Flytte hus

I am writing this well rested because just over a week ago we gathered our belongings, said goodbye to our raucous friends outside Cosy Bar, nimbly avoided all the inevitable vomit hazards from the night before, and hopped in a taxi to our new place.

En route the taxi driver picked up on Ant’s interest in an advert for bacon-flavoured liver pâté (leverpostej) and gave us detailed instructions on how to serve it up with champignons and pickled beetroot to create a snack that only the Danes could love. We are yet to try it, but have the beetroot ready and waiting for when we feel up to it…

As our itinerant lifestyle comes to an end, it pains me to have left such an optimal working environment behind:

We are actually feeling pretty nostalgic about the carefree Studiestræde days, because life in the new apartment has been a relentless onslaught of boxes and trips to IKEA and furniture assembly and swearing and vows to Marie Kondo our possessions more ruthlessly in future.

Older apartments here are devoid of wardrobes, which I think is what keeps IKEA in business. That and meatballs.

Our spirits have lifted in the last few days because I think we are nearing the end of the ‘life in a sea of boxes’ phase, and also because we bought a power-tool. Ant has been drill-happy. Everything needs a hole in it when you have a drill! We have hung quite a few sets of blinds and curtains that are yet to come crashing down (touch wood!), and only drilled two unnecessary holes in the wall so far… don’t worry, we’ve found the Danish equivalent of Bunnings so we can spack-fill the errors away like they almost never happened (ha, as if – it will be totally obvious).

Denmark encourages this kind of ill advised DIY by having a general policy that rental homes don’t come with any window dressings or lights, apparently as a result of the Danes’ affinity for both casual nudity and high end lamp shades. One real estate agent looked at me like I didn’t know how to clothe or feed myself when I asked if people get an electrician in to fit the lights. We were actually lucky that two of the rooms had old style ceiling roses with wires sticking out, as I am yet to work out how to even open the other little outlets that we are supposed to wire lights into in the other rooms… I’ve just kind of been occasionally probing and pawing at it and getting nowhere, like a chimp trying to learn to use a tool. It’s the saddest.

Not having lights in half the rooms has led to one night where we bothered to light candles and it was all hygge and lovely, but mostly to a lot of challenging IKEA assembly by headtorch – I wouldn’t strongly recommend it. I think we need to just give in and go full Danish and embrace floor lamps.

At the peak of the box-fuelled chaos last weekend we took our bikes for a spin out to Vesterbro to get what is renowned as the best flæskesteg sandwich in town, which thankfully restored our will to live. Flæskesteg, rødkål og agurksalat, where have you been all my life? It was also a good excuse to try some clazzic Danish chocco milk. If you visit us we will take you here for every meal. That’s a promise and a threat. Ant especially loves that there is a ‘stor’ (large) option that just doubles the amount of pork.

We also got out and about to a few other places, supposedly to ‘show some of Ant’s friends around’, when in reality we still know practically nothing about our new city. At any rate, they were very gracious about our attempts, and it was nice to have an excuse to down tools and wander around some more.

Our reward for almost finishing unpacking is to head off to Budapest tomorrow. I’m looking forward to doing activities that don’t involve screwdrivers and pictorial instructions booklets… until then, I will leave you with this glorious image of our second giant box pile: