DKizzle

Watching the Denmark game in their city square was insane. We had to shove our way into the crowd to get a spot. People were sitting on top of pølse (Danish sausage/hot dog) stands and every time Japan scored, people threw their partially-full beers up in the air. It was fun to experience the atmosphere. We watched the game with a UO professor of mine who is teaching at Copenhagen Business School this month and who used to play basketball with my Danish coach 25 years ago. It would've been fun to celebrate with so many people after the game, but Denmark lost 3-1. Unfortunately, Europe is not faring too well, so the number of countries we can watch games in to cheer with the local people is dwindling (pretty much just Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, and Portugal).



The night of the game, local grocery stores were sold out of the regular cans of Carlsberg beer (Denmark's most popular beer, distributed globally). My coach didn't believe us when we told him they were selling 1-Liter Carlsbergs. The cans said "Endlig en øl, den er stor nok at dele"... which means, "finally a beer that is big enough to share." Jeff and I were like, "Share? Ya right! They're the perfect size!"




One of my former teammates asked me to come to her high school graduation on Friday and it was so interesting to see. My coach's son and a few of my players were also graduating, so it was great to see them. It was much more similar to ours than the Danes had made it out to be. The speeches were kind of a wake up call that reminded me of how rusty my Danish is! Jeff obviously didn't understand any of it, but he said he could still tell which speeches were good just based on their tone of voice and how bored the audience looked. :)

THEN I was introduced to the best Danish tradition I have witnessed so far: post-graduation party tour busses. Danish students take most of their classes through their high school career in groups of 20-30 (there were 11 of these "classes" graduating in the one ceremony). Each class rents a big open-air army vehicle and decorates it with leaves, baloons, posters, etc. and drives through the city and visits each student's house for about 15 minutes to meet the families, eat, and DRINK. The posters said things like, "honk once and the boys drink, honk twice and the girls drink, honk three times and the virgins drink" and every vehicle also had posters saying the name of the school and that they were graduates. We'll post pictures at the end of the week of our travels so far, so you can get a better idea of what I mean. I immediately started thinking of all sorts of excuses to have this type of party bus... it's kinda dangerous with all the drinking, but I want to figure out a way to introduce the tradition to the US. Lots of high schools had graduation that day, so as Jeff and I biked through the city, lots of vehicles passed by us, yelling on megaphones and blowing blow horns. It looked like fun.



Friday night, Jeff taught me how to play chess. I've learned before, but now I have actually played a few games. He says I am not bad for a beginner... whether I will continue with the game remains to be seen, but I kind of like it.

This weekend, we went to my assistant coach's summer house about an hour outside of Copenhagen on the beach. We had perfect weather and went to the beach for a little while. We're trying to ease our ghastly pale skin into the European sun a little bit at a time. The water was about the same temperature as the Oregon coast, maybe a little colder (about 15 degrees Celsius, maybe).

It was my coach's 3-year old's birthday weekend, so we had a fun time celebrating his birthday with about 20 relatives. The group spoke ridiculously good English, for various reasons. My coach's brother-in-law is American, so their whole family obviously speaks impeccable English (even the young children). My coach made fun of me for rinsing the dishes off after scrubbing them with soap because apparently when you dry them off with the towel, that is sufficient to get the soap off. Just another small difference...

After being up at the summer house for a couple hours, we went on a walk with the family and I kind of kept Jeff informed about what people were saying and what was funny. After a while, Jeff said, "You actually understand Danish pretty well!" To which I replied, "Jeff, they're speaking to a THREE-YEAR OLD; that's why I can understand!" haha



We came back last night and we had sushi with three of my teammates that I was especially close with. It was "hyggeligt" a common Danish word that the closest translation for is "cozy" or "comfortable". My friend's chinchillas are named "Bimbo" and "Cheek" (as in butt cheek) in Danish and the names actually sound kind of nice in Danish, so an unsuspecting America wouldn't think anything of it. So, we joked around for an hour about all the Danish words I could convince an American to name their child that would lead to a rude awakening were they ever to travel here. For instance, I feel like Fanden is not that far off from other American names like Landon or Fulton, etc... but it translates to a not-so-nice four-letter word in English.

Okay, I'm off for now, we might go to the park this evening for a the large weekly dance lessons they put on during the summer. Tonight's style is Balboa swing... this could be interesting.