here's a little photo-update from what Risskov looks like these days! On Friday I was amazed by the mist and how beautiful and serene everything looked, and obviously enough I hadn't taken my camera with me. But after Saturday was no photo-weather, Sunday proved perfect:
Recovering from Saturday night's Vengaboys show at Train and the return to standard time, Liselott and I went for a walk through Risskov and to the harbor closest to us. Wait did I say Vengaboys?

As an attempt to adventurize our lives a bit, and actually just because it sounded like a fantastic party, we bought lots and lots of Vengaboys tickets for Saturday aaaand we were right! They played for what felt like 15 minutes, but at least only the songs we all knew from our childhoods in the 90's, and were then replaced by more 21st century music. The Vengabus was in town and everybody was jumping! 

We got to dance, and we got to dance an hour longer. I have a little time-change jet lag, and I will not blame the Vengaboys. 

Speaking of the basement before, here’s one to clarify. Our house in Retirementhomestreet is hyggelig (cozy. well, call it that, but it's more). We spoke today of cultural conceptions that differ in specific countries, and Germany was mentioned in the context of homeliness. But the Danes certainly take this to the top. When I lived with my mentor for the first few days of being in Aarhus, fresh buns or bread or cakes were always in the oven, and Luane was just busy making jam from some fruits she collected on her way home. On TV and Game nights, there were candles lit all over, at 4pm, even in the bathroom.  So when Sergio from Italy spoke of the Germans as a heimelige (see hyggelig) society, I had to smile.

In our house, 13 people share their lives to a greater or lesser extent. Add numerous bugs and spiders in our basement apartment. A few days ago, right after I revivified this blog, my housemate Sanna sent me a text message: “I just found a paperclip!”

Without implying any hierarchical relations here, this was funny. How many emails has my mum sent me about finding paperclips? So house equals home sooner or later. House becomes home because that’s all we have, because we throw our stuff around and store our food and our memories at this place, even though it’s in a limited time frame. House becomes home because you share stories with people you didn’t choose but chose to spend time with anyways. House becomes home because with 13 people, there will be people you instantly connect with, and others you get along with, and so on. 

There are candles lit in my room, my room is a mess (it’s home, after all) and I’m recovering from a hyggelig Pölser-Dinner with the basement roomies.

Next to hyggelig and candles, pölser is the thing to do in Denmark, or so it seems. Wikipedia says the Danish Hot Dog is the most known hot dog in Europe: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hot_dog_variations#Denmark_.26_Iceland

House became home. Hot dogs in the basement turned into a boys vs girls evening: when Kieran and Stephan began playing fifa on Stephan’s playstation just one wall away, Liselott (who almost lives in the basement) and I drank cheap sparkling wine and watched Sex and the City. Kieran is off to a trip round Europe. Sanna’s back in Norway for the weekend to recover from Aarhus and visit her real family. And the replacement will be waiting for them here.  

Living in the basement apartment of a student house has many, many advantages. For instance, the basement is one floor and one floor only. Down here, we share our bathroom and kitchen with four people and we know who’s cooking. And who’s leaving the mess – you get my point. Another nice thing about living in the basement is that we can do whatever we want without an entire 13-people household licking their lips. This is also how we came to invent Pancake-Sunday. I think. 

We do still hold that more are merrier. In any case, we’ve had our third weekly Pancake-Sunday today and because pancakes are everywhere and always in our student house, we’re over pancakes already. 

So instead of writing that essay that’s been waiting for days already, I decided to take it on a culinary challenge: Challenge the Samosa-man from the shopping center across the street! To my own surprise, my home-style samosas were pretty edible (say Kieran and Liselott and I’m eating one of the leftover samosas right now). And I’ll most likely be having sore muscles from kneading the dough. Aha - That’s why people have kitchen aids. 

My creative spirits thus awoken, the essay moved further down my to-do list and I went for a walk instead – to find out what’s on the other side of the shopping center. Curiously enough, the Danes do really seem to put much trust in each other – while in the Netherlands, no single supermarket would even leave their dumpsters out, the bins and boxes are stacked right next to the parking lot here. 

Coming back to said creative spirits; I’ve been feeling the need to get storage space in my room that I don’t have to look at all the time, so this seemed perfect. And so later today Sanna, Liselott and I put on hooded sweaters and pretended to be scary, walking the 20m to the parking lot and got crates that I can now fill and stack under my bed. I might have to go back for more. 

Obviously, this wasn’t really adventurous until I noticed that our landlord/neighbor was strolling down the street – he does that. And although he’s actually a nice man who just happens to be quite slow on fulfilling his landlordy duties, he’s quite attentive to whatever could be causing trouble on our side. Oh well. He didn’t seem to care about the crates. I’d like to believe we actually tricked him with our hoodies… 

What kind of Sunday was this? No pancakes, no real adventure, but the discovery of non-20DKK samosas, storage space and ants in my cosy basement room (that happened just now).