Bah.. Thesis, schmesis!

It has been brought to my attention that working on one’s thesis does not necessarily have to be all bad. It’s all just a matter of creating the right settings for the experience. See, we’re still facing some unusually high temperatures here in Denmark, so work is probably the last thing on peoples’ list of things they’d love to do at this moment.. Which probably goes to explain a rather whiny status update of mine on Facebook which read something along the lines of me being much more in the mood for mojitos in the sun than thesis and work.

Well, as could probably be expected, it took Tina all of ten minutes to pick up on it and make a comment that she thought that mojitos in the sun and thesis writing would compliment each other nicely.. And, well, one thing begat the other and suddenly the comment threat warped into us setting up a “date” for the next day – that next day being Friday – involving thesis writing in the sun, sunbathing and, of course, mojitos! As if it were the most reasonable combination ever.. Honestly, I thought it sounded like the best idea ever and didn’t really think much of it until later when I came to remember that my dad frequently reads my status updates as his own little way of keeping in touch. I then realized that me planning a serious working effort involving cute blondes, sun, rock n roll and alcoholic beverages would probably render him either very upset, very confused.. Or just plain proud! I’ve really no idea, but I guess we’ll have to wait and see.

Whatever people may or may not have thought, Friday arrived soon enough and I (having worked the night before) got up at an (for me) unreasonably early hour to pack up my laptop, myself, a bottle of rum, mint sprigs, limes, cane sugar and other necessities to head down to Tina’s for a serious bit of work. I arrived there at around 11-ish and as part of my new lifestyle of not doing more bodily harm to myself than necessary started out by applying a generous amount of sun screen, I then suggested we headed out into the sun.. Which Tina plain refused.. Not until I’d had my morning coffee! I, being pretty uncomfortably hot already, tried to refuse but she’d have none of it an was already in the process of making me up a cup.. She’s right, of course, I get tired, semi-grumpy and more importantly develop strange headaches if I don’t get my morning coffee. Tina knows this and as such she insists and makes me coffee.. Talk about knowing each other too well?

Either way, after a not so enjoyable cup of coffee which however served its purpose, we grabbed our stuff, a few blankets and headed downstairs and outside onto the community lawn to set up camp, boot up our laptops and get cracking.. I set the mood with a summer playlist I had lying around on my iTunes and we had a pretty entertaining time of chilling and doing some work, only interrupted by our constant shifting around caused by the baking sun and our constant chase for at least a bit of shade. We were soon joined on the lawn by some bloke who was apparently out to chill and looked at times more than a little confused by the rowdy youngsters who had now taken to listening to Slipknot and Rammstein while chilling happily and working away. A strange combo, admittedly, but hey, that’s how we roll!

His wonder probably only grew by around 12:30 PM when I loudly proclaimed “Fuck it, I need a drink” and went up into Tina’s apartment to pick up some glasses, some ice, and a makeshift cocktail shaker that I fabricated from a half gallon plastic pitcher (having actually forgotten my own shaker at home). With these things in hand, I returned to our base camp (which may or may not have shifted location in the time I was gone), started muddling lime with the bottom of a soda bottle, added the sugar, mint, and ice, shook best as I could without destroying myself or the drink.. Then added soda and served us up a couple of beautiful mojitos.. Which turned out to be just what we needed on this Friday afternoon at 12:40 PM! I mean, honestly, when do you NOT need a mojito?

With these drinks in hand, we managed to keep our spirits high and the creative workflow going  for another few hours before hunger set in instead of thirst. As it turned out, Tina had the perfect solution for this problem – and even more spoiling in store for us – as she went and reheated some of last night’s dinner which had consisted of salmon, pasta, ricotta cheese, rucola and other good stuff all mixed up and served in the sun.. Yum! You’d think this would be a pretty damn good working day already, and you wouldn’t be wrong in assuming so, but it actually got better as we managed to squeeze in a bit of sunbathing before both of us eventually had to head off to take care of our day jobs (or night jobs so to speak).. Well, fast forward a few hours and this is when the story warps into a tale of how spoiled of a bastard I really am..

See, at around 11:20 PM, I’m stuck at GLS, doing god-awful, boring sorting of various papers just for the sake of having something to do on a really, really slow night when a text ticks in from Tina saying “You’re not off for a while, are you?” I reply that “No, I’m not really supposed to be, but I was thinking of seeing if I could get out early since there’s nothing to do.” – “Well,” the kind girl informs me, “I’m heading home from the theater, how about you find out?” .. It was all really simple from there, I asked her for two seconds, finished up what I was doing, dashed upstairs to where Torben was sitting and asked if there was any chance he could manage the rest of the night alone as sweet Tina had just offered me a lift home. His reply was something along the lines of “Fucking go.. Go for it!” which I told Tina, and exactly seven minutes later, I jumped into the passenger seat of Tina’s little car and together we set off towards downtown.

“Here’s a crazy thought,” Tina said, as we were sitting there in the car homeward bound, and by then I already knew what was coming: “How’s about we drive by a gas station or whatever and get us a goodnight beer?” – “Awesome,” I merely replied, “I think you owe me one anyways!” “Yup,” the blonde merely quoth and pulled the car off the road and into a gas station, disappeared for about five minutes and returned with proof of just how good a girl she really is.. She’d gotten of course not only a single beer, but a six-pack, that was somehow to be expected with the two of us. But not only that, she’d gotten Carlsberg because she knows I prefer that over the Tuborg she usually drinks. I’d have gone with Tuborg because I know she usually plain refuses to get Carlsberg if faced with options, but apparently she wanted to please me. and make me happy, so who the hell am I to complain?

With beer in hand, we continued on, chatting happily of things to come. “Oh, I need something to eat, too,” Tina remarked, “but what.. I’ve got pasta.. Tomatoes, sun dried tomatoes, rucola, etc, etc, etc.. Can’t you just get free access and use your imagination?” – “Well, I was gonna say,” I replied.. “Give me five minutes with your fridge and I’ll see what I can do. It’s the least I can do in return for bailing me out and giving me beer.. Well, that and share the jägermeister I’ve stocked in there with you!” – a statement that merely made Tina go “Ohh!” and beam with more happiness than I’ve seen out of her for ages.. The adorably retarded girl sure loves her food and her jäger!

We arrived at Tina’s not five minutes later where Tina quickly popped open a beer for each of us, popped the rest in the fridge and set about doing the dishes while she let me search the fridge and pantry for suitable ingredients for some midnight pasta (which is bordering on becoming a tradition for the two of us). I settled for some whole grain pasta and a sauce of sun dried tomatoes, fresh tomatoes, garlic, fresh chilies, thyme, balsamic vinegar and sugar.. And a bit of vodka and cream thrown in for good measure.. And fresh basil.. And, of course, loads of freshly grated Parmesan cheese.. Which must have turned out quite successful because while it’s not uncommon for me to hear Tina go “Yum!” and smile, it is in fact rather unusual for her to do it after EVERY bite! So I guess I did well, there was even some talk of understanding of Klaus once having licked the pot after eating one of my dishes.. Anyways.. Glad you liked it, babe

Having gotten our full of pasta with creamy tomato goodness, we sat around for a few hours just talking, drinking beer and being merry.. And had our jäger shots of course! After some bickering and arguing about who would get the miniature bottles from the fridge.. We eventually decided to settle over a game of rock, paper and scissors which eventually made me go fuck it, forfeit and get the damn bottles after Tina started playing random, unknown wild cards such as “fire”.. But who cares. There were no real losers in a game of “whoever loses, gets jäger shots for the table!”.. Eventually, at around 2:30 AM (which is ironically shortly after when I’d originally have been home, had Tina not come to my rescue), I decided I was getting old and tired and needed to get home.. Which I then did, arriving home a little later than I usually would after a Friday work night, but a lot more full and a little more happy faced than usual  after three beers and a shot..

So, who says working Fridays have to be that bad.. Honestly.. I could come to enjoy them if they were all as awesome as this!

Whisky In The Jar!

No, I didn’t spell that wrong.. Thin Lizzy might like Whiskey with an E, but I prefer Whisky with a Y and no E.. As in Single Malt Scotch Whisky.. Particularly of the Islay variety, a rather unique strain of whisky from the wind swept, small Scottish island of Islay which are generally known for their distinct smoked flavor owing to a production process which involves smoking the malt over a peat fire.. Me, I loves me some smoked flavor so naturally this is right down my alley..

And apparently even more down my mom and her boyfriend, Klaus’s, alley.. As they’ve actually spent the last week or so touring the island of Islay and participating in the yearly Whisky Festival taking place there.. Needless to say, I think my mom and Klaus are total bastards.. Well, not total bastards.. But bastards to at least some extend.. A great extend. Okay, I’ll stop now..  Anyways, I must’ve quite vocally expressed my jealousy and dissatisfaction because they had almost just but returned once they summoned me for dinner, tall tales, pictures and what was to be a few unique experiences.. An offer that I willingly accepted, even going so far as to decide I’d play the role of the better man and bring them a curiosity from my recent trip, in the shape of a rareish Belgian beer, and a few stories of my own.. And of course the batch of French onion soup I’d promised Klaus earlier and the production process of which I cursed to high heavens in an earlier post.. The idea was then that my mom and Klaus would provide the rest of the dinner experience and, I figured, wine, coffee and the likes.

All in all, it was a huge success. We kicked things off with an aperitif in the sun on my mother’s terrace  in the shape of Campari and soda which wasn’t really my thing.. But then, I really never fancied bitters. To go along, we shared a few tales from our respective journeys after which I spun the story into mine an Tina’s trip to the Beer Mania store in Brussels and presented my pièce de résistance in the shape of a large bottle of Mea Culpa beer I’d purchased at that very store. A beer that’s apparently the brain child of the owners of the store and is brewed especially for this particular store.

This, of course, raised a few eye brows with the beer lovers in the crowd, all three of us, and a few smiles as well once we got to corking it a sampling the goods. It turned out to be nice, lively, sparkly, light, crisp and refreshing with a distinct wheat-like freshness plus notes of citrus and light spices (coriander?) to it. Definitively a hit on a warm summer day, and just about every bit as good as I’d been led to believe it was gonna be. I’m not sure if it was Zascha or Zeb who first recommended this to me, but thanks! And Zascha, no leaving Brussels for you.. Coz, like, I need to come visit and bring home more beer!

Ahem, anyways, after beer and more tall tales, we figured we’d better get dinner ready, so we heated up some onion soup and some cheese toast while firing up the BBQ and sipping some Rosé wine. Again, the onion soup apparently brought joy, especially with Klaus, who was caught between dishes licking out not only his bowl, but also the pot which had been used for heating the goodness.. Hmm, I chose to take that as a compliment. Tina, upon being informed, seemed a little upset, though, as she was apparently hoping for leftovers.. Which she should have let me know in unmistakable terms and she’d have gotten some.. Next time, babe, promise

Klaus, upon finishing licking stuff, spent the next hour or so working his magic on the grill serving up sausages and grilled pork tenderloin.. So good! But it wasn’t until dessert.. Which was really just coffee, that he produced the really good stuff, and pulled out a bottle of limited edition 16 year old Bruichladdich cask strength whisky pulled directly from the cask by him and my mother not three days earlier. This beast (bottle 510 out of only a 1000 to ever be bottled) weighed in at just over 56% alcohol by volume and was about as feisty as it was rare. Smoky, pungent and with a raw edge of alcohol bite to it.. In a really good kinda way. If this sounds weird, it probably is, but it was still an awesome experience none the less to sample a whisky that will only ever be tried by about a few thousand people world wide.

Speaking of awesome, the old couple had another couple of surprises up their sleeves. The first being that my mom had brought home a half bottle of Laphroaig 10 year old for us to sample afterwards. I’ve always hailed Laphroaig as being my absolute favorite whisky thus far and as one of the most unique ones out there. Well, apparently it’s rubbed off on a few people and they were only too willing to pour out a few drams while we spoke about their tour of the distillery. A tour that was of particular interest to me as I, owing to my membership of the Friends of Laphroaig Club, own a small piece of land on their distillery grounds. Klaus, having never head of the gimmick, brought along my deed to the land on their tour of the distillery and not only got to see the land, take pictures and plant the Danish flag, he also managed to create so much awareness and interest among the tour group that they all fell for the gimmick as well and joined the club of land owners. Which apparently so pleased the nice people at Laphroaig that they sent a miniature bottle of their Quarter Cask Edition plus a small whisky glass back home with my mom as thank you and as payment for “lease” of my one square foot of land. Which just goes to show that these people not only make awesome whisky, they’re awesome, too.. A quite touching gesture for a fan such as myself.. Even if I still wish I could’ve been on the tour myself.. Sigh, some day..

By the time of the evening we’d gone through most of the tall tales and odd ends about our various trips and I’d gotten my special miniature as well as samples of good wine, good ale, rare whisky and good whisky in general.. Well, we all sorta started getting somewhat sleepy. A side effect that may have related to neither of us really haven’t slept much, but on the other hand having spent quite some time sampling 40+% ABV spirits, so before things got too tired and rambling, I decided to call it a day and venture on home. I had quite a walk ahead of me after all. It had been a good night, though, full of good talks, good experiences, good samples and awesome gifts, however small.. Hey, when’s the last time you got a personal gift bottle, however small, courtesy of one of your favorite distillers? Right.. I’ve found yet another reason to love Laphroaig

I Wanna Be A Rock Star!

I destroyed a LOT of things last weekend.. Parts of a patio table, an electric guitar, my brand new Hendrix tee, parts of myself and a home-brew beer.. But strangely enough, it all began quite quietly and nice-like.. With me wandering around on my own at home, enjoying a day off and listening to some soothing Rammstein.. Umm, okay, so it didn’t start entirely quietly, but things were to get a hell of a lot worse.. It all started going downhill when Tina first called at around 3 PM and convinced me that beers in the sun sounded a lot better than goofing off at home. I actually was planning to blow off the beers for a few more hours as to not wind up too drunk and/or weird, but we all know my issues when it comes to saying no to cute blue eyed blondes.. So it should come as no surprise that about 15 minutes later I was on my way out the door to have beers with the guys and gals in the sun at the uni court yard. I arrived there some 30 minutes later, wearing my usual summer uniform of blue jeans and band shirt.. Which for some reason seems to still confuse people, forcing me to explain over and over again that the short, shirtless buzz cut look  just isn’t very metal.. Naw thanks, I’ll take my jeans, band shirt and occasional stolen rock star shades thank you very much.

Anyways, times at uni were good as usual, hanging in the sun with Saxberg, Andersson, Tina, Jakob, Daphne and various other people with a few beers after a while we headed off to a local park for the latter part of a May day party which featured an awesome Danish cover band and plenty of beers.. Plenty for us and plenty too many for others. Apparently some people had been drinking since 10 AM that morning and with us arriving at around 5 PM, the fun of the party for the thousand odd people there seemed split between watching the band and watching the people who’d had a little too much to drink act out.. Which made for a pretty entertaining two and a half hours.. For some of us anyways. Tina and Jakob left half way into the show to get some food, one of Andersson’s friends ended up wandering off not to return until about an hour later when he was too drunk to even relate where he’d been. Others, though thankfully none of our friends, opted for just passing out in front of the stage.. Good times!

Actually, I ended up returning to the Uboat alone after having lost track of Andersson, too, which spawned a few looks as I’d set out with four friends in tow and returned three hours later, beaten, sweaty and alone.. But it wasn’t anything that couldn’t be settled over a few beers.. And a few more.. And some drinking games.. And a stupid bet with Saxberg about whether or not I could drink 4 beers in an hour – which is of course nowhere near as big a problem as the subsequent hammer of drunkenness over the head.. As a result, the next couple of hours were a nice potpourri of goofing off with Tina, Jakob, Daphne and Tommy, greeting random friends, telling Tommy that sure I’d be at his grill out the next day, I’d even love to be in charge of the grill.. And grabbing Daphne by the hair, pulling her head back and jokingly trying to force her to deep throat a scimitar made from inflated, bendable party balloons.. That Tina had earlier scored off some homeless guy at the rock show.. No, I swear, in an odd twist of events that really did happen.. Did I mention we’d been drinking?

All in all, it was really good times.. With a lot of great people! I made it home at some point, too, though I’ve no real idea how and when.. I only know I woke way too late the next day as I’d kinda arranged with Tommy and Jakob to meet up at around 2 PM.. And I woke at like 1:40. Anyways, I texted up Tommy and found out that I was the first he’d actually heard from that day so I shouldn’t really worry too much.

Instead, some of us ended up meeting up at around 3 PM then sending Tina off to work before Tommy, Jakob and I went shopping for greens, meat, coals, beers, some soda and Gin and Tonics for the evening ahead. We then dragged ourselves and our purchases off to Tommy’s where we crashed on his patio thing with a few beers and a Gin and Tonic and kicked back for a while, drinking a few cold ones to keep the hangovers at bay.. As the day and evening trickled on, others started arriving.. First Andersson who was absolutely beaten and scarred from the night before, then Michael and Martin and finally Champ and his girlfriend, Signe..

As they arrived, and we all shared a good laugh over me partially drunk trying to light a couple of fires in rather considerable gusts of wind, we got the festivities under way. I had two grills going, one of which was embedded in Tommy’s patio table. I kicked things off by lighting that one a little too hot and as a result scorching large parts of the wooden frame around it. Not being one to let a single mishap stop me, I then proceeded to overload both grills and as a result dumping a T-bone I was doing for myself onto the coals. Champ was nice enough to go “wash my steak” while I struggled on and eventually got everybody served.. Which kept people quiet for quite some time which I took as a sign that I’d done well.

As we ate, people started complaining about getting cold which I didn’t really understand, but I did agree to move down inside into Tommy’s living room as soon as we’d finished eating.. Which we then did and had a ton of fun with. We hung out for a good few hours until Tina got off work and we greeted her into the flock.. And pretty quickly traded Jakob out for her as he was simply too beat from Friday to go on. We eventually lost Andersson, too, and Tommy wasn’t looking too hot by the end of the night either. I was about ready to go home as well when Michael, Tina, Martin and I started talking about hitting the sleazier parts of town just for shits and giggles. Which pretty quickly turned into a new master plan, but not before I’d been on my back on Tommy’s floor, trying to chug wine from a 3 liter box and messing it up horribly, sending cascades of wine seeping down my cheeks and shoulders and onto my t-shirt.. Where I imagine it mixed well with the spray of beer that’d hit me not too long before as a bottle exploded on me as I tried to open it..

All in all, I ended up leaving Tommy’s with the guys and girl in tow, semi-dry and reeking of beer and wine.. While carrying Tommy’s old electric guitar which he’d let me have on the single condition that I smashed it and took pictures.. Something I decided to do right then and there on the street as we made it outside to what is basically the street walk right in front of Kolding’s most alternative/rock-ish club.. And I did better than just take pictures, I got a video of it as well.. Just to prove the stupidity of it all. And how surprisingly hard it actually is to smash an electric guitar:

After I’d finished and generated cries of both “No.. No!” and “Rock n Roll!!!” .. Groupthink set it.. And drunken groupthink at that.. And we got around to thinking that “Hey, wouldn’t it be the funniest thing in the world if we took the thing bar hopping with us and tried to sell it for beer or drinks?” As a result, we piled into one of the nearest and trendiest bars with Tina looking gorgeous as ever, the guys looking trendy as always and me sporting beer soaked long hair, a wine stained Jimmi Hendrix t-shirt and a smashed up white Fender guitar under my arm.. That I was by then bleeding profusely over as I’d managed to cut my hand on several places on the broken neck. Strangely, security did absolutely nothing to stop us, they merely laughed.. But we did get a few pretty weird looks at the bar.. And nothing much more, so we ventured on on our quest to find more bars.. I even managed to dump the guitar somewhere.. I probably should’ve kept it as as Johan Johansen signature, but oh well, it was getting a real pain to drag around, so I left it outside the next bar en route.. Which was a more sleazier kind of place which was evident by the cheaper prices for the round of beers that Martin bought, the poor live music and the fact that within ten minutes I had to step up and use my drunken logic to get us out of two fights that we nearly got into, including one with the live musician who was in the middle of his set.

And that’s before things even really got crazy. See, someone.. And by someone, I mean Tina.. Got the great idea that since we were already in the sleazier part of time, we should hit every bar down that street (which is like five on a good day) and have shots at each place.. Already running drunk enough to have smashed a guitar and myself, my reasoning stood no chance.. And besides, it’s well known that I have problems saying not to above mentioned cute, blonde, blue eyed girl.. So a deal it was then. Michael kicked things off by walking up to the bartender and ordering 12 shots which we threw down in like two minutes between the four of us, leaving just enough of a pause to almost get in another fight with one of the locals.

We then pressed on, moving a few hundred meters down the street to a respectable establishment called “New York City” which I’ve only been to once and my only memory from that one trip being that the barkeep at the time asked me after my order if I could please pay in cash as “the whole card business was a little too complicated to figure out right then.” They were apparently on last call when we arrived so we barely had time to throw down a Jager shot each – I think.. Tina, correct me if I’m wrong – before moving on to the next place on our route, Domhuset, which was also on last call (a popular trend right around 2 AM, I guess) but they also managed to hand over four of their signature shots – a vile concoction of vodka and pop rock candy.. Which didn’t go well with anybody, but at least they were cheap. We gathered by now that last call apparently was all the rage and since we only had one place left to go, “Kontoret” (The Office), we quickly moved on as it was now exactly 1:56 AM.. And we made it, barely, so we didn’t really have much time to think about what we wanted.. For some reason someone suggested tequila which I went along with despite the fact that I knew it’d suck.. There’s no way what something served in a place like that could be anything other than Sierra tequila and synthetic lemon juice served with age-old table salt.. An assumption I turned out to be correct in, but for some reason it went down anyways.. This being Tina’s round, I’d say she got me back pretty good for the vodka/pop rock mix

Besides our little rock start stunt at our first stop, I’d say Kontored is probably where we created the most confusion out of any place we ventured that night. Mainly because we walked in, all of us, even me – being at least 10 years younger than anyone in the bar, begged our way to four tequila shots, threw them down in an instant and then filed, all four of us, into the ladies’ rest room.. The reasoning being that Tina had said there’d be pictures of naked men out there, and for some drunken reason we all wanted to see that.. Only we neglected to tell this part to anybody, so we just kinda went in there and returned a bit later.. After which we again left the bar and staggered back to our first stop of the night to actually pay or dues and buy one last shot there.. Which I ended up paying for and which turned out nearly twice as expensive as the other rounds that evening because we were now apparently back in the trendy side of town.. But oh well, I could probably afford it better than the rest of my entourage anyways and since I don’t ever really go out on mad spending sprees anymore, it’s all good.

Besides, my reasoning had pretty much stopped working by then, so we just threw down our shots quickly and decided to call it a night which I’m sure everybody would have done after seven-eight shots and a beer in like – I don’t know – just under an hour. I ended up walking Tina home before returning home myself, and I’m reasonably sure she ended up picking up the neck of the broken guitar on the way.. But my memory kinda escapes me a little after two days of heavy drinking.. It was one hell of a fun time, though.. We should do that again some time!

“Du wissen wo ist Berlin?!”

Apparently there’s this ongoing trend in my circle of friends (that I of course have nothing to do with..) that involves quoting the movie “Eurotrip” (if you haven’t already seen it – go rent or buy or whatever!) It all really escalated a few days ago when I put a quote in my Facebook status and since then, Dunkel and I have pretty much been throwing random quotes at each other on a daily basis .. With Tina and others chiming in a times for good measure.. It’s all good fun, until things turn frighteningly real..

See, Tina and I had our own little study into miscommunication pure Eurotrip style late this morning! But we’ll get to that in just a little bit. The back story is that we’d been visiting with Christian and Emelie who now live together at Christian’s place (technically now their place, I guess). Since we were invited for dinner and wine and what not last night, we figured we’d spend the night instead of driving home so that Tina could also enjoy some wine and what not.. It was all good, really.. There were five of us to begin with, we ate for like 10 people, had some good drinks, some good wine, frolicked around, threw out random Eurotrip quotes and references, insulted each other.. Some would say a little too much on my part, but that’s how I roll..Anyways, I’m sorry if I pissed you off, Tina

At some time around 3 AM, we decided on bed, having played two games of Trivial Pursuit, tipped over a few beers in the process, had a little too much wine to drink and having finished the left overs from dinner just for good measure.. All of us were pretty knackered and it didn’t really help that we were getting up six hours later in order to drive back to Kolding and get on with the day.. But such is the life of busy students.

Oh well, come morning we got up at 9 AM.. Or, Tina did and the rest of us followed in a more leisurely pace. We then cleared up the mess of the night before, ate breakfast and hung out a little before we needed to leave. Me, having probably once again miscalculated the work/rest/sleep ration was feeling pretty well knackered by this time, and I think Tina was missing her morning coffee as well. There was actually talk about hitting McD for coffee which goes to show how desperate we apparently were by then. As a result, we didn’t really chat as much as we usually do which was probably for the better because it seems that when we did, things pretty quickly went horribly wrong.

Between my history of mumbling when I talk, me being knackered and a general lack of coffee things quickly went a little askew on the communication front.. Culminating in an epic study in miscommunication which rivaled that of the infamous hitchhiking scene of Eurotrip fame:

Only our version was a bit more local: As we’re getting off the motorway and heading down to an intersection where we usually  make a right turn, Tina says something along the lines of “I wonder if it’d be possible to go straight across, then make a right further down or whatever.” My mumbling response is somewhere along the lines of “No, I’m not sure.. I think that’d just land us down by the hospital, and that’s not really where we wanna go” – So, we drive on and I keep on discussing the subject, either in my own mind or in my usual tired mumbling manner, not too sure.. Either way, when we make it to another intersection, I point left and what I think I say is something along the lines of “Doing what you just suggested, I think would just land us here.” What Tina think she’s hearing, on the other hand is more along the lines of “Hey, make a left here!” .. Which she does, in the nick of time!

Granted, I usually spent a lot of time trying to blame anything and everything on Tina, but I’ll be man enough to admit that this may have all been my fault.. Mainly because I’m pretty sure I was half-asleep and not at all coherent at the time.. So there..

Anyways, we then keep driving on, none of us really knowing where we’re going and each thinking that the other person knows what we’re doing. It’s all fun and games until Tina asks me where the hell we’re going and I reply something along the lines of “I thought you knew” which then spawns a discussion about whether or not I told her to go that way or not and the realization that Tina actually doesn’t know if we’re even in Kolding anymore.. Which I can assure her that we are, we’re just simply.. Uhh.. Taking the scenic route.. through the ghetto.. Which is a bit of a problem because it really isn’t the fastest way to my place and we kinda were running late as it was as Tina had another appointment to get to.

But eh, we figure it out, get back on track and drop me off on time, with Tina hopefully making her appointment, too.. What a mess.. And I do sincerely apologize for any part I may have played in it – Like, really! I promise I’ll get some sleep – as in a lot – as soon as I’m done with work tonight, I’ll probably even take tomorrow off from working on my thesis.. I figure my brain needs some time off..

Sensory overload!

I had an amazing experience this Saturday. Or, a geeky experience, some would say.. Either way, I really enjoyed it, so go ahead and call me a geek, a snob and all that jazz.

Ahem, anyways, to make a long introduction short, my mom’s boyfriend, Klaus, is throwing a rather fancy wine tasting for some old friends of his featuring strictly wines from the Medoc region of France. He was short a few bottles and had been looking all over (and outside of) the country for them. I’d suggested he looked up my go-to wine guy and asked him.. And as it turned out, my guy came through and hooked him up with a local merchant/collector here in Kolding who just happened to “have a few bottles lying around.”

So, Klaus, being the guy that he is, thought I might enjoy the experience and asked me (and my mother) along to visit the Holiest of Holies.. I mean, this woman’s wine cellar.. When he went to pick them up.. And what an experience that was.. Or well, at first it didn’t look like much when we arrived at our destination and a rather innocent looking cellar door (which I hear is the most beautiful word in the English language?). It wasn’t till our host, Hanne, arrived and let us in and down a flight of stairs that things got interesting.

The first thing I noticed, aside from it being fucking cold down in this beautifully arched brick walled basement. Were some old, wooden  shelves carrying bottle after bottle of Warres Vintage Port wine from the late 90’s all the way down through to the year 1900! “Yea,” I thought as I browsed on a little, inspecting crates upon crates of some of the finest Grand Cru reds to come out of France in the past 10-15 years, “this is DEFINITELY where I parked my car!” I pressed on, trying hard not to look too much like a kid in a candy store and even harder to not knock something over.. I mean, even if you don’t know much about wine, you don’t need to be a genius to figure out that when most things don’t carry price tags and those that do carry tags in the $100+ area, well, then you should be careful!

After a while of chatting and random browsing, our hostess asked us if we wouldn’t please join us for a small glass of wine. This sent me into a mild coughing fit which I did my best to attribute to the climate of the basement rather than the fact that she’d just pulled out a 1996 Medoc and was now offering me the most expensive wine I’d ever had the pleasure of tasting.. At 10:50 AM on a Saturday morning! Naturally, not one of us declined the invitation.. She then led us through a small, private study, the walls of which contained wine racks featuring some real treasures with small stickers showing the various vintates.. 1986, 1974, 1963, etc.. I even spotted a couple of pre World War I reds.. And a 1961 Pommery Champagne.. Even the candle holders on the small desk were made out of empty bottles of super wines.. Sheesh!

And that wasn’t even half of it. Our destination, apparently, was the tasting room which was like the inner sanctum of the place, featuring more beautiful arches, glass mosaics, a fireplace, a large oak table in the middle of the room and hundreds of bottles of wine ranging from fuck off expensive to downright priceless. The large crates from the first room were present as well, only now the featured vintages such as 1974-1986, and the walls featured long wine racks containing a breathtaking amount of collector’s items and sets such as Sauterne wines from 1920-35, pre-WWII reds, all wines ever ordered by (in)famous Danish politician Peter Brixtofte, and, well.. Just about everything you could imagine from within the last 100 odd year or so.. All of the rare, most of them in perfect condition and none of them (of course) carrying a price tag.

“This is ridiculous,” Klaus whispered in my ear, “do you have any idea how much all of this is worth?” I could only whisper back a guesstimate of “anywhere between DKK 10 million and price-fuckin-less” to which he silently nodded in agreement.. And so there we were seated for the wine experience of a life-time.. For me at least, being unable to take part in the experiences related by Klaus and Hanne of visiting French Chateaus and Californian vineyards.. I was perfectly, blissfully happy with just sitting here in this cold, stone-walled basement, sipping a 13 year-old red wine at 11 AM in the morning while being surrounded by one of the most impressive wine collections in all of the land.. I didn’t even notice the cold anymore. “This is insane,” was all I could text Tina, “I’m sooo overly stimulated right now!”

But, alas, business is business, so after our sipping session and a good talk, we figured we’d better let our hostess get back to enjoying the rest of our day. So Klaus picked out the two bottles that he wanted for his tasting and got away with paying “only” DKK 2700 or thereabouts for them which immediately made me feel better about some of the amounts I’ve spent on wine and spirits over the years. Then again, the bottles that he got were rather exclusive, two of them being the same vintage as yours truly (1981) and the other one being a 1984, I think, it was 25 years old to the date anyways, so must’ve been a ‘84.

We then shook hands and went back from whence we came and let Hanne, who was apparently feeling a little under the weather from a cold, get back to her bed. I then checked my watch.. Noon.. And it had already been a rewarding day.. Which was only to get better and feature such events as the announcement of larger parts of the Rock Am Ring line-up (featuring Korn, Marilyn Manson, The Prodigy, Limp Bizkit and Flogging Molly), nearly getting into fights with a psychotic cunt of a next door neighbor, DIY labor, home-made pizza by yours truly and a case of getting my drunk on with Tina, Daphne, Jakob and other.. But that’s another post, I’m sure.. I’ve been meaning to follow up on these events, but it’s late and at least this post is a bit longer than that of the night before.. Or this morning, rather, I guess.. My apologies to any Cardinals fans out there, by the way.. Them birds did put up a good show and a good fight!

Johan’s Weird Weekend

It’s been a somewhat atypical weekend in Johan-land.. Man, things were simpler when describing my weekends usually just entailed doing a write-up of whatever I remembered of last night’s drunken escapades.. It kinda seems a while since I’ve done something like that.. Maybe I  really am growing up and turning more mature?

Naaah! Maybe I’ve just been a little too busy.. Either way, the most normal thing to happen during the weekend was actually me spending (yet another) Friday night in the comfort of my home working on my assignment and resisting the urge to go out and part-take in mindless intoxication activities.. I know, boo, but a boy’s gotta do what a boy’s gotta do! Either way, the spending 12 hours of the day on school work aspect aside, it really wasn’t too bad.

Saturday, in stark contrast, started off in a somewhat badder manner. Now, I don’t know what the fudge I’d been up to whilst asleep at night, but whatever it was it involved pulling my triceps muscle in my left arm which makes for an interesting experience especially for lefties such as myself. The pain I experienced when I woke up wasn’t actually too bad.. As long as I didn’t try to either fully extend or bend my arm. It was the every day activities that proved a bit challenging.. You know you’re in trouble when activities such as washing your hair (however long) becomes a painstaking experience, and it wasn’t till after  chowing down on a healthy serving of painkillers that I managed to actually pull a t-shirt over my head.. The swallowing of the painkillers themselves being a bit of a problem as taking a gulp of water with a non-functional left arm is a bit of a challenge for a leftie..

Either way, I didn’t have much time for complaints as I had rather unusual plans for the day.. I was to spend  my Saturday afternoon at uni doing proof reading, printing and stitching together of my assignment. Unusual, you say? But why? Lemme tell you, my dear friends.. In my five years at university, this is the first Saturday that I have spent at uni which didn’t involve being intoxicated in one way or another and rather centered around serious work.. For shame! But hey, contrary to my expectations, it wasn’t all bad.. I had Christian there for company, and Lea, too, as she just happened to drop by for a nice, loving exchange of insults and catching up.. Actually, all we were missing were a couple of beers and we could’ve had ourselves a healthy, good time!

I ended up leaving uni at around 4 PM, heading to the store on my way home and picking up some edibles and heading home to do dishes and clean up a bit. I’d made dinner arrangements with my mom and her new boyfriend, Klaus, so my mom was to arrive to pick me up at around 5:20 and drive me back to her place – which she did pretty much on cue. I didn’t know, however, if she’d be bringing Klaus along so I figured I’d better tidy up a bit.. An activity I could’ve spared myself because not only did she not bring Klaus, she didn’t even come in.. Oh well.. Off we went!

When we arrived back at my mom’s, I found out that the reason Klaus hadn’t tagged along was that he’d brought his lil’, ol’ dog, Viktor, for the weekend and wanted to stay back and watch him which was fine by me coz I love dogs and apparently Viktor loved me, too, spending most of the night clinged to my leg.. For reasons totally unrelated to me continuosuly scratching him behind the ear and slipping him pieces of roast pork, I’m sure!

Speaking of roast pork, it was what was for dinner. Admittedly, it’s not a cut I’m too fond of, but it can be good at times and last night was actually one of those surprising exceptions. Interestingly enough, for someone being invited over for dinner, I reckon I ended up doing a lot of work. I’d barely even made it in the door before I was asked to help cover up my mom’s far and then walk the dog.. Which was actually pretty fine for me because I love walking and I love dogs, but eh.. I’d barely made it back in from the walk before Klaus wanted to show me the “perfect pancake batter to impress anybody”. I told him he’d be more than welcome to but that it’d be futile as in my world, Tina makes the pancakes, and that’s just how it is.. There are things I’ll go to extreme lengths to experiment with and try to perfect and things that I just don’t touch because Tina already does them so well.. Pancakes being one of those.

So, Klaus set out on guiding me through a no-measure recipe for pancakes that I will probably never use and after that he set out to create an appetizer of smoked salmon which he got about half-way through before realizing that my mom was out of any kind of dressing that’d suit the salmon at which point he looked at me and shrugged his shoulders in a “well, you do something!” kinda way.. Which meant that it was apparently now up to me to come up with an on-the-fly dressing for smoked salmon.. Um, okay, a quick rundown of ingredients in the fridge revealed some dijon mustard as the best base for the dressing to be.. I decided on a bunch of brown sugar to cancel out most of the heat and found some black pepper and sea salt for seasoning. Looking around, I discovered (much to my surprise) some basil infused vinegar and eventually decided to stir everything into a vinaigrette, using sunflower oil for the oil as my mom apparently doesn’t believe in the wonders of olive oil, and adding a bit of herbes de Provence for flavor.. The result was actually approved.

By now things turned even more fun as my mom apparently cracked under the pressure of having to cook for all of two people and suddenly found herself not knowing what to do.. Especially not when she realized that the crackling on her pork roast had turned soft rather than crunchy.. After having told her not to worry and demonstrated how proper leveling of the hunk of meat and a few minutes under the broiler could crisp things up, she apparently deducted that I’d finish things up for her and sat down to have a smoke, leaving me to worry about resting the roast, heating up a side dish, frying some potatoes she’d completely forgotten about and building a sauce.. Strangely enough, it wasn’t even till I’d started heating red cabbage, gotten the first strage of reduction for the sauce going and a bunch of potato rösti sizzling away that I turned around and went “Hey, what just happened here? This all seems oddly familiar”

Eh, either way, good times.. We slipped in the smoked salmon appetizer while the sauce base was simmering away, I then added more meat juice happiness and a bit of cream while forcing my mom to take part in her cooking adventure by actually slicing the roast which was then served up by Klaus.. Just to, y’know, get everybody involved in the process, I’m sure.. Either way, the result was good and my sauce even recieved praise from Klaus who had, in his days, apparently trained under a rather talented French sauce chef.. So being praised by him was pretty cool, and eventually resulted in a rather lengthy discussion (as in about half an hour)  about the wonders of reduction in cooking, demi-glace and grande glace which left my mom shaking  her head and looking a little perplexed.

The dinner experience culminated in Klaus’ no-measurements needed pancakes which nearly ended in disaster after Klaus, following a few glasses of wine challenged me to do an in air flip of the pancakes. I told him that while I know how to do said stunt, it wouldn’t be possible given the shape and the size of the sides of the pan he was using. He, in turn, wanted to prove me wrong and ended up nearly scrambling all three pancakes in the process.. Nice attempt, though! Even so, they still made it to the table and while they were good – I especially dug the addition of Cointreau – I’m sorry, Mr French Chef, Tina’s pancakes win this challenge – no comparison.. So, on the rarer occasion that I crave pancakes, I think I’ll turn to her..

Good things did come from the pancakes, though, such as a nice shot of Cointreau and another geek meets geek moment as Klaus and I started discussing the wonders of Islay whisky for a good hour or so. Klaus, apparently, is leading a trip to Islay this spring which not only impressed me, but also served to piss me right off.. Because, damnit, I wanna go.. On the other hand, though,  I managed to stump and impress him by (through my membership of the Friends of Laphroaig club) being able to show proof of ownership on a piece of land on the fair island of Islay.. Again, I feel like we really connected, and left my mom feeling ever so slightly confused and out of the loop once again.. Good times!

In all honesty, I’m glad my mom has found someone who makes her happy and that I can actually relate to and share common interests with.. I know this surprises a lot of people, but that’s just how it is.. And I hope it’s at least a good kind of surprise. All in all, I ended up feeling pretty happy with the experience but rather worn out as I walked on home.. And still, as I arrived home, I wasn’t able to get to bed.. Which was really just typical.. So I stayed up till about 5 AM, watching random videos on Youtube and what have you before finally turning in.

Wow, this rant is turning rather long, huh? Well, that’s probably owing to the next and final weird aspect of this weekend.. Me actually having an entire Sunday to spend with no plans what so ever and no things that crave my attention or need doing.. I’m not even ignoring or postponing things, I really have an entire day off with nothing to do.. Wow, I’d kinda forgotten how that was like.. And my mom is right, I’m having a hard time finding out how to spend my time.. But I won’t let you, dear readers, suffer under that much longer, I’ll cut offf this post by now..

No, really!

Welcome Home!

As mentioned earlier (and enthusiastically), Tina is back! Which means I got an excuse to take an evening off from studies and work to hang out, have fun and cook us some dinner.. A task which proved a little more difficult than I’d expected, but hey.. It was her first days home and I’d promised to cook her a welcome home dinner of whatever she wanted.. Which wasn’t really much, it was all just rather complicated.. First things first, she wanted chicken.. Which baffled me about as much as that one day when Louise was sick and asked me to bring her milk.. Louise doesn’t drink milk.. And Tina doesn’t eat chicken! So for her to request that was more than a little weird and scary, as it meant I’d have to come up with something involving chicken that she’d actually enjoy.

Her wishes on top of that were about as humble as they were vague. All she wanted was “something involving pasta, parmesan cheese, pine nuts, black olives, sun dried tomatoes and rucola.” Hmm.. Okay.. Well, having had a bit of over-exposure to olives and not really being sure on how to fit the briney taste into things, I vetoed that part. I thought of vetoing the rucola as well, but Tina really loves the stuff, so.. I was left with some pretty simple wishes.. Of a very summery character.. For a menu that had to be put together on the 2nd of December. Which gave me a bit of a headache because my mind, culinarily speaking, is pretty much listening to the weather and has gone into an infinite stews, ragouts and slow simmered foods loop which made putting together a summery menu and pairing it with a light, crisp summer wine a bit of a nightmare.. But I’d like to think I pulled it off none the less.

So, on Tuesday, having fulfilled his assignment quota of the day, the Johan went shopping, he also went on down to Louise’s to plant a bag of oranges he’d stumbled upon at work in front of her door for her to find when she got home from work. An act for which he was later labeled a sweetie. He then went home and cleaned some as the apartment was much in need of a thorough cleaning.

At around 5:55, Tina wrote that she was about a five minutes walk away, so I set out to mix up a couple of Mojitos, something I’ve already ranted way too much about, so lets leave it at that and just say that they were much appreciated and went well with the talk we had while I prepared our summer-themed dinner consisting of well-brined chicken breasts fried in infused olive oil w/ whole wheat pasta tossed with roasted pine nuts, steamed broccoli, sun dried tomatoes, olive oil and Parmesan cheese and, as a bit of a do or die experiment, a rucola based salad with baby spinach and other leafy greens, Chinese pears, walnuts and Parmesan flakes tossed with extra virgin olive oil, freshly squeezed lemon juice and black pepper.. No, I shit you not.. And it was even a hell of a lot simpler than it might sound.. And tasted damn good, if I dare say so.. Especially when washed down with a crisp, fruity, Australian Chardonnay and a good laugh.

Tina went so far as to say that it’s the best meal she had ever had, but I’m not sure I’ll believe her on that one, especially not since she’d already praised my Mojitos to high heavens.. I’m glad it made her happy though. Mission accomplished then, I’d say! And I kinda think I should cook for her way more often coz the Johan does like a bit of praise But yea, good times! Which weren’t made worse by our sharing the remainder of the wine over a talk and a good, old favorite.. An Eddie Izzard DVD.. Well, the wine and a bottle of my new favorite xmas brew.. An experience that Tina managed to kinda ruin for me as she took one sip of it before declaring.. “Tastes of caramel and malt.. Kinda like Harboe!” .. Which, to those who don’t know, is my absolute least favorite beer in the world. So, yea, that’s probably the closest I’ve ever been to slapping Tina around until she feverishly started explaining the reasoning behind the comparison as being based solely on a strong taste of malt, not any comparison in general taste.. Or quality for that matter! Phew!

But yea, good times, other than those little beer-related misunderstandings that could’ve so easily spurred tension amongst friends. Unfortunately, poor Tina wasn’t really feeling on top of her game and her stomach was giving her a lot of trouble, so at 11:30-ish, we had to abandon our original idea of an evening walk back to her place and call for a cab to take her home.. Which was actually another messed up experience in itself.. Seeing as the cab arrived right as Tina was getting herself ready to head out, I had to run out and halt the cabbie before he zoomed off. As I did, opening the door and declaring “she’ll only be a minute”, I looked at the cabbie and thought “Hey, I remember you.. From somewhere..”. I didn’t really think more of it, though, as I went and got Tina, said goodbye and left her to limp into the cab.

It wasn’t really till I was sitting around later, surfing the web and Tina wrote to tell me she’d gotten home safely and had enjoyed speaking a bit of German with the cabbie that I put two and two together and got that sudden realization of “Oh, yea..” of course I knew the guy.. I’d talked with him, too, in German, too, matter of factly.. As he was the exact same guy who drove Louise and I to the ER a couple of months back when she decided to suddenly collapse with severe abdominal pains on our way home from the Uboat.. What the frig are the odds? And just what the hell is this poor, German taxi driver thinking of me by now? I mean, this being the second time that I’ve hailed him to transport a pretty, young girl who was in severe pain or discomfort after a close encounter with yours truly? .. It really is a pretty bad statistic.. And a pretty bad ending to an otherwise lovely evening. I’ll have to call a do-over sometimes where nobody get to be sick.

Do’s and Don’ts of Mojito making, part two

What’s the definition of when you know somebody TOO well? I’m not too sure, but after last night I’ve some idea. I’d say that Tina and I know eachother too well when she can text me saying, I’ve just rounded this and that corner on my way to your place and I go, oh, judging by the length of her legs, that means I should start making Mojitos now.. And then have a couple ready by the split second she enters the room.

Yes, freaky, I know, but sure made her happy. Tina sure loves her mojitos.. And mine apparently. Actually, she, quite surprisingly, fessed up last night that even having traveled the world and tried Mojitos from anywhere from Øster Lindet through Paris to Bangkok, mine were still her favorite!

Which, honestly, pisses me off! Not because I don’t think it’s an insanely sweet and honest compliment to come up with.. More because of the fact that, fuck.. If I can do it, anybody can! Especially a well-paid bartender in some upscale bar on the other side of the globe! A Mojito is not a difficult drink to produce and you certainly do not need to be a top-notch mixologist to mix one up. Yet, some of the most frequent search terms on my blog are “premade mojito” and “mojito mix”.. Friends.. Please.. Stop!

Okay, apparently my first post did not have much success in conveying the message, sp lets recap, then.. Shall we? But first things first, credit where credit is due: I owe Jeffery Morgenthaler some credit for his initial inspiration, and I also owe Scotte a lot of credit on his tireless work of comparing rums and finding the best for the job, his dedication has inspired countless experiments of my own.

With that out of the way, lets have a look at the DONT’s of Mojito-making.. These should be pretty simple rules, but I do suspect it’s where a lot of people go wrong:

• Do not use bottled lime juice for a Mojito, this is a carnal sin in Mojito-making and drink culture in general! Use fresh limes and squeeze them as needed! Nothing rivals the taste of freshly squeezed lime juice.
• Do not over-muddle the mint. It will turn into mush and destroy the flavor profile.. As over-bruising or chopping of any fresh herb will do.
• DO NOT use Bacardi White rum in a Mojito!! I can not stress this enough. This is, sadly, a common mistake that will more than likely get you shot in certain parts of the world.
• Do not use crushed ice in a Mojito, it waters everything down and well, we don’t want that.
• Do not expect to be able to fix a Mojito in anything less than a couple of minutes, another common mistake of some chain restaurant bartenders.

Additional notes on rums for Mojito-making: Did I mention not to use Bacardi? Good! I know fully well that Bacardi is a CHEAP alternative, but that doesn’t mean it’s a GOOD alternative. A good third of a proper Mojito (not counting ice) is rum, so make it a good rum. I suspect a good reason why many Mojitos taste like crap is because a bad rum was used and as such more sugar, more juice or ungodly amounts of mint is used to disguise the taste. You do not want to disguise the taste of the rum in a Mojito, so get the good stuff. Preferably the good Cuban stuff such as (at the very least) a Havana Club Anejoo Bianco. If you live in a part of the world where politics rule more than common sense and you are unable to get Havana Club, Scotte suggests that Ron Matusalem Platino works well as a substitute. My personal favorite is Havana Club Añejo 3 Años so that’s what you’d get in a Mojito at my house.. Basically that’s pretty much my go-to mixer for recipes that call for white rum. I’ve tried premium aged rums as well, adding ice and sugar to premiums turned out to be a bit of an insult to all things rum.

Okay, with that out of the way (Who said “geek?”).. Here’s 11 simple steps to producing a Mojito cocktail:

• Grab a glass and chill it either by adding ice to it while mixing or sticking it in the freezer(*).
• Grab your shaker.
• Squeeze half a lime into the shaker and throw the spent hull in as well.
• Muddle gently, as you do, add a good pinch of (cane) sugar or a splash of simple syrup(**)
• Add a large sprig of spearmint and keep muddling gently, bruising the leaves, not turning them into mush.
• Add 2 oz of good, white rum.
• Add ice cubes.
• Shake vigorously.
• Top with 3 oz of sparkling water.
• Evacuate serving glass from freezer, or dump ice from said glass, strain Mojito into said glass.
• Sip slowly!

* – As regards glassware, I’m sure there’s some sort of convention to this.. Me, I like my Mojito without extra ice, so I use a chilled Martini glass. If you wanna serve it over ice cubes, you’d wanna use a high ball or old-fashioned glass, I guess.

** – Sweeteners in Mojitos is something that’s been discussed for ages and probably will continue to be discussed for ages to come. Simple syrup, white sugar, cane sugar, sweet-n-lo (just kidding there)? Some argue that sugar granuals are needed to draw essential oils from the zest of the lime during muddling, others argue that simple syrup is needed because sugar will not dissolve properly.. I’ve tried both approaches and, in the words os late Clark Gable: “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn!” .. Just do yourself a favor and use cane sugar or similar over the processed white stuff if you chose not to use syrup.. And if you use syrup, use a little less than you would ordinary sugar..

And that’s it, really, you can disregard the nerdy rants on sugars and rums as long as you promise me not to use Bacardi.. Apparently this way, too, you can produce a better Mojito than the bartenders of Bangkok

Well, that was unexpected

In true Johan spirit, I went into yesterday entirely without plans and, eventually, things spun largely out of control.. In a rather successful manner!

I woke up entirely without plans for the day or what to do other than a preminition that I was probably gonna end up drunk in the company of Dunkel at some point during the night. This turned out to be quite true, but a lot of other things happened prior to that. Such as Dunkel texting me up fifteen minutes into my morning routine and asking me if I would be interested in going road tripping with him to pick up some laundry at his grand parents.. Duh.. Of course I’d be interested, long ride, spiffy car, rock and good company! I was so up for it, and so less than an hour later, we were off to the fair town of Tinglev, located near the German border.

As we set off it was raining so things didn’t go too smoothly for a while, as we got further south the sky started to get blue, the road dried and we speeded up considerably and tore through the Danish summer while listening to The Offspring and other such goodness and eventually we made it to our destination. Meeting Dunkel’s grandfather was rather interesting. He was basically showing every aspect I’d expect Dunkel to be showing in 50 years; including a sense of humor and a love for schnapps.. Which was awesome!

We didn’t stay too long, though, as we’d gotten another bright idea – since we were so close to the border, we figured why not go for lunch in a foreign country? It seemed the only reasonable thing to do. So we headed off towards Flensburg, a major city on the other side of the border and the only fast food joint we feel somewhat good spending our hard-earned money at, Burger King. Since Dunkel had been doing the whole driving and paying for gas thing, I figured I’d better pick up the check for the meal which proved a bad fucking idea as none of us had really had any breakfast and our meal ended up setting me back close to 28 euros! But in our defence, we were in fact so full afterwards that we could hardly walk back to the car.. And of course, I’d been stupid enough to offer not one but two deep fried sides and as those who know me will know, deep fried goodness doesn’t do wonders for my stomach.. So we were both pretty well fed for the rest of the day.

Anyways, being Danes and being in Germany, we’d be very bad campers if we didn’t take advantage of the cheaper booze prices before heading back home and so of course we did and hit one of the nearest border shops to stock up a bit.. Which nearly went pretty wrong as we had pretty much barely made it into the store before stumbling upon their selection of Scottish Single Malt Whiskys and quality rums which made both of us go “Whoa!” and stare in silence for about thirty minutes, drooling ever so slightly. We eventually restrained ourselves and ended up getting only a single bottle of ten year old whisky each before moving on and picking up some beers for yorus truely and making our way to the register. At the register, we paid up for our purchases while humoring ourselves by reading a rather crudely drawn up sign stating “Looking for Roundup?” (a well-known herbicide) “look no further than our cosmetics department!” .. Eh, okay, we thought cracking a few weird jokes as we exited the store and aimed the car due North and sped towards home.

Safely back in Denmark, after a much too fast return journey, we dropped my place to drop off most of the beers and pick up a bottle of Scapa to take part in a late afternoon whisky tasting session featuring our new purchases and a another bottle that Dunkel just happened to have standing about. We then went back to Dunkel’s, did our best at cleaning out his mess of an apartment and then sat down, put on some music, tasted some awesome whisky and ordered up a couple of pizzas, breaking the 50 Euro marker on money spent on junk food that day.. Ew!

After eating and swearing on all that was holy never to eat junk food again, at least not in such proportions, we started trying to rally up some people for a party. This proved a little more difficult than expected as apparently this years Roskilde Festival started today, Sunday, and so most of our friends who were going this year were already lining up for good camping spots starting Saturday evening.. Bah, humbug I say!

Anyways, we ended up getting a hold of Einar (as could be expected), Penny, Dunkel’s girlfried Marianne and a friend of hers plus Louise B who was all too happy to show up and drink some of our beers after attending her grandma’s birthday.. All in all, it was a pretty cozy evening during which we got to tell a lot of Rock Im Park anecdotes, cry out Saufen and Helga quite a lot throughout the night.. And, I guess, quite effectively scare the living shit out of Marianne’s friend who had apparently just finished tenth grade and wasn’t too familiar with wild parties and tales of more or less sane binges.. Yeah, I can see why exposing her to Dunkel and I might not have been the best idea in the world But she stuck through it right until around 4:30 AM when Dunkel pronounced the party over after Einar had pretty effectively consumed most of our mixers.. Poo!

Oh well, Louise, Penny and I filed homewards and about the last thing I remember of the evening is walking the long way home along with Penny while Louise is somewhat incoherently texting me about her process of feeding the population of wild animals in her apartment; which I found out to consist of a couple of pet fish.. Right, yea.. Strong lagers and cheap rum will do that to you, I guess Anyways, I make it home around 5 AM and find myself completely incapable of going to sleep so I turn to weird activities such as early morning TV (not very interesting!), browsing the internet (not very interesting either!) and reading (not exactly easy after a night out).. Eventually I take to just texting Tina to see if they’d gotten a proper camping spot at Roskilde and apparently that did the trick because as soon as her reply rolled in at around 7 AM, I promptly passed out and was out cold for the next 5 hours.

Vegan Week 2008: Day Four, You’ve been.. Thunderstruck!

Whoa! What gives? Y’know what? I do suspect that over the past 24 or so hours, Denmark has been hit with every bit of bad weather there is save typhoons and hails of fire.. Okay, granted, those are extreme.. But still, no kidding so far we (and I personally) have been bit by rain, storms, snow, hails and sleet.. And on top, we’re in the middle of a huge ass thunderstorm.. Granted, thunderstorms are fun, you get to walk around, howl at the moon and listen to AC/DC’s Thunderstruck.. And that, in my book, qualifies as a dang good time, but really.. The rest of the crap, I could do without.. Easily! Especially when I have to be on the move.. Which, surprisingly I have been a lot today.. All things considered.

Y’know, it’s funny.. A couple of days ago when I was grocery shopping with Tina, I was mocking her because she bought so much shit all at once and was telling her that basically I prefered to just walk around to the store around the corner every other day and get whatever I needed.. Well, boy did that comment come back to haunt me today when I was out of stuff for my lunch salad and I had to wade through snow and rain to get whatever necessities I needed.. Bummer!

But oh well, at least in my mind the sun was shining. You see, I got graded on my four hour written exam today and received a 10, the second highest grade on the new scale.. Wow, was that a pleasant surprise, considering I was pretty damn sure I’d not done especially well.. At all!

In fact, the sun was shining so much in my mind, that I didn’t even really mind the second exposure to wind, rain, snow and what the fuck have you that I had to endure while winding my way down to Tina’s for dinner later that evening. In fact, I only seemed to mind right around the time that I made it inside and realized how much I’d taken on the likeness of a drowned mouse. But then, you don’t usually hear me complaining unless there’s someone around to hear it – Well, duh!

Anyways, yes… Dinner.. I have a sad feeling that Tina has been suffering more than I have during this whole crazy bet, so I took it upon myself to provide her a filling, protein and fiber rich meal to ease her near-endless hunger.. As well as to try and cheer her up after a long, hard day.. So I arrived, packing a bunch of homemade garam masala spice mix, tomatoes, lentils, wild rice, parboiled rice and my usual obscure sense of humor.. Well, one of the things I truly like about Tina, the tired version especially, is that it takes barely anything to turn her frown into a smile.. In fact, all it took was one look at my flavour shaker (which admittedly is one silly looking device), and she was happy just bouncing around the kitchen by herself for a few minutes, laughing and shaking the damn thing around like there was no tomorrow.. All while I was trying to get food on the table.

Oh yes, food.. Another trigger button for my dear, little friend. Hand her a plate of my food and good times are bound to ensue: This time the poor creature really was hungry so at the moment the food hit the table, she started piling into her mouth.. By way of her plate.. Almost.. Upon tasting it and seeing that it was good (who’d have thunk vegan tikka masala would work as well?), she piled even more generous amounts of food into her mouth.. before THEN realizing that the food (having just come off the burner) was insanely hot which lead to one of my favorite sights in the world: A flustered Tina waving her hands, cupping her mouth, making a combination of affirmative “Mmms” and painful whimpers while not really knowing whether to spit her food out or eat more.. While at the same time suffering from a series of hiccups from nearly bursting with laughter at the obvious insanity behind her own actions..  You gotta really see this for yourself to realize that it’s probably one of the funniest and cutest sights in the world, and gosh-darnit I wish I knew how she does it because whenever I pull something like this, I tend to just look like an idiot.

Anyways, Tina eventually calmed down a bit and the rest of the dinner (with wine, thank you very much) went pretty smoothly with everybody (all two of us) having both second and third servings.. Did I mention that the good thing about vegan food is that you can eat just about as much as you want, and not have to worry about the calorie intake? Yum!

Now after the usual dinner, the usual movie followed. We were lucky that for once there was something good on TV as one of the Danish channels showed Kill Bill, a favorite of mine – and Tina’s apparently. I made quite an effort trying out of trying to ge Tina to explain to me why a surprising number of sweet, little blondes liked such a reasonably (and by reasonably i mean ultra) violent movie.. It was all in vain, though, as she just shrugged and said something along the lines of “I dunno.. Tarrantino is just cool” – which I could really only agree with, but I really thought only we boys would appreciate the coolness of people being torn limb by limb with katanas and other fancy merchandise. It wasn’t till near the end that it hit me that the reason they might also like it is that aside from being cool, the movie is just damn pretty and beautiful. If you don’t believe me, re-watch the garden battle scene between that blooded, blonde hottie and the warped, Asian hottie..

Wait, was I side-tracking again? Anyways, after the movie, the rain and snow had thankfully stopped which made me quite happy as I had a 25 minute walk home to look forward to. Thanfully it kept dry all the way and I got to watch an awesome, awesome display of thunder and lightning lighting up the entire city as I walked uphill towards my apartment. Sadly, though, the wind had not calmed down, in fact it’s picked up, so I was kinda shivering too much under my soaked jacket to stop and really appreciate the show.. Not even the two glasses of wine had helped much, so of course I took it upon myself to hurry home and pour myself a nice dram to keep me warm while writing this.. Mmm.. Weekends.