Tuesday, September 21, 2010

The Scarf: Not an Accessory, But a Way of Life

Please believe that I am not exaggerating when I say that all the women here wear scarves.

They wear them all the time, outdoors and in, summer and winter. (OK, I am only guessing, but it seems like if you're going to wear a big wool scarf in August you might well wear one in December too). Occasionally it's a light, printed silk type of thing, but more often it is in fact a wool scarf.

I am pretty sure people pegged me as a foreigner right off due to my lack of scarf. I imagine it goes something like this:

1. No scarf.
2. Lots of black hair.
3. Funny accent when speaking Danish.

But no more! I recently finished knitting myself a scarf. The pattern, Dimma (which is Swedish for "mist") comes from a Swedish knitting blog, so I've named it the Scandinavian Scarf.
Clearly I'm going to need an even larger, woollier scarf for winter. But that's OK, because knitting is a serious hobby here. You can even buy yarn in the grocery store. For now, my Scandinavian Scarf and I are ready to brave the first days of fall.

Thursday, September 16, 2010

Language Lessons, Part Two: A Numbers Game

B managed to sneaky enroll me in his Danish for important University people class, so now on Mondays and Wednesdays we go to class together.

(Check it out. I can actually say that in Danish. Jeg gor med B til dansk klasse hver Mandag og Ohnsdag. Vi laerer sammen).

It's an interesting mix of people. Altogether there are about 20 students--although we've been warned that attrition will be both dramatic and severe. Including B and me, four are from the US. Two are Estonian. Two are Chinese. Two are from Spain. One woman is from Japan. Another woman is Dutch, with a Swedish boyfriend. One man is from India. And of course there's a healthy group of Germans.

I feel really lucky, though, because the class is taught in a mix of Danish and English. Actually I'm a bit surprised by just how much English goes on in the class, being more used to the kind of language teacher who refuses to translate anything and just repeats the new word louder, while making faces. That's not the point, though. The point is, imagine trying to learn your third or fourth language in your second or third language. If I'm asked to translate something to English, it's easy for me. And if someone asks a question in English, I don't have to concentrate extra-hard to understand.

When I do have to concentrate extra-hard is when we do numbers. I was really excited for numbers since for a long time I could only count to twenty. This made things kind of tough at the farmer's market. Sure, I could ask for 5 tomatoes. But if they were sold by weight, I never understood the price. (Keep in mind that currently it's about 5.5 kroner to the dollar, so you really can't get a bag of anything for less than 20-something kroner). As of last night, I can theoretically count to 100. I say theoretically because it's not super intuitive. Look at this. Non-Danish speakers, indulge me here and keep an eye out for cognates.

10--ti
20--tyve
30--tredive
40--fyrre
50--halvtreds
60--tres
70--halvfjerds
80--firs
90--halvfems
100--hundred

In case you're not feeling linguistically adept, that's something like this:

Ten, twenty, thirty, forty, half-threes, threes, half-fours, fours, half-fives, one hundred.

Naturally.

I'll be learning them fast though, since I'm no codfish.* (Jeg vil gerne laere numrene; jeg skal ikke vaerer en torsk).

*A Danish expression, meaning a real moron. I think fish may figure more prominently in idioms around here than in the US. Stay tuned for more!

Sunday, September 12, 2010

Two Go To Thy

E and I had the great good fortune to be invited on a biological excursion to Thy (pronounced approximately Tew), Denmark's first national park. It's in the northwest part of the country, right along the coast. The excursion was yesterday.

We left the University on a bus at 7:00, with about 30 other people from the biology department, and drove for 3 hours across the country (imagine crossing a whole country in three hours). It was nice to get out into the surrounding areas and get some context for where we live. We saw a bunch of sheep, which E decided should be called "wool-cows", because she doesn't know the Danish name for sheep, but she does know "wool" and "cow". So, until we know more Danish, sheep will be "Uldkøer".

We arrived at the park, at a pretty cool lighthouse, and embarked on our hike.


Lodbjerg Fyr, inspiring us to make a fyrtur soon

It was grey and damp, as the weather here likes to be. But, we set off boldly on our hike (which was rumored to be somewhere between 12 and 18 km long, or about 7 hours). It started off very nice (if a bit grey and damp), and we went through some beautiful dunes and heath. There were some close relatives of blueberries that were fruiting, and we gave them a try. They tasted kind of like blueberries, but more bitter.

E and the heath

We had the park director, a botanist, an invertebrate zoologist and a vertebrate zoologist in the group, who gave little talks about various things along the way.

Learning

Sadly, it started raining pretty hard after that. We don't have great rain gear yet, so I got pretty soaked. By the time we arrived at the town where we were stopping for lunch (and the bus had met us), E and I were not particularly excited for the the next 4 hours of hiking that we had planned. Fortunately, it turned out that most people also were feeling done with the hike, so we ate lunch on the bus, and then drove to a nearby town to spend the afternoon. A few intrepid souls finished off the hike, and for that, I salute them.

We, however, went to an aquarium (the Aquarium of the North Sea). It was small, but quite nice, and we saw some interesting things.


There was a touch tank, where touching the fish is encouraged, but picking them up by the tail? Not so much.

Do not pick up the fish by their tails

B complies


And, here's an overview of the town of Nørre Vorupør, the host of the aquarium. For you California dune nerds out there (you know who you are!), check out the native Ammophila on the dune.
Ammophila getting its native on

After that, we got back on the bus, picked up the hikers at the end of their trail, had "second lunch", and headed back to Aarhus.

Beefsteakhack, anyone?