The Saustrup Family Blog

Today is a special day! Not only is it a rare day that only comes once every fourth year, it’s also the day that Nina is opening her crafts website to the World. On her new site you can read about and purchase her wacky sock puppets and other neat crafts!

Nina’s shop on Etsy

Nina is crazy about sock puppets - she can’t stop making them, and if she doesn’t sell some of them soon we won’t have space to move around! Please help us and visit her site now!

Actually it was last summer, but that’s no reason not to post it again! This was my second visit to Russia, and I decided to do it on my newly purchased means of transportation - my Honda CB1300. I drove from Århus, Denmark to Stockholm, Sweden and took the ferry to Helsinki, Finland. From here I drove more or less along the coast to the Russian border. From here it was a short but bumpy ride to the magnificent city of Saint Petersburg.

Driving to Saint Petersburg isn’t really that difficult, at least not when you have a GPS unit like my Garmin Zümo 550. The only problem is that this unit only covers Western Europe, and only shows the biggest main roads in Russia - and badly too! At one point I was driving on the road from the border between Finland and Russia, and according to the GPS unit, I was miles away from any roads and almost crossing through a lovely forest lake.

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We’re getting married! I proposed on February 4. 2008, and even though it still feels new and weird, it also feels incredibly good. One thing is a bit of a bother though, and that’s the initial paperwork. The marriage office at Århus City Hall is being everything but cooperative.

Marriage - or in our case a civil union - is not really a tricky thing in Denmark. It’s not supposed to be, anyway. All you need to do is fill out a marriage application, attach the required documents and wait a couple of weeks for the approval. When you have the approval, you can make an appointment at city hall, and the actual ceremony takes 5-10 minutes.

If you’re both Danish, all the information required is already available and you don’t really need to attach any additional documents to the marriage application. If you’re not Danish however, you need to provide documentation of your civil status. In our case, we need proof that Nina is not already married in the Russian Federation.

“No biggie” I thought. Not the case.

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