Conversations with Danish people

I can now go into a supermarket and do an entire shop, without mistaking what I am buying, and conduct the checkout process in Danish so they are none the wiser that I'm not a local!
Well so long as they don't ask any odd questions other than "vil du have en kvittering" (would you like a receipt) where I can answer 'Nej Tak' or 'Ja Tak'.
Otherwise its a 'Hej', on greeting, the groceries are whipped past the scanner and down a chute for us to pack in our own baggage, (sometimes they ask if you would like a bag, but I can answer that OK), and then once I've paid (they have the amount on screen so its easy to know what to hand over in cash, or its a wireless card transaction), then its 'farvel', and the friendly 'ha en god dag' (pronounced "ha goo day") upon leaving. Boom.

Sometimes it can get tricky if the person before you hasn't got their groceries, then the person after you gets served before you've packed your groceries. Grocery traffic jam!

Bargain bins here too

The Danes really love their sweets

And bakeries

And gossip

And gearing up for Halloween  - pumpkins galore for the annual Jack-o-lantern festivals! 

Speaking of speaking Danish, sometimes its funny to just go with the English interpretation. We couldn't help but have a giggle at these:

Sign on a lift. We decided it was for people who wanted to warn others when they intended to let rip on the way up or down.

The Danish 'Madhouse'. Decide if you want to be Mad or Glad (see below)

And on the subject of  different languages, I found myself saying the wrong hello and thank you as I traveled through Europe. Hej, and Tak in Italy when I first got there, then Ciao and grazie by the time I left Italy and got to Austria. It was then Hallo and Danke when we got to France, and Bonjour and merci by the time we got back to Rome.

In Rome we got hounded by street punters trying to sell us tours and wotnot and I finally resorted to speaking the few phrases of Finnish I knew as they spoke English quite well. So 'anteeksi, kiva tavata sinut, miten sinä, minun nimeni on', then they would say 'where you from?' and I would say 'Finn' and they would say 'sorry, I dont speak Finn' and leave us alone.

Ha! Funny times!

Here's a Danish socket. I think they look like happy faces 😃

Some more photos of nothing in particular

Adding a few more photos of the life and times of Toni and Barry in Denmark. We are now in Autumn and sure enough, the trees are slowly turning into autumn colours and we get some lovely sunny days but it's definitely getting cooler and the days are getting shorter. Hopefully it will cut to the chase and just start snowing soon. Not that we want the sun to stop shining. That's lovely too. But we really love it when it snows. At the moment however, Horsens is a bit like Wellington. It can be sunny in the morning, raining at lunchtime, grey all afternoon then sunny at night. Today we took the train up to Aarhus and it was the same there. No rain though which was good as we had our bikes and didn't have our umbrellas.
Anyway, enough of weather. Here are the photos.

Barry's model of one floor of a block of flats.

A morning walk by the sea

The university on a sunny morning

And Barry waiting for me with a coffee!

Barry working on his designs at home

Surveying the flats - they are designing a refurbishment for their small group projects this year.

Surveying

Autumn colours

Taking her rabbit for a walk, as you do

Barry has a theory that the reason so many bikes are abandoned is because of all the spiders in the bike sheds!

shudder

Swans swimming at our local Bygholm park by the train station

Autumn colours

Waiting for the train to Aarhus

Sails on the sea at Aarhus

A very cute cottage actually used as a WC

Tivoli gardens in Aarhus

Aarhus

Another example of Danish delicacies

A house around the corner from us. Many places have wee gardens like this.

Barry's friend "Tom" which is entirely Barry's name for him. 

Local news

We are back in Horsens and well into the last semester for Barry and work for me. In the weekends we have managed to pop out and about to catch the last of Summer. It's officially Autumn here and we've had some wet days but its still quite mild and the jackets have stayed in the wardrobe.
The other day we went for a bike ride around the fjord and saw some wildlife including a deer and a squirrel. We have also seen wild rabbits, miniature horses, steers with horns, loads of cats (we never saw them in winter) and of course birds of every type. The spiders are still keen to come in doors and are uncomfortably big for me. That was one thing I didn't expect in Denmark and judging by some of the comments on the facebook pages for exchange students, its been a bit of a nasty surprise for other visitors too. The landlords were out with pesticide spray in the stairwells and bike sheds the other day so at least we can walk down the stairs without hitting the webs and there haven't been so many 8 legged hitchhikers on our bike!
So no photos to show of the deer who ran away and disappeared amongst the woodlands, or the spiders because I don't get close enough to them to take a photo of them, but I did get some photos of Horsens in the sun and some bare bottoms - see below!

My bike doesn't look so rusty next to these.

The trees are so pretty covered in red berries

Close up of the red berries

Yellow houses look nice against a blue sky

The local boat ramp

All the roses are gone, just giant rosehips left

The beach

Blackberries are still growing wild and in abundance

Barry's mate nicknamed Tom. He's super friendly.

Another view of the fjord

And another view

We finally spotted a squirrel. Very skittish though, no hope of feeding this one nuts and getting up close and personal like the ones in Hyde Park, London

So the Danish people are not shy to strip naked in public and go for a dip. In fact its not unusual to see naked people sunbathing in parks either. Of course taking a photo of them is very bad!

We got to see some camels and other animals all looking well looked after at a local circus the other day too!

In our VIA university teeshirts

A gorgeous butterfly

Barry with the shopping and a perfect rainbow

Thought we would try some skum! Nice. It's actually the lemonade version of chocolate fish - marshmallow (skumfidus) coated in chocolate

I caved in and bought a 'weinerbrod' the other day. This was a gooey caramel, almondy, chocolate, yummy mess that tasted delicious!