This is it, then?

Handing in a MA thesis has probably been one of the weirdest experiences of my life. Not to mention one of the more stressful. In a true Murphy’s Law kinda way, anything that could go wrong did go wrong and as a result, I only barely finished printing the damn thing at midnight on Sunday, some 9 hours before I’d planned to hand in the damn thing. Having done so, I pretty quickly made my way home and more or less passed out from exhaustion.

The next morning, I got up early, called for a cab and went down to uni to hand in my thesis. Sitting in the cab with the culmination of five years of university on my lap really was the weirdest feeling ever. You’d think I’d be relieved that it’s all over, and of course I was, but it’s hard to even grasp that it really is over, let alone feel joyful and happy about it as you’ve spent the last few weeks being stressed out and worried sick about everything.. And, well, the whole process wears you out unlike anything I’ve ever tried before, so when I did finally make it to uni and handed the thing in, I felt more zombified than I ever have in my life. It was an odd mix of happiness, relief, nervousness and sheer exhaustion. I honestly cannot remember ever having been this tired and worn out in my entire life.. Really.. And it was only 10:30 AM on a day devoted to celebrating me, Tina and Louise handing in our respective theses.

Oh well, as always the Johan soldiered on.. Having handed in my thesis and said hi to Louise and Tina who just happened to be at uni for some last minute printing or whatever, I went on with my day. Which first and foremost involved planning and shopping for dinner later that night.. Which turned out to be a pretty interesting quest considering how mentally and physically beat I was and bearing in mind that we hadn’t really had time to do any planning what with our theses needing writing and stuff. What little planning Tina and I had done involved throwing out a hell of a lot of invitations and figuring we’d just sort out the details during the day.. With the result that we now had eight people (ourselves included) coming over to Tina’s for dinner that evening and no real plans for food or anything.

We decided during our little meet-up at uni to just go with something simple involving pasta, creamy tomato sauce and chicken and to more or less just tell people to show up whenever they felt like it. This took a lot of the stress out of the planning, for everyone but a severely sleep deprived Johan who now had to do shopping and preparations for dinner for eight.. Which was fun, let me tell you. It involved a lot of walking between my place and Tina’s place, going to the store not once, or twice but three times in order to get everything I needed. And making not one, or two, but three visits to my go to wine guy. The third of which was caused by my own stupidity as I chose to drop (and break) a bottle of white wine I’d just bought on my way down to Tina’s.. Doh!

The entire process took about four hours total, cock ups and all which left me about five minutes to rest at Tina’s (having your own key does have its privileges) before moving on with my day, the next part of which was a lot more enjoyable. See, Zascha was in town for the evening’s celebrations but had decided to come early to do some shopping. Having not had the chance to properly hang out and spend some time together in ages, we decided that I should join her and we’d make a day of it. A pretty awesome day, really. It was raining pretty heavily that day so we spent most of it huddled together under Zascha’s umbrella while walking around town and picking up new clothes, accessories and boots for Zascha. I know I’m a guy and shouldn’t enjoy such activities, but there you go, we actually had a lot of fun doing it and we barely even fought, bickered, made fools of ourselves or walked into things in the process.. Ahem!

We also took time out to visit a new downtown cafe for what we hoped would be a quick, easy lunch.. Which instead turned into a bit of a waiting game as they took forever to take notice of us, get our orders and eventually put food and drinks on the table.. But they did serve me my first beer of the day, so I’ll forgive them. As far as food was concerned, we decided to share a plate of nachos which would have been a pretty good idea, had we not been terrible at sharing. It all went reasonably well until I, as any guy would, implemented the universal “if they’re stuck together, they count as one nacho” rule, a rule that ended up working out in Zascha’s favor as she was able to lift almost an entire layer of chips stuck together by molten cheese. This, naturally, pissed me off so while she was happily and joyfully munching away at parts of her loot, I ripped the other half right out of her hand, dipped it and ate it like the bastard that I am, causing Zascha to shoot me a look of surprise, anger, disappointment and just plain disbelief.. Well, I’m sorry, sweetie, it had to be done!

I spent the rest of our lunch date wondering whether Zascha was about to kill me and or kick me in the shin, but to her credit, she did neither, though she did spend most of our subsequent walk down to Tina’s complaining about my manners. We arrived at Tina’s at around 5 PM, I think, and when we did, Emelie and Louise were already there, too.. I think.. At this time, I’d reached a point where my brain had started shutting down and not even registering the most basic things. The fact that Zascha (bless her) had brought a Cuban sipping rum for us to enjoy wasn’t really helping my cognitive process either and I can’t for the life of me relate any details of what happened during the next few hours. I know that Tine and Christian eventually arrived and that a lot of talks and laughs were had.. As for my part.. I was merely just there, trying to take part in the conversation, trying to get dinner on the table and trying to be somewhat coherent.. And I failed pretty miserably at most of those tasks. Judging by the reactions of the others, I made some pretty weird, out of place comments and had some pretty strange answers to pretty simple questions.. But I did get food on the table.. Eventually. And after forgetting pretty basic things such as adding cream to a creamy tomato sauce. The others assured me the food was still good, though, I wouldn’t know, I’m not sure I registered how it tasted, but I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t say so if it wasn’t. And I guess that goes to prove than even when tired to the point of exhaustion, slightly drunk and barely aware where I am, I can still cook a mean pasta dinner.. Yay me!

We spent a lot of time eating, talking, sipping good wine and having a general good time. Getting some food (and wine) in my stomach helped me wake up a little and start registering what was going on around me which made me realize that I obviously wasn’t the only worn out, tired and incoherent person in the room. Actually, I think that most everybody, save perhaps Karsten, Louise’s boyfriend, who arrived near the end of our dinner were in a totally different place mentally which quickly became evident as we went for a Trivial Pursuit after dinner which had to be abandoned after a few hours on account of no one being smart enough gain an advantage, let alone win.

Sadly, Christian and Emelie had to leave the party rather early and once they did at around 10 PM, fatigue quickly set in for others. Karsten and Louise were next to leave on account of Louise being exceedingly wrecked and Tine, too, took her leave at around 10:30 PM. Leaving just Tina, Zascha and I to sit around, enjoy ourselves, sip some of the remaining wine and actually managing to finish a quick round of Trivial Pursuit.. Amazing! We even made it through a surprisingly long and heated game of LUDO which literally lasted for hours.

We eventually admitted defeat at around 1:30 AM when we were all basically too tired to stand, or even sit up for that matter so as the girls started getting ready for bed, I made my goodbyes and started on the long, hard walk home which I honestly don’t even remember taking, but I must have done so as I woke up the next morning in my own bed feeling utterly discombobulated and not knowing what to do with an entire day off..

Being done is such a weird feeling, I hope I’ll get around to enjoying it one of these days..

I has a wine cooler!

It’s been a pretty quiet weekend in Johan-land.  Actually, most of it has been dedicated to working on my thesis (90 pages down, baby, ten to go!), but some epic stuff has happened such as my mom and Klaus dropping by somewhat unexpected with a birthday present.

When I say somewhat unexpected I mean that my mom did warn me on Friday that they might drop by on Saturday morning, so I did get some fair warning and I did manage to get up at 8:30 on Saturday just in case.. Not that I’d heard anything further or anything, and not that I did hear anything until around 10 AM when my mom called and was like “Yeah, we’ll be by in about half an hour’s time. Cool, I said, and put down my work for a while and started waiting.. Which I did for all of an hour until my phone rang again and my mom informed me that they were running a little late which, I told her, I’d kinda figured out after they didn’t show up after that half hour. My mom then started rambling on about how I’d misunderstood what had been said while I could hear Klaus in the background trying to press along down a totally different track as far as excuses went.. I never really did figure out what had happened or why they were running late, in fact, I’m not sure they even THEY know, but it’s nice to hear that they’re already at the point where they’re starting to disagree about things and bicker on like an old married couple.

Either way, long story long, they eventually arrived at around noon-ish and called me out to meet them in the drive way on account of them having difficulty getting my present out of Klaus’ car. Which is no surprise given that Klaus drives a classic, lowered, aerodynamic sport car kinda thing and they arrived with a box large enough to fit a fully grown Tina.. And about as heavy as a fully grown Tina as well.. Which, admittedly, isn’t really all that big or all that heavy but what with Klaus being close to retirement age, my mom being female and the space being rather  tight and narrow, it was understandable that they were having a bit of trouble.. And since it was my present and all, I figured I’d better come lift it out the car and carry it inside.

So, what all went into this giant, heavy box of doom? Well, since they hadn’t really bothered (or been capable) of wrapping the huge ass box, it was kinda easy to tell from the beginning. Yet, not really believing my own eyes, I still carried it inside and opened it to confirm that it did in fact contain a 15 bottle electronic wine cooler! Or, if you happen to be from America and think that a wine cooler is something you drink, we might also call it a wine fridge.. Either way, it’s a small cooling unit with adjustable temperature settings and enough room for fifteen bottles of wine.. and it’s f’ing awesome! In fact, I pretty quickly declared that it was the perfect gift for someone like me.. And at the same time a really bad gift for someone like me. See, given the recent string of birthdays, more or less expected dinners with Tina and what have you, I’m down to five bottles of wine in my personal collection.. Which leaves me with ten empty slots to fill and an already run amok collector’s spirit.. The fact that I now have substantially improved storage conditions for my wines also means that I can now buy substantially better and more expensive wines without necessarily having to drink them young or worry about the effects of changing temperatures in my basement.. As you can probably tell, it’s all a bit of a predicament! But even so, I think it’s an awesome present and I’m sure that the five wines that I do have are quite happy to be chilling at a cool 16 degrees rather than the pretty hot and humid comfort of our washing cellar at this time of year.

My mom and Klaus stuck around just long enough to witness my childish fascination with my gift and then raced on, excusing themselves with having a ton of stuff to take care off. I found it all a bit odd, but hey if they didn’t want to stay.. And I did have work to get back to, aside from assembling my new toy and re-stashing my wines,  so I guess it was all good.

I worked on my thesis till around 4 PM when I hit the 90 page mark and was like “fuck it, let’s celebrate!” I’d heard Dunkel was back in town so I headed down to him with a few beers and other interesting drinks, and so we pretty soon found ourselves in a pretty good mood watching some clips on Youtube and throwing down a few cold ones. We eventually got to talking about dinner and I’m not really sure how, but somehow home-made Chicken Cordon Bleu turned up.. As so oft before, when alcohol is involved, one thing let to another and before we knew it, we were on our way back from the store carrying DKK 255 worth of purchases including chicken breasts, emmentaler cheese, air cured ham, cream, a bottle of vodka and some extra strong lagers.. The last few items were mainly for inspiration as neither of us knew how to make Chicken Cordon Bleu, so we figured there’d be some discussion and planning involved.

As it turned out, when we got back, there was indeed very little planning involved as I did as I so often do and jumped gung-ho into the whole thing and started butterflying chicken breasts, thinking that was the way to do things.. It’s apparently not.. Apparently, you’re just supposed to pound them flat and then roll them around the filling, but I hadn’t bothered to do my research so I ended up with some really large, thin pieces of chicken. My main fear now was that they’d break or tear if I tried rolling them around the fillings, but luckily at this point drunken logic came to my help once again as we decided that rather than making two small Cordon Bleus and go through all sorts of worries.. Why did we not just make one GIANT Cordon Bleu, sandwiching ham and cheese between the two breasts and then not having to worry about rolling or folding anything? As an added bonus, we’d get a ridiculously large, unhealthy and in many ways revolting abomination of a Cordon Bleu in the process!! Genius!!

This all turned out to be not that bad of an idea; it certainly was easier to work with, it didn’t disintegrate during cooking (possibly because it filled the entire pan), that and there’s basically no end to the pride felt by two drunken idiots who get to make ridiculously large servings of unhealthy foods.. Especially not when they in another moment of sheer genius decide to top the masterpiece with some left over ham and cheese.. It really was beautiful. In a messed up kinda way

The whole thing was served with beerm roasted potato wedges and a sauce whipped up from roasted garlic, pan juices, chicken stock, nutmeg and cream.. Simple, filling, heart-attack inducing.. And surprisingly good for a first, drunken attempt.

Having thusly celebrated our own sheer genius, we kicked right into an extended movie night featuring.. Uhhh.. Dodgeball, Top Secret, Idle Hands and Zack & Miri Make A Porno.. I think.. I got confused.. At any rate, there was a lot of laughter, a lot of Jessica Alba, a lot of beer, some Offspring.. And I may have missed a few details along the way because at one point during Idle Hands we decided that it’d be fun to blend vodka, strawberry slush ice, brown sugar and more vodka and serve it up in tumbler style glasses.. As a result, we ended up splitting 2/3 of a bottle of vodka during half of what was essentially not that long of a movie.. Ah, good times! Which isn’t to say that a movie featuring Seth Green, Jessica Alba, music by Rob Zombie and cameo appearances by The Offspring wouldn’t have been pretty good times to begin with, I’m just saying that five shots of vodka in the process probably didn’t make it worse.

The whole beer/movie/vodka adventure lasted until about 1:30 when Dunkel had to forfeit which was probably, come to think of it, in everybody’s (all two of us) best interest. So I ended up walking home right around then, carrying the last half bottle of beer with me to finish once I got home which I of course did, coz you shouldn’t let good beer go to waste.. And I’m, come to think of it, quite happy that it all ended there because it allowed me to get up the next day, albeit late, without a hangover and actually get to enjoy my one full day off this week which was quite a nice experience, thank you very much. It’s been a long week but what little time I had off has been spent well, I guess now since we’re once again getting frighteningly close to 4 AM, I’d better get my ass to bed so I can get up at a reasonable hour tomorrow and get back to working on my thesis..

Sigh.. It’ll all be over soon.

I don’t really mind bossy women

As long as their orders read something along the lines of “get your ass over here so I may cook you dinner, serve you wine and give you presents!” No, really, those were almost Tina’s exact words.. And who am I to argue with Tina? Ahem, okay, silly me.. I do realize Tina and I argue a lot, so let me rephrase that.. Who am I to argue with the dear girl in this particular situation? Hmm.. No, I thought so..

Maybe I should just start from the beginning.. See, thing is, we haven’t seen each other for a while and as such have been trying to set something up, but things such as life, work and theses kept getting in the way.. I suggested this afternoon, but Tina had plans, she suggested tomorrow but apparently other things were up then as well.. It really was kinda frustrating to me.. But then suddenly out of the blue tonight she messages me at around like 7 PM going “Have you eaten?” .. Which I, at the time, strangely enough had not.. Again, I usually don’t go three hours without eating, but that’s another story.. Anyways, I tell her no and she simply goes “Well, get your ass over here!” I pretty much know not to argue at this point, but just in case I would, she quickly adds: “I’ve got food simmering for us, I’m about to open a bottle of Italian wine.. And I also have a present for you from Italy!”

Yes, ladies and gentlemen of the interwebs: that is my Tina, and that is how damn spoiled I am.. And how am I to refuse an offer like that? I mean, we all know from years of experience that I have a hard time saying no to this pretty, little, blue-eyed blonde in the first place.. And you throw in home cooked dinner, wine, good times.. And presents? (Did I mention she spoils me?).. Well, short story even shorter, I was out the door and on my way in like five minutes. I spent the brisk walk down there listening to a bit of Neil Young and answering Tina’s question of “Merlot or mystery wine?” in favor of the latter.. And I think I managed to answer a few cooking related questions as well, before I rang the buzzer, was greeted by Tina at the front door with a smile and a big hug, then dragged up to her apartment where I got a sniff of the food, was immediately pulled into the living room, handed a glass of wine, was forced to drink, then given my present in the shape of a bottle of nice Italian Extra Virgin Olive Oil DOC of the Garda region for which I barely managed to thank her before I was scolded with a playful “Now show some respect and take your fucking shoes off!” .. Right, I’m sorry, babe, next time I’ll remember to take my shoes off while you pull me around and dazzle me with sweet smiles, wine, lovely food, presents, hugs as well as chattering and kind reminders for me to remember all sorts of things.. My mistake!

Naturally, this launched me into a counter offensive as I told her (while taking off my shoes) that if she thought that only because she hadn’t seen me for a while,  she could start bossing me around and telling me what to do and start pity little arguments, she was sadly mistaking.. Which of course led to more bickering.. And to Tina acting in a very breaking all the rules (that she made up) way by starting to put on shoes of her own.. Granted ones that she got in Italy and wanted to show off, but I still call rule-breaking on that one! .. And I’m starting to think she’s getting a little too smart for me..

See, I will usually scold Tina for spending too much money on clothes or shoes.. Or sometimes just for spending money in general.. It’s all part of our not dating but still acting every bit as an old, married couple game.. But with her inviting me over for dinner first, sharing a good bottle of wine with me and giving me presents as well. You’d expect she’s trying to soften me up for the blow.. Plus I think she knows fully well that dresses and stilettos are two purchases I have a really hard time arguing against.. Because well, she shows me these really gorgeous, hot, red stilettos that she got.. And I don’t know what to say.. Goddamnit! I’m calling obvious and well-planned manipulation right there!

But I forgive her this once.. Coz, well, the shoes were really pretty (both pairs), there was good food, did I mention she was cooking me dinner.. And she got me a really well-thought out, personal and caring present (long story, but there’s been some fascination with good olive oil on our behalf).

But yea, speaking of dinner.. It was awesome! Mostly when we get together, I’m in charge of most of the cooking, so for me to just show up and get fed is a real treat, not because I don’t enjoy cooking for her, but mostly because there’s just an extra element of being pampered involved. Plus Tina is a great cook who gives herself way too little credit. I will take some for teaching her a few odd tips and ways, but she definitely deserves credit for what she does. The pasta and meat sauce thing with red wine reduction she did was great, and her balancing of chili and garlic in the dish was enviable to say the least. The cook herself (naturally) thought that the dish was lacking in the red wine flavor, but she’ll usually say that unless there’s like an entire bottle of wine in the dish.. And I do happen to prefer to drink some of the wine WITH the dish rather than in it. And besides, when paired with the wine she used in it, I thought the balance was really good. In the end my main gripe with dinner was the fact that I wasn’t hungry enough to squeeze down two full servings.. Boo!

After dinner, my brightly smiling companion looked at me, batting her lashes slightly and asking “Do you know what the best part about this is?” – “Umm.. No?” I ventured, to which she brightly informed me that “since I cooked dinner, that means you get to help with the dishes without any complaining on my behalf!” which spawned a few laughs from me as I more than happily got started on helping her with the dishes.

We then lounged back for a while, sipping some more wine and watching a few episodes of a show I’d somehow completely managed to miss called “Big Bang Theory” which actually turned out to be a great source of entertainment for someone as geeky as us and I foresee many more get-togethers centered around this show.. And hopefully dinner with wine as well. I really did enjoy the concept of a sitcom actually being funny for a change as well as the geekier aspects and references being employed.  It seemed a more intelligent form of humor to me with a nice bit of absurdity thrown in for good measure. And me, being the geek that I am, of course got a few kicks and giggles out of the more obscure references such as a “42″ cap, a caffeine molecule t-shirt, a periodic table shower curtain.. And the sheer number of obscure facts, theories and stories referenced.. Ahh, good times.. And probably a new obsession of mine.

Ah, but it had been a long day.. For one of us at least.. (Let’s just say that Tina is a wee bit better than I am at getting up in the morning) so we wisely decided to call it a day at around 11:30 after many laughs and giggles as well as some arguing and as such, I then trotted homewards, feeling happy and stuffed and spoiled.. Good times, good times!

Of blonde moments and gay moments

Tina and I both have our moments. She has her borderline dumb blonde moments, and I have my moments where I more or less knowingly engage in a series of actions that may cause the casual observer to question my heterosexuality. Usually, when our weird moments clash, good times and good fun ensues and Saturday was definitely no exception. Now, as a bit of a disclaimer and an attempt to avoid the argument that will most certainly ensue over this anyways, I would like to – once again – state for the record that I consider Tina to be an extremely smart and intelligent young woman. She just has those little moments every once in a while that end up being extremely entertaining because they fit her long, blonde hair so perfectly while clashing completely with her otherwise intelligent personality. I sometimes do her a small favor of not going into details about her blonde ways or little slip-ups on here, mainly when she’s begged me not to – or been a real sweetheart or spoiled me in one way or another.. But, really, when she’s being beyond adorably retarded, there’s only so much I can do to keep it from getting out..  Oh, speaking of adorably retarded, I would, finally, also like to state for the record that I use the words “adorably retarded” and “adorable retard” in the most affectionate way possible.. Right, that’s the disclaimer out of the way, eh?

So, here’s the scenario.. Without going into details, i think it’s pretty fair to say that Tina has been having a pretty hard time lately. This is no the time or media to discuss such things, but I think it’s fair to say she had a lot to deal with including work, her thesis, breaking up with her boyfriend and everything else. She’s been a tough little fighter through it all, but I still couldn’t help but feel that she needed to be spoiled a little, so I convinced her she should spent Saturday evening with me and let me cook her some food and pour her some good wine. Well, she kinda suggested it herself, but I was right on my way to launching an invitation her way when she texted me and asked the exact question I was gonna pose: “Wanna hang out Saturday and have dinner?” I guess that’s just the way we roll.

I kinda spent the next few days planning things and over those few days, plans kinda changed a little as well. Tina asked me if I’d be interested in making the day into a working day with her, and I replied that I’d love to, as long as I could get away with just pretending to work. See, after a 60+ hour work week, I didn’t really feel like spending my Saturday working on my thesis, I would however love to keep her company. So the plan was, then, for me to pop over once I’d woken up on Saturday, she’d do some work, I’d pretend to do some work, we’d have a drink, have dinner, share a bottle of good wine and do whatever we felt like.. But, of course nothing went according to plan.. It’d have been too easy that way.

I kicked things off by oversleeping and I kinda think Tina did as well..I then wasted several hours staggering around, trying to get ready, get some food, get the last bit of shopping done and whatever else I needed in order to wholly confuse myself.. When I finally did make my way down to Tina’s, it was almost 2:30 PM, and I was kinda fearing I’d missed out on a lot – which just so happened to not be the case.. As Tina was nowhere near ahead of me as far as daily chores went. On the contrary. Apparently she’d been out with the girls the night before and one thing had led to another and one shot to a third and so on until she had apparently staggered home at 5 AM in the morning.. So rather than working on her thesis, she was in that wonderful post drunken giddy state of hers. So, I found her sitting around watching a comedy-drama thing on day-time TV about mentally retarded people.. Which, in her state, apparently was the funniest thing in the world – at any rate she spent a lot of time giggling to herself and laughing slightly at the goings on and I spent a lot of time, watching her, head tilted to the side and a puzzled smile on my lips.

As luck would have it, though, we couldn’t just sit around all day and watch retards on day-time TV. We had things to do! Namely, we had to get a tent for Tina who was heading to Italy for a week the next day. So, into Tina’s car we jumped and off we went to a local hardware store to look for cheap tents, bicker a bit about which to get, yell a little at each other while falling over innocent crouching customers and eventually get into a full-fledged argument about whether or not I was allowed to help Tina carry the tent she’d just purchased.. Oh, there was to be a lot of arguing that day.

With tent in hand (I’d managed to snatch it while Tina wasn’t looking), we (or rather Tina) headed out to buy a present for our friend Tine who’s celebrating her birthday Monday (today). Tina got her this gift certificate thing to a local SPA thing which was beautifully wrapped by the nice lady behind the counter in a wrapping leaving no doubt about where the gift was from. Tina pointed this out to the nice lady while I wasted no time in, sarcastically, telling her that she wouldn’t have that problem if she’d just wrap her presents herself like I did. Which spawned another huge argument and a fair bit of pouting and bickering, much to the amusement and confusion of the nice clerk who was merely trying to help. The joke here being that I am so notoriously bad at wrapping things but still do my best whenever I’m buying Tina a present which have led to some pretty ridiculous wrappings, including black plastic bags, tin foil and stapled together paper bags. She enjoys this to a point where my creative wrappings are now a huge part of the thrill for her whenever she gets a present from me, but apparently the suggestion that she could just shape up like me and learn to wrap things properly.. Well, it didn’t sit too well, and as a result, we were still arguing on our way out and even as we got in the car to drive to Tine’s and deliver the present.

As we arrived at Tine’s, we took a small break from arguing to enjoy the sun while waiting for Tine and her boyfriend, Henrik, to also show up. Apparently they’d been out shopping and we’d arrived a little before them, so we kicked back, talked and just plain enjoyed the fine weather for about ten minutes before the others arrived. When they did, we said our hellos and were kindly asked in, an offer we gladly accepted but not before offering to help them carry their groceries from the car, a quite noble task which ended in complete chaos as Tina and I once again exploded in each other’s faces this time in a bitter fight over whether or not Tina was allowed to be an independent , strong woman and carry the heavy bags or whether I was to help her.. Or something to that extend. Poor Henrik who isn’t really used to our loving insults and fights started looking beyond frightened at some point during it all, so I casually whispered to him not to worry, “we’re not dating or anything, we just love to fight”.. Strangely this seemed to do little in terms of calming him down and making him understand. Regardless, he seemed happy with the helping hands.

Having both helped and scared Henrik, we made our way inside and were treated to a grand tour of the house which was under extensive renovation, we then sat down, hung out and talked for a while.. Oh and we had something I’ve never had before.. A smoothie! Apparently a chilled concoction of various fresh fruits and berries, dairy products and ice. A surprisingly flaming concoction for something served so cold, and a treat that, for the first time that day, really made me question my masculinity.. But hey, Henrik was drinking it, too, so I figured it was okay.. So frosty beverages in hand, we wiled away some time talking about our respective theses and our progress on them.. Something that eventually left Tina with a bit of a bad conscience, so we figured we had better drive back and see if we (that is, she) could get some work done on hers.

We arrived back at Tina’s at around 5 PM and she immediately got to work on her thesis while I got to work on making us some coffee and doing the dishes so I’d have some space to work on and some pots, pans, plates and cutlery to dirty while cooking dinner.. Something I got started on immediately after having done the dishes and made sure Tina had coffee, and, well, popping open a cold, canned “Mojito Long Drink” that Henrik had given me.. What can I say? I cook better when I’m not sober.. And I wanted to make sure Tina got a really good and well-deserved meal.. So while she did her best to get some work done, I did my best not to distract her too much while I whipped dinner together.. Which proved hard because A) I’m very good at dropping things and hurting myself when I cook and B) apparently the smells of what I had tried so hard to put together in order to spark her prodigal appetite was driving the poor girl crazy.. Which I took to mean that my evil plan was working.

For dinner, Tina had requested something light, possibly chicken with some sort of salad. I knew to go light because of her recent lack in the appetite department, but other than that I was pretty lost. Eventually, I decided that since I was looking to spoil her silly, I’d go light and partially with what she’d requested and partially with ingredients I know she loved and throw in a little side dish I’d created inspired by her monkeying around on another occasion. So, I went with chicken steamed in vegetable stock and lemon juice with garlic, green onions and chili. Which covered the chicken part. To that I served steamed green asparagus with olive oil, lemon juice, garlic, prosciutto ham and Parmesan cheese. Which covered the light part. Furthermore, for the part of the meal inspired by Tina, I went with a salad of honey dew melon, blazing hot Fatalii chilies and fresh mint leaves, dressed in cane sugar, lime juice, extra virgin olive oil and cracked black pepper. A really interesting combination that I came up with one day after Tina had rubbed her eyes after handling chilies and I was spun into thinking about how to lessen the burn from really hot chilies (I guess we all find our inspiration in our own little ways). Finally, for the part I knew she’d love (other than the obvious addition of her favorite ingredients: chili and citrus juice and the mojitos I made to kick things off), I made some homemade garlic bread which has been.. Well, pretty much an obsession of ours since we first tried it.

I somehow managed to get all of this done using only a single burner, an oven and a fair amount of good luck and cussing. I even managed to time everything perfectly and to keep Tina from having to help which I guess partially made her feel bad, but I do think she also quite enjoyed being spoiled silly. At any rate she seemed very happy with just having to sit down for dinner and a lovely white wine courtesy of my go-to wine guy. I won’t even go into details about how much we ate or the amount of butter and olive oil consumed through these dishes, but I’m happy to see that I saw Tina eat more than I’ve seen her do in weeks, possibly months, so I’m thinking it’d be okay to call it all a success. We actually ended up sitting there for over an hour, eating, talking, laughing, listening to a bit of Rammstein in the background (as you would during any candlelight dinner) and just having a plain good time while working up the courage to get up and do the dishes. Which none of us really wanted to do given that we were perfectly fine with just being full and happy.

We did eventually muster the courage to get up and do so but not before making a little more garlic bread to eat as a reward afterwards. Again, I won’t disclose exactly how much garlic bread was eaten, but there was some giggling at the sight of Tina’s happy, full tummy. But then, neither of us had really been eating anywhere near enough lately, so it was all good.. And at any rate, we quickly got something else to talk and laugh about as Tina turns to me and goes “Y’know, that search feature on your blog, it totally doesn’t work..” I barely have time to go “Wha? No?” before the little one bursts into an insane fit of laughter and starts muttering things along the line of “I’m such an idiot!” – “Are you having one of your blonde moments again,” I ask as she struggles to regain her composure.. “Uh-huh,” she stutters, looking at me almost teary-eyed with laughter.. “I just realized that the reason it didn’t work was because I was trying so hard to do searches in Danish..” Which is when, I too just tear into a fit of laughter.. Coz, Gee-wiz, sweetheart, you’ve been reading my English language blog for going on three years now, it really should come as no surprise to you that you’d have trouble doing searches in Danish.. Even if I admire your persistence in trying and find it kinda cute that you even went through the trouble of doing alternative spellings for Danish special characters.. Better luck next time. I’ve tested it out myself and it actually works pretty well.. If you use English search terms!

So much for the blonde moments, then, but what of the gay ones? Well, as it occurred to me and as I told Tina while we were watching our movie choice for the night (which just so happened to be “The Sound Of Music”), it occurred to me that I was having the least heterosexual day I’d had in a long, long time.. What with kicking the day off with smoothies on the couch, then Mojito chased by a dinner consisting mainly of steamed asparagus, melon and fruit juices, and then, now, just for good measure sipping chilled white wine while watching “The Sound Of Music” .. I mean, seriously, had it not been for the heavy metal backdrop and the pretty female companion, it would be this kinda behavior that would make people seriously question my sexuality.. Which is why I say that Tina has her blonde moments, and I, apparently, have my gay moments..

I can explain the whole “Sound of Music” thing, by the way. See, Tina has a thing for that musical.. And I have this book called “1000 movies to see before you die” which mentions “The Sound of Music”, so naturally I had to see it, and naturally I’d told Tina some time ago that it would be her responsibility to see to it that I got to see it. So when she suggested it Saturday, I jumped right on it.. That explains everything, right? Alright, okay, maybe not, but that’s just how I roll.. And it was a surprisingly good musical.. Which led to a lot of purely heterosexual discussions of the “her voice is really soothing” and “what a beautiful dress” varieties. The latter centering around a wedding dress worn near the end of the movie about which I remarked that it was indeed pretty but I wouldn’t dare drink red wine in it to which Tina, in yet another tired and adorably retarded blonde moment pouts and remarks that “Well, sorry, but there were a lot of shots last night, a lot of really good food and wine tonight and it really is quite a tight fitted dress, so I can’t really help it..” A statement which confuses me profusely for all of five minutes before Tina realizes I was talking about the dress in the movie, it’s whiteness and the ease with which one could stain it, and I, on the other hand, realize that Tina thought I was talking about her summer dress and poking fun at the fact that  her otherwise slim stomach was looking a little bloated after me force feeding her. A little on the defensive side, I reckon But it did go to prove that we were apparently both pretty tired at this point after a long day of fun, bickering and both blonde and gay moments, so when the movie conveniently ended not too long after (who’d have thunk it’d be over two hours long anyways), we decided to call it a night, said our goodbyes and I headed off, nearly forgetting not only my bag and my laptop but also the remaining dinner ingredients – something that Tina thankfully pointed out to me as I was on my way out the door – blonde moment, anyone?

Either way, I then grabbed my things, said goodbye again and this time headed home for good through streets filled with drunken idiots and loud youngsters, homewards bound. To get some sleep, which I never got because while I’d been nearly falling asleep in Tina’s bean bag chair, I apparently wasn’t feeling sleepy at all once I returned home, so instead of going straight to bed, I stayed up till like 5 AM, talking to random people on MSN, watching a few shows and wasting my time on Facebook.. Insomnia is such fun!

Quest For Fire

Have we talked too much about strange, Danish traditions? I think not! Let’s talk a bit about the wondrous, anarchistic night of mayhem that is Midsummer’s Eve in Denmark.

As far as this humble writer is informed, Midsummer’s Eve is the celebration of the longest day of the year and the sad realization that things are now heading in the opposite direction. Either way, for hundreds of years now we’ve had this tradition of getting together, singing songs and lighting songs to ward of evil spirits, witches and other creatures of the night.

Well, as with so many other Danish traditions, hundreds of years alcohol consumption, friendly competition, and a plethora of twigs and wood at hand coupled with the usual Danish do or die attitude, this wonderful tradition has now warped into a bit of a yearly arms race as to see who can put on the best BBQ, the best show, and, most importantly, the biggest fire.. And I think this year my team won!

Well, okay, so it wasn’t really my team.. But I was ON the winning team.. By accident! See, I’d headed back from Nyborg Monday night thinking that someone (namely Tina) might want to do something on Midsummer’s Eve Tuesday. Luckily someone (namely Tina) had had about the same idea and on Tuesday morning invited me to spend the day/evening with her, her parents and friends at her parents’ place somewhat out of town.

Not being one to usually pass up free dinner, free drinks and, most importantly, good company, I quickly got with the program, packed my stuff up and jumped on a train to hopscotched a few stations to meet up with Tina who picked me up at the station along with her parents’ dog, Frida, aka the cutest little thing ever.. Or.. On par with Zascha’s parents’ dog anyways, together we – having struggled a little to convince the dog to jump off Tina’s lap and let her drive – we drove back to Tina’s parents’ place to do a bit of work on our respective theses before allowing ourselves to goof off and take the night off.

As if by some stroke of luck, we actually both managed to get a fair bit of work done, sitting around her parents’ kitchen table and listening to some music – including lots of Nick Cave and Johnny Cash who Tina, much to my approval noted that she might well become fond of – good girl! We struggled on valiantly till around 6 PM when the whirlwind that sometimes is Tina’s mother arrived  home and started a frantic attempt of getting things ready for the BBQ that we were apparently heading out to before the evening’s bonfire, all while bickering slightly with both Tina and myself. This went on well for all of five minutes before I somehow managed to get myself stuck on both women’s bad sides and discovered just why two front wars is such a bad idea.

Having failed at bickering and fighting with two women at once, I decided to make myself useful instead and helped Tina and her mom pack a pickenick basket for the evening ahead. Tina’s brother, Kim, had arrived in the mean time and gone straight for the shower, but did eventually join the rest of us in the kitchen where he took the time to complain a bit about Tina’s new computer and our taste in music before the lot of us headed a few houses down the street. To where we were apparently supposed to meet up with the other families from town, enjoy a community BBQ and light a fire or two. Tina’s poor dad was stuck at work still, so he wouldn’t be joining us before later in the evening. This, Tina’s mother remarked to the neighbors, would be no problem, though, as she’d brought all three of us to compensate. “Hah,” a wise neighbor ventured, “you lot better start talking, then” – which I did, because it’s generally hard for me to keep my mouth closed for more than two minutes at a time.. Something Tina remarked on within a minute of me opening my mouth.. To which I replied that I’d actually been asked to speak and that I could just shut up and not mingle if she’d prefer.. And to otherwise just keep her mouth shut while the grown-ups were talking

Tina opted to not reply to this with more than a slight grin and instead decided to go look for her sunglasses.. That were conveniently stuck in her hair, something I found great fun in pointing out to her and everybody else within earshot. Tina, however, didn’t think this anywhere near as funny as I did, so she decided to shot my mouth in the quickest and best way she knew; by suggesting we go find a place to sit down and have a beer.. Smart girl!

Having found a place to sit and a beer to sip (or a glass of Verdi in Tina’s mothers case), we now only needed to get something to eat, so we unpacked our food, put salad and potato salad on the table, then headed off to the grill to fry some sausages, get some smoke in our faces, talk a bit with the neighbors and crack various jokes.. It was all great fun and resulted in some nice food as an added bonus which we happily consumed while I entertained Tina and the table with tales of my recent (agave related ) battle scars. This mildly amused and mildly scared some onlookers while Tina merely shrugged and went something along the lines of “you should see him when he really gets going.”

After a second round of sausages, of which I had the most as I decided to fry up a bunch not really realizing that only I wanted more (eh, too bad, it’s a tough job eating for three, but someone has to do it), Tina’s dad finally arrived, took one look at the food I’d prepared, then decided against it and went to fry up some sausages of his own. The rest of us, minus Kim, decided to join him for more community laughs around the grill. Tina had, at this point, discovered a stash of free wine (she has a nose for these things, I swear!), so her and I were pretty happy and chatty, mingling around, seeking out the sun and chilling in it with some more wine.

We talked a fair bit amongst ourselves, but also with a lot of other friendly people. We once again did a banging job of introducing myself as Tina’s friend, even going as far as choosing the most neutrally laden synonyms for the word friend.. And once again, nobody seemed to get the picture.. Apparently while it’s hard for city dwellers to understand the concept of boys and girls being just friends, it becomes downright impossible for dwellers of smaller communities to understand this. It’s amusing, really, that I stress three times in front of people that we’re just friends and walk by two minutes later overhearing something like “Well, Tina’s other half there..” – So much for trying to set things straight. At least Tina can laugh it off unlike others who have gotten downright upset over the assumption

After a bit of sun, a bit of wine, a nice talk and a lot of categorical denying various assumptions, we were finally at the highlight of the evening: The lighting of the bonfire.. Or, whatever the hell it was It looked more like a contraption out of a horror novel that must have taken weeks if not months to complete. The thing was literally several meters tall and even wider than it was tall, At the very top towered a life-sized doll version if a witch – another piece of tradition that I’m not too sure of – and the whole thing was set ablaze by the help of several liters of an unknown, flammable liquid.. Add tp this the steady supply of beers and reasonably dry surroundings, and in many cultures this would be considered a brilliant example of how NOT to do things, in Denmark it’s a yearly tradition., usually accompanied by the singing of various hymns and cheering.. Oh how I would love to at some point bring a bunch of foreigners to one of these events and just watch them go “Wait… You’re doing what now?!”

For such a huge fire, the whole thing actually burned down rather quickly.. As in the time it took Tina and I to steal a few beers of the locals and consume those while snapping a few pictures of the spectacle. Oh, and for Tina’s dad to drop by our little group, give me a caring squeeze and once again inform me that I wasn’t right in the head.. Something he’s come to enjoy doing and something I’ve come to interpret as his way of saying that he cares. But all in all, it was probably a good thing that the whole thing was over rather quickly, it was a standard Tuesday night after all and most if not all of us had work in the morning, so people slowly but steadily started disbanding. Tina’s parents, too, eventually said their goodbyes and left, and not long after, Tina, Kim and I followed.

We first dropped Tina off at her parent’s house, and I’d then been lucky enough to score a ride with Kim to the local train station where he dropped me off a few minutes later, sadly just minutes after the train had left.. But hey, that gave me the opportunity to walk around town for a little, reflecting over the evening and feeling rather buzzed from the beer and wine while listening to some good music and killing the hour or so I had to wait for the train to arrive.

It had all been a rather good experience. I of course love spending time with Tina, but I really like her family as well, we have a lot of fun and crack a lot of jokes.. And I may not be right in the head.. But, hey, neither are they, so it’s all good!

Eurotrip 2009, Day 2: Testing security at the EU Parliament

I’d say the day started early, but having been up at 5:30 the morning before, sleeping till 7:30 when Zascha stumbled in wearing a Stairway To Heaven tee (ZEPS RULE!) felt like a major relief.. Not that I was really awake when I took to stumbling around, clearing up from the night before and doing some dishes.. But hey, I like to pretend. Even Tina stirred, too, at some point and emerged looking slightly under the weather.. But then, she’s not really much of a morning person and was coming down with some sort of virus apparently, so I can’t say I blame her.

 

We all sorta just stumbled around for a while before Zascha had to leave for work. Apparently she has only one set of keys so it was my chore to let her out the front door so that Tina and I might use her keys and leave the house at our leisure.. Good point! So I did, and it went pretty well.. Let her out, got instructions as to which key worked in which door, said goodbye, instantly forgot what Zascha had told me and spent a good five minutes getting back inside.. Which I finally did, and then ran into an old lady who was apparently Zascha’s land lady and looked quite shocked to see a young, long haired, groggy man stumbling around on her stairway.. She moved to say something, too, but not understanding more than like ten words of French, I just beamingly told her good morning and hurried back upstairs.. Zascha, if your land lady hates you now, I’m sorry.

 

While Tina showered and did whatever it is women do to make them even more pretty, I listened to some music and ate a bit of breakfast. I then showered myself and got ready, pausing along the way to be scolded by Tina for taking too damn long.. Seeing as she’d only taken about twice the time I had, and hadn’t stopped to tell me that our parking meter was about to expire Anyways, I clearly didn’t make it on time so the little one had to rush down herself and move the car which, in a town like Brussels, takes about a half to a whole hour, depending on various factors, as you not only have to first find a suitable place to park – but also find your way back to the place you were in in the first place.. Poor Tina.

 

When Tina came back and I’d finished taking oh so long getting ready for the day, we sat around for a bit, deciding what to do, Tina had planned on doing some work and me on spreading some good vibes and moods as she did, but that plan was pretty quickly abandoned seeing as, well, I guess we hadn’t driven all that way just to spend our time working – Well, I know I hadn’t. Instead we decided on spending some time seeing the sights and sounds. Tina had already been to Brussels once, so she kinda left it to me.. And me, well, I’m a bad tourist. I’m not really too interested in museums and odd must see buildings and squares.. I’m more of a walking around and taking in the sights and sounds kinda guy.. So we spent a good deal of time contemplating before we decided that hey, seeing as Belgium in our world is mostly known for its beer.. Maybe we should go beer hunting!

 

Which turned out to be a grand idea, thank you very much, as it turned out that Brussels has one of the world’s premiere beer stores that was definitely worth checking out since we were there anyways.. So we grabbed a tourist map, some money, our shoes and headed out in search of the illusive and appropriately named “Beer Mania” store.. And maybe a bite to eat and a beer to drink along the way.

 

Scouring the streets of Brussels turned out to be a lot of fun. As it turns out, Tina works in much the same way as I usually do (no big surprise there by now), so when she’s looking for something and knows she’s on the right track, she’ll just push on and keep going, thinking she can always adjust her path later and wind up in the right place.. Which is a tactic that works great when, like us, you’re stuck with a map that for some reason only has half of the city’s streets on it. I usually work in the same way, but for some reason my radar and sense of direction had been blown completely by the trip down there, so I let Tina do most of the pointing about which turned out to be a lot of fun as we got to see a lot of things we would not have seen, had we just taken a direct path.

 

Instead, our indirect path led us down a lot of small streets, past a lot of interesting little shops, through some roundabouts and past various museums and about a hundred little car wash places – Brussels is apparently big on those!  We even stopped to help a little, lost, old lady looking for a particular museum whom I, interestingly enough, actually managed to help out as I pointed her in a direction where I’d seen a building that kinda looked like a museum.. It turned out not to be, but the museum, instead, turned out to be on the way to said building.. Hah! Score – Johan and sheer dumb luck: 1, Brussels and logic: 0!

 

After some random stumbling around, we finally reached our goal.. Beer Mania! Which, coincidentally, was about as crazy as the name suggests: 400+ Belgian beers in their selection, 100+ custom beer glasses plus a cafe and tasting room.. I remember walking through the door, loudly exclaiming “This is definitely where I parked my car!!” and then everything just sorta went black for a while from sensory overload. I remember just walking along the shelves, brightly beaming to myself, checking out the selection and going “I want this, and this, and this, and..” after a while, Tina caught up with me and asked “found anything you want to get?” to which I just replied something along the lines of “Eh.. Meh..” – the stone cold truth is I probably could’ve bought most of the store and felt quite happy about it. The sad reality is that I had very little money and was limited by what I was able to carry.. So I limited myself to a sampler pack of Flemish bottle fermented beers and a large bottle of the house’s own brew “Mea Culpa” there were other bottles I wanted to get, even some I regretted not getting – such as a 12 year old vintage Chimay Grande Reserve(!!).. But such is life. In all it was a mind-numbingly good experience for someone like me and Tina, too, found a few interesting brews to take home.

 

Leaving Beer Mania, we were starting to feel mighty hungry.. Oh, who are we kidding, we’d felt mighty hungry since like an hour before we actually wandered into Beer Mania. So we decided to head back to Zascha’s to drop off our fine new beers and then head to a small pub we’d discovered in the general area which bragged about burger platters and fine beers.. Hey, what can I say? They spoke our language! And English! Which is another cool thing about Brussels.. See, they speak French down there, but English, too.. So you get this general feeling about being in France.. Except people speak English and aren’t well.. Fucking French! Anyways, back to the pub.. Which was apparently an Irish pub.. Meaning that they served American burgers, steak sammiches, chili.. And Belgian beer.. Yes, decidedly Irish.. Not that I was complaining anyways.. The food was cheap and good, if a bit on the fatty side, and they served Belgian Trappiste beer at 3 euro a bottle.. Which was remarkably cheaper than their selection of say.. Heineken and Bud. In other words, it was pretty much heaven to a carnivorous beer-lover such as myself!

 

Having had our fill of Irish culture in the form of burgers and beer, we made a detour by Zascha’s apartment to pick up our passports that we apparently needed for identification purposes when we met up with Zascha at her work.. Which just so happened to be the European Parliament. We then, getting a hang of the city at this point, trotted off in the general direction of the Parliament which we found just minutes before a huge rain shower found us.. It was an epic sight for sore eyes, really. I’m sure a fair share of people have been seen rushing towards Parliament for many obvious reasons: excitement, running late for meetings, what have you.. Now, the sight of Tina and I, sprinting across squares and open spaces towards the huge buildings.. In a simple effort just to find shelter from the rain.. That’s new! Especially seeing as the buildings are quite impressive and landmark-like.. And here I am getting my first view of them, huddled against the side of the secondary building, shivering and sheltering myself from the rain.. We drew some looks to say the least! From Zascha, too, when she came down to pick us up.. At a totally different entrance than the one we were waiting for her at.. But that’s another story.

 

Our entrance into the Parliament itself was as graceful as our arrival. We managed to set off not one but two sets of metal detectors and get stopped not once, but thrice.. Twice because we didn’t really think to empty our pockets of things like, say, mobile phones and cameras before going through the metal detectors.. And once when I got run down by a security guard and had just enough time to think “Holy fuck, I’m going to die” before he stopped and gave me a 5 Euro bill I’d apparently left behind at one of the checks.. But after those little setbacks, we were quite fired up and ready for our tour of Parliament.

 

Which was interesting, by the way, because we were there, not a s a tour group, but as guests of Zascha and, as such, Dan Jørgensen, the Member of Parliament she works for.. So we got to skip most of the boring shit I couldn’t give two shits about (not being a fan of the EU) and got full access to the more interesting parts such as the MEP offices and what not, including one of a certain Poul who I spent an  embarrassingly long time wondering about who the hell might have been.. Until I suddenly realized I’d been in the private office of Mr Poul Nyrup Rasmussen, former Prime Minister of Denmark and a huge player in the Social Democratic movement in the EU.. Duh! We also got to see where Zascha worked where I treated myself to a small peak at her boss’ office to see how a Member of Parliament worked, figuring that if I’d asked first, people might have said no.. Anyways, that’s what you get for leaving the door open. Last but not least, we checked out some smaller meeting rooms and the Parliament chamber itself.. Yea, we actually got onto the main floor of the chamber itself, which I hear is apparently not a very common place to be allowed in.. But then again, it was another case of “if you ask, they may say no.. And hey, the door is open!” – so we went for it.. Quickly.. And with no harm done, I might add.. And we weren’t chased down by security I might add, so I guess it was okay.. Well, we weren’t chased down by security until we tried to leave anyways, and apparently broke some rule by letting Zascha lead us out, rather than asking the nice security officer to do so. At any rate, he was super pissed and told us off. So we apologized and traveled on, cussing under our breaths.

 

Having thusly checked several different security instances at the EU Parliament, we headed on our merry (long) way to do some shopping for the last few items for dinner before returning to Zascha’s where I pretty immediately got cooking on what was to be a shared birthday dinner for Zascha and Tina, as I’d promised them both that I’d cook up a little something for their respective birthdays.. And I’d like to think I did my best. Well.. If people not being able to walk after dinner is any measure of success, I certainly did. I’d wondered a lot about what to cook, even going so far as to call my mother’s boyfriend, Klaus, and get his input and guidance on what to do and whether I was doing things correctly.. Which he seemed to think I was, but having the backing of a trained French chef is always a good thing.

 

I ended up doing French onion soup topped with Gruyere and Emmentaler cheese and fresh baguettes for starters, paired with a 2005 Bourgogne Chardonnay.

 

Then, following a short delay, a sauce-related mishap and a lot of smoke, I came up with beef tenderloin steaks with a small helping of concentrated Bordelaise sauce (which admittedly didn’t come out quite as good as I’d hoped, given all the work), creamed potatoes and Belgian spring carrots with fresh thyme braised in butter and left-over Chardonnay. This I paired with a 2004 Barbera d’Alba that I’d gotten from Klaus, a rather expensive and insanely good wine that he’d brought home from the source himself.. Oh and there was some bread, too, but I don’t think anybody bothered touching that.

 

We were supposed to have had cake for dessert, but only Zascha and I managed to put down a slice.. And not a very big one at that.. Apparently dinner had somewhat broken people as we pretty much had to drag ourselves to the couch and after that we pretty much just died.. Not even the after dinner Amarone that I’d popped (as you do) served to revive people and I think we actually managed to leave most of the bottle un-drunk.. Which seems like a carnal sin, but really.. We were really tired.. Tina wasn’t feeling well and was hurting from walking.. And Zascha was sporting a headache.. So what were we to do? My only comfort was that it wasn’t much of an Amarone to write home about and that I read on Facebook that Zascha apparently put it to good use in the days to come.

 

As an end result, we ended up heading to bed just shortly after midnight after a long and exhausting day for all of us. It was a good day, though, and a lovely dinner if I dare say so myself. I hope the girls liked it, too, since I’m apparently now banned from ever cooking for them again after nearly killing them with said birthday dinner.. I spent the last few minutes of the evening laying around, listening to drunken people rummaging through the street and then, much like the night before, blacking out completely.. Zascha apparently has a comfy couch.

Eurotrip 2009, Day 1: One Night In Brussels

Seeing Zascha again was plain awesome and the fact that she was packing an umbrella for us to huddle under in the pouring Brussels rain didn’t make me any less happy to see her.. But still, it was a bit of a fast greeting as it was both cold and wet standing around on the street, so we quickly gathered our luggage and belongings from the car and rushed down the street through 27 sets of doors (okay, it was only three, really) and up some stairs to Zascha’s new.. and AWESOME.. apartment where we were quickly treated to a grand tour, on which I mainly noticed that she was now the proud owner of a gas-fired stove.. So not fair! I may or may not have been quoted as saying that I wanted to move in with her for the sake of being able to cook on it every day.

 

As far as schedule went, we were now running not only late but reeeeeally late, so dinner pretty much became our primary concern as Tina and I hadn’t eaten for ten odd hours or so and our meal back then hadn’t really been of any significant nutritional value (except calorie-wise anyways). Zascha offered three options (pizza, pub and home-cooked). With our brains being pretty much too fried to make any kind of decisions, we eventually after about 15 minutes ended up deciding on home-cooked which involved going to the store and picking up some things for Zascha to “throw together”.

 

Did I mention it was raining cats and dogs? Right.. Yea..  So, yeah, my first ever real view of Brussels, other than massive traffic and tiny one way streets, became mainly that of a lot of legs walking by as Tina and I huddled together under an oversized umbrella held high enough for Tina to move freely but still low enough to cover most of my vision.. This led to a lot of fun incidents such as me banging into various lamp posts and buildings whenever Zascha tried to point out interesting pieces of street life. But never the less, I made it to the store, through the store and back home to Zascha’s pad without too many major injuries.

 

Safely back at Zascha’s we were treated to the rare sight of Zascha cooking which is something I didn’t even see often when she lived here and we ate together like 3-5 times a week.. Shame really, because when she does try, she does really well.. She banged up this whole whopping portion of pasta tossed with ricotta cheese, fresh basil, chopped shallots, garlic, smoked salmon and pine nuts.. Which tasted plain awesome, especially paired with a nice, little Pinot Noir she’d found somewhere in France. I must’ve put down like three or four big portions but still didn’t manage to finish the whole lot which I felt kinda sad about and subsequently tried to blame Tina for the left-overs, but apparently I was the one who egged Zascha on to make such a large portion by saying that I’d be able to finish ALL of it – NO problem! I blame the two hours of sleep paired with whopping amounts of caffeine and 2000% GDA of vitamins owing to the Red Bull for such ridiculous statements.

 

After dinner, we sat down with the rest of the awesome wine, chatted, hung out, ate some snacks and tried to complete a game of Trivial Pursuit which we had to abandon on grounds of everybody being too tired for anything to make sense. Regardless, it was nice to catch up and hang out a bit even if all of us were entirely spent and in need of bed – which rather quickly became the next logical step.. We had a long day ahead of us the day after anyways. So, I got ready to crash on the couch while the girls got ready to crash in Zascha’s bedroom, doing whatever it is girls do that take 30 minutes before bed.. We said our goodnights and crashed pretty instantly.. At least I think we did, I only remember laying my head on the pillow, thinking “I probably won’t be able to sleep” then blackness, then waking dazed and confused at 5 AM the next morning..

 

To be continued..

What do you mean it can’t be done?

We were at Mie’s place yesterday celebrating her birthday.. You know, the whole family shebang.. Beers, wine, dinner, conversations and all that jazz. Mie and her boyfriend Dennis moved into this new house not too long ago so there’s still a lot of renovations going on.. At some point after dinner, Poul, a guy from my neck of the woods (greater Kolding area, that is) looked over in the corner and noticed a metal fire place, wood fired oven kinda thing standing around rather awkwardly on the floor. “Yeah,” Mie said.. We had this local chimney specialist come over and have a look at it, he said it wouldn’t fit onto the chimney and what not, so we don’t know what to do with it.

Poul, evidently being a taking no nonsense from nobody kinda guy, got up an expected the piece and eventually went “I’ll be damned if I’ll let some chimney sweeper from Fuhnen dictate what can or can’t be done.. Boys, we’ll make this work!” I should probably mention that there’s quite a lot of friendly rivalry going on between the demographic groups from various parts of Denmark, namely those of us from Jutland (the main land where I’m from), those from Fuhnen (Denmark’s second largest island where Nyborg is located and I’m trapped a the time being), and the pricks from Sealand, Denmark’s largest island.. Which I won’t even get into.

Either way, Poul apparently saw a chance for the people from Jutland to shine, so in no time he had me, my dad, Jonas – another guy from Jutland – and Dennis, the owner of the house and hence honorarily introduced into the group despite being from Fuhnen, sizing the thing up. We went at it, twisting and turning things, screwing parts of the metal chimney into place and concluded that sure enough, the chimney were a quarter inch or so too long for the oven to fit underneath..  As if that ever stopped anybody from Jutland, though.. We quickly devised a plan. My dad, Poul and Jonas piled into a car, enlisting the help of Birthe (who was conveniently sober) as driver and went looking for a metal grinder. In the mean time, Dennis and I went looking for supplies mainly in terms of beers and proper safety gear for what was about to happen.. Our master plan being that if the oven was too tall to fit under the chimney piping, we’d simply tip it over, carry it outside and grind a few inches off the feet, after which it, in theory, should fit right onto the chimney with no room to spare.

The car soon enough returned bearing my father’s discount grinder packing the only low end metal sawing attachment they’d been able to find.. Not letting that stop us, we set on to carry the oven into the garden to get things done. At this point we conveniently discovered that the oven apparently could be lifted off its metal feet, which made things a little easier as it meant we could lift it off the feet, put it down on the floor, on top if a bunch of wooden planks we produced out of nowhere and then just carry the feet outside and grind them down.. Which we did.. And what a sight for sore eyes that was. Jonas did the cutting, with Dennis assisting, wearing as proper a safety attire as we could be able to find.. Consisting mainly of Poul’s jacket, a pair of Ray Ban sunglasses to protect his eyes from the sparks flying everywhere.. And some gardening gloves for keeping his hands safe. And of course the job was done with each of them holding a cigarette in their mouth and a can of beer on the side. I, being the only other person in the crowd with glasses and apparent lack of regard for own personal safety, provided a helping hand from the side line and doubled as photographer..

After an eternity of cutting, we had the feet ready, the only thing left to do was to assemble the chimney, attach the oven and while holding it up slide the feet down under it. leaving a fully functional wood fired heating device. Some of the more squeamish women in the crowd opted not to watch this part of the process as it basically involved most of the men they cared about playing around with heavy lumps of metal and sharp edges between their fingers.. We figured it’d be alright, though, we had proper safely equipment after all.. Right?

Well, it did go alright for most of the process, we got the chimney into place, we got the oven screwed onto the chimney, we even slid the legs half way under the oven – which was now suspended in mid air.. And then, then the legs just wouldn’t budge. They were half way under there, but the combined weight of the chimney and the oven was too much for us to slide them entirely into place.. We pondered leaving it like that, arguing that at least it’d been assembled now and was in more of a working order than before.. Then someone got the grand idea to go grab a car jack from their car, use it to hoist the oven up as much as possible.. And then slide the legs into place before lowering it down again.. Genius! Like the rest of the process, it was such a stupid idea that it might actually work.. And it did! Five minutes later we were able to slide the jack out with the oven securely fitted onto the chimney and resting comfortably on its legs.. And needless to say we were beyond proud of ourselves for doing something a local expert on the matter deemed impossible!

All we needed was four people from Jutland, a local resident, a grinder, a (donkraft), a bag-in-box wine, a few beers and some common ingenuity, proper safety equipment in the shape of gardening gloves and Ray Ban sunglasses plus equal parts brute force and healthy disregard for personal safety.. And they said it couldn’t be done.. Hah!

Old red wine, way past its prime

So much for keeping you updated, huh? Well, my apologies but my weekend shaped out a bit differently than I expected.. For starters, I allowed myself to calm down and relax a whole lot more than I’d initially planned on.. This is owing mainly to me being a bit over-worked from the goings on of the first part of this week, but also to me nursing a beginning cold which is threatening to kick my ass pretty good.. As a result, I’ve kept a pretty low profile, stayed off the computer and the stress that is the internet as much as possible while trying to rest and enjoy myself at the same time.. And it hasn’t been all bad.

Well, it didn’t start out too good, either. I woke up Friday at around 10 AM thinking to myself that the light in my apartment was a little too bright for my liking. I initially thought I’d gone completely bonkers from working myself too hard over the course of the week but eventually found out that the bright light was caused by the sun reflecting off of the several inches thick layer of snow that’d fallen during my few hours of blissful sleep. Faithful readers and people who know me in other ways will know that I’m not a big fan of snow – in fact, I despise it – so I knew the day was gonna be off to a pretty crummy start.. Especially when I made to go out of bed and realized how freezing cold my apartment was.. Apparently the heat had also gone shot over the course of the morning.. Along with the power and the hot water! Which pretty quickly made me into a walking case study in bitterness and anger as I strode around the house, trying to fix the power and the heat, failing miserably at both tasks!

I eventually gave off and ended up just packing my stuff, leaving a note for Brian that things were amiss and then ran off to Nyborg.. Where I arrived a few hours later, delighted to see no snow on the ground over there.. Which considerably brightened my mood – along with the fact that I got to go out and spend a gift certificate I’d gotten from my dad this past christmas. After about an hour, I’d become the proud owner of a fancy new Global knife (which pleases me more than I’d like to admit), a new kitchen sieve and a bottle of wine for my collection I just happened to stumble upon in the process.. Stumbling defining the process of making a detour on the way home to my dad’s past a little store and picking up the bottle on sale.

Safely back at my dad’s, I chilled for an hour or two, showered, shaved and did all those other things I wasn’t really capable of doing in my own chilly apartment. My dad and his wife were heading off to the theatre for the evening, so rather than spending the night alone, I headed on over to my half-sister Mie who was throwing a dinner party.. Which was good times despite the fact that I think they had a secret plan to poison everybody with garlic during the meal as they’d apparently managed to slip several full heads of garlic into the various dishes.. Interesting, really.. We spent the rest of the night getting a bit of a drink on, listening to music and generally having a pretty good time, and we eventually headed downtown to a local bar which was a bit of a mixed experience.. The crowd was pretty good, people were friendly, the music was good (owing mainly to it being delivered from a jukebox and some bloke buying in on a shit-ton of credits and using all of them to play Slayer, In Flames and Iron Maiden tracks..  This pleased the Johan, but not the young girl he was talking to at the time), and the staff was downright incompetent.. I wanted to get something to drink and having spotted a bottle of Cruzan White Rum on the shelf as the only interesting beverage, I went and ordered a Cruzan and Pepsi.. For which I was charged DKK 45 for a single shot after I’d meticulously taken the time to point out the bottle to the bartender and explained to her that this was, in fact, a rum and that it was suitable for mixing in most drinks that called for white rum.

Outraged, I returned to the table, poured a bit of Pepsi into my rum and tried to enjoy the situation.. Which somewhat improved after I finished my drink, then slumped as I went to purchase a beer chaser and was charged DKK 25 for the local discount option.. For shame! The others eventually wanted to move on to a more clubbing like place, but I passed not really being interested in spending even more money just for a chance to get in and buy even more overprized beverages.. So at around 2 AM, I decided to head home, crash, get some sleep and avoid any possible hangovers.

Saturday ended up being far more relaxed than the day before, if you ignore the fact that my dad and Birthe were yelling at me for stinking up the place with my garlicy essence. I told them to take that up with their daughter who had knowingly tried to poison me the night before and then caught a shower. I then headed out to get a toothbrush, a rather essential tool that I have a habit of forgetting whenever I go to Nyborg. I returned about an hour later, only to bump into my dad who had just also been out to get a toothbrush for me.. 

Oh well! I winded away most of the day on the couch before time came to help my dad with dinner. We ended up doing rosemary and garlic (which I protested but was sadly overruled!) infused leg of lamb braised with a bunch of root vegetables and Danish Stout beer served with butter roasted fingerling potatoes tossed with fresh parsley (something I’ll have to remember to do more of) and a sauce built on whatever was left from the braising process.. It was delish if I dare say so myself..

In the process, we also managed to sample some of France’s finest in the shape of an aged Chateau-Neuf du Pape and a killer Red Burgundy.. A process that sounded a hell of a lot more interesting than it actually was as both wine had definitely been on the shelf too long and were starting to get sour.. The whole process ended in me standing to attention, giving a military salute and humming Amazing Grace while my dad teary eyed poured both bottles down the sink and got us a much younger specimen from the shelf.. What a crying shame that was. 

We spent most of the evening brooding over the result of our wine tasting, while I for some reason had The Who’s “Old Red Wine” playing in my head constantly, until we eventually though “Fuck it! Went and got a couple of beers from the basement and set out to drink a few and watch “Return to the House on Haunted Hill” which was every bit as ridiculous as I’d expected it to be.. My dad ended up a tad bit dizzy from his rather strong selection of beers and went to bed while I made up a late night snack and set out to do some reading.

Sunday and Monday alike, I’ve spent feeling a bit under the weather, getting at least a little work done and resting as much as I possibly can. I think I’m coming down with a cold or something, at least that’s how I feel, but I know that Birthe has also just been down with the flu, so who knows.. I’m hoping for the best and expecting the worst – all while laying low, staying still and trying not to complain too much.. Fact of the matter is I don’t have time to be sick, so I’ll have to not be.. Even if that means I’ll have to submit to Tina’s torturous treatment involving camomile tea and freshly squeezed lime juice.. “Oh God help me!”

I’m writing this in Nyborg, by the way, but by the time it gets posted, I should’ve made it home to Kolding and my own little place, which I’m sorta looking forward to now.. I’ve got another long week ahead of me but if I can keep the sickies at bay, it should be all good.. Blah, wish me luck!

I’ve done a lot of stupid shit in my life

Accidentally lighting myself on fire while trying to cook a nice, home-made meal for Tina is probably one of the worst.. But, alas, the human torch fire display was but the culmination of a long cooking tale involving, literally, blood, sweat, tears and way too few beers.. I guess we’d better take it all the way from the start, huh?

See, it’s no secret – especially for readers of this blog – that student life is hard, financially, at times.. As such, a freezer makes for a valuable investment as bulk purchases and shopping during sales makes for an easier strain on the food budget.. So, a few months ago, I came across both a bunch of chuck and a small mountain of ground beef and pork on sale at a price which in no way made me think twice about stocking up on about four pounds of chuck and six pounds of ground goodness.

I subsequently spent the next few weeks wondering what to do with this huge pile of meat I’d gotten my hands on.. And suddenly the idea dawned to me that, hey, I was not the only one suffering under a financial strain.. So maybe I should get hold of Tina and ask her if she’d be interested in splitting the expenses if we were to get together and cook up a huge batch of Chili Con Carne and Bolognese. As it turned out, Tina had no real problems with getting some 15 ready cooked meals at the price of DKK 10-15 a pop, so a date was settled dedicated largely to cooking, hanging out and listening to heavy fucking metal!

That very day, as mentioned in an earlier post, came off to a really odd start with my bedroom being invaded by random carpenters at 8 AM.. It also came off to a rather bad start for Tina who wasn’t feeling too well in the morning, but none the less pulled herself together and showed up only slightly, yet fashionably, late.. Leaving me just enough time to not only cut up the chuck and aromatic vegetables before she arrived, but also to sink the tip of my Global Chef knife into my right index finger.. But that was to be expected, it’s how I roll after all.

Either way, with Tina having safely arrived, cooking commenced with great precision and astonishing speed. I’ve always been notoriously bad at letting people assist me while cooking. My dad’s pretty much always been the only person allowed to do so, but I’m by now learning to let Tina help as well – and hey, it only took me five years! So, while I took on sweating vegetables and more or less coming up with a plan for what was to happen, I put Tina on spice roasting duty.. Roasting and grinding your own spices is a good way of getting every bit of flavor and aroma out of spices. When working with really hot, dried chilies, it’s also a good way of inducing tears and coughing.. A small, yet important, fact I’d forgotten all about, but which pretty quickly added tears to our tale of blood, sweat, tears and way too few beers.. But Tina championed through, showing not only great skill in handling a cast iron skillet at about half her own weight, but also at subsequently pounding the shit out of said spices.. Whether the coughing and the tears the spices caused her attributed to her being so eager to grind them finely, I don’t know, but the fact of the matter is she produced a great, fine chili blend.. Which was subsequently added to the browned chuck along with coffee, beer, some chipotle, tomatoes and additional seasoning.

“Can I stir this,” Tina said looking at the fuck off pot of would be Chili Con Carne. “Heaven forbid no!” I replied, not wanting the whole, tinned tomatoes to break up before their bitterness had had a chance to cook out a bit. “Well, aren’t you glad I asked?” she promptly smiled back, making yet another stab and reference to a situation where I may or may not have yelled at her a bit for stirring a pot she wasn’t supposed to. A situation I’ve tried hard ever since to make her forgive and forget.. Something that evidently hasn’t happened yet.

Either way, into the oven the chili went and we then set out on adding said six pounds of ground meaty goodness to another pot in order to build the bolognese. This, in turn, almost turned out a huge mess as I hadn’t really calculated on six pounds of meat and two pounds of veggies taking up a lot of fucking space, so the pot was a bit on the small side, but held up.. Even after adding a bunch of canned tomatoes and a splash of red wine. This splash of wine set Tina off with another spiteful comment as she remarked (in reference to Heston Blumenthal) that she thought real chefs used an entire bottle of wine. My reply was something along the lines of “Fuck you, sweetheart!” as I raised the bottle and emptied it into the bottle. This prompted first a shriek of surprise and then a burst of laughter as she apparently “didn’t think I’d actually do it.” I, of course, held that she’d known me for five years now and should know better!

These small arguments and the addition of a bottle of wine effectively ended stage one of the cooking process and we quickly jumped into stage two.. Reduction, reduction, reduction.. A tedious process which involves simmering dishes for hours on end in order to evaporate water and intensify flavors, and which I consider one of the few things besides wine production and cooking with butter that the French ever got right. The good thing about reduction cooking is that it’s pretty much just a waiting game allowing us to do all sorts of things on the side such as shopping, arguing, talking to my mother who we happened to run into at the super market and somehow convince people that we’re some odd couple of sorts.. Seriously, you yell at Tina ever so slightly from the dairy section some eight meters away to put down the fruit she’s fondling because “No, we’re not getting that!” – and suddenly everybody thinks you’re together or something.. Sheesh!

Safely returned from the store and the prying looks of soccer moms who seemed to be of the opinion that we were undergoing some sort of marital crisis, we did the first batch if dishes, watched an episode of Top Gear, at the fruit I’d obviously not convinced Tina to put down.. And then sent out to do some more crying! See, Tina really wanted French onion soup and I’d promised I’d cook  it for her some day.. So what better day than that very day? Now, the good thing about French onion soup is that it’s good.. The rather bad thing about French onion soup is that the production process involves peeling and cutting well over two pounds of onions.. Which was okay for Tina who was wearing contacts but started to kinda get to me in the end.. The suffering I endure for the people I love!

Either way, it was all soon over because as luck (and logic) would have it, peeling and cutting onions is a much faster process when you’re two at work rather than when you’re doing it alone. So, into the pot the onions went and into the living room we went while the onions were allowed to sizzle away and caramelize on their own. I spent the time by properly schooling Tina into the black arts by forcing her to watch “Metal: A Headbanger’s Journey” which I figured it was about high time for her to watch as she’s starting to really get into metal (which both in some strange way both fascinates and scares me) and the movie really helps define and explain the ways of the metal.

After the movie and after the onions had met some Chardonnay, some beef broth and various herbs, it was time for Tina to go on with her active chores if the day.. Namely going to the gym.. Which left me in charge of finishing off the various dishes we had cooking and cook up a few more as Tina had left me with the responsibility to figure out dinner.. And wine, most importantly! Her only request was that we have a bit of the soup for starters.. So off to the store I went, again, and looked for something that’d go well on top of onion soup and white wine.. Chicken somehow became the obvious choice.. I had some leeks left in the fridge from earlier.. And well, leeks’ best friend in the world would probably have to be.. Bacon! (believe it or not!).. So, chicken over fried bacon and leeks in a light cream sauce featuring plenty of black pepper, chardonnay and Noily Prat it was.. Topped with cheese and raw leeks, of course.

Granted, chicken is a bit of a gamble with Tina as I’m still guiding her onto the goodness of chicken.. So, my genius plan was to mix up a Mojito for her as she arrived back, get her tipsy, then lay down the plan! A plan that worked just beautifully, coz, well, a well-made Mojito is one of the few tricks I know, and will admit to using, to get my will over Tina.. Lasagna is another, but that’s another story.. Not that I think she’d really mind the menu anyways, but I kinda wanted a Mojito, too, so there.. And what a hit that was, prompting compliments from Tina as she arrived back and inducing comments such as “pre-made drink mixes is for fucking idiots who don’t know what they’re doing.. Which is why I’ve got you!”

As it turned out, the menu was approved, too, without much fuzz and she did seem impressed with my borderline ritualistic way of preparing French Onion Soup.. Which went all well up until the point where the bowls with croutons and cheese on top had been under the broiler and I were to evacuate them from the oven, using my fancy oven mittens courtesy of my grandma.. For some reason, I wasn’t really paying attention to my doing so rather than grabbing the bowls, I thrust both hands onto the broiling elements of the oven, not really realizing anything was wrong until I saw the look on shock on Tina’s face and started smelling something burning. 

“This is a problematic result,” I proclaimed as I pulled a burning mitten out of the oven, blew out the smoke and started to laugh and crack jokes at my own stupidity, not realizing that my other hand was, in fact still on fire.. Tina, apparently now used to my ingenuity in finding new ways of hurting myself, didn’t really say much as I struggled to beat out the fire in my mitten-clad left hand with my own right hand.. Now freed of its mitten.. She simply shook her head, going, “only you would do something like this..” “Yes,” I acknowledged, after having fought down the flames and finally gotten the little soup crocks out of the oven.. “But look, I made cute, little starters.”

So, that was the fire aspect of the tale of blood, sweat and tears.. And still, the only damn beer involved was the one that went into the Chili.. But no worries! The last cooking procedures were about done and we spent the rest of the night more or less feasting on French Onion Soup, Chicken with Fresh Pasta, expensive Chardonnay.. And Rammstein and Slipknot.. Y’know, to add to the sophistication.. Or whatever, it was good times.. But all good times have to come to an end and at around 0:30 AM, we decided we’d probably had enough so we set out on bagging the large amounts of freezer food we’d prepared over the course of the day, threw half of it in a bag for Tina and I then walked her home before making my own way back home for a bit of rest and some much needed sleep.. Which, I’m happy to say, was in no way interrupted by unknown carpenters.