Back in the US

I have been back in the US for a week now. It has been wonderful to see friends and family. I am so grateful for the time I got to spend in Denmark, but it’s good to be back with the people I care about the most. Thank you so much to all of you who read my blog and were interested in what I was doing in Denmark. I appreciated the opportunity to share my experiences while I was gone and it was nice to know that so many people in my life were reading!

Danish Summer Eats

I haven't written that much about Danish food. I guess that's because I'm still not entirely sure how to define Danish food. Yes, there are traditional dishes like meatballs, pickled herring, and open-faced sandwiches on rye bread, but other than the sandwiches, I'm not sure how often people actually eat these things. Even if you go to a "Danish" restaurant, the food is tends to be oriented more towards ingredients and seasonality than traditional Danish foods.

When people ask me if I eat or cook Danish food, I say sort of. I've really enjoyed being a member of KBHFF and eating Danish produce. To a certain extent, I feel like I've been eating Danish food through my weekly bags because the produce we've gotten (for example, a kilo of potatoes almost every week, a huge bunch of dill this week) fits with what Danes like to eat.

Right now there are a few foods in season which are everywhere and clearly important to Danish culture: strawberries, shelling peas, and new potatoes. I've gotten these in my KBHFF bag, they are available at farm stands set up around the city, and in grocery stores. It is always made clear that these are Danish products too. The sign will say "Danish Strawberries" or "Danish Peas." One thing that has really amazed me is that even in the grocery store, they sell the new potatoes with dirt still on them. I can't imagine that ever happening in the US. Still, there's good reason because the skin is so delicate that they need to be cleaned by hand right before you eat them. The strawberries are also sold really ripe. There are times when I'm biking by a place selling strawberries outside and I can smell them.

Another Danish summer food is koldskål. It's a simple but somewhat unusual dessert that has really grown on me. You take a special kind of cookie, it kind of like a really crunchy Nilla Wafer, put them in a bowl, and then pour this thin custard overtop. The custard is usually lightly sweetened buttermilk with some egg and often has a vanilla or lemon flavor. Then you eat the cookies and the custard together.

Danish High School Graduation

This afternoon I witnessed how Danish high school students celebrate graduation. I was out running some errands and I didn't have my camera or iPad with me to take pictures, so I'll just have to describe what I saw.

Today was the last day of school in Denmark, which is an especially big celebration for those finishing high school. When Danish students pass their last high school exam, they get a special hat to wear. I've been seeing young people wearing this for the past week or so.

[source]

This afternoon, groups of students were riding around Copenhagen in trucks with open backs (think army truck, not pickup truck), wearing their hats, honking their horns, cheering and waving (you can see a short video of this here). I then ended up riding behind a group of female students having a bike parade. Two of them had cargo bikes which they had decorated with plants and Danish flags. The group was riding along ringing their bells and honking horns. They passed a café where a lot of people were sitting outside and the students waved and shouted at the people sitting in the café. To my surprise, almost everyone waved back and some even shouted congratulations. That is not very Danish behavior, but from talking with Danish friends, it seems that high school graduation is a big deal and that people are reminded of being young and celebrating their own graduation.

Apparently the parties will continue all weekend, so I will probably see some more trucks of students driving around...

Hygge

Although understanding other cultures is often a nuanced business, cultures often have features which although difficult to define have a name and its members have a reflexive awareness of them.

In Danish culture, the idea of "hygge" is like this. Every Dane would be able to tell you that hygge is a central and distinctive part of Danish culture.

I've been wanting to write about hygge for a while because it's something that I really appreciate, but recently I saw some good examples that illustrate it well.

Danish usually translate hygge as coziness. However, it can be used as any part of speech, so you can say, "I had a hyggelig time with my family at Christmas" or "I'm going to hygger with my friends tonight." Hygge basically means being comfortable and cozy, usually with people you care about. It entails having a comfortable home, being relaxed, lighting candles, and drinking coffee, among other things.

When I was in Århus, at the old town, many of the signs in the buildings explained how the furnishings or decorations made the house hygge. You can see in the English translation, "The light curtains, the embroidered cushions, the footstools of the stove screen create the cosiness of the room." In the Danish,  it is written that these create hygge.

Another example comes from an email I got last week from KBHFF, the food co-op I belong to. At some of the units in Copenhagen, they have a place where people can sit and have coffee when they come to pick up their bag. At my pick-up location, people tend to be in and out and they want to create a more hygge atmosphere. Here's part of the e-mail I got with my rough translation:

"Efter medlemsmødet, hvor det blev diskuteret hvordan det kunne være muligt at skabe lidt mere hygge omkring afhentning af poser. . . . Forhåbentlig bliver det super hyggeligt, og der serveres selvfølgelig te og kaffe."

"After the members' meeting where we discussed how it may be possible to create a little more coziness around picking up bags. . . . Hopefully it will be super cozy and of course tea and coffee will be served."

Again, this shows how Danes want to incorporate hygge into everyday life. Whether it is lighting candles at work or stopping to have coffee when you pick up your vegetables for the week, this is a central aspect of Danish culture.

There's a nice NPR blog post on hygge here. I really liked how they looked at Twitter to see how people used #hygge. I've looked at Twitter several times over the past few months to see how people have used hygge as a hashtag and it is usually to describe spending time with friends or family, being in nature, celebrating a holiday, or having a nice time at home. 

I love the idea of hygge and it's something that I hope to bring back to the US with me.

Sankt Hans (Midsummer)

Sunday was Midsummer's Day in Denmark. In Sweden, it's a national holiday and a really big deal. It's always on a Friday so that people can celebrate all weekend long.

In Denmark, Midsummer's is important, but not so big as in Sweden. It is always celebrated on June 23 and is called Sankt Hans (or Saint John's). The day is celebrated by lighting bonfires and singing special songs. Historically, effigies of witches were burned on the bonfires, and some of them (including one I saw on Sunday) still burn fake witches today.

In Copenhagen, most of the fires take place in parks and on the beach. In the days leading up to midsummer, I saw a lot of piles of brush set up in parks ready to burn, like this one in Fredericksberg Garden.

On Sunday night, I went to the lakes in the center of the city to see several fires. Some had already been lit when I got there and I waited around for another one to be lit. There were lots of people watching and they cheered and sang when the wood was set on fire. (Should I mention that this second picture was taken after 10 pm?)

As a bonus, there had been a little bit of rain earlier in the day and it paid off with this beautiful rainbow.

Being at the Sankt Hans celebrations made me realize how much I'll miss being in Copenhagen. I'm not a city girl, but Copenhagen is just enough city for me. It's great to be able to go out and join a crowd of people sitting outside and enjoying the evening. Biking with the sun setting and a rainbow in the sky seemed to symbolize to me how magical this city is and how much I have enjoyed my time here.

Basic Copenhagen Style Bike Lanes

I realized that I haven't explained some of the basics of biking in Copenhagen. Here's a street near my office that shows the main elements of Copenhagen style lanes.

On the far right is the sidewalk. Next to the sidewalk, but separated by a curb is the bike track. The bike track is then somehow separate from the cars. Often this is just a curb, but sometimes there are also parked cars between the bikes and traffic and as this picture shows, there is an island with a bus stop on it.

On streets with slower traffic, bikes are not so separated, but most streets in Copenhagen look something like the one above with plenty of space for bikers to be separate and safe from faster moving cars.

Hiking Seven Lakes (Bulgaria Highlight)

On Wednesday, I got back from a trip to Bulgaria to visit my dear sister Juliana. It was a great trip. I enjoyed seeing Juliana's life in Bulgaria, getting to meet some of her friends, and seeing a beautiful country I probably wouldn't have visited otherwise.

One of the highlights was a hike we took on my second day there. We went to a national park outside of Sofia where there is a cluster of seven scenic lakes that you can hike around. Juliana had heard it was beautiful and wanted to go, so I was up for it.

Getting there was a bit of an adventure. We took one bus from Sofia to a medium-sized town in the country. From there we took another bus which we barely caught which dropped us off at a tiny town in the middle of nowhere. We found a cab there which took us part way up the mountain.

There is a ski lift that runs in winter and later in the summer, but it wasn't running this early in the season. There were guys with jeeps giving people rides up to where the seven lakes trails start, but we hiked about two hours up to get to the starting point.

At the top, there's a "hut," which is really more of a lodge. We enjoyed a picnic lunch there, then began hiking around the seven lakes.

Because there was snow on some of the trails still, we couldn't get to all seven lakes, but we saw four and it was a beautiful hike. We had some rain at the end as we came down, but overall it was a nice day  to be out. We saw a number of other hikers too.

I enjoyed getting to see the beautiful nature Bulgaria has to offer and had a great time with my sister!

Even though we were hiking, we still observed some cultural differences. I don't think an American national park would have this prohibition:

Bike Like: Foot rests

Because most bikes here have brakes where you pedal backwards, it's a lot easier to start if you don't have both feet on the ground. At most stoplights, you'll see people put their right foot on the curb.

At some stoplights though, there are these handy little foot rests. You put your foot on the orange part and then hold onto the bar at the top. Two people can rest on one of these. This one is advertising a new bike superhighway that just opened, but my favorites are in downtown Copenhagen and say something on the order of, "Hello cyclist! Put your foot here and thanks for biking!"

Although it's the big things that really make Copenhagen great for biking, these litte touches from the city to make a difference.

Distortion

Two weeks ago, Copenhagen’s biggest street party took place. Four nights in a row, there were parties in different parts of Copenhagen. The first two nights there were outdoor parties in two neighborhoods that went from 4-10 pm. After 10, the parties moved inside. On Friday and Saturday night, there were bigger parties on the outskirts of the city where thousands of people partying wouldn’t bother the neighbors too much. 

There was a lot of controversy about Distortion this year because they were moving it out of the city center into different neighborhoods. A lot of this was for safety reasons: the streets in central Copenhagen are really old and small and they got too packed with people. As it was, there were points on some of Copenhagen’s widest streets that were filled wall-to-wall with people. Moving the parties seemed like a wise choice:

I had heard that Distortion is worth experiencing, so even though I wasn’t going to party, I went to the parties on the first two nights to walk around and see what was happening. The streets were blocked off for large parts of the city. There was music at various points around the neighborhoods where people were gathered to dance. There were also lots of people just sitting out in the street eating and drinking.

Here, on one of the main streets in Copenhagen, the street was blocked off and a huge line of tables had been set up:

One of the things that I had been told was interesting about distortion is how people take over the city space. I saw lots of people climbing, sitting, and standing on things that they normally wouldn’t:

There was even a disco ball on a crane hanging over a bridge in Copenhagen.

Distortion was very Danish in a lot of ways. People were drinking a lot. And by a lot, I mean a lot. Still, I was impressed that there was a good atmosphere and that people were out enjoying the long evening and the company of thousands of other people. It was also interesting to see a picture of the streets cleaned up the next day. Distortion organized the clean-up and you couldn't tell that there had been a party. I don’t think that people putting on a street party would clean things up like this themselves in the US.

Bike Fixed While You Work

At the Naperville train station, there is an auto mechanic who will fix your car while you're at work. I recently discovered that in Copenhagen, you can get your bike fixed while you go to work. This is common at many companies, including CBS. However, the national train system also offers this at some stations.

The sign says that if you check your bike in by 9, it will be repaired by 4. It gives instructions on how to register your bike to get repaired and get access to the gated area. Then you park your bike there and it will be fixed for you by the end of the day.

There are bike shops on almost every block in Copenhagen and many offer fast service. However, sometimes you have to wait and the bike shops often don't open until 10 or 11. This is a great way to get your bike fixed without having to be without it when you need it.

Århus

Last weekend, Ziyu and I went to Århus, the second largest city in Denmark. We figured that we should probably see something of Denmark other than Copenhagen and the surrounding area before leaving.

We took a bus to Århus. Going there, the bus went onto a ferry between Zealand (the island where Copenhagen is located) and Jutland (the peninsula connected to continental Europe where Århus is). On the way back, the bus took a different route, going overland from Jutland to Funen (another island) to Zealand via a really, really long bridge. The bus rides were really nice because it was a beautiful weekend and I enjoyed seeing the Danish countryside in it’s full greenery. Taking the ferry was also interesting because Denmark has 406 islands and we could see a number of the smaller ones from the ferry.

Århus has a population of about 250,000 which means that even as the second city, it is much smaller than Copenhagen. There is a large university there, so a lot of people see it as a student town. Ziyu and I both liked Århus. It is like Copenhagen, but quieter. It was funny to compare it to Copenhagen, seeing Copenhagen as the big, busy city, because compared to a place like Chicago, Copenhagen is pretty calm and orderly.

Århus has two must-see attractions. The first I ARoS, the modern art museum. In 2011, they added an installation to their roof, Your Rainbow Panorama. It’s a circular corridor on the top of the building with different colors of glass to make a rainbow. It is striking to see from below and the artist envisioned that it could be used as a means of navigation within the city because people could say, “I see the blue side which means I’m north of ARoS.”

Inside was also beautiful. First, there was a nice view of the city. Both because Denmark is an old country and there are building restrictions, there are very few tall buildings. It doesn’t take much you get you above the height of everything else. But it was also interesting to walk around and see the city through the different colors. As you walked through and looked around, your perspective on the city changed.

Overall, ARoS was a really good art museum. They also had an exhibit on the golden age of Danish art. I really appreciated that exhibit because they provided historical information about how Danish culture and history had affected art during that era. The other exhibits of Danish art that I’ve seen haven’t been as helpful with providing context.

After the art museum, we found a nice place to eat dinner outside. It was a beautiful sunny day and we have been loving the long summer days here. Århus has a lot of nice cafés and cute streets to sit outside and enjoy the atmosphere. After dinner, we saw a movie at a small theatre nearby. The theatre had a number of screens, but they were all for small audiences: there were only 12 seats for the movie we saw.

On Sunday morning, I went for a nice run along the coast. There was a beautiful biking and pedestrian path going along the coast. When I got back, we had brunch in the sun next to the river.

Then we set off for the other main tourist attraction in Århus, Den Gamle By (The Old Town). Like Skansen, the historical village I visited in Sweden, it is a sort of Danish Naper Settlement. However, at Skansen, they had lots and lots of buildings, but you could go inside very few. In Århus, almost all the buildings were furnished and you could go inside.

We finished our time in Århus by going to a new exhibit of artwork along the water appropriately called, “Sculpture by the Sea.” We went the second day that it was opened, so there were lots of people out to see the artwork. A lot of the art was very surprising and was integrated with the natural environment. There were over 80 sculptures in the exhibit. We didn’t get all the way to the end because we had to get back to downtown Århus to catch our bus.

It was nice to see something of Denmark besides Copenhagen and Århus is a really charming city. However, the trip also made me aware how small Denmark really is and how many Danes live in Copenhagen.

Gro i Byen (Grow in the City)

Coming home one night last week, I had to wait on an island in the middle of the street while crossing. I noticed this little planter that someone had put up on the backside of a street sign.

There's a little thyme plant inside. "Gro i byen" means "Grow in the City." I loved finding this little spot of guerrilla gardening.

Also, I should note that it was round 9:30 pm when I took this picture. I'm loving the long days!

Better than the Prairie Path

On Saturday, I visited Arken, a modern art museum southwest of where I live. It's located right on the beach and getting there was about an hour bike ride each way. The museum was good, but what I really enjoyed about the day was the bike ride. Making scenic bike paths usually isn't a priority in Denmark, but this one was beautiful. Most of the ride I was on off-road, paved, multipurpose trails. A large part of the trails went alongside old fortifications that were built at the end of the 19th century and were manned during WWI. Currently, the fortifications are being restored and a park is being developed along them.

Some fortifications.

Some sheep.

Fortification + Sheep.

At one point, there was a little park for mountain biking. It even had a nifty bike repair station.

Mountain biking park with different ramps for practicing.

Bike repair station with tools attached to cables so they can't be stolen.

After riding along that trail, I turned and went on another one that goes parallel to the sea. There are some protected manmade saltwater bays there and the trail went along those, which were calm and beautiful.

Swans galore!

There were houses along these protected bays (the bike path ran between the water and the houses) and almost all the houses had a little dock. 

I went to the museum, the I went and hung out on the beach for a while. The day had started rainy, but had turned nice. I had brought a picnic and I sat on the beach for a while and read. People had told me the beaches were actually pretty nice, but I was a little skeptical. Nice beaches? Denmark? But, I was pleasantly surprised.

After enjoying the sun and sand for a while, I had another beautiful bike ride back home!

Helsinki

As I mentioned, I spent a couple days in Helsinki over the weekend. I had printed out a walking tour to do in Helsinki and the author wrote that Helsinki is a city of second glances. You don't fall in love at first site, but when you take a careful look, you really like it. I think that was an accurate description. It doesn't have the glamour or charm of Stockholm, Oslo, and Copenhagen, but it's an interesting city and it has a lot of character.

I spent a lot of time walking around and looking at the interesting architecture in the city. The city is known in particular for both its Art Nouveau and more contemporary buildings. There is also a design district, with a lot of stores featuring Finnish design. I had a list of stores to visit, and enjoyed seeing their wares. Going to the different stores was almost like visiting museums devoted to Finnish design.

The other main thing I did in Helsinki was visit Suomelina, a large former fortress on an island outside the city. The fortress has been held by Russia, Sweden, and Finland and had an interesting history. I enjoyed the museum there as well as just walking around the vast fortress. At one point, it was the second largest town in Finland.

I enjoyed my little trip to Helsinki. I love seeing the subtle differences between the different Nordic cultures and appreciated the Russian influences on Finnish culture. I loved walking and running around the city and experiencing Finnish design.