Saturday, January 29, 2011

Handball with the Danes? Ja, tak!

Today's random photo is dedicated to a) anyone who is as of yet unconvinced that making your own baked beans is an awesome idea, and b) anyone who doesn't think it's worth spending the money to buy free-range, organic eggs. Just look how well that egg held together! and the yolk is practically orange! Also, protip: I asked the guy at the farmers market today if there's any thought on exactly how the color of eggs is related to the taste (the eggs we buy are all brown, but there's a range in darkness). He didn't know about that, but they found that the lighter eggs tend to be the ones that were laid outside in the yard, and being in the sun makes them lighter.


Close watchers of facebook may have noticed that last night Danny and I discovered that not one, but TWO of our friends and readers of this blog have doppelgangers on the Danish national handball team. Crazy, right? While it is very imaginable that Danny would have discovered this one day via random internet searching, we found out the better way: actually watching handball. Backstory: As we wrote about back in October, I lived with a wonderful family when I studied abroad in Denmark. This week, my "little" host sister Catrine was in London with 3 of her friends. They spent 2 days in Cambridge visiting another friend who is a student there (King's College, for those of you who were wondering), then they spent 3 days in London. We met up them after work each night to show them around a little and be impressed at how perfect their English is. The first night we took them to get Indian food, and it became clear that a) they had never had proper Indian food before, and b) they weren't used to spicy food!

The first night they mentioned that Denmark was playing in the handball world championship, and the semi-final game was on Friday night, and did we think there would be a place in London where they could watch it? I was doubtful, but luckily Danny knew of a huge, tacky, American-style sports bar near Trafalgar square (conveniently located next to the Texas Embassy Cantina), and the website said they would be showing the game. We arrived, doubtful whether it would actually be showing, and expecting that we would probably just find a quiet corner in which to enjoy some terrible nachos and watch just the 6 of us. Boy were we wrong. The initial shock of being carded for the first time since we arrived in England was followed by the even bigger shock of finding the back room completely full of really, really excited Danes watching the Danish-language sports channel on about a dozen screens. Wow.

So we ate our nachos and drank our Carlsberg, and enjoyed being the only non-Danes in the room. The atmosphere was awesome. Handball is a HUGE deal in Denmark. The team had been totally dominant in the tournament so far, and the national team hadn't been to the final in 44 years, so people were pretty excited. The game was great - Denmark went up by 4 points shortly after the start of the game, but at halftime it was tied 12-12. DK had an awesome second half, and the final score was 28-24. Want to see how excited people were? This video quality is bad, but it captures the feel of the evening very well. Although with the poor light, it's hard to see just how blond people are. You'll have to trust us.

The final against France is on Sunday, 5pm Continental time (11am EST) - get excited! As Danny points out, it's in Malmö, so it's practically a home game for Denmark. Watch for lots of red, and lots of flags!

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