New Year's in Denmark
2008-01-03 10:10 Filed in: Home Life
Ever New Year's in Denmark, the queen gives a speech
at 5:30. So any decent New Year's party has to begin
in time for everyone to be seated with a drink in
hand before the speech. Martin's party was no
different.
I understood slightly more of this year's speech than last year's, but I was still basically lost. I did notice when the queen accidently said 2006 instead of 2007. After the speech, the cameras show you several men in bearskin hats and fancy uniforms as they march around and do things with swords. One guy walked over to a flag (a Danish flag with the queen's monogram on it), tied a cord around it, spent some time making sure the monogram was nice and visible, and then moved it a few yards. After that, all the bearskin guys marched into a building and the doors were shut behind them. At this point, we had a toast.
After a bit of socializing, we moved into another room with a long dinner table. There were 15 adults and a baby. Thomas and I sat on a small bench at one end of the table. At each place was a large plate with a napkin on top. We were each brought a smaller plate to sit on top of the napkin. The smaller plate had some slices of meat, cheese, some green leafy stuff, and a blob of pesto sauce. Bread was passed around.
After some eating, some talking, some usage of noisemakers and confetti canons, the small plates were removed, and the napkins were transferred off the large plates so that the main course had somewhere to sit. There was some meat, some potatoes, and some vegetable-creamy-salad things I'd never seen before but tasted good. Bread was passed around again.
After eating, we watched some kind of 80s music special on TV. There was a documentary about a-ha's rise to fame, including the opportunity to hear the famous "Take on Me" riff when it was still in "The Juicy Fruit Song" by a pre-Morten band called Bridges. It was interesting despite my poor Danish and Norwegian skills. (It's worth noting that outside the US, a-ha was not a one-hit wonder, and they're actually still quite good.)
Just before midnight, it's tradition to watch a short black-and-white film called Dinner for One. When it ends, there's just enough time to pan across whatever area in Copenhagen it is that people gather to watch a clock, and then close up on the clock for the big count down. Another toast, and it's time to go outside and set off about $1000 worth of fireworks.
When everyone in the neighborhood is setting off $1000 worth of fireworks in every direction, let's just say that the 4th of July in the US is really put to shame. It also means anyone driving in the wee hours on New Year's should have the good sense to watch for people and fireworks in the street, but that didn't stop one car from driving over a lit box, sending all of us running to safety until we could verify nothing would shoot towards us instead of up.
After the fireworks, I went inside and fell asleep. I think everyone else was still socializing until something like 3 o'clock. A significant amount of time was spent trying to find a taxi back to Nivå. One arrived just as we had given up and resigned to sleeping at Martin's. We ran out to the taxi, and I'm pretty sure I dozed off again until we got to Nivå. Charlotte gave us her key so we could say at her place instead of having to get all the way back to Herlev. This was very much appreciated.
Though I was under the weather, and the vast majority of the conversation was in Danish, I had a very good time.
I understood slightly more of this year's speech than last year's, but I was still basically lost. I did notice when the queen accidently said 2006 instead of 2007. After the speech, the cameras show you several men in bearskin hats and fancy uniforms as they march around and do things with swords. One guy walked over to a flag (a Danish flag with the queen's monogram on it), tied a cord around it, spent some time making sure the monogram was nice and visible, and then moved it a few yards. After that, all the bearskin guys marched into a building and the doors were shut behind them. At this point, we had a toast.
After a bit of socializing, we moved into another room with a long dinner table. There were 15 adults and a baby. Thomas and I sat on a small bench at one end of the table. At each place was a large plate with a napkin on top. We were each brought a smaller plate to sit on top of the napkin. The smaller plate had some slices of meat, cheese, some green leafy stuff, and a blob of pesto sauce. Bread was passed around.
After some eating, some talking, some usage of noisemakers and confetti canons, the small plates were removed, and the napkins were transferred off the large plates so that the main course had somewhere to sit. There was some meat, some potatoes, and some vegetable-creamy-salad things I'd never seen before but tasted good. Bread was passed around again.
After eating, we watched some kind of 80s music special on TV. There was a documentary about a-ha's rise to fame, including the opportunity to hear the famous "Take on Me" riff when it was still in "The Juicy Fruit Song" by a pre-Morten band called Bridges. It was interesting despite my poor Danish and Norwegian skills. (It's worth noting that outside the US, a-ha was not a one-hit wonder, and they're actually still quite good.)
Just before midnight, it's tradition to watch a short black-and-white film called Dinner for One. When it ends, there's just enough time to pan across whatever area in Copenhagen it is that people gather to watch a clock, and then close up on the clock for the big count down. Another toast, and it's time to go outside and set off about $1000 worth of fireworks.
When everyone in the neighborhood is setting off $1000 worth of fireworks in every direction, let's just say that the 4th of July in the US is really put to shame. It also means anyone driving in the wee hours on New Year's should have the good sense to watch for people and fireworks in the street, but that didn't stop one car from driving over a lit box, sending all of us running to safety until we could verify nothing would shoot towards us instead of up.
After the fireworks, I went inside and fell asleep. I think everyone else was still socializing until something like 3 o'clock. A significant amount of time was spent trying to find a taxi back to Nivå. One arrived just as we had given up and resigned to sleeping at Martin's. We ran out to the taxi, and I'm pretty sure I dozed off again until we got to Nivå. Charlotte gave us her key so we could say at her place instead of having to get all the way back to Herlev. This was very much appreciated.
Though I was under the weather, and the vast majority of the conversation was in Danish, I had a very good time.
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