Exploring my Danish roots

expatriate daydreams

I've been obsessed with Denmark for a long time now. It's a combination of liberal politics, collectivist culture, savvy urban planning, history, landscape and climate, tall men, you name it and I'm drawn to it. For those that know me well, take 17 seconds to scroll down the landing page of this website and tell me if every single highlight isn't so perfectly me. It just feels comfortable, like home. And it is home, in a way.

My mom's dad's family is Swedish, full of Malmquists and Bjornbergs from Stockholm. Her mom's line is a common English/Irish/UK mix. My dad's maternal line is Russian and German. My genes go back to Chester A. Arthur - US President No.21, John Williams - advocate of religious freedom, freedom from religion, and founder of Providence, Rhode Island,  a woman my gramma referred to only as "the Jewish gypsy" (love that), and other assorted characters I've yet to learn about.

However, for whatever reason, I feel most drawn to Denmark and to the experiences of my dad's dad, Otto Jessen. He came to the states at age 23 in 1929, from Alslev and then Ravnsbjerg, Denmark.

One of the lingering regrets of my life is that I didn't tune into this passion for Denmark until my grandpa Otto had already passed away in the spring semester of my freshman year at college. I wasted so many vacations in Iowa being a teenager and doing what teenagers do, which is waste time. If I could go back I would record every single story and word out of his mouth, I'd ask so many questions.

Part of My Happiness Project in 2013 is to research my Danish roots. Genealogy has to start somewhere and I'm starting with Otto and working my way back. A secondary reason I'm doing this, in addition to my primary desire to learn all about his life, is to generate energy around my goal to live in Denmark. Not to take a vacation. Not to enroll is whatever PhD will get me over there for a couple years. To live. Live for real. For a long time. I've researched expat websites and yes, even a few grueling doctoral program. I'm unclear for now as to how to make it happen. But again, even that has to start somewhere. In a small way, I feel like the three hours I spent at the Family History Library this weekend moved me in the right direction.

The Great Dane, per his declaration, grandpa Otto.

Here is what I learned so far:

Otto was born 28 September 1905 in Alslev (parish), Skast (district), Ribe (county).

He was child number seven for Kristen Thomsen Jessen and Dorthea Marie Andersen. Older siblings include: Karen Kristine (1891), Niels Paulsen (1896), Ane Katrine (1898), Anton Marinus (1899), Dagmar (1901), and Egner (1904). Herluf came after Otto in 1908.

Dorthea was 42 years old when she had Otto. In 1905. In farmland rural Denmark. And he was child number seven. The woman was not messing around. #vikingstock

Kristen, in some census records spelled Christen, and Dorthea Marie were born and christened (Lutheran) in the same parish of Tistrup (also in Ribe, the same county in which Otto was born). Kristen was a farmer, as was Otto once he made it to Iowa. Kristen was five years older than his wife. He passed away in July 1931, and Dorthea followed in April 1932, a couple years after Otto arrived in the United States.

I found the entire family (minus unborn Herluf) listed in a 1906 census (folketællings) in Alslev, where Otto had just been born in 1905. I found a birth record (fødte kirkebøger (look at me go)) for Herluf in Alslev in 1908, but then the family is not in the 1911 census for that parish. Where does a farmer, tied to the land, take a wife and eight children in 190-something? That's a mystery I get to work on next time.

It's a surreal feeling, to find something like this and actually see it on paper. 

I also found the passenger list for the ship that brought Otto to America. He said he was born in Alslev, but his last residence was in Ravnsbjerg. His travel visa was issued in September 1928, so I tried to find census records from Ravnsbjerg in 1925 (the last record before 1930, when he was already gone). That city doesn't exist in the census records. It's thrown me for a loop and I can't figure out why they wouldn't have done a census there. Google Earth circa 2013 shows all sorts of life and stuff going on in Ravnsbjerg, Denmark; but for some reason, 1925 census workers weren't keen on it. I need to know what county and district it's in (which I couldn't figure out online, but that would help).

At any rate, it was the first time I've ever done any research like this and I'm already looking forward to my next trip to the library. Granted many of the research sites are available to me online (i.e. the statens arkivers  (Danish state archives at Arkivalieronline.dk), but the itty bitty Danish grandmother who works at the Scandinavian research desk does not get to come home with me. She was enthusiastic, excited by the double ss in my last name, and helpful in teaching me all sorts of useful words that will no doubt help me navigate Denmark once I arrive:

kirkebøger: church record

søg: search

opslag: page

folketælling: census

amt: county

sogn: parish

herred: district

landsogn: rural

fødte: birth

døbte: baptism

copulerede: marriage

døde: death

begravede: burials

Oh yeah, I'll be the hit of expat singles mixer. Just you wait, Denmark. Just you wait.

Style Statement | My featured guest post

My friend Miranda hosts a weekly guest feature on her blog, Friday Favorites. She asked me to contribute and my post is live on her site today. I decided to write about interior design, Style Statement, and tuning into what moves you. 

My home sweet home

Her blog is beautiful, her writing is engaging, and we share so many interests and hobbies. I encourage you to not only read my guest post, but also check out the rest of her site. 

Budapest, part one.

Budapest was the first stop on my recent European vacation. After sprinting through the Paris airport - with a 60 minute connection in which we switched two terminals via train, cleared passport check, and navigated another round of security - we arrived in Hungary. Our luggage did not. Since we knew ahead of time we'd have to sprint in Paris, we packed only purses with iPads and iPods and lip gloss. This did not bode well for what would become four full days without my luggage. You do the math. Then continue to do the laundry in our little cruise ship bathroom sink. Not cool. Enough said.

Dear Air France, Thanks a lot for the elveszett poggyasz.

Thankfully Viking River Cruises arranged our transfer from the airport to the ship, so we avoided this highly dangerous situation...

#lostintranslation

Lost luggage and L'Occitane lemon verbena shampoo scented underwear aside, we were greeted by posh accommodations. The Viking Longships were completed earlier in 2012, so we were sailing pretty in a brand new boat.

...as seen sponsoring PBS Masterpiece Classic, if that gives you any indication as to the situation on board.

Our Viking Odin Longship sitting pretty under Budapest's Chain Bridge.

Internationally recognized as the cardinal rule for beating jetlag: If the locals are awake, so are you. I'm not able to sleep on airplanes, so rounding the corner into my twenty-eigth hour of no sleep meant rules be damned. After a 45 minute power nap, it was off to the Christmas Market with a handful of fellow Viking travelers. Tourists on the move.

Complimentary umbrellas = savvy marketing.

Similar to when I walked out of the metro and saw the Colosseum for the first time, fully realizing I was finally in Rome, this building will always be my first memory of Budapest. It lit up right outside our ship as I groggily sat up from my not-so-powerful jet lag nap. As I climbed the hill from the river to the city, it sank in, I had arrived.

I mean, seriously. Budapest is kind of ugly. #irony

This was my first European Christmas Market. What a charming memory to kick off the season. I was so swamped at work, preparing to be gone for over three weeks, that I hadn't really tuned in to the approaching holidays. This put me in the spirit instantly. It's like a summer arts festival in the states, and it's full of locals eating dinner and socializing over hot wine. I think I expected more artisan than arts and crafts, but to be fair there was a mix of both at this particular market. I was also excited to see how the markets changed in all the different regions, countries, and cities we visited (stay tuned, Blog Reader, stay tuned). 

Christmas Market in the town square.

I google translated this sign. It was oh so useful in telling me it means "Mikulas package"

Trendsters Unite! Mason jars have officially been declared a global movement.

Cute. Edible. And used as Christmas tree ornaments. 

Not cute. Not edible (para mi). Not used as Christmas tree ornaments. 

Local culinary fare.

Hot wine. Hot Hungarian man. Check. Check. 

Locals meeting friends for dinner. I appreciated how not-touristy this market felt. 

And you thought it was only the stuff of shabby chic pinterest weddings in the states. 

A tradition I came to love was the Christmas tree in every town square. Larger cities that have 
multiple town squares had a tree and a market in every neighborhood. I love that. 

By the time I walked back to the ship it was dark outside and the rain made everything impossibly romantic. The journey back looked a bit like this...

Metro, that I didn't need for my short distance, but that I found beautiful.

This couple, however, decided to take the metro. In heels and fur, no less. 

See? Romantic. I need more cobblestones in my life. 

I know, it's postcard perfect. This city is the first of many. Get used to it.

Another favorite memory was the moment we opened our curtains for the first time, gasped, and realized our floor to ceiling glass doors were framing the Chain Bridge. We'd only been in the lounge and not really explored our sense of space on the ship yet. It was decided: We slept with our curtains wide open all night long. Actually, we slept with our curtains open the entire trip. We didn't want to miss the random castles floating past in the night, the fires burning and lights flickering in little villages, the terrifying locks (wait for it). 

Yes, I'm laying on the bed with my feet sticking out the window into the icy night.

Next post coming soon: Hero's Square, and Fisherman's Bastion and Matthias Church on Castle Hill.

Photo Series: Budapest

Budapest (12-2012), a set on Flickr.

This represents a fairly wholesale upload of all my Budapest photos into a Flickr set. We only had two half days...full of fierce jet lag, lost luggage, and blindingly thick fog. I need to give Budapest another shot. It's a beautiful city and I did what I could to capture it in a trifecta of non-optimal conditions. Enjoy!

Why this time might be different.

Anyone who knows me well is familiar with the intensity of my organizational habits. Which is a polite way of saying that I'm fairy sure, if I bothered to be diagnosed, I'm functioning with a considerable degree of OCD. It works for me though. I don't know anything else and I've maintained this intensity since I was a toddler; long before it was a conscious decision. With that information in hand, one might assume I live for new year's resolutions, for progress charts and gold stars. I don't. Not in my personal life anyway. My career is intense and I tend to like a chill atmosphere at home (yes, mom, I am aware that my chill is still a frequency most couldn't reach if they tried on their most manic day). 

Yet, here I was, rounding the corner into 2013 on my laptop generating 21 Evernotes related to The Happiness Project. Before I left for Europe I created a Facebook event inviting 20 or so friends to my condo for monthly brunches and conversations about happiness. Before creating the event I was in Hawaii reading Gretchen Rubin's book poolside. Before diving into her text, something was gnawing at me that prompted me to buy the book sight unseen from the airport bookshop in the first place. So, somewhere between Point A and Point B, I realized something has to give. 

OCD, meet The Happiness Project.

The genius of Rubin's thesis is that happiness is exactly no more and no less than you define it to be. If you decide you would be happier going to bed an hour earlier, do it. Happy. Done. She has no grand delusions of nirvana. I appreciate that. Neither do I. I may have a dormant romantic streak, but at the end of the day I'm pretty practical about it all. That practicality exploded into Evernote and snowballed through a series of reflections, mind maps, photographs, songs, and finally...The List. 

If I'm going to do something, I'm going to do it right. And by "right" I mean intensely. At first I thought I would create a theme for each month, as Rubin did. But the more I got into it, the more my list reflected goals that I wanted to accomplish daily, weekly, monthly, and long-term. For the first 4 months of this year I laid out a schedule of sorts (re-learn the guitar for one hour per week, send six Postcrossing cards per month, one photowalk adventure per month, etc). It's nothing earth shattering, but it led me to admit a truth I'd only vaguely acknowledged until now. 

My college textbook. I'm old.

I'm still living with a grad school hangover. Furthermore, what's extra lame, I'm only living with that hangover because I'm choosing to. It's been 18 months. Snap out of it already. But 'it' was the devil I know and...its own version of comfortable. In grad school I consciously shut down life, even breaking up with my hopelessly-devoted and apparently-distracting boyfriend just before classes started. Healthy or not, I focused only on career, school, travel. To be fair, working full-time as a new administrator, taking a full-time load of graduate classes, and traveling all over the country for work every 3 weeks was plenty to deal with. What this meant however, is that the stuff I love doing, the stuff that I wake up on an unplanned Saturday and choose to do, has been dormant for over three years now. Not entirely dormant, that's not accurate, but dormant to a degree that I acutely feel a deficit in my life. No more. 

I know myself, though. I know myself all too well. Since I'm not keen on resolutions, I've invited 20 friends over for brunch to ask me if I'm still playing the guitar. It's not entirely selfish. I'm genuinely excited to hear about everyone's version of a Happiness Project. I'm also genuinely excited about the creative space and the progressive energy this will generate. I live for that. I just forgot for a while.