Farewell Denmark

It's Tuesday evening - it just happened before I could really get a hold of this day. I just barely managed to make a list of what to do before it was all over. My Danish experience, the Danishly flavored education, my life in the suburbs, call it whatever you want - it's coming to an end. I have a ferry ticket home on Thursday morning. Another stress factor. Thursday seems so far away on Monday, it's still more or less a week, but on Tuesday afternoon, Thursday morning, is actually just a day away. Things change, and that's the way it goes. So, while I started my day reading in an article about the ethics of _Our Common Future_ (by Oluf Langhelle, it was quite interesting, actually, it should have been in the ESST at Aalborg University curriculum, if there'd been one), I soon realized that I should start terminating everything. Library books everywhere. 10 beer cases, which constitute my bed. Empty bottles. Garbage. John's luggage under the stair. It all - all of a sudden - has to go. Money, as we know, is a driving force, so I started returning the beer cases, which brought be outside to check the mail. Mail, so far in Denmark, is bad news. Bills this, bills that. No news is good news. There is never no mail, someone always leaves ads, but in between children's toys and cheap Danish beer ads, I found a little white note, reading:

Your garden is unattended. It must be brought to order withing 8 days.



I miss some kind of "Or else...". Anyways, I had actually been thinking about moing the lawn. We have no lawn mower, of course, so that's a challenge. But seriously, I had been thinking about arranging something. Until now. Reading this short but stern message certainly didn't bring out any good will and mutual understanding. However, perhaps as intended, the absence of this "or else..." leads you to imagine all kinds of possible scenarios that you'd rather not experience, so I set about to find a solution. After unsuccessfully bribing someone to do it for me, or making contact with the one neighbor I had actually talked to, I had to contact our closest neighbor, the ones with the huge barking dog and the small barking dog, with a garden so messed up by the aforementioned two dogs, that the "lawn" is just a few straws sticking out here and there. Though, acknowledging that these were probably not the ones with the best seleciton in lawn mowers, I rung the bell. After all, like most people, they probably - at one point in life - had some kind of ambition of a decent garden, probably long before the dogs made their appearance. And sure enough, the red nosed man behind the door (surprisingly able to understand my feeble attempt of normalizing my language) produced an old, rusty, dog-poo-infested, one-man-powered, yellow lawn mower. It was kind of a struggle, and it's not beatiful per se, but there is a slight improvement. My only worry now, is if someone actually comes to check in 8 days, my little amelioration might be undermined by time, the sun, and photosynthesis.



I notice now, again, as I did right before christmas, and last fall, that earthly possessions are, for lack of a better expression: a pain in the ass. Once again, I'm stuck carrying my stuff around. And, as I am not settled - with wife, kids, a labrador, and, in this setting: a station wagon, I tend to end up moving my stuff by means of manual labor. I am counting the mentioned beer cases as my earthly possessions, which might be stretching it, but more importantly, my speakers and amplifier have been moved around too much the last 3 years. Buying it was stupid. I should have gotten something more portable back then. But to be fair, a sound system has been nice to have. Everything has its ups and downs. Everything is stock in black and white, as some Danes once put it. Aside from Saybia and other scarce mental and physical Danish memorabilia, I have recently procured some Danish artifcats. Although I have no relation to the Aalborg Football Club, nor any aquired affection for neither this town, nor its people, I couldn't say no to the offer of twelve pairs of Aalborg FC (or Aalborg Boldklub) socks. That's right: socks. Socks are now going to be my most tangiable memory from this place. Coming home and trying on the socks revealed that the logo was a little bit more gaudy than I had expected. But... they'll do.



Now all that remains is cleaning and tying up the loose ends. I've turned in my locker key, and I just remembered I need to give up my fake Danish citizenship. The latter should have been done 14 days ago, but I'm sure I'm not causing an international crisis by being late. I've also tried to make us of the one thing that is good about Aalborg university: the library print quote (it's not the same as anywhere else on campus - that would be too easy). So today I went and printed out a rough guide to Linux and my IBM user manual - and made front pages in color. Nice. Now I can be slightly better prepared for ditching Windows - and perhaps do some more troubleshooting on my laptop. But, hey, my laptop has not crashed since 26.05.2006 17:06, which is not bad. That's almost 100 hours, which isn't anything to get cocky about, but it's a step up from what I've been used to lately. I've been moving the chips around a little, and now my PC seems pretty stable, but it's only running with 128 MB of RAM, which is a slight pain. What is interesting is that the RAM chips in my computer are different from what crucial suggests for my computer, different from each other, and the Hyundai label on the one side of the original one differs from what it says on the IBM warranty label on the other. So who knows really. I trust the ones that made it to be fair.





Well, anyways. Maybe I should do something more productive. This is the end of "Benjamin@Aalborg" though. Not I guess it should be "Benjamin on the Run". Bye for now. Bye to Aalborg.