The Danish Christmas Lunch

First of all, let's dispel some discrepancies in translation. This is not actually a Christmas "Lunch". This is a Christmas "Marathon of Excess". The only thing that I've known that actually comes close is Grey Cup Sunday in Fillmore, Saskatchewan. When people tell you to bring your pajamas for Christmas Lunch, you should get a bit suspicious (or excited!). We sat down to food and drinks at 2 pm and didn't come up for air until about 10!

We drove for an hour to Susanne and Jørgen's house in Skibby by the Fjord. Jeanet and Nis came also, so we had 6 adults and 6 kids from 11 to 17 years old. Jeanet and Susanne both came to Canada to study at the same time Mette did. 

The table is set like artwork and the bottles of Akvavit are brought from the freezer and lined up for duty.

The calm before the storm

The food and drink are served in 3 main courses (fish, meat, and cheese/fruit) but with many specific rounds and pauses within each course. Each dish is traditional to the Christmas lunch and are to be expected if you are eating at a friends house, grandma's house or at the annual workplace lunch. In Canada, there are as many different ways to celebrate Christmas as there are families. In Denmark, there is the Danish way and what you lose in variety or surprise, you gain in the unity of sharing traditions with each other.

You start out with pickled herring, but on a hard grain bread (open face) with some fat (that's right - lard) spread on first. On top of the herring is the curried sauce - but that's really only for the light herring. The dark herrings just take raw onions. A cold sip of Akvavit follows each herring dish and if I can recall correctly, it follows just about every second bite you take for the rest of the night. I hold Jørgen and Nis in high respect as beer experts so we had a dozen brands of German, Belgian and Danish beers available to cut the taste of the Akvavit.

The rest of the day goes something like this: Herring-Akvavit-egg&shrimp-Akvavit-pan fried flatfish-Akvavit-beer break-remove plates, bring out new ones-Akvavit-Pork roast-Akvavit-Frikadella (meatballs)-beer-Akvavish-sing shongs-Ashkavish-cold cutsh-Ashvishk-mishkmishmm-something something-pass around boxes all colorful-Skoal!-Jeg ELSKER dig!!!-hug hug-Skoal!-blue cheese or something-Skoal!- dance to the Wii game, it must be broken, can't get any points-pajamas-I'll just lay down here for a bit.

I think that just before the cheese is served is where the old Vikings would make some great decision to head off to Greenland on a raid.

Hey - I got a keg! Wanna come to England?

Who Has Seen the Sun?

Am I missing the news? Can someone tell me if there has been a massive meteorite strike the earth and cast a permanent darkness with dust and ash? The clouds are so thick here that you almost need a flashlight at high noon. Even the Danes are telling me this is extraordinary, but I'm not sure I can trust anyone who tells me Akvavit is a tasty shot of spirits.

Couple of Danes disposing of a body under the cover of midday

November has been very tough. I am no longer a 90 day tourist nor has my resident application been accepted. I am an in-betweener. This means no drivers license, no library card, no jobs, no Danish lessons. Just read books, take runs and wait (for my CPR number, for some sun, for supper, for the kids to come home?).  The only thing keeping me sane is going to workouts with Steen at "Average Joe's Gym" (reference to movie 'Dodgeball', not the actual name of our gym).

Here's an example of my state of mind: today I took a special bike trip to the local EuroSpar grocery store just to pick up 6 litres of milk that was on sale! Once I was an industry baron, COO, CFO, CEO, OREO; with reversed coordinates I could direct a drilling rig to dig into Olympic Plaza in downtown Calgary, with an un-erased pencil mark I could have some Korean fabricating plant devising a method to connect a HydroCracker to a CatCracker, with some imaginative calculations I could send hundreds of young engineers to their death or industrial humiliation.  Now I scan the weekly flyers for a discount on rough grain oatmeal. Oh Schadenfraude!

Christmas will be a bright interlude into winter. There are Christmas markets starting up in Copenhagen so the artificial LED lighting will be good for the vitamin D. And….look who else dropped by to make things a little more interesting:

The local chimney sweep

Just try saying "Chimneysweep" without a jaunty Dick Van Dyke cockney accent!

Halloween Garden Gnomeo

Halloween in Denmark has become very North American. In 1996, the grocery store chain IRMA, sold their first decorative jack-o-lantern type pumpkin. Now they sell thousands and lots of people decorate their houses and really get into the spirit.

The kids dress up and trick or treat, but the schools are not so much involved like they are back in Canada. The treats that people hand out are either home-made baking or individual candies from a bag (but not wrapped individually if you know what I mean).

We went to a party with some friends from town and the kids used that as their base for trick or treating. Very similar to what we do back in the 'hood of Richie Hazeldean.

Have you ever decided to dress like a garden gnome or an old man or a street person or a lumberjack and realize that you don't have to go out and buy any clothes to make your outfit? That's just sad.

Ride the 'Snake' in Copenhagen

After two weeks of steady rain and cloud coupled with an empty bank account, we had a dramatic turnaround last week as money arrived from Canada along with some sunshine. This means "TOGA PARTY!!!", no wait, that was 25 years ago. At my age, a nice meal with my beautiful wife provides the same thrill as a 1980's Sunday night Toga Party at Boomer's with all the Kenosee waitresses and bartenders. (Ok ok, just kidding, I'm not THAT old)
We would have to organize a Date Night to celebrate but since we have no nights available, a Day Date would have to do. And a day date means a trip to Copenhagen! The best way to do Copenhagen is by joining the thousands of other cyclists on the bike trail system.

We took our bikes on to the train but got off at a park outside of greater Copenhagen. This park happens to have an amusement park in the middle of it but it was shut down for the winter. Amusement parks are very eerie places when there are no people around. (Wait…is that the wind or the sound of demons from another world complaining about the ridiculous price of a soda pop?)

You can walk right into the closed amusement park to do battle with zombies.

We rode the trails and paths through parkland, lakes, residential suburban areas and eventually right into downtown Copenhagen.

Beautiful parkland with fall colors.

At no point in the 15 km towards downtown were we ever in traffic and you can come into CPH from any direction and expect the same cycling experience. In fact, in some parts of the city the cycle traffic is so thick it has become a congestion problem on the pathways!

One of the main goals of the day was to ride across the new bike bridge called the "Cykelslangen" or bicycle snake. This bridge was built by the city to bring cyclists past a heavily congested route that included some stairs. It has a very gradual incline and carries the riders out over the canal and away from the crowded pedestrian area below. 

The Cykelslangen allows bikers to avoid pedestrians and fast moving boats.

We biked into the south island near Christiania and found a great place for lunch called Cafe Wilder. It's a small little restaurant with tight tables and lots of activity. Hell, after a thirst quenching beer followed by open face sandwiches with a shot of schnapps and then a wine and cheese dessert, it was WAY better than a Toga Party!

Executive (boozy) lunch at Cafe Wilder

The real beauty of biking in CPH is that the route home is simply to the nearest train station where they give you and your bike a ride home. Now, that's what I call a date!

Winter Warnings

I've been reading, with some sadness from my perspective, that the autumn weather on the Canadian prairies has been spectacular and that the Oilers and Riders have been less than spectacular. Actually, this is the first time in my life that I'm actually worried about the impending winter months. Even though the winter is warmer and shorter, I'm told the old sun is not going to be around very much.

Wind surfers and Para-sailers in the hurricane behind us

The Danes combat this the same way we do: get outside lots, stay active and have friends over for nice food and candlelight. This is called having a "hyggelig" time (pronounced hew-gely, loosely interpreted as "cozy"). 

Steen reading in front of the fire he built

The clouds, the wind and the rain mean a bit more seclusion on my part but I'm trying to combat this with workouts and running. I have found that I'm not anywhere near ready for retirement and need some things to keep me busy. While paying for a photo-radar ticket we also found out that my Alberta Driver's license is only good for 90 days. I can get a new Danish license after a driving test but only when I get my CPR number (see blog post #1), so I'm going to have my wings clipped soon. That's not as dramatic as it sounds because I have a bike and public transit, but still not good news. 

Learning the Danish language is still my prime objective but I can't take free lessons until I get my CPR number (see blog post #1). Paying for them is an option, but we are running a much tighter budget here than we ever have in the past. There is a simple reason for this:

Results of scientific study

I could probably find a job, but I need…….. (see post #1). Meanwhile, my objective is to schedule myself busy with worthwhile and meaningful tasks, keep fit and maintain a positive outlook. In fact, there is a section of blue sky between the clouds as I write this. Things are looking up!

City and Country

This Thanksgiving weekend marks the start of school holidays for the kids and teachers here in Denmark. The kids are warming up their thumbs for some anticipated screen action so I will take great joy in disappointing them with blackouts. You may not know this, but Mette is teaching English for a few hours per week at the elementary school so the holiday affects her also.

Friday night was "Culture Night" in Copenhagen where all the doors on art galleries, museums, dance studios, churches and historical buildings are thrown open and the public is admitted for free. Almost all the squares have tents set up with music and drink so the entire city and surrounding areas converge on the downtown. The night was mild and the sidewalks were packed with people and bikes. It was a really cool experience. We went to a big art gallery where one of the rooms had a 20' ring filled with 3" of sand and horse footprints in a figure 8. It was moving - I wept with the rapture.

The very next day we launched into a countryside bike ride around our area. The farmland and forests are covered in trails that are excellent for biking or hiking. The Danes really take advantage of the outdoors. On our 26 km journey we ran into bird watchers, falconers, horse riders, skeet shooters, hunting dog trials, radio controlled airplane enthusiasts, runners, bikers and farmers. I couldn't help but think the RC airplanes and the skeet shooters should join up or maybe the bird watchers, falconers and hunting dogs. There would be some great efficiencies in the club system.

On Thanksgiving Sunday we were invited to the house of another Canadian (Jeff) and his Danish wife (Louisa). They used to live in Vancouver and have been here for about 2 years now. They have kids in Maja and Tom's school. We also met up with another Mette who is married to an American (Kevin) and they've lived here for about 15 years. Louisa's sister and kid were also there so we numbered 16 in total. Louisa roasted a turkey (not so easy to find or finance) and we baked a couple of pumpkin pies - FROM SCRATCH! Baking pumpkin pies is not so easy, so you can imagine the rig pig language coming from me when the basket I was carrying them in broke and they tipped upside down! We scraped off the snails and moss and ate them anyway. It was a fantastic party and we had a lot of laughs and discussions. By the time we left at 1 AM, there were kids lying all over the place like a "kid bomb" had gone off. 

The Mermaids of Copenhagen

One of the most iconic images of Copenhagen is the "Little Mermaid". Based on a Hans Christian Anderson story, the statue was commissioned in the early 1900's by the Jacobsen family who founded the Carlsberg Brewery. 
The picture below is not the famous statue. This one is found about 100m up the wharf at an ice cream shop. It is less visited by tourists but much more likely to lure sailors into the rocks like they're supposed to.

Definitely NOT the "Little Mermaid"

Tourism Highlights

Greg and Charlene Weiss, great world travelers and friends now for 18 years, made a stop in Nivå to cap off their European Great Battles Tour. They spent the previous 2 weeks with other friends on a guided tour of some of the great battlefields of WW1 and WW2 in Northern France and Belgium. Wisely, the Danes conceded defeat to the invading Nazi's but kept a healthy resistance and smuggling operation during the war. We were going to have to dig a few layers deeper into the sedimentary layers to find the Viking age if we were going to discuss battles and wars. But that's not what this visit was about.

Our location north of Copenhagen allows us to zip into the big city easily or squeeze that big Peugeot down the winding country roads stirring up chickens and kids as we roar through the villages. We spent lots of time in Copenhagen, in Hillerød at their castle, in Roskilde at the Viking Museum and a bit of local stuff here.

Highlights of the tour (besides just spending time with old friends):

Renting bikes in Copenhagen to join the masses on the fantastic bike paths in the city. The bike rentals are part of the CPH share program where you register your ID and credit card and then take a bike and leave it at another location. The new share bikes (CPH is on their second or third version of the bike share program) are heavy electric units with touch screens for GPS and registering. They are almost too heavy to pedal without the electric motor assist, but a lazyman's freewheeling delight when powered.

Copenhagen share bikes. Riders are enjoying the pissoir (guess what that is)

We found a cool Diner in a part of town that is revitalizing from being a hooker and lowlife street that serves a great "working man's supper" that would be categorized as comfort food: very tasty and packed with calories. The tables are close and your fellow diners don't hesitate in leaning over with a recommendation while you read the menu.  I had 'biksemad' which is a hash of leftover potatoes, diced beef roast, and onions topped with a fried egg and a side of pickled beets. Since the locals are puffing on cigarettes while they eat, I can't tell if it tasted good or not - it was a bit like eating in the Commercial Bar during the blues jams back in the 80's; it's all about the atmosphere!

Chicky Grill Bar - picture it packed with some extra chairs between tables. No photo on night of mention because all you could see was cig smoke.

Perhaps one part of the tour which has changed from really cool and interesting in 1995 to a bit too sketchy in 2014 is the Christiania area. It was an early 70's hippy occupation of an abandoned military base right across the harbor from downtown in what is now a very desirable location. It was founded on commune principles, especially freedom, but that has morphed into a "Freetown" of drug dealers. The main road is called "Pusher Street" and there are probably a dozen street stands where you can buy hashish and weed. Even though tourists are kinda welcome, you get the feeling of glares as you walk by in a place where you are obviously not a customer or a local. Greg and I twisted our ball caps into 'lock' position and tried talking like Eminem but that just got them angry.

Pusher Street in Christiania - this photo is from the internet. There are about 5000 "No Photos" signs posted throughout the area.

Maja and Tom's birthday ended up windy and rainy so we had a birthday lunch at a restaurant in Hillerød by the castle. Here's a tip for all you world travelers: when a Danish waiter asks "would you like something to drink?", the answer is "yes, I will have a beer". I made the mistake of requesting a soda water and ended up paying 45 kroner or $9. If you put free water into a 2 cent plastic bottle, the 'value' increases to pusher street criminal kroners. My EPCOR friends would be living in estates and driving in blacked-out limo's if they lived in this country! 

After spending the equivalent of a temporary foreign worker's monthly wage on lunch (thanks to G&Ch), we headed back to our place. We played backgammon, quizzed the kids on geography and math questions, and then Greg showed the kids some card tricks. All three consider those 2 or 3 hours to be their highlight of the G&Ch visit. Like I said earlier, it's all about being with friends!

An Afternoon at the Game

Sunday afternoon is for football. Not the wife-beating, dog-fighting, muscle-brained NFL (don't tell them I said that) or the Roughie 0-24 pigs fly, hell freezing over, can't believe it could possibly happen CFL, but the football that seems quite popular to the other 7 billion people on the planet. We're trying hard not to use the "S" word for football because it kind of sounds like when people say "ice hockey" to us. Don't want to be an ignorant immigrant rube from the New World.

We went to the Lyngby vs Køge football game in the Lyngby suburb or district of Greater Copenhagen. This would be a Div 2 league with young professional players. Good football but in a stadium that holds maybe 6000 and with only about 1500 people at the game. When you buy the tickets, you need to choose the "type" of seating: do you want to be with the drunken-flag-waving hooligans, the regulars, the families or in the fenced-off enemy section? All sections allow smoking so suck it up like you did in the 1980's. We chose the family section because I don't want my kids exposed to any kind of swearing.

The food at the game is Pølser (big wieners) and Øl (beer). The pølser is sold as an exposed wiener (even in the family section!) with 2 small buns on the side. This was very confusing to the kids and caused much consternation. Mette spent about 3/4 of the game slicing buns and creating hotdogs to solve this painful dilemma.   

You can get a good deal on a pølser and øl or if you are really thirsty you get a simple piece of cardboard with 5 beer holes that folds up with a carrying handle so you can carry a rack of draft beers back to your mates in the hooligan section.

The game was pretty good with some nice football and only a couple of times did a player cry out in agony when he was bumped. Lyngby won 2-0 so the crowd was in a pretty good mood at the end. A little bonus for us was that the stadium is adjacent to the Danish Technical University where Mette studied so we got to see where she developed her diligent study habits and wallflower personality.

Some Juvenile Humour

Hey - if you have

You might want to consider

Just a suggestion.

The Abandoned Lego Factory

So there's this Danish company that uses American movies to sell Chinese plastic all over the world and they have 6 theme parks that are actually owned by the British. Our first visit to Legoland was 21 years ago during our Danish countryside honeymoon. We've been there lots, the kids have been there lots but it is still fun and not as chaotic as you would expect. The place is designed for younger kids (12 and under) but Steen still gets a charge out of it due to his delayed mental development.

We took a couple of days from school because they just go on field trips every day anyhow and it's a good way to beat the lineups at the rides. Legoland is on the mainland (Jylland) so to get there we need to leave our island (Sjælland) by crossing the world's third longest suspension bridge (1.6 km span) across about 7 km of water to get to the next island of Fyn. Once on Fyn, you head towards Middlefart and cross another bridge to the mainland. Legoland is plunked down in the middle of farmland in the middle of Jylland in the middle of nowhere because the original Lego factory was here in the town of Billund. It's a 3 hour drive, which is a very long distance to travel in Europe so we need to stop a few times to get coffee and stretch our legs.

Storebæltsbroen (The Great Belt bridge). Photo not by author.

Driving across at 110 km/hr. Photo by passenger in car - not the driver - she was texting.

Our first stop is at the Hostel we are staying at. When you add an 's' to the middle of 'hotel', you get to pay for bedding (or bring your own), make your own beds, strip them down when you are done, sleep in bunk beds, clean the kitchen, fix the broken pool table and watch Swedish TV with a group of Germans in the evening. Our hostel is right by the Givskud Safari Zoo which is about 30 minutes from Billund. At the zoo we saw a lion eating a horse and a gorilla eating her own vomit. Sorry, but no giraffes were on the menu today.

On our first day in the park, we have almost free run of the place. If you like a ride, go on it 10 or 14 times until you get bored. If you get thirsty, pay your $5 Canadian for a half liter of bottled water; there is only one fountain on the 35 acres and the employees at the concessions are not allowed to give you tap water. Grrrrr.  

An informal survey and data count shows that more than 100% of all Danish kids under the age of 10 are blonde! If you have a long blonde-haired daughter dressed in bright pink or peach clothing, you will NOT find her in the crowd. She will be completely camouflaged.

The highlight for most of us is the Pirate ride where you can shoot water cannons at the spectators and they can shoot back at the boats. We drenched a boatload of Chinese teens all decked out in their special lime green tour jackets. We didn't stop until they agreed to accept a shipping container of spare plastic Lego pieces from our house!

København aka Copenhagen, or "CPH" to the twitter gen

As the kids headed north by bike to school, we headed south to the train for a day trip into Copenhagen. As you might expect, it's not called Copenhagen here; it's called København (Køben - the market, Havn - Harbour) and pronounced in an unrecognizable "Koobnhawn". It  is an incredible city that is completely old and new at the same time. For tourists (and there are many), you have canals, harbors, castles, a pedestrian street that is 7km long, museums for guns, doctors, industrial design, modern art, landscape art, Renaissance art and Art Mainprize (legendary coffee drinker from Carlyle, Sask).

Little kids on a field trip or some highway workers lost their way

Walkable and VERY bike-able but not very car friendly, this city seems like a place where a 16th century town has been evacuated in the morning and replaced with a modern civilization in the afternoon. I think it is really cool to see a father riding with his kids along busy but safe bike paths, pull up to an old 17th century building, lock up the bikes, grab the groceries (small fridge) and head upstairs to the apartment. I'm thinking that they cook a healthy root vegetable stew, discuss EU strategy in Syria while they eat, clean the kitchen together while they joke around and then work on their oil painting of a ballet dancer, but I'm sure they just play Minecraft on their iPads and ignore each other like the rest of the world.

Cobblestones, bikes and old things everywhere… and Mette.

A compass and map are useless in this city of curving streets, 5-way intersections, neat little alleys and dozens of parks and squares. With street names like Holmbladsgade in the Holmbladsgadekvarteret, Kronprinsessegade and Østbanegade, you aren't going to be asking for directions either. Or at least "Good luck with that".

Nice stop for a cold Tubourg - just to shelter from the rain of course.

S'Cool to go to School

Our morning ride to school takes us past the affluence of the seaside homes along the coast. Today is spectacular with the sun low in the morning sky reflecting off the calm waters of the Sound. Tom, Maja and I are riding our coaster bikes along the quiet road on our way to school having a few laughs and enjoying the view of a cruise ship, some sailboats and a rowing club out for a morning rip. People come out of their houses wrapped in housecoats and walk to the nearest jetty for a quick dip in the ocean. This is the idyllic ride to school that I had imagined from way back in Edmonton.

People who live along the Gammelstrandvej often have a little private beach or sitting area surrounded by hedges and many have their own swimming pier. No pictures of morning swims - swimsuits are not common and swimmers are typically quite wrinkled.

Maja and Tom have started school in the regular program with all the Danish kids. Typically, newcomers are placed in a language intensive program called M1 or M2 (depending on age), but their big brains and lack of peers in the M1 program prompted the school to start them directly in the regular curriculum. They are loving school here and who wouldn't? It sounds like a lot of fun and games. This week is a "market" at the school where they work at booths making and selling things to each other. I suggested we fill a shipping container and sell the goods to Toys 'R Us but the damn socialists won't let me. 

Steen started into the M2 program about 2 weeks ago. His response to the first day of school was "That was the best day of school I've ever had!" There is only 10 kids in his class, all from other parts of the world who are learning Danish together and (somewhat) keeping pace with regular math and science. They will get moved into regular programming when they are ready. Day one consisted of obtaining an iPad, creating a shopping list and walking to the grocery store to purchase ingredients to the lunch they will cook on Day 2. Day 3 of school was cancelled because the teacher had an appointment! This is starting to sound suspiciously like NAIT!

What is up with this country and their commitment to sport? Maja went to her first gymnastics class yesterday and the instructor noticed some raw talent (gee, thanks Kerrie) so she was invited to try out for the team. Four sessions per week, 3 hours each. "Twelve hours a week?" I ask mathematically.  She looks at me seriously and says "We want to be the best. We are all here to be the best in the country. That takes a lot of time and commitment." Next we get Steen into rowing and we'll find out he needs to take a private jet to train at Oxford on the Thames … if he wants to be the best.

Slowly but surely we fill up our calendar as we get the kids established and start to plan out holidays and vacations. It's always a delicate balance between travel and budget, sports and family, rural drives and urban hikes, beer and milk in the fridge.

Cars Cost Less in Wetaskiwin, But Not Here

Finally, we are the proud owners of a pre-owned Peugeot 307 station wagon built by the Frenchies when they were not on vacation. It took 32 hours of website viewing, 23 hours of dealership tire kicking, 14 hours of phone calls, 9 hours of spreadsheet organization, 3 hours of test drives, 4 hours of mechanical inspections, and 1 CPR number to bring it all together. It's not easy when you have too many choices and too much time. 

Late model Peugeot with early model driver (both grey)

Cars are expensive here. Everyone tells you that: friends, dealers, insurance agents, kids on bikes. There is a massive tax on new cars here (180%)! If you wanted to purchase a new BMW 320i, it would cost you $94k CAD + taxes = $263k! No sneaking off to Germany to purchase one right from the Motor Works either; the tax is applied at registration. After that, there is a yearly "green tax" that you will pay based on the fuel consumption of your car. It could be as much as $2000 (or more) if you choose a bit of a guzzler. These high prices are reflected all the way down to the used cars, so you can expect to pay a lot more for a car here than you would back in the Land of Bitumen.

It sounds outrageous to pay this kind of taxation, but if you re-frame it, you are really talking about a "user pay" system that all fiscal conservatives love to love. An awful lot of your income tax goes to road repair and construction but we all own cars, so that is the expectation. There are neighbourhoods in Copenhagen that have 18% car ownership. They want their taxes going to mass transit and bike lanes. If you can afford a car here, you can afford the user-pay tax. There are arguments to raise the taxes even higher to reduce car ownership. Rush hour is a real gong-show in Copenhagen.

Fuel costs about $2.30 CAD per litre and $2.00 CAD per litre for diesel. Since diesels get better mileage (more energy per litre), we bought a diesel. Diesels are not fond of short daily trips, but I think we will blow out the soot by ripping shitters in the high school parking lot. 

Since people pay such a high price for a new car, they REALLY take care of them. We looked at cars with more than 250,000 km that looked like they just rolled off the showroom floor. Heaven forbid if you have ash residue in the ashtray or cigarette lighter! No way I'm buying that run-down piece of crap. I'm going to have to protect our car's interior by layering it with garbage and pop bottles. I can't risk the depreciation.

Wayne is Watching

Is Wayne Gretzky trying to contact me or is it just sausages? You decide.

They Nailed the Dishwasher but Epic Fail on the Fridge

We've been here for 14 days and guess how many times I've been grocery shopping? No…no…and no….the correct answer is 14 times! Now I'm like you and love grocery shopping (except for the part where you make a list, go to the store, fill your cart, pay for it, load it into your car and then put it away). We tend to think the Europeans love to shop for supper at the market on the way home from the metro: you might picture some French guy sniffing a baguette and pinching some tomatoes to see what he might enjoy with a splash of Bordeaux tonight. But the truth is that we are not talking about a cultural difference, the difference is caused by an APPLIANCE!

The refrigerators here were designed by little old ladies who might like a tiny spot of jam to go with their homemade scones. Our fridge back in Edm has its own address and property tax bill. We once hung a hindquarter of beef to age in it and still had room for the 5-gallon pail of mayo from Costco! When we shopped for milk, we bought 4 - 4 liter jugs for a week of consumption. They don't sell 4 litre jugs here! They don't even sell 2 litre jugs! We need to buy - (all my engineering friends have already cranked this out on their HP calculators) - 16 separate litres of milk if we wanted to stock up. Of course we don't - we just go shopping every day.

Don't even think about leaving the house without your bag full of bags! There is no such thing as a cheap plastic shopping bag. If you forget your bags you must pay for the good kind  made from strong plastic and then you can add these to your bag full of bags. You look like a real amateur when half your grocery bill is for the bags to carry it home.

Rick proudly displays his "bag of bags" including his favorite Netto bag

The grocery stores are rather small but at least half the floor space is filled with beer and wine. This is a good thing. Less food choice, more booze choice. In a country where everything is quite expensive, the beer is cheap! 40 DKK = $8 CAD = 6 cans of tasty beer. It's even cheaper if you buy a plastic returnable crate with 30 bottles (which, of course, I do).

So if half your fridge is full of cheap beer and your fridge is half the size of a Coleman cooler, this leaves room for about 2 litres of milk; exactly what we consume in a day. Wait…gotta zip off to Netto….I think I just heard the kids making chocolate milk!