Halloween, Snow and Vikings

Again, my life is a whirlwind of parties and fun, however with exams looming eerily close (I have one on the 4th of December), the real world of study is closing in!!

Halloween was lots of fun - although not really celebrated in Denmark, like Australia, it's still a good excuse to get dressed up, and have a party!! The Tuesday which was actually Halloween involved a costume competition at our local hangout, the Studenterhus, in which my Superwoman outfit took 2nd place! And the pumpkin carving gave my friends 3rd place, so it was a very successful night all round!!





On the walk home through the forest that night, we discussed the possibility of snow, which had been predicted, however none of us really thought it was cold enough. So imagine my glee when I woke up the next morning to find it snowing!! It was so pretty, blowing everywhere!! I was so excited at the bus stop, everyone laughed at me, thinking I'd never seen snow, so I spent all day explaining that I had seen snow, I ski every year, but it's so exciting seeing snow in your daily life! It is very unusual for snow to happen in November in Denmark also, so I feel very privileged!! It stopped by lunchtime, and melted after a couple of days, but was still very lovely!



Then on the Friday night, we experienced another Danish tradition - Julol, or 'Christmas Beer'. It appears that at Christmas and Easter time, the Danish breweries make a stronger beer to help celebrate the holidays, and release it at 8:59pm on a certain Friday night, meaning all the bars give this beer away free at that time!! So it's a mad rush to the bar, Christmas songs are playing (ah, 'Last Christmas', that European chestnut!!), and everyone is making merry - quite a fun experience!!



We went to our local bar in our college, because my flatmates were throwing a Halloween party, complete with lots of bats and carved pumpkins, so I then brought everyone back to our flat - it was fun getting Christmas beer dressed as a faery for Halloween!! Saturday night was my German friend Philipp's birthday, so I enjoyed some German hospitality close to home, as his party was at our college, so we were all able to recover nicely after the strength of the Christmas beer!!



This week I have been afflicted with a cold, possibly as a consequence of the changing weather, possibly my body's resistance to my new gym membership, so have been taking it relatively easy, only going out for dinner on Wednesday night for my Italian friend Fabrizio's birthday. He is obsessed with the Vikings (or the Wikings as they call them here - 'V' isn't really a big letter in Europe!!), so we had a Viking party last night - lots of helmets (historically inaccurate, of course, as the Vikings didn't actually have horns on their helmets!), and general loutish behaviour!!



So, that's my life in a nutshell over the past few weeks - now I will settle down to some serious study, I promise!! After I go to Latvia in a couple of weekends, then I'll study ...