ii.

Sanskrit supposedly has 96 words for love. Greenland has many, many words for snow. And Denmark has many different words for ... blonde hair color. At least that's what I learned from a Danish colleague over lunch last week. Here's how it goes: her friend traveled to Argentina and was there for a few months. She is blonde, and she was with another woman who had light brown hair. But to the Argentinians, they both were 'rubia'. There wasn't any difference to people in that country. But my colleague's friend was shocked because to her, light brown hair was very different than blonde hair. At least in Denmark. And the Argentinians had many different names for tones of brown and black hair, but to her they they only seemed 'brown' or 'black'-haired. Isn't language funny like that? The world around us engenders our language, language creates our filter of culture, everything is shades, yadda yadda.

Yeah, this is not lunch. But...I did have a good brunch last week.

I didn't realize the Danes have so many words for types of blondes. "Yes," my colleague said. "For example - my hair is very dull, it's not very blonde - it's lys leverpostej." I laughed out loud. Lys leverpostej means light liver pate blonde. Google liver pate if you don't know what I'm talking about. I asked my roommate later and she said Danes most certainly have different names for different blonde types of hair, and started rattling them off: "There's Norwegian blonde - that's more silvery, very white blonde - and Swedish blonde, that's more corn, more gold, and leverpostej, and. . . "

I asked my colleague at lunch what she thought Americans had a lot of words for, and she said 'polite manner words'. 'Please' and 'thank you' and 'how are you' and 'charming' and 'you're welcome' and 'may i', etc. There is no word for please in the Danish language. We talked about how American culture compared to Danish culture, as seen through language, is a lot of verbal dancing. The niceties you go through, the words you learn, the gestures. How easily offended we can get. How we scold our children if they don't say please, even though telling someone to tell someone else please really defeats the purpose because the word can then become a hollow sort of chore. How we say a lot of things we don't mean, like 'how are you' as a breeze-by greeting gesture.

I read somewhere that - and I think this is the best way to begin to describe Danish interaction to a foreigner, seeing as I'm a foreigner myself - if you think of how your immediate family interacts, that is how Danes interact. You've grown up with your family. You don't really need to use niceties every day. You're direct. You can weather certain jokes and a fair level of inappropriateness because you're all close. You come from such a strong base level of connection that you don't have to tip-toe around as much. Now think of an entire society, for the most part, acting that way, and you're closer to how Danish communication differs from American communication. Denmark is so small and insular and homogenous that the starting point for communication is one of much more shared references and backgrounds. Obviously that has its problems, too.

It was a good lunch conversation, something to mull over without trying to rush to black and white conclusions about either country.

iii.

coconut curry hokkaido pumpkin soup

4 cloves of garlic, minced

1 knob of ginger, around 1×1′ chunk (but if you’re a ginger lover, you can double this), diced

1 medium sized onion, diced

3 tablespoons olive oil

2 teaspoons curry powder

1 tsp salt, 1 tsp pepper

1/3 cup coconut milk, any kind (light, full-fat, your choice)

1 bouillon cube

3 cups water

3 fingerling potatoes, cubed

1 medium hokkaido pumpkin, cut into 1′ sized chunks, seeds removed

Combine garlic, ginger, onion, olive oil, curry powder, salt and pepper in a soup pot over medium heat and cook until the onions have softened. Add coconut milk, bouillon cube, water, potatoes, and pumpkin. Cover, reduce stove to low-medium heat, and let simmer for around 25 minutes, or until both the pumpkins and potatoes are completely soft when pierced with a fork. Use an immersion blender to blend all of the soup. Top with Sriracha, pumpkin seeds, or a dash of cream.