Okay, so I cheated a bit. I wrote the bulk of the previous post on Sunday morning, but then all of a sudden time (quite thematically appropriately) got away from me, so I had to leave it as a draft when we left to meet M’s friends. Which became more of an adventure than we expected, because buses completely screwed us over, and we ended up spending 1,5 hours trying to get to where we needed to go, and ultimately reached our destination an hour late. Embarrassing, but not our fault! However, what I was trying to say is, I posted it just now, so technically I didn’t post an entry last week, and that means it’s penance time again. Hence you’re getting two for the price of one, lucky bastards!

Back to Sunday’s adventure: the first bus we took had to deviate from its normal route due to road work, which meant that we had to get off on the wrong stop, and by the time we reached the stop of the next bus we were supposed to take, it had already gone. Or it never went at all, because of the road work… I don’t even know. However, we ended up walking quite the distance to another stop where we ultimately discovered that we needed to wait half an hour for the next bus. Fortunately the weather was gorgeous, so sitting and waiting wasn’t so bad, and on our way there we glimpsed a shop I’ve been meaning to visit for a while now. We totally would have had the time to visit it, too, but we didn’t know that when we passed it, and by the time we found out, it was way too late… But even so, now we know where it is, and we’ll definitely visit soon.

Fortunately M’s friends didn’t mind our lateness, but instead welcomed us with a table full of all kinds of tasty treats. It was an interesting visit for several reasons. They got to meet the elusive girlfriend they only learnt about recently, and I got to meet a bunch of people M chats with on a daily basis, but whom he rarely meets in person. So why did they only learn about me recently, you may wonder, and the answer is both extremely simple and strangely complicated.

You see, my friends are people I share intensely personal things with. His friends are people who share interests with him, and in this particular case, the same university background and profession. Where I talk with my friends maybe on a monthly basis (if we’re lucky…), he talks to his pretty much every day, but the things we talk about differ wildly. My friends know me. I tell them if something important happens in my life, and even though we connect rarely, we do so on a deep, personal level. They aren’t an active part of my everyday life, but I carry them with me every step of the way, and I always know that if I need them, they’re only one email or phone call away (and vice versa, of course). M’s friends know next to nothing about him, personally, and so the subject of having a Finnish girlfriend move in with him simply never came up, until a few weeks ago it got mentioned entirely tangentially. Cue intense curiosity from their side, and a sudden invitation for coffee ;)

In person their curiosity was much more subdued, and only one personal question ever got asked, which was about what I do for a living. That one didn’t take long to answer, and soon we were back to talking about the horrors of software development in environments that are endlessly bogged down by layers and layers of procedure. Or how bad it is when there is not enough procedure. Apparently it’s a hard thing to get right. Made me feel oddly good about my job, which at least is clear and unimpeded, if not terribly engaging. All in all, I enjoyed the visit a lot, although I’ve no idea how much they got out of it. I guess we’ll see if we get invited again.

Today I reached a milestone of a kind: my first dentist visit in Denmark! One of my molars has been aching a bit lately, and on Sunday and Monday it was bad enough that I resorted to painkillers. So, on Monday after work I walked to the nearby dentist’s office and asked for an appointment, and got one for this morning. (This all sounds so easy now, but I absolutely detest having to use any health care services at all, especially abroad, so getting myself through that door was more of a struggle than is readily apparent.)

This morning I was so nervous about the appointment, I left for work without my bike helmet, which is unheard of. I just simply forgot, and by the time I realised, it was too late to go back and get it. I’ve worn the stupid thing religiously ever since I got it, so it was the weirdest thing to just suddenly forget. Fortunately I only had a half hour of work before the appointment, so I didn’t have to spend the entire day dreading it.

Unsurprisingly, everything went very well once I got there. The dentist was extremely nice and spoke excellent English, and couldn’t find anything wrong with my molar, so the current assumption is that I’ve been grinding my teeth at night which then aggravated the tooth. The plan is to wait and see if it calms down on its own, and if so, then nevermind. (It’s been much better today anyway, so things look promising.)

Of course, she also found a broken filling and some cavities that will require two additional visits in the near future, which is not so great, especially considering the pricing of Danish dental health care, but so it goes. It’s been a while since I last got my teeth checked, so it’s not exactly surprising, and I’m just happy to have everything taken care of. Having my own dentist is another small step towards belonging here, as odd as it may sound.