The Little Red Devil

Here is the little guy we've welcomed into our home (to shred it up and play with every piece of it). Introducing Mars, aka the Little Red Devil!

Our new furbaby, Mars

A visit to the queen's place

A week filled with curry, boeuf bourgignon, barbecues, and beers zipped past. Before we knew it, my parents' last day in Aarhus had arrived. And what better way to spend it than with a visit to the beach and a local palace? We kicked things off with a visit to Bellevue Beach. Because yes, I may have made the inexplicable decision to live in Scandinavia, but it comes with proper sandy beaches, so ha!

Bellevue Beach

And then we swung by Marselisborg Palace, Queen Margrethe's summer residence. 

A tour through Marselisborg Palace grounds

As the queen wasn't in residence, we had the opportunity to spend the afternoon wandering the grounds. And, as you can see from the bottom right corner of the above collage, security at this royal residence wasn't exactly White House style. 

The grounds of the Marselisborg Palace haven't always been the territory of the royal family, but they did have some history as royal grounds in the 17th century. Then, in 1661, the seriously indebted King Frederik III of Denmark was forced to surrender this palace, among other properties, to his Dutch creditor, a certain Gabriel Marselis. Marselis's sons managed to upgrade the grounds from a manor to a barony, but the family couldn't keep their hands on the land. The last private owner was Hans Peter Ingerslev, who decided to offer his lands for sale to the city council of Aarhus, and then suddenly died two days later. (Not at all fishy...) The town council decided to build the palace, which was completed in 1902. The palace and its surrounding property was returned to royal hands as a wedding gift for Prince Christian and Princess Alexandrine, Queen Margrethe's grandparents. The palace has since been a secondary royal residence.

We were surprised by how freely we were allowed to wander around, touch the sculptures, picnic on the lawns, play in the guard stands, hike through the woods, or even take a nap in the gardens should the mood strike. It was definitely a memorable way to spend our last afternoon of a visit together.

A Viking's welcome

The Vikings turned out in droves to welcome my parents on their first full day in Denmark. There may or may not have also been an annual Viking Moot (festival) to attract them to the Moesgård beaches, but I am confident that that really was secondary.

My parents received a full viking welcome on their first full day in town.

Beware the Viking Battle! (photo courtesy of Tibor)

The Moesgård Viking Moot began in the 1970s as a place for people to take lessons in Viking crafts. It rapidly expanded, drawing crowds and picnickers. In 1977, the first Viking market was held. Today, Moesgård hosts the world's largest Viking festival, falling around Saint Olai Day (July 29), when Aarhus historically hosted a market. 

The Viking Moot crafts fair (photos courtesy of Tibor)

The Viking Moot is open to the public on Saturday and Sunday, but lasts all day and night, with Viking participants living only on Viking technologies for the weekend (including ocean bathing, which they weren't ashamed to do right in front of the day-time visitors!).

The Vikings camped on the seashore all weekend. (Photo courtesy of Tibor)

Though despite the not particularly welcome boldness of some of them, some of the Vikings were quite the charmers!

Viking babies! (Photos courtesy of Tibor and my mom)

The only word of advice for future visitors is to not show up in heels. But as a recent Paris transplant, what's a girl to do?

Hats (or Viking hoods) off to the Moesgård crowd for a perfectly Danish welcome to my mom and dad!

Bienvenue chez Nicolas et Emilienne

81 landlords contacted, 2 ½ apartment visits, and 1 offer led me to my new home on the first of the month. It took another three weeks of bumbling around a half empty apartment while scouring used furniture sites, negotiating with local delivery men and the world's worst set of movers, and waiting for packages to arrive from every corner of the globe before we were officially chez nous.

At long last, the apartment is ready and waiting for its first set of official house guests: my parents! As we wait for their train to bring them to town, I figured I'd show off with a few before and after shots.

Ta da! Our nearly finished masterpiece that we call home. 

And it's no Eiffel Tower, but the view's not half bad, to boot.

Let's pretend that summer made it to Denmark...

Burn the witches!

The solstice may fall on the 21st, but in Denmark, Midsummer's Eve is June 23, also known as Sankt Hans Aften (Sankt Hans for short), the eve of Saint John's Day. As legend has it, the shortest night of the year is filled with evil forces and tension between light and dark. On this night, witches fly by on their way to Brocken, though my Danish friends weren't quite sure where that is. To keep them away, a scarecrow-esque witch is burned on a large bonfire. (I was relieved to read that the midsummer's eve witch burning is only a late-19th/early-20th century addition to the festivities, not a carry-over from a time when real women were burned as such.)

The university took part in the annual tradition, so my new friends and I gathered after work to join in. Supposedly Sankt Hans also involves singing of the traditional Midsommervisen song, but all I saw of that was a few students clustered around an iphone looking for the lyrics and stumbling over a melody. Overall, the setting looked more like Hollywood's interpretation of a college campus than anything I'd actually seen on an American campus. And the bonfire, scarecrow witch and all, was massive and very impressive, though I could have done without the rain of ashes. Overall, kudos to Denmark on a pretty cool national tradition.

Sankt Hans, or Midsummer's Eve, at Aarhus University. In the bottom left panel, you can barely see the scarecrow witch's head, the only part of her not yet consumed in the traditional midsummer's eve bonfire.

A balancing act

Lately I've been learning some neat tricks in my new pole dancing studio. It's been particularly challenging as this school emphasizes different positions, so I'm still in a transitional period. I'm finally beginning to stabilize in this new position: the one-handed handstand. We start by putting one hand on the floor and one on the pole, then we flip upside-down and catch the pole with one leg. Pretty cool, huh?

Ta da!

Graduation Day

Many months after the fact, and hailing now from not just France but the US, Canada, and Denmark, we made it! It was fantastic to get one last (unexpected) chance to see some familiar faces from my PhD days in the Ecole des Neurosciences de Paris, as well as, of course, to see Nicolas without all that last-minute packing pre-move stress.

My PhD graduation

The French didn't quite seem to get just how a graduation ceremony is supposed to work. For one thing, having never given their high schoolers nor undergrads a graduation any sort of ceremony, they didn't realize that doctors shouldn't be wearing mortarboards. (That said, I think you would have seriously let down a lot of French grads had they shown up to find themselves given soft, squishy doctoral hats and hoods instead of the classic graduation cap and gown from the movies.)

Though they didn't quite know the ropes, to their credit, the organizers clearly put a lot of effort into making the day memorable for us. The ceremony began with a fifteen minute classical music concert performed by a full orchestra. Then a parade of professors in full regalia, including someone who seemed to be carrying some sort of scepter, marched up the aisles. After a couple of introductory talks, the keynote speaker, French Académie des Sciences member Ghislain de Marsily, gave an amusingly left-wing political call-to-action speech. He recounted his days fighting during the May '68 student rebellions which nearly toppled the French government, and he went on a brief anti-creationism rant. He argued for better gender equality, questioned how we define "the greater good," commended the class for including so many foreigners, and encouraged us to use our imaginations, creativity, and originality to go out and change the world together. (He later explained to me that he was inspired by Steve Jobs's 2005 Stanford commencement speech, though he wanted a more group-oriented, less individualistic, perspective.) He actually dared to finish his speech with a quote not only from an American president (JFK), but spoken in English. He may have been an old man in full academician regalia, but he was not bound by French tradition. Coming from the Parisians, it was a really heart-warming note on which to send off the new PhDs into the world.

And of course, no French ceremony would have been complete without a champagne reception. And so my French education is officially complete. For now.

Now the recipient of-- count 'em-- four PhDs (for just one thesis!)