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Published: March 28th 2010
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I am very much adapting to the different life style here in Denmark. The more I have seen of it, the more obvious the difference is. I can definitely see that growing up on a farm would be a fascinating experience. There is so much space and so few people. Here, the air is fresh and the plantation is very graceful. Each night, you can have a glass of wine and see the sunset over the ocean. In addition, each day is shared with your animals. You can walk the dog, play with the cat, ride the horses and attend the chicken and pigs. Unlike the fast pace city, where focus is on the money, cars and prestige; life on the countryside is very peaceful and charming.
Everyone on the countryside is very trusting. Often people do not lock their doors, or they would give their spare keys to their neighbors. People would leave sacks of vegetables on the side of the street unattended along with a board labeling its price and a moneybox to put the money in.
Both of Maria’s parents are very humorous and warmhearted. They are also very interesting and curious so we have many
random discussions. Her mother is also a very good cook and made very exciting Danish food every night. I joined her parents for some wine one evening and had some exciting and humorous discussion of current events. Her brother is also extremely friendly, has a lot of energy and loves to chat about random stuff. I look forward to partying with him at some point during my stay.
March 19th I went out with Maria’s friends for some partying in the town of Aalborg. They are all extremely friendly and spoke fluent English. For no reason at all, they decided to show me the school they went to in the middle of the night. There is a street in Aalborg where there are lines of pubs on both side and festive people everywhere.
March 21th Maria and I went up north to a white sand beach that is very popular during the summer. Near by there is an old church that is built on the edge of a cliff. Currently the ocean is rapidly eroding the cliff underneath the church and the locals have started a project to move the church to another location. We also saw a
lighthouse on top of a sand dune. It was extremely windy and within minutes there was sand in my eyes, ears, hair, nose… everywhere. That afternoon we saw Nanette (one of Maria’s friends that also came to Thailand) play in her band.
Next day Maria gave me a tour of her school. It is similar to a college in Canada, with smaller classrooms. The architectures of the school were very old and charming. There was many interesting art around the school painted by students. There are also weird artistic statues all around the school that apparently no one understands.
We walked through the streets of Aalborg. For the first time in my life, I went door by door to many restaurants to drop off resumes for work. I guess during a low tourist season in an economic recession job availability isn’t that high. Especially when you don’t speak the local language.
On march 23, we traveled to Læsø, a small island in the north of Denmark with a population of 2500. Læsø is a popular tourist destination in the summer. It is still very beautiful at the time of our arrival; however, it was a cold compared
to what I’m use to. On Læsø we stayed with Maria’s Aunt. She has a small house on the farm. By small I don’t just mean it has a few rooms. The roof is just over 6 feet tall, so in two occasions I bumped my head on the ceiling. She also made us amazing traditional Danish food, lots of greasy meatballs and potatoes. Each day we biked over 6 hours, so the heavy meals were a perfect end to each evening. We spent 2 days in Læsø and saw the beach, some very old churches, a small tower, a small candle factory, a museum with seaweed roofing and the famous Læsø salt factory, where salt was over 10 dollars per kg. Læsø is very small but friendly communities so often we walked around private property and no one seemed to care. We also meet an ice-cream man on Læsø has been to 125 countries and spoke Chinese.
Yesterday we went to the Aalborg summer street festival. It was a festival to celebrate the coming of summer. There was a skateboarding competition, funky music, graffiti artists at work and street dancing. Despite the event being called a summer festival,
it was extremely cold, which made the BBQ and soup we bought all the more amazing. Random note: the size of a burger in Denmark is about 50% larger than they are in Canada. They have more vegetables in them but less sauce, and no ketchup!
I was also given proper instructions for horse riding for the first time in my life yesterday. At the beginning we took the horses to a small area next too her barn enclosed by a wooden fence. Maria gave me the instructions while her mother looked on nervously and her father looked photos. It was amazing how well the horses can understand instructions such as start, stop and turn. After learning the basic instructions, I decided to take the horse out of the enclosed area, and get a little more speed. Then the horse started running really fast and it because very bumpy and extremely hard to maintain balance. At that point I tried to stop the horse and that’s when it decided to do a crazy rodeo like jumping move. Perhaps I could have held on if I tried, but seeing that I have no idea how to control a horse my
first instinct to was abandon ship, so I flew off the horse straight into the mud. After that I decided to perhaps slow down my learning curve. We had a nice ride around the woods. Horse riding is really fun and Maria’s riding skills was quite impressive. I will definitely try to get better at it.
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