For beginners, lets look at the Danish birthday celebration. I morgen jeg har tyve år! Hoorah hoorah hoorah. For a peek at the traditional Danish birthday song we learned in class...see here:
In this song, the Danes wish you delicious chocolate and cake. Fortunately, I have enjoyed BOTH today.
I ate two desserts twice today (yes, with 2 ^ 2 or 2 x 2 or 2 + 2, that means I've had 4 [small] desserts). In my defense, you only reach such an enormously important day ONCE in your life. The logical fallacy...that could be said for every day. But I like to think that turning 20 is really something special. 2 decades. A single score. Tyve år!
One of the delectable treats I enjoyed, flødeboller, can be seen below. I've decided to include this picture as words cannot possibly begin to describe my love for this tiny tasty treat. It is, without a doubt, my favorite food that I have had in 2 weeks in Denmark. The first fresh mozarella and tomato sandwich I had in Copenhagen was a close contender but when will a meal ever win my palate's affection over dessert?
While it may look like a mere marshmallow hiding in a chocolate shell, I assure you, friends and family, it is SO much more. It is fresh, fluffy creme, light vanilla wafer, and a rich and inviting chocolate coating. While I could write an entire post about this dessert, I will opt to give two thumbs up and a recipe link. It just happens to turn out that these are mostly eaten by children at birthday parties. What a fortunate coincidence.
Another Danish birthday tradition is to wrap the birthday boy/girl in a string of Danish flags. The Danish flag is linked in many ways to the culture and celebrations, rather than just as a patriotic symbol. It's also common to wave it while singing to the birthday girl/boy. The traditional birthday cake is apparently called lagkage, though I would not trade my 2 flødeboller or 2 slices of aftenkaffe pie for anything. Each night the hotel we're staying at puts out coffee, tea, and some sort of dessert. Tonight was a sort of turtle like cake, made with (guesses/estimations) a creamy filling, some sort of caramel, pecans and almonds, a light crust, and a bit of chocolate on the edges. Add two cups of coffee, and you have one VERY happy almost birthday girl.
In fact, I've been calling today my pseudo-birthday, because apparently some facebook flook confused my roomate and a few of the other students and misled them to believe that my birthday was today. Soooo, after being sung happy birthday at midnight last night, there was a bit of confusion. Regardless, much appreciated, and suffice it to say that I've received plenty of inquiries as to the actual date. In European style, for the record, it is 13.08.1991, or in simpler terms, tomorrow.
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