17 February 2011

A couple of great days

Friday 11.2.2011
I love seeing new parts of Copenhagen, I feel like I am slowly adding pieces of this wonderful city together like a puzzle... and hopefully when I leave I will have an accurate picture and idea of my Scandinavian home. So Friday night I got to experience another part of the city (well an outlying suburb) called Albertslund. This so called "ghetto" part of Copenhagen is where my boyfriend grew up and don't worry everyone, contrary to his sporadic flashing of the "A-town" hand sign he is not ghetto in the least haha! When I use this word "ghetto" it is of course in the Danish sense, compared to South-Central in Los Angeles it is quite tame. But nonetheless they probably have a higher occurrence of crime than other parts of the city, I was told by more than one Dane not to go there by myself at night.

Martin and myself went to Albertslund to have dinner with his dad and afterwards go to a concert. We ate in a little shopping complex at a Turkish (although I kept on wanting to call it Greek... oops!) restaurant called Marmais. The food and beer was delightful! For some reason I feel like Mediterranean food is best showcased in a buffet, so I found it to be more than ideal... and yummy! Not to mention it was very "hyggeligt" talking with Martin and his Dad over dinner and a couple of beers.

Niels Skousen & Band
Afterwards we walked over to Forbrændingen, the concert venue, to see Niels Skousen. Even though I was easily the youngest person in the crowd and most likely the only non-Dane, I had a lot of fun! Skousen's music was really enjoyable. He received a lot of his inspiration from Bob Dylan, and has really good guitar melodies with deep, sometimes satirical, lyrics (as I have been told, I must see them translated). I think my favorite songs were "Go' Aften Danmark," which was commenting on the danish talk shows like "The Today Show," and "Herfra hvor vi står." That last song is his most popular one and it was really cool when he played it because everyone, including the bartenders who mounted the bar table, linked arms and joined in singing. Here is a sample of his music, it is a song called 68.



Saturday 12.2.2011
Small Local Train near Brede
I got yet another piece of the Copenhagen puzzle the next day as Martin, his mom, sister and I took the train north to Brede. In the summer I went to the Frilandsmuseet, or the Open Air Museum near Brede, where they have centuries old houses from all over Jylland, Fyn and Sjælland. We went to Brede to visit Martin's "mormor" or grandmother. Side note: One of my many favorite things about Danish is that the names for grandmother and grandfather make so much sense, for instance your mom's mom is "mormor" and your father's mother is "farmor." So there is no need to ask that usual follow up question of "now, what side is that on, your mothers or fathers?"

I found it to be very fun and interesting to interact with a Danish person from an older generation. Martin's mormor lived in Denmark during WWII and the German occupation, her husband actually participated in the Danish Resistance movement. She was very sweet and I was shocked at how well she spoke English, apparently she speaks it about four times a year because she has friends from the Netherlands with whom she speaks in English with for birthdays, Christmas etc. Our "frokost" or lunch was delightful. The best part about it was all the pretty plates, I felt as if I was having a tea party but with delicious Danish food! My favorite part of the meal was the coffee and cake at the end. The cake had a fudge type top layer with vanilla cake underneath, but the best thing was the marzipan crust around the edges.... ohhh so good!

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