my favorite Swedish word

Fika

Some folks at MINC taught it to me :)

Television

We watched TV last night while waiting for dinner to cook.

• I learned that Dora the Explorer, everyone’s favorite bilingual cartoon character, speaks Dutch and English in Belgium (instead of Spanish & English like in the US)
• While singing to Britney Spears’ Womanizer, the Europeans politely informed me that she was very unpopular now due to her lip syncing her concerts (even after her latest album!)
• Everyone thought the ad for a Danish cell phone company that featured 3 elderly women dancing naked (with only their nether regions blocked out) in matching red cowboy boots and hats was wack. Too bad it came on at every break.
• Once when I switched channels, the German next to me said “Hey, that’s German news!” about two seconds before the screen switched to show a giant burning swastika. He just covered his face in his hands. (It had been an ad for the news in the middle of a documentary on WWII)

Food

I think when I left you last, I was about to head off to the exchange student dinner. It was tons of fun to take over the restaurant with the 100+ exchange students and eat to excess. I sat next to a really interesting Dane named Mikkel who had an eerily familiar American accent, evidentially from the 6 months he lived in Romania with Americans and Daniel, who’s like my gay best friend, except he happens not to be gay.

After dinner, a group of us decided that we were too poor to go to the bars so early, and that we’d party in the Danish style by picking up beers at Netto, the local Grocery Outlet / 7-11 / store that sells things that fell off the back of a truck. Unfortunately, the appeal of liberal Danish open container laws drops with the temperature, and most nights are between -10° and 0° C here. Fortunately, yours truly has a flat in city center, with heat paid for by the school! (or the government. or the building owner. I’m not really sure. but by someone else, that’s the important bit). So we had an impromptu party at my place, pregaming a late night of bar-hopping (we ended up back at Jolene bar for the second night in a row!).

It was so fun having everyone over that I decided to do it again, perhaps in a slightly more organized and less drunk way.

On Wednesday, I threw a dinner party for, let’s see, I think 11 people total! I introduced everyone to mac n cheese, 7-layer bean dip, and banana bread. I also got to introduce my Danish friends like Søren to my exchange student friends from the rest of Europe. We enjoyed Iranian pistachios and a phenomenal Belgian beer, brought by citizens of their respective countries of origin.

Squeezing in around my little table

The mac n cheese itself was ok. I usually make Martha Stewart’s crack and cheese recipe, but I haven’t been able to find gruyere cheese in the store here, and I really think that’s what makes the dish.

Side story: I asked a French friend who’s been here since the Fall if they had gruyere here. He said, “Yes, yes, it’s Swiss, right?”. It sounded French to me, but I thought I remembered reading somewhere that gruyere was Swiss, and the French version had a different name. Also, I’m pretty sure the brand I usually buy in the US has a Swiss flag on the packaging, so I said “Yeah, it’s Swiss” and he said “Yeah, they have it here” and gave me the Danish name. That afternoon, I went and bought some. Turns out, he gave me the name for literally swiss cheese - like, the kind with holes in it.

Without gruyere, I figured I’d save myself some time (and money) and try this easier recipe instead. I used yogurt + cream cheese instead of cottage cheese, since I couldn’t find that here, but I think it worked out alright. There was a last minute hiccup when I realized the casserole dish I was planning on cooking it in wouldn’t fit in my dinky toaster oven, but I just ended up baking it in a sauce pan instead.

On Thursday, Mikkel came over for lunch, and I made quesadillas (which he’d never heard of before) with corn, salsa, baked beans, and bell peppers. I’m slowly realizing how much of my diet is Mexican, which is so weird! I don’t think of burritos, quesadillas, tacos, chips and salsa, etc. as Mexican food near as much as I think of them as college student food. I finally discovered that the reason I can never find tortilla chips in the chips aisle is because they’re in the Ethnic food section next to the Vietnamese rice noodles and coconut milk.

Last week, I tried making a pasta sauce based on Brian & Roland’s recommendation. It was so good that I made it again last week to poach eggs in. When I was invited to another international potluck this weekend, where everyone makes a dish from their home country, I wanted a chance to use the tomato sauce, and I also wanted to take advantage of the fact that I could use a real oven! So I made a pizza stacked high with vegetables — it was easy, cheap, and yummy. [full spread, including my pizza on the right]

Several of the Korean students were quite curious about the pizza, and checked with me several times “Bread, then tomato, then cheese, then vegetables?” Their obvious unfamiliarity only makes me sympathize more with Adam’s odd experiences with pizza while he studies abroad this semester.

All in all, I’m getting a bit of a reputation as that girl that makes tasty food for us. Anyone who knows me from the US will find that either really funny, or serious cause for concern. But it turns out that outrageously expensive cafes and tons of free time is a combination that’s pretty conducive to learning how to cook. (A kitchen equipped only with a mini-fridge, 2 stovetop burners and a toaster oven is another matter). I’ve often thought, gee, it’d be nice if I had the time to find a recipe, go to the grocery store to buy the necessary ingredients, and come home to make it. But I haven’t found the time until now, when going grocery shopping takes me approximately 8 times as long as it does at home (as much as I love my Danish-English iPhone app, speed is not one of it’s strengths).

We’ll wait and see if my fondness for cooking fades away. At this point, I’m reasonably sure of the identity of most of the spices I’ve bought in a trial-and-error fashion, and I have a couple things I love making (I can’t believe how much of my life I’ve wasted putting jam on toast! now I just put marmalade or spiced ginger preserves into the bread dough). Dig in!*

*The rather unfortunate consensus to this question.

Sweden [in pictures]

So I went to MINC and visited Jacob. Here’s a picture of him humoring me:

After I visited Jacob at MINC, I decided to walk around Malmö for a bit, since hey, how often are you in Sweden?

I definitely fleshed out my Scandinavia has the cutest houses set on flickr

What I really wanted though, was to get a cup of coffee and sit and read my book somewhere warm.

The steamy coffee cup on this sign looked promising, but alas, it was closed.

Aha, here’s just the place, I thought! But it was closed too. Now I was just confused. I mean honestly, when do you want a pastry and coffee more than at 10:00 am on a Thursday morning? Everything looked a little bit deserted… maybe it was a holiday?

Perfect

End of quest: I went in, and got a cup of coffee and a tasty cinnamon roll for just $6.10! The rumors are true, Sweden is cheap — no wonder the Danes go shopping here! I proceeded to the room at the back, occasionally glancing at the cute boy in the corner while sitting under the gently swaying light I had hit my head on on the way in.

Ducker's coming to visit!

In mid April! I can’t wait, the days will be almost 15 hours long, the sun doesn’t set til 8:30… we shall get a bottle of wine at the grocery store and sit by the harbor watching boats and bikes and people!

I’m realizing that March will be the last substantial block of time I have without my American family and friends. At the end of March, I’m going to travel around Europe over Spring Break, seeing Jona in France, hopefully Ollie in Munich/Vienna, and perhaps some other friends. Then Ducker comes less than 2 weeks later. My Dad and my brother will be here 2 weeks after Ducker leaves, and then my mom’s coming 2 weeks after they leave! And then, it’s almost time to go home — wow. It doesn’t seem long when I think about it like that - or when I realize I’ve already been here for just over 4 of the 24 weeks I have.

I'm now $4 richer!

after feeding all the beer cans left in my flat from the impromptu party last night into the crazy Danish recycling machines.

early mornings and late nights

This has been a week of too little sleep, but the many firsts make it worth it!

Tuesday brought my first Danish class, and when I borrowed a bike to visit my friends afterwards, my first bike ride. I already wrote about that, so I’ll skip it here.

Wednesday was a bit ridiculous -somehow, I had scheduled all these little blocks of time with different people in different places, one right after the other. After class in the morning, I met up with Janel, my Canadian friend, at Baresso, a favorite (Copenhagen chain) cafe of hers, to work on homework. Of course, “working on homework” also included talking about the Olympics (she showed me the iconic pair of mittens that her grandma had sent her), expressing shock at the $8 lattes, talking about boys, explaining how the internet works to her, etc. She’s so bubbly — even when we are talking about serious or sad topics — that hanging out with her always lifts my spirits.

After Baresso, I headed over to Norreport station to meet up with Greg, a former UC Berkeley chem student who’s working in a nanoscience lab here before he sarts his PhD program this fall. He arrived here one week before I did, and I count on him to be my obnoxious tourist partner in crime. We rushed over to Vor Frelsers Kirke (which I can say without hesitation is the most beautiful church I have ever been in) to listen to some Bach pieces being played on the organ. It was incredibly beautiful to sit in the huge expanse of the church and let me eyes wander to all the intricate, celestially themed decorations while listen to such dramatic music. Afterwards, we got dinner at an Indian restaurant, my first time at a table service and waiter type of restaurant.  It was interesting talking to Greg, since I think he’s the only person I know here who’s not a student of some sort. He convinced me to apply to grad school at UC Berkeley this year, and we spent too long reminiscing about how sweet the Bay Area is. He’s currently trying to decide between Harvey Mudd & Harvard next year, so I gave him my thoughts on Cambridge too.

Next on the agenda was meeting up with Søren at Cafe Retro. Søren’s a Danish student at my school; I met him when he came up to me in the library and started talking about my Andy Warhol bag. He ranks very high on the most interesting people I have met list. We sat at Retro, drinking coffee, reading our books, and making up stories about all the other people around us in the cafe. He seems to know everyone and meet people wherever he goes. He showed me his notebook, which is an incredible collection of notes written in many languages by the people he’s met. The notes range from the “Hey, nice to meet you” type to deeper thoughts on life and the universe. He calls me “American girl” and I hope I can spend more time with him in the future.

Finally, I met up at bar in the same area with some of my friends from school. The website is too obnoxious to link you to, I’m sorry. I had a couple drinks, gossiped, and was introduced to more people than I can keep track of by my friends. And then I meandered home.

On Thursday, I woke up early early to take the train to Malmö (it’s right across the Øresund strait - trains leave every 20 minutes!). I was visiting Jacob, a Swede, at MINC, a startup incubator, for their weekly breakfast. I know Jacob because he met Samuel, an Australian, when he studied abroad there and I know Samuel because he is currently studying abroad at Babson College and trying to work at HubSpot this summer.

I’ve worked in 2 startup incubators before: Sprowtt was in the Palo Alto Plug n Play Tech Center and HubSpot is in the Cambridge Innovation Center. It was so cool to be in the environment again, talking to people working at companies that are trying to solve big exciting problems, and it made me miss the startup scene. Jacob let me know of a couple cool events though, in both Sweden and Copenhagen, that I’m going to try to check out and meet some people at. One guy I talked to said that they were trying to move to San Francisco as soon as possible (something we have in common, I guess). When I asked why, he said it was because in San Francisco, entrepreneurs are celebrated, while in Sweden, most people think you are crazy to do something so uncertain. No one I talked to had planned on being an entrepreneur. After breakfast, I wandered around Sweden for a bit. I think I’ll write a separate post on that, if for no other reason than because I took a lot of pictures.

I headed back to Copenhagen and went to a different Baresso (it’s really the Starbucks of Copenhagen). There, I met a man who spent about an hour explaining his theory of consciousness to me, which was “above spiritual, above physical, above scientific explanations”. I love that I can make meeting and talking to people a priority in my life here. Normally (at home) I would think that I didn’t have time to listen to this crazy guy and help him write a letter to his spiritual master, but here, it’s practically the reason I’m here! and it helps that I have nothing “better” to do :)

When he finally left, I grabbed a croissant and ran off to take the train to Danish class #2. It’s so funny - the class is not required and we don’t get credit for it, so everyone is there for the sole reason that they want to be there and learn Danish. But sometimes, when the teacher reads a word, we can’t help but laugh. The pronunciations are absurd! A three letter word will have every letter pronounced differently than written, and it only gets worse as the words get bigger. We also got a very helpful pronunciation guide, though it trips me up too… V’s are pronounced like W’s when in the middle of a word, unless they’re the first sound in the word, which happens more often than you’d think because sometimes Danes decide just not to pronounce the first couple letters of a word. Especially if they contain an H. Anyway, a useful (for me) word to know is bøger — it means books, and it’s pronunciation is the same as boo-yah! which always makes me smile. I think my favorite word in Danish might be bøgcafe :)

After Danish class, I was looking to going home and finally catching up on sleep, but then I couldn’t turn down an offer to go to Jolene in the meat packing district. Now, the meat packing district in NYC is a trendy place to be, although it might technically be the former meat packing district. Not so in Copenhagen! This is still the meat packing district, and trendy clubs alternate with refrigerated loading bays. The NYT article I’ve linked you to (Jolene’s official website is, I kid you not, on myspace) quotes “If you come here at 4 a.m., you will see all the club kids coming home and all the butchers arriving in their white, bloody clothes”. It was a little creepy. Also, there was a shower drain on the dance floor. Anyway, despite being exhausted, I had a blast at Jolene - cheap beer, ridiculous dancing, and awesome company. When we got hungry, we headed out into the rain to get some cheap falafel before heading home. I learned that Josephine, one of the girls I went with, actually lives just a couple blocks from me!

Speaking of rain, did you notice that I said it was raining? That means it must be above 0, I think for the first time since I’ve been here!! When I woke up this morning (ok, maybe it was afternoon) I noticed that the rainstorm last night had cleared out almost all of the snow in my flat’s courtyard. Walking around today has been a delight — it’s so warm!! (I think the high today is 2-3 C). On the same note,the time that the sky starts to brighten has been creeping earlier and earlier, and it won’t be long now before I no longer have to wake up in the dark.

Ok, time to sign off on the longest post ever. I’m sitting in Paludan Bogcafé by København University, mooching wifi from the library next door. My netbook’s battery is impressive — which means I take it dying as an indicator that I’ve been sitting in one place for too long. Tonight the school is taking all of us exchange students out for a night on the town! It was originally supposed to include a canal tour, but unfortunately, the canals are still covered in ice. I’m still excited to have dinner on someone else’s dime though. Til next time!

Love,

Maia

The advantages of losing weight

I weigh less than I usually do now, due to a month of being busy, poor, confused, and somewhat lazy. This is awesome because while my jeans used to be skin-tight, now I can wear my silk long underwear and my yoga pants under my jeans, which is a toasty warm combination. Plus, I don’t need a belt, and my jeans aren’t baggy. Done and done.