If wishes were horses... OMG IS THAT A PONY??

So no sooner to I rant about stupid residency laws, then they get changed!

I would add a link in English, but it's not updated yet.  Oh, here, let me Google Translate that for you!

The big news is, you can now use education as part of the employment requirement.  And it's three years of the last five, so you aren't completely screwed if you've had a child.  In fact, you might even be able to have TWO!  And maternity leave will be included as time served towards those three years.

You can take an education outside of Denmark, you can include work outside of Denmark (provided it all relates to Denmark in some way, lots of fiddly bits here), you can combine study and work.  All in all it's far more inclusive and flexible than before.

There is no "active citizenship" bullshit (apart from signing a piece of paper that says, I will learn Danish and I won't be a dick - kinda wish they'd make Danes sign this too).

The suddenness of it all makes me feel a bit like Jay in Dogma.



Maybe instead of ranting about immigration, I should have been ranting about how no one randomly gives me $10 million dollars.  HA!

Visa Roulette

I find myself sinking further and further into “I hate this fucking country”-mode, which can only mean one thing:

TIME TO EXTEND MY RESIDENCY VISA!!

Whoot.  Whoot.  Joy.

I follow changes in immigration law like other people follow sports teams.  Currently the laws are like the underdog.  You cheer when they suck less and you keep hoping that they’ll get better, even though in your heart of hearts, you know they never will. 

Expats love to compare immigration policies.  People who have brought spouses to the US claim that the US wins for ass-suckery.  They point out that you get questioned in private matters and that many of the questions are outright offensive.

For future reference, American INS: My husband and I don’t have sex nearly enough and I am more than happy to deliver my husband and child over for you for paternity testing because, yes, I am THAT confident that my husband is the father of my child.

But whereas the US INS only ass rapes you the once (and it’s a good buggering, let’s be honest), Denmark likes to do it again and again.  And every year they learn of a new way to fuck you.  Denmark is proud of this.  The people (and I use the term loosely) that work in immigration like to point out how few visa applications there are and how few of those are granted, as if the goal for the country is to stop people from coming all together.

Shhhh, don’t tell anyone, but the goal is to stop people from coming to Denmark all together.

Anyway, after a bit of a hullabaloo about Danish citizens being unable to bring their spouses to Denmark just because they happen to not be EU citizens (the EU rules make it impossible for Denmark to keep EU residents from entering DK, possibly another reason DK would like out of the EU), these laws were relaxed.  Not completely repealed, but relaxed.  The Department of Integration was liquidated.  Now the blame for any immigration shenanigans can be passed from department to department.  By the time you figure out whom is behind any shitty rule, the author has been promoted to a different ministry.  (Finger pointing is a Danish pastime.)  Sure, it is now possible to bring your non-EU spouse to DK.  But Denmark is going out of its way to make sure they don’t stay permanently.

Here are the rules as they stand right now:

The rules that really get my goat? 

1) The working for 2.5 out of 3 years and currently being employed at the time of application (and granting of the permit).  Why is that a problem?  Where I live, most of the Danes don’t have full-time employment.  So I would need to move somewhere where I there’s the possibility of getting a job.  Which means that my husband would have to try to get another job.  Can I just tell you that now is not a good time to be looking for a job in journalism?  Even if you are a Dane?  As an archaeologist, I’m not going to find full-time employment for 2.5 years in a 10-year period.  So I guess a new career is in order.  I’m limited in my degree choices by my Danish language scores.  And I need to take a degree in something that will result in steady, full-time employment.  I’ve got an idea for that - but we’re looking at +3 years of education before entering the job market… so I might be able to apply for permanent residency in 7 years if I’m lucky. *

A lot of expats applaud this law, especially if they are gainfully employed.  This is kind of like how healthy people in the US don’t like socialized medicine, it’s easy to judge the people who lack the right cards when you have a full deck. 

Of course it’s my own fault I don’t have a full time job!  I should have majored in engineering or become a doctor because OBVIOUSLY I was going to meet a Dane and fall in love with him and decide to immigrate and I should have realized 15 years ago that the Danish government would change the immigration laws after I first applied for residency in 2008 and planned accordingly!!  And I certainly have no right to complain now, because I should have instructed my husband NOT to take the only job that he was offered because it required us to relocate out of the big city and be tied to one location when obviously he should have continued to work as a taxi driver so that we could move to wherever I might some day get a full-time job (that I would have already gotten if I had just made better career choices before I met my husband and if I’d just been better at learning languages).

Of course Denmark doesn’t mean to catch little ol’ WASP me in its big bad net.  It’s meant to prevent all those other immigrants who come over here to milk the system. But who exactly are these other immigrants?  ‘Cause I know when you (the uniformed masses, not you the reader, because obviously I don’t mean you the reader, you are the exception to the rule okay?) say other immigrants what you mean is “Somali” and “Iraqi” and “Afghani” and you do realize that they are here as asylum seekers (or my favorite phrase “quota refugees,” ‘cause Denmark doesn’t want them, but you know, the EU makes them take these damn refugees) and not here on a family-reunification visa? So, all those other other immigrants who married Danish citizens, then? 

2) Active Citizenship.  Seriously??  I need to be on the board or an “active member,” whatever that means, of an organization for a year?  Do you require this of native Danes?  No??  The only Dane I know who is involved in an organization is my husband, who also happens to be the head of the housing association where we own an apartment.  I’m pretty sure that having him appoint me to the board is nepotism.  I’m involved in a mother’s group and the local theater group, neither of which has “articles of association” that need to be documented.  Well, I’ll be sure to quit doing things that interest me and bring me into contact with Danes that I have things in common with and start volunteering at the Red Cross with the blue-aired brigade.   I’m sure that with a full-time job, I’ll have tons of time to be an active member!

3) It’s going to cost my Danish citizen husband 2,880 DKK ($483.16) to apply.  That’s just to apply.  If I’m denied, no refund.  If I get through, we get to do this again in a year or two or maybe, if I’m really lucky, three years.  Because the taxes that he pays are for Danish citizens who DIDN’T marry foreigners (excepting the royal family, who are free to marry any damn foreigner they want), so Danish spouses wanting to keep their dirty foreign wives had better be prepared to pay for that privilege. 

4) Biometric cards.  I have to present myself at either the center for immigration or one of a few selected police stations to be photographed and fingerprinted.  For my special identity card.  I didn’t have to be biometricked (new word, Webster!) for my driver’s license or for my Danish social security card.  But you know how us Family Reunification immigrants are, always stealing shit and leaving fingerprints…

Now I’ve been one to counsel patience for this government.  I know government moves slowly and in Denmark, where nothing happens unless there is a consensus, getting 89 Danes to agree to anything is a miracle (that’s a basic majority in the Parliament).   But I’m feeling a bit hoodwinked.  Sure, they softened the requirements to get the temporary residency visa for family reunification (I mentioned this above, it was a moment we all cheered that our team sucked a little less this year).  But then they stopped.  And added the biometric cards.  Yes, this government added the biometric card.  In May.  (If you have applied for extension but not gotten it before May 20^th, you will have to go be biometricked.  This ends your public service announcement.)  Instead of continuing with immigration reform, they’ve hammered out a tax reform that no one likes, forgotten that the last government’s border wars were still ongoing and that the EU Parliament is quite upset with Denmark.  (In case you haven’t been following, Denmark used the it’s presidency [which revolves between member states every 6 months] to change the EU laws so that it can do whatever it damn well wants without EU approval.)   

So there you have it.  Denmark is a pot of water heating up on the stove and we are the frogs, slowly being boiled to death.  It’s still currently more difficult and expensive to move elsewhere, but only just.

*Note: there’s been some talk of allowing education to count towards employment, but the rule still stands for “regular” family-reunification visa holders. 

A Day Out With the Family

I really wish this post had photos, but we didn’t bring a camera.  Why should we, we only all decided to go to the recycling center because we were really hoping the Spawn would take a hint and TAKE A FREAKING NAP ALREADY, WHAT ARE YOU TEETHING OR SOMETHING???

And on the way home, having gone to the supermarket (maybe if we just drive a bit farther…), the DB mentioned that the hardware store was having an open house and would we like to stop by?  There’d be beer.

Would I?!  I’d only be more excited if he’d told me that there was a certain Swedish mega-store opening up down the road and they were giving away free kitchen gadgets to American archaeologists!  AND THERE WOULD BE BEER???  WHY DID THIS NOT GET MENTIONED UNTIL NOW?

See, the not-so-secret is, I love hardware stores.  Home Rhymes-with-Meepo?  I’d live there.  If you could graft Home Can-those-tiles-I-keepo onto an I-Swedish-home-store, I’d never leave.  Home Deliver-me-from-Repo lets me fantasize that I can Do It Yourself and then an I-can’t-pronounce-this-style-but-I-wants-it-store makes it a reality, one little hexagonal-headed L-shaped screwdriver thingy at a time.

I think it might be the smell of steel nails.  Or the 101 types of sealant.  Or hearing the following exchange:

Big Redneck Dude to Sales Clerk: I need caulk.

SC: What sort of caulk, sir?

BRD: Hard wood.

SC: Hard wood caulk?

BRD: I need something to fill my holes.

SC: Here, I think you’ll find this caulk will fit your needs.  But you’ll need a more pliable caulk if you have a bigger hole.

Okay, I haven’t actually *heard* that exchange, but I’m sure if I could just hang around "Tiles and Flooring" long enough I would.  I live in anticipation.

I’m also a big fan of small town hardware stores.  The one in my hometown was fantastic.  It’s gone now, but it used to be housed in the old assayers office.  Yes, assayer.  It’s a Gold Rush town; we had mines, miners, and assayers.  In fact, now that one of the mines re-opened, it’s an assayers office once again.  It’s like the circle of life.  Ore not.

Get it, ORE not?  Maybe I should have been more dead-PAN, eh?

Anyway, being the former… uh, and is again, assayers office, it was built with solid stone walls and the windows had solid iron shutters.  The floor was a patchwork of thick wooden planks that had been worn down by the feet of numerous fortune seekers. As a hardware store, it held large bins of loose nails and screws.  There was gold-panning equipment and paint.  I’d go in there during the summer with my dad, who would need a hammer or other odd tool.  No matter how hot it was outside, it was always much cooler inside.  You’d step through the doors and leave the heat behind; I’d always get goose bumps from the sudden drop in temperature.  And there was the overwhelming odor of nails and oil, with a slight hint of pine from the two-by-fours stacked out back.  You would buy nails by the weight, so there was a large scale that I’d use to weigh various odds and ends while my father chatted with the shop clerk.  To this day, the smell of nails makes me think of summer.

The local hardware store here isn’t quite the same.  It’s more modern with clean white walls and cement floor, but it does have the same smells and it has something the old hardware store didn’t: power tools.

Jigsaws, be still my heart! 

This being Denmark, where if you can’t do it slightly buzzed on beer, why bother to do it at all, the free beer was flowing and men in blue boiler suits and garden clogs stood around and chatted.  There was a treasure hunt, which invited the participants to go ahead and wander through all the back rooms and workspaces.  People took tractors for test-drives (I didn’t, alas) and the Spawn sat on one of the riding lawnmowers and said “Vvvvvvv!” while violently turning the wheel.  The DB got a slightly crazed look on his face and I had to remind him that she can’t mow the lawn until her feet can touch the pedals. 

All in all, it was a fantastic afternoon.  And on the way home, the Spawn fell into a nice deep sleep.  Happy days, my friends, happy days.

California Awake

The visit home (the other home, you know, the one a person grows up in) was great.  The Spawn did fantastic on the flights, she took to her American family without a hitch and even came to love the dog.

The dog, meanwhile, discovered that children are not nearly so much fun as previously thought and that they follow you around the house!

The return trip was uneventful, but by-god jet-lag is worse when you have a baby and not enough time to reset your internal clocks before you go back to school or work!  The problem is that our "buffer" weekend got used to go pick up a car in northern Jutland, so the Spawn slept merrily in her car seat for the drive up and back.  Effectively keeping her on California time.  It's been a week and she's only now sleeping until 5:30 in the morning.

And she started day care this last week.  So we have no schedule as of yet, too many new things.  I'm completely exhausted.

But for now, pictures!

Main Street

The creek

From the other end of town.

My home town is smack dab in the middle of Gold Country.
Remnants of the Gold Rush are everywhere.

The Bunker Hill Mine dates from the 1850's.

There is something rather romantic about
old, crumbling mines.

Compared to old, crumbling homes, which I think are
rather tragic.

The Thanksgiving spread.

We retuned to a cold, damp, dark Denmark.  Our cat was thrilled to see us.  He'd learned to use the cat door while we were gone, so he now could go out and come back to make sure we hadn't left again 100 times and we didn't have to keep opening and closing the door.

And now it's suddenly Christmas time and we haven't decorated yet!  Or bought presents!  Or finished the laundry!  Holy cow!

At long last.... California

It's been 4 years, but we finally made it out to visit my family in California.  I've been taking some pictures, but as usual, I've forgotten to take even more.

I'll post them later, when I've uploaded them and stuff.

Meanwhile, it's a bit reverse culture shock - different baby products, different sleep systems, different weather...

The weather here is great.  'Cause, duh, it's California, man.  Mostly sunny, cool to (dare I say it?) crisp.  Not quite lighting-a-fire weather, but is hot-apple-cider-drinking-while-kicking-leaves weather.  Points to California.

But I think I'm a duvet-convert.  This sheet thing with blankets and quilts is so not working for us.  I keep getting tangled up and kicking the DB.  He keeps trying to throw off blankets only to pile them on me, so then I try to kick them back, and a-tangled we get.   Points to Denmark.  Also, I miss my huge bed.  How did I ever sleep in a queen size?

Baby food here is way grosser.  That came as a shock.  I expected it to be better.  I don't know why, maybe because there are more choices and more choices means better choices, yes/no?  But the baby cereals we bought?  Blah!  Like newspaper!  Alas, although the Spawn loves to eat newspaper, she wasn't buying it in mush form.  I really miss the rice cereal from Denmark.  Tastes like tapioca pudding without sugar.  Quite yummy.  Thankfully, she's taken to Saltine crackers and watermelon as well as bagels and sourdough bread.  So we have something to entertain us her while we eat.

Then there are two things about the US that make me all unhappy in the pants.
One - every foreigner needs to buy a visa before going to the US.  Every One.  These must be purchased BEFORE you get to the airport.  DUDE, WHEN DID THIS HAPPEN?  Two years ago, said the flight attendant at check in.  TWO YEARS AGO??  OBVIOUSLY I DON'T FLY ENOUGH!!  WHY DIDN'T SOMEONE WARN ME?

Like Orbitz, when I bought the tickets.  Or American Airlines when I checked their web-pages for international travel with babies.  Or ANYONE!

We had to slink off to the special counter to buy the DB a visa, getting the whole "you should have done this days ago" speech and "this is how it's been for years [you idiots]."  But but but... I'm a savvy traveller!  I know how many ounces and grams of liquids I'm allowed (and yes, stupid woman in Heathrow, baby food is exempted in reasonable amounts so stop your 'pre-check' bitchyness and let me advance to security) (seriously, they hired someone to 'pre-check' you before you enter security - the least they could do is teach them the rules!  it was like listening to a dalek, only instead of saying "exterminate! exterminate!" it was "no liquids! no liquids!").  I know how to whip off my belt with one hand while taking my computer out of my bag with the other!  I have small travel bottles of everything I need in a tidy ziplock bag!  HOW CAN I NOT KNOW ABOUT A VISA???

Dammit, America!

Secondly - what the hell happened to the newspapers here!?  Your broadsheets are... not broad!  They're skinny! What is that all about?  I feel like some incredible hulk trying to hold the newspaper.  I keep opening it and ripping it in two because my arms stretch out to the normal width of a paper and the paper is just not that big.  It's bad enough that half of Denmark's newspapers are now tabloid format (which means I can't even begin to take them seriously, I keep thinking I'm going to turn a page and read "President Obama is a gigantic alien baby in a man suit! says former aid"), what the hell is this all about anyway?

Dammit, America!

There's only one solution to all this... more wine tasting!  Yaaaaaaay vineyards!

I'm Home

What does that mean, "I'm Home"?  Where's home?  What makes a home, anyway?

My friends and family would have me call California home, although I haven't lived there for over 10 years. Certainly it was "home" for a long time after I left, especially when I lived in Rhode Island. With all apologies to friends and folks living in New England - but what a great place to visit!  But California is no longer my home.  It's where I'm from and it's where I wouldn't mind moving back to, but it's not home.

Since I've moved away from home, I've lived in a number of places under a number of conditions. A tent in the desert, the floor of a professor's house, student housing, shared apartment, shared room, small apartment, huge house, California, Rhode Island, Denmark. I'm not the only one who has moved around a lot and lived in many different situations - Danish Boy has lived in a caravan in Holland, a kibbutz in Israel, and more apartments than I could name.

Now that we've bought a house, I can say that I do finally have a place that everyday feels more and more like my *home*. But really, "home" is best described by this song that I discovered on The Girl Who.



Speaking of music - I get all teary-eyed and squeeze the Spawn even more when listening to Pink.  It has nothing to do with the above post.  I just figured that while I was putting up music, I might as well throw this one in to.  :-)

It's a really small island

So a week before we moved to our new home in a small village, away from the small town that we lived in, we got a letter.

It was addressed to our new address.  The one we hadn't moved to yet.

But it was delivered to our old address... where we were currently living.  Without any corrections being added to the envelope.

Not only did the letter sender already know where we were moving to, but the postman also knew we hadn't moved yet and so delivered it to where we actually lived.

It's a small island.

Party like it's... wait, what year is it again??

The theme song for this post is brought to you by Jimi Hendrix.



So I'm taking driver's ed (because 16 years of exceptional driving experience in a variety of weather, countries, and vehicles and a spotless record means NOTHING to Denmark) and trying to memorize foreign vocabulary and listening to Nirvana Unplugged.

Suddenly it's like 1994 around here.

Except I do not remember being nine months pregnant in high school.  In fact, I think I weighed about half of what I currently weigh.  And rocked green corduroy pants, orange flannel and t-shirts with such witty sayings as "Cat Wants In/Cat Wants Out" with associated cartoon.  I suppose I could still wear such things and claim I was being "ironic" and then get shot for being a hipster.  Worse things could happen.  I could be trying to wear leggings and over-sized sweaters with large belts...

Only I'm struggling with the NemID nonsense (hey, got the DB at home for a few hours, best try to make use of his expansive Danish vocabulary while I can) and the circle of ridiculousness is right out of 1984.

I feel like I should be dancing the Time Warp... but that takes me back to 1975 and I wasn't actually BORN then. (If you are confused about this "Time Warp" thing, click on the link.  Not that you'll understand better afterwards, because The Rocky Horror Picture Show never did make any sense, but hey Susan Sarandon, Barry Bostwick [you may remember him as the Mayor in "Spin City" - oh yeah, THAT GUY] and Tim Curry in women's underwear!)

And I swear I keep letting the cat IN but not OUT, leading me to ponder the existence of some spacial-temporal anomaly which is magically letting the cat out and sucking digital signatures out of my computer (or wherever digital signatures are kept - I suspect in Pia Kjærsgaard's underwear drawer) faster than the Borgerservice can type them in.

Oh for the good old days, when you immigrated by showing up in some port, being checked for lice and TB and then released to the hounds.  Or even better, when you showed up in some port and stuck swords and axes into the natives until they paid you to stick swords and axes into someone else, usually their neighbor.  Remind me to change my ring tone to "Flight of the Valkyries" and to pick up a horned helmet from the museum gift shop before I take my driver's test.

Hvad skal du særlig opmærksom til, bitches?

(What should you pay particular attention to, oh driver's education student?)

A momentous week

No, I didn't give birth... *sigh*

But we bought a house!!

Correction: my husband bought a house, I am forbidden from owning property because I'm a dirty foreigner on a temporary residency visa.

There is some logic to this -  every time there's a war, Germany invades Denmark (usually right after Poland), today Germans *love* to holiday in Denmark (why, y'all have the ALPS fer fecks sake??!!) and there is a worry that the Germans would buy up Denmark given the chance - after all OBVIOUSLY the Danes have SOMETHING the Germans want because THEY KEEP COMING BACK!

There must be ways around this rule, I know a Polish couple that just bought a house on my island, so maybe the law is limited to dirty foreigners on temporary residency visas AND Germans.

So yeah, there will need to be some lawyering to get it all worked out so that if the DB dies (God Forbid) the house will pass to the Spawn and I'll be executor or something.

BUT THAT'S NOT THE POINT OF THIS POST!  THE POINT OF THIS POST IS THAT WE'VE BOUGHT A MOTHERFREAKING HOUSE Y'ALL!!

Before you jump in and say "welcome to the wild world of home ownership" let me remind you that we (DB) own an apartment in Aarhus, which we rent out rooms in, making us not only homeowners, but landlords.  Believe me when I tell you I keep a close eye on interest rates and inflation.

Unless you are my accountant, you're probably getting bored with this discussion.  "So, this new house - what up?" you ask.

It's on the western side of the island, in a little village we came across a long while back that we fell in love with.  We've been trying to figure out how to move there since we settled on the island, but most of the houses for sale were WAY out of our price range.  We shopped around looking at places that were in our price range and they ran from "OH DEAR GOD I think I need another tetanus booster" to "JESUS H CHRIST we should just burn this down and start over!"  We looked around outside our "happy zone" - going as far as to look at a "parcelhus" (think 1970's ranch-style in the US... aka hideous) in Marstal.  That was a sad sad day.  Things overheard at the parcelhus:
"Hey, if you stand here, in the corner of the lot, you can almost see the ocean... there, just on the other side of the breeze-block mother-in-law cottage..."
"Well, we certainly wouldn't have to worry about lawn maintenance, I could trim this with your electric razor."
"I suppose we should be glad it comes with A tree."

But this is a small island.  Tell one person you're looking for a house and people begin to call YOU with homes for sale.  That's how my husband heard about this house.  We went out and saw it several times.  It was perfect, nothing has to be done before moving in.  We didn't say to each other "well, we can live with it for now" (although I did say that about the kitchen... but I say that about most kitchens) and after a bit of discussion we could get it for within our price range.

It has the most gorgeous view over the landscape.  There's a bit of ocean, but mostly it's fields and wooded areas.  We're surrounded by farmland, being just outside the village itself, so yes, we'll get that wonderful manure smell several times a year, but we'll also get an ever changing seasonal view.

It's a two bedroom house, with two floors, but only one bathroom and alas, I'm losing my bathtub.  We're going to get creative on the upper floor - it's a huge room and I cannot abide wasted space (why do Danes make a huge open space and then fill it with multiple sitting areas... how many hygge zones do you need?), so we're going to build a master bedroom up there using bookshelves for walls (this is what happens when you watch too many home improvement shows) and turn one of the bedrooms on the ground floor into a guest bedroom.  The back yard has several fruit trees and lavender and wisteria (hands down my favorite plants) and a lawn that is large enough but hopefully not too large.  There will be space to grow as well, if we decide to keep adding on to the family.

I'm awfully excited about this house!  I can't wait to be able to hang pictures on the walls again (without thinking... hmmmm, will this mean I have to paint the whole room when we move out or just this wall...) and decide randomly to paint a room cerulean blue JUST BECAUSE I CAN.  I'm also relieved because this means when the Spawn gets a hold of my markers and decorates the wall, I can say, "ah, well, I'm sure Dad will be VERY PROUD" instead of "OMG THE DEPOSIT!!"  Spawn will be able to run about in the backyard, whooping and hollering and not disturb the neighbors.  Nor will Spawn disturb anyone other than Mom and Dad with the indoor roller skating or "Puttin' on the Ritz" routine (which the baby is practicing RIGHT NOW in my uterus).

You probably won't get any more photos until we move in, sometime in mid-May.  I'm not going to post pictures of the previous owners things, that's her stuff and I think she should have some privacy.

The grass is always greener

If you are ever without a topic in conversation in Denmark, may I suggest the weather?  Of course it will follow a set pattern, but this is handy when you have had too many drinks at a party (and by party I mean any get-together of more than two Danes) and find yourself forced to make small talk with the person sitting across from you.  It will go something like this:

Dane: This summer has been better/worse/hotter/colder than last year.

You, the Foreigner: Yeah, what is it about Danish weather?

Dane: Sometimes we have very beautiful summers.

You, the Foreigner: Ah.  (Pause.) But they aren't very long or hot are they?

D: But one year it rained the whole summer.

YtF: Ah.  (Pause.) You've got some pretty long dark cold winters.  February is particularly grim.

D: There is no such thing as bad weather in Denmark, only bad clothing choices.

YtF: Oh, I'd beg to differ.  I'd go so far as to say a summer without a single sunny day is by definition a whole lot of bad weather.

D: This is why we leave our children outside to "air."  You will get used to it too.

At which point you flee for the bathroom and as you stare at the blurry reflection above the sink, it occurs to you that the weather conversation was pretty one sided and that it could have gone like this and no one would have noticed: 

Dane: This summer has been better/worse/hotter/colder than last year.

You, the Foreigner: I think frogs are pretty cute.

Dane: Sometimes we have very beautiful summers.

You, the Foreigner: But I don't know that I'd kiss one.

D: But one year it rained the whole summer.

YtF: So it's a good thing I'm not looking for Prince Charming.

D: There is no such thing as bad weather in Denmark, only bad clothing choices.

YtF: Hell, I'd settle for Prince Ready and Available For Rent.

D: This is why we leave our children outside to "air."  You will get used to it too.

If you ever want unsolicited advice from a Dane regarding clothing choices or how to get used to the horrible seasons in Denmark (laughingly called "spring," "summer," "fall," and "winter" but are really "cold," "not so cold," "cold again," "holy jesus it's cold AND dark"), just turn to the Dane and say "gosh, I'm cold!"

Me, I've been cold since mid-August.  As a foreigner this means I get Danes telling me, "oh, you aren't cold now!  Wait until December!"  Pshaw!  I've been through enough winters in DK to tell you, December is NOTHING, it's February you have to watch out for, fool!  Also, I'm not some noob who's brand new to this cold weather stuff.  I've lived in New England.  It starts snowing there in November and doesn't melt until April.  But just because it's colder there does not make me any less cold RIGHT FREAKIN' NOW, MAN!

'Course in New England they have this odd concept of time.  There's a saying, "if you don't like the weather in New England, wait five minutes."  From experiencing New England's weather, I can tell you that those"five minutes" takes approximately three months.  This must be why New Yorkers freak out if you tell them that another subway will be arriving in 10 minutes.  I mean good God, that's really half a year from now!  They also like to say they have "real" seasons in New England.  Yeah, really bad ones.  There's "still cold," "horribly hot and humid," "hey, those were a nice two weeks," and "blizzards."

California has two seasons, if you can call them that.  There's "hot" and "not hot."  Or "not raining" and "raining."  The exception is San Francisco.  While the rest of California is experiencing "hot," San Francisco is having "what lovely weather we are OH SWEET MOTHER OF GOD IT'S COLD."  This is The Fog.  The Fog is why so many people around the world have San Francisco sweatshirts.  No one who lives outside the city is ever truly prepared.  The Fog is insidious and rolls up and over the city like a glacial steamroller.  It is damp.  It is cold.  It is unescapable.  It happens in the season we in the Northern Hemisphere expect to call "summer."  It is the reason you see all those who live in the city walking around during the sunny summer afternoon with fleeces tied around their waists.  The Fog is coming.

Of course, take a Dane to these locations and they will snort at the weather and insist that really, you just have to get used to it (except when it's hot, because then they collapse and die because they keep drinking beer instead of water and dehydrate - true story).  If human evolution had been left up to Danes, we'd still be living in caves and without fire.

Lene: I am kold.

Ole: It not kold now.  You wait til snow kom.  Den it is kold.

Lene: I could invent fire.

Ole: Stupid woman.  You get tough now.  Or go move south with Sven.  

But since I've been blessed with a higher intellect, when cold, I build a fire.

Yeah baby, that's what I'm talkin' about!

Is it the circle of life or signs of the impending apocalypse?

Right, so at the beginning of summer I was amazed that seagulls were rare and bullfrogs plentiful in my little town by the sea. I mean, that's all kinds of backwards if you think about it.  But it was what it was and the croaking of amorous bullfrogs punctuated our sleep for what seemed like months.

But I didn't mind the bullfrogs.  One, it sounded a lot like where I grew up, where the sound of frogs drifted up from the creek, and two, I hoped they would keep the mosquito population in check.

I'm not entirely sure what happened but suddenly the cacophony of the pond came to an end.  And nary a frog was to be seen or heard again.  Perhaps they over-ate and died.  At any rate, it's been a long time since the frogs croaked.  (Boo-yah, that was an awesome pun!  Fist-pump to the sky, yo!)  And true to form we were quickly swamped with mosquitos.

It was as horrible as it sounds.  Doors and windows had to be closed before turning on the lights and several times the ceiling had to be vacuumed because a swarm had landed and looked like they were in for the long haul.  The bedroom was a scene of carnage.  Thankfully the ceiling is lower there and I could kill the little buggers with some toilet paper.  Tallies were kept of the daily kills, though usually when you hit 10 you just go with "lots" as the final number.  The old Israel mosquito killer was plugged in. (It's a red thing that looks like a plug adapter, but isn't.  You put a special tab into it that releases something into the air that repels mosquitos when it's plugged in.  Possibly very toxic but also very effective.  Far more effective than my other option: waving my arms and yelling.)  The mosquitos also got increasingly larger as the summer progressed.  I even stopped asking my husband to eject the spiders out of the house, it got so bad.

Yes, you heard me right.  I LEFT THE SPIDERS IN THE HOUSE!  That is how serious the mosquito pestilence was.

The temperature dropped a bit and we thought, ah, this will end 'em, but still they came.  The bathroom, or should I say the blood-bath-room, was a region of strategic importance.  Oh, the battles that were fought!  The number of times I peed in the dark!  *shakes head*  Numerous spiders were allowed to spin in the window in a desperate attempt to bring cool air in without letting in the swarm.  The spiders, alas, were useless.  I don't think I saw one desiccated mosquito corpse in any web, either in the bath or bedrooms.  In fact, yesterday I found the corpse of a full grown mosquito on my desk.  He seems to have died of old age.  OLD AGE!  He had a grey beard and a mechanical wheelchair!  Or would have if they made them for mosquitos.  And that beard may have been part of a dust bunny he tangled with.  But still OLD AGE!!

But then, after just a few weeks of oh-my-god-honey-look-at-the-ceiling shrieking and pointing, the mosquitos were, for the most part, gone.

In their place came the spiders.  I don't know what they've been eating, because it sure as hell wasn't the mosquitoes, but they have thrived all the same.  What was once a few spiders in a window or one corner of the room because a scene from "Raiders of the Lost Ark."

Yeah, that scene.  The one that gives me the shivers.

This is my house after one day of not cleaning.  I think the poor bastard in this photo was trying to stuff some ads for Netto under my door when the mosquitos got him.





Meanwhile the dust-bunnies have been gathering in strength because we're too busy vacuuming the ceiling.  I might as well just attach the chandelier to the floor and tell everyone the house was built upside down.

But today I noticed something very different when I threw open the curtains (scattering several spiders and rolling at least one up into the pull-down shade).  Swarms of sparrows and swallows.   As I look out my window now, they are mostly swallows, but this morning my garden was full of dust-bathing house sparrows.  It's like I'm living "The Birds."

Only with small cute little birds that chirp and that had better be eating spiders and mosquitos instead of the large cawing crows and ravens that infested the movie.

Omygod, is that a "The Birds Barbie"?

I want one!  I'd call her Lenore and the birds Edgar, Allan, and Poe!  It would freakin' rock!!

Someone, please, mark this down for my birthday present.

Right, where was I?

Oh yes.  So Act of God or Act of Nature?  Am I looking at signs of the impending apocalypse or should I rent "The Lion King" and a set of bongo drums?

So far, Alot has not taken to lying down with dogs (a trusted and true measure of impending doom, right up there with an enraged Stay Puff Marshmallow Man terrorizing downtown New York) and the only mass hysteria I've seen is in Netto (although it looks like it's been hit by a plague of locusts so maybe a point towards apocalypse should be awarded).  But I did see a ginormous ginger cat on a boat the other day.  He looked completely calm and not at all like a Turkish Van (a breed of cat that likes water).  That might have to go on the pro-apocalypse list.

Any other signs of a Revelatory nature?  Pia K. converts to Islam?  Dub-ya joins PETA and gives away his millions to help clean up the Gulf?  Joe Biden manages to go a week without putting his foot in his mouth?

If you've seen a sign of the End Times, let me know in the comments, will ya?

Here's a thought for the day...

If my husband dies, I have until my visa runs out to leave Denmark.

If I die - even though I am enjoying the benefits of temporary residency in DK (/sarcasm) - my husband has two years to apply for permanent residency in the US. Even though he doesn't have any type of visa now.

Alive, all I have to do to get him a permanent residency in the states is to sponsor him, that is, make over $20,000 a year.  Or ask my parents to sponsor him, since we'd all be living there until I got a job anyway.  As long as they make over $28,000 a year.  Not a problem there.

He will not be required to prove active participation in society by joining a club or being on the board of an organization.  He will not need to acquire 100 points.  He will not need to apply for an extension every year no earlier than three and no later than one month before his visa expires because it won't fucking expire because it's a GOD DAMNED PERMANENT VISA!

Yes, it's that time of year again, folks.  Time to extend my visa.  *Whoo-hoo.* Time to again check the little boxes saying I've been a very good girl and not taken any money from the government I support with my taxes, that I have not broken any laws, that I still live in a house bigger than 40 sq. meters.  Then my husband gets to sign that the conditions of his current residency permit have not changed (causing him to yell at the paper, "oh my god, I'm a citizen for Christ's sake, I was BORN here.  God I hate this country.").  I'll turn it in and then wait three months for my visa to be renewed.  Which means that for at least one month, possibly even two, I will be here without a valid visa in my hand.  So before it expires, I'll ask for a paper saying that they are reviewing my application and that I can stay in Denmark until the final decision, because I'll need to be able to prove that I can legally stay here and work when I need to fill out work contracts.  And they'll tell me I don't need them and then I'll say, YOU TELL THE UNIVERSITY OF COPENHAGEN THAT THEN.  Then before I leave for Qatar, because I won't have gotten my residency card yet, I'll have to get a re-entry visa that will expire before I can reenter Denmark because they are only good for three months and I work for five.  I'll also have to provide documentation to the ministry of integration so that they know why I'm taking five months off of Danish class.

When not being bugged by the government, we are very happy with our lives here.  Just go away and let us be!

It's midnight on a school night and I am still up...

WHY AM I STILL UP??

This is the question I ask myself quite often on weekends.

Especially on Sundays, when I *know* I have to get up at some point on Monday.  In this case, I am due to get up in 7 hours so that I can have my coffee before staggering off to Danish class.

The rest of Denmark has vacation now and I am not for another two weeks.

Well, it seems like all of Denmark is on vacation, I'm sure plenty of you are reading this at work RIGHT NOW!  Haha!  You cheeky sods!

Germany is also having vacation as we speak.

This I know because I seem to have gone to sleep last weekend in Denmark and woke up in Germany.  It looks the same around here, but for the last week no one is speaking a language that I can communicate in other than order beer and ask for toilets.  Even my Danish teacher was getting confused and sometimes spoke to me in German.  Then my brain does this little jig in my head as it frantically looks for the proper vocabulary in the Danish file, then swaps to Languages-Currently-Not-In-Use and whips something out.  It is guaranteed to be wrong.

C'est la vie, non?

Staying up late on school nights is certainly not going to help my fragile language abilities.

But is nice about staying up late in Denmark during the summer, regardless of what language you may encounter the next afternoon morning, is that you can appreciate the sunrise at a respectable hour.  Like 3 AM.  And then go to bed and still get some fairly good hours of sleep.  Provided you are like me, part vampire, and sleep happily through the day.  And provided you don't have Danish at 8 AM.

It's the only time of the year I can pretend to be a morning person.

Just look at that sunrise!  How lovely.

Morning people love to talk about the sunrise.  About how it heralds a new day all fresh with no mistakes in it.  I'd like to point out that I always start my day without any mistakes in it... only I start later in the day to minimize the number of mistakes that can occur before the end of the day.  Forward thinking, that's me.  I also like my days like my wines and cheeses, slightly aged and mature.

But I do like sunrises.

Which would leave me with a problem if it wasn't for Danish summers.

Moving through the bowels of the house...

I am going to plunge right in and point out that this post contains absolutely no bathroom humor, or puns, because jokes like that are a drain on my system.  So continue to shower on the praise, folks, because I am surely going round the U-bend...

I wish I could say that that got it out of my system... but I think I may have gone septic.

Oh, I'm flushed with shame.

Ack!  I must go on before this post becomes clogged with OH MY GOD I CAN'T STOP I'M OVERFLOWING WITH TOILET PUNS!!!

I can't even say "moving on" without sniggering.  So mature! But the reality is that we are about to embark on a tour of part of the house you normally don't see on home tours of the rich and famous (thank god no one rich or famous lives HERE) but where, undoubtably, the majority of us spend some quality time.  If it makes you feel better, maybe you should bring a newspaper to read.

Moving through the vestibule, around the stairs, hidden away, pretending to not even be there, is one of the happiest surprises of this house.

A second bathroom.

There were six of us sharing a bathroom in Århus, which is possible but maybe not advisable unless you have an industrial exhaust fan, great water pressure and an amazing water heater.  And patient people who abide by a schedule.  I had forgotten how wonderful it was to be able to go to the bathroom when you wanted and to have complete privacy for the duration because THERE IS ANOTHER FREAKING BATHROOM UPSTAIRS!!!

The door on the left leads to the kitchen.  We are going behind door number two.

*snigger*

It's not the world's largest bathroom, but it is larger than a lot of the bathrooms I've used in Copenhagen (I'm pretty sure the term "water closet" was coined for your bathrooms, my dears).

Sink to the right, toilet straight ahead (a head *snort*), the dark patch in the back is the shower, but we've not put in a shower curtain yet.  I see the benefits of two toilets in the house, but as yet we don't really have any shower issues to work around.  Anyway, the floor of the shower is heated.  That took us a while to work out.  You turn on the floor heat and then wonder why, god, why do your feet continue to freeze while you sit on the throne?  Meanwhile the dehumidifier is getting nice and toasty wheels.

A word about the dehumidifier.  My husband is a feared of the damp.  This is a perfectly rational fear because his father's house was recently declared uninhabitable due to mold and Denmark is nothing if not damp.  Years ago we lived in Ebeltoft, in a very small, newly renovated apartment that lacked air circulation.  Who the hell renovates a bathroom and forgets to put in a fan?  You can't really throw the windows open when the rain is falling (falling? it drops on you like a ninja in the dark!) at a 45 degree angle and just above freezing.  So we bought the dehumidifier to dry our clothes and to prevent mold from spreading.  It's once again at work, although I am not convinced that having it whirl away in a back room while I can push paperclips through the spaces in the window frames and stick post cards through the gap between the front doors means that our house is now safe from damp... but marriage is all about picking your battles and the dehumidifier's gentle hum when the humidity in the bathroom reaches 50% makes my husband very happy.

Same picture, with flash.  Ugh, it's very clinical, isn't it?

Anyway,you can see a bit more of the shower and this mysterious door just on the other side of the toilet.

This small door leads to...

The most difficult room to photograph EVER.

I have no idea what's going on here.  This is a room purposefully? accidently? made by the creation of the bathroom in what was possibly a hallway or pantry.  The water boiler is perched halfway up one wall like some sort of vulture-bat.  What you see in this picture are pipes that run from the water vat, over and around the room like a spaceship film set and then into the kitchen.  The kitchen being a more recent edition to the house.  You can also see a door.  There's a bolt and everything.  But the door to the back of the house, to the old laundry and coal house (yes, we have some really weird stuff going on in some of the back buildings), is in the kitchen.  Where does this door lead?

To the world's smallest courtyard!  The door is really solidly shut here.  If my husband gets his way, the dryer that we will some day purchase will magic itself into the courtyard by way of not one, but two, old and not very well plumbed doors and then fit through this door which will need to be removed by the hinges, to be placed in that little room that kinda freaks me out.

This is because I once removed part of the floor to see if I could find a water valve.  No valve.  Large deep hole.  No one likes to discover they are standing on a plank above a large deep hole.

Anyway, back to my amazingly small courtyard.  It's got a tree, some random pipes and...

Can anyone say AWESOME??

I have a water pump in a courtyard!  In my house!!

Most of the homes in this town have a water pump in the backyard.  There's also two in the main square, one of which works, and tourists love to stand around pumping cold water on themselves.  (Inevitably someone is standing looking up the spout to see if water is coming.)  Mine may work... after a bit of restoration.  The jolly paint job cemented various bits together that should move independently and some bits that should not move at all are now decidedly wobbly.  But Hey! I have a water pump in my backyard!!

In the garden of evil... baby....

I've been a very good girl and taken pictures of my garden for you all.

This is my garden from my bedroom, right before spring errupted.  Across the road is the duck pond, where the nefarious Ducks of Doom await and plot world domination.  Then there's the harbor and the sea beyond that.  My uninterupted sea views are, in fact, interupted by the harbor.  But come Fleet Week, I get a great view of both ships.

BWHAHAHAHA!

Actually, we did have two small navy vessels in port a few days ago.  It was a little dark to take a non-flash photo and I only take military photos when I am sure no one is going to catch me because I don't want to get shot, thankyouverymuch.  So you'll just have to trust me that we had sailors in town.

*Insert seaman joke here*

Of late I've been suffering from insomnia.  This is partially exasperated by having my husband rush off back to Aarhus to make money as a taxi driver until his job here beings in July (more specifically, until his first pay check is deposited) and I just kinda forget to go to bed.

I'd forget to breathe if it wasn't a subconscious act.

But it means I end up getting to watch the sun rise over the duck pond.   Once I even managed to photograph it!  I love sunrises.  Provided that I've been up all night to watch them.  I'm very unfond of seeing sunrises because I've had to get up early.  I like watching the sun rise and then going to bed.  I also like wandering around town after everyone else has gone to bed.  But taking pictures in the dark is a little difficult - I would need to find the tripod, learn to use a camera properly, and have patience.  Posh!  The point of wandering around in the dark at night is the wandering around in the dark at night!

I hear tonight is a full moon.  I'm so tempted to go out and wander around in it.

Anyway, my garden.  I didn't plant it.  According to our landlord, he spent a Great Deal of Money on it and we must take care of it.  This would be much easier if I knew anything about plants.

Like this plant.

I like it.

It's all spiky and the red flower thing is even more red in real life, but I'm not a fabulous photographer and I lack photoshop.

And I have no clue as to what kind of flower it is.

There is also this flower that's growing in the gravel and nowhere else in the garden.  This suggests it's a weed, but it's pretty and I want to keep it.

Then there is this flower.  Bush.  Flower.  Bush.  Flowerbush?

It's got spiky thorns like a rose, but it doesn't look much like a rose.  I was going to lean in and sniff it, but I'd have to step on some things that may or may not be baby plants and possibly grasp another spiky plant-bush thing in an effort not to fall on my face into the flowerbush and that would just suck.

This picture also shows how much lusher my garden has gotten since I took the picture at the top of this post... just a few days ago.

I also really like this plant.  It's a purple plant.  Has little bitty flowers that remind me of a plant back home that I used to think was Fox Glove, but now I know is not.

Oh, you say, I thought you said you didn't know about plants?

Yes, well, I am sort of a nut for poisonous plants used in murder mysteries.  And Digitalis is one of the fun ones.  But I did just learn that it's considered a weed by the USDA.

Then there is this little yellow flower growing right next to my ornamental pond.  It's got leaves that totally scream "weed" or possibly "romaine lettuce" but a quick wikipedia trip doesn't tell me if lettuce has flowers.

Because of the whole Fox Glove thing, I tend to not eat random plants in gardens.

That and my mother liked to tell us kids the story of the boy scouts who went camping and then used Oleander sticks to roast marshmallows and DIED!

Speaking of the ornamental pond...

Here is a picture, with a newspaper for scale.  Or perhaps I've kidnapped this pond and this is a proof of life photo.

It's about two feet across and probably about that deep.  It seems to be made of a cement ring, sunk into the ground, with some solid bottom keeping the water from leaking away.

And it is full of dead leaves.  Topped by small green plants that do not seem to be algae and perhaps are meant to be there.  Not really sure on that one.

My husband is at a loss as to it's purpose.  In my husband's world, things have purpose.  I like things to have a purpose, and in my house, if you don't serve a purpose (which sometimes just has to be "entertain the Archaeogoddess for half an hour) you don't get to move with us then next time we change addresses.  It's a harsh old life in the Archaeohousehold, but it makes it easier to move from house to house.  However, I recognize that sometimes we don't need to know the purpose of a thing to appreciate and like it.

That being said, the ornamental pond creeps me out.

I went and fished a plastic bag out of it the other day and I thought, just for a minute, that I was about to fish a foot out as well.

A human foot.

I mean, come on, doesn't that pond just scream "body dump" to you?

It would have to be a small body.

Which just makes it all the more creepy, doesn't it?

Don't worry folks, if I was going to go about killing people, I would definitely not put them in my ornamental pond.  Because putting the body in your own backyard is how they catch you.  There is also the problem of size.  My pond is just too small.  To fit a body in it I'd first have to cut it up and deep fry it until it was crispy and then run it through the wood chipper, and if you are going to go through that much trouble you might as well just dispose of the body somewhere else, like the fertilizer ponds that are all over Denmark.  Your victim could be spread out all over Samsø without you having to lift a finger.

Then there is all that business about pig farms.  Lots of pig farms in Denmark, you know.  This country is just crying out for a crime syndicate and a mob boss.

I don't know what day it is nor what country I'm in...

Actually, my watch tells me it's Wednesday and I'm cold, so I must be in Denmark.

But I spent several days in Spain.

Because, you know, why not?

Oh, okay, honestly, I had a wedding to attend.  Yes, my friends rock.  My husband and I were discussing our friends and their inherent coolness in timing over breakfast as we looked out from the hotel in the Sierra Nevada (in Spain, not the one I grew up next to) and realized that we've been on three destination weddings over the last four years, four if you include our own.  And not only does that average out to one a year, it really has been one a year.  That makes this a tradition.  My husband and I do not go on vacations, we go on weddings.

So, friends of ours, we're ready for our next destination wedding.  I'd like to try Greece.

Thank God for the Greeks!

This is a long post.* A lot has happened and it'll take some time to get it all down. And the title of this post will only make sense later.

Maybe.

Not promising anything.

So, lets see, where did I leave you all?

No idea. Typingup a new post on the website so can't read what I last wrote. I should do something about that. Nah, that smacks of planning and organization and here at Archaeogoddess Inc. Corp. Ltd. we don't play that game.

Lets start with Thursday. Stuff started happening then and hasn't really let up since.

THURSDAY

So the Dane and I go sight-seeing. The Netherlands incorporates the Rhine river, that is, the Rhine bisects the country. Along the Rhine are the Limes. The Limes is/are the defensive boundary the Romans created along the perimeter of the Empire. North of the Limes is barbarian land, south is the Roman Empire. I love boundaries! Cultures colliding that stuff. And as a Roman archeologist I am particularly intersted in the Roman frontier. Of course I'd like to see it. Good ol' Google gives me a web-page for the Limes in the Netherlands that tells me all I have to do is going into the tourist office in Nijmegen and get some good guide leaflets that will direct me to fantastic walking tours of the Limes. I'm so excited I can't stop bouncing and I neglect to really read my guide book. And I really should have.

Because Nijmegen is directly south of Arnhem and north of Eindhoven. For a person who knows her "Band of Brothers" by heart, I should really have figured out what was going to happen.

There are no Roman ruins. In fact, very little in the area predates 1945. The whole area was pretty much flattened by WWII and Operation Market Garden. Reading the little booklet (by the way, the Netherlands? Not prepared for tourists. The tourist office had one booklet in English. We got a few others in Dutch but alas, our Dutch was not good enough to realize "what," as my husband would say "it was all about.") we discover that Nijmegen has been flattened by just about every invading force in Europe. Charlemagne, Napoleon, Hitler, various Williams from various countries, the Spanish several times... you name it, they've flattened it. I wouldn't be surprised if Genghis Khan and Attila the Hun were involved. Forget Meggido (the site of Armageddon) or Jerusalem, this tiny town is constantly rebuilding themselves.

Makes you think "perhaps they should STOP rebuilding it and MOVE!"

It has a very nice museum, however. Lots of Roman remains from various excavations in the area and a fantastic display of illuminated manuscripts. No explanation on how they were made or how wicked awesome they are, for that you need to have an enthusiastic Archaeogoddess guide, but ever so lovely to look at!

Right, so having been rather disappointed in Nijmegen, we headed to Elst, where I had a Dutch guide book with a 3.2 km guided walk called "In de schaduw van de tempel" (In the shadow of the temple - Dutch is so easy!).

Uh, yeah. So there is a reason Elst is not in the guide book. There is NOTHING in Elst. Elst falls between Nijmegen and Arnhem and is so damn boring that it "is famous for its Roman temples, which are situated under the Saint Werenfried church". (Wikipedia for Elst) Did you get that "under the church"? I thought I had taken a picture of it. But I hadn't. Basically it looked like this:

Where the magic red shoes are the foundations of the temple peaking out from under a large church. Overwhelming, I know.

From there the tour went downhill. Seriously, you ask, it could go downhill? Oh you betcha!

We trecked to "Huis met klassieke elementen" (House with classical elements) and saw this amazing structure:

See the "classical elements"? That would be the tacky urns and cement columns by the pond (light green patch) and this fantastic house if for sale! You can own a house so famous it's in a tourist guide!!

I guess the owners had enough of tourists taking pictures of their famous house and now just want to be left alone.

Then (then? oh yes, it goes on) we came to this:

What is it? Why it's either Dutch track housing or the site of an ancient Roman temple to pagan gods. Actually it's the site for the upcoming Dutch director Stevijn Speilenburger's "Poltergijst" movie. Because WE KNOW WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU BUILD TRACK HOUSES ON NON-CHRISTIAN HOLY SITES!!

For the record: my husband who is culturally deprived totally did not get the humor of the situation and still cannot figure out what I'm talking about.

Thoroughly put out, we went home.

FRIDAY

Last day of classes for the Dane before Fall Break. A misnomer since every teacher assigned huge projects that the students will TOTALLY have time to do since they are on vacation from all their other classes.

We meet up with everyone in the bar and drown our sorrows until 7:30 pm. Not much drowning. Heineken is a wussy beer.

The Dane is now hungry and I'll do anything to keep from having to slave away over dinner when I have to pee every 5 minutes (damn you Heineken!) so we go into downtown Utrecht for dinner. We park in a parking structure.

As we step out to admire my Danes lousy parking job (parking spaces are not designed for Volvo station wagons sporting bike racks) we notice a car rolling downhill towards our car. We frantically try to signal the driver and then we discover THERE IS NO DRIVER!!

See, Poltergijst!

Stupid f*cking asshat Dutch drivers! Do they not know that when you park on a slope you put the car in GEAR as well as use the HAND BRAKE!? The answer to this, having looking in all the other Dutch cars as we wait for the police, is NO.

That, by the way, is what it looks like when an Alfa Romeo of DOOM rolls backwards into the hitch of a Volvo. Our hitch saved the VW Golf next to us from Total Annihilation.

We were fine. The car... well, I'll get to the damage the car sustained later. It's quite a strain for an old car to hold a downhill drifting Alfa sedan with nothing more than a hitch and a racing bike. Oh yeah, the racing bike....

Smoosh.

The Dutch witnesses were very helpful and we made our way to the police station and then back again where we waited for two very very helpful police officers to show up. They found the owners of the car (a rental, but the driver had been involved in ANOTHER accident recently so he was on file) who came eventually (had to finish eating first, mind) and moved his car. Once again parking it without putting it in gear. Sigh. We moved our car to a better location far from other possible accidental ghost driven cars of DOOM.

Only now it's 10:30. Uh, where oh where are we going to find food? McD's? KFC? The husband threatened to throw himself in the canal rather than eat at these locations, so we wandered from restaurant to restaurant being greated by more and more confused wait staff ("what, you want to eat? Now? No, the kitchen has been closed for over an hour!"). Then one restaurant suggests this Greek restaurant just up the road. We wander in and Thank God for the Greeks, the kitchen is open and they'd be happy to feed us HUGE amounts of VERY GOOD food for a fair price. Meanwhile, the rest of the restaurant is full of Greeks enjoying the live music and dancing and shots of Ouzo. It was a FABULOUS night.

SATURDAY

We went to Oosterbeek to see the Air Museum dedicated to Operation Market Garden. It is a brilliant museum with everything in English, Dutch and German. The video even came with Polish subtitles. From there we went to the cemetery. I got very emotional.

"50 years ago British and Polish airborne soldiers fought here

against overwhelming odds to open the way into Germany

and bring the war to an early end. Instead we brought death

and destruction for which you have never blamed us.

This stone marks our admiration for your great courage

remembering especially the women who tended our wounded.

In the long winter that followed your families risked death

by hiding Allied soldiers and airmen while members of the

Resistance helped many to safety.

You took us then into your homes as fugitives and friends

we took you forever into our hearts.

This strong bond will continue

long after we are all gone."

Over 1,700 people are buried in this cemetery, mostly soldiers who fought and fell in Operation Market Garden in the area around Oosterbeek. There are many more cemeteries like this one spread out all over the Netherlands and indeed, Europe.

That these brave souls died in one of the Allies biggest blunders makes it all the more poignant.

We headed home where we promptly blew a fuse, resulting in a loss of electricity (fixed after a time by my Dane plugging us into the next campsite that is now free and available for use), and then we ran out of gas. On a Saturday night. Nice.

Hurredly gulping soup, we then headed off to see a German movie about the RAF. Which does not stand for the Royal Air Force, but the Red Army Faction. Watching a bunch of people blow things up and kill people because they think that this will some how bring about a brave new world of joy and plenty (oh and stop the Vietnam War in the bargain) and ending in more death, the spread of terrorism to new idealistic souls and eventually suicide by the main protagonists is not exactly light watching.

SUNDAY

Blessed be the people who sell propane on Sundays, for they shall inherit the earth. Went to Leiden and the archaeology museum. Another place they don't expect tourists of the non-Dutch variety. Got kicked out 10 minutes before closing because when the Dutch close up shop they CLOSE UP SHOP.

Went home and discovered we were leaking gasoline from the car. Our little incident a few days earlier had knocked the fuel line lose and it was dripping gas. Sigh.

So we cooked dinner. Blew the fuses AGAIN. We are now out of plugs for our electricity. Ate in the dark. Went to a birthday party, because we promised. Came home late and crawled into bed in the dark and the cold.

MONDAY

Boy the car is really leaking gas! Got the electricity turned back on and realized it is one particular heater that is throwing to fuses. Got the car to the shop. Our fuel line had dropped onto the drive shaft and it had burned a hole clear through it. We were gushing gas last night. Nice. Now we need to find a new fuel line for a car that hasn't been made in 20 years. I really hope someone junked one recently. We really need to get back to Denmark. I have an article to correct and a flight to catch.

So as of right now we have electricity and propane. We have no car and only a borrowed bike for transport. The temperature dropped and I have to pee every 10 minutes. But I can tell from the Peek a Poo toilets that my digestive track is working PERFECTLY.

The next Facebook quiz that tells me I need more excitement in my life gets shot.

*I am not going to go through this for typos and other errors. Because I have to PEE!