no butter cow here, folks

not our chickens. and these don't even resemble ours.

i went to the opening day of the market in vorbasse to check the chicken vendors for telltale signs of our chickens. there were actually a few that looked like them, but the people who had the stand were not the ones who came to look at the rabbits. i hated to confront someone who i didn't recognize, as there are, of course, lots of danish landrace chickens in denmark. they could, of course, have gotten them from our thieves, but maybe they were innocent victims as well. i know i would have recognized the people and i didn't see them. there are other markets around, but i think i give up now. 

the market is really not a nice place, it's sort of like a low-rent county fair, only without the competition for best pickles and biggest carrots. the chickens that were for sale looked pretty scruffy and the rabbits (of which there were many) were even worse. there were puppies and kittens too, but they all looked flea-bitten and awful. i'm surprised people would dare to show up with animals in such bad shape. and i wonder if they ever sell any of them? i suppose the pity factor plays in and people buy them to rescue them. with all of the righteous animal rights folks around in denmark, i'm surprised people are allowed to display such a mangy bunch of beasts without getting them all riled up.

i'm glad i went on opening day, as it gets crowded and even more depressing on the weekend. tent after tent of cheap, unnecessary crap, garage sale items passed off as antiques, dangerous-looking traveling carnival rides and unhealthy food, in addition to loads of horses that stand tied up for for three days in the sun without visible food and water, waiting to be sold to a new home. if you think there is no white trash in denmark, just visit vorbasse and you'll realize it's alive and well.

i'm glad i went to check for the chickens, because if i hadn't, i'd be obsessing wondering about it forever. but give me a good old fashioned state fair in the states anytime over the crappy vorbasse market.

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i might want need a llama.

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fonts reimagined as food.

by some lithuanians.

stop the merry-go-round, i want off

there comes a point when you just have to say "enough." you can't do more. you can't give more - thought...energy...horses. sometimes what you give simply isn't appreciated. and in the worst case, it's actually abused. for example, when a 150 pound kid is allowed to ride your teeny tiny pony for an hour and then the riding instructor wonders why the pony won't gallop. hmm, could be something to do with the fact that she can't lift her feet off the ground. just sayin'.

i'm notoriously bad at recognizing the "enough" point, but i'm trying to get better. this time, i vow it will be different. when the welfare of the pony is at stake and the one responsible apparently cannot recognize, even when asked, that it wasn't ok to put such a big girl on such a little pony, then one has to take hold of the reins, literally in this case.

besides, the horse (which has been dubbed princess leia jesus kristensen) at home is lonely and the pony will keep her company.

a matter of focus

in the light of day, things look different. i'm feeling less indignant about our freeloading couchsurfer than i was last evening, tho' writing that awfully negative list did seem to help clear it out of my system, so that's undoubtedly a big part of what makes me feel better. but how you see people is also a matter of perspective, isn't it?

sometimes, one thing is in focus and sometimes, it's another. focusing on one aspect can blur the others and change how you view an experience.  i've been pondering the cultural lens with which we inevitably view things. and how that makes things appear to be wrong or right.

what was especially bewildering and disappointing in this instance is that the person didn't at all fit the cultural lens which i expected since this person was from the culture of my birth.  so i had expectations of a certain kind of person - open, funny, forthcoming. already when he approached my car at the train station, he didn't look at all as i had expected. he didn't actually greet me, just kind of slouched his way to the car, looking rather unhealthy and drawn (which is fair enough after a long-haul flight). perhaps because he didn't meet my expectations, he never had a chance. i'm willing to admit that.

but in his behavior, he did himself no favors. it just reinforced the strangeness of the initial encounter and made it seem worse and worse. perhaps what i was actually disappointed in was how well he conformed to an american stereotype - that of the ugly american - with strange stories of living a sort of unabomber, hermetic-life, hidden away from civilization, rejecting the trappings of said civilization (medical care, for one, tho' not credit cards, apparently), working odd jobs, going for weeks without speaking to anyone. but at the same time, an odd sense of entitlement (that dinner would be served to him, his laundry done and folded) and that air of superiority that he'd seen and done all and seen and done it better.

of course, it is a matter of what one chooses to focus on. and tho' it was an odd experience for sure, it was, in the end harmless. i'm still pretty uncomfortable with the weird recordings, for which he never asked permission, but in all, it's certainly given me something to write about, hasn't it?

what i'm torn about now is how to approach writing feedback on the couchsurfing site. with all of my other experiences, i've not at all hesitated to write something really positive, because they have all been great. i'm not sure, in this instance, that it's worth writing something negative. tho' perhaps i have a duty to give other potential hosts a heads' up about this guy. but all of my complaints are admittedly a matter of taste - he didn't steal anything, he didn't harm us or threaten us, so maybe it's not fair to write negative feedback. and if i do, of course, i risk getting negative feedback myself, which i don't want (tho' after cooking and doing laundry for this guy, he would have to have a lot of nerve to give me negative feedback).

so i'm leaning towards writing nothing at all - on the premise that if you can't say something nice, don't say anything. but that makes me feel a little bit disappointed in myself. again, it's all a matter of focus, isn't it?

and i have to stress, this doesn't put me off couchsurfing, it just makes me resolved only to host members where it's verified that they are who they say are (couchsurfing has a mechanism for this) and who have good references.  i still think it's an awesome concept. and after nearly two years of participating in it, this is the first experience that's left a bad taste in my mouth.