Monthly Archives: December 2014

Chop your own Christmas tree

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During December, especially during the weekend, you will see a lot of cars driving around with Christmas trees either on their roof or in trailers (or even in the car!). This to me is one of the ways that the arrival of Christmas in Denmark is marked, especially since in Malta we typically made do with plastic Christmas trees (and garish lighting…according to Michael!).

Since moving to Denmark I have made sure that we have a Christmas tree every year, even in the years we were not to spend Christmas in our own house. Previously we bought a ready-cut tree. However, since we now have our very own house we decided to ‘upgrade’ to a tree we chose and chopped down ourselves.

Where to chop down your own Christmas tree

Chopping down your own Christmas tree is called ‘Fæld selv’ in Danish. Driving around the countryside you will often find signs during late November/December pointing the way to places where you can do this. If you receive ‘Sonderborg Ugeavis‘ you can also find a page of adverts on one of the pages (on pg. 9 this week, but for some reason this page is missing on the online version). Otherwise, in general, most places are located on Kær, near Augustenborg, near Nordborg, in Syd Als and Vester Sottrup.

The Experience

We opted to go and look for our tree on Kær, since this was the closest to us. We borrowed a trailer from our lovely neighbour (an upgrade from putting the tree inside the car as we have previously done, and contending with tree needles all year round) and off we drove till we found a place close to the airport. We parked our car and walked to the Christmas tree field.

Christmas Tree Sønderborg

Once you arrive at the field you then have free reign to walk over the place till you identify the perfect tree for you. Everyone will have their own preferences…wide at the bottom, full on top, 2m high, 1 m wide or whatnot. We saw a perfect tree as soon as we walked in, but thought we’d look a bit further. Nevertheless, we returned to the first tree we saw!

And the tree is cut

Once you identify the perfect tree you can then pick up a saw and go at the tree trunk till the tree is free. You then drag it over to the field entrance, where the owner is there ready to take your money (200 DKK in this case) and also put your tree in a net to make it easier to carry. At the place we visited we also could get some cake and a tractor was there ready to carry you back to the car.

Christmas Tree Als

The result? A Christmas tree in our front room, all ready to be decorated, receive presents, and to be danced around in the coming days!

Rock and Roll Christmas from the tax minister

It is not everyday we see a Danish minister of government bring out the rock and roll guitar. But the current minister of tax, Benny Engelbrecht, loves to sing so he decided to create a Christmas greeting in the form of a music video with his hobby band “Benny and the True Taxmen”.

Benny Engelbrecht is from Adsbøl outside Gråsten and has played music for many years. After becoming minister he has also jumped on the stage, most recently in Gråsten at the Apple Festival.

Takeaway Days: Hungry.dk

Takeaways are very popular in Denmark, especially in university towns such as Sonderborg. The most abundant establishments (by far) are pizzerias (or… pizzarias, as they tend to be called here), offering seating at small tables in the waiting area, as well as delivery.

One of the ways of ordering online is through aggregate websites that help you find takeaways that deliver in your area, select what you want and order. One of these websites is hungry.dk, which seems to be the new kid on the block, having slightly fewer restaurants on the list in the Sønderborg area than similar websites. We decided to try it out one Friday evening when the wind was blowing, the rain was pouring and we were out of food!

Starting with the website itself, it is quite easy to use. I liked the fact that the different menu sections can be collapsed so I didn’t need to scroll down through e.g. burgers if it was pizzas I was interested in. I also liked that at the top they showed you the most popular dishes, as it helps tell you what is good from that place. The rest of the website is, as should be expected, easy to use, even allowing you to very easily select extra toppings for your pizza at the ordering page rather than at the paying page (or just by writing in a text field).

We decided to try Oasen – a couple of friends have spoken fondly of this place. Order through… now you just need to wait. The waiting time given was of 75 minutes, but the pizza arrived with no issues whatsoever within the hour. All in all very good service and I look forward to seeing more restaurants added to the list.

Disclosure: We were offered a voucher for 150 DKK in exchange for trying out the hungry.dk website and writing about it. The opinions on the website are our own.