Archive for September, 2007

Yesterday I had what I believe to be my first completely Danish interaction as a customer. A real interaction, where I understood everything, and wasn’t guessing about what to say, and where more was said than hi, a price, and bye. This is significant because Danes will switch to English at the first sign of an accent or grammatical foible. I’m proud to say that the cashier is still oblivious about my non-Danishness after the following conversation.
Cashier: De tre der? (Those three [movies you just set on the counter] there?)
Me: Ja. (Yes.)
Cashier: Kode? (Code [for your movie rental account]?)
Me: {correctly pronounced numerical code which I’m not giving to everyone here}
Cashier: Nioghalvfems. (Ninety-nine [kroner].) Vil du ha’ en pose? (Would you like a bag?)
Me: Nej tak. Hej hej! (No thanks. Bye!)
Cashier: Hej! (Bye!)

I know, you’re probably thinking, “but you hardly said anything!” True, but it’s incredibly easy to say even “hej” and “ja” in an accent, and Danes pick up on it. Also, I understood every word he said. I’m really noticing improvement in my oral comprehension, despite the mumbly nature of the language.

This morning, I had my first Danish thought. (I’m not counting all the times I think “hva’?” (what?) because that’s more of a conditioned response than a thought.) I was looking for a particular picture of Lidja on this site, and saw a few pics of Tycho in the Lidja album. I exclaimed “det er ikke Lidja!” (that’s not Lidja!). I wasn’t reading Danish or speaking Danish, or in any sort of “Danish mode.” It just came out naturally that way.

I went into the kitchen to get something and heard a buzzing noise. I looked over and found a bee repeatedly flying itself into my closed window. I do not know how or when it got in. I’m not a big fan of pain, and I’ve never been stung by a bee but I hear that it hurts. More importantly, when any other insect bites me, I react poorly so I’d rather not find out what happens with bees. I really didn’t want to put myself in a position to get stung, but I also wanted to let the poor thing outside. It definitely wanted to get there, and I’d prefer it there too.

It was flying erratically, bouncing often to area near the latch for the window, so I didn’t want to put my hand there. I decided I could probably open the other window, right next to it, without the bee even noticing me. I unlatched the other window, and immediately, Tycho decided to kamikaze out of it. No, he didn’t do it, but he clearly wanted to, so I grabbed him up. With a Tycho in one arm, I was unable to get the window held at a certain angle. (Danish windows have about 500 hooks for keeping the window at 500 different angles, rather than any sort of reasonable method of adjustment.) So now, I’m worried not just about the bee, but about Tycho jumping out the window, and/or a sudden burst of wind blowing my window off.

Still holding Tycho, I backed away a bit and watched the bee. At first, Bee didn’t notice the newly opened window, but after a few pointless bounces, Bee landed on the sill, walked over to the other window, and started to pointless bounce at that pane. The wind blew the window open a bit wider, and I had hope that Bee would see the way out. But no. Bee landed again on the sill and started to pace. At this point, Lidja decided to jump up and see what was going on. Oooh! moving thing! Lidja started to paw at the bee.

So now I’m worried about Lidja being stung by a bee, in addition to me being stung by a bee, Tycho getting loose and jumping out the window, and the window being blown off. Fortunately, Bee was too excited about the window to sting Lidja, and finally figured out what to do. Lidja wanted to follow the bee, outside, so I shooed her down, dropped Tycho on the floor, and quickly closed the window.

Good times.

By the way, Lidja is the easiest cat to pill in the world. I’m not saying it’s easy, but I still have all my skin firmly attached, and no blood has been drawn, after administering quite a bit of intestinal medicine. And she still asks for scritches.

I’ve added a page about our Tetris floor, which is now mostly down.

A while ago, I wanted to unsubscribe from Borders emails. Or preferably, get rid of my Borders Rewards account completely, but really just stopping the emails would be great. I’m not a big fan of book “superstores” and even if I were, I don’t live within like 5000 miles of a Borders, so I care way less now. Anyway, I clicked on the “unsubscribe” link at the bottom of an email, and it took me to a webpage that required my Borders Rewards number. This annoyed me, because all they really need is my email address. When I moved to Denmark, I didn’t exactly worry too much about my Borders Rewards card being in an accessible (or memorable) place. So I recently found my card and put it somewhere obvious, so the next time I got one of the dumb emails I could do it again. 

I got another dumb email, and I once more clicked on “unsubscribe,” this time armed with my number. They have now changed things so that instead of just entering your number, you have to create an account to manage your preferences. So, I have to create an account in order to delete my account. Right. I wrote to customer service to ask if I really had to create an account just to delete one, and explained my situation (in nice language, fwiw). I got a promise that my reply would come within 24 hours. It didn’t. 

Fine. I’ll create your dumb account. So I did, using a colorful account name. I then went to sign in. 

I wondered if it couldn’t be because of my NSFW account name, so I made another one called pixiedust or something, I can’t remember. Anyway, same message. 

So remember, kids. Borders sucks.

I’ve posted new pics of our condo improvements.

Last night, Thomas and I went to see “Death at a Funeral.” Ridiculously funny. Well worth it. Highly recommended. I’m getting really good at ignoring the subtitles. They used to annoy me. 

In Denmark, your movie tickets have assigned seats. Going to movies is a pretty popular activity, and if you don’t buy your tickets ahead of time, your seats might really suck. You can buy them online several days in advance, but T & I aren’t that nutty about it. We’ll just go to the later show if the earlier one has all the good seats reserved already. 

We’ve been trying out all the different theaters in Copenhagen to see which ones are nicer. We hadn’t been to Dagmar Theatret yet, and “Death at a Funeral” was playing both there and at Palads, where we’ve been a billion times. We reserved seats at Dagmar, and showed up a bit early to get goodies. We get in line to enter the theater area. I’m standing there with my popcorn and T’s giant Fanta. T hands the woman our tickets. She says stuff in Danish, and I understand enough of it to realize we aren’t going in to the movie right now and we have to talk to someone over there. 

I ask T for more info, and he says something is broken and the movie was cancelled. After talking to the someone over there, we have the option of getting our money back, or getting tickets to the showing at Palads. Fortunately, Palads is only about two blocks away; we were told the previews would start in about five minutes. T picks out our seats on a computer screen, and we get new tickets. We walked over to Palads, with our already-purchased popcorn and Fanta. 

For reasons that probably make more sense than seat numbering on Danish trains, odd-numbered seats are on one side, and even-numbered on the other, and the numbers start in the middle. This means the middle of the row is always seats 1 and 2. You’d think that those seats would be in the middle of the screen too (especially since the ticket booking website has seat layout diagrams and always places the screen in the middle), but you’d be wrong. We have yet to enter a single theater where that’s true, although it’s usually close. 

We’ll usually reserve seats 1 and 3. We did this for our seats at Palads too. Palads has something like 15 screens of various sizes, and the 1 and 3 plan has worked decently for us for the big screens (575+ seats) and the tiny screens (50 seats), but this movie was on a medium-sized screen we hadn’t been to before. We walked to our row, and out to the middle of the screen, then turned to see what the seat numbers were. Fortunately, no one had reserved seats 6 and 8, because that’s where we planted our behinds for the entirety of the movie. 

We should start a theater seating journal so we can always make informed decisions.

I knew when I looked out on a table full of salad ingredients, including Thousand Island Dressing, and was told it was taco night, that Mexican food in Denmark would be a problem. There is apparently a restaurant in Copenhagen, I’m told, run by Chinese people, which serves both Italian and Mexican food. This doesn’t sound promising either. So when I got a menu for Bronshøj Pizza & Grillbar shoved through the front door, and the corner happily advertised “now offering Mexican dishes,” I knew it would suck. But I had to see how much. I had to. 

I ordered a chicken quesadilla. The tortillas were as you’d expect. At least they got that right. In between: cheese, rice, beans, chicken, black olives (unsliced). On top: lettuce, peas, corn, and cucumber. Now, you’re probably thinking “peas? CUCUMBER?” And you should be. But I’d also like to point out that when I say “beans,” I don’t mean “refried.” I don’t mean “black.” I mean “baked.” Oh, and there was a drizzling of that white sauce you put on kebab. On the side, there were two things possibly intended as dip. One was watery and red, and I couldn’t bring myself to try it. The other looked somewhat like guacamole, but about 10 shades closer to white. I tried a fingertipfull, and it wasn’t very guacy. It didn’t have much taste at all actually. 

So yeah. I make my tacos and quesadillas at home.

I made another pair of barefoot sandals. This is fun.