August to October (The Lost Chapters 2)

If anyone still checks this site, they might have noticed we haven't posted a single blog in the last two-and-a-half months. We might tell you we've been very busy with school, or that that nothing interesting has happened recently, or that we had a serious case of writer's block. But those would all be lies.

In fact, we haven't written anything for two reasons:

1. After a year in Denmark, things have stopped being quite so new and exciting. We're getting used to Danish life (and weather). We're beginning to accept the high prices, lack of friendliness and foreign language. We're settling in...
2. We're lazy.

Anthony has a particularly easy semester, so he has found a job. From 11pm-1am (Monday to Friday mornings), Anthony delivers newspapers in the local area. This isn't always the best experience (especially in the rain), but it has its benefits: two hours of quiet exercise and a whopping 35$/hour!

With this newfound wealth, we’ve decided to take a few weekend excursions. Two weeks ago, we visited friends in Munich and next weekend, we’re headed to Berlin. Anthony also bought himself a new digital camera and so we’ve got a lot of photos!

To check out where we’ve been, check out our “Travels Blog.”

Roskilde Festival

Roskilde Festival...What a blast! We'd been looking forward to it even before we bought our tickets in March. The festival lasts 8 days, with only 4 days being actual festival days with full music programs and stuff. Since we hadn't shown Etienne and Berns Copenhagen yet we opted to only come for the last 4 days. However, rumour had it that finding camping spots would be difficult if we didn't show up on the first day with everyone else to set up our tents.

So...Etienne arrived at Copenhagen Airport from London on the night of the 25th. After a quick stopover at our place we headed to Roskilde right away to grab our wristbands and wait until the gates opened up. In the morning, after having waited until the crazies had stormed the festival grounds we walked through an already mushrooming fields of tents and set up our tents. Little did we know then we ended up getting an amazing spot - right a the edge of the swimming area!

On Thursday we came back, in time to see Guns N' Roses. Guns N' Roses pulled a no-show for the first hour of their set. After a while people just assumed that they weren't going to show at all and begun yelling "Asshole" at the stage. When they finally did arrive, the first few songs were classics followed by a bunch of terrible, long solos. Partway through a few of us took off and checked out Sigur Ròs (which was an amazing show!).

Friday and Saturday didn't have very many bands playing. We really liked Morrisey, Tool, The Streets, Tool, Thäström, George Clinton Parliament/Funkadelic. Bob Dylan, was a suprising disappointment as he was just too old and had lost all stage presence. Despite being at the festival, we didn't have to miss the World Cup, as they showed the games on a huge screen.

Sunday was definitely the best day at the festival. There were so many good bands that we couldn't even fit them all in. We saw: Arctic Monkeys, The Strokes, Placebo, Franz Ferdinand, and the final act, Roger Waters performing Dark Side of the Moon. Roger Waters put on an AMAZING performance! Definitely the highlight of the festival.

Check out the festival website www.roskildefestival.com

Broløbet

At the end of June, we ran Broløbet - a race spanning the Øresund Bridge between Denmark and Sweden. It was the last time the race was going to be held so we decided to take advantage of an opportunity to cross the bridge on foot (normally the Øresund is only open to vehicular traffic). Since the entire distance of the race is a half-marathon (21.2 km), we divided the race up so that we each did roughly half of the distance.

The coordination involved for this race is pretty impressive. About 10,000 people participated, about half coming from each side of the bridge (Copenhagen and Malmö). For this they had two seperate registration centres and buses shuttling all the runners to the starting point. In addition, about 500 people were running the race as a relay so buses had to be coordinated to shuttle second leg runners to the halfway point and pick up the first leg relay runners from the halfway point to bring them to the finish line. On top of all this they had to close down a lane of traffic on the bridge and section off the rest of the course.

To see pictures and how we did in the race, check out www.broloppet.com.

Vi er forlovet

By now you probably already have heard:

MARIEKE AND ANTHONY ARE ENGAGED

(more details in the blog below)

A commemorative photo (as in Amelie)

The location: Basilique to Sacre Coeur, at sunrise, with a view of Paris

A reenactment...

Life in Denmark (the Lost Chapters)

So…After not having written a blog for months, we decided that we HAD to sit down and do one since most people have probably already given up on regularly checking this site. So much has happened in the last few months but we’ve had fewer opportunities to write blogs. Or rather, one of us would say “I’m going to write a blog today” but somehow it just never materialized. Anyway, it’s been two months and plenty has happened.

April was a pretty hectic month. Anthony went to England for Easter. He visited with relatives and family friends and had a really good time. Meanwhile, Marieke stayed in Copenhagen in a desperate attempt to salvage her first year project (having already kicked out one group member, she could then focus on coaxing the other member to actually do some work). The week didn’t turn out to be that terrible, since a friend of hers from the Queen’s Triathlon Club visited for 5 days from Maastricht (in the Netherlands).

Then, we both went into intense work mode, attempting to get our projects done. Anthony’s projects involved never-ending programming in Matlab to create a simulation of a wind turbine in changing winds. Marieke’s project had become a seemingly never-ending writing and revision process – investigating the computer industry’s preparations to phase-out several toxic chemicals from their production lines. Marieke made contact with an industry expert from the USA who was coming to Copenhagen for a conference. He provided valuable insights, and got Marieke into the conference, which ended up saving her project.

May was just a continuation of the hecticness. We were both finishing our projects and Anthony was starting exams. Despite the craziness, we did get our first taste of Danish summer weather and Danes coming out of hibernation. It was insane. If you think that Canadians love the summer, then you’ve never met a Dane. They literally go into social hibernation during the winter to the point where no one makes eye contact. Once the weather warms up, the neighbours, who you thought were completely rude and inhuman in the winter suddenly start saying “hej”. It’s still usually not much more than “Hej”, because after all they are Danish.

We planned a weekend trip to Paris for “Anthony’s birthday”. We stayed in this really inexpensive, cute hotel called Hôtel Bonséjour in the district of Montmartre. We did the obligatory site seeing: Notre Dame, Eiffel Tour, the Sewers Museum, the Louvre etc. and we also had the chance to meet up with some family friends of Anthony’s for lunch. We ended up staying with them for the whole afternoon and were able to practice our French.

On the Sunday morning Anthony and I went to go watch the sunrise from the top of Montmartre at the Basilique du Sacré Coeur. This was where Anthony proposed! Marieke finally realized why Anthony had been so adamant to go to Paris, while our projects were still not finished (May 14 represents 50 months as a couple). He had been planning this for months and had the ring custom-made by a jeweller in Florence (Marieke’s high-school friend Paula). We spent the rest of the day touring Montmartre to see all of the locations from the film Amélie (which we saw on our first date): the grocer near Amélie’s home, the café where she works, the adult video store where Nino works, the Metro station where they meet and the photo booth where Nino loses his album.

We haven’t yet set a date for the wedding, but it will at least wait until we return to Canada. In the meantime, we invite all of our friends and family to come celebrate our engagement with us (the party will last from now until August 2007).

June has been pretty interesting so far. We are now completely done our projects and exams and did well for our first year. This has definitely become the month of guests. Janice was on a three week break from work and visited us twice on her way to Munich, Budapest, Belgrade, Vienna and Prague. Berns and Etienne are both coming with us to Roskilde Festival. Berns has travel plans before and after the festival to visit friends in Prague and Munich, while Etienne is coming with us for the first four days of our three-week Scandinavia tour. With Etienne we’ll be leaving the day after the festival and taking a night train to Oslo. From there we’ll be seeing the fjords around the Bergen area. When Etienne flies out of Oslo, we’ll be continuing north through Norway and traveling through Finland, Sweden and possibly some of the Baltic countries.

We’ll be back in Denmark in August and we’re thinking of going on a long bike ride to Legoland. Marieke’s family is also coming to visit, as well as Alex and Emily. So, our next blog posting may not be for a while…

Immigrants in Denmark

It's been a while since we posted anything, but unfortunately we are very busy. We do not finish school for another month, so right now is crunch time. Plus, we have to plan our holidays.

So, to tide you over, here are a few stories about immigrants in Denmark:

First, the poorest neighbourhood in Copenhagen (the “ghetto”) has decided that the best way to improve living conditions and property values would be to limit the number of non-Danes who live there.

Second, a recent study has shown that ONLY 30% on immigrant now feel actively discriminated against. This is a “great improvement” from the 43% five years ago. Politicians everywhere are proud, saying that this shows a new level of Danish tolerance. Actually, over the last five years, the Danish government has become distinctly anti-immigration, enacting several laws to limit new immigrants. In our opinion, this study could just be showing that the 13% of immigrants who felt most discriminated-against have left, and no new immigrants have been allowed to take their place…

Third, another study investigated the best traits for an immigrant to have in order to find employment in Denmark:

• At least second-generation immigrant (preferably third)
• Has worked previously in Denmark (for a Danish company)
• Has Danish spouse
• Has employed spouse
• Not a refugee (or a relative of a refugee)
• Fluent in Danish

The authors of the study commented that immigrants often wrongly feel that they cannot find work. Apparently ignoring the absurdity of their own results, they said that any immigrant can easily find work in Denmark (provided they possess all of the above qualities).

Springtime in Denmark

Spring has arrived and we have had two weeks of almost constant rain. As we talked to some friends back home, we started getting nostalgic for our days at Queen’s (and in Canada in general).

We miss living close to all our friends. We miss the diversity of a multicultural country. Anthony misses the blue skies and mountains of Alberta. We miss student clubs, and student bars. Marieke misses recycling (and hates that Danes wear fur). We wish we knew any of our neighbours or at least that they would smile once in a while.

Then, just as we’re starting to feel homesick, the skies cleared and the sun came out (literally). Suddenly, Denmark didn’t seem so bad and we realized that we’re really enjoying ourselves here. We both really like our university programs and we love our apartment. We’re having fun learning Danish. We get to bike everywhere, and the public transit is so good you really don’t need a car. The grocery stores sell tons of organic food, and super cheap beer. We get lots of holiday time, and are planning many trips. We’re loving it.

Speaking of trips, I’m off to England for a week to visit some relatives. Marieke will be staying here to work on her first-year thesis, so if you’re procrastinating, give her a call (with Skype, it’s only 4 cents/min). Her mobile number is +45 60 62 74 35.

Recent Visitors

So we've been getting visitors at our place again! First my mom, in the beginning of February and then Anthony's parents in mid-March. My mom's visit was a surprise - everyone else knew about it but me. I knew that my mom had been planning to visit my Oma in Holland for a week. A while back she had mentioned that she might stop off in Denmark to see me, considering that she would be in Europe anyway. Closer to the date, she kept saying that she'd think about it but that she probably wouldn't have time to see me. So I was kind of bummed, as I'd gotten my hopes up that my mom would visit.

So anyway, Anthony had asked me about a week beforehand if I could be home around noon one day to receive a package (it was close to my birthday and we had made a few travel plans/ticket reservations that required someone to actually be home to receive the package - so I wasn't suspicious). So, when the "package" arrived it turned out to be my mom- albeit a little late due to inevitable flight delays. I couldn't believe my eyes! There was no way that my mom was standing in my living room! We had a really nice visit, despite it being extremely short (about 24 hours from the time she arrived until she had to be back at the airport again). We didn't get to do very much sightseeing but that'll have to wait until August when the whole family is due to come out and visit!

Anthony's parents were here for 3 days after having gone to Anthony's cousin's wedding and before their 25th year anniversay holiday to Sicily. It was a lot of fun! We went up to Helsingør to see Kronborg castle (the famed Hamlet castle) , did a walking tour of Copenhagen, went to the Carlsberg Brewery and went to Christiania (that hippy village that we always refer to). The last night that Brenda and Michael were here we had our "landlords" over for dinner, which was great since they had a chance to meet some real Danish people.

So now we're in the midst of organizing our summer and our next guests' visits. In April, my brother Pieter might come out, and a girl I know from the Queen's triathlon club who's in Holland on exchange is coming out to visit over Easter. In June, some of our friends (so far Berns and Etienne) are coming out to go the Roskilde Festival and do some traveling with us. In August my whole family (maybe minus Pieter) is coming out to visit.