Eels, Handball and English

It's fun to do international travel for business. I find that you actually learn more about common culture than you do as a tourist as you get to have prolonged conversations with locals about some of the more mundane aspects of life and still get to sample the food and see the architecture. An example of this is their view of the English language. On TV and in the theaters everything is in English so I can sit back and watch some MTV or Discovery channel and just have some Danish subtitles obscuring parts of my screen. I at first though it was the fact that there are only 5 million people who speak Danish (that's right, this whole country is about the size of Atlanta) and it just wouldn't be worth the effort for Hollywood and I'm sure that's a part of it. But my colleagues here said they have a strong belief in artistic integrity and if it was meant to be seen in English they watch it in English with the original actors speaking the words rather than dubbing. They also said Danish has a small vocabulary compared to English so many Danes think in English and use English to convey thoughts where words don't exist in Danish. For example, Danish has words for hate and love but nothing in the middle to convey when you're just not keen on something. Well click on the link above to try to learn the basics.

So another topic of discussion of local foods. They want to treat me to dinner a few nights this week and asked me what I wanted. I told them I can have steak and chicken anywhere, take me for something local and I'll eat anything all the way to sushi. Now I had steak last night (with a local flare) and probably will tonight too, but if I go out with locals I figure it's a better time to find hidden gems. So what is this area known for? Fried eel. I guess the lakes here have large populations of eel that they catch fresh. They told me about the Sargasso Sea where I guess all eels migrate to give birth, really interesting and still a lot of mystery too. Just click on the above link to learn more. Well that's dinner tomorrow, so look forward to that update :)

On the way back to the hotel my host pointed out a "world famous" handball player getting out of his car at my complex. For starters, are there famous handball players? I guess the Silkeborg team just paid top $ for him and he was headed to the health club here for a massage. Fame is a funny thing when someone can be famous to millions and a total stranger to me.

Oh, and from a business perspective, the reason why I'm here, the day was excellent too. Looking forward to a really good week, the people here are great.

Well I'm headed to Bone's restaurant in this complex with my hotel. It has a similar logo to the fancy Bone's steakhouse in Atlanta, but I guess here it's a family restaurant, so I guess we'll see and amend this later.