In Denmark part 1

From my brief visit to Denmark it was remarkable how different the country seemed to Sweden. I can honestly say that I have never been to a more crowded place than Copenhagen. I don't like crowds at the best of times, but some of the people there did seem a little strange, men wearing shorts that were too short and too tight and ladies holding hands. But each to their own, as we say in Britain. Who was I to question someone's dress sense? And if ladies want to hold hands, then that's fine as well, nothing wrong in being friendly, is there?
We had arrived in the middle of a Gay rights festival. We came upon what looked like a pop festival with bands playing music and a very large crowd of people. After the song had finished someone walked on stage and moaned about how gay people were badly treated and not taken seriously, while the majority of the crowd were dressed in sailor suits and the afore mentioned short shorts and matching short t-shirts showing off their belly buttons or some form of piercing.
We had our own personal tour guide. Anne, a friend from WoW met us at our hotel and showed us around the city. There's nothing like having local knowledge and we managed to get our photo taken next to the little mermaid statue without the crowds. Just like Sweden, I really knew nothing about Denmark other than what I'd picked up through tv and books. One of my most abiding memories of Denmark comes from my childhood and the movie of Hans Christian Anderson starring Danny Kaye. This movie was a staple of school holidays and you could expect to see it at least once every year. I've not seen it for about 30 years, I would imagine, but I can still remember Danny singing about 'Wonderful, wonderful Copenhagen'(although I think if he had arrived in the middle of a Gay rights festival, he may have not been so exuberant!). Another thing I knew about Denmark was Salte Fisk. Salte Fisk are fish shaped pieces of licorice, covered in salt. Licorice + Salt may not sound very appetizing, but let me tell you, they are delicious! Thanks to Anne and Lars for introducing me to them! I should point out that Salte Fisk are the best and you should accept no substitutes!
I'll be completely honest and say that after our evening walk around Copenhagen, I thought that we had seen everything of interest, and I was not looking forward to having to spend a day filling time. However, I was completely wrong about that because Copenhagen has a lot of hidden gems and if you look for them, you wont be disappointed.

Video of the Day

Being Posh

I say old chap, have you seen my monocle? That's right everyone, I'm being posh! Last weekend we were invited to a Polo match. Now, being invited to a Polo match is not something I ever imagined would happen to me...but I could say that of a lot of things over the past few years. I have to admit that it was a difficult choice I had to make, either watch England vs Australia in the last test of the Ashes or go watch some posh people on horses. In the end my curiosity got the better of me, besides, I was keen to find out how they kept the horses from drowning. I imagined an equine version of a snorkel would be used.
However, on arrival it became very clear to me that there are 2 types of Polo and the one played in the water was in fact played without horses! Just as well I suppose.
The Belgian Open was held over 2 days, in a field (obviously) close to where we live. The sun was shining and the drinks tent beckoned to us to come imbibe of it's liquidy goodness. So we did. It was all jolly nice, as we approached the tent we could see tables and chairs laid out and to my delight I noticed bowls of peanuts on the tables. Beer was bought and my delight deflated somewhat when a dog walked along and snuffled into every bowl it could find. The dog wasn't a Great Dane, the tables were low to the ground. Naturally, I didn't warn anyone that there was dog spit on the nuts. It's one of the pit-falls of not being able to speak Dutch all that well.
It's true to say that none of us had a clue of what was happening on the field, I had looked up the definition of the word 'Chukka' before leaving and promptly forgot what it meant by the time we arrived. But, I tried to insert it into my sentences every now and then.
"Oh I say! What a marvellous chukka"
"Did you see that chukka? The goalie had no chance!"
"Another bottle of chukka, anyone?"
Although we had no idea of the rules, it was still a marvellous spectacle to watch. Very skillful and I have to say that I was full of admiration for the riders who showed superb skill in handling the horses. Our side sadly lost, the score was 4-3 and a half. Not sure what the half was for.
Actually I'm not even sure what the 3 was for either! The sun was shining and the beer was cold and with the appearance of a Spitfire flying over the field we could have been in Kent. It was all rather like watching a village cricket game, that sort of atmosphere.

Self Indulgence Video of the Day

Perfect Sunday

As an English sports fan I don't get many chances to celebrate either my country or my team, Tottenham Hotspur, winning things. Spurs have been average, at best, for the majority of my life, the last time they won the league was a few years before I was born. The English football team have mirrored Spurs in a lot of respects, winning the World Cup 2 years after I was born and since then promising much but delivering nothing. When I moved to Belgium I considered supporting another team, Manchester United. I was tired of supporting a team that wasn't going anywhere and just wanted a bit of glory for once. I found that I couldn't change my allegiance, even if I wanted to. If you are a true fan of football then your team is in your blood. Tottenham Hotspur were the team local to where I was born, as much a part of me as being English is.
This leads to another interesting point and one that I've been thinking about over the past few days. Do you ever truly lose your identity? You can change your nationality but I truly believe that you can't change who you are and where you come from. My wife has been having a light hearted bit of 'banter' with a friend who has lived in Australia for 20 years.

Banter is nothing more than light hearted joking between friends which often involves mild insults, especially if sport is involved.

It seems that the Englishman has gone native, declaring his love for the Australian cricket team and delighting in the destruction he believed would be inflicted on English cricket! It couldn't have been easy for an English sports fan living in Australia for the last 20 years. But, I have to protest, in writing, to the Australian government, for brain washing innocent Englishmen into believing that Australia are better at cricket than England!
England won The Ashes back from Australia, in case you haven't guessed yet and for the next 18 months, us English can hold our heads high...until we lose them again in Australia!
I don't personally know the guy my wife was joking with, but I enjoyed being part of this banter. But, I did think seriously about whether it is possible to lose your national identity. I suspect my wife's friend's opinions were very much tongue in cheek but I did wonder whether his support for the Aussies was similar to me wanting to support a winning team. To ensure he doesn't lose his Englishness, we are sending him an emergency package containing a pair of Union Jack boxer shorts, a Bowler hat, a photo of the White Cliffs of Dover and a dvd of Mary Poppins! Come back to the light, before it's too late!
So, yesterday was a perfect Sunday, England won the Ashes and my team Spurs won their third game in a row. Already Spurs fans are talking about glory, as they do every season. I will be treating our current good run as I usually do, on a match by match basis.

The Ashes Dates back to 1882 and is only played between England and Australia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ashes is an entertaining and informative link which will tell you all about the legend surrounding this great sporting rivalry.

Video of the Day

In Sweden - Food & Drink

1. Knackebrod
2. Moose
3. Yummy
4. Fish Soup

As so often happens in my blog, I return to one of my favourite subjects...Food! The first meal I had in Sweden was a fish soup (see photo). Now, before moving to Belgium I had always regarded soup as a drink. I would no more have a bowl of soup as a meal than I would have a bowl of water or a bowl of tea. However, if I wanted a drink with my meal then I would take water. So the fact that I chose soup as my first meal in Sweden was kind of strange. We had stopped at a lovely harbour town on the west coast, called Fiskebackskil (there should be 2 little dots above the a but I don't know if I have them on my keyboard!). The first restaurant we came to offered a small selection of meals but the description of the fish soup -and yes, an English menu was available - promised the customer untold fishy riches. The description was spot on! It turned out to be one of the best meals I ate whilst in Sweden. As if that wasn't good enough, the restaurant offered a free Herring buffet to enjoy whilst waiting for your meal! Now a Herring buffet could possibly be someone's idea of Hell. Not for me! I was happy to try Herring prepared in every conceivable way. I wasn't to keen on the Herring in fruit marinade, but the rest of it was jolly nice.

The best meals we had in Sweden were prepared by our friends. You can't beat home cooking! We had a traditional meal of...Herring! Actually, this was our starter. Served with cheese and sour cream with fresh chives and pieces of crispbread. Called Knackebrod (2 little dots over the a and the o) it comes in large 12 inch discs with a hole in the middle. The hole allows you to hang the Knackebrod up in your kitchen and in the old days Swedish drivers would always keep a supply of them in the boot of their cars in case they needed a spare wheel.

The starter was accompanied by a schnapps, which compliments the fish. The main dish was of gratain (spelling could be wrong) with anchovies (pure genius! I love anchovies!), smoked sausage ( surely the king of sausages), prawns with caviar and meat balls. Oh, there were taters as well.

We also had moose. Absolutely delicious, tastes like chicken...that's a lie, it tastes like Beef, but stronger if you get my meaning. We also had a home made pie which was a little like a crumble, different taste but really, really nice! This was a secret pie, keep it to yourselves, ok? We had specific orders not to eat anything before our traditional Swedish meal!

I did say that eating out in Sweden was expensive. Actually, we had some good meals for reasonable prices. The fish soup was one of the cheapest meals we had. After a few weeks my taste buds were screaming for a curry but we had to settle for a Chinese meal instead! Again, the prices were no different than what we would pay in Belgium. So, I may have been a bit hasty in condemning Swedish prices. It's actually the beers that accompany the meal that puts the prices right up.

In Sweden, if you want a strong drink, you have to go to a special shop called a Systembolaget. The Systembolaget are state run and deliberately make your alcohol buying experience as annoying as possible. Whilst you can buy beer in the local supermarket, the highest alcohol content is 3.5%. I think this is quite a good idea. They advertised the beer in the supermarkets as barbecue beer, I tried a few and my only complaint would be that barbecuing them makes the can very hot difficult to open! Other than that, quite nice!

Video of the Day

In Sweden - Episode 1

We honeymooned in Sweden. I have to admit now that Sweden wasn't on the top of my 'must see' list. In fact it wasn't even in it! But, we had a great reason for going and that was to see some of our very good friends that we had made whilst playing WoW. When visiting a country for the first time, I revert to racial stereotypes and football. I find that it helps, although it's not always very accurate. I honestly didn't see many good looking blonde people, although I did see a man who looked a little bit like ex England manager Sven Goran Erikson. My wife soon got tired of me saying things like:
"Malmo 0 - Nottingham Forest 1 European Cup 1978"
or
"oh! Helsingborg!...now didn't they play Arsenal (spit) a few years back?"
I get a pretty good geographical knowledge of the world from watching football and expect every man that I meet to do the same. Sadly, the only man I met in Copenhagen (that's in Denmark) accused me of being a football hooligan when he found out I was English. Bloody cheek! I nearly punched him!
Moose! There's a stereotype for you. I was a little disappointed not to drive into a random moose as I thought that suicidal moose were as much a part of Swedish roads as suicidal rabbits are in Britain.
The Swedish Chef. Him off the Muppet Show. A generation of children grew up thinking that the Swedish were unbalanced chopper waving maniacs, with spongy heads! One of the first questions asked of me in Sweden was "Are you disappointed that we don't all talk like the Swedish chef from the Muppets? Which made me laugh...but deep down a little part of me was thinking "Yes, yes I am..."
1 - 1. Maybe not immediately clear to non-football fans, but one all, as we say in Britain, is usually the score when England play Sweden. I have grown up watching England not beating Sweden to such an extent that I am constantly surprised that Sweden don't do better in the World Cup...then I remember that England are not very good and realise that this is probably why!
Porn. That got your attention! I know as much about porn as I do about Sweden (no, honestly!) and so I don't know really where this association with porn actually comes from. It's something I've always known, maybe it's an imprinted genetic man thing. In fact, in The Rough Guide to Sweden's introduction, the author writes:
'Many tourists come to Sweden looking forward to wild sex and easy pick-ups - and most return disappointed.' (If only we had known that before booking!)
and goes on with:
'Somehow, over the years, the open Swedish attitude to nudity and sexuality has become confused with sex. Sweden isn't populated soley with people waiting for any opportunity to tear off their clothes and make passionate love under the midnight sun.' (Again, had we known we would have probably settled for Margate)
I wondered whether to put this last bit in, it's possible for people to grow to a reasonable age, sure of all sorts of crazy things. It's not as if I went around asking people their opinions on whether Sweden's association with prolific porn was justified!
Moose! I have nothing else to say about moose (or should that be meese?), I just wanted to change the subject from porn.
Expensive. Rough Guide says 'Forget anything you've heard about Sweden's reputedly high prices...', well yes, forget it if you are a millionaire maybe. I found Sweden's prices higher than what we are used to. A beer cost around 5€, which is high in my opinion. Eating out was expensive as well. However, I must say that the entrance prices for the attractions we visited were reasonable in comparison to British prices. So, maybe it evened out over the 2 weeks we toured the country.
ABBA. We saw no members of ABBA whilst on holiday.

In Sweden is dedicated to Johnny, Camilla, Jeanette and Jakob,Fred and Linda. Some of the nicest, most generous people I've ever shared a beer with! Thanks guys for making our honeymoon extra special!

Video of the Day

I Married a Night Elf...A Fairy Tale in 2 Parts...Part the Second

The guild has been running for 5 years now. In that period I have met some of the nicest, most generous people anyone could ever wish to meet. I have made friends all over Europe, some of them have grown into good friends...and one of them I fell in love with and married last month!
I wont bore you with the details of how we met exactly. But let's just say that it was in a dark and dusty dungeon and there were a hell of a lot of bodies lying around...most of the destruction was her handy work!
Since we have been together, we have often been asked how we met. Saying that you met online occasionally gets a raised eyebrow, but saying you met playing a game which includes Elves and Gnomes will often result in coughing, spluttering and sometimes alcohol dribbling from a nostril or two! It used to embarrass me a little, people can be small minded.
Games are for children! What are people your age doing playing games? Why don't you watch tv like normal people? What do you mean you've never seen Big Brother, Britains Got Talented Ice Dancers or X-Factor??
We do watch tv, maybe an hour a night. Sometimes a dvd. Sadly, most programmes insult peoples intelligence and even sadder, most of those people watching and appearing on these shows don't even realise it. Interestingly, a few years back the television was blamed for the break down of family life in Britain. People would sit in front of the goggle box and spend all evening watching Coronation street and Kojak and not speak to each other any more. So I find this 'sniffiness' towards the internet rather strange. The internet actually promotes conversation and contact. Our gaming experience has turned into a real family affair, my wife's sons play, one of her sons girlfriend plays as well. Her nephews play and my brother in law plays. We speak most nights. That communication thing that the television took away has returned with the internet. Hands up how many of you reading this have regular contact with a friend or loved one in another country? Ok mum, you can put your hand down! Who is in regular contact with a friend or loved one throughout the day via msn? Ok, I can put my hand down now!
So, the internet wins!
I sort of went off on a tangent there.
Where was I? Oh yes, dribbling nostrils...
That embarrassment factor has gone now. I don't care what people think about how we met. I think it's kinda cool. So does the vicar who married us.
Most of the posts for the next few weeks will be all about our wedding and honeymoon...most of it will be true!

I Married a Night Elf...A Fairy Tale in 2 Parts...Part the First.

If you have a look at my blog profile, you will see World of Warcraft (WoW) listed as a hobby. I've been into gaming since Pong was first released way back when some of us were still wearing flaired trousers(first time around) and I still had hair down past my shoulders! In the 30 years or so since then I have owned everything from a Spectrum 48k to a Playstation 3. I have played more games than I care to remember, from the Nodes of Yesod to Little Big Planet and I specifically bought my first PC so that I could play Doom, and yes it was worth it! But, one game has stood out head and shoulders above all of the many, many games I have played over the past few decades and that is WoW.
The Warcraft series started in 1994 with Warcraft: Orcs and Humans and its mix of real time stragedy and compelling story line proved popular with the game playing public. Blizzard, the company that made the game soon became synonymous with well made and addictive games. Although new releases were few and far between, the likes of Warcraft, Starcraft and Diablo are amongst the very best games available.
WoW is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG for short). It was released in Europe in 2005 and recieved excellent reviews throughout the gaming community. I had played Ultima Online a few years earlier and found that the format could be addictive and enjoyable and with a review of 95% from a trusted website I felt I should give WoW a go. I installed the game and played for an hour or so before deciding that the game wasn't for me. I un-installed and the game joined a pile of other unplayed games in my loft. At around the same time another MMORPG was released, called Guild Wars, it offered a slightly different playing experience to WoW and demanded no monthly payment to play. I enjoyed Guild Wars to such an extent that it persuaded me to give WoW another go. This time I was hooked, but with reservations. I spent my playing time missing out on a vital aspect of the game, namely communicating with the other people who were also playing. I was sure that everyone playing the game were sure to be sweaty red faced teenagers, pounding on their keyboards and shouting KILL! KILL! KILL! at the top of their voices. But, after a period of time I realized that there was a diverse mixture of age ranges playing the game (pounding on their keyboards, shouting KILL! KILL! KILL!) and as anyone will tell you who played the game in the 'old days', WoW was a lot harder then. So, I eventually reached a point where I could either stop playing because it was too difficult to advance without help or actually start talking to people.
So, I formed my own guild. A virtual guild is no different to a real life (rl) guild. It is basically a number of people who group together for mutual benefit. I gave my guild an epic sounding name and started to recruit like minded people. My criteria for a perfect guild was that the members had to be mature. WoW really is rl in microcosm. There are polite people, rude people, good people and bad people. There are people who just have no idea how to interact with other people in a socially acceptable manner. People who steal, generous people and people who think that the height of humorous sophistication is to write the word anal in general chat and then there are also the people who read it and actually do think it is the height of humorous sophistication!
I wanted people like me, kind-hearted, funny and handsome to join my guild...what I got was not quite what I had wanted but I had a group of people who wanted to help each other and that was a good start.

This post is in danger of becoming an epic saga and so I have decided to split it into 2 parts.

Video of the Day - YAY!!!

Previously on In Flanders

After my months hiatus I have returned to my key board for some more ramblings and rantings from the low countries. I started the blog in February of 2009 and I have posted 132 times (including this one). So, especially for new readers who can't be bothered to look at the old posts and for those of you who may need reminding about what the hell I've been going on about in my blog, here is a brief recap of my written posts:

Me.Englishman. Alien. Good moaning. Dutchney. Bread. Bikinis! Blog? Do you? Mmmm, curry... Alstublieft? Bananas! Howzat?! Bluffing. Chips! Ding ding. Mmmm beer...Ik begrijp je niet. Chihuahuas. Yappy. Moe. You bloody liar! Parle vous Francais? Homesick. Dads Army. Hand Schoenen(lol). Special words. Smacky lips. Goal! Man hug. Cyclists(grrr!). Breadery(made up word). French strikers(grrr!). Gawd blimey guvnor. St Georges day. Bread wars. De auto is duur. Lead poisoning. Dolly mixtures. Come on you Spurs! Spam, spam, spam. Cuckoo! Wieler touristen(grrr!). Algebra. Camping. Zombies! Bloop. Aliens! Giant robots! Son of a beach! Pie and Mash. Tower of London. Mmmm wine...hic! Argies! Badly cooked meat. Where? Twit. Wine flu. Dong! Howzat?!(2) Winkels(snigger). Hotel, motel, Holiday Inn...say what? Owww! Hot enough to boil a monkeys bum! Rock on! Rock off! Pants. Wee. Sea food....

And a brief recap of my video posts:

Goal! That's another fine mess you've gotten me into! Fish. Very drunk indeed. Happiness is a cigar called Hamlet. I only said Jehovah! Four Candles. Dong! Blow. Good moaning. Kneesy, earsy, nosey. Bless you. Your lower intestine. Hoots mon! Hey presto! Does your dog bite? Excuse me, has anyone got a bottle of orange juice? Soda. Who's on first? I used to rule the world. Woof! Flap.

Yes, yes I know, lazy blogging from me. But I look at it as more of a homage to the US tv programmes of the 70's and 80's when you would often see whole episodes made up of clips from previous shows. Remember those? As always, dear reader, I encourage you to leave comments, even if it's only a hello. It's always nice to hear from people and lets me know that there is life out there in the ether....Normal service will now be resumed.