Samstag, April 07, 2007

Chewing Gum Days

There are days that proceed slower than an old Hubba Bubba chewing gum moves in my mouth. They start in the early morning usually with a divine service in which some couple marries or a nearly new born baby that is completely without any ability of speech but in return with the ability of braying is baptised.
To make it plain: I like couples in the process of binding their lifes to each other and I adore midget children being about getting a name which they can't neither comprehend rudimentally nor pronounce in any way. It's a quite good decision to summon all relatives, friends and acquaintance to see how they react when you put them for hours in several rooms: first in the church, then in a lobby where they have to drink sparkling wine or optionally orange juice and then in a living room/ saloon/ club house. While people are waiting for the next call to change the room they begin to talk to each other discussing questions like what the other has done in the meantime since the end of the previous family celebration. Of course: The early encounter with sparkling wine and the proximate beer is supportive and useful since everybody looks busy by walking about with his jar like bringing it to somewhere.
On Thursday, it was no one married and no one received officially his name and - well - no one became 50 years. The reason for celebrating was Easter. The International Club of the University of Roskilde (RUC) had invited to an typical danish Easter lunch. Since I helped to organise that event I arrived early at 11 o'clock, admittedly without touching any alcohol.
That started at three hours later with a shot of aquavit and a glass of beer. And it reminded me of the spectacle I see periodically in the entry area of the RUC canteen: beer drinking students. And it reminded me that a German immigrant has told me that the limit to be an alcoholic lies beyond 20 beers a week.
Thereby, one receives the impression that early drinking is slightly more accepted and common in Denmark than in Germany, a phenomenon which entails that Germans generally aren't exercised in boozings so that they end up emptying their stomach on the stairs to club houses at dawn after wedding days.
It was a Dane who told me that young Danes meet at one's house to pour the cheap supermarket beer in their throats. The result can be seen e.g. on weekends in the disco Buddy Holly in Roskilde where 20-year-olds wriggle around each other on the dance floor, while some of them jump on the dance podium and others take visitors off the dancefloor to ask them: "Hvad hidder du?" in order to find out that those as foreigners don't speak their language.
On the same day but earlier I got to know that people in Slovenia don't have the tradition of prickling small holes in the narrow end of egg to keep its peel intact. I learned that white eggs look like brown eggs after the attempt to dye them with red onions. And eventually the easter lunch evoked what I love about each chewing gum celebration day: the bounteous buffet.

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