A Sweet Game of Pinochle

We are spending the weekend here in Aalborg, no trips or visitors to speak of. Just a quiet weekend at home to relax. We did have a fairly exciting week, though: we gained access to the laundry room in our building and I played a very good game of pinochle against Andrew at one of our neighborhood pubs last night. Andrew and I were out at the local British pub - the John Bull Pub - last night for a beer (and a water for me) and we brought the pinochle cards. Mom, you'll be proud, because I've been kicking his butt almost non-stop lately, but last night's game was an especially good one: I won in only three turns and the final score was 24 (Andrew) to 125 (Melissa)! Check out the scorecard, which I insisted Andrew take a picture of:

Getting a key to the laundry room was another source of excitement, as we've been lugging our clothes to a laundromat a few blocks away each week. Today, though, all I had to do was carry it (it being the several loads we've been holding on to since our return from Norway, while we've been holding out for access to said laundry room) down a few (5) flights of stairs to the laundry house out back. All was going well until the first load was finished washing and needed to go into the dryer, which I couldn't figure out how to start! I translated all the directions, tried to pay, and pushed just about every combination of buttons in the room: no luck. Thankfully, it was a sunny day, so all of our laundry got sun-dried on the line. If it's sunny again tomorrow, I will do the rest of our towels and a few blankets, but I'm hoping to hear back from someone at the university about help with the dryer in anticipation of our long, dark winter.

Sometimes I feel like a real idiot here - like today, emailing a woman to ask for help on how to use a dryer. Or when we had to go to the hospital for the first time and we walked to the wrong one (there is the North one and the South one and they do different things at the different locations). Or the first time we went out for dinner, and we didn't know if we were supposed to seat ourselves or wait for a host (Andrew ended up searching the restaurant for a server after about ten minutes). Or navigating the grocery store and not being able to find basic things like baking soda for over a month. Some of these may seem very small, but they start to add up and soon you feel like nothing is easy.

There are so many wonderful things about moving to a different country (we've been in a total of five different countries in the past two months!), but it can also be overwhelming at times. Even the smallest tasks can seem impossible when you don't speak (or read) the language, and we haven't really met any new friends yet, which is hard. We're going to call about language classes next week, though, which I hope will help with both problems. Also, we're looking forward to my parents' visit in a few weeks, as it will be so nice to have two very friendly faces here in Aalborg with us.

Crazy Engineers Storm Norway!

With our visitor, the illustrious David Stone, quickly exhausting the Aalborg-area attractions, I (this is Andrew, I'm hijacking the blog this week) took a couple days off of work and we all hit the road to Norway. I know what you're thinking -- "Hit the road? You are a silly man, Andrew Hamilton, Norway is across the North Sea!" Well, dear reader, you are quite correct in that assessment, but allow me to explain: ferries regularly connect Denmark with its Scandinavian brethren. We rented a car and boarded the 'Fjord Cat' in Hirtshals, DK bound for Kristiansand, NO on late Thursday night. The difference in landscape and fauna was immediate and stunning (can you spot Norway below?); it seems we picked the duller Nordic country in which to reside!

After some much-needed sleep, we left Kristiansand Friday morning for the city of Stavanger. The drive was beautiful and, after two months of bikes and buses, it felt good to be behind the wheel again! Before finding our hotel, we stopped off at the nearby Lysefjord (a fjord, if you couldn't tell) for a quick hike up to Pulpit Rock. After just 2.5 hours of scrambling over rocks and dodging the light-footed locals (Norwegian babies passed us on the trail) we reached our destination and took in the views.

Just as we were about to begin our long descent, a helicopter appeared and inexplicably circled the overlook. To the surprise of everyone present, it got near enough to drop one of its passengers on the peak, who turned out to be a medic. An injured hiker needed evacuating, so the rock was cleared and the whirlybird landed -- check out the video!

The rest of us had to take the long way back...

On Saturday we took another - shorter - ferry ride to the town of Tau for a scenic tour on horseback. I acted quickly to diffuse a potential blow-out when the proprietor of the farm offered Melissa the old mare because 'ladies like her, she's so gentle'. That got Melissa an upgrade to the prize-winning fjord horse, Evita, while I was saddled with the geriatric Ella, who also had some weird hair condition that caused her to shed all over me. Dave got a male horse almost as old as Ella, and the two of us vied for last place during most of the ride.

We had scheduled a kayak trip on the Lysefjord for Sunday, but after a 2.5 hour car ride to the town of Lysebotn at the far end of the fjord, the trip was cancelled due to rain and high winds. Nevertheless, the trip to Lysebotn was an adventure in itself. Particularly harrowing was the final descent into town, which featured many hairpin turns and a winding, one-lane tunnel. Oh, did I mention the rental car had a manual transmission and (we surmised) the engine of a weed wacker?

We had to catch our ferry back to Denmark on Monday night, but that left us with enough time in the morning to do some shopping and check out the Petroleum Museum in Stavanger. Did you know Norway is the world's third largest oil exporter? Now you do! The museum was not worth the $20 admission, but we did find an old, broken arcade game that inspired the title of this post.

The sea was angry on the ferry ride back to Denmark. Barf bags were circulated, and standing was risky. We made safe landfall, though, and were home in time for another day's work on Tuesday. My fellow crazy engineer left this morning to catch his flight out of Copenhagen tomorrow - it was wonderful to have him as our first visitor! Who's next?

As always, more pictures of our entire trip can be seen on our flickr page here. Don't miss the chance to see the Grand Princess Hamilton make port in Stavanger!

A visit to the vikings

Our very first visitor (a one Mr. David Stone) arrived on Thursday! I picked him up from the train station in the afternoon, and what fun we've been having since. On Saturday, Andrew, Dave, and I explored a viking burial ground located about twenty minutes outside the city. We caught a bus for about five minutes, and then unnecessarily walked for about fifteen-twenty minutes, not realizing that the bus would have taken us the rest of the way there; but, it was actually a very nice walk as this weekend was uncharacteristically warm for Denmark (I think it broke 75 degrees on Saturday!). It was a very interesting park with burial sites, foundations of where their homes were, even a field that was preserved in sand from hundreds of years ago, and a replica of the type of thatched barn that they would have used. Also, roaming throughout the entire park were several goats that live there.

On Sunday, we caught the bus to Hals on the east coast of Denmark where we spent the afternoon at the beach. The weather was nice, but not all that hot, so Andrew was the only one brave enough to go all the way in (I only got as far in as my feet and spent the rest of the time sunbathing).

This morning, Dave and I visited Andrew at work and I finally got to see where he goes every day (yes, it is confirmed that he does, in fact, have a job). Dave and I picked up the bikes that Andrew's department is generously loaning to Andrew and me until we buy some, and we set off back to Aalborg. We had lunch and then spent the afternoon at the Aalborg Maritime Museum, which had several small ship replicas & boat paraphernalia, as well as actual boats (a submarine, a sail boat, and a torpedo boat) that we were able to walk through. 

As always, more pictures of everything are on our flickr page here!

A trip to England, Guv'na

Andrew and I went to England this week - to London and then to Bath for the third International Conference on Self-Healing Materials. We flew to London last Friday night and spent the weekend there, meeting up with some old Illinois friends on Sunday to travel to Bath together. The excitement started right away on Friday night when we were startled out of our beds at three AM by a loud fire alarm going off in our hotel room. Grabbing our wallets and passports, we ran down the stairs along with the other Travelodge guests and had to wait outside in the rain for about twenty minutes before the firefighters announced it all clear.

Saturday afternoon was spent wandering the Tate Modern and the city around St. Paul's. The best part for me was seeing a Pollock (not mine, but wonderful nonetheless!).

Andrew's favorite part of the trip, by far, was eating at - not one - but TWO Jamie Oliver restaurants! He's officially spoiled now. We went to Jamie's London restaurant Barbecoa on Saturday night and had a truly wonderful meal. To start, we had a coal-roasted beet salad and crispy calamari. For our main courses, I had roast chicken with a smoked olive beurre blanc and garlic mashed potatoes, while Andrew ordered a sirloin steak and pit-smoked beans. We finished this first gluttonous meal with a delicious thing called "chocolate nemesis" - yum! In Bath, we ate at our second Jamie restaurant: Jamie's Italian. There, I had a delicious tomato & mozzarella salad and ricotta & mint ravioli, while Andrew ordered a root veg salad to start and wild boar sausages with minty lentils as his main course (his favorite!). We split a fantastic tiramisu for dessert. You can check out photos of all of these dishes on our flicker page, but here's Andrew's favorite photo from these visits (I think he's starting to feel very close to Jamie now...).

All in all, it was a great trip. Mostly it was just nice to be around friends again, and to be someplace where everyone speaks English!