Dan the Dane

Goddag til min Aussie venner og familie! Hvordan goer det?

Things here are going very well! I've just hit the big 3 month mark a couple of days ago, but only feels like i've been here for about a week! I'm just having a brilliant time here, and while I miss some things from home (beaches, warm weather, mangoes, tim tams, friends and my record player, but not in that order particually), mostly I have enough things here to keep me more than amused.


I've fallen in love with a danish liver spread called Lever Postej (post-eye):

From Wikipedia:

In Denmark the liver is formed into a paste to which herbs, salt, pepper and other desired seasoning are added. It is then put into a loaf pan and baked in an oven.

The leverpostej is sliced or spread on buttered Danish dark rye bread (rugbrød) and eaten as an open faced sandwich. It might also be topped with any of a variety of pickled items, such as beets, løj, or cucumbers. It is also traditional to place a slice of the saltkød on top of the leverpostejmad.

It's probably the Danish equivalent of Vegemite, and it certainly took a bit of getting used to, but now i love it!

Earlier this month, I had my second Rotary camp, a Viking camp in a city called Roskilde, about 3 hours from here. All the rotary exchange students (new and old) met for a weekend of hammer throwing, viking ship building and danish folk dancing, which was all very very fun.

Everyone (except me, i seem to be lost in the back row somewhere):



Matt (Newcastle, Australia) undertaking a typical Viking pasttime, log throwing:



Camilla (Argentina) with a danish troll:



Some attractive vikings found in the museum:



On a replica viking ship:



Alistair (Canberra, Australia) with a viking-sized icecream, the Grand Danois:



And me with my hair-twin:



This month I also went with the Silkeborg exchange students to visit the resting place of the first king, and ancestor of Prince Frederik, King Gorm. His bones have been moved around a lot in the past 1000 years, but they currently rest in Jelling inside a modest church. The Danes take their Royalty very seriously, and actually have the oldest continuous Royal family in the world.

The Jelling Stone has runes on it dating from 1000 AD, raised by Gorm the Old for his wife.



Soetkin (Belgium) and Julia (Italy) in the church where Gorm's bones lay:



Most of the silkeborg exchange students with a statue of H.C. Andersen:




On the same trip we also visited Odense, and saw the exact place where Hans Christian Andersen was born inside the H.C. Andersen museum which was very cool.

Other events in the recent few weeks include purchasing tickets to the Skanderborg festival, as unfortunately i wasn't allowed to go to the bigger Roskilde festival. However, Skanderborg festival involves 5 days of camping in a town just 10 minutes from Ry, with big names like Eric Clapton, Franz Ferdinand and the Kings of Leon playing. It's not til August, but tickets sell out every year. It's called Danmark's Smukkeste Festival, (Denmark most beautiful festival) so I'm looking forward to it a lot!

I've also recently been out rowing and I can really see spring on the way now. Apparently in the next two weeks, all the beech trees around here will get their leaves back and the whole countryside will turn much greener. The weather this week has been very very nice, I was even able to wear shorts and a t-shirt on the weekend! This Thursday, it's going to reach 17 degrees! I helped Freddy mow the lawn on the weekend, and managed to get the tiniest bit of sun on my arms and face.

On the 4th of May, I am going to be moving families, which is both very sad and very exciting. I'm looking forward to my next family, but I'm going to miss this one a lot. On the 10 til the 12th of May, I'm going to be on a trip to Norway with my language school for whitewater rafting! We are travelling by ferry up to Norway, which I'm sure will be very very cold. And then, the weekend after that is Eurotour! Beyond that is school holidays until mid-August.

Mange knus, Daniel