In my Danish class yesterday, we had this exercise. I thought it would be fun to write the Danish expression, then the literal translation, and then the "real meaning" translation. A lot can be learned from such exercises about a country/language/people, and about how useless it can be to look one word up in the dictionary at a time, instead of having the ability to translate entire expressions.
1. Han aner ikke en pind.
He sees not a stick.
He knows nothing.
2. Han har sommerfugle i maven.
He has butterflies in the stomach.
He is excited and a little nervous.
3. Han har det som blommen i et æg.
He has it like the yolk in an egg.
He has it really well/He is very protected.
4. Der er hul i hovedet at købe aktier nu.
It is a hole in the head to buy stocks now.
It is very stupid.
5. Dér ligger hunden begravet.
There lies the dog buried.
We have here the explanation.
6. Han tog benene på nakken.
He took the legs on the neck.
He goes his own way.
7. Han har meget om ørerne for tiden.
He has a lot on the ears these days.
He is busy.
8. Han har ti tommelfingre.
He has ten thumbs (by the way, "Ti Tommelfingre" is what "Home Improvement" was called in Danish)
He is very impractical.
9. Han har taget billetten.
He has taken the ticket.
He is dead.
10. Der er ingen ko på isen.
There are no cows on the ice.
Everything is OK.
11. Hans planer gik i vasken.
His plans went in the wash.
Don't matter none.
12. Slå koldt vand i blodet!
Throw cold water in the blood!
Take it easy!
Of course one of the first things I noticed was that all of these examples used the male pronoun "han", and did not use the female pronoun "hun" at all. I think that the "cows on the ice" expression was the most interesting, as in everything could be going wrong, but at least "there's no cows on the ice!". This goes a long, long way in describing the Dane's (in general) quality of always looking ONLY on the bright side of things. For a realist and pragmatist, this can be soul-crushing.
Tuesday, November 30, 2010
Saturday, November 27, 2010
The Day Before the 1st Advent Sunday
President Obama got a little roughed up in his basketball game yesterday -- an elbow to the mouth -- and had to get 12 stitches for the wound. This is totally embarrassing, like when during the premiere of Quantum of Solace, Daniel Craig had just injured his arm and walked the red carpet in a gawdawfully ugly sling.
The Danish People's Party proposed making students pay back their student grant money if they work outside Denmark within the first 5 years of finishing school. I think I'll send an app to them. This proposal applies to ethnic Danes too. In general, the government wants to cut one year off the amount of time that students can receive grant money, which is now something in the neighborhood of $1000/mo for 6 years. Believe me, folks: $1000/mo does NOT go very far here, in the land of overpriced items and the highest taxes.
Speaking of overpriced items, the government gave a resounding "NO!" to allow big-box retailers in the country. A huge reason to have them was to increase the competition, and give consumers fairer prices. I've lived this long without WalMart, I guess I can live a bit longer without it too. But it's getting hard, with being allowed only one free checked bag on flights to/from the US. And as for the argument that big-box stores will destroy the local shops, well I'm not shopping at the mom-and-pop stores anyway, because they don't have what I want. It would, however, increase the competition with the 'small-box' Danish grocer retailers, like Coop and Dansk Supermarked.
And with that said, breakfast is ready. Enjoy the snowy weekend, and stay warm!
The Danish People's Party proposed making students pay back their student grant money if they work outside Denmark within the first 5 years of finishing school. I think I'll send an app to them. This proposal applies to ethnic Danes too. In general, the government wants to cut one year off the amount of time that students can receive grant money, which is now something in the neighborhood of $1000/mo for 6 years. Believe me, folks: $1000/mo does NOT go very far here, in the land of overpriced items and the highest taxes.
Speaking of overpriced items, the government gave a resounding "NO!" to allow big-box retailers in the country. A huge reason to have them was to increase the competition, and give consumers fairer prices. I've lived this long without WalMart, I guess I can live a bit longer without it too. But it's getting hard, with being allowed only one free checked bag on flights to/from the US. And as for the argument that big-box stores will destroy the local shops, well I'm not shopping at the mom-and-pop stores anyway, because they don't have what I want. It would, however, increase the competition with the 'small-box' Danish grocer retailers, like Coop and Dansk Supermarked.
And with that said, breakfast is ready. Enjoy the snowy weekend, and stay warm!
Friday, November 26, 2010
It's SNOWING!
and snowing and snowing. The first snowfall of the year hasn't yet stopped. Of the area that I shoveled 1.5 hours ago, at least 1 inch of snow is now covering it.
It's so pretty, the snow. But the street view was pretty chaotic this morning at rush hour. I felt so sorry for the cyclists on the stretches of street without a proper bike lane. They made their way through the slushy muck as car drivers, most stupid enough to not have cleared the snow off their lights, tried to go as fast as possible. Idiot drivers.
This weekend looks perfect for spending the nights in, with a mug of gloog (mulled red wine with rum, silvered almonds, and raisins) and some æbleskiver (basically pancake balls).
It's so pretty, the snow. But the street view was pretty chaotic this morning at rush hour. I felt so sorry for the cyclists on the stretches of street without a proper bike lane. They made their way through the slushy muck as car drivers, most stupid enough to not have cleared the snow off their lights, tried to go as fast as possible. Idiot drivers.
This weekend looks perfect for spending the nights in, with a mug of gloog (mulled red wine with rum, silvered almonds, and raisins) and some æbleskiver (basically pancake balls).
Thursday, November 25, 2010
Happy Thanksgiving
Just want to take a moment and say "Happy Thanksgiving"! My favorite holiday of the year, it's all about eating and eating. And if you have great relatives, getting to eat with cool folks. My aunt's birthday falls around Thanksgiving, so an extra dessert included chocolate birthday cake!
Here we hosted a big Thanksgiving meal last week, but I am thinking about getting some turkey (despite nearly almost having finished turkey leftovers) for tonight. There's still sweet potatoes that need eaten, too.
This year I'm spending most of the day sending out applications. Hopefully next Thanksgiving I'll also be thankful for a fantastic job. (Or at least, just, if only, some kind of job.)
Cheers and remember to take a moment and be thankful for what you have in life.
Here we hosted a big Thanksgiving meal last week, but I am thinking about getting some turkey (despite nearly almost having finished turkey leftovers) for tonight. There's still sweet potatoes that need eaten, too.
This year I'm spending most of the day sending out applications. Hopefully next Thanksgiving I'll also be thankful for a fantastic job. (Or at least, just, if only, some kind of job.)
Cheers and remember to take a moment and be thankful for what you have in life.
Friday, November 12, 2010
UNSTOPPABLE
That's all I wanna say today: UNSTOPPABLE UNSTOPPABLE UNSTOPPABLE!!!!!!
Messrs. Denzel Washington and Chris Pine star in this action flick that was filmed in my hometown of Bellaire, Ohio.
In fact, many scenic shots were filmed from an old high school friend's mom's backyard. And one of the extras is tattoo extraordinaire Ron Meyers. Seriously, if you're in the Ohio River Valley, or visiting soon, go to him if you want a tat!
So, a BIG shout out to the 'Blair folks, and looking forward to giddily making my way to the cinema, sing-songing, "'Yo home to Bellaire!
Messrs. Denzel Washington and Chris Pine star in this action flick that was filmed in my hometown of Bellaire, Ohio.
In fact, many scenic shots were filmed from an old high school friend's mom's backyard. And one of the extras is tattoo extraordinaire Ron Meyers. Seriously, if you're in the Ohio River Valley, or visiting soon, go to him if you want a tat!
So, a BIG shout out to the 'Blair folks, and looking forward to giddily making my way to the cinema, sing-songing, "'Yo home to Bellaire!
Thursday, November 11, 2010
It's that time of year!
"Busy" has been the key word of late, which is more than fine with me, as I would entertain just about any kind of distraction from really noticing the increasingly shorter days and pitch blackness before dinnertime.
It turned out that my union OK'd the Danish class. I was looking forward to it as an opportunity to network with employed Danish people, for a change, but wouldn't you know it - all but one of the other classmates is also foreign! And we are all unemployed except for the German nurse. (My nurse sister got all the ability to deal with germs.)
In any case, this is an interesting class, and I have learned a few things so far.
That aside, I have been invited to five social events over the weekend, one of which is Christmas cookie making!!!!!!!
This year also will mark the fourth Christmas away from Ohio/in Nyborg at the in-law's. The first year my mom sent a lovely care package filled with my favorite Christmas cookies. Each year, she gets together with her friend and they bake up a storm! Among the many types of cookies, gingerbread men with meringue icing is my FAVORITE! Here is a link to the recipe.
The last two years I have attempted to recreate this recipe on my own, but with limited success. I remember it was quite a chore just to find the ingredients at the stores! Here is a cheat sheet:
1. shortening = butter. Ain't no such thing as Crisco here, folks (not sure if that might be due to some kind of rules about partially hydrogenated oil, but that's another story). And ALWAYS use organic butter. It has a much better taste, and you feel less guilty about eating desserts, if you know there are not any pesticides or hormones in those fat cells.
2. molasses = mørk sirup (dark syrup). This can be found at your bigger stores, such as Kvickly and Bilka.
3. white vinegar = klar eddike. While one-liter bottles of colored vinegar are everywhere, the white stuff costs about three times as much, and therefore can be found at the 'nicer' stores, such as Kvickly. I wonder why it costs more than the other kind, because they had to add coloring to the cheaper kind!
4. ground cloves = nelliker. At your typical discount stores, such as Netto, Fakta, and Rema 1000, you can find a small array of baking goods, such as flour, sugar, baking powder and soda, salt, pepper, powdered sugar, cinnamon, and vanilla pods. But for anything more exotic than cinnamon, it is once again necessary to go to a bigger store that carries the vast assortment of Santa Maria spices. Thank GOD for Santa Maria's spices!
5. confectioner's sugar = flormelis (powdered sugar). These come in boxes of 500 grams, and I have discovered that each box is 2 cups.
6. meringue powder = ? This one I have yet to find here in Denmark. So I save valuable suitcase weight and bring some back each year.
Another baking ingredient I have yet to find here is cream of tartar. It is called "vinsten" (lit. wine stone), and I have found it only on a Dutch website. Last summer I had trouble finding it in Walmart and Kroger (why isn't it next to other products that make things rise, like baking soda and powder?). So my mom and SIL presented me with several containers of it before I left.
While Denmark is known world-wide for its pastries, the art of baking desserts is not a big "thing" here. For example, little kiddie birthdays are celebrated with a layered whipped cream and apple dessert, topped with crushed macaroons and presented in a big clear bowl (it is called "lagkage", lit. layer cake, but the only cake I've seen in it is a thin round that you can buy pre-packaged). The kiddies also have "boller" (buns) with hot chocolate. These buns are more like something I'd eat with soup. But hey, it all reminds me of hot buns Daniel Craig in the film "Layer Cake". And that is a welcome daydream in the midst of high-pitched children's shrieks and yells (which are never, ever absorbed by carpet or furniture in these wood-floored, minimalistic Danish homes with very tall ground-floor ceilings).
The "boller" are also split in half and buttered beforehand. That is to say, before the guests arrive. I suppose it is a nice traditional thing to just be able to sit at the table and grab a buttered bun, but my germophobicness is triggered, and I have trouble wanting to eat something that was cradled in another person's hand. Not to mention the forced eating of another person's ideal serving size of butter (or worse, non-organic butter, or at the very worst, margarine!) I mean, do they have any idea how much work on a treadmill it will take to burn off those calories?!
While there are plenty of pastry shops here called "bageri" (bakery), I have yet to see a bakery that fits my definition of the word. Without any such thing as sheet cakes covered in delicious butter cream frosting, cupcakes, donuts, or cannolis, I cannot get too excited about the bakeries here. Oh how silly I was to have taken the many Italian-inspired bakeries for granted in the Ohio River Valley! And while there are a few boxed cake mixes, they aren't any comparison to Pillsbury's or Duncan Hines'. I have been forced to learn how to make cakes from scratch!
Cake making and decorating in Denmark seems to have a good following online with other bloggers. While several websites exist for baking ingredients and supplies, I have not seen an actual storefront with these products. Isn't that interesting? Once again, thank goodness for IKEA, which has very inexpensive baking tins, cookie sheets, cookie cutters, and a cake decorating set.
As far as Christmas cookies go here in DK, check out this website, which shows the "brunkager" (lit. brown cakes), "pebornødder" (lit. pepper nuts), "vaniliekranser" (lit. vanilla wreaths) and more. The Danish Christmas cookie is thinner, drier, flatter, and unfrosted, compared to American Christmas cookies.
So this weekend I am really looking forward to making some real Christmas cookies and candy! I really thank my friend for inviting me over to do this. It should be a lot of fun. And if she or I had a cookie press, I would most certainly try to make the "vaniliekranser", which are one of my husband's favorite Christmas cookies.
It turned out that my union OK'd the Danish class. I was looking forward to it as an opportunity to network with employed Danish people, for a change, but wouldn't you know it - all but one of the other classmates is also foreign! And we are all unemployed except for the German nurse. (My nurse sister got all the ability to deal with germs.)
In any case, this is an interesting class, and I have learned a few things so far.
That aside, I have been invited to five social events over the weekend, one of which is Christmas cookie making!!!!!!!
This year also will mark the fourth Christmas away from Ohio/in Nyborg at the in-law's. The first year my mom sent a lovely care package filled with my favorite Christmas cookies. Each year, she gets together with her friend and they bake up a storm! Among the many types of cookies, gingerbread men with meringue icing is my FAVORITE! Here is a link to the recipe.
The last two years I have attempted to recreate this recipe on my own, but with limited success. I remember it was quite a chore just to find the ingredients at the stores! Here is a cheat sheet:
1. shortening = butter. Ain't no such thing as Crisco here, folks (not sure if that might be due to some kind of rules about partially hydrogenated oil, but that's another story). And ALWAYS use organic butter. It has a much better taste, and you feel less guilty about eating desserts, if you know there are not any pesticides or hormones in those fat cells.
2. molasses = mørk sirup (dark syrup). This can be found at your bigger stores, such as Kvickly and Bilka.
3. white vinegar = klar eddike. While one-liter bottles of colored vinegar are everywhere, the white stuff costs about three times as much, and therefore can be found at the 'nicer' stores, such as Kvickly. I wonder why it costs more than the other kind, because they had to add coloring to the cheaper kind!
4. ground cloves = nelliker. At your typical discount stores, such as Netto, Fakta, and Rema 1000, you can find a small array of baking goods, such as flour, sugar, baking powder and soda, salt, pepper, powdered sugar, cinnamon, and vanilla pods. But for anything more exotic than cinnamon, it is once again necessary to go to a bigger store that carries the vast assortment of Santa Maria spices. Thank GOD for Santa Maria's spices!
5. confectioner's sugar = flormelis (powdered sugar). These come in boxes of 500 grams, and I have discovered that each box is 2 cups.
6. meringue powder = ? This one I have yet to find here in Denmark. So I save valuable suitcase weight and bring some back each year.
Another baking ingredient I have yet to find here is cream of tartar. It is called "vinsten" (lit. wine stone), and I have found it only on a Dutch website. Last summer I had trouble finding it in Walmart and Kroger (why isn't it next to other products that make things rise, like baking soda and powder?). So my mom and SIL presented me with several containers of it before I left.
While Denmark is known world-wide for its pastries, the art of baking desserts is not a big "thing" here. For example, little kiddie birthdays are celebrated with a layered whipped cream and apple dessert, topped with crushed macaroons and presented in a big clear bowl (it is called "lagkage", lit. layer cake, but the only cake I've seen in it is a thin round that you can buy pre-packaged). The kiddies also have "boller" (buns) with hot chocolate. These buns are more like something I'd eat with soup. But hey, it all reminds me of hot buns Daniel Craig in the film "Layer Cake". And that is a welcome daydream in the midst of high-pitched children's shrieks and yells (which are never, ever absorbed by carpet or furniture in these wood-floored, minimalistic Danish homes with very tall ground-floor ceilings).
The "boller" are also split in half and buttered beforehand. That is to say, before the guests arrive. I suppose it is a nice traditional thing to just be able to sit at the table and grab a buttered bun, but my germophobicness is triggered, and I have trouble wanting to eat something that was cradled in another person's hand. Not to mention the forced eating of another person's ideal serving size of butter (or worse, non-organic butter, or at the very worst, margarine!) I mean, do they have any idea how much work on a treadmill it will take to burn off those calories?!
While there are plenty of pastry shops here called "bageri" (bakery), I have yet to see a bakery that fits my definition of the word. Without any such thing as sheet cakes covered in delicious butter cream frosting, cupcakes, donuts, or cannolis, I cannot get too excited about the bakeries here. Oh how silly I was to have taken the many Italian-inspired bakeries for granted in the Ohio River Valley! And while there are a few boxed cake mixes, they aren't any comparison to Pillsbury's or Duncan Hines'. I have been forced to learn how to make cakes from scratch!
Cake making and decorating in Denmark seems to have a good following online with other bloggers. While several websites exist for baking ingredients and supplies, I have not seen an actual storefront with these products. Isn't that interesting? Once again, thank goodness for IKEA, which has very inexpensive baking tins, cookie sheets, cookie cutters, and a cake decorating set.
As far as Christmas cookies go here in DK, check out this website, which shows the "brunkager" (lit. brown cakes), "pebornødder" (lit. pepper nuts), "vaniliekranser" (lit. vanilla wreaths) and more. The Danish Christmas cookie is thinner, drier, flatter, and unfrosted, compared to American Christmas cookies.
So this weekend I am really looking forward to making some real Christmas cookies and candy! I really thank my friend for inviting me over to do this. It should be a lot of fun. And if she or I had a cookie press, I would most certainly try to make the "vaniliekranser", which are one of my husband's favorite Christmas cookies.
Wednesday, November 3, 2010
Election Day Hangover
Woke up to the news that Ohio Governor Ted Strickland lost, as well as Congressional Representatives Zack Space and Charlie Wilson. I was glad to hear, however, that Debbie Phillips was re-elected to the Ohio House of Representatives.
After being asked pre-November 2008 a multitude of times, "Why did Americans vote for Bush?!/vote Republican?" and trying unsuccessfully to explain the main reasons (putting gay marriage on many state ballots, for example, which led to answering the question, "Why is gay marriage so bad?!"), I have decided to follow another course of action in the certain upcoming interrogations.
I will simply respond, "Sorry, I cannot talk about this. You'll have to ask someone else."
Because really, haven't we all expected more from the Democrats in the last two years? It's absolutely shameful.
After being asked pre-November 2008 a multitude of times, "Why did Americans vote for Bush?!/vote Republican?" and trying unsuccessfully to explain the main reasons (putting gay marriage on many state ballots, for example, which led to answering the question, "Why is gay marriage so bad?!"), I have decided to follow another course of action in the certain upcoming interrogations.
I will simply respond, "Sorry, I cannot talk about this. You'll have to ask someone else."
Because really, haven't we all expected more from the Democrats in the last two years? It's absolutely shameful.
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