Creeping Danishness 2.1 - How to cut food properly

So again, I am using a decimal system, because this subject may seem small, but actually it touches on two essentially Danish characteristics - precision in all things and a high value placed on thrift - so it will probably come up again.

I learned about the seriousness accorded (by Danes) to cutting food properly about 15 years ago, as part of the preparations for a family party. A group of the women were prepping in the kitchen of the town Forsamlingshuset ( most towns in DK have a communal gathering house with a full kitchen, tables, chairs, etc. for big parties), and a well-meaning cousin asked me to cut the tomatoes as pynt for the smorrebrod (decoration and things to set on top of open sandwiches). I started working away and she quickly stopped me - aghast that I was cutting the tomatoes into slices instead of wedges, or boats! She then very patiently (and I thought a bit smugly) demonstrated the proper way to cut, and display, the boats on a platter.

Tomato boats

Now I can appreciate a traditional presentation, but as an American, I am used to a certain relaxed standard when it comes to cutting vegetables. In addition to slices and boats, I have even diced the occasional tomato for a salad or for pynt. And I kinda thought that a slice of tomato would sit nice and flat on an open sandwich. But over here, it just doesn't work that way. And there is a certain method to this seemingly ridiculous orthodoxy.

Smorrebrod med pynt

Danish tomatoes are smaller than American tomatoes - especially New Jersey beefsteak tomatoes - and are rarely larger than a  baseball. This size doesn't get you a lot of slices, and then the top and bottom are wasted, too. But with boats, you just need to trim off the little green bud at the top and the rest cuts up perfectly. Precision, and thrift. The Swedes have a word that sounds like largum (but I don;t know how to spell it) and it accords to this very concept - just right. Not too much, not too little, nice to look at, works perfectly.

Now that we are here full-time, the tomato boat issue is cropping up everywhere - with cheese, and certain standard types of bread and rolls.

The delicious, kinda smelly, semi-soft cheese we love to eat here can only by cut with the wire-type of cheese slicer. But first you have to cut away a small amount of the wax around the sides, but not too much, because you need the wax to keep your fingers off the stinky cheese. Then the slice has to be thin and flat - no gulleys in the middle! -  across or you will be accused of "holing" the cheese, or udhuler. This is actually the word for not cutting the cheese properly.

Smelly cheese with the beginnings of udhule  on the left

And rygbrod, the dense rye and grain bread that is a staple for both breakfast and open sandwiches, must also be absolutely thin and flat - no artsy slants! - or your Danish husband may ridicule you. I always thought the bread slicing machine on my  mother-in-law's counter took up an absurd amount of space for its limited function. But clearly, she couldn't take the pressure of bread-slicing perfection.

Rygbrod  with one good slice and one corrective slice

Lastly, I will mention how to properly slice rundstykker, the roundish rolls that many Danes eat for breakfast or with morning coffee. You need to use a good long serrated knife, and saw it evenly, or a little ball of doughy bread will appear in the middle of your roll. The practice is in fact, nor dissimilar to the way I have seen older Jewish people in the US cut their bagels. They hold it in their hand and saw through it carefully, and you are sure they will cut themselves, but it always comes out perfect.

How to slice rundstykker demo

Ready-to-eat rundstykker with cheese and jam

Creeping Danish-ness 1.1 - Cycling

So there are many ways that our lives are becoming more decidedly Danish, hence the title. Cycling is just one of the ways, but clearly warrants more than one post, hence the 1.1.

We arrived on a Friday afternoon, and the VERY first thing we did on Saturday morning was to have Danish-style bike locks and kickstands installed, so we could park them anywhere and avoid hauling around chain locks. We had brought both our bikes over at some expense and considerable inconvenience (finding boxes and packing them, taking a van to the airport, having Bo's parents pick us up with a trailer, and reserving two 'seats' for the bikes on the train from Randers to Copenhagen). But it is inconceivable that we would not have bikes here. In addition to the long recreational rides we have been enjoying, we use them to get everywhere around town. So does everyone else.

And I must say, it feels great to whip through the city on the smooth, flat paths. There is a special set of lights and directionals for bikes, which are often travelling faster than the car traffic. I try to pick out a cyclist travelling at a pace I feel comfortable with and follow their moves around trucks or other obstacles. But I'm still not comfortable enough to head into town during rush hour, when the lanes are pretty packed.

Bikes near Christianborg

Believe it or not, the point of this picture was not the bikes. There just happen to be a lot of them. And although it is not fair to judge during the vacation season, there are decidedly fewer cars in the city because people are generally on bikes.

Bike counter on Norrebrogade

This much graffiti-ed and stickered over machine is a cyclist counter on one the major avenues into the city. On that morning, 1,563 cyclists had crossed the bridge on the outbound side by 9:30AM, and 2,119,221 this year. (The estimated population of greater Copenhagen is 1,935,746, as of this April.) Last night, when we crossed this point coming home, more than 18,000 others had done so as well  - and this on one of the most popular vacation weeks of the year. The section of Norrebrogade nearest the city has double-wide bike lanes and automotive traffic is limited to busses and delivery vehicles. Besides devices like the counter that raise awareness of cycling, there are also cute little footrests at some intersections with messages like "Thanks for biking!" and events where commuters on bikes are served free coffee and rolls.

The cycling-centric culture is not at all limited to Copenhagen. There is an extensive network of national bike routes - these are routes with less traffic or dedicated cykel-stier ( bike paths). Communities maintain their own network of bikepaths, sometimes along major thoroughfares, and sometimes behind and between other routes. We have designed whole vacations using these maps - purchased from the Dansk Cykelforbund
( http://www.cyklistforbundet.dk/), which has a very cool shop near Orstedsparken. The maps and related guides describe the routes and interest points along the way (castles, historic sites, bike hotels. campgrounds, toilets), and also point out major routes with good bike paths.

Last Thursday, for example, we spent the day biking on a mixture of designated routes and regular bike paths along roadways. We biked from Copenhagen up to Fredriksborg Slot in Hillerod ( site of the national history museum and one of the most spectacular castles in Europe), and came home by crossing over to another important royal castle in Fredensborg and down Kongevejen (the King's Road)  to join up with a numbered bike path into the city. The beginning and the end of this trip were definitely on important commuter paths, with wide lanes and constructed alongside (but fenced off from) major highways. But we picked up Bikeroute 31 in the morning between Farum and Hillerod, which took us through forest, some typically Danish fields and marshland, and which included considerable gravel or grass paths away from roads. Definitely scenic, but on the way home we opted for a large chunk of non-numbered bikepath along Kongevejen - which was smooth, straight and very fast. We met up with Bikeroute 50 which brought us back into the city, but not before passing through amazing beautiful rural stretches in Allerod, where we shared the paths with people on horseback. 

A few pictures from our "Castle Ride":

Frederiksborg Slot seen from its Baroque Garden

Fredensborg Slot

Bikes and helmets taking a rest

Asger Jorn Museum, Silkeborg

On Tuesday, July 17th,we had a lovely drive through Bjerringbro among other towns to Silkeborg, home of the painter and COBRA movement founder, Asger Jorn. It is set on a beautiful piece of land on the Gudenaa, near the Kayak Club and a pleasure garden of sorts with a bocce (sp?) ball course, playground and ice cream kiosk. I've been here before but the rest of the family had not, so it seemed a good half-day outing with lunch.

A piece I don;t remember so well from last time bowled me over on this visit - the Dubuffet ceramic mural affixed to the facade of the museum.

Dubuffet Mural at Jorn Museum

Entrance Jorn Museum

While Asger Jorn is not my favorite Danish artist, he did work in an impressive range of media and did hang with some of the greats - Leger, Dubuffet, Arp, Alechinsky - and they are all represented in the museum. But I think my problem with Jorn comes from knowing mostly his "master" paintings in the canon, and not the oil sketches, and prints, ceramics, and tapestries that I loved seeing in Silkeborg. I should remember that when looking at other artists that I have decided about years ago - to look more closely at their "secondary" work.

And, of course, no matter what's on the walls, every Danish museum is beautifully presented and furnished. The Jorn Museum also had gorgeous wooden block flooring.

Painting gallery in Jorn Museum

Two of my favorite pieces from the visit:

Jorn oil sketch. This is small! Maybe 18 x 18"

Detail of tapestry

Tapestry commissioned by Aarhus Stadtskole ( 8  x  50 feet?)

This is a terrible photo, but the room is necessarily dark. Jorn designed and wove this in France in collaboration with Pierre Alechinsky and others. It is remarkable if you get up really close and enjoy the quality of the weaving and the freedom of the abstraction.

Two Days in Ostjylland - one rainy, one sunny

A month after the first post, and a lot has happened.

We have driven our dog 3,000 miles across America, to her new temporary home in Portland, OR; packed up a large house that we have accumulated all manner of crap in for the past 17 years; and reduced our necessary possessions to three 50-lb. suitcases, two carry-on bags, and two crated bicycles. We have been in Denmark, at Bo's parents house in the small town of Oster Bjerregrav for four days now and only one of the those days could be called sunny. From 102 degrees and muggy in NJ to 52 degrees and rainy is quite an adjustment.

On Saturday ( 6/14), we went into the nearby city of Randers, where the sculptures of Jens Galschiot are scattered throughout town (http://www.randerskunstmuseum.dk/FrontEnd.aspx?id=3035). He is a very political Danish sculptor, whose most famous piece involves an obese naked woman holding the scales of Justice riding piggyback on the shoulders of an emaciated man. Others around town depict specific homeless people from throughout the world, and allegorical groups such as this trinity in a new public square adjacent to the art museum: 

Hard to see from this shot, but on each cross is hanging a pregnant teenage girl as a protest against the Roman Catholic Church's prohibition on birth control in a world where so many unwanted children are born into dire poverty. Compelling, if rather obvious, and absolutely the LAST thing you'd see on view with the help of public funding in the US. Remarkably, there were no protesters in sight.

On a more light-hearted note, there were young street performers in another part of town hamming it up, doing head stands in broken glass, banging on drums and the like. One performer was my in-laws' next door neighbor, Caroline.

Caroline

Yesterday was the best chance of non-rain in sight, so we set off on our bikes at 8:30AM for Mariager, a scenic old town on Mariager Fjord about 16 miles form Bjerregrav. It started off well, but within an hour, dark clouds loomed and we ran into a medium rain shower. A quick change of jackets made it bearable, then absolutely doesn't-get-better-than-this perfect when the cloud passed over and we were again cycling in brilliant sunshine.

We got to Mariager by 10AM and it was deemed too short a ride for such a nice day, so Bo revisited the maps and we lengthened the ride up along Mariager Fjord and back through the farmland north of Randers where so much of Bo's family has held farms and businesses over the years.

Bo consulting bike map in central square of Mariager

Andrea biking along Mariager Fjord towards Assens

Kind of a mistake....Yes, it was lovely landscape and yes, the rain held off. But we were hit with an unbelievable headwind for the last third of the 56 mile bike ride and had to pedal pretty hard to avoid being blown backward, even going downhill. We earned a beer with our very late lunch. But it was definitely a cautious tale about biking in Denmark.