Zoobilee Zoo and Captain Kangaroo

We had a visitor at work earlier this week who looked a lot like Captain Kangaroo. I mentioned this to Staci at lunch, which led to the topic of 1980s children's television. She said that her favorite show as a child was Zoobilee Zoo (see full cast, left). When she described it a bit, I realized that this was a show I also loved as a very young child, but had never been able to find again in my adult life, as I had no idea what it was called. I remember seeing it only a few times, but absolutely loving it, particularly the character below who I always thought was a cat but was apparently actually Whazzat Kangaroo. (In my defense, she looks a lot like a cat -- cat ears, cat tail...) I also was a fan of the character who I thought was a racoon, but was really Bill der Beaver. It's exciting to finally rediscover this gem. Of course I looked for it on youtube, and there are actually several full episodes available. I started to watch one, but it turns out it's actually pretty boring and predictable. Not surprising, I guess, given that it went off the air in 1987 and I was therefore only three when I would have watched it (although maybe I was watching reruns). It is focused around a group of people in animal suits, who are called Zoobles. The viewers, for some reason, are addressed as Zoobaroos by the mayor (in center of picture above), who helps sum up the moral lessons learned by the characters in each episode. To the viewer above the age of 4, it's pretty trite and has annoying songs, but it's nevertheless satisfying to finally answer one of those little questions that's been bothering me for years (what WAS that weird show with the animal suits??)

Does anyone else remember this fantastic program?

The Danish Language, part 2

Today I went into a hardware store and successfully asked, in Danish, for some bicycle lights. I was very proud of myself, as I got a Danish reply, and had no communication difficulties, unlike this guy.

It's from a Norwegian comedy show, and they're making fun of how terrible the pronunciation is in Danish :)

Oh, and also, it's official -- I had my first bike ride during snowfall yesterday. It begins...

I'm So Euro

Evidence:

1. I no longer regularly translate prices from kroner into dollars in my head. This makes me cringe less when buying things, especially given that the dollar is dropping like a stone (5.0??? seriously??) The other day, for example, upon buying an Irish coffee for 42 kroner, I thought to myself, wow, that's such a good deal! Then I thought, wait a minute, that's actually more than $8, for a pretty small drink... not something I would have EVER classified as a good price in the states. But here, that's really pretty reasonable. (By the way, did you know that the proper Irish way to drink an Irish coffee is without a straw? We were a bit insulted the other day when we had a different bartender than usual and he tried to give us straws.)

2. I know my exact weight in kilograms (since there are scales on the treadmills at my gym), but would have to think a bit to translate that into pounds. (I'd just as soon not, though...)

3. I wear legwarmers for their intended purpose, legwarming, during my daily bicycle commute when I wear skirts. Of course, the daily bicycle commute is another piece of evidence on its own, too.

4. It makes me distinctly uncomfortable when I'm with Americans who insist on crossing against the light when there are no cars around. "But, the light is red...!"

5. I light candles like it's my job. Even while I eat breakfast. And I just bought an advent candle... with a little line for each day in December, so you burn a bit more each day.

6. I could never make myself run down to the grocery store right next to my building in a sweatshirt or something. Or without makeup.

7. I never forget to put the little divider thing on the belt as soon as I put my groceries on. And I get pissed if others (obviously foreigners) do.

8. Oh yeah, and I eat open-faced ryebread sandwiches with cream cheese, tomato, and cucumber for lunch every day.

Probably there are more things. That's what I can think of at the moment. But I'm definitely still an Amerikansk pige -- I refuse to do dishes the plastic-tub-in-a-sink way, for example. I just don't see WHY this works better. So I'm holding onto my roots :)

The Danish Language

I like Danish, because it is so literal. Everything is called exactly what it is. For example, a bra is called a b.h., which stands for "bryst-holder" (breast holder). Jeans are called cowboybukser (cowboy pants), a hole punch is a hullemaskine (hole machine), and wood is just called træ (tree). As in, my house has floors of tree. It's silly. On the other hand, there are also words that don't make sense at all: the verb for "to ski" is translated literally as "to stand on skis" (at stå på ski), and the phrase "I am a housewife" is "jeg går hjemme", which means "I walk around at home". The traditional word for stepmother is stedmor, but due to the negative connotations with evil stepmothers, the more polite "papmor" has been adopted -- literally, "cardboard mother". Which doesn't seem all that polite to me either, but you can always go with the other possibility, "bonusmor". Grandparents are "bestparents", whereas great-grandparents are "oldparents". Cute.

I like my Danish book because it assumes we're all refugee-types, rather than mainly European PhD students, visiting faculty at universities, and employees of study abroad programs, which is the actual composition of the class. We learn phrases like "I can't come to class tomorrow because I have an appointment with my social worker", and "Zahra's not coming anymore -- she's gone home to Lebanon." At the moment, we're learning words for jobs, and while we have learned the obvious ones like "teacher", "nurse", etc., all of the specific jobs we have learned are distinctly... immigrant: busdriver, cabbie, hotel maid, janitor, and my favorite, "jeg går med aviser", which means "I walk around with newspapers", and is about the lowest of the low in terms of jobs. These are the people, usually drunks and vagrant-types, sometimes just foreign, who try to hand you free papers at the train stations and on the street. It must be a bit disheartening to take Danish class and be told that this is what you can aspire to when you learn the language... It makes class more entertaining though, and helps the 3.5 hours pass a bit more quickly.

Mallows

I just purchased the following bag of Marshmallows :
from my local Netto, for use in preparing delicious candied yams for today's "intern Thanksgiving" event. I think the "easy to make" claim in the upper right-hand corner is a bit silly, given that they're flippin' marshmallows, but turn over the bag and you find these detailed "instructions for use":

My favorite is step 3, in which upon careful roasting, the "Mallows become a real caramel". What the hell does that mean? The safety warnings are also pretty good. Finally, there's also a pictorial version of above instructions, in case you don't know any of the three included languages, or are illiterate. My favorite is the picture of the sad kid who's too young to safely eat marshmallows:

Diverse

Wow, just got home from the most ridiculous dinner ever. Maybe I'll write about it when I am less tired. For now, suffice it to say that customer service is non-existant in Denmark. On an unrelated note, here is a map of drinking ages around the world. Go Denmark, in all of your 16+ glory. Enjoy!

source: http://www.unusualmaps.com/drinking.html

Fact of the Day

According to my Danish teacher:

In Denmark, old people get a special free transportation pass that they can use on the train, metro, and buses. Except during rush hour. Because they are too slow.

Bamse -- the world's strongest and kindest bear

From Wikipedia:
Bamse – Världens starkaste och snällaste björn ("The world's strongest and kindest bear") is a Swedish fictional cartoon character created by Rune Andréasson. The highly popular children's cartoon first emerged as a series of television short films as well as a weekly half page "Sunday strip" in 1966, before being published periodically in its own comic magazine since 1973. The name "Bamse" comes from a Scandinavian word meaning "bear" or "teddybear" or, at least in Danish, just generally stuffed animal. He is the world's strongest bear, as he gained super strength by eating a batch of honey called dunderhonung (lit. "thunder honey" or "rumble honey"), specially prepared for him by his grandmother. Most other people, with only a couple of exceptions, will only get a three-day stomach-ache from eating it. Nalle-Maja, one of Bamse's daughters will get both the strength and the stomach-ache. His other daughter, Brumma, will get none. He is also the world's kindest bear, and frequently repeats his motto, "nobody is the better for being beaten". Catchy, no?

Bamse's best friends are Lille Skutt ("Little Hop"), a very fast but notoriously frightened white rabbit, and Skalman ("Shell-man"), an ingenious tortoise who invents all sorts of machines, including spacecraft and time machines, and stores just about anything in his carapace (except for a locomotive and an atlantic steamboat, according to own claims). He also looks stoned. Skalman seems to be a polyphasic sleeper, and according to himself, his best invention is the food-and-sleep clock, whose calls he follows slavishly, even at times when sleep seems highly inappropriate. To this date, he has only ignored the alarm call a few times, including the discovery of a dinosaur's egg, the birth of Bamse's children, and a state of deep depression (due to the (false) belief that his carelessness had caused the death of Bamse's children). A bit dark for a children's comic strip, I think...

Bamse and his friends are very clear about their values. They are strongly opposed to racism, bullying and violence. Also, pro-communism... keep reading. The only villain that is depicted as unredeemable is Krösus Sork ("Croesus Vole"), a crude capitalist who will do practically anything for money. This, together with the overall focus on sharing and some of the "school" pages making pro-Chinese and Vietnam statements, has led some people to accuse the series of promoting communism. The series somewhat changed direction when Bamse had children, specifically triplets, in 1982. In 1986, he had a fourth child, Lille Skutt having one at the same time. (Skalman remains single, though.) Family life is now in focus, and here also the basic values shine through, like that of gender equality. In 1989 Skalman noticed that Bamse's fourth child ("Brumma") was intellectually handicapped, which again brought up the subject of equality. More heavy themes... awesome.

Etc, etc. Conclusion: Scandinavians are super weird. As a side note, I'm considering naming my future kitten Bamse, not after the bear but after the Danish word for stuffed animal, and because I think it's cute. It strikes me as more of a puppy name, but I'm not sure I'll ever get a puppy, so... hmm. Something to keep in mind.

Danish hospitals have no security

Whenever I go to the hospital, which I do somewhat often for work, I am always surprised by how I can just walk wherever I want and nobody tries to stop me. I guess I haven't done a lot of hospital wandering in the states (at least, not without my volunteer vest that shows that I have a reason to be there), but I feel like somebody would stop you, or at least ask you if you needed help finding something, if you tried to wander into, for example, the X-ray or MRI department. Here, though, I can just waltz into whatever department I like, looking kind of lost and carrying my bottles of wine (because usually when I go there it is to deliver wine gifts to guest lecturers), and nobody even looks at me.

Anyway. I think that's weird.

Denmark is really, really small

So, I started this blog when I first came to Denmark 3.5 months ago, but haven't gotten around to posting until now. So here goes, with no real introduction.

When I talk to random Danes, one of the first things they usually ask me is, "So why did you come to Denmark? It's so small!" I don't really get why they have such a complex about this, as far as I can tell the size of a country doesn't really matter for ones day-to-day life, but it is true that it's a pretty damn small country. Point of evidence: Celebrities are everywhere. On Friday evening, my friends and I were having dinner at La Galette, a French crepe place, when Sidse Babett Knudsen, pretty much like the most famous actress in Denmark (see pic), came in with her little son and sat at a table a meter or so away from us. Thing is, if you're famous in Denmark, you probably live in Copenhagen, and Copenhagen isn't really that big, so you see famous people a lot if you know who they are. Of course, an American like me usually doesn't know who they are, since famous Danes are not typically all that famous on a global scale. I've seen 3 of S.B.K.'s movies, but I'm still not sure if I would have recognized her if I hadn't been with a "real Dane" who pointed her out. It was exciting though, and interesting to see how polite the Danes in the restaurant were about leaving her alone -- I feel like a star of a similar caliber in the US would be mobbed, or at least stared at more.

Anyway, I'm late to a brunch, so that's it for now...