I'm living in a war zone

Or, you would think so judging by the noise of all the fireworks people set off at night. Fireworks are only legal/available at this time of year (for New Year's Eve), so people are going crazy with them. Every night as soon as it gets dark the streets and skies are full of them, and from inside one's apartment it sounds like the city is under siege. I guess tonight will be worst of all, since it's actually New Year's Eve now... I'm going to a party at a coworker's apartment. It begins with the Queen's annual address to the nation at 6 pm, followed by dinner, etc. Then before midnight you stand on a chair, turn on the TV, watch the clock in town hall square, and, at the stroke of 12, jump down to the floor -- jumping into the new year.

Look how Scandinavian...

My Christmas eve dinner was!
Actually, the meal itself (quiche, soup, salad) wasn't really all that Scandi, I just think the picture is.

Julefrokost!

Last Saturday we had our staff julefrokost. Julefrokost means Christmas lunch, but isn't necessarily really a lunch. They are really common, and most people will go to a bunch during December: with work, with family, with friends, with your old high school class, etc. It's such a big deal that all of the trains are free on weekends in December (to discourage drunk driving).

The event starts with dinner. First comes the fish course, with assorted herring eaten on rye bread. Next is the meat course, which mainly means flæskesteg -- roast pork with "cracklings" (weird crunchy skin layer on the top). Then for desert there is rice pudding with cherry sauce. All of this is Christmas lunch food, as opposed to Christmas food, which is a whole different menu. All is enjoyed with Christmas beer, wine, and snaps. In between courses, you sing Danish Christmas carols (and, in our case, some American ones).

After dinner is a gift-exchange game called pakkeleg ("package play"), which involves dice and gift-stealing. Everyone brings a wrapped present to the party, and then during the game they all run around taking them from each other. Eventually time is called and then you are stuck with whatever you've got. You can end up with lots or none. I got a big candle with snowmen and candy canes, but others got more exciting things like chocolate penises and various parts of a dismembered mannequin.

Next there is music and dancing, including running around outside in the dark holding hands in a big circle and running around a tree screaming a song whose lyrics translate to:
"Now it's Christmas again, now it's Christmas again, and Christmas lasts until Easter.
No it isn't true, no it isn't true, for in between comes the fast".
I always thought you were supposed to "dance" around a "Christmas tree", but apparently running around any tree will do. Actually, I'm surprised nobody broke an ankle or anything, given that we were running around in heels (the women, anyway) in the dark, on cobblestones, being dragged by the hand, after perhaps a bit too much to drink... But apparently no one was seriously injured.

Anyway, then is more dancing, etc. for a long time... everything takes a long time, actually: our Julefrokost started at 5, and continued until midnight, at which point a bus came to take us to the club "Vega" where we had VIP passes... very classy. Meaning, free entry into the club, reserved booths, and drink tickets. Pretty nice. Even the "old" (as in, over 30) staff came to the club... It was amusing to come into work on Monday and listen to my boss and other people in administration talking about their hazy memories of the night!

So, a fun night, and interesting cultural experience! Very different from most American office Christmas parties, I think!

If you ignore the guys peeing in dumpsters...

Copenhagen is really beautiful at Christmas! Sure it gets dark at 3 pm, but that just means more time to enjoy the light displays on Strøget, the pedestrian shopping street. Unfortunately I didn't have my camera with me today when I went shopping for shoes to go with my new Julefrokost (Christmas lunch, literally, but not really a lunch so much as a herring buffet and boozefest) dress, but below you can see a picture taken by somebody else of some other year's Christmas decor. (I don't know what time of day that picture could have been taken though -- I've never seen that square so un-crowded in December!) I think the nicer end of Strøget is one of the prettiest places in Copenhagen at Christmas -- Tivoli's pretty good too, but a bit much, perhaps, and much more touristy.Denmark gets into the Christmas spirit starting on November 1st, aka J-Day, when Tuborg's Julebryg (Christmas brew) is released. This marks the beginning of the season, and all the shops put up their Christmas displays. I haven't been feeling Christmas-y for quite so long, but the last few weeks have been pretty full of Julehygge -- what with the decorations, the gløgg and pebernødder cookies, the Crazy Christmas Cabaret in Tivoli, and Nøddeknækkeren (the Nutcracker) last Friday, although the Danes put on one of the weirdest productions of it I've ever seen, with the exception of the Ballet of the Dolls version -- the Danish one included two Herr Drosselmeyers, a giant yellow rabbit on springs, a gorilla sugarplum fairy, and WAY more bicycles than I've ever seen in the Nutcracker before. We had terrible seats in the gallery, with a rather limited view of the stage but a very nice view of the royal box. Unfortunately Her Majesty was not in attendance.

13 days, according to my advent candle!

Dogme films and Danish lit for dummies

I don't know how familiar you are with Danish films, but they tend to be dark, bleak, and depressing. I think it's strange that the happiest country on earth produces the most depressing movies, but maybe they're trying to reach some kind of balance or something -- experiencing traumatic situations vicariously since their lives are just so damn easy. Actually, I've heard speculation that the reason Danes are so happy is that their expectations are so low, and the depressing films support this idea -- if you are constantly expecting a loved one to be paralyzed in a car accident, or to find out your husband is cheating on you, or is dying of cancer, or that he molested your children all throughout their childhoods (plots elements of a few of the Danish dogme movies), then you have to be pleasantly surprised when things turn out alright.

Whatever the reasoning behind the depressing nature of Danish cinema, the same phenomenon apparently applies to literature, at least in the genre written for foreigners trying to learn the language. For Danish class, we each have to read three little books and then discuss them in an oral test next weekend which determines if we can move on to the next module. Anyway, these books are amusing because while they are written to be understandable to someone who has only been learning the language for about two months, they are not children's books -- like Danish movies, they deal with themes such as infidelity, dying/kidnapped babies, post-traumatic stress syndrome, intellectual disabilities, racism, drowning children, etc. But this is all done using very easy words and simple sentence structure -- translated opening line paragraph of one of the books I read, for example: "It is night. Mona can see the moon. It is yellow, and it shines." And it goes on, using similar language, to describe her one year old having febrile seizures, her thinking he's dead and fainting in the arms of the paramedic, etc. Pretty weird. (Btw, he ends up being alright in the end -- in case you were worried).

Anyway -- I just think it's interesting that such an apparently happy country is so obsessed with making themselves sad, but maybe it makes sense. Maybe if you live somewhere where life is difficult and awful, you only want to watch lighthearted movies, to take your mind off your troubles. If, on the other hand, you live in Denmark, where you have nothing to worry about, you need to create some drama in your life to keep yourself from getting too content and bored. Hmm.

Danes love to bite chumps

This may be incomprehensible to my older readers, but to anyone familiar with Facebook it should make sense. I have noticed that Danes, and maybe Europeans in general (based on a smaller pool, so maybe it's not statistically significant) just LOVE facebook applications. Especially the vampire one, where you can "bite chumps" to turn them into vampires. But it holds for all applications -- most Danes have so many that you have to scroll down for like an hour to get to the NORMAL wall (below the superwall, and the funwall, and the daily babe, and the "if you were a _____, what kind of ______ would you be" quizzes, and the extended info, etc., etc., etc.!) It's nuts. Seriously guys, do we NEED to see your hot bag on your facebook page?? Actually, I think my favorite application I've seen so far is the "baby-ticker pregnancy countdown" which shows a picture of a floating fetus and how big it is on the current day. But this is on the page of an American, so I can't blame everything on Europe...