Living in a foreign country, you think the conversations I had would be enlightening, peppered with new ideas and fascinating anecdotes illustrating the wonders of the world. Here is the perfect chance to learn about new cultures, to discuss politics from a whole new perspective.
Mostly though, we talk about food.
It's amazing how many times a conversation can turn to food. Either we're discussing what we should make for dinner that night, or waxing nostalgic about the food we're missing from home or arguing about what goes in the perfect tomato sauce.
Thus far, my experience with traditional Danish food has had more cons than pros. Of course, this has more to do with where I had the food than the meal itself. It's unlikely that any food made by college students and served to 150 people is going to be good, Danish or not.
Their sandwiches don't come with the top piece of bread, bringing up all sorts of questions as to what constitutes a sandwich. Does a sandwich not, intrinsically, require bread on both the top and the bottom? The answer, in this country at least, appears to be no.
When it comes to Danish food, the discussion begins and ends with the pastry. In America, it is a mere breakfast food, barely a step above the common muffin. Here, it is a work of art executed in flour and sugar.
Pastries here are not luxury items, an extravagance only to be enjoyed once in a great while. They are a staple of life, looking delectable and delicate anywhere there is coffee to be found.
This is partly due to the number of bakeries in the country, which open at dawn to bake fresh bread and pastries for the hungry masses. Not that there aren't bakeries in America, but rare is the town where you pass four bakeries on the way to school the way I do here.
In case you were wondering, yes, I have had danishes while in Denmark. They are, understandably, one of the most popular pastries here what with being named after the country and all. Unfortunately, spending hours trying to speak the language here has turned me a bit bitter toward the pastries of the same name.
While I was expecting pastries here to be delicious, I hadn't been expecting the glory that is European sprinkles. At home, sprinkles are waxy things that are added more for a splash of color than any real flavor. But the Europeans, especially the Dutch, understand sprinkles. They've unlocked the potential of multi-colored bits of sugar in delicious, exciting ways.
Sprinkles here aren't just for ice cream. When they're so sweet and delicious that they dissolve in your mouth, you can't limit sprinkles to simply ice cream. You can put them on anything you want, up to and including a slice of bread. It is sugar-induced madness, yes, but so delicious.
With such delectable, mouth-watering choices to pick from, I should be in Food Heaven and dining on delicious European cuisine every night. Instead, I'm cooking for myself this semester, which means that I eat mostly salad and grilled cheese.
Cooking has actually gotten a lot easier since I got to Denmark. When faced with the need to make two meals a day for yourself, you gain culinary proficiency pretty quickly.
It helps that the Americans and Canadians here have formed a cooking support group. We will spend hours in the kitchen, trying to make stir-fry and, when we get really ambitious, apple crisp. Granted, the French and the Italians upstairs still routinely put our best efforts to shame, but we're getting better.
We've grown so confident in our cooking abilities that we're going to try to cook up a big meal for Canadian Thanksgiving this Monday.
Even if the dinner ends in a huge disaster and the pie burns, it won't be a total loss. After all, we still have American Thanksgiving in November to work out the kinks and try again.
At the very least, a huge cooking disaster will be fodder for even more hours of conversation about food.
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Catie Coleman
