Karneval!

The weekend of Whitsunday (or Pentecost) is a weekend of celebration in Copenhagen. A three day festival kicks off Friday evening and lasts until late Sunday night. The occaision is marked with parades, music, dance, food, and games, all centering around a Brazilian Carnival-type theme. We were able to go today and we got a pretty good taste of the event, hearing lots of drumlines, scantily clad dancers, and good beer.

They had a diverse lineup of bands. The ones we saw included several amatuer drumlines, a samba group (lots of drums and dancers with feathers), as well as a Cuban rumba band. Cavan loved the Cuban band and was mesmerized by the twirling dancers that zoomed past him. When it was done, he kept asking for "More! More!"

Meeting people through our dog

As it turns out, the best way to have friendly conversation with people here in Copenhagen is to take our dog Sasha for a walk. There is a park a few blocks from our apartment which is unofficially a dog park - a big empty field lined with hedges where dogs young and old take their owners to socialize. Dogs are excellent at breaking the ice. As soon as we get to the park, I let Sasha off her leash and when other dogs are there, she quickly bounds over to greet them. The dogs end up romping around together, and us humans, for lack of anything else to do, begin talking to each other about our dogs. And other topics as well. For instance, the fact that we are all standing around in the middle of Copenhagen speaking English to each other is usually an entree into talking about where I come from and what I think about Denmark. And once that's been talked about, there's always the weather. And if nothing else, you can always talk about how silly and cute the dogs are. We're there often enough that people know Sasha by name, and Tom and I by association. It's not much, but it's the social outlet that we need, I think. Even having someone recognize your face (or your dog's face) in a foreign land helps it feel just a little bit more like home.