On Optimism

It's snowing still," said Eeyore gloomily.
"So it is."
"And freezing."
"Is it?"
"Yes," said Eeyore. "However," he said, brightening up a little, "we haven't had an earthquake lately.”

Today B and I were bemoaning the "wintry mix." If you're lucky enough not to know what that is, it's when it rains and snows and maybe sleets all at the same time. Now the wintry mix has turned to snow, which is certainly an improvement, but also kind of a disappointment since we were thinking maybe spring was coming soon.

(According to the Danes, it already is spring, since March 1st is always the first day of spring! I guess that also shows a certain optimism).

Anyway, we're thinking about how we'll go to Holland soon and see the tulips and wait for spring to come to Denmark. And we're also thinking, well, we haven't had any earthquakes recently either.

5K Festivity

It's been an embarrassingly long time since the last time we've blogged, but that's just because we've been busy having adventures for you, dear reader. Today, we're going to bring you up to date on B's birthday and a fantastic Scandinavian tradition, all in one post!

For B's birthday, we had a party themed around "5K". That stands for "koldt" (cold), "kaffe" (coffee), "kakao" (hot chocolate), "kage" (cakes, broadly construed to mean any sweet baked thing) and "kubb" (description follows). You can see why Danish is such an awesome language now - alliteration is so easy!

Kubb is typically a warm weather game, but "varm" doesn't start with "k", so we had to make some allowances. In any case, after all the dark and snow, we were excited about going outside to play a game, even if it was a bit cold. Kubb . . . how can we explain it? It's like if Vikings played croquet. There are two teams, and they take turns throwing sticks at the opposing team's wooden blocks. A full description can be found here. The rules that came with our set also helpfully recommend that one should play kubb "like a Viking, not like a lawyer".

We bundled up and headed out to Skanseparken, where boys played girls in a rousing match. It's not important who won. After one match, we were all pretty cold, so we headed right back in for board games, hot drinks, and cookies. And that time everybody won!

Croatian M makes a hot play!

E lets fly a stick!

PS--Happy birthday to B! And special thanks to American P, who gets the photo credit for this post.

ROYGBIV and HB EM PSA

Denmark is often quite grey.  Grey sky, grey sea, grey trees.  It's pretty in a sort of stark, cold way, but sometimes you need a little something more.

That's when we like to go up in "Your Rainbow Panorama," the huge art installation on top of ARoS Kunstmuseum.  You walk around in a giant tunnel of colored glass (designed by our favorite half-Danish artist, Olafur Eliasson) and look at the views of Aarhus in every hue.  B really likes the yellow panes; he says if you look through them, it looks sunny and warm!

Well, it wasn't sunny and warm yesterday.  In fact, it snowed.  But I thought that looked pretty cool outside, and it might look even cooler from my rainbow panorama.  Here's the virtual view.

 

 

 

 

Also, in exciting news, Denmark beat Spain last night in the European Championship semifinals for men's handball!  So we're on to the finals tomorrow at 5 PM Danish time.  Handball is super fun and exciting to watch, so we recommend tuning in if you can.  In Denmark you can watch live on TV2, but maybe you can find it somewhere on the internet too.  Cheer loudly and drink beer!