Life across the pond: There hasn't been a war run this badly since Olaf the hairy, King of all the vikings, ordered 80,000 battle helmets with the horns on the inside

Everything is shifted back a week since the past week and a half has blended together into one long run.

Two Fridays ago Andrew and I headed out to Denmark to see our friends Rod and Liv and help celebrate the birthday of our friend Mathilde. Andrew and I always have airport problems so we made sure that we got there early. Since we were so early we decided to grab some food from one of the airport restaurants since it was lunch time. Of course, as things go for us by the time we got our food we had 15 minutes until our plane was supposed to start boarding. We got up as the plane should have started boarding and I ran to the toilet while Andrew checked our gate. As I was walking around the corner to go back to him he came running towards me yelled "Gate 19" and took off in the other direction still running. I ran after him, finding out on the way that our plane said "final call" on the board. We turned the corner where the sign pointed Gates 1-19 only to be stopped short by a tram that we had to get on to get to the gate. We waited frantically and then again on the tram. Once we got off we sprinted up 2 flights of escalators, down a hall and just as we were rounding the corner to our gate we heard the announcement that they were just going to start boarding our place. Stupid Easyjet put "final call" on the board even though they hadn't started boarding yet, so we ran all that way for nothing.

Rod and Liv live a few miles from the centre of Copenhagen in a nice little 5th floor walkup. We were pretty tired by the time we got there so the four of us had a few beers and a bit of food before crashing for the night.

Saturday we got up and headed to the other side of Denmark for the party. Aparently Denmark is made up of a bunch of islands and we headed down, over a big bridge, across a few islands and then up the side of another one. We stopped halfway in a town called Arhus for lunch. We stuffed ourselves at a nice little buffet on a canal before continuing on our way.

The party took place in Mathilde's hometown and we were all staying the night at her parent's house, like a good old school sleepover. The party was held in a community hall just a few minute walk from the house so we all got dressed up and walked over there for some pizza with her family before the party started. Our group, consisting of 5 aussies, 3 danes and me took over our own table and got right into the swing of things. Everyone was really nice to us especially considering the language barrier, although it seems that most people in Denmark know English fairly well. The party lasted well into the night and by about 4am we were quiet ready for sleep.

Strange danes wrestling, not really sure if that is something normal for them or not

Mathilde after the danish tradition of covering the birthday person in cinnamon if they are single when they turn 25

Liv and Rod

Not really sure what Liv and Andrew are doing

Mick, one of our aussies, being goofy

Mathilde and Liv

Sunday we took the long drive back to Copenhagen stopping in Liv's hometown on the way to drop off her parents care. We were invited to stay for Sunday dinner with the family and who turns down an offer like that. Us kids went off to the park to play around a bit before dinnertime while Liv's dad cooked a traditional danish meal for us. I'm not entirely sure what all of the food was but it tasted delicious. We had some kind of pork loin, steamed red cabbage, potatoes and a bunch of other vegetables I'm not sure about. For dessert we had a traditional summer dish of mixed berries in a porridge like consistancy with a bit of cream and sugar added to sweeten it, so yummy. It was interesting to sit around the table and not know what people were saying most of the time, a different experience for sure. After dinner Liv's dad took us back to their place and the four of us watched a movie before crashing out.

Monday was our last and only day to explore Copenhagen before our plane that night. Liv and I rode the bikes into town and met the boys with the bags at the train station. It was a nice ride, Copenhagen is big on bikes, so they get priority over cars, they have their own lanes and lights and everything. Copenhagen isn't a very big city and we managed to get around it all in just that day. It's a very pretty city. We went to Liv and Rod's favorite Turkish buffet for lunch and ate so much, it was amazing. We ate so well on that trip. After that we had some time to kill so we popped over to this aussie bar that Rod had been wanting to check out, there are aussie bars all over Europe, I think they're slowly taking over.