Cedar Point: Worst Amusement Park, Ever.

Over the weekend, my (wonderful. don't let the 'ex' prefix fool you) ex-boyfriend decided that he had to visit Cedar Point Amusement Park in Sandusky, Ohio. Apparently their craptastic website wasn't quite crappy enough to deter him (Planet Snoopy? Seriously? ...And then the picture following for Group Tickets looks like a montage of SpEd field trips, the 'Castaway Bay' guy looks constipated... I could go on for ages... see for yourself.). Maybe he didn't visit the website beforehand and was just looking for a fun, out of the the ordinary weekend activity? Maybe he just didn't believe it could be as bad as the pictures make it look? Unfortunately for him, it was.

Following his visit, he sent the following complaint, which I have reposted here for your reading pleasure:

To Whom it May Concern:

Opening an amusement park for the season is hard work. The logistics involved must be extremely complex, to which I'm sure your 138 some odd years of accumulated amusement park opening experience must attest. Apart from the inherent uncertainty in early season volume, and the general growing pains of training a new wave of employees, many of whom, let's just be honest, are probably not graduates of "high school" so much as "court ordered rehabilitation." These are the realities that any large business must face. Yet, one thing that you can probably foresee is the possibility that the denizens of your park might, at some point during their visit, want to ride a ride.

Naturally, I must admit; your website and advertising don't specifically mention that your seventeen roller coasters and seventy-six rides work. You probably got me on that one; their mere existence is something that I cannot dispute with the limited set of facts gleaned from my visit on May 10. What I can say is that, given the choice of waiting in lines for a combined 7 hours to ride one ride due to malfunction after malfunction, or getting chlamydia, I think the venereal disease comes up the clear winner.

There are many drawbacks to chlamydia. It is estimated that as recently as 1995, 15% of blindness worldwide was caused by the disease. It can cause inflammation that is painful and unsightly, and can disqualify one from, well, "intimate time" with the lady (or gentlemen) of one's choosing. However, if on Sunday morning, rather than having been at Ceder Point all day Saturday, I had simply contracted the aforementioned sexually transmitted infection, the following would be true: (1) I would have had (admittedly clumsy and unsatisfying) sex. (2) I would have, even after the necessary treatments, roughly eighty additional dollars. (3) If economists are to be believed, I would have created a cogent incentive for you to test your rides prior to taking people's money. And, most importantly, (4) I would feel substantially less dirty.

Now more than ever, I of course understand your policy of refusing refunds once people actually experience your product. Even if I were to reconnect with the $42.50 admission, the fond memories of amusement parks from my childhood, which were brutally disposed of at approximately 4:21 PM, are unlikely ever to be revived. Please understand, also, that the next time someone asks if I want to drive several hours to your park, I will assume immediately that they are trying to passive-aggressively destroy our friendship, and will never speak with them again.

Sincerely,
Greg

hahahaha. :)

You know you're Danish when...

I've been meaning to make an entire post of "quirks" and "skills" I've acquired during my last ten months living here in Denmark, but I think I'll work on it and save it for August, when I finally return to the states and can reflect on the entirety of my time spent here.

For now, just a quick "You know you're Danish..." teaser...

You know you're Danish when...

You impress students with your ability to open bottles with pretty much anything.

Danes drink a lot. Because they drink so frequently and the opportunity to drink may arise with little to no warning, Danes are sometimes caught off guard without a bottle opener (they aren't like Americans, where every other person seems to have a bottle opener on their keyring!). Because of this, they have evolutionarily appeared to have gained the skill to open bottles with just about anything in their current surroundings. Slowly but surely adapting to my environment, I am gaining this skill.

Students come into my office pretty frequently asking if I have a bottle opener. I don't have one at my desk (though I guess I really should just get one), but I'm usually pretty cheery about taking their bottle and telling them I will find something to open it with. The student then follows me around as I search the office for a suitable tool. Once a suitable tool has been found, I open the bottle using my Danish MacGuyver Bottle Opening Skills and they are usually pretty darn impressed.

Things I have used which have impressed students opening bottles within the past few weeks:

01. Another bottle
02. A stapler
03. Scissors
04. A huge bread knife
05. A lighter

None of these tools are particularly creative, but I'm pretty proud that I've acquired this "skill" while I've been living abroad.

Science and evolutionary biology are cool.

I missed it!!

The one year anniversary of this blog was on May 6th! In usual forgetful fashion, I missed it, but

*Happy Belated Birthday, So, Sarah Says...!!*

I'm celebrating with a cupcake picture, of course! :)

It's a red bean paste filled cupcake with rambutan frosting and toasted sesame seeds. It actually doesn't sound very good (ahem, sesame seeds should be left to MUFFINS, in my humble opinion), but I thought it looked very pretty.

Wednesday 5.7

Apologies for being MIA for the past few days. I’ve been too busy at work to do much homing from work recently and the weather has been really nice, so I haven’t really been interested in sitting inside blogging from home after work either. I’m still pretty busy at work right now, so this will just be a super quick update.

So, what have I been up to?

Well, I spent this past weekend biking on Denmark’s easternmost island, Bornholm. I was technically ‘chaperoning’ a trip for work, but this is a great trip to chaperone because you basically get to the island, hand all the students bikes, wish them luck, and go off biking with your friends for the day. This was my third time on Bornholm (I’ve been for one weekend a year for the past three years, since 2006!) and, as usual, I had a great time. The first day, some friends and I decided to bike all the way south to the white beaches of Dueodde. The beaches were beautiful and the weather was warm on the island, but not quite beach-laying weather, yet! On the way back, we stopped for some famous Bornholm ‘sild’ (which is Danish for smoked herring). Delicious! All in all, the first day we biked over 68 kilometers (over 42 miles), and Bornholm is hilly (unlike the rest of Denmark).

The second day, Libby, Summer, and I biked up to the Hammershus castle ruins at the northernmost tip of the island. On the way up, we stopped for lunch in Allinge, which is one of the biggest towns on Bornholm. All three of us ordered and conversed with the restaurant people completely in Danish. It was a great feeling because they could understand us all with our super American accents so well (much better than the snobby Copenhageners). Again, the weather was great and we all got pretty nice tans sunbathing among the ruins for an hour! The second day we biked about 42 kilometers (over 26 miles). The best part was that none of us were sore on Monday because we are all super-avid cyclists now. Hahaha.

Monday and Tuesday this week were pretty uneventful, but the weather was great. I can’t get enough of this great weather. I can hardly even remember the Danish Mist of winter! Knock on wood that it doesn't sneak back on all of us poor unsuspectors this summer...!

In other news, today I had an experience that made me realize what a snobby Copenhagener I’ve become. I did laundry last night (at my sweet laundromat with the trippy, drugged out, elven merpeople on the walls!) and hung my grey cardigan up to dry on the hook above where I hang my keys in my bedroom (I imagine it’s supposed to dry flat, but whatever. I’d go ahead and make a comment here about how washing instructions are for overly domestic losers, but I’m still quite sad about messing up the tulle on my white skirt by haplessly throwing it in the dryer…). Anyway, because of my distractingly hung grey cardigan, I ran out of my apartment this morning only to slam the door and realize, instantly, that I had forgotten to grab my keys. Damn. This meant I couldn’t bike to work (my bike lock key is on my keyring) and would be late. I called the office to let them know and started off on what would be a thirty minute walk. Passing the lakes on my way, I noticed a Copenhagen City Bike (bycykel) rack. I seized the opportunity, deposited 20kr in the one remaining bike, and took off down the road. Now, I know I may be overly privileged with my relatively nice, privately owned bike, but honestly, this city bike was the crappiest bike I have ever ridden. The seat was all wobbly back and forth, there were no gears, and only back pedal brakes. SUCH a crappy ride. What was worse was that I looked like a complete tourist riding my city bike with the plastic city map built into the handlebars and gaudy ‘rims’. Ugh. I guess that’s what I get for locking myself out. Luckily, Rachel was heading home for a few minutes after a meeting this morning so I joined her, was let into our apartment, retrieved my keys and my bike, and was happy again. Thank Odin.

Tonight I'm going out for my second Danish Mexican food experience. The last one was disappointing, to say the least. The Danes know nothing about Mexican food. Probably because there are, literally, no Mexicans here. (Shwarma, on the other hand, they've got down to a T!) We'll see. The dinner is on the corporate bill because it's for a extracurricular club I co-run with Rachel, so I've got nothing to lose. (And we're going all out!) :)

Two other things:

01. "Oh, shit! Our planes about to hit Mickey Mouse and I'm pretty sure we just flew through Saul Bass' Minolta logo...!" click! I'm not sure if I think this is cool or just really, really gaudy commercialism.

02. The absolute ugliest, most heinous dress Ralph Lauren has ever made. click!

Is this a joke? No? He should be ashamed. If you're going to keep rolling out stuff like this, change your name back to Lifshitz and stop your fratquerade.

More Friday Love

... because J.Crew e-mailed me. :)

Solid Silk Taffeta Ballerina Dress

Swiss-dot Bobbie Sundress

Cotton Interlock Cross-back Jumper

Cotton Cady Strapless Claudine Dress

* all the hot pink text is linked, if you want to see more of the dresses!

It's Friday, I'm in love!

It's Friday and May! What's on my radar?

01. I've decided my Spring/Summer 2008 colors are probably light grey, light pink, and cream. I've been really drawn to them on recent shopping trips and I love how the colors look together and accented with pearls and silver jewelry. Perfect and fresh for spring. I'll also be incorporating blues into my wardrobe once the weather gets a tad warmer here. I've got two supercute strapless blue dresses to wear (one navy, one bright blue) and last summer's navy twill shorts from J.Crew are dying to be paired with an oxford and my topsiders again soon!

02. Also style-wise, what is the deal with Maxi dresses for spring?! I've been seeing them everywhere!! But who can actually wear them? I haven't tried any on (mostly for practical reasons - a maxi dress would be hell to bike in - but also because I love cocktail length sundresses for summer and they work for me) but I imagine I'm too short to be able to pull off a maxi dress with the kind of Mediterranean glamour I feel they should represent. (like this Missoni day dress or this one by Giambattista Valli that evokes images of an evening at a gorgeous mansion with an infinity pool somewhere on the Mediterranean. Aquamarine is also a beautiful color for spring and would look great with my "palette". ).

03. Best Mother's Day gift EVER!! Cupcakes, of course! :) Sas Cupcakes are a bit expensive ($40 for a dozen, $30 to ship because they need to be shipped two-day to still be fresh and delicious upon arrival), but what better gift could a cupcake-loving girl like me send to her dear Mom? I'm just bummed that I won't be there when they arrive to try a few! The zesty light lemon cake with fresh raspberry buttercream sounds amazing!

I guess that's basically it for now. There have been a lot of things that have crossed my mind to blog about recently, but the weather has been nice so I've been outside a lot and otherwise, I just haven't had time. I'm off to chaperone a bike trip for work over the weekend. Cross your fingers that it's sunny for us! Have a great weekend! :)

Glæde Kristi Himmelfartsdag!!

That's Happy Ascension Day to all you non-Danish speakers (but, really, who doesn't speak Danish these days? It's not like it's an obscure language spoken primarily in a country of only 5 million people or anything.) "Wait, Sarah," you may be asking, "since when are you religious, let alone religious enough to celebrate Ascension Day?" The answer is: since never. Still not. I just think the Danish translation which is, directly, word for word to English, 'Happy Christ Heaven/Sky Speed Day.' And, come on, fart?! Absolutely one of the best words in Danish. I love when I'm on the highway in Denmark (rare, but happens on occasion because I am lucky enough to know people who own automobiles) and I see a sign that says 'Din Fart,' which means 'Your Speed.' Also, elevators with signs like the one in the picture that accompanies this post. Hahaha. :) I bet foreigners walk up to elevators like that, see the button next to 'i fart' and look surreptitiously around, wondering if this is a cruel joke the Danes play on the unsuspecting. Not a cruel joke, but if you're that embarrassed, perhaps it's your first clue you should be getting a bit of exercise and taking the stairs. :)

Happy Sky Fart Day! :)