Post summer

Marianne:

The Fall in Denmark has been amazingly beautiful. Today it´s September 22nd and the temperature has (again) climbed above 72 degrees. And we´ve had a lot of those days. Wonderful, since the summer wasn´t very warm. We´ve spent a lot of time on our wonderful roof terrasse. We´ve also spent many hour at the golf course, where I made the photos.

After the summer, I´ve started to sing in a gospel choir together with Lone. The leader of the choir, Manuela, is very skilled and charismatic. And she´s extremely disorganized, which can be a bit challenging... Singing in the choir is fun and life-affirming. The first time we met, we couldn´t get access to the room, where we were supposed to sing. Well, then we just sang outside in the sun. When we were almost done for the day, a group of children 9-10 years of age, joined us. They actually came to play ball, but decided to join us. So much fun! We will give two concerts before Christmas. The picture is from a concert last year, before I joined. Lone is there (with sun glasses).

Our friend Dan celebrated his 60th birthday in August. Michael and I left for Aalborg early Saturday morning. We drove the car to Copenhagen and parked in a parking garage with no public access. We walked to the Central Station, where we took the train. After arriving in Aalborg, we were picked up by Søren and went to the party.

It was a nice event together with Dans family and friends. The scuba diving fraternity simply had to entertain. They sang a song spiced up with anecdotes. Among other things. it was revealed that Dan always gets himself dirty. That´s why the guys are wearing dirty t-shirts. Michael messed his t-shirt up the night before, when we celebrated our nephew Søren´s 15th birthday at a steakhouse in Roskilde. I did however protest, when he considered to wear the shirt and wipe his hands in it during dinner. That would be such bad behavior.

We flew back home in the afternoon on Sunday and when we arrived in Copenhagen to pick up the car, we had to realize that it was locked up. The reason was a huge Ironman event taking place in the city center and the street, where the parking garage has its exit, was closed all day. So we had to go home by train, since we were expecting visitors (Linette and Jan) later in the afternoon. Well, well, well...






Monday evening we were invited to a reception at the American ambassador´s. It took place in his private home, Rydhave, north of Copenhagen. The reason was that Denmark signed a contract with Lockheed-Martin for buying F-35 fighters. Everybody who were involved in the process where invited. SO good to meet with friends and acquaintances. The house is (of course) decorated in American style, and it was very nice to see that the couple had chosen a lot of Danish artwork for decorating the walls. Rufus Gilford told me that it was his husband who chose most of it, as he´s the one who´s more into that. (Yes, they are a gay couple who actually got married here in Denmark).

Here in Farum we have a very nice shop/café that sells French specialties such as patés, sausages and cheese, wine, soap etc. One Friday night, we went down there and ha a wonderful charcuteri plate with duck rillette, sausages and cheese with nice condiments and a wonderful glass of wine. It was extremely delicious. We enjoyed the nice weather outside and ended up visiting with the couple at the next table. Just as you would do in Southern Europe. A very nice experience and definitely something to repeat.

On September 8th -11th we were in the southern  part of Jutland. We played golf at a very nice golf course, Brundtland. We attended a tournament (Ryder Cup), where two teams (green and red) were competing in different formats. It was good fun. Michael and I were both on the red team - something that is not common, since couples are supposed to be on different teams. After the event was finished, we therefore had to draw for who was going to the green team - and that ended up being Michael. A relief to me, since I don´t feel that I look very good in green ;-)


Apart from the golfing, we also enjoyed socializing with nice people. On Friday night they had arranged for a rum tasting. It was very delicious rum, Skotlander, produced here in Denmark. Actually the production plant is very close to our summer house, so we´ll definitely go there for a visit. Saturday night was gala evening. It was pretty fun to see all these people dressed up. Very different from the golf clothes we usually wear when we meet. This was a very nice, long weekend.

Unfortunately, the red team was beaten at the finish line. It was the very last of Sunday's 27 games that decided it all. Very disappointing, since we had put our faith in the can of Anti Slice "medicine" that was handed out to everybody on the red team.