Fødselsdag Festen! (Birthday Party)

You haven't lived until you've sung opera to a bar full of Norwegians and heard your own American accent morph into something distinctively drunken and Scandinavian.


Our kollegium has both a cafe AND a bar, because the Danes are just that fun-loving. Before we get there, let's go back a few hours. The beginning of the birthday party.


Two of the Norwegian guys made this:

And yes, it was that delicious. And yes, Scandinavian men can bake.

We then rearranged the kitchen so it looked like this:

See the ceiling light in the left side of the picture? We had to string it up with paperclips because it kept threatening to hit me on the head. Oh, and everyone's toasting. This happened quite a lot. When you make a toast in Denmark, you say 'skål' and look everyone in the eye AT THE SAME TIME without breaking contact. I still don't really know how that works. 

Before we had the cake, we sang Happy Birthday in Danish, which goes like this:

I dag er det Christine's fødselsdag - hurra, hurra, hurraaaa...

I don't know the rest, but you can probably find it on youtube. Or just watch the Dogme film Festen if you REALLY want to have fun*. 

And then we did this:

We're dancing in this picture; it's a little difficult to tell. It was about that time that we decided to move the party to the cafe. And then to the bar. And then we all fell asleep. It was pretty great.

*sarcasm. Great film, but very, very dark.