You should know that there are about 5.4 million Danes. The country is half the size of Maine but chopped up into chunks and spread out on the shore. Denmark contains many very blonde persons who love licorice. All kinds of licorice, mostly black. There must be 35 varieties of black licorice. Where in America you go into a small shop and find beef jerky at the cashier, in Denmark you find licorice. If I could read Danish I would tell you some of the kinds but I could only make out three or so – “family favorite,” “strong,” and “salty.” It comes shaped as tubes, pipes, coins, cats, herring and ropes.
Another interesting thing about Denmark is shortly before I went there my father informed me that the paternal ancestors were Danish, not Dutch as I always thought. He mentioned this is an off-hand way, whereas for me it was major news, like “by the way I never married your mother.” All my life I’ve been telling whoever asked that my ancestors were Dutch. But he says they were Danes who stopped briefly in the Netherlands, hollandizing their name (Van Sloat, I understand), before moving on to America. That ancestry was so defined that I’m truly having a small identity crisis, though my love of licorice may be explained.
Wednesday, July 25, 2007
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4 comments:
Interesting. Do they put licorice in their beer, too? It's great for head retention.
the swedish love licorice too. i HATE the stuff. and i mean that. it is DISGUSTING. your word verifier says "cxsug" which i am sure means "it sucks" in danish.
sloat does not sound very danish ...
my swedish is better than my danish, by far, but here is something: "hold haenderne over dynen" :)
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I LOVE licorice! Especially black, which you can not find in the States, very often. Americans love red licorice (which I find too sweet).
I think "Dane" sounds cooler than Dutch, if that helps out any. =P
i love licorice, too, though the salty kind freaks me out a bit. twizzlers, by the way, are not licorice! I don't know if the Danes put licorice in beer. I bet they do, though. There were shelves and shelves of micro-brewed beers in the supermarket. I mean, in a country with 5 million people, micro is in.
There used to be a tea company called Stash Tea (which I can never find anymore) that made a wonderful licorice spice tea.
My dad called today. he says that's what he hears about the danish-dutch thing. he doesn't know anything for sure. i'm telling myself it's not something to be upset about, but wait until i blog about the swedish tap dancer.
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