Raspberry Danish

 Flag's backward, I know

My American teammate and I headed over to the jewel in Scandinavia's crown, Denmark (that might not be true, but I liked the sound of it). Much to our surprise and greeeeat delight, it turned out we happened to roll into Copenhagen on the celebration of Queen Margrethe II's 40th jubilee. Yeah I don't really know what it means either but after chillin for a while outside city hall, we saw her in all her royal grandeur.

And sang the Danish national anthem like 8 times in a row while waiting for her to come wave on her balcony. She's the Queen, she can do what she wants I guess.Apparently the Danes really love her since her approval rating is like 80%. Keep doin your thing Margrethe.
So despite my impatience/mildly frozen toes, I wasn't about to go rogue and be the only person to boo her for taking her sweet time. The lady is 70. Plus with another 6+ footer rollin in our crew, we wouldn't really have been all that incognito.
Lesson for the kids - height has its downfalls. Heckle with care.

For all my irritation, all was forgiven when she finally came outside. Some people might grow tired of the undemocratic, excessively pompous obsolescence of a non-functioning monarchy.
I am not some people.
Having finally seen the queen (THE queen is probably somewhat heretical, sorry Elizabeth) in the flesh, I feel like I can now die happy. I've seen it all!

The rest of the day consisted of coming down from that high and trying not to freeze/trying to see stuff before the sun set shortly after 4 PM. By the time we got into the city, that left us like 3 hours... Luckily, the city's only an hour train ride from our digs and I visited København aka Merchant's Harbor for the first time back in the two zero zero seven. Feel free to drop that little bit of trivia about the city's name in your next dinner conversation.

I'll let the pictures do the talking.

En route

Rubbin' shoulders with the who's-who of Danish society on

Strøget aka Europe's longest pedestrian shopping street

View from the Rundetaarn aka Round Tower 

 Good eats

Lost in translation

Valhalla I'm Coming

It's been a while.

Not gonna lie, not a lot's happened in the last 9 months. Or I just don't remember. I meant to write about a little trip to Amsterdam and Pan Am games in Mexico in the meantime but I wasn't feelin the whole blog scene (read: I'm lazy) and so, rather than start yet another post off with yet another apology, let's just get at it.

Cue up some Immigrant Song or watch Mamma Mia if that's your thing, 'cause this kid is in Sweden.

!

After half a season of relative unemployment/keepin on keepin on with the Team Canada grind, I'm back overseas with Ian, livin the good life. Bladow. As good as the good life gets when you're a female playing a mid-major sport. I'm the Murray State of the pro sports world.
Bring on the 15K annual pay check and high school gym-sized arenas!

As I said, we're in Sweden. I refuse to say something along the lines of 'Land of Ikea and ABBA' but that's the only cliche descriptor that ever comes up... and I don't know enough to say anything grand of my own, so there it is.
We're on the very southern tip in a little town called Svedala, outside of Malmö (shoutout SARAH MEEK BEASLEY) and across the sound from Copenhagen. Not a bad deal on the geography front. Good thing Swedish weather is tip top and it's never windy or rainy or overcast everyday or anything so I can explore between practice. To be fair, there's no snow anywhere so I'm kinda loving that. On the flipside, in case anyone missed that, it IS windy/rainy/grey or all of the above at some point most everyday so basically I live in foreign Seattle.

My team is not doing so hot, having gone ahem.. 0-9 in the first half of the season. Raletalk.
So for now I won't say much more about that except we're about to be the dark horse, dressed in wolf's clothing, to tear the playoffs to pieces come April. Stay tuned for that.

Cats be tremblin' in their boots

Sweden is already a serious contender for best country in Europe so far due to a couple factors.
Namely:

DRYERS. These people believe in and possess dryers, of the laundry appliance type! This is unprecedented in my Euro experience, anywhere. I'm all for environmentally-friendly drying racks and whatnot, but the existence of the dryer takes away a major Euro life con, which is - the crunchy towel. Anyone who's ever lived without a dryer for an extended period of time is all-too familiar with the sensation of drying off with a colored piece of sandpaper.

Second, our apartment has a dishwasher. I would throw a couple exclamation marks after that but people might start to wonder what my enthusiasm for home appliances is all about. But literally, I almost threw a small party when I walked into the kitchen and saw the beaut. Whoever invented dishwashers deserves a Nobel prize or at least more notoriety in Europe because although I knew they existed over here, much like the dryer, they have always been a rare breed in any apartment I've ever inhabited. What a beautiful thing.

Third, this just cause I think it's hilarious:

Apparently I'm easily impressed.

Also, 2012 will be a better year in this blog's life! Next week, same bat time, same bat channel, I promise.