Pancakes!

Apparently "Pancake Night" means something very different to Danes than to Americans

So among the Danes on my hall, my roommate, Blaire, and I have become pretty good friends with about 4 of the guys. The other 10 people we talk to and say hi to, but I wouldn't call us friends. The 4 guys, however, have cooked us dinner about 4 times now, so Blaire and I decided it was our turn to return the favor. We decided to host "Pancake Night" for our hall and make American pancakes (not crepes) with blueberries, bananas, and chocolate chips. We wrote an invitation on the kitchen white board. For a while, only Sunnleif, Magnus, Arni, and Jonas (our 4 friends) had signed up. We assumed this would be the extent of the list. To our surprise, by Monday, the night of the dinner, nearly everyone on the hall had signed up. We suddenly realized we'd be cooking a pancake dinner for 15 people... not 6.

Blaire and I laughed and panicked at the same time. We have friends! How are so many of them coming? Maybe we should make bacon and eggs, too?? Are pancakes alone enough for dinner for this many people? Oh crap... we're going to be cooking so much food.

Blaire and I went out into the city, bought all our supplies, and came back to the kollegium (apartment/dorm). We decided against buying bacon and eggs for the dinner out of frugalness (meat is expensive...). We walked up the stairs and into the kitchen around 6:00pm to start cooking, only to find most of the people on our hall already eating a huge dinner. Blaire and I starred at each other, and, too embarrassed to ask why they were all already eating, ran out of the kitchen into our room.

Then, the reality of the situation hit us, and we started dying of laughter. Danes consider pancakes dessert. So they had read our invite and assumed we were cooking dessert for the hall. We told them the pancakes would be served around 7:30pm, so they all made sure to eat their dinner before then (Danes are very timely). Anyway, that's nice, we thought. No more fretting over whether or not we'll have enough food.

So Blaire, our friend Barathi, and I set out to cook "dessert" for everyone. The pancakes were a huge hit, and all the Danes seemed to really like them. We served them with syrup, butter, and powdered sugar. Then--the funniest moment of the night--one of the Danes goes, "These pancakes are so much better than the ones the last Americans made. These are great. You should have seen it, last time, the Americans had cooked bacon and eggs to go with the pancakes."

From their perspective, yes, bacon and eggs for dessert would be pretty weird. Blaire and I looked at each other and silently acknowledged that our cheapness had really paid off.