Mystified

Around here, a person answers the door with some trepidation...for good reason. This morning while John was in the shower, there was a tap on the front door. I sort of wondered what the mailman had that he had to hand it to me in person. With my new found comfort in this house, I assumed that the shadow that had passed by the dining room window was him. It wasn't. It was Lars' brother (I'll call him Claus, which in Danish, rhymes with 'house') and his girl friend, also Thai (like Lars girl/wife?). I guess the brothers got a package deal.

He wanted to come in and look around because they were interested in renting it when we moved out. I curbed the "Huh???" at the back of my throat and formulated a "What???"

However, I dare say the look on my face was 100% "Huh???" So....we have 13 moths left on the lease. What the hell??

If only we had gotten out of the house on time....we were on our way out for groceries...we could have avoided this little encounter. I sent them away, telling them John was in the shower, and they couldn't come in until he was out....and we were back from groceries....if ever at all. Claus asked me to call him when we got home. I said "no" you can come by at 5 o'clock....BUT.....being as you're Lars' brother haven't you been in here before? Shouldn't you already know what the house is like? Don't you know we have until next year on the lease? He seemed to understand all of this but... who knows?

I guess he wants to show it to his girlfriend. I wonder if she'll think the furniture is staying....it isn't. I wonder if they're thinking of setting up business again. Lars has been crying poor mouth a lot lately and I don't think moving out of this house has really done much to alleviate the financial difficulties caused by the loss of a certain income. John's theory is that Lars would like to move back into the house, with his brother and his girlfriend, to restart the business, and this little expedition was to plant the seed of us thinking we've got a way out of the lease. I don't know about that but it sure seems odd that someone would come for a look see more than a year out, and that person happens to be the landlord's brother.

Very curious. Maybe Lars thinks he can't afford to fix the pool, and he was really worried that the company was going to after him for the excess on the water bill. I don't know, but this might all have to come up when I see him next week. I assume he didn't call to ask me in advance because he knew I'd tell him to get stuffed (in a nice Canadian kind of way).

This warrants some definite feelers, though. I could move out of here if I found the right place. Moving is a hassle but we don't have that much stuff.....errr....maybe we do. And getting everything hooked up again.....there are charges for all those new hook-ups. But, it would be nice to be withing walking distance of a market and a few shops. Something to mull over, just in case. Claus kept saying they wanted to move in when we moved out and even when I said "If we moved now, you want to move in?" he agreed.....but often the finer details get lost in translation (or lack thereof).

***A little bit later (6:55 to be exact)...***

I must have done a great job of scaring them off because they didn't come back at five. Maybe "Fuzzy" the dog frightened them half to death with his barking and hairy fierceness. I'm still going to Scandia Housing's website tonight to look at what's available. Maybe Claus is anxious and we CAN get a new place before next year.

I bet if the neighbors saw them coming up the drive, they were freaking out.

Back in Business

I just paid a $2,000 water bill. That's our estimate of usage for the next six months....because the pool continued to dribble water back into the ecosystem all summer long and we kept dangling the hose in it to keep the water level up to the skimmers so as not to burn out the pump. Lars, the landlord/pool & house boy is a little worried because I told him that the company's accountant (who is kindly reimbursing our outrageous utility bills) might go into shock when he notices that the water bill has doubled since the last time we sent one. If we don't get our money back, I told him..."I'm coming after you. Since you let it go on all summer and didn't get anyone in to fix it."

I was a little nervous when the notice came to read the meter....being that we had been feeding the pool all summer. It turns out we doubled consumption. All summer long Lars babbled about why it might be happening but he always came back to evaporation. Okay, fella...let me go get the "Pictou County Water Resources Evaluation Study"....I know it's over 30 years old, and I know it's out of print (though you can get it still online)...BUT!! That's my name on there! Right below the title. So, I do know a little bit about evaporation, or did.....so don't give me any chatter about the sun stealing my H2O.

At least the evaporation idea was less wearing on John's nerves than the "John must have vacuumed the drain plug out" theory.

We will know in a few weeks because he has consulted the pool guy who will come in "April or May" to investigate the problem. Luckily the rate of water loss increased sufficiently that we recognized the futility of keeping up. We turned off the pump in early October and let the thing drain. It reached a level of about 2 feet from bottom and stopped. Apparently is drains out into the ground and not into a pipe because Lars thinks that it met the level of the water table and stopped.

That pool was a beautiful thing last summer. Very relaxing.


It might be a big concrete hole this year. I suppose we could store things in it or make it into a vegetable garden.

When I last wrote anything significant, I was just starting to get unpacked and settled....the movers never did come that day. We had to wait another few weeks before our things were released...because the company paid the Baku office of the movers, but no one communicated this to the Danish branch....who just didn't believe anyone had been paid. It seems like a long time ago now. Despite a less than confident beginning, not one thing was broken or missing from the move. That was a first! I can only conclude that the roads are very smooth in Belarus and Ukraine. We did get settled, bought some more stuff at IKEA and now we're all nice and cozy in the little Danish whorehouse.

We had a few more visitors, the last one about six months ago at 2:30 in the morning. I was still up when I heard a soft tapping at the front door....so soft I had to point at the dog and tell him to bark. I got John out of bed. He went to the door and spoke with a gentleman who appeared to be drinking, but well dressed in a nice suit and tie. John said he looked like he was in his thirties.....never got one dirty old man, ever. Knock on wood, but it seems like the word of our closure has filtered through the ranks, and folks are going elsewhere for their fun.

Getting Kenai into the country was easy in the end. I did all of the things I was supposed to do to make him legal and EU ready, and when the big moment of truth came at Danish Customs, there was no one to be found. There was supposed to be a vet there to check his papers and his microchip....but no...they were renovating the customs area and one of the carpenters had to search for a border agent. It all sounded so serious on the web site. It just didn't seem right that we went through this long separation for nothing.....to think that I could just follow the green arrow on the baggage hall floor, and be out into the fresh air and freedom.

No way! I wanted something official. When a customs guy finally showed up he asked where we were traveling from, he handed me the microchip reader, I scanned Kenai's chip, and handed it back to him. He said okay.....I backed up two paces, turned right and that was it. Welcome to Denmark, Lassie!


I got him some insurance. I didn't know that one must have insurance for one's pooch in case he damages somebody's property or chews their leg off. It's compulsory here. This information came from the lady at the boarding kennel where Kenai stayed for the Christmas holidays...."Bring with you when you come: blanket, contact information, proof of shots and insurance." I wonder if we can get him replaced if he runs away or gets stolen. Today I was trying to get an appointment for him at the groomer and made several calls. The first place said it would be June before they could take him, and another said a month. The third and the fourth places hung up because I couldn't speak Danish.....or they couldn't speak English...whichever is more important. I will try again tomorrow.

So far, and this is likely to remain the case, there have been no Danish lessons. The Danes take this "Danish" thing way too seriously. And not just the language. Being Danish is a "thing" not just a language. I've absorbed enough to get by so I think I'll leave it at that and the book learning to the people who are going to be here permanently. Officially, thirteen months to go for me. It seems whenever I attempt to say something in Danish, I'm immediately recognized as non-Danish and the speaker reverts to English anyway. And most infuriating is the fact that most people will pretend they haven't got a freaking clue what you're trying to say even though you "know" you're saying it right. I "know" because when they repeat it back to me, it sounds just the same! Honest!!

Over the course of the year I've found places to shop for groceries that don't close at six. It isn't that big a deal to drive 40 kilometers to get there when you really have to have some yogurt at 7PM. If only John was home from work with the car by then. Now that the time's changed, his biological clock or whatever it is that regulates these things, hasn't twigged to the fact that he has to come home in the daylight. He might be catching on a little bit now that we're in the second week of daylight savings time. He turned up last night at dusk.

I meant to post this picture a very long time ago. I stealthily captured this image during the busy Saturday afternoon shopping crush at Fotex, one of our grocery stores. I really hoped no one saw me do this because acting weird and unusual is very un-Danish. But I had to get this one....I wasn't sure how much pork a cute little boy holding his 4-H project in his arms would sell back in Canada....


I translated the caption. It says....."Happy pigs have curly tails." Doesn't particularly make me want to by any sausages.