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Published: January 31st 2010
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For my first entry i'd like to take it back to the 8th of NOVEMBER. At this time i was still living with my first host family, the Hansens, but on this particular weekend i was picked up by Lone and Poul, my second host parents, in order to go on a trip out into the sea to hunt wild oysters (devilishly tricky to catch) I already knew Poul and Lone quite well because i had lived with them for 2 weeks while the hansens were over visiting the states and you guys in the 505. so i got picked up on saturday afternoon along with paco, an ecuadorian exchange student that is currently living with me, and we took to Grejs for the night before the big trip the next morning. The next day Lone, my host sister sarah, paco, and i, stood up at around 6 and jumped in the French car for the trip down to a danish city called Ribe, its really famous for its church where a king used to live. He had to go off to battle one day whilehis wife was pregnant, but he wanted to know whether it was a boy or a
girl upon his return, so he told builders in the city to build a beautiful church, and if it was a boy, give the church a tower, but if it was a girl, give it a steeple. So he went off to battle and as the cliche god would have it his wife gave birth to twins (a boy and a girl) anyways your final result was a church with a tower and a steeple and its very beautiful and famous. I suppose the whole problem could have been avoided if he just waited like 10 minutes to be home and see for himself. its so foggy in denmark anyways that he probably would have first seen the church when he was roughly 50-60 meters away. but aside from that Ribe is also quite well known for its Marshland where, for several hours of the day, you can walk several kilometers out into the ocean without it getting deep at all and find 2 large banks of oysters just kind of standing like little black islands. We were driving down to ribe to see/eat the later. We entered the visitor center and got a quick 20 minute introduction on how
the walk out there would go, wildlife in the area, the history of the marshland(engrossing), which oysters would be best to eat, and lastly, if you didnt get back on time, the tide would rise leaving you and your sack filled with oysters under 2 meters of water. we were informed that it was roughly a 4 kilometer walk, the first 3 were supposed to be on solid ground mostly while the last was around knee to waist deep. but before we could experience it on our own we had to gear up with rubber pant boots, or as we call them "poots" this was just so you wouldnt get soaked and freeze. We had to test them in a bucket of water to make sure there were no tiny holes in the boots from the oysters, sadly pacos "poots" were holey 3 times in a row but at last we got some good ones for him. so we drove out to the dyke, which was pretty much the first dyke i had ever seen! We hiked over the dyke and got to see the amphibious land we would be walking on for the next 3 kilometers, we had our
backpacks and buckets and were ready for the track. the first three kilometers went by pretty uneventfully, there was either muddy land or about 6 inches of water and a hole bunch of strange snail tracks, but finally we made it up to the last look over the water that was our last kilometer. It was a pretty nice looking out and seeing in the distance a tiny little black island, but the walk wasnt exactly easy, often sarah, paco, and i would link arms and make a running/sloshing group effort to tug through the waste deep water, but at last we came to the 2 little islands of pure muscles, oysters and those long muscle things. We spent the next 20 or so minutes searching for some nice big oysters to bring home, there were some seriously MASSIVE ones! Some people had brought lemons and these special knives out with them so they could just slurp the oysters down right out there. We decided that because more than likely we would only be out here one time in our lives, and even though oysters raw taste like a massive booger dipped in sea water, we would have to try
one out there. so instead of searching for the biggest we switched gears to looking for the tiniest little guy possible, but those were pretty scarce and i only found a mediumish one. you can see in the picture my main thoughts about how it tasted😊 just pure delicious. So our buckets and packpacks were filled with oysters, and we made the exciting trek back through the water, the water was a little bit higher now and it was a little bit tougher, not to mention the fact that we had the full packs and that this little chinese couple tryed to carry like a 4 year supply back in a fishing net, 4 bags and and backpacking bag and we had to keep on waiting for them to catch up:D but at last we made it back to the dyke. We looked a little tired i think. We made a little stop in ribe to check out the church and the flood levels of the past, at points the whole town was under water! We grabbed a hotdog just to hold us over then caught some shut eye on the way home. We had worked up quite an appetite
but we knew there was still alot of work ahead of us before we could enjoy the delicasy we had collected. we washed them off and then it was man against oyster as we tryed to open sixty of them, who were very understandably reluctant to get opened and cooked. but at last we had them all ready and cleaned, we had already made the sauce and had some bacon ready for the famous "angel on the rocks" dish which is just pretty much an oyster with bacon on. We popped them in the oven and FINALLY got to enjoy our hard days work, cooked oysters certainly taste alot better than raw:D
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