Back on my feet

I have been sick. I am never sick, but when I am it is always due to stress. Nothing new this time around;  I have been stressed and a bit worried about moving here, getting myself sorted out financially, workwise and personally.
I already felt tired and wornout Friday (I even missed Kulturnatten =( but I only surrendered Saturday evening, went to bed, overheated and with a sore throat. And I woke up yesterday morning, feeling good enough to get up and lounge around the apartment. Sorting out the last clothes, doing a bit of laundry, cooking a bit of soup and then have frequent breaks and teas. 
Today I am totally back on my feet, feeling YEAH and ready to do my try-out-day at work. 
There really isn't much more to tell, (and I don't want to jinx anything by telling more, my Italian heritage shows its ugly face =)) - while I do my stuff, you might want to check out my (taaaaaaaaaa daaaaaaaaaaah here)

ALLTIME FAVOURITE BLOG: Luxirare. This chick does... magic with food and fashion. She is *so* creative it totally blows my mind. Every time. The blog features nothing personal about her and her life, only breathtaking elaborations, genius inventions and reinventions in food (you saw that coming, didn't you ?) and fashion. It is not that I find fashion less interesting, it is just very concept-y for my taste. The site is pretty image-heavy (and what images. She's quite the artist) and it might take a while to load, but have patience, it is worth the wait. I wish I had the time* and resources to pour that much passion, research, creativity and love into the making of pretty simple stuff basically. 
So go on, have a look: Luxirare.

*if i had the time I would probably piss it away anyway =)

Tah-dah list

• woke up in my own bed, way too early. But I

• got up,

• got dressed,

• had breakfast and followed M to

• finish and print out applications.  This is not the best part of moving here, I am tired of sitting down  in front of computer to try and sell myself in a language I do not master anymore and much preferred to move boxes up stairs and decorate room.  But I did 8 of them, for jobs I have no experience doing 
  

• sent 3 applications and

• landed 1 interview.**

Friday.

Wish me luck.

* oh and i helped save a kitten from drowning on the harbour. Well. Somebody else got it out of the water, I just took it home and tortured it with a towel.  So much for feline elegance...

** (my first in Dk)

HALP!

Hvad er en facer ? 

og en anden frakke kan vaere nødvendig*

• Brug af en bomuld bolden dyppes i neglelakfjerner, tør alle gamle neglelak før maleri negle. Vask hænder og lægges i blød i varmt vand i et par øjeblikke. 
• Med en orangewood stick, skub tilbage cuticles, så de er alle selv med hinanden, når vandet har blødgøres huden. 
• Med søm neglesaks, skønhed saks eller et søm fil, forme dine negle jævnt. 
• Med en rolig hånd, omhyggeligt maling kun spidsen af hver søm med en hvid nuance. En anden frakke kan være ønskeligt, afhængig af tykkelse og opaqueness af polsk. Tillad polske tørre mellem frakker. 
• Brug en lidt gennemsigtig pink eller nøgen farver, maling hele nail når tips har tørret. En anden frakke kan være nødvendig. Tillad negle tørre grundigt. 
• Når alle frakker har tørret, gælder en klar topcoat for at beskytte din nye franske manicure. At forlænge den manicure's levetid, gøre en indsats for at male et klart frakke på hver nat. Vær sikker på, at det er rigelig tid til at tørre helt. 
• Hvis du føler særligt kreative og ambitiøse, kick off dine sko og matcher dine tootsies til fingerspidserne! 

* for dèn der er godt nok grim ?  

Skal vi gaette paa at nogen har brugt Babelfish til oversaettelsen ?
Fundet paa sol.dk

Smells like.... Mormor

My staircase smells like mormor. She lived with my morfar here in Frederiksberg.

I felt strangely sure about this place, this apartment from the start and I couldn't just dismiss it as a question of taste, (I love these tall rooms, these wooden floors in these beautiful houses, the stucco on the ceilings) it felt like something else.  It just hit me walking up the stairs yesterday; this is why I felt safe here immediately, this is why I trusted my intuition to live here. 

My mormor was a very strong woman in a very quiet kind way. She controlled (silently) my morfar totally and he died within a couple of years when she died. I am still convinced he died of sorrow, he had no reason to live when she was not around anymore. He was a loud, bragging, dominating character with a profound passion for food in any form or shape. I am sorry that my passion for food surfaced after he passed away; I am convinced we could have shared some good meals, though his passion was for massive amounts of it, not for the quality =)*.

I think he loved my mormor dearly, even if his only way of expressing it would be to ask her "skal jeg roere lidt ved dig, Marie ?". I saw them kiss only a couple of times, usually at lunch when she had had a few too many snaps, chased down with appelsinvand. Then she would agree to kiss him (in a strange defiant way, it looked to me as if she wanted to, but couldn't allow herself unless she was squiffy) , we would cheer and be a bit happier afterwards.  She was a smoker and a serious one if there ever was one. Often I would bring her morning coffee on her bedside when she visited in Jylland, and it would be strong coffee with cream (no milk for her) and I would sit with her there while she smoked her first Cecil without filter, fascinated by her kind, wrinkled face. She had such soft skin. 

I know it is a clichè but I really wish I could have appreciated my mormor and morfar more while they were alive. But it feels as if they're approving of my being here.  

*once for Christmas he ate so much he got sick and had to go to the bathroom and puke. After a while he came back in and started eating again as if nothing had happened. 

In love already

I had just the kind of Sunday I dreamed about when imagining coming back to Dk.
Slow, lazy Sunday mornings with long coffees, lit candles, John Mayer on the stereo and a fire lit (bonus). Then brother arrived with wife and 2 whirlwind-kids, just happy to see me after the initial disappointment of not having to take a plane to come see me. They brought gifts, homemade chocolate cake, a fave Barolo and a huge plant that I love and then they set off to jump in my bed (the kids that is....).
Later we went out for lunch and then footballgame in the Park. I am not much into football, but I am very much into seeing Bro unwind and become totally relaxed, a kid again.
His thing, and I sure love to see him do it. I had one to many beers ( but followed the game nicely and at least managed to yell and boo and cheer in the right places for the right reasons =) ) so I walked home afterwards through the fabulous, eternal nightfall that I so love in Denmark. Everything becomes such a unique shade of blue and dark comes so slowly as if it has all the time in the world. I wanted to linger and walk through Assistens Kirkegård, it seemed magic, but I resisted and went straight home to more candles, hot chocolate, and more John Mayer. 

Oh yeah. I'm in love with this already.

I am not lost. Everything else is

Okay.
I have a tiny problem finding my way around. M and I jokes (actually he jokes, I just laugh along as if I find it funny) that if I ever got to Italy in the first place, it was probably because I took a wrong turn somewhere. And that it took me 15 years to come back to Denmark because of my missing sense of direction. Haha, very funny.
Anyway. I don't really see this as a problem*. Or maybe I just learned to live with it. Fact is, it is sort of serious. Take two turns right and one left in rapid succession, and now go back to where you started from. I can't. Well, I can if I draw little lines and figures in the air with my fingers and really really concentrate, but it makes my day and feels like a huge victory. So it is *that* serious.
If I go for a walk I decide on one of two things to do. Give up trying to find my way around, just enjoy the walk and then necessarily have to ask people for directions to get back to where I started from. Or simply move in one direction only and walk straight so that I can just go back. If I have to stay alert and remember landmarks it is just not relaxing. I got used to this and I am not ashamed of asking people for directions. Often I will look up maps on the internet if I have to go somewhere new, and get a general idea of where I am going, but I know I will have to ask people sooner or later.**

Then things changed as I got a new phone for my birthday in July. Oooooh the wonders of GPS. It has changed my life. I don't use it with audio directions (turn left blabla) - it wouldn't teach me my way around just doing what the voice says. I simply use it as a mobile map and an indicator of where I am and where I am going.

So yesterday I had to go to the jobcenter a couple of km from where I live. I got there just fine, but going home afterwards I took what seemed to be a shortcut. And then suddenly Frederiksberg was lost. (I am never lost, I always know exactly where I am. Here!) I didn't think much of it as I had "landed" just in front of a Rema1000 (ooooh curious - oooh food, oooh grocery shopping...) So I park the bike, get in there, walk around, get back out and take my time to get home without GPS - yes, I don't know where I am but I have no hurry so I get home much later. Proud.
Then in the evening I remember something I saw in Rema1000 and that I want but didn't buy.  I tell M and he says "that's ok, we'll buy it tomorrow. Where is that Rema1000 ?". And he realizes (just a split second before me) that I haven't got a clue and couldn't find my way back there...

*well, okay, maybe once. A collegue offered me a lift home; we had been working late and there were no more buses at that hour. He asked me where to go, and I kept giving him the wrong directions. It took us an hour to get to my place, 3 km away from work...

**there's not always somebody to ask though. I remember that time I got lost on the intersections of an Italian highway, I kept taking the wrong turns and must have gone round and round (and bloody back and forth) in a loop for an hour before I managed to get out....

Daring parallel

Disclaimer:
Nerdy obsessive food-observations follow:

I came up with a parallel yesterday that I have been struggling to formulate but just couldn't pinpoint properly. Then I sort of mentally dismissed it as uninteresting stuff (my BF call me nerdy about food and often I shut my trap about my observations), thinking they might be uninteresting to people who isn't so ... obsessed. But then I came upon  Stensamlers tweet and I felt ... comforted.
She writes: "de danske sandwiches med alt det der 1000-et-eller-andet-snask, de ALTID putter i". She lives in Italy (too) but while her observation is almost identical to mine, the parallel I will draw (sooner or later =)) is all mine.

Here goes:
In my opinion much Danish food is very... abundant in ingredients.
My man and I stopped for lunch in a local roadside cafè and ordered the omelette with tomatoes. Nice and simple, I had mouthwatering visions of fluffy eggy omelette, maybe (please please) with small sweet Danish tomatoes and a clipping of purloeg. Maybe even rugbroed. OOOOh, be still my roaring stomach =). 
The plate that was served was ... slightly different. I cannot say it was bad per se, but I don't understand ... the casting of the ingredients. The omelette was not fluffy at all because the tomatoes had been incorporated into it, dampening the eggs and thus weighing down everything. It had a nice decoration of salad, that was a mixture of babyspinach, lollo, and rucola. Nice enough with a little salad but combining 3 of the bitter salads seems .... thoughtless.  To top it off, a generous drizzle of vinegar and a helping of pesto. (pesto? ) That is for pasta in Italy. It is so good when it's good that you eat it on pasta on its own.  I love babyspinach, but I would slice it finely and eat it raw with a nice dressing or steam it a tiny bit, add good butter and eat it like that. Rucola's lovely with something sweet (pear, melon, tomatoes) to counterbalance that bitterness. Just seems like overkill to serve all these together.

And that is probably what I'm trying to say. While it may all be a question of taste, and thus cannot really be discussed, it seems to me that no one ingredient is allowed to take centerstage while the other ingredients support that one main deliciousness. Less is not more in Danish cuisine.I couldn't taste the eggs for the tomatoes and viceversa. They may very well have been the sweet chunky morsels I longed for, but as it were, they just heavied down what could have been a fluffy omelette. The spinach with the lollo and rucola just seemed too bitter and hard to the bite and I never discovered whether it was good pesto on its own, the taste of it was overwhelmed by the whole saladsymphony.

And this is where I will draw my parallel. Because I find the Danish society to be much the same. Noone is really allowed to sink too deep or rise too high (maybe allowed is not the strict word, but we do have Janteloven =) - we are all very equal and we all have the same rights, the same possibilities.
Vi skal alle have lov at vaere her!

In Italy there is very much difference between rich and poor. Whole families survive one month with what I made in one month. And I assure you, I didn't have that much of a paycheck. Politicians earn in two months what the average family earn in a year. People are allowed to rise up or fall back. Much as the Italian food. Pesto is eaten on pasta. You might add a little parmigiano because it is good, but pesto is divine on its own. My preferred (and I share that favourite with a lot of my Italian friends) sandwich is the Panino al Prosciutto (bread and ham. Yes. Nothing else) - bread is good and Prosciutto is fab when it's good.

I wish my tomatoes (or the lovely baby spinach or the fluffy omelette) wouldn't have had to fight for my attention. I wish one of them had been allowed to take centerstage and rise above the rest.