Quarantine, and After

When I'm sick I take up so much of my time.

This weekend I fell into such a state, and subsequently did nothing noteworthy between the hours of 15:00 on Friday and 8:30 this morning, with the exception of learning to cook.

That's right. The  Cucumber Queen has gone where no one--actually, where many people have gone before. Not only did I boil gluten-free pasta, lentils, and asparagus, I learned how to turn on the stove!

Seriously, though, the buttons on that thing are highly vexing. I spent almost fifteen minutes just turning it on and watching it turn off again, not knowing that it was in lock mode. Fortunately, the guy in whose presence I had dropped part of the cucumber referred to in my last post saw my struggle and valiantly came to my aid. I subsequently became acquainted with the oven.

I took a picture of myself eating an egg. There's not much else you can do for sightseeing in times like these. I shall refrain from posting it, however, in hopes that my new camera will arrive soon (that's why there haven't been any pictures!)

Anyway, I de-quarantined myself in time for class this morning--we had a test in my Current Trends in News Media class--and felt much better as the day went on. It was a rare sunny day, and quite warm. Walking to my bus station, no longer conscious of finding my way around the city I felt almost--Danish.

I took the bus home, as usual, and, as usual, there was a baby stroller on board. The difference this time was that said baby, young enough to not have any teeth, was pushing whole slices of bread into his mouth at once. Each slice would fill his cheeks. I laughed, and so did the other people near the baby. It was a nice communal moment that took place outside language. Sometimes this is what study abroad is all about.

The Suite Life with Kate Silver (ME!) and Danish People

I am afraid of many things.

Cooking is one of them.

To combat this fear, I am sometimes able to achieve a state of cognitive dissonance that entails extreme avoidance. Namely, I convince myself that if I ignore my roaring stomach, it'll go away. Not my stomach, that is, but you know...the hunger. I wish I were speaking of some super-emo existential hunger, but that's another story.

Today, I was hungry. Shocker! I ate all the food I had in my room, and since I didn't have class (no one has class on Wednesdays, but sometimes you have field studies--more on those, later) I didn't go into the city. Eventually, I realized I might have to go to the kitchen.

This was an unnerving thought. It really shouldn't have been; the Danes on my floor seemed nice enough. It was my cooking skills I was worried about.

I thought of running in, grabbing my mammoth cucumber, and running back to my room. I thought about it again, realizing that absconding with any suggestively-shaped variety of vegetable would label me much more decidedly than any lack of cooking skills. I had no desire to be THAT girl.

So I opened the door, and the Danish guys asked me something, to which I responded "En Engelsk?" and everything just kind of went from there. They thought it was pretty cool that I was from New York, and I thought it was pretty cool that they were from Denmark (I didn't tell them that).

They told me about Danish reality shows, and I told them about Netflix. Apparently they have a system like that here, but it's pretty sketchy.

As for the cucumber? It (he?) and my red pepper made a delicious light dinner along with a roll of bread and some peanuts. And since no meal would be complete without me dropping food on the floor, I nodded in satisfaction when the last chunk of cucumber landed on the tile and bounced halfheartedly. I have marked my territory.

Faux-Pas Series: First Installment

If there is one question you should never ask a Dane with whom you are unacquainted, it is "How are you?" 

Those three little words can only elicit one of two responses:

1) The Dane slowly backs away as though you are threatening to shoot him or her in the face. 

2) The Dane stops to think for a moment before saying, "Well, my ulcer is taking a break, but I seem to have a herniated disk so I went to the doctor and he told me I should stop cycling until it gets better, but of course I don't want to and then..."

Or something to that effect. So what is it about our beloved American expression that seems to push Danes into a paranoia/overshare dichotomy? 

They take it literally. What is a synonym for 'hi' to most Americans is considered by Danes a genuine inquiry after a person's well-being. Saying "how are you" (notice I didn't say "asking 'how are you'" to a stranger in Denmark is insulting and an invasion of privacy at the worst, and at the least, very confusing for the Dane. It shares space with the breach of etiquette that is telling inside jokes around outsiders. 

Once you know someone, though, it's alright. For the record, it's 'Hvordan går det?'

A Vague Account of the First Week

I couldn't find sleep on the plane. It wasn't in the surprisingly hearty rolls or even in the red wine. I didn't find it in the episode of Bones that repeated every hour, and not even in the lulling Bergman surrealist drama Fanny and Alexander.  


I've been in København (pronounced Kew-bin-hawn) since Sunday, and have picked up some sleep here and there between the smorgasbord of activities that pervaded my first week at DIS.  


I picked up a whole bushel of it last night, causing me to miss the boat trip and welcoming party. The first week really is exhausting!  


That's not to say that it hasn't been enjoyable. Yes, I'm intimidated by the number of Danes in my kitchen at the moment, but at least I have someone to inform me that I'm about to throw my garbage under the sink.  


I'm a student in the CMM program, but I'm a Film Studies major back at home. All my professors, Danish or American, really know their stuff, but my favorite class so far is The Literature of Ice and Snow, the first day of which we addressed our preconceptions of the words "North" "Ice" and "Snow". We considered semiotics, denotation, and connotation, and I'm really excited to read Smilla's Sense of Snow, which is a Danish modern classic that explores the postcolonial relationship between Denmark and Greenland. It's also a murder mystery, and I'm a pretty big fan of that genre!  


More later. I'm going to figure out how to cook some beans!