Liz's European Adventures: Rachel's Birthday!

Rachel turned 24 on sunday, November 9th. I love to make my friend's birthdays special...and the simple fact that we are living in Denmark is all the more reason to do so.

Rachel really wanted to have an American birthday party in our apartment, complete with American 'games.' Whenever we have discussed our two favorite games with our foreign friends (beer pong and flip cup), everyone has shown so much interest and has wanted to try the games with us. We figured Rachel's birthday was a great reason to throw this party...

To be able to play beer pong, there was some serious work that we had to do. We rearranged our entire apartment - we moved the bed up on its side and leaned it against the wall in the bedroom. We moved the loveseat, and brought the dining room table into the bedroom. We had to ask every Dane we knew where we could go get some scrap wood, and finally found a store that is close to a Lowe's or a Home Depot. We were able to find a steal.....a piece of scrap wood for 25 DKK...$5USD! Perfect. We had to carry this 8 foot long piece of wood home, which was around a 5 mile journey.

We were walking down the street and through intersections to the nearest bus stop. We decided that we would just take a chance by getting on the bus because it was so early in the morning and shouldn't be too busy. We got so many weird looks from everyone, which is something we are used to! We had to walk about 3 miles with a futon frame and another trip with the mattress when we moved into our apartment, and have a trip planned in the near future to move a bookcase/closet about 3 miles into our apartment. Without cars/SUV's, you have to be resourceful!

We spent the afternoon of Saturday, November 8th walking around Aarhus and doing some early Christmas shopping. We had lunch at our favorite sandwich shop (Dee Dee's - I will explain later), then went home and watched some American television on the internet. We got up, and got ready and went to have dinner at our favorite restaurant - Det grønne hjørne - the Green Corner - with our guys Kenneth and Johnny. Then it was time to get home to get ready for the party!

The party went off amazingly. We had about 30 people in our apartment, which is not a big apartment. For those of you who knew my St. Louis apartment, it is around the same size, and two of us live in it. One room had games of flip cup going on, while the other room had a beer pong tournament going. Needless to say, we had some serious cleaning to do afterwards. Later in the evening, we wanted to go dancing at Social Club, and ended up having to kick people out. The party was definitely a success.

For Rachel's actual birthday, I had planned a surprise for us. We made friends with a guy named Kristian who we met at our favorite cafe - Cafe Århus. He is essentially a zookeeper at a Randers Regnskov, a Danish indoor tropical zoo in Randers, Denmark, which is about a 45 minute bus ride away from where we live. I arranged it with Kristian that Rachel and I would get a behind the scenes tour, and get to play with the animals, feed them and touch them. Rachel loves animals, and everything turned out amazing! Plus, on our way to the bus stop, we stopped at.........McDonald's for lunch! This is a definite treat for us, because it costs over $10 USD for an extra value meal. No wonder Europeans are skinny!

Kristian met us at the bus stop and was waving a tiny American flag for Rachel, and had a present wrapped up (it ended up being a cute stuffed crocodile, which he planned because he knew we would be holding crocodiles). For those of you who know me and my huge fear of snakes (thanks Tim and Kevin!), I was amazing that day. Though I stood like 30 feet away and didn't make direct eye contact, I took pictures of Rachel while she was holding huge snakes, and let them wrap around her neck. At one point, I even went into this scary snake room where the snakes are not behind cages, but just hanging around. I stood in one place in the center of the room, and was sweating the whole time, but I did it for Rachel. Needless to say, I deleted those pictures as soon as possible, so you will not be seeing any of those.

The day was amazing for both Rachel and I, and we have found another great friend in Kristian.

On the #8 bus (our favorite bus!) carrying our piece of plywood, aka our beer pong table.

Johnny and Kenneth concentrating hard on beer pong.

Johnny and Kenneth

Randers Tropical Zoo

We were able to go behind the fence with these guys. There was a mom, dad and baby. The baby kept biting Rachel in the leg. I stayed away from him!

Kristian had a story about every animal. These parrots do not like him because he had to take away the yellow one's girlfriend from him because she was sick. He is squawked at by these birds every time he walks by them.

Kristian and a baby something. It was cute, and kind of funny because the mom doesn't like him either, and ran away when we came to see them!

A huge iguana.

The ducks just roam around amongst you.

We got to pet an armadillo...they are actually softer than you would think.

These little monkeys were so cute. This zoo is unlike American zoos because the animals can come up next to you, if they choose to. You get much more close.

Feeding the manatees carrots. They were really sweet!

Kristian was so good with the kids and other passer-bys. He would stop and talk to them and explain to them what he was doing. We saw so many more things at the zoo then we would have ever seen on our own, and learned so much more. At one point, he told the crowd in Danish that we were zookeepers from America, which is why we were able to be behind the fences with him!