A Dim Sum Do and other Danish Birthdays...

I went into town yesterday afternoon to celebrate a friend's birthday. This particular friend is a lovely person, who is also a font of all knowledge when it comes to food and Copenhagen (not necessarily in that order)! We celebrated over good dim sum at the very authentic Pak Ka , and then it was onto Mikkeller for some serious beer sampling! Cherry Inyourendo anyone?
It was so nice to share an afternoon relaxing with like-minded people from all over the world, and to meet some great new people too! Some of these women have been and will be here in DK for a bit longer than us "work" expats, and I really admire how they have selflessly adapted to settle here long-term with their Danish partners - much respect to you girls!

Danish birthdays don't differ that much from birthdays in the UK, apart from a couple of things:- if it's your special day in the UK, your friends usually treat you and buy you drinks or pay for your dinner etc., but it seems it's the opposite here, if you invite people, you treat them! Apparently if it's a big birthday, people sometimes advertise an open house party in the local paper so that friends from your past and present (and hopefully not just random strangers!) can turn up to help you celebrate! Birthdays of course involve the Dannebrog, it's adorned literally everywhere for birthdays, and small flags are bought out to restaurant tables should they learn it's your birthday.
Talking of birthdays, I am not sure I will ever forget the Danish Birthday party for a seven year old that we were invited to, which took place some months ago now. We duly turned up gift in hand, and everyone sat around the table to enjoy the traditional hot chocolate and sweet bread rolls. Feeling slightly awkward as the only non-Danish speaker there, I was secretly willing my two to be on their best behaviour (as the Danes seem to think that all English children are incredibly polite and well behaved). Imagine then my horror when the cake was bought out (huge child shaped Danish Pastry - fantastic, no cake baking for me this year!) and everyone fell silent as they were about to sing the special birthday song, and my daughter chose that precise moment to (unintentionally) let rip with the loudest "expulsion of gas" I think I have ever heard (either that or my mortification amplified it for me). Thankfully, ever polite as these people are, everyone carried on as normal after what seemed like an eternity, and it was quickly forgotten. I however, have filed it away in my memory bank of things to embarrass your children with when they get older and think they are really cool....

Happy Store Bededag Day

Or Great Prayer Day! It was created by the King in 1686 who consolidated a collection of holy days into one day apparently, which also means it's a day off! I am quite pleased about that part to be honest, it has been a busy week...

Last weekend the weather was lovely and on the Sunday I met with friends for Dim Sum in the morning which was great. I am always getting lost so took the GPS which wouldn't switch to Pedestrian mode rather annoyingly, so it took me the road route through another "interesting" area (of which there aren't many in Copenhagen - do I look like I want to buy any cocaine?) to get there! The food was good though and it was nice to stuff ourselves with authentic Chinese dumplings, I wasn't brave enough for the chicken feet though! After this my friend took me to a great Middle Eastern supermarket as I was in search of Tahini to make some decent hummus. We live in a hummus loving house, and the stuff you can get here is not good, but the home made version was met with approval, and R even took a pot of it with her to school the next day for her morning snack. As it contained quite a few cloves of garlic, I am sure she was popular with her class mates! The supermarket was really interesting and reminded me of the shops we have in London, it was full to the brim with coloured jars of spices and pastes, maybe all that spice explains why rather stocked this - bottles and bottles of it that took pride of place behind the till - just in case? Then it was time to go back home for an afternoon in the garden, potting plants and enjoying the sun. We had some unexpected guests at one point, they stayed with us for at least an hour or two much to the delight of R & S! All this was followed by another barbecue, Greek style this time with chocolate bananas for pudding... something that the children demand each time they see the barbecue being lit, very simple to do: - cut a slit in a whole unpeeled banana, stuff it with chocolate, wrap it in foil and stick it on the cooling barbecue whilst you enjoy your main course - a la Blue Peter!

The week consisted of lots of meetings for me, but S and I still managed to find time for a trip to Ikea, playschool, his first proper trip to the Dentist (which he loved, no-doubt I will have to remind him of that one day) and then yesterday Danish story time for children at the library which I think he quite enjoyed. I think some of the mothers were quite bemused at us being there and not being able to join in the songs etc., but we knew the tunes to a lot of them as they were the same as at home. The words were different, but I found it really interesting that the origins must have been the same at one point. It was so nice to see S interacting with Danish children and reassuring that at that age, language just doesn't seem to matter.

The weather was just beautiful yesterday and really warm (for Denmark). We got back from school and went straight outside for the rest of the afternoon. The Magnolia tree is about to explode, I can't wait to see it when the whole tree is in bloom. Also interested to know what these buttercup type flowers are, they are so beautiful.

Last night was book club, this time we studied Edith Wharton's An Age of Innocence which prompted great discussion and lots of laughs, although that could have been the wine, it was a lovely evening! On the way there it was so obvious that it was a holiday today, there were crowds of people making the most of the sunshine and getting quite merry! As part of the tradition of Store Bededag, the citizens of Copenhagen would stroll through the city on the evening before. Another tradition was to buy and eat 'varme hveder', a traditional bread, as of course the bakers would have been closed the following day, I am sure it helped soak of some of the alcohol too!

Copenhagen feels like a different city right now, the pavements are full of chairs and tables and hibernation is definitely over. It felt almost Mediterranean last night as it was so warm (for Denmark!), but as is usually the way with bank holidays, today it's raining!