Surviving November and the Danish winter

November is not really my kind of month. It’s the time here in Copenhagen when it’s starts to get dark when you leave work and the darkness is just clearing when you wake up in the morning. Your energy level just drops to a point where you feel like sleeping all the time. In no other month (no, maybe January as well) does my pillow and my bed have such a strong hold on me. I’ve always loved sleeping and I love my bed, no doubt about it. But when this time of year comes I often wonder if I should have been born a bear and go underground sleep until the sun comes back.
So what do you do to survive this darkness for the next 5 months? Here is my survival kit:

Good books
A long and exciting book can pull you out of this dark winter world. Nerd Girl recommends these books for winter reading:

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay

Cloud Atlas
Harry Potter (can always do with a second reading, especially after the film versions have screwed up your memory of the real plot.)

The Shadow of the Wind

Movies:
Winter movies should also offer an escape into happier, prettier and shinier lifestyles with totally superficial problems and always (!) happy endings. So forget Scandinavian social realism with handheld cameras and only depressing shades of grey.
Nerd Girl tends to go for old Danish films – set in the 1950s with lots of romance and cute dresses. But here are some good international films I turn to:

Amelie of Montmartre :

Les Demoisellers de Rocheforte

My Fair Lady Chocolat

And then the food...

When its dark outside and the rain or snow pouring down you need something really sweet. Something like appelcake - Danish appelcake. The world's easiest and best winter dessert: Appel mash, almond macaroons crushed and whiped creme - in layers.

Nicloe Kidman will play Lili Elbe

This is pretty big news. I just read that Nicole Kidman is to star as Einer Mogens Wegener, in a movie about the Danish painter who was the first man to have a sex change operation. Charlize Theron will be playing his wife the very talented painter and illustrator Gerda Wegener.
It is according to the hollywoodreporter.com that the story of this fascinating couple will be turned into a film with such heavy leading ladies as Nicole and Charlize. Based on a fictional bestseller by David Eberstorff about the couple, I wonder how much of the actual story we’re gonna get from the film. But any how it will be interesting to se.

Einer was married to Gerda Wegener and they were quite a famous couple in living in Copenhagen in the 1920s. Apparently Einar’s female alias Lili Elbe was created when Gerda, lacking a female model, asked him to pose for her as a woman – and he from then on developed as the transsexual Lili Elbe with the support of his wife.This is Lili Elbe after the sex change operation:
Gerda worked as a painter and illustrator creating beautiful painting and drawings for among others French Vougue.