Everything's just... gone!!

All our stuff just left Aarhus for Nice this morning. Quite a big step toward home reunification! Two great guys from a British moving company came to load their truck with our > 400 cubic feet (=12 cubic meters) of stuff. We took some snapshots of the process.

7:55am: It's good we had reserved 3 parking spots in a row for the movers' truck to park!

8:00 am: Here's what the living room of our apartment in Aarhus looks like...

8:47am: Time for a painting yoga session in one of the now empty bedrooms

9:08am: This is definitely clearing out...

9:53am: A lot of our stuff is now stacked inside the truck

10:10am: Hey! we can start seeing some of that back wall again behind the cardboard boxes that we had not seen in 3 months

10:38am: Each of our 150 items got a colored sticker with a unique identifier and was added to a now 6-page list

10:49am: Almost there...

11:15am: Time to wave the truck goodbye... (check out at one of the windows on the third floor ;)

It'll take about 2 weeks now we think before we see our belongings again down at the other end in Nice. Stay tuned!

Cherry (and plum?) blossom in Denmark

Spring has been unusually sunny here in Aarhus, with about 4 weeks of uninterrupted sunshine! That was a lot of sun, since it's up around 5am and sets around 9:30pm... We marveled at how everything could be so green, even though no raindrop had fallen for all that time. But make no mistake: it was not necessarily warm and not windy all that time! It was truly pleasant however to be spoilt with sun after the long and cold Winter.

Some rain today and a bit chillier, but it was nice to get shelter from the rain under all these pink flowers... Enjoy!

Wishing the Queen a happy 71st birthday!

Yesterday (April 16th) was the Queen of Denmark's birthday. Quite an event for the Danish folks, with major celebrations all around Denmark, starting of course in Copenhagen. Last year, the Queen had arrived to Aarhus a few weeks later on her famous Dannebrog boat and she had traveled across town on a horse carriage. A concert had been given in her honor in the local stadium.

But this year, "completely against tradition" as we were told, the Queen was in Aarhus and not Copenhagen to celebrate her 71st birthday. Must have been quite shocking to our friends in Copenhagen, but oh well, they'll get over it...

For this special occasion, all of us faithful subjects of her majesty in Aarhus were allowed on the Eastern lawn of the Marselisborg residence. There, it was arranged that the Queen and her dear husband Henri would walk out on the balcony to wave at the crowd and receive happy birthday wishes from us. We would also be treated to a pure display of delightfully old-fashioned tradition with life-size (and alive) lead soldiers like we expect to find them around royal castles, were it in Denmark, England or Monaco.

So sure enough we were present at such an important event (might as well go to see what they do with your taxes when you can ;-). And at 12pm the door opened to let the Queen and her husband be greeted by a chorus of "tilykke" ("congratulations" in Danish), as well as both the traditional Danish birthday song and the more famous one that the rest of the world knows... Of course Danish flags were everywhere...

The Danes really love their Queen, and well, such traditions are growing on us... Q relates to her husband Henri, a fellow French expat in Scandinavia... Wishing we could all get together and have a good time around some glasses of red wine down in his chateau in Sout-Western France... Aren't we all part of the same large family anyway?

We could debate for hours on the purpose and usefulness of holding on to such outdated traditions, but in the meantime, long live the Queen!

Done with the snow in Aarhus: Spring, welcome!

Well, actually it's been a while since we have not seen snow here, and that's good! Spring actually starts on March 1st for the Danes, but we were not gonna get fooled...

In fact, we did get some snow flakes yesterday during our walk (hence the winter jackets...) but that was just a wink from defunct Winter...

Now closer to April, flowers are enchanting us everywhere. Tons of white, purple, and light blue crocuses are spurting on all the lawns, it's just dazzling!

For Q's b-day yesterday we also had a dense bunch of tulips ("like in the movies" said C), which brought the Spring season to our table as well.

Not too many flowers yet in the park around the Queen's summer residence in the Marselis forest. But several bronze sculptures here and there, which complement nicely the elegant landscape of the estate, and contribute to giving it a very romantic atmosphere. So we'll be back when the rose garden will be in bloom!

On a bike ride this afternoon, stop over at the Marselis harbor (where we had seafood for the birthday dinner last night) and at the deer park, a wild-life reservation where people can just walk among friendly animals, and most importantly, where animals can frolic among friendly humans. By jumping around and chasing each others, fawns were truly giving quite a show!

More soon as the Spring unfolds...

Making it into 2011... hidden in a closet...

After our exciting but busy trip throughout some of Europe's principal cities like Paris, Brussels and Strasbourg, we opted to spend New Year's Eve at our place in Aarhus. A fine meal made of fresh crayfish with home made mayonnaise, als home made carrot soup, and a cake from one of the best patisseries in town. We also had our bottle of Henriot champagne that we imported ourselves from France, naturally...

The big event associated with New Year here in Denmark is private fireworks looking like professional ones, and coming from pretty much every other household. Of course the peak was from midnight until 2am on New Year's Eve, but we started hearing them quite frequently after sundown (around 4pm these days) since December 30th, and way until January 7th or 8th. And on December 31st, people did not even wait for sunset to start lighting their firecrackers. On that day we heard the first bangs around noon.

With this increasing agitation outside, we quickly learned that Sascha was in need of special attention and care. Apparently fireworks are a well-known cause of stress for pets that can be quite traumatizing. Q knew this about his old dog, but we never really had a chance to witness this with Sascha earlier. Fireworks were not that common in Colorado (and more regulated). So we actually felt fortunate that we had decided to spend our New Year's Eve at home, in order to not make him any more anxious than he already was.

We actually found that the safest thing to do was to give him half a pill of the sedative we had gotten for him a year ago when we brought him to Europe by plane. Combined with organizing hiding places at the bottom of various kitchen cabinets, that seemed to do the trick. At least, he survived!

And so did we! From hearing the war-like explosions all around us at the turn of the year, we felt much safer to not have had to go anywhere... That may seem like an over-reaction, but we did hear on a daily basis the ambulance sirens shortly after the peak of fireworks festivals. We were also told that every year at least one house (only one?) gets set on fire because of poorly handled fireworks. Well, it was quite a windy night...

But fireworks were actually quite nice seen from the safety of our home, through our large windows. It was sort of non stop, so we'd regularly pause our meal to go check out what was happening. Sort of like a free show! Check out the movie to see what we mean...

Catching up on 2010: Preparing for the holiday in Denmark - Part 2

On the weekend following our Thanksgiving celebration and the ceremony by the city Christmas tree, we were glad to join two more Christmas-related events. This was the Sunday before Saint Nicholas (December 6).

Q was invited to listen to a choir in the little church of Tilst, a small town on the outskirts of Aarhus. Q's colleague and friend Annika sang there. It was a fine and novel mix of traditional Danish and English Christmas carols. Some were more of the traditional kind, and others quite rhythmic, as you can check on the movies. And somehow, with a large audience packed into that tiny old church, it was very reminiscent of Christmas celebration in Alsace.

After that, Q joined C at a cookie baking party organized at Maike's place, a German colleague. We baked all kinds of cookies, from various traditions, German, Swedish, Italian, American... Quite some fun times! And we could feel the spirit of Christmas just hovering above us...