Category Archives: Denmark

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A Naden Band Christmas

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Without wanting to sound like a Grinch, November is just too early for Christmas music for me.

I mean, COME ON. Two months of nothing but Christmas music?? It’s on the radio, in the stores, at the mall, on my husband’s car playlist. It’s omnipotent.

And it drives me nuts.

Not only that, but every artist and her uncle has to release their version of every single Christmas song ever penned.

Why? Because Yuletide music is a big money maker. Just like all of the Christmas merchandise showing up on Costco shelves in early October.

Okay, so I AM a bit grinchy.

But now that I’ve got that off my chest, there is one Christmas music tradition that never disappoints. And it’s usually in the appropriate month of December too.

It’s the annual Naden Band Christmas concert, which has been a tradition in Victoria for more than 40 years. Even when COVID was cramping our style, the Naden Band streamed their concert so we wouldn’t have to miss it.

We often think of the Naden Band as part of our local parades, but they have performed all over the world for many different events, along with their more traditional performances.

Only days before we attended this year’s concert, the Naden Band had been at Canadian Forces Base Esquimalt to welcome back two navy ships, HMCS Vancouver and Winnipeg, as hundreds of sailors returned from months of deployment in the Indo-Pacific region.

The Naden Christmas concert was in conjunction with the Salvation Army’s holiday toy drive. The ticket price was very reasonable (are you paying attention Taylor Swift?), and each audience member was encouraged to bring one unwrapped toy.

The theme of this year’s concert intrigued me. It was “Hygge”.

Most of you have at least heard of hygge over the last few years, but for those of you who haven’t, let me exercise my Scandinavian heritage.

Hygge, which originated in Norway but was made popular in Denmark, is all about getting cozy and finding comfort. It might be found in a hot toddy by the fire, or curling up with a good book. It has a similar origin as the word “hug”. Whatever brings you contentment, that’s hygge.

Mostly, I was curious as to how the Naden concert people would pronounce it. Scandinavian languages have a sound all their own and the word hygge is no exception. Online you’ll see it described “hoo-ga”, but that’s not really it.

No, it’s more like a hacking sound from deep in the throat, followed by “gi” as in the word give. Okay, that doesn’t sound very cozy-like, does it?

So we’ll move on.

This year’s musical evening was fabulous, as usual. The Naden Band performed everything from traditional Christmas songs like I Saw Three Ships and Joy To The World, to less traditional ones like Fairytale of New York.

Among my favourites were songs from A Charlie Brown Christmas (Linus and Lucy gets me every time) and I’m Dreaming of Home, which featured the Pipes And Drums of the Canadian Scottish Regiment. There’s nothing quite like the sound of the pipes, is there?

The Royal Canadian Navy’s Naden Band, if you don’t already know, is a group of amazing, top notch musicians. Whenever a musical piece calls for a solo performance, you really get to hear how talented they are. And playing music is a full time position for 34 military musicians, so they practice A LOT.

Another highlight of the evening was when an audience member was chosen to conduct the band for the song Sleigh Ride. During the intermission, anyone who was interested could add their name to the draw.

A few minutes into the second half, a name was picked out of the box. It was a magical moment for all of us. The name drawn was one of the sailors who had returned from deployment only days before. It was something right out of a Hallmark movie script.

If you have never attended the Naden Band’s Christmas concert, I highly recommend it. There are usually several performance dates to choose from, including a matinee show.

And now I want you to mark this day and time on your calendars: December 26, 12:01am. That’s when the Christmas music ends, okay??

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Cycling – One Driver’s View

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“Never argue with a bus!” my Dad used to laugh. He was a bus driver in downtown Vancouver for more than 40 years, and he’d pretty much seen it all.

Other vehicles were always trying to outrun or outmaneuver his bus, sometimes to their peril. They weren’t thinking about the fact that a bus is a heck of a lot bigger and heavier, and that a small vehicle would not fare well if the two were to come into contact. All they could think about was getting ahead of the bus.

I was reminded of that the other day when I was in my car right behind a cyclist at a stop light. The cyclist didn’t gesture his intentions, but when the light turned green, he immediately fumbled his way out into the intersection and turned left in front of an oncoming car. All that cyclist was thinking about was beating the car.

Fortunately, the car driver saw what was happening just in time and hit the brakes. And honked.

In the last couple of years, especially since COVID-19 has come into play, there have been a lot more people out there cycling. It’s one of the few things a person can do these days that’s enjoyable and healthy. Unless you make a sudden left turn in front of an oncoming car, that is.

Cycling stores are literally running out of bikes because of the high demand. More and more bike lanes are being built, creating corridors into the downtown Victoria area.

Now, a lot of drivers will roll their eyes at the news of yet another bike lane. But I think they’re a good thing.

A few years ago, my husband and I were in Copenhagen in Denmark and I marveled at how co-operative and respectful cyclists and drivers were with each other. Pretty much every main road in Copenhagen has a bicycle lane with its own signs and signals. Drivers and cyclists alike know the rules and, for the most part, stick to them. Except for children, you don’t see too many people with bicycle helmets. Far fewer 2-wheel-versus-4-wheel incidents, I’d guess.

Cycling has been a big thing in Denmark since the 1880s, and these days, 9 out of 10 Danes own a bike. But it’s also a small country, and mostly flat. Victoria and Vancouver Island don’t have that advantage.

Back in the 1990s, like many families, we had a big van. For the most part I was used to its berth, but passing a cyclist was another matter. One day, long before cycle lanes had come to town, I had to pass a cyclist on a busy street. I got past him okay, and then came up to a red light.

Well, I guess he didn’t like how close I’d come to him when I passed. Or maybe it was something else. But he pulled his bike up along the sidewalk to the right of me as I sat at the light, came around to the front, and spat on the hood of the van. Have a good day.

To this day I still get nervous when I drive up behind a cyclist on a road with no bike lane. Especially on a certain stretch of Bay Street that is particularly narrow. I want to give them lots of room, but if the road is busy, that’s not easy to do. And then there’s the collection of cars coming up behind me to contend with. Sometimes they get impatient waiting for me to make up my mind and lean on the horn. Gimme a break.

Let’s face it; there are good and bad drivers, and the same goes for cyclists. But the reason we have rules for the road is so that nobody gets hurt in the process. And I’m going to need all of you drivers out there to pay attention and do your best.

Because, you see, I’m planning on getting myself a bike one of these days. Maybe a nice e-bike to give me some help up those hills. Because I’m old.

So I’ll need you all to be prepared for that stupid left turn I’m bound to make right in front of you.

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We All Need A Little Hygge

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My parents were both Danish, so I grew up hearing that language all around me. My first words were in both Danish and English, likely in that order, and it wasn’t until I started school that I realized they were actually different languages.

There are words that seem to be unique to a language, and hard to translate exactly into another. For instance, one of my favourite Danish words has always been “pyt”. It is said in response to something that is stressful or frustrating. And when you say it, pyt is almost like spitting. So it works really well when you’re fed up. “PYT! Let it go…”

You may have come across the word “hygge” in the last few years, and perhaps you even know what it is. But for those of you who haven’t heard of it before, I will explain.

Hygge actually originated in Norway, but first appeared in Danish writing around the 18th century. It is an old, but still very relevant and common practice that has become more popular all over the globe lately. Pronouncing it is your only challenge: the “hy” part sounds sort of like you’re hacking up something that is stuck in your throat. And then add a “ga”. Saying HOO-ga comes close.

The Scandinavian languages are all rather guttural, and Danish is no exception. There are certain letters and pronunciations that are difficult to demonstrate. Danish has often been described as sounding like German, but with a hot potato in your mouth.

But what exactly is hygge? It’s coziness and comfort. A long hot bath. Reading a good book by a crackling fire. Lots of lighted candles. Warmth, soft music, good food and friends, all of those cozy things. Being out in nature is hygge, as is a feeling of gratitude.

In Danish, there is the word “hyggebukser”, or hygge pants. Those are the pants you love to wear, but rarely in front of anyone else. Maybe your pajama bottoms or sweats. In fact, if you’ve been working at home for the last few months, you’re probably wearing them a lot anyway. I mean, if no one can see, who cares? That is hygge.

There’s also the word “hyggesnak” which is what you might think of as cozy conversation. You know, a nice chat with an old friend about comfortable topics. No politics or anything that could be controversial. Politics is definitely NOT hygge.

For me, hygge is sitting out on the back deck on a summer morning with my thermos of coffee and my cat on my lap. I have been known to stay there until noon. As long as my husband doesn’t turn on the radio to blast the news, that is. The news these days can ruin everything, can’t it? All I want to hear is the birds.

Many times over the years I’ve had my friends over for smørrebrød, which is a Danish meal that literally translates as “butter bread”. These are open-faced sandwiches made with dark rye bread topped with all kinds of delicious treats. You might use different cold cuts, shrimp or other fish with fancy garnishes. And lots of butter. I usually make Danish red cabbage along with the sandwiches, and serve up some pickled herring too. We drink Aquavit and Danish beer or “øl” and feel the hygge. (You probably noticed that letter ø. That’s an extra letter in the Danish alphabet, which also sounds somewhat like you’re gagging.)

These days, of course, having friends over is not possible in the same way. So instead, we spend time every week on a Zoom chat with a glass of wine.

Your idea of hygge might be different from mine, and that’s okay. The point is that however you do it, it has to be something that makes you cozy and content. Happy, even. And with fall and winter looming, we’re going to need lots of hygge to get us through.

And we’ll hope for a better 2021. Because, you know, PYT to 2020!

Godt Nytaar!

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I am three quarters Danish;  my mother was born in the tiny fishing village of Karrebeksminde on the coast of the island of Sjaelland (Sealand, if you prefer) in Denmark.  Sjaelland is also home to Denmark’s capitol, Copenhagen.  My father, as it turns out, was conceived on the high seas as my grandparents immigrated from Denmark to Canada.  He was their first child, born in Calgary, Alberta.

My parents met in Vancouver and were considered rather old when they had me;  my father was 35 and my mother 37.  As a result, I was an only child, and all through my childhood I heard about Denmark.  My parents both had Danish friends, so I remember visits between them, fat cigars smouldering, Danish delicacies like festsuppe and vienerbrod (translated literally as “feast soup” and Vienna bread or Danish pastry), and at Christmas, little Danish flags everywhere.  I remember visiting the Danish Lutheran Church in Vancouver, where I had been baptised, and its red roof and model ship hanging from the rafters, a site in pretty much every Danish Lutheran church, and I recall attending the Danish Bazaar in the church’s basement every year.  My first words were a mishmash of Danish and English, and my mother loved to brag to her family back in Denmark that I spoke that language.  I found out years later that my Danish was actually pretty much a hybrid between the two languages and my grammar was all wrong, but as a child it seemed perfectly natural to me to converse in either language.  When I first went to school, I remember being given a spelling test and asked to spell the word “milk”, which I dutifully spelled “melk” because that was the Danish spelling.  I was offended to be told that it was wrong.  How could it be wrong to spell something correctly in Danish??

Eventually, my Danish was overshadowed by English, although I kept it up in conversation with my parents over the years.  In the spring of 1970, my mother’s sister, my Aunt May came to visit us.  It was a real adventure for me to have my Aunt May, who spoke a little English but not much, staying with us for a few weeks.  We introduced her to Vancouver, where she marvelled at the skyscrapers and mountains, both unheard of in Copenhagen.  I loved to tease her at her inability to pronouce English words starting with “th” and “shr” because they came out of her mouth sounding hilarious to me!  She good naturedly went along with my teasing and we got along famously.  I didn’t know at the time that the reason my Aunt May came to visit was because my mother was dying, and this was their last chance to see each other.  When my aunt was preparing to fly back to Denmark, I was upset that my mother wouldn’t let me go with them to the airport, but of course, I know better now.

My parents were planning a trip to Denmark when my mother passed away.  In a phone conversation with my Aunt May shortly after my mother’s death, she convinced my father to rebook the trip for the following year, 1973.  And so that spring, my father and I flew to Europe, neither of us having been out of North America before.  By this time I was 15 and a real teenage brat, but we spent five weeks in the country of our heritage, travelling from Sjaelland to Lolland Falster where my grandparents were born, enjoying Copenhagen, riding bicycles and light trains and buses and visiting with everyone we could on both sides of the family.  I was able to see the house that my mother was born and grew up in, the church where my father’s parents were married and the country that I had, up to then, only imagined.  I spent my 16th birthday in a pub with my Aunt May and my Dad, which would have been unheard of here in Canada.  My Aunt ordered me a pint of beer and after that, I was blitzed!

At a dinner out one evening, we decided to have Chinese food, and I was absolutely entranced listening to the Chinese waiters speak Danish…it was utterly fascinating to me.  I was also perturbed to hear the Danes talk about “pizza”…what?  There’s no Danish word for pizza?  I bought and wore Danish clogs as my father and Aunt May and I wandered the streets of Copenhagen, visited the real Little Mermaid and enjoyed the sites and sounds.  There were beautiful castles, cobbled streets, fairgrounds, a depth of history I could barely grasp, great food and wonderful people.  When I said goodbye to my Aunt May, I was sure I would be back again some day.

As it turns out, I have not been there since, and I recently found out that my Aunt May passed away just before Christmas 2009 at the age of 95.  Many times I have had dreams about being there or flying there, but life has always found a way of distracted me from actually going.  I have kept in touch with some of my cousins, and every now and then I think about and talk about going back, perhaps with one or both of my daughters.  In the meantime, every Christmas I put Danish flags on our Christmas tree, and once every year or two I hold a smorgasborg for my good friends with traditional Danish food and lots of beer and schnapps.

My father remarried a couple of years after my mother passed away, and I inherited an unusually blended family of Danish and Chinese.  My brother, who looks more Chinese than caucasian, was told as a child by his Danish grandmother “Never forget that you’re a Viking!”  I smile, imagining this little boy who always indentified more with his Chinese roots hearing that from his grandmother.  I often tease him that I’m going to bring out the Dane in him, but I have yet to succeed :-).

In the meantime I’ve never forgotten my Danish roots, and although my mother worked very hard at speaking English without an accent and becoming a Canadian, I’m happy that she and my father gave me such a wonderful, rich culture to celebrate.

Godt Nytaar means Happy New Year. 
To all of my readers, here’s to a year full of happiness, harmony and good health!

IJ

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A Rant About Stuff

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The audio cassette greatly increased the distr...Image via WikipediaWith all the hoopla about Apple’s latest iPhone problems, I’ve been thinking about things that get re-designed or “upgraded” and end up being less than satisfactory.  And what do we do with the old ones?  Okay, some of the stuff I’m going to talk about may not seem as fancy schmancy as the iPhone 4, but IT’S MY BLOG!  Dammit.  But I really did have to stifle a laugh when I saw the disaster that became the iPhone 4.  All of that hype, all of that excitement, and all it would do is drop calls.  Yeah, put all of your attention into the appearance and these things called “apps” and “oooh, it does this! and it does that!”.  And forget that it’s supposed to be a PHONE, you idiots.

First of all, why change something that works just fine the way it is?  I spent a long time looking for a bra the other day because all a person can find these days are these foam type cups that are supposed to “smooth” out the look of your bust, I guess.  But all they do for me is make me feel like I’m a massive, over-stuffed double D.  I hate them.  And since when are subtle traces of nipples on a person’s top so disgusting or unappealing?  I mean, they’re BREASTS for pete’s sake.  They’re supposed to have nipples!!  Personally, I believe that the truth is that young women simply want to look bigger.  Of course they do.  I guess I was exemplifying exactly that when as an 11-year-old, I got a bra from my Aunt in Denmark who had never seen me and didn’t know I was flat as a pancake.  I put it on and stuffed it with Kleenex, like any girl would do, excited to have her first bra.  Two boys asked me if they could come to my house after school.  I guess it worked.

But I’m 53 now, for crying out loud.  I have no desire to lure anyone with the size of my boobs anymore.  It would be disturbing if someone wanted to come to my house after seeing me in one of those foamy bra things.  I’d be calling 9-1-1.

Well, after hours of searching I finally found what I was looking for at Sears.  The real slap in the face was that the bras that I ended up buying actually cost three times as much as those foam-stuffed things.  Hopefully they’ll last three times as long.  Things are just not made to last anymore.

For awhile now we’ve been using a crappy old microwave that my husband inherited from work because our “new” one pooped out on us after only a couple of years.  The very first microwave we got was given to us as a wedding present 26 years ago.  It lasted almost 24 years.  Stoves and fridges and washers and dryers are lucky to last 10 years, if that, anymore. 

My father calls it “built in obsolescence“.    And it makes sense, doesn’t it?  Why would a company want to make ANYTHING that lasts 24 years?  That means it’s going to take 24 years for them to get any more money out of you.  That goes for anything electronic.  In this case, it’s not even that they can’t make something as good as they used to.  It’s that they don’t want to.  And I won’t even go into this madness for the next “great” technology that has taken over the universe.  Holy crap, how many 2- or 3-year-old cellphones are there out there lying around unused because their owners don’t actually even care to use them for their expected (short) life spans, because the next iPhone has come along?  Sheesh!

Okay, I’m calmer now.

But where do we put all of this stuff when it stops working or suddenly doesn’t suit us anymore?  For me, it’s in the basement.  There are a couple of old TVs down there, a gazillion cassette tapes (nobody uses those anymore!), some old books of my Dad’s, wires, boxes of boxes, two space heaters that barely lasted two years each, two fans, same thing, a dead coffeemaker, a couple of old computers and monitors, boxes of my daughter’s stuff (hopefully they going to take it with them when they move out?), some of my brother’s stuff, and the rest I can’t remember because it’s been so long since I’ve even looked through it all.  A few years ago, I convinced my husband to spend the money to hire one of those junk hauling companies to empty out the garage and some old stuff from the basement.  I was so relieved to get rid of it all.  And then, much to my horror, it seemed only months before the basement filled up again.  How did that happen?

Tomorrow I have to go to Richmond and pick up my mother’s secretary/desk, a beautiful piece of furniture that I always loved because it was hers.  And I have no idea where I’m going to put it.   Years ago I fantasized about having that piece of furniture, and now it’s just another (rather large) thing that I don’t have room for.  I guess when I was younger, it was all about acquiring stuff.  You moved out and took your stuff with you, and when you could afford it, you bought more stuff to fill your place with.  And you dreamed about the “big” stuff like a car or a house, until you could at least afford a car loan or a mortgage.  And then you filled your new house with more stuff, until your kids came along and you had to move into a bigger house to be able to fit them and their stuff…

Okay, that’s how it happens.

But I don’t want all of these things anymore.  And having to deal with my parents’ stuff because they are at the point where they can’t take care of it and don’t have room for it leaves me (and my siblings and many others I’m sure) with this enormous pile of someone else’s stuff that I’ve never even wanted. I guess my parents didn’t plan on being stuck with so many things either.  We don’t realize when we’re younger, that the things we think we want will eventually just become the things we have to find a way to get rid of.  I put that in bold so that when I read it again later, I will remember.

How did I get on this whole rant?  Oh yes, cellphones.  Well, the last several months I’ve been at the end of my contract with my cellphone company and had nothing but offers for the “newest” and “latest” new cellphone.  Complete with another 3-year contract of course.  My old cellphone works just fine, but like all other technology geeks I am tempted by these new offers.  Except, unlike younger geeks, every time I think about a new one, I can’t think of what to do with my old one.  Nobody in my house wants it and it’s such an old model that I know for sure it isn’t going to become one of those “refurbished” ones.  This particular cell provider talks about recycling your old phone…but what do they really do with it?  I have hellish visions of poor people in third world countries working for next to nothing taking these electronic things apart and breathing in and handling horrible toxins from their components.

I call it my old cellphone, but is it really?  After three years, oddly enough it hasn’t died on me.   Crap.

IJ

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