Danish gifts

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Well, the Danes have now gone and I'm feeling bereft and miserable. In the 5 days with us we became very close and shared many aspects of our lives. I felt we made 30 new best friends and then they just went away and left us! We miss them.
Besides being one of the best, most exciting choral groups I've ever heard, they were also unformly gorgeous. Evidently there's not the same social stigma about classical music and choirs over there. The women looked like magazine models, and had brought the most incredible fashions with them. I would never have packed purple high heels to go on a choir tour, but hey, go the glam. The boys, oooooh, the boys. They looked like members of the Danish winter olympics team and, whenever the sun came out, whipped off their shirts to walk around topless. Heeeeelllllo! I'm moving to Denmark!
It was also great hearing the Danish language, which truly sounds like Martian-speak to us. They opened and ended their concert with a beautiful traditional Danish folksong, I Danmark er jeg fodt, so as a surprise for them one of us transcribed all the words by listening to their CD and wrote them down phonetically. At their farewell dinner we sang it back to them; yeah, there were many tears in the house. :-)

I also received many gifts from them as thanks for helping organise and host the choir members. Above you can see the present from one of the girls who stayed with me. It's a 4 year old organic balsamic apple vinegar, and it tastes incredible. It's from a line of products endorsed by the Danish celebrity chef, Claus Meyer (the Danish version of Gary Rhodes, I was told). I've already started splashing it over everything in sight, and this may seem really off, but it is outstanding on good vanilla icecream. It's interesting; the apple flavour is really enhanced, but the creaminess of the icecream tempers the acidity, so it tastes like incredibly good tangy apple flavoured icecream. Very highly recommended.
Next to it you can see a handmade glass bowl, made by Pernille Bülow which my other guest bought at a store, Illums Bolighus, I visited on the Strøget in Copenhagen when we were there in 2004. A store where it was too expensive to even breathe. Danish design is wonderful, and available everywhere over there, but cheap it aint. So, to be given something from that store was very special.
I also received some more Danish design in the form of designer pot stands for my kitchen. (Check out the amazing water jugs!!) The boys even got items from Georg Jensen; yikes! Pretty excellent gifts, with a really local flavour; and especially appropriate for me and my love of anything to do with the kitchen. It somewhat eased the pain of their departure, but not entirely. However, we're so keen to maintain our ties that it now looks like we'll be going back to Copenhagen in a few months. We weren't planning to tour that far north, but it's too good an opportunity to pass up. We found a learn to speak Danish website today. I'd better start brushing up; the plan is to be fluent by September! Lol!