finding an electrician

I have a bit of PTSD from trying to deal with Danes over the phone in English, so it was time to get creative :)

I used Google Translator and worked my way through the online yellow pages, emailing a few electricians a day in English, until one wrote me back. Actually, only one wrote me back, but I only needed one so I won't take my 90% failure rate personally. My skin is getting thicker everyday!

The days are getting shorter and while I love the concept of "hygge", trying to live by TV and candlelight was getting old, so I needed to take care of this sooner rather than later. 650 DKK (about $120 US) per hour was a semi-high, but ok rate. But the 810 DKK (about $150 US) they were going to charge for a dimmer switch was ridiculous so one of my coworkers came the rescue by taking me to a hardware store where I was able to get one for a much more reasonable price of 269 DKK (about $50 US).

Anyway, I'm pleased to show you my not so finished living room complete with the crystal chandelier I've long dreamed of, and the thrifted velvet sofa!

The pocket doors and woodwork need to be painted, but it's going to be a long winter, so I've got plenty of time. I'd also like to get some curtains and a bookcase, but easier said than done. Someday, I will luck out at the thrift shops, or get hold of a car and make a pilgrimage to IKEA. Until then, I'll try not to think too much about it.

apple cobbler

Autumn is my middle name and my favorite season. Aside from the year I lived in Washington DC, this is the first time in my life that I'm missing the New England foliage season. I pretty much spend the rest of the year waiting for the crisp fall air, the fairs, convertible driving with heated seats, cinnamon coffee, pumpkin soup, and of course the beautiful colors. It's already turned cold and rainy here, they don't sell cinnamon coffee or canned pumpkin, I don't have a convertible let alone heated seats, the foliage isn't great, and I'm feeling a twinge of homesickness for my favorite season in the place to be.

A fellow New Englander and expat to invited me for a day of fall apple baking this past weekend. She has apple trees and more apples than she knows what to do with. We initially discussed canning apple sauce, apple butter and whatever other appley things you can preserve in jars, but as we've established, it's not easy to procure things in Denmark, so without an adequate supply of jars, we decided to bake instead.

It was a cold rainy Sunday, perfect baking weather and we listened to Ella Fitzgerald as we sipped tea and homemade honey walnut schnapps, swapping thoughts on life in Denmark vs. where we're from, and of course, shopping tips!

Who knew that Kvickly is cheaper than the middle eastern market for dried beans? Who even knew that Kvickly sells dried beans? And hydrogen peroxide, I thought I'd have to ration the supply I brought with me when I moved, but it turns out I can buy it at Matas! And did you know that there's a price book app for iPhone? Me neither!

I made my apple cobbler, Tara made an apple yogurt cake, and when we were done with all of the peeling and coring, she boiled the skins and cores to make pectin!

This recipe makes a ton of cobbler! But that's sort of the deal with cobbler, it's meant to be served in abundance with a side of love and a generous scoop of vanilla ice cream, or better yet, cinnamon! Unless you have a large family, are expecting company, or need to put on weight, you might consider halving the recipe.

12 apples

(I like cortland)
1/2 cup white sugar
1/4 cup brown sugar
1/2 t cinnamon
1/4 t nutmeg
1/4 t ginger
ground cloves
3 T honey
2 T lemon juice
1/4 cup apple cider
6 T butter
cobbler topping
(see below)

Peel, core, and slice the apples. In a large bowl, whisk together the sugars, cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, a couple pinches of cloves, honey, lemon juice, and cider. Add the apples and stir to combine.

Spread the apples evenly into a large casserole dish. Scatter with little pieces of butter and bake at 350 degrees, for about 30 minutes, or until the apples begin to soften. Make sure to stir them once or twice during baking. Cool for 30 minutes.

While the apples are cooling, make your topping...

2 cups flour
1/2 t salt
3/4 cup sugar
1/4 t baking powder
10 T cold butter
1/2 cup oatmeal
6 T heavy cream

Sift together the flour, sugar, salt and baking powder. Cut the butter into small pieces, then cut it into the dry ingredients. When the mixture looks coarse with some pea sized pieces of butter here and there, stir in the oats, then add the cream, and stir just until it combined.

Scatter the topping over the apples and bake at 375 degrees for about 45 minutes, or until golden.

It was getting dark by the time the cobbler came out of the oven, so the final shot isn't as good as I would have liked, but trust me, it's delicious and much less of a hassle than dealing with pie crust!

We baked straight through to dinner time and Tara introduced me to her amazingly delicious curried lentils! It's a perfect cold weather meal and she said I can post her recipe here, so stay tuned :)

curried coconut chickpeas

Not to sound like a broken record, but I pay approximately 50% in income tax and another 25% VAT on everything I buy. Yes, even groceries!

This definitely sucks, so I've come up with a game I call "how low can I go?" It's not even a game really, it's just a personal challenge to see how much of my net salary I can save each month.

A year ago, I'd think someone of means would be crazy to deprive themselves like this, but it's a whole other ballgame over here.

First of all, shopping is completely intimidating. This being Denmark, salespeople approach me in Danish. If I need help, I say as politely as possible, "I'm sorry, do you speak English?" and hope for the best. If I don't need help, I smile as sweetly as possible and say, "just browsing, thank you". Generally, people are cool, sometimes they're not, but whatever, it makes it easy to save money when shopping is such a chore. At the grocery store, I pay in cash to avoid any possible snafu's with the debit terminal, say a quick "tak for det" when they give me my change, bag my goods, and escape as quickly as possible.

The language barrier aside, there's not a whole lot of choice here. Someday, I'd like to do a photo post that shows you how little choice we have. It's pretty much brand name or generic. There are no endless selections of brands, flavors, and sizes. You need ketchup? OK, brand name or generic... done.

The "how low can I go?" game has several sub games, one of which is "how far can I stretch a 900g bag of dried chickpeas?" The answer is, farther than you think!

I've mentioned before that I'm loving Thai and Indian inspired flavors. This dish hits the trifecta of fast, stretching a kroner, and indulging my taste for curry and coconut!

olive oil

1 onion, chopped
2-3 garlic cloves, pressed
1/2 - 1 T curry paste
2 cups cooked chickpeas
2 T soy sauce
1 1/4 cups coconut milk
chopped tomatoes
1 T brown sugar
fresh juice from 1/2 lime
chopped fresh basil

Heat oil over medium-high heat. Add the onions and saute, until they start to brown, then add the garlic and curry paste. Saute until the garlic softens, then add the chickpeas, soy sauce and coconut milk. Bring to a boil and simmer 10 - 15 minutes, then stir in the tomatoes, sugar, and lime juice. Simmer another 10 minutes, then stir in the basil.

I served this over brown rice, which is my standard, but I'm sure it would be delightful over Jasmine rice, or white rice simmered with tea or cinnamon sticks.

I used 1 T of red curry paste, which was quite spicy. Next time, I'll cut back on the curry, or experiment with green or yellow curry paste. I'll also add some veggies along with the chickpeas... maybe cauliflower, carrots, red peppers, and zucchini?

I used 2 leftover canned tomatoes, which I chopped and added along with a bit of their juice. If I didn't have to use up canned tomatoes, I would've used 1 medium or large fresh tomato.

Cilantro tastes soapy to me, but if you like cilantro, I'd sub it for the basil because it's more authentic :)

a year in rearview

It's been almost a year since I began planning my move to Denmark. This has been the fastest and most stressful year of my life!

I've gotten many emails from my blog followers complimenting me on my courage and thanking me for inspiring them to personal change. Looking back over this past year, I still can't quite believe I did it and I'm here, living, working, and owning property in a foreign country. I actually pulled it off! This is not an extended vacation and it's not being an exchange student. I will never be the same after this.

So while I'm honored to be considered an inspiration to anyone, let alone many, most days my life feels incredibly awkward, sometimes overwhelming, and sometimes just plain frustrating. It's taken me over 3 weeks to straighten out my internet access, nevermind that I've been waiting since June for a connection. I have a chandelier that will not light and I don't know how to call an electrician, or how much it should cost. I need wood for my woodburning stove, and have no idea where to get it. I own property in a country that can revoke my visa at anytime and force me to sell the property. I can't sell or rent the property for a profit until I've lived in it for 3 years, which is about 2 months after my visa comes up for renewal. And I have a very stressful job that I can't leave because my visa is dependent on the job and I can't find another job because I don't speak Danish.

So, the big question here is, "if I knew then what I know now, would I have done it"?

Yes!!! Without hesitation, yes!!!

My life here is very hard compared to the one I've had and this adventure would be much richer shared with a partner, but I will survive. I've met many lovely people, but Denmark as a whole isn't the most accepting place for foreigners. Riding a bike in the wind and rain sucks, it sucks even more when I forget to cover my seat at the bus stop and have to ride home on a wet seat like I did today. It rains sideways here, so sometimes an umbrella is useless. I pay 50% of my income to taxes, I will never have a pension here and cannot access many of the benefits I'm paying for because I have a temporary visa. I will never have a permanent visa because the requirements are so strict that fulfilling them is practically a fulltime job, and there is no easy route via a Danish husband.

I have a new level of compassion and respect for people who leave their entire lives behind to start a new life somewhere else. I know how hard it is to rely on public transportation and the kindness of others. I know how hard it is to not speak or read the language of the country I'm living in. And I even know what it's truly like to live in a Welfare State; regardless of one's political leanings, I can say with 100% certainty that national healthcare does not qualify a country as socialist, nor is it even a significant step on that path.

When I made this decision, people told me I'd regret it, but I'm exactly where I'm supposed to be. Nothing amazing comes without sacrifice and even with the hardships and sometimes hollow feeling in the pit of my stomach, I'm happy that I'll never look back on my life and say, "I had the chance to live and work in Europe, but I was too scared to take it." I gave up many things for this adventure, but there would've been nothing noble in staying the course, living a life of regret. Things sort themselves out and everything finds its place.

I look forward to the next two and a half years with great anticipation and I can't wait to see what's next! Where will I travel? Who will I meet? What will my life be like? Will I move back to the US or will I stay in Europe? There are so many possibilities and I never considered that my life would turn out like this!

So, now that that housekeeping portion of this move is complete, I can finally get on with living. Just in time for the long cold winter, where it's dark 18 hours of the day :)

things i love about denmark

As promised in an earlier post, here is a list of things I love about Denmark...

1) Bike lanes. This is the thing I will probably miss the most if I move back to the US. Despite living near my town center in Connecticut, attempting to ride a bike on simple errands was risking my life. Here, we have dedicated bike lanes with their own traffic lights, and motorists actually look out for us.

2) The bikes. My bike search has been well documented on this blog. I adore my Pashley, but I still look longingly at the Batavus, Raleigh, Velorbis, and many others. I'm appalled that upright bikes with fenders, chainguards, etc. are mainly a high-end specialty item in the US when you can buy one at the grocery store here for the equivilent of about $300 US. The US needs to get with the program on this.

3) No HFCS! Hugh fructrose corn syrup is the devil and in Denmark (and I think all of Europe), it's treated as such. I don't have wonder where it's going to pop up next because it doesn't exist here. The food tastes much better, and the Coke tastes just like it did when I was a kid. And the chocolate, OMG, the chocolate!!!

4) Cheese. Even the low-end grocery stores here have a cheese selection that would be considered "specialty" in the US. I never thought I'd see the day where brie would be a staple in my fridge. Fresh mozzarella is actually easier to find than the other kind (not fresh?) and for that, I will forgive Denmark its lack of ricotta, provolone, gruyere, and cheddar.

5) Bakeries, green grocers, florists, etc. Everything has not been consolidated into supercenters. Some people would probably find this terribly inconvenient, but I like it! I get to be that girl riding through the city streets on my black bike, skirt blowing in the wind, baguette and flowers sticking out of my wicker basket. On a fair weather day, it feels every bit as romantic as I imagined. I was doing just that the other day when someone called me "sexy". At 35, it's nice to still be sexy ;)

6) Walking streets. I love strolling the walking streets, looking in shop windows and browsing the outside displays. In the US, it's usually the clearance junk they put outside. Here, they put out the good stuff and don't seem to think too much about people walking off with it.

7) Drinking outside. It's nice to go to a park or the beach and enjoy a beer or a bottle of wine with friends.

8) Friends from all over. I learn so much by having friends from outside the US. It's fun to introduce them to things from the US and to be introduced to things from their home countries. So far, I've fallen in love with Baumse Mums, chocolate covered marshmallow bears from Norway, and the Norwegian version of Kit-Kat. I've learned from my French friends that sometimes boxed wine is actually good (psst...try Two Oceans Sauvignon Blanc) I know the proper way to slice and eat cheeses of all kinds, and I can make a pretty awesome quiche! And curry, I actually love curry, who would've guessed?

9) Secondhand furniture. Scandinavia is very design focused, and they prefer modern design. Very few people here shop secondhand, so that means I'm able to pick up really cool housewares and antique furniture for dirt cheap. Wait until you see my "new" dining table!

10) Hygge. Literally translated, it means "cosiness" but it more accurately means surrounding yourself with comforting and soothing things and shutting out life's irritations. Danish homes are mostly free of clutter, many stores sell white candles in bulk. Hygge is an intimate candlelit dinner party with friends, it's a tea party in the garden, it's a rainy afternoon spent baking, and I suppose it can exist outside of Denmark, but there's something very cosy about riding my bike through the empty streets at night and seeing white candles burning in windows and hearing people laughing around the table. It's everywhere, and I love it!