Last Friday was J-Day. Julebryg-Day. Christmasbeer-Day. Every first Friday in November, Tuborg releases its Christmas brew. Trucks drive around town and deliver crates of “Royal X-Mas” to bars, where Santa’s helpers hand out the bottles. Needless to say, it’s a big deal. Although Denmark has – in Skandinavian comparison – relatively low alcohol prices, who would say no to a free beer? So more people than usually were abouts in Aarhus even at 8:30pm. One must be in time, because Royal X-Mas strikes at 8:59 sharp. As adaptive as we international students are, we decided to join the frenzy. 

Girls in Sexy-Santa dresses indeed gave us free beer after we had waited for an hour (we were misinformed and thought the brew would start flowing at 8pm), Jingle Bells and Last Christmas were blasted and the few other guests who were already at the bar were singing, dancing, falling all over. Only one of us managed to drink his stout fast enough to catch a free second round, but it turned out that the Christmas brew is cheaper than others. 

Except for the free beer and seeing drunken Danes, J-Day means that here, Christmas is officially starting. Yesterday I considered buying an advent calendar in the supermarket, because it didn’t occur to me that there is an entire months to go before December even starts. The holiday season will be a long one this year. At least, there will be Julebryg throughout. 

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).