards America as opposed to their homeland. I am an American citizen, and I do like/appreciate being an American, but even though I have many criticisms of China, I still value being Chinese. How do you balance 2 identities? And why, when I'm not so patriotic in America, do I so eagerly attempt to acquire a Danish identity? Why do I wait for the crossing lights like a Dane? Why am I mapping out bike paths rather than train schedules? Why am I eating with a fork in the left and a knife in the right and refusing to switch them after cutting the meat? Or trying not use my hands for burgers and sandwiches? When did I start eating liver pate for lunch? And why aren't the other students/immigrants/tourists/residents not also doing this?
I think the sticking point is that I came here wanting to learn, more than anything else, the culture: the food, the language, the mannerisms, to be able to blend in. There is something about Danmark that is friendly and trusting (did I mention babies and toddlers can be left outside on the streets while you get a coffee?). You can't do that in America. And there are so many new things that are amazing/awesome/simply marvelous and ingenious that I DO consider potentially living here in the future permanently. Culture shock? More like culture amazement.
My parents came to America with the intention of staying. They adopted the language, made a successful niche for themselves, but certainly didn't LOSE their Chinese identity. They simply got themselves another one.
And I'm on my way to getting a Danish identity.
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