Thursday morning, Bodil was shoveling snow on the deck of Jensine. Crazy really, considering it was easter in Denmark, and usually the spring flowers are starting to peek out from the dirt. But this year it had snowed during the night – a snowfall that meant that Esben and I had to drive with a speed of 60 km/h from the Elbe until we hit the highway, and eventually arrived in Årøsund at 2am the night before.
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When we arrived in Bremerhaven more than seven years ago, we had no idea we would be staying for so long. But now it is coming to an end. This summer my contract is ending and we will be leaving. Continue reading
Esben travels quiet a lot for work. Usually he’s home for two weeks and then away for two weeks. Lately, he has spent most of the time in France, England and Northern Ireland, and we have often talked about how nice and easy it would be to go on a weekend trip in connection with his work. But somehow it’s not so easy in reality. Until now. Continue reading
Every time we go to the city centre of Bremerhaven, we pass by a large submarine in the harbor. And every time we pass, Mattis yells “I want to visit the submarine!” Visiting is actually straightforward, as it’s part of the German Maritime Museum in Bremerhaven, but somehow we never made it – until now. Continue reading
“But where were the polar bears?” We were all on our way back to the car after visiting AWI’s ice breaker, the Polarstern – and Mattis has learned enough about my work to know that Polarstern equals ice and snow, which apparently equals polar bears. But they were not there. We did, however, see a helicopter, labs, sleeping quarters and even a film with penguins – but no polar bears. Continue reading
After finishing our three-week trip onboard Chip-Chip sailing south of Fyn, Sjælland and in the Kattegat, Esben had to go back to work. But the Kindergarten and school was closed for another week, so I had signed the kids and me up for a one week sailing trip on Jensine, going with my mom and dad and a bunch of other people. Continue reading
One of the reasons that it is possible for us to live in Germany is that Esben usually travels for his job. The way it works is that he is out two weeks at the time, currently mainly in France or the UK, and then he works from home for two weeks. The consequence is of course that I am alone with two kids in a foreign country for two weeks at a time while also having a full time job. But it’s okay. Because when Esben is at home, he is truly at home, being able to pick up the kids a bit earlier and occasionally coming in to join me for lunch. Also, we have arranged our life so that it’s logistically possible to be alone with the kids; we live right next to Mattis’ kindergarten, which is located right next to Runa’s school. So mornings are easy. And my job is a 20 minute drive away. Continue reading
We don’t really have a tiny house, but considering that there’s four of us sharing our 85 m2 we do have a relatively small apartment. What we have is two bedrooms, combined kitchen and livingroom – and a garden. We actually wanted more space, it seems that everybody has more space, right? But it turns out that small works out great for us, at least so far. Continue reading
Crushed. That’s the word the doctors used to describe the bones in my right arm after I slipped an fell 3m down on hard ground from our sailboat. I am not even sure what happened, I wanted to remove some tape, it was a bit slippery after the rain, and suddenly I felt myself falling. I screamed when I hit the ground, and then I stopped because I couldn’t breathe. When I regained control of my breath I screamed for help, and I could see a man come running towards me. Continue reading
Renovations are going on all over the city of Bremerhaven, but for Germans, Bremerhaven is still pretty much synonymous with unemployment and high poverty rates. I didn’t know anything about that when I was finishing my physical oceanography studies in Gothenburg and started looking for a job. At the time, Esben was already working abroad most of the time and we had our one-year old daughter to also consider. As Esben is somewhat free regarding his home base, I could look for jobs outside of Denmark, but because of our daughter Runa we preferred to not be within driving distance from Denmark. Continue reading
