今天看到政大校貓小橘出車禍過世的消息。可憐的小橘！
我弟弟是念政大的，所以格外難過。
看有新聞報導說肇事的車子不是故意衝撞到他的，
而是小橘突然自己跳到車子底下被碾過的 : (
弟說小橘原本就為病所苦（貓愛滋跟疝氣）。莫非小橘他有厭世念頭？！
不論如何，希望小橘在天堂可以很快樂。
在小橘的臉書上看他的照片，不知不覺就看了兩個小時。
實在是太可愛了！每個表情跟姿勢都好可愛！
(Source: 小橘的臉書照片)
話說，今天的天氣實在是好得不像話。陽光刺眼，微風徐徐，我終於打開房間的窗戶了，入冬以來第一次。春天來了呀！很難想像三月底我跟老公跟他的同事們一行人還要去法屬阿爾卑斯山中某海拔2300公尺的地方滑雪。我這輩子只滑過一次雪，而且是慘痛的經驗，本來是發誓此生再也不要滑雪了，沒想到老公百般地盧慫恿（他很想去），為了維持夫妻的感情，我只好捨命陪君子了。
(ㄟ…我可以只去那邊玩雪橇就好了嗎？不然我可能得用滾的下山了… T_T)
總之，現在還不能讓自己太沈浸在春天的美好氣氛中！
This weekend MT had Saturday all day free, and we decided spontaneously to take a trip to Helsingør, just for the heck of it. We could have just as well gone to Hillerød, or Roskilde, or south to Møn, but we randomly picked Helsingør from the map, and so to Helsingør we went! From Østerport Station we each bought a 24-timers billet (a ticket that allows you to travel anywhere in the “hovedstad” region within 24 hours) and hopped on a train going directly to Helsingør. It was easier than I thought.
Inside and around Helsingør Station
During my past year living in Denmark I hardly left Copenhagen. I’ve traveled about 45 min. north to the Louisiana Museum a few times and 1.5 hours northwest to Frederiksværk to visit a friend, but that was it. I had no idea what the rest of Denmark looked like. Which is sad, considering that I’ve already lived here for a while now, and Denmark really isn’t that big. Before I visited, I didn’t know anything about Helsingør except that it is located on the northeastern tip of Denmark, on Sjælland (the island on which Copenhagen is also located), and is as close to Sweden as one can get on Danish soil. From Helsingør, one can get a perfectly clear view of the houses across the narrow Øresund strait in Helsingborg, Sweden. (I have a friend who lives in Helsingborg, who told me he can see everything going on in Denmark just as clearly from the window of his house.) The distance in between is only 4 km.
Therefore, it’s not difficult to imagine what a crucial military role Helsingør played back when Denmark and Sweden were still enemies. The Kronborg Castle in Helsingør, built in the 1420s by the Danish king, Eric of Pomerania, and now a UNESCO World Heritage Site, was a sea fortress that collected loads of money in tolls and controlled the entranceway to the Baltic Sea. It’s one of northern Europe’s most important Renaissance castles. However, Helsingør and Kronborg Castle is probably most known for being the setting of Shakespeare’s famous tragedy, Hamlet, in which Helsingør is written as “Elsinore.”
On our way to Kronborg Castle we came across several beautiful old houses and a church (the main church). Many were built in the 1500s and 1600s and have some sort of historical significance, although I didn’t realize it at the time. One house I randomly spotted and took a photo of simply because it had a swan on the facade turned out to be the old Swan Pharmacy (Svaneapoteket), which was built around the year 1500 on Strandgade 77 and served as the town’s pharmacy from 1578 all the way until 1970.
This particular orange house on the corner of Stengade had a plaque on it, which mentions that the house was home to author and publisher Christiern Pedersen, famous for being the first person to translate the Bible into Danish. From 1578 to 1619 this building housed the Øresund’s customs office.
Oxernes Gård, Stengade 66, built in 1460
MT and I spent almost all of Kronborg Castle’s open hours on its grounds (during the winter it’s open 11 am – 3 pm). There were free audio files available for downloading via bluetooth throughout the castle, and we listened to them on my cell phone as we explored the various rooms in the castle and looked at paintings and other artifacts. We also visited the chapel and Maritime Museum, and walked around enjoying the beautiful view of the sea. It was a typical winter day, cold and windy with just faint traces of sunlight.
Beautiful orange hues on the castle grounds
Tiny doors, tunnels, cannons
Indoors
The Maritime Museum in the castle was quite interesting. I learned that in 1639 some Danes were among the first Europeans to immigrate to the United States, where many settled in Wisconsin. And that the Bronx in New York was actually named after Jonas Bronck, an early immigrant to the region with Danish ties. There’s a lot of other pretty cool stuff to look at.
When we were done with Kronborg Castle, it was past 3 pm. We wandered off to look for some lunch and ended up having hot drinks and sandwiches in the cafe in the Helsingør Culture Center. The food was unexpectedly good and reasonably priced. There seemed to be nothing else to see, as most places looked closed. In fact, one of the first things we noticed about Helsingør upon exiting the train station, besides the really cool “local trains” (Lokalbanen) gliding through the streets, was that there’s not much business going on, and even the Tourist Information Center was closed, although I don’t understand why a tourist information center would only open Monday to Friday, when most potential tourists are at work, and not on weekends. After walking around a bit more in downtown Helsingør, we took the train back to home sweet home Copenhagen.
We had a nice time in Helsingør. Nowadays Helsingør is a quaint little town that’s much quieter than it was in its days of glory, but its historical and cultural significance makes it still well worth a visit.
Today is our 1st anniversary.
The 1st wedding anniversary is traditionally known as the “paper” anniversary, and the husband and wife are supposed to give each other anniversary gifts based on this theme. Neither of us has had time to give this much thought. Yet on this day, the universe gave us both the most amazing and fitting gift imaginable: a contract.
It came as a pleasant surprise because we had not been expecting it at all. But it changes everything. Just a few days ago we were lamenting about the shortcomings of our nomadic lifestyle, and here, out of the blue, comes this wonderful opportunity allowing us to have a more stable life. We might be staying in Denmark a little longer than we had originally thought we could.
For our next apartment, we could sign a longer lease and not have to move every few months. I have a greater incentive to perfect my Danish. I will have more time to explore my career options. He could seriously look into getting licensed here. We might even be able to adopt a cat…or have a baby. Who knows. In any case, this particular anniversary gift of paper really changes the way we plan the next few years of our lives.
To whoever or whatever that is out there, watching over us: Thank you. Thank you for the best anniversary gift ever. (And all I could come up with was toilet paper.)
(Just kidding.)
I’ve been home with the flu since Thursday. I rarely get sick, so I’d forgotten how terrible it feels to have the flu; the last time I can remember being sick like this was November 2010, before I quit my previous job. This time round, all the symptoms seem to be concentrated to my head, which is good, I guess. At least there’s no throwing up or muscle aches. But my nose is like a broken faucet during the day, and I keep waking from a splitting headache during the night. In general, my entire head (esp. brain and nasal sinuses) has just been woozy and in pain. Oh well, I will manage. Hopefully my head will be cleared before my exam on Friday.
I haven’t been seeing much of MT these days; in the mornings I am vaguely aware of him getting up and leaving for work, and at night he comes home in the middle of my dreams. We did get to spend Friday night together though—MT came home from work on Friday night with stuff he thought would make me feel better—enough Vietnamese takeout food to feed four people, a bottle of red wine, and a packet of ginger candy. I nearly laughed out loud. I was sick with the flu, not starvation! But boy were the food and wine delicious!
The Vietnamese food was from LêLê on Østerbrogade. We pass by it a lot but had never tried it, even though I kept reading good reviews about it in Danish newspapers and magazines. I had a feeling that my husband would bring home some food from there to “surprise” me (whenever he says he has a surprise for me, I always manage to figure out what it is beforehand. I know him too well…what can I say?), but I’m glad he did : )
It was really good. I could taste how fresh the ingredients were, especially the shrimp, the pork slices and the assortment of herbs. All of the dishes came with a generous amount of fresh mint, basil and other leafy greens, which I loved. The hot soup was great for my congested nose. The two of us polished off all of the food and finished the bottle of red wine while we watched two movies in bed. It was one of our best date nights ever, even though I had to keep my nose plugged with tissue paper, and MT had to kiss me through my snot. (Love you too, babe <3)
By the way, I LOVE the ginger candy. MT got it from Lêlê too, although the candy’s from Indonesia. I don’t normally like to eat candy, but this one’s got a chewy texture that I like, and it’s surprisingly gingery and spicy. It works great on my irritated throat. Never thought I’d be discovering “new” Asian foods in Denmark!
We saw bags of pre-washed and pre-chopped kale at the supermarket the other day (they don’t always have it). We weren’t sure how agreeable raw kale would taste in a salad, but decided to give it a try anyway.
I really hate the smell and taste of raw kale. It’s so rubbery and green that if I smelled or touched it with my eyes closed I wouldn’t associate it with “edible” at all. Then how does one use it in a salad? I personally believe that the key is lemon juice.
Somehow, after being “marinated” in a little lemon juice for 20-30 minutes, all of the raw kale leaves’ unpleasant taste and smell disappeared. I only used the juice of half a lemon for 2 servings of this salad, to which I also added salt and pepper, olive oil, 1 tomato, a little fresh parsley, and chopped garlic and thinly sliced onion and red bell pepper sautéed until soft, and some cheese shavings. It was a very delicious salad, not to mention nutritious.
Of course, as meat eaters, we couldn’t resist plopping on a steak with creamy mushroom sauce on top. The steak and raw kale salad tasted wonderful together : )
I was sitting at home this evening, eating dinner by myself and listening to this week’s Valentine’s Day edition of the radio show “This American Life.”
Act One was an interesting story about a guy and his girlfriend who’d been in a wonderful and relatively problem-free relationship together for more than ten years but decided that they should try sleeping with other people first before getting married, just because they’d never done it before and were wondering if they were missing out by only having been with each other their whole adult lives. This was a dangerous experiment to undertake, and by the end of it their once solid relationship did not survive the test. There’s more to the story but my focus is towards the end, when the guy tells host Ira Glass that this experience taught him that it’s healthy for any relationship to be evaluated from time to time, and if he ever got married, he would want to have an agreement where he and his wife have to get “remarried” at the end of seven years.
And to my surprise Ira Glass, who normally doesn’t go out of his way to disagree with the person he’s interviewing, disagreed. He said, “[O]ne of the things that’s a comfort in marriage is that there isn’t a door at seven years. And so if something is messed up in the short-term, there’s a comfort of knowing, well, we made this commitment. And so we’re just going to work this out. And even if tonight we’re not getting along or there’s something between us that doesn’t feel right, you have the comfort of knowing, we’ve got time. We’re going to figure this out. And that makes it so much easier. Because you do go through times when you hate each other’s guts… And the no escape clause, weirdly, is a bigger comfort to being married than I ever would have thought before I got married.“
This statement resonated so profoundly within me that I had to go back and listen to it one more time. This really, truly is, I believe, the essence of marriage. Ira Glass couldn’t have put it better. In addition to being a contract with the government, marriage is a promise between two people, a mutual reassurance that since there’s no easy way out (assuming that getting a divorce is logistically, financially and emotionally a pain in the ass), both sides will put in every effort to make things work, and not let every little conflict get in the way of the bigger picture.
Interestingly, just earlier today a girlfriend was lamenting to me about how so many guys these days tend to just run away from a relationship rather than try to work things out, and why it’s so hard to find “the one.” Our conclusion was that nowadays too many people have this unrealistic idea of “love at first sight.” It means that people expect to know whether a person is right for them upon meeting them for a very short period of time, with the presumption that if the person really is “the one” for them, he/she would come “ready-made” with all the desired and suitable qualities, but if not, there’s no point trying. Therefore, when even a small problem occurs, they will be quick to give up and break off the relationship, because in their mind, if it was the right person, everything would be smooth sailing and free of disagreements, anger, yelling, boredom, frustration, sarcasm, etc. etc…, right?
I admit I may have been a little like that before. I would wonder: If he really is the right person for me, why is everything still so hard? But eventually I began to realize how lucky I am to be “stuck” in this marriage. The fact that I can’t get out of it is actually a blessing. Deep down I know that even if we have a huge fight we’ll still be together tomorrow, and even if we’re going through a rough patch, or a phase, or whatever, we have lots of time to work it out, because neither of us can run away. The restrictive nature of marriage is actually a form of protection of…love. (I know, it sounds terribly cheesy. But I’m glad Ira Glass thinks the same way.)
