Sweden

We took a day trip to Sweden, driving across the Øresund bridge between Copenhagen, Denmark and Malmø, Sweden. The first section (4km) is under water tunnel and you then plop above water for the rest of the journey (8km).

We found some grape jelly there! Well, kind of... they had something called "Port Wine" with pictures of grapes on the front, the cool thing is it really does taste like wine - YUMMY!!! Now if I can only find Vodka, Whiskey and Rum jelly I'll be eating PBJs every day. We found it amusing that the strawberry jelly came in unusual packaging.

Christiansborg Palace

Last weekend we took a tour of the Queen's work palace (she lives in a grander palace, must be tough). They forbid us to take pictures of the inside but I accidently snapped a couple anyway >:-). My favorite part was viewing and hearing about Denmark's most famous picture, Lauritz Tuxen's painting of King Christian IX and family. The history of the family is impressive, Christian IX is known as the Father-in-law of Europe because his six children became kings and queens of various Europeon countries (like Greece and Russia) - I bet conversation around the dinner table was vivid.




Denmark has some cool buildings, I like the spire of this one:

A stroll in the park

Before the big snow storm yesterday we took a stroll in Frederiksberg Garden, a large park many people use for jogging, ice skating, viewing a castle and last but not least celebrating a huge milestone in a toddler's life.

Danish mothers approach a special tree in the park and have a little ceremony, the hanging of a pacifier on the tree's branches. Some have personal inscriptions like RIP 2.5 years, or pictures of the toddler laminated next to the retired binky. We saw one such mother and toddler hitting this milestone, it looked like it worked - the kid was excited about "graduating" instead of the frustration and hair pulling I've seen relatives go through.





The park has ponds, strangely the ducks don't migrate somewhere for the winter (well, at least here). The water surface is 90% frozen however there is always a tiny portion open. Perhaps the park crew breaks open a section and hands out food - the ducks have a good deal here, why leave?

First week

Wow, I can finally take a nice hot shower. The drain in our shower was clogged and until they fixed it last night we've been rather smelly (well, my family has - I took showers at work).

Interesting enough there is a major problem with the water here, it is full of calcium. This means you need to wipe down the shower hardware every morning otherwise it quickly corrodes and you get charged for not maintaining the house. You also need to put special chemicals in the washers otherwise your dishes discolor and your clothes start getting stiff.

Breakfast and lunch are provided at work, no charge except the 350DKK they monthly take out of the paycheck. You're not able to opt out of the program, but then again you wouldn't want to. Each meal is a wonderful buffet of many different and delicious foods, quite a bargain for $56 a month. I was easily spending $100+ month for unhealthy and not so tasty food in Redmond.

Sabrina is disappointed in the jelly selection. She loves grape and yet oddly they don't have it, worse than that - they've never heard of it and stare at you like a freak. You do have your standard strawberry, etc as well as some rather strange creations like carrot jelly. Mmmm.... yummy.... or not.

We made it!

The airlines gave us a bit of grief over Kibbles (our cat) but we pushed through and got to Copenhagen in one piece. Sabrina started school today (Hørsholm International School) and I started work. Everyone is pretty helpful here, they know how tough it is to get going in a foreign country. We got a couple of dinner invitations which should help get our social life off on the right foot. Will post more later... time to head home!