God Jul!

As this is our first married Christmas together we decided to spend it in Copenhagen and have a traditional Danish Christmas. This is largely the same as a Christmas in the UK but with a few small differences. The Danes enjoy their Christmas meal on Christmas Eve, when they also open their presents (which means I got to open my socks a day earlier than usual). Their traditional meal is "flaeskestegt" (pronounced "flay-ska-sty") which is roast pork (with crackling), red cabbage and caramelised potatoes. Very good, believe me. And they do amazing chocolates which nearly all contain marzipan (great if, like me, you love marzipan!).

Christmas Eve is the traditional family day when everyone stays in, generally eats too much, watches TV and plays games but Christmas Day is very social with most people venturing out for walks, ice-skating or even going to the cinema.

We went ice-skating on the main square, Kongens Nytorv (just 2 minutes walk from the flat). Predictably I was the only one who fell over.. but despite the slight bruising, it was a lot of fun. We were all put to shame by two tots who, complete with ice-hockey helmets and pads, stormed around the rink doing jigs, jumps, spins and all sorts.. show offs.

The weather has been cold but dry so unfortunately no snow.. but the forecast for New Year is very cold (with temperatures not getting above freezing) with the possibility of snow.. can't wait! It has been another relatively mild winter here so far with only a sprinkling of snow so far. Apparently in some winters it is possible to walk across the ice from Copenhagen to Sweden... but no sign of a big freeze just yet. Maybe it's all to come in January...

Wishing you all a "God Jul" and a "Glaede Nytar".


PS For those of you wondering what happened in Bali at the climate change negotiations, the outcome was an agreement to a negotiating process (involving all countries) with an end date of 2009 to agree on a post-2012 framework (when the first commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol expires). This is good news but the agreement to talks was the easy bit. Now comes the real hard negotiations on what each country's share of the overall greenhouse gas reductions should be. This promises to make Bali look like a walk in the park.