Vikings goes to water

Finally I have taken a bath in the Mediterranean sea (this year). Yesterday while it was cold and gray in Denmark we spend a couple of hours on the beach. I admit the water was a bit cold, but it was very nice and refreshing, even Sara came under, but not without some groaning and stuttering some bad italian words, but under we came, and enjoyed it... by the way it was 27 degrees :-)

Even though it was late afternoon, I also got a lot of sun, and a sunburn on my nose, at least next time I wont go one with the sand.

With all this said, I can already feel that I am going to miss the danish summer, because 27 degrees is only a spring temperature, when it gets 37 degrees I wont brag so much about it, because thats really too hot for human beings. Its no wonder the Italians don't really have a word for the weather, like we do in Denmark, because from now until the end of October its going to be hot and sunny, which makes all the discussion a bit boring. Whereas Danes have the pleasure of waking up to a surprising new weather almost each morning.

Anyway here its another hot day, like all the others.

Along with the heat came a new topic around our dinner table; "should we install air conditioner", since we are both environmental activists in the closet, its pretty hard to decide to install these energy eaters, but maybe a few nights of 30 degrees will cure us of these doubts,
and if you can get the with an "A" energy marking, is it then okay ? Probably we will end up saying yes...

My easter was a trip to Denmark, to see my parents and sister and to celebrate my aunts 89s birthday.

After being sick for almost a week with the flue some relaxing holiday was just what I needed. Sadly it was only me going up north, to the cold and gray Denmark. Sara had to stay and slave on p.hd. which was both sad, because I missed her, but also good, because then I could try to speak danish a bit too :-).

Romans are famous for their rudeness, and I have had some pretty depressing experiences, because I am always a bit uncertain about what I am saying in Italian, that combined with some roman rudeness, always makes some pretty strange situations, so I was looking forward to some danish politeness.

But my happiness to be among my own started declining already 5 minutes into the sterling check-in queue. With two farmers and a girlfriend in front of me. excited to listen to my native tong, I started listing to what they were saying. I took me a while to understand what they were actually talking about, because the conversation seemed to be looping with one saying to another "it wasn't so bad" and "it could have been much worse".. anyway I guess they were talking about the holiday or something. Then farmer 1 started calculating when they would actually be in the car, which wasn't easy because he had to add about one hour to our landing time, which in his head meant half past eleven (we landed at 21.20 (which plus one hour is quite a bit earlier than what he estimated)). As we got closer to the actually check in desk the girlfriend interrupted the calculations, wanting to confirm that farmer 1 actually was going to carry (I guessing here) their big hand luggage. To this farmer (a bit irritated (again I guessing) that he was interrupted) that he could not because he was carrying the backpack (which was on his bag and looked empty). "And you can only carry one luggage on board" he said. They stared a bit at each other where after farm boy discovers that his jacket is actually placed the suitcase she’s carrying, and quickly grabs it - staring a bit back at her very dignified.

Anyway when I got into the plane, I found my place - an seat by the isle and started reading my book, after a few minutes a girl came and asked if she could get to her seat by the window. Smiling (not to much of course) I moved and allowed her to come in. Back to my book, where the main character had just killed his editor. After yet a while I saw a guy standing and looking at me, I look up, an he looked at me, I thought that he was just waiting for some person to let him pass in order to get to his seat. My thoughts were correct, but after I read some pages more I looked up again, seeing he was still there, asked him if he was supposed to sit in the middle seat. Apparently very offended, he said “yes” or actually more like a “hrmf”, me having been among the Italians who talk to you even when they don’t want anything, this seem very strange on me. No love or even friendly smile ever happened between him and I, not even an hour into our flight when I just bought a beer and opened a back of chips, everything a mess on my small airplane table, he asked me to get out…. Was he waiting for that?!?.

In the end it was all worth it because in the airport my parents were waiting, my mom was busy greeting another young man, which she thought was me, and my dad talking to a machine which insisted it was broken. Funny how strange things can seem so normal. In the Scandinavian spirit, my dad had borrowed a friends spaceship of a Volvo, which enabled us to cruise at the speed of sound all the way home, with a short pitstop in a dirty “grillbar” for me to get a “ristet hotdog med det hele” and a “cocio”.

Being back in Denmark was nice. Even though the bus was strangely silent and empty, and I actually wished that I couldn’t understand the phone conversation I overheard in the bus, its very pleasant to be in Aarhus. Because even though I am such an evil man to move to another country I had missed my family a lot – at least most of the time.

The problem with coming home for a long weekend, is that all the people you’d wish to go and visit doesn’t really fit into that kind of timeframe, so sadly I missed a few and only saw little of others.

Anyway I enjoyed my aunts 89 year birthday very much, I bought to many Danish books. And everything else, so I was a bit sad when I had to go back home. Its not easy to because while I was very sad to leave Denmark, I was also happy to go back home to Rome.