STORE BEDEDAG
Today is Store Bededag in Denmark, "Big Prayer Day". It is a public holiday, always held on the fourth Friday after Easter.
Store Bededag was introduced in order to replace a number of other prayer and fast days (eg every Wednesday). Many Danes believe that it was part of the 1770 reform that halved the then number of public holidays from 22, by removing the likes of Epiphany, the day after Boxing Day, and Michaelmas. But its origins are in fact much older, dating from a reform in his diocese by the then Bishop of Roskilde, Hans Bagger, in 1686. The idea was taken up and given royal approval by the then king Christian V, who apparently liked the fact that he could get his praying out of the way before the start of the annual summer tour of his lands and dominions, a tradition that continues to this day.
Store Bededag is one of the most popular days for holding confirmations. Confirmation usually takes place towards the end of seventh grade, when children are 14. It is a combination of the religious and the secular, with a big party (Danes don't really celebrate 18th or 21st birthdays in the same way as other countries do). However, because virtually all one's friends are having confirmations at the same time, the party is mainly for extended family and relations. The child being confirmed gets lots of money and presents; in return, they have to give a speech, often their first ever. So too does their father, reviewing their life and extolling their virtues, something I have now done three times. Plus paying three large bills, of course ....
I spent the day neither praying nor partying, but helping my sister-in-law in Aarhus. For Christmas presents this year we offered each other a day's free labour. I won my elder son, who was quickly put to use in helping to demolish the woodshed, part of the Smug Builder project. For my sister-in-law, I had to stand in the rain and scrub the algae off her wooden garden furniture and flower pots while she tidied up in her small urban garden. Then we went off to the garden centre, and bought large bags of soil and associated flowers to put in it. Manual labour can be very satisfying, and it is remarkable how much can be achieved if you are focussed. But it is also knackering. After washing all that work down with "eggcake" and beer, it was time for a two-hour afternoon nap. It's possible I did some praying during that time, but unlikely.
Arriving back home in the evening, I then watched the film Julie and Julia, about the blogger (Julie Phillips) who worked her way through Julia Child's famous cookbook in the course of a year. For a fellow blogger, it was rather inspiring, even if I can't bone a duck. Yet.
Walter Blotscher
Friday, 30 April 2010
Thursday, 29 April 2010
NOMA
Let's hear it for Danish cuisine. The Copenhagen restaurant Noma has just been crowned the world's best, beating the winner for the past 4 years, Spain's El Bulli, into second place.
Noma's rise has been nothing short of phenomenal. Opened as recently as 2003, it got its first Michelin star in 2005 and a second (making it the only restaurant in Denmark to have two) in 2007. It was rated the third best restaurant in the world in 2009, and has now taken over the top spot.
Sadly, that will probably make it even less likely that I will ever be able to eat there. I like Danish food, but Danish restaurants are, by international standards, both scarce and expensive. Wages and staff benefits are very high, regulations are tight, and there is VAT (at 25%) on everything. The sort of family-owned trattoria that makes Southern Europe so delightful - simple food washed down with a carafe of the house wine - just doesn't exist here. There is no way it could make money.
Still, credit where credit is due. Tillykke med prisen, Noma!
Walter Blotscher
Let's hear it for Danish cuisine. The Copenhagen restaurant Noma has just been crowned the world's best, beating the winner for the past 4 years, Spain's El Bulli, into second place.
Noma's rise has been nothing short of phenomenal. Opened as recently as 2003, it got its first Michelin star in 2005 and a second (making it the only restaurant in Denmark to have two) in 2007. It was rated the third best restaurant in the world in 2009, and has now taken over the top spot.
Sadly, that will probably make it even less likely that I will ever be able to eat there. I like Danish food, but Danish restaurants are, by international standards, both scarce and expensive. Wages and staff benefits are very high, regulations are tight, and there is VAT (at 25%) on everything. The sort of family-owned trattoria that makes Southern Europe so delightful - simple food washed down with a carafe of the house wine - just doesn't exist here. There is no way it could make money.
Still, credit where credit is due. Tillykke med prisen, Noma!
Walter Blotscher
Wednesday, 28 April 2010
A.P.McCOY
Who is the greatest sportsman or -woman in the world at the moment? Mm, that's a tough one, and the source of many a heated discussion over a pint of beer. How do you compare sports? And even within one sport, how do you compare different people, particularly if they don't compete head to head? Rooney or Messi? Cancellara or Contador? Federer or Nadal?
But if you could sort out those statistical and measuring problems, who would you pick? Valentino Rossi from motorcycling? Tiger Woods from golf? Michael Phelps from swimming? One of the people who without doubt ought to be on the final shortlist is Northern Irishman A.P. (Tony) McCoy. McCoy has just won the National Hunt jockeys' championship for the fifteenth time in a row. Given that he is still only 35, that basically means that he has always won it. Indeed, he is the odds-on favourite to win it this year as well.
National Hunt racing, in which horses jump over hurdles or fences, is big in the U.K. In order to win the jockeys' championship, you don't have to win ONE race, you have to win lots of races. Around 200 a year, in fact. During his career, McCoy has won more than 3,000 horse races. In the 2001/2 season, he broke the record for the most winners in a year, either National Hunt or flat, with 289. The previous record of 269 had been set by the great flat race jockey Sir Gordon Richards (24 times a champion), and had stood for 55 years.
It is true that the good jockeys tend to get the pick of the best horses, which in turn makes it more likely that they win. But as any punter will know, that doesn't always hold true. Besides, unlike in flat racing, where accidents are rare, the chances of a National Hunt jockey at some point falling off a horse going full gallop are pretty much 100%. During his career, McCoy has broken his ankle, arm, wrist, leg and back, pretty much everything really. You have to wonder why he still does it.
One question mark on his career had been the fact that he had never won the Grand National, the race with the biggest fences and so the one which is most a lottery. Great jump jockeys such as Jonjo O'Neill, John Francome and Peter Scudamore never won it during their careers. However, that blot on an otherwise unblemished CV was remedied this year, when McCoy won the National at the 15th attempt on Don't Push It.
What a record!
Walter Blotscher
Who is the greatest sportsman or -woman in the world at the moment? Mm, that's a tough one, and the source of many a heated discussion over a pint of beer. How do you compare sports? And even within one sport, how do you compare different people, particularly if they don't compete head to head? Rooney or Messi? Cancellara or Contador? Federer or Nadal?
But if you could sort out those statistical and measuring problems, who would you pick? Valentino Rossi from motorcycling? Tiger Woods from golf? Michael Phelps from swimming? One of the people who without doubt ought to be on the final shortlist is Northern Irishman A.P. (Tony) McCoy. McCoy has just won the National Hunt jockeys' championship for the fifteenth time in a row. Given that he is still only 35, that basically means that he has always won it. Indeed, he is the odds-on favourite to win it this year as well.
National Hunt racing, in which horses jump over hurdles or fences, is big in the U.K. In order to win the jockeys' championship, you don't have to win ONE race, you have to win lots of races. Around 200 a year, in fact. During his career, McCoy has won more than 3,000 horse races. In the 2001/2 season, he broke the record for the most winners in a year, either National Hunt or flat, with 289. The previous record of 269 had been set by the great flat race jockey Sir Gordon Richards (24 times a champion), and had stood for 55 years.
It is true that the good jockeys tend to get the pick of the best horses, which in turn makes it more likely that they win. But as any punter will know, that doesn't always hold true. Besides, unlike in flat racing, where accidents are rare, the chances of a National Hunt jockey at some point falling off a horse going full gallop are pretty much 100%. During his career, McCoy has broken his ankle, arm, wrist, leg and back, pretty much everything really. You have to wonder why he still does it.
One question mark on his career had been the fact that he had never won the Grand National, the race with the biggest fences and so the one which is most a lottery. Great jump jockeys such as Jonjo O'Neill, John Francome and Peter Scudamore never won it during their careers. However, that blot on an otherwise unblemished CV was remedied this year, when McCoy won the National at the 15th attempt on Don't Push It.
What a record!
Walter Blotscher
Tuesday, 27 April 2010
BASES
The base 10 number system makes calculations straightforward, whether adding, subtracting, multiplying or dividing. Young people won't remember the days before calculators. But when I was at school we used a curious contraption called a "slide rule". In my mother's day, it was pencil and paper.
Yet it is easy to forget that metric measurements are in fact a relatively new phenomenon. A decimalised measurement system was first adopted by revolutionary France in 1791, replacing the previous different systems. Over time, it spread to more and more countries, so that today, it is only really the United States that does not use the SI ("système international") units of kilogram, metre and litre.
Before that time, there were all sorts of different bases. The Babylonians used base 60, which is why we still have 60 seconds in a minute and 60 minutes in an hour. The Roman numeral system, beloved of films, television programmes and the Super Bowl, was a complicated mixture of base 5 and 10. A number of currencies (the pound, the franc, the rupee) subdivided into 20. Many countries had a unit called a mile, but they were all different.
Pockets of resistance to the power of 10 still exist. Although decimalisation of the pound took place in 1971, the U.K. still has traffic signs in miles, and pubs serve beer in pints. Danish farmers still talk of land areas called "toender", even though they were officially abolished in 1907. They are roughly half a hectare (5,000 sqm), but in fact a bit bigger (5,516.2 sqm). There are similar anomalies in most countries. And industries dominated by the U.S. still use old measurements such as a barrel of oil and a bushel of corn.
However, although base 10 appears to have swept everything else inexorably away, it is not in fact the most common base system. That accolade belongs to the humble base 2. Computer chips are a mass of small circuits and switches, in which 1 represents a switch allowing current to pass, and 0 represents the closed position. With zillions of chips in the world, base 2 wins. A good job that it is computers that have to calculate in it, not humans.
Walter Blotscher
The base 10 number system makes calculations straightforward, whether adding, subtracting, multiplying or dividing. Young people won't remember the days before calculators. But when I was at school we used a curious contraption called a "slide rule". In my mother's day, it was pencil and paper.
Yet it is easy to forget that metric measurements are in fact a relatively new phenomenon. A decimalised measurement system was first adopted by revolutionary France in 1791, replacing the previous different systems. Over time, it spread to more and more countries, so that today, it is only really the United States that does not use the SI ("système international") units of kilogram, metre and litre.
Before that time, there were all sorts of different bases. The Babylonians used base 60, which is why we still have 60 seconds in a minute and 60 minutes in an hour. The Roman numeral system, beloved of films, television programmes and the Super Bowl, was a complicated mixture of base 5 and 10. A number of currencies (the pound, the franc, the rupee) subdivided into 20. Many countries had a unit called a mile, but they were all different.
Pockets of resistance to the power of 10 still exist. Although decimalisation of the pound took place in 1971, the U.K. still has traffic signs in miles, and pubs serve beer in pints. Danish farmers still talk of land areas called "toender", even though they were officially abolished in 1907. They are roughly half a hectare (5,000 sqm), but in fact a bit bigger (5,516.2 sqm). There are similar anomalies in most countries. And industries dominated by the U.S. still use old measurements such as a barrel of oil and a bushel of corn.
However, although base 10 appears to have swept everything else inexorably away, it is not in fact the most common base system. That accolade belongs to the humble base 2. Computer chips are a mass of small circuits and switches, in which 1 represents a switch allowing current to pass, and 0 represents the closed position. With zillions of chips in the world, base 2 wins. A good job that it is computers that have to calculate in it, not humans.
Walter Blotscher
Monday, 26 April 2010
RURAL NAMES
People out here in the sticks sometimes have odd names. The man who has the farm in the middle of the village is called by everyone Joergen Cat. He doesn't in fact own a cat, but simply feeds all of the strays who hang around. My wife has a cousin, an electrician who grows potatoes on the side; he is known as Potato Lars. He sells a proportion of his crop at a stall on the edge of town at his friend Aage's house. Because Aage also sells B.P. propane gas canisters, he is called Gas Aage. Perhaps the oddest name is Ole Milkman. Ole is not a milkman, but his family used to have a farm shop selling dairy products. But that was in Ole's father's time, and Ole has simply inherited the nametag from his dad.
This bizarre nomenclature is an echo of a bygone era. In the Middle Ages, most people only had one name, the Christian name given to them when they were baptized. As horizons widened and the population grew, surnames began to appear, either "son of" formulations (Williamson, Wilkinson etc) or job descriptions. Many common surnames today - Smith, Shepherd, Taylor, Mercer, Thatcher, Miller, Knight - reflect important mediaeval activities.
Perhaps it is only me, a foreigner, who thinks the local system is slightly weird. But I know I will have been accepted when they start calling me Walter Blogger.
Walter Blotscher
People out here in the sticks sometimes have odd names. The man who has the farm in the middle of the village is called by everyone Joergen Cat. He doesn't in fact own a cat, but simply feeds all of the strays who hang around. My wife has a cousin, an electrician who grows potatoes on the side; he is known as Potato Lars. He sells a proportion of his crop at a stall on the edge of town at his friend Aage's house. Because Aage also sells B.P. propane gas canisters, he is called Gas Aage. Perhaps the oddest name is Ole Milkman. Ole is not a milkman, but his family used to have a farm shop selling dairy products. But that was in Ole's father's time, and Ole has simply inherited the nametag from his dad.
This bizarre nomenclature is an echo of a bygone era. In the Middle Ages, most people only had one name, the Christian name given to them when they were baptized. As horizons widened and the population grew, surnames began to appear, either "son of" formulations (Williamson, Wilkinson etc) or job descriptions. Many common surnames today - Smith, Shepherd, Taylor, Mercer, Thatcher, Miller, Knight - reflect important mediaeval activities.
Perhaps it is only me, a foreigner, who thinks the local system is slightly weird. But I know I will have been accepted when they start calling me Walter Blogger.
Walter Blotscher
Sunday, 25 April 2010
CULTURE IN COPENHAGEN
This weekend my wife and I went up from the country to the big city. The reason was a beginner's course in tango dancing with Linus, two hours on Saturday and two hours on Sunday. When we lived in Tanzania, we learned how to do salsa, and this would be similar. Not the European tango, one of the five "standard" dances in ballroom dancing, all stiff arms and jerky movements (think Arnold Schwarzenegger and Tia Carrere in True Lies); but the Argentinian variety, slower and more relaxed, with somewhat dreamy violin music. The best word to describe it is languid. Though it still requires hard work; I fell asleep in the car as soon as we had finished.
We stayed in the city with friends, who also go to tango; apparently it is all the rage in Copenhagen at the moment. He is a conductor; and by chance, Saturday night was the 20th anniversary concert of one of the choirs that he conducts, an all-women choir that only sings Bulgarian music. Now, if you think that Danish women singing a capella Bulgarian songs in Bulgarian sounds a bit, well, weird, then you are right. They were very, very good, and the performance was at times spectacular; but I have to admit that the music was not my cup of tea. Talking with him afterwards, I found out why. He said that a lot of balkan music is written in complicated tempi such as 7/8, 11/8 and 13/8; for an unreconstructed 3/4 or 4/4 man like me, the beat just doesn't sound quite right. I am reminded of the gala performance for Margrethe II's birthday (see blog of 16 April), which the television commentator said would give the Theatre Royal the opportunity to enlighten the general public about the joys of opera. However, by choosing excerpts from Wagner, Richard Strauss and a modern composer I had never heard of, they probably put Mr and Mrs Denmark off completely. What about easing them in with a bit of Mozart or Verdi?
So, you won't find me rushing off to join a Russian all-male choir any time soon. Argentinian tango, on the other hand, is a distinct possibility. I'll get back to you.
Walter Blotscher
This weekend my wife and I went up from the country to the big city. The reason was a beginner's course in tango dancing with Linus, two hours on Saturday and two hours on Sunday. When we lived in Tanzania, we learned how to do salsa, and this would be similar. Not the European tango, one of the five "standard" dances in ballroom dancing, all stiff arms and jerky movements (think Arnold Schwarzenegger and Tia Carrere in True Lies); but the Argentinian variety, slower and more relaxed, with somewhat dreamy violin music. The best word to describe it is languid. Though it still requires hard work; I fell asleep in the car as soon as we had finished.
We stayed in the city with friends, who also go to tango; apparently it is all the rage in Copenhagen at the moment. He is a conductor; and by chance, Saturday night was the 20th anniversary concert of one of the choirs that he conducts, an all-women choir that only sings Bulgarian music. Now, if you think that Danish women singing a capella Bulgarian songs in Bulgarian sounds a bit, well, weird, then you are right. They were very, very good, and the performance was at times spectacular; but I have to admit that the music was not my cup of tea. Talking with him afterwards, I found out why. He said that a lot of balkan music is written in complicated tempi such as 7/8, 11/8 and 13/8; for an unreconstructed 3/4 or 4/4 man like me, the beat just doesn't sound quite right. I am reminded of the gala performance for Margrethe II's birthday (see blog of 16 April), which the television commentator said would give the Theatre Royal the opportunity to enlighten the general public about the joys of opera. However, by choosing excerpts from Wagner, Richard Strauss and a modern composer I had never heard of, they probably put Mr and Mrs Denmark off completely. What about easing them in with a bit of Mozart or Verdi?
So, you won't find me rushing off to join a Russian all-male choir any time soon. Argentinian tango, on the other hand, is a distinct possibility. I'll get back to you.
Walter Blotscher
Saturday, 24 April 2010
CLIMATE CHANGE (2)
For the rest of this month the temperature here in Denmark is predicted to be 15 degrees (around 60F) or more. Nice spring weather.
Yet this week it snowed twice and hailed once. True, the stuff eventually melted the same day. But it nevertheless snowed continuously for 3-4 hours on Tuesday. And it was freezing; I went cycling last night in a cycling shirt, two jumpers and a rain jacket, and I was still cold.
We are continually being told that the world is warming up, but snow in late April seems to point the other way. I find it all very confusing.
Walter Blotscher
For the rest of this month the temperature here in Denmark is predicted to be 15 degrees (around 60F) or more. Nice spring weather.
Yet this week it snowed twice and hailed once. True, the stuff eventually melted the same day. But it nevertheless snowed continuously for 3-4 hours on Tuesday. And it was freezing; I went cycling last night in a cycling shirt, two jumpers and a rain jacket, and I was still cold.
We are continually being told that the world is warming up, but snow in late April seems to point the other way. I find it all very confusing.
Walter Blotscher
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