Hej, arrived yesterday in Berlin with Loth & the flu. Felt terrible & spent the majority of the day and night in bed. Thankfully we have a nice house to stay in - Mario from Spain was kind enough to put us up, even though we only met him in Munich for about 15 mins. I missed the Love Parade last night, though was not overly concerned to miss a bunch of gits prancing around the streets in brightly covered furry garments to bad techno . After Prague Loth & I went on to Cracow, which was a wonderful city & one that we were sorry to leave. Our hostel there seemed so desperate to find customers that we were given a leaflet for it upon boarding the train in Prague & assured that we'd be met at the station in Cracow. Sure enough, when we arrived there, there were people there who were incredibly helpful, spoke fluent English & drove us free of charge to our reasonably priced hospital clean hostel. I'm still trying to figure out what the trick was... After Berlin we're heading back down south through one or all of the following countries - Hungary, Croatioa, Slovakia, Slovenia, Austria, Lichtenstein, Italy. Then will somehow make my way back to little Denmark.

Hello, I am in Prague with Lothlorian & Minton. Somehow plans of a possible trip to Switzerland & Germany mutated into a mad dash around Europe, trying to fit about 10 countries into 1 month. On 4th July Loth & I left Copenhagen and got the train to Munich, where we met up with Minton, Dave May & Wai. Spent 2 night there in a place called 'The Tent' - basically a huge tent with lots of (predominantly) Americans sleeping on the floor. Saw a 'schloss' (castle) & Drachau - the first Nazi concentration camp. On the 7th we headed up here to Prague. Spent yesterday charging around the town after Minton in an attempt to explore half the city in a day. Saw many beautiful sights - cathedrals, bridges and fine views amongst the rest. Loth & I discovered a great dinner venue - apparently one of the few real Czech food places in the area that isn't touristy. I had a lovely meal of 'rake', which is "3 half hollow out toasted potato brimming mixture from piquant pork meat namely regaling mixture cheese." Highly recommended. Better than it sounds, I assure you. Think I'll go back tonight to try something which also sounded delicious: "chicken meat modification on way Chinese kitchen".

MENTIONED GRAMS THEY ARE QUANTITY BASE MATERIAL IT IS. PASTE, GREENGROCERS, FISH AND SMOKED-MEAT PRODUCTS IN RAW STATE.

Sunburnt, drunk & dehydrated after today's canoe trip around Bagsværd Sø. Lucky me ended up sharing a boat with crazy Romanian guy (AKA 'Tomorrow Never Dies') from the Danish class. At least he didn't come out with too many weird ones today (except for when he told me that I have to speak with all my teeth & then asked me 'how many teeth you have?' [?!?!?!?]). Colin & I are now full time slaves to the mother agurk on the cucmber farm. (Yes, Chris Chris - we have indeed found and removed the mother cucumber - we took a photo for you, which we will send shortly.) Colin seems content with his cucumber labour but I am less enthusiastic about the whole ordeal. Fortunately I will (if the bureaucrats get off their arses) be transferring to a good Danish school in Copenhagen within the next few weeks, so plan to soon announce my resignation from the cucumber industry. Lothlorian's coming to Denmark on 18/06 to stay with me for a while & we're going to work together in the carpark @ the Roskilde Festival in exchange for free tickets. Not really a great line up this year but I wouldn't mind seeing New Order & the Red Hot Chilli Peppers. Also loosely making plans for a bit of a trip to Germany & Switzerland (if financial situation allows for such indulgence). Will stop entry now - either it's the beer or being in Denmark but I'm fast forgetting how to spell... have already corrected a few words on this page where I keep using 'k's instead of 'c's.
See you,
Elena.

Hey,

Well, still here in DK. One month left of living in the kollegium. Will be missing out on the conveniences of closely located friends, parties & free internet when we move out. On the other hand, it will be quite enjoyable to not reek of fried meat and have to wash my clothing after spending any amount of time in the kitchen while the Danish lads cook their dinner. Had my 21st birthday the other week. It coincided with the kollegium's annual party which was convenient, particularly as a rodeo had been hired. A multitude of photos can be seen on my website (follow the link from http://elenaandersen.tripod.com).
Otherwise, Colin & I should be starting jobs on a cucumber farm in a couple of weeks. The only doubts I have are due to the bullshit/half truths that Kamal told the cucumber farmer in order to convince him to employ us;
Claim: My parents are both Danish farmers who migrated to Australia during the farming rush in the 50's. My Danish, however, isn't perfect.
Truth: My father is a Danish marine engineer & my Danish is crap.
Claim: Colin has recently finished a degree in agriculture. The implication is that he is Danish.
Truth: Colin has recently finished a degree in agricultural chemistry. He is true blue as they come.

We'll see. Will post further details as they come.
Hej-hej!

Hej igen,

Det er mig. I am quite well indeed. Have now started Danish lessons which I attend on a week-daily basis. the lessons are very S.....L....O.....W...................... they just go on and on and on and on....... I'm sure we'll get there in the end though. Some of the people in the class are... interesting. On Friday which was our 2nd day, we had a different teacher who didn't know what we had learnt yet and asked us to call out some Danish phrases that we knew so as he could write them on the blackboard. After he'd already written up a fair few (ie. it was obvious as all hell what we were all doing), someone yelled out "tomorrow never dies!". This evoked little response so he continued to yell it out until the teacher said, "ah, yes - do you know how to say that in Danish?" to which the guy replied, "oh, are we supposed to be saying Danish things?" No no, or course not dear boy, we were just wondering if you'd seen any Bond lately. Smeghead.

So, aside from these so called 'lessons', at Easter time, Colin & I went for a bike ride up to Helsingør (AKA Elsinor) where we saw Hamlet's castle & spent the night at Kristian's parents' house with his sister. The next day we caught the ferry over to Sweden, where we rode around a bit, saw a castle that was built for an old Danish king, ate some tasty sugary/buttery Swedish pastry delights, passed by some porn shops (no, we didn't go in), visited a cemetary that had in its grounds lovely little bunnies hopping around amongst the blue spring flowers & did the grocery shopping (excitement +). We then caught the ferry & softing out of riding again, caught the train home. the little duck 'Twat' rode in Colin's bike basket the whole time whilst the hippo 'Bilbo' was having a culture filled experience in France. Sadly, Bilbo decided to not yet return. Maybe he enjoyed the stinky cheese there too much, who could say.

Well, that's all from me for now.

Vi ses,
Elena.

Hey peoples,

Colin (boyfriend) has now made it to Denmark. He's already given everyone a great impression of Australia by:
a) Not wearing shoes, despite having toenails so disgusting I wouldn't touch them with a 10ft pole and then telling everyone that in Australia, he never wears shoes at all. Apparently 5 degree weather is but a small obstacle - he has to toughen up his feet you see (for what? who knows...)
b) Telling everyone that the national dish of Australia is MEAT - and not nice meat, really ordinary meat such as chops with lots of fat on the side
c) Being passionately and very vocally proud of the fact that it has taken him 7yrs to get his dreads so filthy that they're black (shudder)
d) Telling everyone that all Australians are really lazy
I think that these factors, combined with Colin & I's extra yob performance of 'Advance Australia Fair' contributed to many people's decisions to never visit our beautiful sunburnt country. But such is life.
Yesterday Colin summed up in one statement why he has so much difficulty with the Danish pronunciations when he said "the reason I can't pronounce anything properly is that I can't be bothered to read the whole words - I just look at the beginnings and endings and guess what the middles are going to sound like". Oh Colin.... you are true blue.

Hello one and all,
Goddamn............... today the "marathonbar" finally came to an end. It is a great tradition in the bar downstairs - once a year the bar opens for 4 days and all the crazy Danes compete to see who can stay for the entire 72 hours and drink the most beer. They all seem to take it very seriously, with speeches and all -"I would like to thank everyone in my kitchen for helping me to reach this goal. I've drunk a lot of beer over the past 4 days. I truly believe that nothing is good without beer..." and so on. (At least I think that's what they were saying - the transalation may be shady at best). Køkken (kitchen) Q has won the beer drinking contest for a few consecutive years, so when in danger of losing, they hastily bought 6 crates of beer for all to share. First thing in the morning and furthermore, giving all due consideration to the fact that the best beer was about 7.5%, beer makes for much incoherency, resulting in diary entries such as this. Aside from all of this, I have made wehat I seriously believe to be a step up the ladder from ING & will hopefully soon commence a job delivering pamphlets. Fresh air, no office politics... what more could I possibly want? Will also be starting Danish lessons very soon.
Adios.

Hey,

So I've finally made it to Denmark. Here's (in brief) what I have done so far:
Stayed with Lothlorian & Adam in the (terrible) cider making town of Taunton (Loth, did you finish that bottle yet?). The round-a-bout was most exciting though all the pubs closed at 12:30, which left little time for merriment (not that we really felt like drinking warm flat Fosters anyway...).

I then went on to London for 2 nights & stayed there with Hilton's friend. London was nice & I walked around for a while and saw, amongst other things, lots of cute little furry grey squirrels.

Then I flew in to Dublin (thankfully making it in one piece despit technical problems with the aircraft) and went to Galway to stay with Emily. Here I was not even given time to drop my bags off at the house before I was bombarded with pints of guinness from Em's friendly Irish friends (hey, who's complaining though?). Needless to say, the guinness in Ireland was fantastic, though Australian guinness is not so much poorer as many make out. I spent my week and a half or 2 in Galway wandering through the beautiful cobbled streets and eating by day and drinking guinness and bulmers (cider - much better than that of Taunton) by night.

And so, a little tubbier I left on a bus to visit Christina in Wellington county, Wexford. Here I struggled accross the street, a ridiculous sight, having aquired even more luggage, the more uneccessary of items including my beloved coffee plunger (which I had bought in England after a few terrible days of instant coffee) and Em's double doona. Unable to take another step, I collapsed in a lovely room meant for 4 in a B&B. The next day I was met by Christina and her fiance, James. We went back to spend the night at a 21st in the middle of the country (where Chris got outrageously drunk and danced up a storm & insulted & made fun of basically everyone on the dancefloor). After spending the night at James' parents' house, I caught a bus to Dublin the next day.

On my first night here I walked into a pub just around the corner from my hostel and, strangely enough, found myself standing face to face with Julia Mynott, an old friend from Primary & High School. Anyway, the next afternoon we went pubbing together (people in Ireland drink at all times of the day), blah blah blah etc. etc., the next day I caught a plane to London, followed by a plane to Malmo (Sweden), followed by a bust to Copenhagen where I was met by my Dad's cousin, Lilian and her husband, Niels.

I stayed with Lilian & Niels for about a week and then moved into the kollegium in Bagsværd (close to Copenhagen), which is a big block of rooms (intended) for uni students. Somehow I managed to get a room there, which is extremely fortunate as the general waiting period for an appartment here ranges from 1 year to 10 years, generally falling somewhere at the higher end of the scale. People here actually pay money to real Estate agents to have their kids on a waiting list as soon as they are born so that they can go straight to the top of the list when they want to move out in 20 odd years. No joke. Why don't people tell you these things before you arrive in the country??? Anyway, it's all good. Colin arrives soon so he'll have to hide out in my room until June or July - I was extremely lucky to meet someone at the kollegium whose older brother is going to Sydney for about 8 months and has said that we can rent his appartment for that period. So anyone coming to stay with us, if at all possible, schedule it for then or you'll be sleeping on a mattress on the floor of my cosy little dorm room. As for a job, I currently have none. However, being a Danish citizen I am now elligible for government assistance. So for the time being, dole queue, here I come!

Ok, enough of my rambling. For those of you who complained that I didn't tell you what I was doing, here you are: I present you with a small and boring novel. For those of you who were not concerned in the slightest, I am terribly sorry.

So goodbye, from the land of cold and dark,
Elena.

Hello all,

Welcome to the first entry in Elena's blog. I'm in Taunton with Lothlorian & Adam. Taunton is not especially exciting. Happy New Year to all & feel free to send me an e mail (euchrideuchrow@yahoo.com.au) and update me on your exciting lives. Tonight Loth & I will be going to the local round-a-bout for New Years - apparently a tradition in this crazy town. Will update you soon when there is any news to tell... Happy holidays.

Elena.