I finally managed to find the time to write a few lines after returning to Copenhagen, home sweet home.
Last week we finished our (very nice) Australia trip with yet another slightly annoying two-days-without-sleep trip from down under to up here. Actually it also had it’s nice moments: on our flight from Abu Dhabi we had comforting two four-seat rows and a baby bed for the three of us. There were only in total 60 passengers on a plane with 280 seats. Dunno how this works out for the economics of the airline, but I wanna fly this way all the time now. Unfortunately our six hours stay in Düsseldorf and the subsequent flight were already much less pleasing. Well, the flight was actually fine.
Arriving in Copenhagen we actually had worse weather than when leaving in Sydney (remember it’s winter down there these days). It’s good to be back ;)
Well actually it was not all good, since I was fighting a mixture of lack of sleep and jetlag for the past days … but I think I finally defeated it today.
Maybe to add a few more lines about Australia, Sydney in particular …
We had a couple of days in Sydney after the end of ICHEP. Which we basically spent with walking half of Sydney, the Manly peninsula and various beach/costal walks.
Same as Melbourne, it’s a really nice city. The weather was quite a bit better and we actually got slightly sunburned (once again, it’s winter down there).
I put up a few panoramas in my gallery’s Cities and Nature folders … maybe I’ll add a few more later.
Thanks to my little one I actually managed to be awake for the last transit of Venus in this century … yeah! He also gave me enough time to set up my telescope and after some breakfast (at least for him) also to follow the happening for almost two hours until the little black dot disappeared at about 6:55 am.
You’ve probably heard of geo caching before … so did I, but never really cared. But after my parents got pretty excited about it last week and we had two good friends and passionate geo cachers as visitors for the weekend (greetz L&M), we decided to combine our little Copenhagen tourist tour with a little geo hunt :)
After discovering seven caches on Saturday, it seems it caught me and I finally registered on Sunday to join the hunt …
It seems like a nice thing to do to see place you otherwise might end up going … we’ll see.
Only the pricing model of GeoCaching.com is something I did and still do not really fancy!
With only the basic and free account you simply cannot do much :( Also the Android app costs about seven euros.
Fortunately there is c:geo for Android which is free and my choice for now … though it has some troubles in the offline mode that I haven’t figured out yet.
… is the name of the restaurant that has been rated “The World’s Best” both in 2010 and 2011, located in the Copenhagen Harbour.
In addition it is the restaurant that Heike and me got invited to by my family for both our 30th birthdays. And after finally getting a table and a three months waiting time we finally had our evening yesterday. Actually we happend to have a night! I reserved the table for 19h30 and we left the place at about 0h30 in the night.
And what should I say it was certainly an extraordinary experience!
We had in total 24 dishes and nine different juices (as we decided to go for the non-alcoholic menu). Eleven starters along with a red apple juice like nothing we’ve ever tasted, before we were even asked for our choice of menu and drinks for the night. The actual twelve-course menu spread from “Fallen Apple” over “Onions and thyme” and “The hen and the egg” to “Walnut and berries”. An in case you wonder about my math … we got an extra dish as we expressed slight dislike towards one of the dishes :)
In general, I have to say that not just in variety of food and ideas, but also in our personal like/dislike in taste we had a wide spread. Most of the dishes were extremely surprising and great, but as usual one doesn’t like everything. That’s the good thing about having a lot of dishes …
As a final judgement I guess I have to say that it has been a once in a life-time evening … meaning that I am very happy we did it, but I am not sure if I would spend that kinda money again.
The eleven starters
Malt flatbread and juniper (it was actually already in our table flower pot from the beginning)
Nasturtium and snail (a snail in an eatable flower)
(fried moss served on a moss plate)
Leek and seaweed butter (fried leek root stuffed with seaweed)
Blue mussel (blue mussels served with a dressing in an eatable shell)
Crispy pork and black current
Fjord shrimp and browned butter (to be eaten on ice and alive)
Rye bread, chicken skin, peas and lovage (kind of a toast with fried chicken skin)
Pickled and smoked quails egg
Radish, soil and grass (selection of radish in a cream bread crumb dressing looking like soil)
Toast, herbs, smoked cod roe and vinegar
The twelve + 1 menu dishes
Apple and Jerusalem artichoke, Garden sorrel and coriander (an apple looking like fallen of a tree in a coriander sauce)
Scallop and grains, watercress and beech nut (boiled de-hydrated scallop along with other things)
Stone crab and seaweed, beach mustard and rape seed
Vegetable and butter milk (salad like dish, with local vegetables)
Onion and thyme, goose berry juice (fried onions with thyme in a goose berry juice)
Cabbage and fresh cheese (salad like dish with a self-made cheese)
Celeriac and truffels (slowly fried knob celery with a crust along with truffels)
The hen and the egg (a fry-it-yourself egg sunny side up with herbs and a potato chip)
Beef cheeks, wild mushrooms and greens from the hedgerow
“Gammel dansk” and wood sorrel (sorrel with traditional danish schnaps)
Pear tree! (???)
Rhubard and juniper
Walnut and berries (walnut ice cream, walnut foam with frozen berries dust)
