Saturday, January 5, 2013

It's a Danish Christmas

While traveling to Denmark is nothing new for me, it has been my first time spending Christmas with Anders and his family.
Christmas
I arrived December 20th, so right before Christmas which, like in Poland, is celebrated on Christmas Eve. I think I can officially count the festivities as starting the day before for Jule Frokost, Christmas lunch. Anders' aunt and her husband arrived for a lunch, though it lasted pretty much all day. We had many delicious things, my favorite at the moment being sild med karry salat (herring with curry salad). Now this one surprised me, my parents make herring in a classical Polish method every Christmas, soaking in oil, vinegar and onion and while I've grown accustomed to appreciate it, I wasn't the biggest fan until this year. I wish I remembered all the delicious meals but I believe the images disolved with every plate of food I took.
Christmas, the next day was filled with meat, the main course being duck with sweet potatoes (not the orange ones but they were covered with sugar), brown sauce and a cranberry (?) I believe marmalade to enhance the meat. It was so appetizing. Though very different to what I am used to, (Polish Christmas Eve contains no meat but rather a lot of sauerkraut, cabbage, fish, vegetables and pierogies) I very much enjoyed this new experience. After dinner we had dessert, which was risalamande, rice with almonds and the trick was to find the full almond and then keep a secret. This meant that people would eat as much as possible. I actually ended up finding the almond, in the very beginning  so I hid it until the very end. With this 'achievement' I won some Belgian chocolates (courtesy of Laura who is living in Brussels). We then participated in the Danish tradition of dancing around the Christmas tree, we sung about 7 songs, with every verse we had to turn the other way. This ended up taking, I'd say about 20-30 minutes. The last one, was the classic Nu er det jul igen and with every verse you must dance faster until you break the circle. Finally, we got to open our presents and needless to say, I'd like to assume everyone was satisfied. 

New Years Eve
Most people think of this day as glamorous as it gets, going to a club or party with dozens of people around, way too much booze. The other opinion is that people hate New Years because of the mindset that comes as mentioned above. I have tried to find the find the happy medium and for the second year in a row had a 'private party'. Last year I just had my best friend and boyfriend over while my parents were away in Boston. This year, I had my boyfriend, his sister and his best friend over. We had dinner with his parents, celebrated with the confetti bombs, watched the Queen deliver her speech and then we were left alone. Of course we had a few drinks, waited until midnight, celebrated and went to bed at around 5. And that was definitely fantastic. Pictures accompanied. 

Just because Anders' face makes me laugh



On Monday, it's back to Leipzig, and I'm excited despite the stressful time period I'm facing. Exams and research essays, I believe I'll be in my natural habitat in the next few weeks: the library. And I'm gonna face this challenge.