Week 9

We're settling in a little more! Some rooms are shaping up, others are still a mess, but we're doing it.

Khloe's room is getting there!

The family room in the basement is a little cluttered, but the kids like having the Xbox again.

Kaden's room. Note his clever use of the snowboard to hide the giant water main.

The other side of Kaden's room with his fancy new dehumidifier.

Friday

Zac and I rode our bikes (separately) to and from work for the first time! Thomas, my officemate, has challenged me to ride my bike to and from work three times before the autumn break, which effectively means I have to accomplish this by Friday, October 13th. If I succeed, he'll buy me a beer, and if I don't, I have to buy him one. It seemed like a good little push to start living that active Danish life.

One down.

Parkin' at the bike rack outside Building 9 like everyone else!

I also remembered to photograph my lunch again, so get excited for another episode of "What's on my Plate?"

Tomato and cheese bread, noodles with spinach topped with pork, green beans, and onions in an Asian sauce, vegetable salad with tahini dressing, a quarter of a pulled pork sandwich with slaw, and smørrebrød with chili mayo and some kind of tasty veggie/grain mix on top.

I told you Zac and I sit near each other at lunch but with our respective departments, but I wanted to give you an idea of how we're situated, so I surreptitiously snapped a photo of him. Bwhahaha! Look how happy he is chatting with his colleagues.

We unpacked another box or two. Maybe we'll be unpacked by the time we have to move again!

It was also wine/coffee chat night with Vibe and Amanda, so just before 19:00, I hopped back on my bike with a bottle of wine (Kung Fu Girl, a riesling from Washington) in my backpack and an extra bike light and I headed for Vibe's. The ride was fine, but I forgot to time it. I keep forgetting to do that. I need to know if I'm getting faster as I go! It's only 1.5 miles (or 2.4 km for the rest of the world), so the ride to her house is actually pretty nice.

We had a good video chat with Amanda (we met her parents!!), then Vibe helped me with some "getting settled" logistics. Of course, we sat and talked for a while longer, too, so I rode home around 22:15. It was only a little scary. At least there was no traffic at the roundabout, so it didn't matter if I did it correctly or not. (It shouldn't be so hard to figure out, right?)

Saturday

Since we didn't go to dinner on our anniversary, we had planned to make a nice Saturday of it in Copenhagen. Zac and I abandoned the kids (only feeling a little bit guilty) and had a really cool day.

Zac's buddies at work told him about a burger stand that had amazing hamburgers, the Gasoline Grill. We decided to hit up the original grill location, which even has fuel and an electric car charge port! 

Zac went for the original hamburger and I got a cheeseburger. We shared some of the fries with Gasoline Sauce, and I tell you, it was all incredible. We tried not to overeat so we would still be hungry for our dinner reservation later, but it definitely left us wanting more!

Zac wanted to walk through Nyhavn because we had only kind of briefly gone past it when we went to see Rachel and Jon in Copenhagen a few weeks ago. It was so crowded! That made it kind of tough to wander slowly and take it all in, but we both found cool buildings that we liked, and we took our obligatory selfie on the bridge with the colorful houses behind us. We missed getting most of the houses in it though, and Zac said I didn't give him time to smile. Haha.

We kept on wandering and found ourselves at Ophelia Plads. As we walked along the harbor, we found a sign for a bus...but it was a boat silhouette instead of a bus! This was when we realized they have bus boats here, too, which totally makes sense when you see how tough it would be to get from one cool building to the next along the harbor by bus and how easy it would be to go by boat.

Bus boat leaving the opera house station!

Everywhere we looked, there were just people sitting. I mean, there's a lot of emphasis on living in the moment and enjoying life here, and as we watched people just using their Saturday to sit and exist in a nice area, we decided we wanted to be part of it. We each bought a cup of beer on tap from a little kiosk on Ophelia Plads, pulled some reclining lounge chairs up to the edge of the seating area, and sat their drinking our beer and watching the bus boat.

And when we left, I found a pine tree!!

Just like home! (Well, this one was in a pot on a big dock on the ocean, but other than that...)

We were kind of near a store that said they sold Dyson products, and we were definitely in the market for a vacuum, so we headed in that direction. Nothing says "romantic anniversary" like looking for a vacuum together! When we came up the street, there was a huge parade of some kind blocking a bunch of traffic, and when we got closer, we saw it was a big demonstration in support of legalizing marijuana. Zac did not feel adventurous enough to join. I was ready to jump in, but he was smarter and less tipsy. They were blocking about 15 busses, so we kind of weaved between them and went into the store.

It was definitely not just a Dyson store. It was pretty much the hugest mega-store for clothing and housewares and gourmet treats ever. (And I have vague memories of being in there once before?) Anyway, we looked at vacuums, kind of picked one out, but decided we'd have to come back for it because we weren't really in a position to carry a vacuum around the rest of the day.

We made a pit-stop at a public bathroom (because we couldn't find one in that giant store anywhere). One of the cool things I recently learned about Denmark is that there are about 33 public toilets for every 100,000 people. In the U.S., the average is 8 per 100,000 people. See? Public restroom, no payment required, just hanging out. Access!

And then, after two months in Denmark, I finally took Zac to Sound Station.

Sound Station is the best record store in Copenhagen. The guy who owns it knows everything, he speaks multiple languages, he's nice even when he's busy, and they have so many good records in such a small and yet well-designed space. He's always playing great music, and you can just spend hours wandering through the racks.

Yes, I know it would've been more impressive to take photos inside the store. But I didn't.

We browsed until Zac started feeling the allergies that used records tend to bring on. We walked out with four excellent and totally different purchases.

Horisant, Chuck Berry, Guardians of the Galaxy Awesome Mix Vol. 2, and Matt Berninger

Down the street, we found another place to get a beer. We were intrigued by the Carlsberg "Slow Beer" sign outside. We ended up in a very dark and old-timey pub with carpets and booths that reeked of smoke. Some old dude was kind of mumbling at us from a booth by the bar, so we just each ordered a beer and asked to sit outside.

It was fun to people-watch. I enjoy looking at everyone's clothing the most. Literally anything goes here, and everyone looks happy and comfortable no matter what.

Zac liked his beer.

Yeah, there's a McLaren in the background.

We still don't know what "Slow beer" is.

Our dinner reservations weren't until 18:30, so we needed to find somewhere else to kill time. It was fun walking around, but we happened upon a bar that was on my list of places to visit - Zeppelin Rock Bar - and when we walked up, there was also a sign for a heavy metal bar nearby. We went up the stairs in between the two signs. We figured that whichever one it was the entrance for would be fine. It was actually the entrance to both! The bar is in the main area when you walk in, and then if you turn to the right, you go into the rock bar, and if you turn to the left and go down the stairs, you're in the metal bar. When it gets busy, there's another bartender down there.

We had a great table right on the second floor by a window, so we could people-watch for daaaaaays.

Zeppelin Rock Bar!

The metal bar, Left Hand Path.

And then, just like that, it was time to walk to dinner. We were actually a little nervous because the last time we ate fancy French food was 8 years ago on our honeymoon in France, and we didn't like it. We pretty much didn't enjoy any of the French food we had eaten there. I got falafel a lot, and we ate a bunch of baguettes, but as far as the restaurants went, we were largely unimpressed.

I think it was a combination of our inability to translate the menu effectively, and our lack of knowledge about which ones were the good restaurants, because this French restaurant in Copenhagen blew our minds.

We had kind of scoped out and translated the menu on the train on our way into the city earlier, so we had an idea of what we wanted, but I also felt very bold, so I asked the server for recommendations as well. We also weren't sure if we were supposed to order one menu item or multiple, but based on our dinner at Louisiana with Jacob and Christina, we reasoned that we were probably supposed to order at least two things.

I scoured the website, translating away, until I confirmed this. Then I asked our server just in case.

Zac ordered the "menu," which is basically a four-course meal that comes pre-selected. First, they served him a kind of "starters" charcuterie board.

We're still wondering how to politely eat an olive with a pit using a fork and knife. If someone more cultured could help us out, that would be great.

I ordered three things from the "board," so they brought mine out kind of in time with Zac's things. The first dish they brought was the chanterelle mushrooms in some kind of cream sauce with corn on toast. Now, if you know me well, you know I never eat mushrooms on purpose. I hate the texture, the mouthfeel, the taste...basically everything. But the server had recommended both those and the foie gras, and again, if you know me well, I can't just say "Eeew" and order whatever I was going to get originally. I had to order one of the things she recommended so as not to be rude, and there was no way I was going to order foie gras.

As Jon Lovitz once said in an episode of F*R*I*E*N*D*S,
"Well smack my ass and call me Judy...these are fanTAStic!"

Apparently, I "don't like mushrooms" because I've never had them prepared in a dish as amazing as this one. I ate every last bit and soaked up the rest of the sauce with our bread.

Next, Zac got some kind of scallop dish in a peppery cream sauce. "I don't know what it was, but it was fuckin' good." Direct quote from Zac. Haha.

I got a fried half lobster tail on toast with lemon and bitter salads. Another incredible dish.

Next, Zac was served some kind of chicken in sauce with cooked vegetables and cold beans and crushed potatoes. It was all good.

My final dish was a sweet bread covered in sauce and green beans and onions. It was also tasty.

Zac's final course was a dessert - it was like a frozen merengue puck covered in homemade vanilla ice cream and a sweet cranberry sauce. We shared it, and it was just incredible. Everything was incredible.

It was a really nice anniversary celebration.

Sunday

Zac has been browsing used cars online for a while. I had a lot of delusions of grandeur about riding our bikes and taking public transportation everywhere, but we are kind of getting the kids involved in a lot of stuff, and they have weird school schedules, and Zac and I are going to work at different times, and it's hard to get groceries home on a bike...I finally admitted a car would make life easier.

Zac really liked Jacob's Volkswagen Golf when we borrowed it, but he likes the size of Vibe's Volvo wagon, so he started thinking a VW Passat was the way to go. The Golf would be easier to maneuver around town and through parking areas and narrow side streets, but with two adult-sized kids and our desire to take some weekend trips to other parts of Europe, the Passat makes more sense.

He found one at a Toyota dealer in Rødovre just outside of Copenhagen. It had low mileage and was in really good condition. It's a 2020, white, with 19" rims and low-profile tires. It feels a little like an Audi when you're behind the wheel - less pep though. It has tons of trunk space, it's an automatic, and it came with a set of winter tires. Zac's colleagues told him it was a pretty good deal, so on Sunday, we went to buy a car.

Zac and the salesman trying to figure out an electronic noise we didn't recognize.

Here are some cool differences between car shopping in Denmark and the U.S.!

1. In Denmark, the price of the car already includes all of the taxes, registration, and fees, so you know exactly what you're paying. It comes with plates on it that are registered in our names from day one.

2. When you go for a test drive in Denmark, the car salesman doesn't jump in the front seat with you. Or the back seat. You just take the car and go! "We trust people."

3. The car salesman in Denmark made no effort to sell us the car whatsoever. He just gave us the keys when we asked, answered all of our questions, and honestly advised us on things like anti-rust coating later in the life of the car and stuff.

4. In Denmark, buying a car does not require hours of paperwork and sitting around in a waiting room at the dealership. You just agree to the price, sign a single page, and leave. Which brings me to number 5.

5. In Denmark, you don't walk out the door with the car on the day you sign the papers. After you agree to buy the car, they have their mechanic go over every detail of the car to ensure it's handed over to you in perfect condition. If there is critical work to be done, they do it. If something needs replaced, they take care of it. Then after it's up to their standards, they detail the car better than anyone we've ever seen before. It takes about a week, and when it's ready and registered, they hand you the keys.

6. You don't pay with a check in Denmark, and you don't have to pay before they start prepping the car for you. You just log into your bank account and initiate a transfer of funds into their bank account at least a day before you go pick up the car so they can ensure the bill is paid before they hand it over. The whole process was incredibly easy.

Since we weren't walking away with our car (which was only kind of a surprise because Vibe had warned us), we went back to the huge store with the Dyson stuff and we bought a vacuum. And a Dyson AirWrap. Don't judge me. I had to leave my really nice hair dryer, my well-loved straightener, and my kind of crappy curling iron back in the U.S. This baby does it all.

The kids acted like we had brought home a new toy. Kaden and Harrison started vacuuming everything. Khloe started curling and straightening her hair. Who knew?

Monday

I left for work after the kids did, but I still caught them at the bus stop!

Several weeks ago, one of my coworkers helped me get set up on a Danish "buy nothing" Facebook page. If you aren't familiar with these, they are local area pages that are established and joined so people who have usable items to give away or trade can post them, and other people around the area can claim them. The "buy nothing" market here is phenomenal. If you want anything from IKEA, check these pages first. The only thing is that, ya know, they're in Danish.

Anyway, I've been signed up on the local page, but it covers a pretty large area and usually when I see things we could use, they're either too far away to care about or they've already been spoken for by a bunch of people.

The etiquette is that if you see a post and you want it, you write "Kø," which means "queue" in Danish, or "Ja, tak," which means, "Yes, please." If there are multiple things in the post, you specify which of the things you want. The seller then replies to you if you get it, and you arrange pickup through direct, private messages.

Well on Monday, Khloe got a horrifying headache at school. It was a 9/10 on the pain scale (according to the office), so I left work and tried to make my way to her by bus. It was rough. The busses were running awkwardly for me and I had a lot of waiting-around time. I browsed the "buy nothing" Facebook page and saw a great IKEA desk with two drawers. The post also listed a bunk bed (which we didn't need) and two chairs on casters.

I know Khloe needs a new art desk. She has nowhere to put her things or to create or draw or paint. The description said that this one had some stains on the desk and the drawers, but that sounded like a perfect art desk to me! No one had posted about the desk. I looked up the Danish word for desk and jumped.

Immediately, she posted and said, "Then it's yours!" I arranged a pickup the next day and hoped Vibe would lend me her car.

One of my colleagues just went to Japan for work (teenage Lindsey is *so* jealous), and she brought back little cakes for us all to try. They are shaped and flavored like bananas, and they have basically no fat or sugar in them, so they are very bland. They're incredibly spongy on the outside with a very thick custard on the inside, and they weren't bad, but also, they weren't something I'm going to go out of my way to eat again.

17-year-old Lindsey: "Sugoi!! Sugoi!! Sugoi!!

"Kawaii desu ka!!" Yeah. I took Japanese for a year. What of it?

After work, I had to take the bus into Birkerød and pick up my medical form from citizen services. As I (maybe?) mentioned last week, the doctor forgot to note on my driver's license medical form that I can actually see perfectly with my glasses on. As I waited at the bus stop in the rain, I was kind of tucking my hands behind my computer bag and I felt something. YOU GUYS. Did I tell you how I lost my AirPods and I thought they must have fallen out of my computer bag on the bus? I was so upset with myself because I'm not usually a careless person. I had tracked down the number to the bus lost-and-found, asked Jacob to check his car, and torn the house apart to no avail. And then suddenly, here they were. Trapped in the lining of my computer bag.

It took me the whole bus ride to free them, but when I did, I popped them into my ears and listened to the new album from The National as I walked through town in the rain, just like a real Dane. It was freaking awesome.

Kaden was supposed to have basketball practice, but he had a tough day at school and chose not to go. Khloe took some medicine (thankfully, customs didn't take that from us...we shipped a pretty large box of OTC meds), laid down for a bit, and felt good enough by the evening time to go to theater practice.

Kaden offered to ride there with her on the bus, and he walked her to the theater. He got home OK, but even after many discussions, quizzes, and rote memorization of what to do after practice, Khloe still  managed to get on the bus going the wrong direction. I got worried when I hadn't heard from her and I knew practice had ended, so I texted to ask if she had made it to the train station yet.

She ended up in the middle of nowhere. The next bus home wasn't coming for almost 30 minutes, so I sat and texted updates every 30 seconds with her including fun Bitmojis and stuff the entire time and hoped that she wouldn't be too scared. I was also mildly concerned about her being abducted or accosted, but the violent crime rates here are so low that I knew it was very improbable. Vibe told me that the last notable thing that occurred in this area was a guy exposing himself to some kids like six years ago. So, ya know, rape or abduction or something seemed a little far-fetched.

She made it home OK and we were all very glad to see each other. Wild times here.

The green line is the route she was supposed to take, and the red line is the one she did take. I hope the illustration helps her in the future.

Tuesday

I had arranged to pick up the desk at 09:00, so Zac and I borrowed Vibe's car, left work, and drove to the address. It was a very easy pick-up from a lovely German woman, and she gave us two plastic chairs on casters from IKEA.

Also, my amazing desk chair from Sweden arrived!! I was so devastated to leave mine behind in the U.S. I'm glad Courtney gets to use it, but when I sat in the chair at my desk in Denmark for the first time, I could tell it wasn't going to meet my needs. Fortunately, ergo is a big deal here and my chair replacement was ordered very quickly. It helped that I saved all the specs for it.

She's so pretty.

After I got my chair, things got less exciting. First, I spent over an hour on the phone with an insurance agent trying to get "contents" insurance to cover all of our personal items in the event of theft, fire, vandalism, etc., car insurance so that we could legally purchase our vehicle, and dog insurance, which is required to have here in case your dog maims someone. I also ended up with something called accident insurance for the three kids, but upon discussion with my colleagues, this is an acceptable up-sell.

When I got home, I spent hours filing a damage claim for some of our furniture items that were scuffed, dented, and/or scratched during transfer. It was incredibly inconvenient to dig up sales records and figure out how many Danish kroner we should be paid for a damaged item we purchased years ago in British pounds from the U.S. Blah. 

Wednesday

Kaden had a stomach bug and stayed home from school. We've been pretty lucky with the illnesses so far, so it was a bummer that he got so sick.

I rode my bike to work again even though the weather was looking a little iffy. I'm not going to let Thomas win this challenge. Of course, I got rained on.

It wasn't so bad on the way in, but the sky was definitely threatening on the way home. I encountered some on-again-off-again showers, but I made it. I needed to go into town (Birkerød) to get the paperwork corrected for my driver's license by the doctor, so I stopped at home first to drop off my computer bag and my extra clothes and all the crap I didn't need to haul an extra 5 km on a bike.

I asked Zac if he wanted to go with me, but I figured he'd say no since he was already in sweatpants on the couch in the warm house. He looked really cozy. He did want to get some exercise though, so he agreed tentatively as he stared at the sky.

"We're going to get rained on."

"Noooo. It's just going to sprinkle and then it will stop. It's fine."

But what did I know?

It basically rained on us the whole ride. We stopped halfway and put on our raincoats when it really picked up. We were drenched by the time we got to the clinic.

I don't know how to help you picture our doctor's clinic, but it's essentially in a very old building in the center of town. There's a gravel parking lot that holds maybe 10 cars. You walk in a normal wood door as if you were going into someone's house, stand in a hallway, scan your health card using a nondescript 3" white box on the wall, sit in a plastic IKEA chair in the hallway, and eventually a door to a room opens and your doctor comes out and invites you in. There's no big reception area or office staff. The doctor is the one who answers the phone when you call. She fills out your paperwork. No one weighs you or takes your vitals. The doctor's office is also the exam room. It's really charming.

She did my eye test, corrected the paperwork, sealed the envelope, and sent us on our way. It had stopped raining and we were excited about that. We stopped at the grocery store on the way home to get a few things and then started riding home. Partway there, Zac said, "You'd better start going faster if you don't want to get rained on!" I was very casual about it and thought we'd be fine, but as soon as I saw our final destination in the distance, the skies opened up with a vengeance. The rain pelted down in the hugest drops, and the wind blew so aggressively that the drops hit us in the head sideways so hard that it was almost painful.

I started laughing.

I was having the best time. Zac wasn't quite as amused, but I think he was amused that I was amused.

I also taught Harrison to play King's Corner the other night, so he's been enjoying our nightly card game. The whole family is getting in on it, and my plot to move us all across the world so that we become closer as a family is working. Bwahahaha!

Thursday

Kaden missed school again, but felt well enough in the evening to go to basketball practice. I think it ended up being a little much for him, but he really likes Thursdays and he rode his bike to practice on his own. He only got honked at once in the roundabout.

Our new car was ready early, so Zac left work to go pick it up. Look what they do for you here! They had the car cleaned better than any detail job we've ever seen, parked in the show room, surrounded by Danish flags. Talk about your showmanship!

I had some late meetings with Post Falls and I took them from the office, so when I was done at 18:00, Zac came and picked me up in our new (used) car! How fun!

* * *

All right, so we have a car, we have temporary Danish driver's licenses, we have insurance, everyone has a travel card for the bus now within our commuter area, and my "Moving to Denmark" to-do list is getting shorter and shorter. They said it would take six to twelve months to figure out all the logistics. I'm gonna nail it in THREE. Maybe. Wish me luck!

This is Denmark. I didn't even remove the background. The country did that itself with all the rain.