Little things

As I'm getting used to all things Danish I find myself less and less surprised by the small things but thinking back today there are a lot of small things that threw me off a bit in the beginning. Here is a small list.

1. Light switches are typically small square buttons and flip the opposite direction. ie. down is on.
2. When people go grocery shopping you only shop for a day or two, not the whole week. For this reason you don't see many shopping carts.
3. Because there are no shopping carts homeless people can't keep their stuff in them as is the fashion in nyc. Instead they use handtrucks or fashion rickshaw type carriages. (Also I've only seen like 10 homeless people, all in better shape than most in ny though equally crazy).
4. In money, commas and decimals are the opposite of the US. 3,000.00 is written as 3.000,00
5. Sometimes you see something for like 49,99. I'm not sure but I think this is an impossible price to make with Danish currency. The cents are called øre and I think they are only in denominations of ,25.
6. No fatties. Sure there are some heavier people but it's really pretty rare to see someone I'd call obese. In my nyc experience I'd say maybe a quarter of people on my train everyday were visibly overweight.
7. Bikes bikes bikes. They are everywhere. This is pretty obvious but when I first came here I really wasn't prepared for how much people ride. Also I've learned that people are just as much impatient assholes on bikes as they are in cars.
8. History. Århus has got some! Again, obvious but unexpected when I first arrived. The office building I work in for example is from the 1600s, over 100 years older than America, additionally it's in great shape. Things are extremely well cared for here.
9. At grocery stores the cashiers sit down and they have a panel in front of them that lifts up which is where the money is kept, not in the register.

It would have been nice to have an even 10 but I can't think of one more right now. Maybe ten could be that I'm surprised how much it feels like home. I've been here a bit over 3 months now but I feel extremely comfortable and it genuinely feels like a lot longer. The city is smallish and in a way reminds me of the city where I went to school. It's got the same sort of charm and while Århus is a bit larger it affords the same sense of familiarity.

Also, I started Danish lessons and it's great! Having been mostly programming for the past 2 years I think has restructured the way I process information and I think my mindset is now a lot more compatible to learning languages.

vi ses!

Hallow Helloween

Halloween post! We had Halloween in November because, we did. Everyone that showed up was in costume, it was fantastic! Though they don't really celebrate Halloween like we do in the states I felt right at home at our party. On the real Halloween we actually got some trick-or-treaters which was really strange.

Anyway, this post needs less words.







My photos always look terrible when I upload them. I blame flickr, or compression algorithms or something.

Stuff you don't care about

My camera ran out of batteries and I'm sort of scared to try to charge it because that last thing I used my adapter on (alarm clock) got fried. So instead a story. Last Thursday I went to a meeting of the Danish Flash User Group (DFUG) to see Mike Chambers and Lee Brimelow speak. It turned out to be a really good time and I met some really cool people. Long story short one of the people I met was Ralph Hauwert, one of the developers of papervision 3d, a 3d engine for Flash CS3. Still with me? Anyway talking to him was nice for more reasons than that neither of us speak very good Danish (though he is much better than I am) and we conversed in english. It got me excited about AS3 and 3d in general which brings me around to the point of this post and the black box below. This is my first attempt at 3D in a code based environment. To use it, click once to shoot a bunch of balls up and then press spacebar to pause it and rotate it with the mouse. When in that mode pressing shift will resume the balls falling. It's not much and though I pieced the code together from other examples for the most part, I'm proud. Also it's only 4k. Sweet. Flash is great.



PS. wu-tang put out a new mixtape on the internet and it's awesome. download it!

I was talking to my co-workers about Colbert's attempt to make a fake run for president and apparently they had this happen a few years ago, except he won. A comedian named Jacob Haugaard ran for parliament and was actually elected to serve. When he was preparing one of his issues included that he hated wind blowing in your face while you were riding a bike, so he promised for wind to blow from your back whenever you rode. He also promised things like changing the weather and putting god back in churches. With a little wikipedia digging I cam across the election results here. Most shocking to me is that the voter turnout rate was 84.3 percent! The US had a turnout of about 55% in 2004 which was one of the highest turnouts in recent history. Also, he ran without a party, try that USA. Granted it was just a seat in parliament and not prime minister or anything, but still, look at that turnout. When elected he actually served his term as well. Though it seems he didn't do anything that remarkable while serving, it got people interested in politics which is very valuable and commendable I think. Our 2004 election had about a 5% bigger turnout than the 2000 election and the election that Haugaard ran also had a 5% turnout bump. If you'll remember the difference in getting out the vote in 2000 vs 2004 I think it was pretty significant. Here, the one guy running caused a similar bump (I realize as I'm saying this I have no idea if it's true, I wasn't here to experience if there was any other significant impetus to vote, but it helps my point if I assume there wasn't). I just read that Colbert got denied the chance to appear on the ballot by the South Caroline democrats which I think is too bad. Colbert has a tremendous following and I think it would really get a lot of people to the voting booths. I'm not sure if this buzz will wear off by next year but I hope and think that there will be a bigger turnout in next years election.

Quick Note

A week or two ago the first big project I worked on launched so I thought I'd put up a link. You probably won't get much out of it unless you are Danish and pregnant, but maybe you are.
http://www.vilkenvom.com

Helloween

Halloween is one of if not my favorite holidays. However, in Denmark they don't really celebrate it. Some people will perhaps dress their kids in costume for a cupcake party in school or something, but there is no going around to houses for candy. Even if they did, Danish candy is absolutely terrible. One in particular called a 'Super Fly' is one of the worst tasting things I've put in my mouth, and keep in mind, this is candy. It is basically a stick of salty, bitter, black licorice and when you bite into it, surprise! It's actually hollow and filled with salt! But I digress.

The guys at work felt bad for me and I arrived on Wednesday to a pumpkin on everyone's desk. I think almost no one had carved a pumpkin before so it was a good time and the results were pretty great!


Jeppe is throwing some pumpkin guts into the bucket while Anders says something to him. I don't remember what it was, but he was probably making fun of him as he is fond of doing.


More guts! You'll notice everything is blurry because I forgot to change my camera settings in my pumpkin carving jubilation. Also, I'm lazy and don't feel like editing.


Jo had an idea and immediately went to work finishing before anyone else. Hers looked fantastic as well. Mads and Anders still scooping.


The results! From left to right, Anders, Mads, Me, Jeppe, Jo. Note that I come out looking like the amateur with all the pumpkin space left over. I had planned to put a lot more stuff above but time and technical (my knife was too big!) issues left me with some 'whitespace'. I'm still pretty happy though and it was a blast. Afterwards we went out to eat at the traditional Danish Chinese buffet where I ate kangaroo (delicious). It was the best 150kr buffet I've ever had. Though there isn't much in the way of Halloween here we are still throwing a costume party for which I just started planning my outfit.


Can you guess what I'm going to be? If you can't I don't know why we are friends.

Botanical Garden

This weekend I walked to the botanical gardens near the university. Though I think it's called a botanical garden it is a far cry from the gardens near my old apartment in Brooklyn. This one was much more open, the space was very noticeable.

Where I entered you first come across a large bed of ordinary, but immaculately cared for flowers.


This space is very large and incredibly relaxing but the whole place was pretty vacant. Since it is in such close proximity I expected it to be teeming with people playing soccer or frisbee or anything. The only people there besides me were really couples pushing babies in gigantic strollers as seems to be the fashion here. By a small pond there was a family feeding the ducks. The bread is much heavier here, I bet the ducks fill up a lot quicker. And yes, I'm the creepy guy taking pictures of small girls in park.


I think this is part of the old Danish village that borders the gardens. It consists of houses that were disassembled, brought to this location, and then reassembled. I think of Boston being an old place, and for America, it is. However the houses here are over a thousand years old. Take that America. From what I can tell it's similar to a Sturbridge Village or Plymouth Plantation type of attraction if anyone gets that reference. This is not what windmills look like these days for sure. Wrong shape and certainly scale.


I never really realized how huge modern windmills were until I saw some pieces up close. This is a single blade, easily longer than an 18 wheeler.

I've got a lot of photos I need to catch up on, hopefully more shortly!

Punk Rock

Where I went to school in upstate New York there were a lot of kids into metal in the surrounding town and it was really kind of weird. It was like that town in Lost Boys that was filled with metal kids except Bill from Bill and Ted wasn't there. Århus in this same way seems to have a disproportionate amount of punk kids. I think I see more here on a daily basis than I ever did in New York (though New York has very much made the move to hipsters from punks).
I don't particularly think of this as a punk city. I don't see many posters for shows or anything and I guess I just assumed it was a fashion issue. However, I was looking through scans of old punk zines today and it seemed that 'scene reports' were often coming in from New York, London, and Denmark one of which is posted below.


There was also a zine called "No Arhus" which was produced in Mundelstrup which is a town maybe 20 minutes from the center of Århus as best I can guess. It was put out by a guy called Johnny Concrete which is a pretty awesome name, Danish or not. Here is a link to another page in a Danish zine presumably put out by the same person since the Denmark graphic is the same. What is interesting about this one is first that it is in English. This came out in 1985 and I guess I'm surprised English was as prevalent back then (though it was only 22 years ago). 1985 is also when punk as a whole kind of started to deteriorate and I wonder just how much of a scene there could still really be here so many years later, but what do I know. Second is one of the last sentences on the first page, "We have a pretty serious problem with skinheads here, especially in our town of Aarhus. And there are some problems with some German punx." I suppose I always thought of the skinhead thing having German origins but it never occurred to me (despite how obvious it may seem) that it would be prevalent in Denmark. I'm rather jaded by how quiet and clean the city is I'm afraid, and I bet I have a lot more to learn about it. Lesson learned!

This is unrelated but funny I thought. Check out this other scan of "The Hollywood Individual" and compare to modern day hipsters. Also: it looks a whole lot like me. Same earrings and everything. If I had Final Fantasy VII hair, this would be a pretty good portrait.

An Unexpected Visit

Last week I got an email from my friend MR saying that she was in Berlin (Denmark borders Germany to the north) and could she swing by. Of course I was thrilled, and that is how I had a small college reunion almost 4000 miles away.

On Sunday MR and I went to the large art museum in Århus which only opened a handful of years ago (four?) called Aros. Aros is sort of a funny museum. The collections are very eclectic and spaced out; each has it's own floor and you take a large spiral staircase up to travel between them. However, on the lower level there is something called the 9 spaces which are nine small rooms that branch off a single narrow hallway which is painted black and dimly lit. Each contain bizarre video installations (are there any other kind) and really use the space perfectly. It's almost a little claustrophobic down there, and to add to the feeling, there are what I am guessing are support columns that cause giant bulges in the wall that create these false corners. The bulges I speak of are maybe 10 feet or more in diameter and just part of them push into the hall but it is in a way where you can follow the surface of the wall thinking it leads somewhere only to find yourself in a tight corner where the curved surface meets a flat one. I know, confusing. I apologize.


The museum acquired this piece which is plastered all over every promotional piece they have and I would say with good reason. It's by sculptor Ron Mueck whose work I was lucky enough to see when he had a solo show in Brooklyn last year. He has a background in special effects and his sculptures are incredibly realistic and this one, titled 'Boy' is easily the largest. While seeing it in person is absolutely an experience, I also think it's size works against it. The feet are immaculately rendered and represent what I think Ron Mueck does very well. Veins and toenails, really convincing details. However, having seen the rest of his work and what he is capable of I think the rest of the sculpture is a bit underdeveloped. It photographs fantastically and really looks convincing, but in real life it somehow misses the mark for me. Additionally, the scale put it out of the creepy large human range and into the definitely sculpture range. Some of his other pieces are maybe 7-15 feet high and just exude this eerie feeling that somehow these are just people on crazy growth hormones or something. One last nit-picky thing that I feel I have to mention or I will lose sleep are his pants. They are just some thin material and don't look very real at all. I understand the challenge of making pants for someone who might be 3 stories tall, but your average youth would rip right through those things.


The museum is quite beautiful and has these great glass windows the look out on the city as well as a roof deck from where this was taken. Århus is quite a flat place and I suppose I never really thought about it until I got up high. The visibility is stunning as the atmosphere is quite clear, surely a change from New York City. There also really aren't any significant landmarks to point out but it's really quite beautiful which at this point really doesn't come as a surprise.

I promise I won't do this much, so I apologize in advance. I just love this video for whatever reason. It's a promotional video for a band called Liars. This video probably had a lot to do with me buying the new album which is not too bad. I saw them once in Baltimore at this small club and it I actually really enjoyed it. My was with my cousins and one of made us leave early because they hated it. It was a weird show, but bottom line, I like this video.

What disappointment looks like.

When I woke up this morning I had a great idea. It was the type of good idea I'll bet most people have at least once every couple of weeks: pizza. I like to make my own pizza, a habit I got into while living in Brooklyn with my most excellent friend Kevin. Kevin inherited a auxiliary pizza stone from his brother and we probably used it once a week. Initially we used store bought frozen dough but eventually graduated to making our own which I would say was overall successful. People always talk about New York pizza as this untouchable pinnacle of pizza perfection, and while it's pretty good, the difference between a slice of dollar pizza and say, Di Fara's, is pretty negligible to me. As some of you may know, I had surgery to remove my adenoids among other small surgeries a few years ago and it's left me without much of a sense of smell which naturally affects the way I taste things. Also, I really don't care. Pizza is hard to really mess up. However, is exactly what I did today. After spending a few hours collecting ingredients, making and waiting for my dough to rise and finally cooking my pizza it came out as bad as it can.


I am pretty sure I made all the correct conversions from cups to liters and Fahrenheit to Celsius, but something still went very wrong. Thus, after a lot of anticipation and building up a huge hunger snacking on pepperonis while preparing my pizza I'm left with a big black pile of disappointment. So instead I cooked up the only other thing I had in the fridge.


This is the very picture of dissatisfaction. I think tonight for dinner will be some feel-good, unhealthy-but-fulfilling, McDonald's to drown myself in.

The Office

The office is where I spend the majority of my time, because well, it's where I work. The office, like most Danish buildings in my experience, look very old on the outside and have insides that look practically brand new. I've got to imagine there are some strict remodeling regulations set in place in order to preserve this as many of the buildings are more than one hundred years old. The picture below is where I work, on the far right side you can see our door. The office space is actually up in the attic and snugly fits the five of us.

The co-workers!

I can't believe how nice everyone I work with is. Everyone I've met in Denmark thus far has been incredibly nice, but I think the people I work with are particularly nice and understanding with my lack of the Danish language. Aside from this they are all really talented. Each one of them is really exceptional which I think contributes to why the company is doing so well.


This is Jeppe, who likes this picture because it makes him look like David Copperfield. The white hand he is using to create this vivid illusion is a porcelain hand from an old glove factory. We got a few of these and were supposed to paint them for the Århus festival so they could be auctioned off to benefit the Red Cross. Needless to say, we didn't really get them done in time. Jeppe also took me out to dinner the one of the first nights I was here. We went to the most American place in Denmark called Mackie's. It was in teh style of T.G.I. Fridays with crap all over the walls. It was very American, but very good. I don't know if I ever thanked Jeppe properly for it, so thanks Jeppe.


This is Jo, like Jeppe, a partner in Hello Monday. Jo is super nice and they tell me she speaks Danish with a little bit of an accent though I really can't tell. I owe my survival of my first couple of weeks to Jo's kindness.


Anders is the third partner (there is one more in the US, but we'll deal with that when the time comes). Anders is the flash guru who I get to work with. He can produce at a crazy rate and works harder than most anyone I know. It's no surprise he's also quite good and I believe is responsible for the FWA winning Minus website. Also, if you didn't know, Anders is telling you: he's metal.


Finally we have Mads. Besides myself he's the only other 'employee.' Mads brings the urban flavor and is also working on motion graphics stuff which is pretty awesome. Mads also has an awesome dog which sometimes hangs out in the office. The dog always snores and is generally pretty hilarious.



These are the people I work with. All very talented and unbelievably nice. I feel like someone slipped Denmark $5 to be nice to me.

A slice of home

I just got back from what I believe is the biggest (the only?) mall in Århus, and I've got to say: they nailed it. Everything from the cheap chinese to the mall goths. Bravo Denmark, you've really covered all of your bases on this one. It conjured flashes of Crossgates in Albany, except I didn't feel like I was going to get shot afterwards. I didn't look around much because just like any other mall, it was suffocating and I couldn't wait to get the hell out. Again, well done.

Festival

This past week was an annual Festival here in Århus which is the city's activity peak of the year. Unfortunately, I haven't really done anything mostly owing to my inability to speak Danish and that I just don't know enough people to find and go out with yet. I have however just seen some things in passing which are interesting enough in themselves.

The theme this year is supposed to be "In Motion" though I get the feeling the theme is pretty arbitrary and does little to alter everyone's schedule of drinking a lot and maybe listening to some live music.


This was one of a couple of bizarre looking carnival rides set up in the big square in the center of the city. If you look close you'll notice the kids are sitting on toilets and wearing small chalkboards around their necks with what I assume are their names followed by a sequential number. It was odd and moved very mechanically, not what you'd expect from a ferris wheel type ride.


While I was preoccupied examining these weird rides I failed to hear what was going on just next door. It is times like these that I am glad I'm as tall as I am, because the circle of bodies was probably ten deep. What they were surrounding was a marching band composed of half adults, half children, and a few so young it was all they could do to connect stick to drum. Of the children (whom sounded pretty good) a handful were also in costumes. The boy above was wearing what looked like Santa from the shoulders up, and a ninja turtle from the front. Others were wearing masks and other assorted pieces of costume that looked like they had been picked out of a big prop bag someone brought. As I mentioned before though, they were pretty good. In a way the weirdness of being in a marching band with the quirkiness of the costumes reminded me a bit of a show I saw the Rude Mechanicals play in Brooklyn.

Later tonight I saw a bunch of kids jumping on a flipped over car that somehow got in the middle of the square (where cars aren't allowed). I'm sure the car was there to be destroyed for some reason, and this wasn't just a random act of vandalism by kids. However, I can't imagine what reason this would be. Unfortunately, I was without my camera, but in a city where people generally seem a bit conservative and guarded, this was probably the wildest thing I've seen so far.

Arrival

In the months building up to my arrival in Denmark, I had created an image of Denmark all my own (which I think it would be difficult not to) via daydreams and guidebooks. When you have something so specific in mind it is always a shock when things are completely different.

Coming from New York City, a mecca of happenings, I expected a city, albeit on a smaller scale, full of happenings and funny Danish art and music. The photo above is the first bit of Denmark I saw outside of airports and train stations. Not exactly NYC Jr.

Now a bit of honesty to the reader, I have now been in Denmark for somewhere around 3 weeks, so I won't pretend that I've been diligent and back-date entries. I guess I've been busy, but the more honest truth is 1. I have been lazy and 2. There really isn't much excitement. There is still plenty of things worthy of reporting on, so from now on I'll promise to carry my camera and make more of an effort here. So in a whirlwind, here is a synopsis of my past 3 weeks!




For the first two weeks I lived with a friend's parents. They were so incredibly kind, it was almost unreal. To add to my surreal experience they lived in perfectly picturesque home in a beautiful neighborhood. This is the back yard. This picture looks a bit hectic, but chalk that one up to my poor photography. On a nice day it was hard to walk outside without breathing one of those contented sighs.


Less than a minutes walk we reach the beach. Now I know I'm not showing much beach in these pictures but when I look back years from now I don't think I'll remember the beach as much as the feel of the beach, which I think these speak more to (for me anyway). I plopped down right here and read a bit of the book I had in my backpack, though I hadn't intended to. My intention was to go exploring a bit down the coast, but I really couldn't help myself. You should be getting the drill by now. Beautiful.



This is my parting memory of my two weeks spent in Risskov (ris-ko). While beautiful, it was a twenty minute bus ride to work and a bit far away from the city life. I have now moved bullseye in the center of the city and so far– it's terrific.

1 Month Away

It is one month until I am due in Denmark. I still don't have plane tickets or a work permit, but as of today I have a place to live! I'm starting to get pockets of excited daydreaming about Denmark which is how I know I'm ready to leave. I was given a google maps tour of where I'll be living and the surrounding areas, here are some highlights.

This is an area near the university where there is a collection of old Nordic houses. When I say old, I mean anywhere from a couple hundred to a thousand years. The houses were all actually dismantled and moved to this location brick by brick. Sounds wild.

Here is a bike path that runs the line between a large forest and a coast of beach. Along this path you'll run into a man-made beach which is apparently the place to go for summer swimming.

Here is the Queens castle. People are allowed on the greens to the righthand side. If you zoom in a bit you can see a circular war memorial, and if you stand in the center and yell, the echo is supposed to be pretty crazy.

That's all for now, I want to save some locations for when I'm actually there with a camera. I haven't seriously photographed since 'charlie365' for those of you that remember it, so I'm anxious to have a reason to again!

NYC

Today is July 1st. One month from now my lease expires and this stretch of my New York life is over. Two weeks from then I start my first real employed job in Denmark. I say my first because while I've been working at a design company for around nine months now, I'm still an intern which is pockmarked by poor pay, no insurance and no business cards which is the deal-breaker. As of this moment I have no plane tickets, no place to live in Denmark and no real prospects, which is completely the opposite of my current New York situation. People keep asking me if I am nervous or excited yet, but I don't think it will hit me until I've been in Denmark for a while. It was the same way with moving to New York. You can go visit anywhere but one day you wake up in your bed knowing that this is your new home and it's not just a visit, that's when the nerves hit.

Once in Denmark I'll be living in Aarhus (map) which is a smallish beach city that isn't Copenhagen. I know almost nothing about it, but here is a small list of things I do know about Denmark, all observed from my Danish co-workers.
- They say 'ok' a lot, and I mean a lot. It makes sense, but it is unnerving to be telling a funny story and at the punchline you just get an 'ok.' They might think it's funny, but that is just their reaction for most things.
- Almost everyone is Denmark speaks English. Many also speak German since Denmark borders Germany to the north. German and Swedish are both a little similar to Danish to the point where you can sort of figure out what people are talking about.
- Throwing batteries in the trash is unfathomable. They have recycling specifically for that.
- Everyone is super-nice. I have yet to meet a Dane I dislike.

As a note, updates will probably be sporadic until I reach Denmark and actually have something to talk about.