DIARY: Oli's Visit

My old friend Oli, who's real name is of course Oliver, was over a few weeks ago, just for a prolonged weekend.

We somehow couldn't be arsed to take too many pictures, but the few I got are here.

He's been touring the world with his girlfriend Juliane for the last year or so, and has only recently returned to Denmark. Chances to meet up have therefore been far and few between.

Family Pic: Julle, Oli, Laila, Vibs, Janne, Mathilde

The Good Ol' Dorm
I've spend some of my funniest (but also most chaotic!) times at Otto Mønsteds Kollegium, in Aarhus Denmark, a dorm with some 100 souls living there. I spend almost 6 years in that place, and in the final years we were a small clique of people who turned into somewhat of a surrogat family.

Oli is a member of this extended family, being an exchange student from Germany, and so is his girlfriend Juliane, Brian whom I visited in Madrid earlier, and of course, Mathilde, who was my well-organised host for the snowy holiday in Canada.

Now, I'm fortunate enough to go home on holidays on the 22nd of August, and on the 1st of September I'll be in Aarhus, hopefully reacquainting myself with all these faces as we all gather to celebrate my friend Christian "Kedde"'s thirtieth birthday, the end, I mean beginning of his life! But before that Oli and I had a chance to catch up with the usual stuff....

Whiskey, Pool, Good Food, and Scrubs, Scrubs!!!

It's somewhat of a testament to our common obsession with the tv-show Scrubs that we actualy got through 16 episodes in the three days Oli stayed here (before you yell "Gewalt", the episodes are 20 minutes long!).

No wonder that we can laugh ourselves to death to the show, let's face it, it's perfect for men: Dr. Cox is the man we all want to be, Ted is the guy we're happy we're not, J.D. is probably who we are, and The Todd says all the things we wish we could get away with saying everytime there's a hot female around!

Now, our friendship wasn't build solely around an American sitcom (it was in fact build around endless lines of Fisherman's Friend shots in the Dorm bar, but that's another story from my alcoholised past!). Oli is a bit of an amateur chef, having a big idol in his namesake Jamie Oliver, so when we weren't wining and dining downtown, he took the chance to cook up not only two excellent breakfeasts but a great dinner as well!

I wondered for a second if that was how marriage would be, but before dismissing that a dream, I couldn't help sending a wish to my atheist gods not to tie me up with a blackhaired German guy down the road!!!

Back at the Table

We spend a few nights at the Palace as well, a great pool place on Camden Street, playing good old rock classics from your untroubled teens (Metallica, there ya go!), while Oli, a terrific poolplayer, handed out his usual beating.

I had to notice with a slight tingle of sadness that I just can't invest my usual competitiveness into other sports than running these days: Or in other words, I play as well as I can, but I don't invest the "extra" anymore, maybe it's passion, maybe it's something else. Hard to say. Losing or winning used to be life or death for me, but now it's just a game. For much the same reason the bowling ball lies dusty around, my poker book hasn't been opened for months, and Liverpool defeats just don't hurt quite so much anymore.

Is there a limited amount of passion in every person? I think that's a very good questions, but not one I will attempt to answer, and while it would be scary to have it all set aside for running, I find that's not the case. I'm just saving the rest of mine for something that's really worth it, and that doesn't involve cues, darts, or balls. It's still (or perhaps finally) a fun game, though, and a great way for us to reminisce as we spend several nights every week at the dorm playing pool while having a few bottles before sleeping in and forgetting to study! (there's the drinking again!).

Porters and Whisky

Back to the present again, another common hobby of ours has been good beer and whisky. In the past we've shared some good bottles of both from Belgian Chimay to Scottish Ardbeg whisky and Irish Connemara. This time we started out by sampling the special homebrews at Porter House where I had taken Brian and Jens a week earlier on their stopover for the American roadtrip.

On the final day we decided to give the whiskys a look-in and went to the Jameson Distillary (which I haven't visited in my 2.5 years here!). The tour was quite interesting, especially since I've previously visited the Whisky Museum in Edinburgh and this tour highlighted the differences between the two whiskey productions.

We had a few samples at the end, and I must say the Jameson is much smoother than it's given credit for, and I got to take a good Gollum-lookalike picture of Oli with his 12-year old in hand!

All in all, a good fun weekend, but nothing more than a warmup for my holidays. In the meantime I make a promise to all my friends to try and practice my ability to party without being hammered! It's a bit of a change, to give it time alright!