Great Prayer Day

Store Bededag, or "Great Prayer Day," is tomorrow and it's a day-off-work kind of holiday (woo!).

The history is pretty straight forward--way back in the 17th century, Danish folks were like, "Man, there are sure a lot of prayer days around Easter...I wish that we could streamline this a bit or something."  So they did, by lumping all the prayer days into one Great Prayer day on the fourth Friday after Easter.

Since, you know, Great Prayer Day meant you were making up all your prayers in one day, everything was closed, including the bakeries.

So, tonight, the day before Store Bededag, you traditionally go out and buy some warm wheat rolls and eat them with butter and jam--because, even though you were supposed to buy the bread early and eat it the next day, who can resist a warm roll fresh from the bakery?!

So happy Store Bededag tomorrow.  And enjoy a roll tonight!

Living Small

We live in a pretty small apartment, even for Danish standards, that clocks in around 480 square feet (45 square meters).

But, then again, it's not like we have a lot of stuff.  I mean, we moved to Germany two years ago with just four suitcases.  We literally only brought clothes, one cookbook, two nice chef knives, a set of teaspoons, and a pyrex measuring cup. (Clearly, I was a little nervous about having to convert cooking measurements.)  It's not very hard to keep the stuff to a minimum when you're starting with that.

I was thinking, though, that even though I'm pretty sure most of our American friends would probably think our apartment is insanely small and too quirky to handle (bedroom light switch in the opposite corner from the door?  sure! power outlets literally in the middle of the wall?  why not?), it's not so bad.  And I kind of like livin' small.

For one, there's just less to worry about.  Two, it's hard to lose things--there are usually only two places it can be.  Three, less heating and electricity costs which pans out to one more international trip in a year.  And, living small has also made us think about what we really need, in terms of both things and in terms of space.

So, we'll probably stay put here in Hyggehus for a while.  Because living small isn't so bad.  Oh, and because of that darned couch.