Day 26 - January 26

I fulfilled my cultural deficiency today by taking a jaunt around Copenhagen. I started the day off by meeting Elyse to buy tickets to Odense (tomorrow we embark on a five-day journey around Denmark, so if there are no blog posts, that is why). However, I was, for some reason, under the impression that there was a Metro stop at the central station…turns out there’s not, so I looked on the map, and it appeared that the station was an equal walking distance from the stop I had gotten off at – Forum – as from the main stop – Nørreport, so I set off to find the central station. It ended up being about a twenty minute walk, and I was already late to meet Elyse…oops. But I did see a side of Copenhagen (or at least a route through it) that I had not seen before. I will need to take the same walk again when I’m not in a hurry.

Ticket buying was a cinch – walk in, tell the lady where we’re going, pay, get your ticket. No need to reserve a time or anything. I’m not sure I’ll ever get over how efficient Denmark’s public transportation is. Sure, I’ve heard of several problems with the Metro, but when you compare it to America…also, their Metro stations are clean. And if they’re running late, they tell you. I’m pretty sure going back to Boston is going to be harsh (though at least Boston HAS the T…).

The next hour became a miracle of coordinating meeting people. We had decided to finally see the Little Mermaid, but when I met at the designated meeting place, half of us were there, the rest off at random places, all saying they would be late and would meet us there. In the next hour, it was a succession of phone calls to various people, asking where we were, whether they should meet us here or there, etc. I was amazed when, about five minutes from the statue, we somehow all came together, not even planned. This group has never been so successful in getting everyone together.

Nyhavn

I asked today if it was weird that I liked naval things, but not fish - the answer? A unanimous (of two people) "yes".

The royal residences and church in daylight.

Now, with the combination of a cold, soreness from walking all day, and the exhaustion of having a successful outing, I think I shall relax with a nice mug of something warm, pack, and I will return with, I am sure, plenty of stories next week!

Day 25 - January 25

In the morning, we had our Danish oral exam. It wasn’t so bad, because at least the teachers can understand us if no one else can (it’s a curious fact that even if you only mispronounce a word by the tiniest bit, no one can understand you – or at least they claim not to – it would be like someone saying “Are those greps on the vine?” as opposed to “grapes”, but yet we would understand, and the Danish would not).

The seagulls' favorite place to hang out near my campus.

Modern buildings on the walk from the Metro to class.

KUA, the Faculty of Humanities campus.

After the exam, we invited Inger to have coffee with us. Nothing fancy, we just went to the kantine, but it was nice. She brought a photo of her family from Christmas :). She also invited us to her farm sometime, which is really exciting and so very nice of her.

And then, to celebrate the fact that we were done (or perhaps, mourn that we would no longer have class together) and that we had all passed, we had a pancake party. That would be European-style pancakes, not American – it’s like a mix between a crepe and a pancake. Just flour, eggs, and milk, and voilá, you have yourself a pancake. Put some Nutella, strawberries, and bananas on it, and you have yourself a taste of euphoria.

It’s strange to think that three weeks have already past, and that I will no longer be seeing these people five (well, really more like six or seven) days a week. Of course, we’re continuing our weekly dinners, and we will probably plan more outings together, but the first phase of this adventure is already over. And that is insane.

I discovered that I am not so bad at flipping pancakes as I thought I was.

Deliciousness.

Day 24 - January 24

I feel like I haven’t done much lately in the culture-department. More like I’ve shifted my regular college life just to a different location. Well, okay, that’s not wholly true – I did go out and walk a bit yesterday, and today I had to study for tomorrow’s oral exam. However, I am determined that when I come back from my Denmark adventure (on Wednesday, a friend, her flatmate, and I are setting off on a 5-day excursion around Denmark before the semester starts) I am going to be in the city every day, as until the week of February 15^th, I only have one class that consists of a two-hour lecture once a week. If you do not hear about my walks or my visits to museums or any such thing, send me a nasty note saying that I’m not fully taking advantage of the culture here :-)

My adventure here, and my blog posts, also seem to be an exploration in food and drink. I think it’s because, though I cooked at home, I did so in a familiar way, but now I am out of my comfort zone, and so I’m in the mode of trying new things, even if the “new thing” is cooking a familiar food that I’ve only ever relied on my delicious chef mother to make. Today was not a cooking day, but I did try out an omelet, something that I have yet to successfully make. I did better today, though - I flipped it just a tad too early, so it ended up being an omelet-like, not-quite scrambled – mixture of eggs, ham, tomatoes, and cheese.

Also, the cheesecake was a huge success. I, myself, thought it tasted good but could not compare to a restaurant, Cheesecake Factory-style cheesecake, but most people there had never tasted anything like it before and loved it. My favorite part was when I brought it out and they all “Ooh”-ed at it. One of the easiest things to make, but looks so fancy when it’s done!

Day 23 - January 23

I went off to the city center to buy some postcards, because the only ones I could find nearby were super expensive. These were about 50 cents each, and it was in a cute tourist shop. Remember trolls?

They had tons of them, including a pirate troll. Might have to get it!

I stopped in a used book store. Who cares if everything is in Danish – books are books, and old books are awesome no matter what they are! But there were random English books mixed in, especially in the history section, every other book was English. Maybe I’ll go back and give it a real look, see if there’s anything interesting. I then stopped into the new bookstore to discover that half of their books were English as well, so if I run out books to read here…however, like everything else, books are wicked expensive – I saw a $20 paperback. I ambled over to the children’s section looking for…yep, Harry Potter. They only had hardcovers (and started with book 3 – that is my favorite, but book 1 would probably be easiest to read in Danish), and it was – EEP - $40! So I think I’ll look around a bit before I buy my Danish Harry Potter…maybe if I can’t find it anywhere else, I’ll buy it right before I leave. I was also hoping to find some Sherlock Holmes, but with the prices, I might just wait until I go to England where, even though the prices may be double, they’re still cheaper!

Photos from my morning:

Signalhuset, my kollegium.

Just like a postcard.

I was making a cheesecake for a friend’s birthday (the only cake I actually know how to make…I didn’t want to experiment too much in another country when the result wasn’t for myself), so I went to the Netto grocery store by Norrepørt – never again. It was tiny, crowded, didn’t have a lot of food, and it did not seem to be any cheaper than Bilka, though everyone says it’s the cheapest. I ended up having to go to Bilka anyway to pick up some things Netto didn’t have.

I did have to improvise a bit on the cheesecake. We didn’t have the right size pan, so we weren’t sure if the mixture would be spread too thin…it seemed a little off, so I had to semi-quarter the recipe (basically, use what was left of the cream cheese, which was in grams, and that amounted to…mostly a quarter of what the recipe called for). Also, for the crust, they don’t have graham crackers, but they do have digestives – English biscuits which are pretty much the equivalent of graham crackers…only better. As I was making the cake, Bo came out and wondered what I was making. When I told him, he laughed, and said “That must be more of an American thing. Anything with cheese is an American thing…” But I thought, on the plus side, since most people haven’t had cheesecake before, if it doesn’t turn out alright, no one will know…It looks pretty, though!

Day 22 - January 22

First half of the Danish exam this morning – the written part. It ended up being ridiculously easy. We had to listen to some tapes and do some exercises, but they over-exaggerated everything (thank God, because when they’re actually speaking I can’t understand any words except for prepositions). We also performed an “entertainment” for the rest of the Danish classes at the ending session…we sang a Danish children’s song that, of course, no one understood, but we had fun.

Today at the kantine I finally founda “Danish” in the pastries. Of course they don’t call them Danishes (French fries, anyone?), but, ironically, Claudia said they are called here Viennese. So I guess no one can decide where they come from. But it wasn’t one of the mediocre, chewy, hotel-breakfast type pastries. It was amazing and flaky and the berry filling – so good!

Shopping around Field’s today (the mall across from my kollegium), I noticed once again how many shoe stores there are in Copenhagen. Not just in the mall – I first noticed it walking around the city center. Everywhere you look is a shoe store. It would be like going to America, but every time you see a Starbucks, you put a shoe store in its place. In the mall, there were at least ten that we passed by. Possibly more shoe stores than clothes stores. The weird thing is, the shoe stores are very rarely alike – somehow they’re all different, at least within a mile radius.

I found pretzels in the grocery store and thought, “Ah! Pretzels! Amazing…” Here, however, they are not called pretzels but ‘party sticks’. Also, they’re about twice as long and twice as thin. As in, I can break them with a flick (and this is not just some fancy exaggeration or metaphor or anything…I actually flicked one into thirds with one flick…and my flicks are weak). They’re kind of fun to eat, although not so good for dipping.

Last but not least, though I am in Denmark, I am reading a book called The Anglo Files, a sort-of case-study of the British by an American journalist who moved to England after marrying an Englishman. Most of the book relates more to the upper class, but with the sections that apply to the British in general, it seems to me that, with the exception of the drinking, I’m practically British. Self-effacement? I’d say I’m pretty good at it. Saying sorry all the time, even when it’s someone else’s fault? Yeah, probably me. Of course, most everyone knows my anglophilia (I don’t think that’s actually a word, but I’m making it a word now), and if they don’t, they learn it fast, but having now actually been to England, I have discovered that somehow I grew up British without ever having been there. Besides what the book said, I have the skin tone, I have the humor (I much prefer British humor to American, and when I was over there for the field school, they once asked me, “Is our sarcasm too much?”/”I hope you’re able to tell when we’re not being serious but being sarcastic” and I just got confused because I hadn’t noticed anything different from what I’m used to), I use British terms (I say “quite” and “rather” rather often, had a few Americans point it out, then went to England only to discover that it’s quite normal there – and yes, I realize I used “quite” and “rather” in that sentence but it was not meant to be clever, just how I would naturally write), I drink black tea with milk and sugar...seeing a pattern here? Oh, I also think the Union Jack is the best flag design, that Doctor Who is the best TV show, and that America should have a constitutional monarchy just because it’s cool to have a king and queen if they have no power.

Our talented class singing a Peberkager Bager Syng

Day 20 - January 20

It was supposed to be a quiet, early night since my room was too warm and I hadn’t been sleeping well the last few nights. I was going over to the Polish guys’ place to learn to make pierogies and then it would be goodnight to Elizabeth. It did not quite turn out that way, but what did happen was much more fun, if it did not help with the lack of sleep.

We did go to the Polish guys’ place, and we actually got there on time this time. Turns out pierogies are the easiest thing in the world to make, but we were scolded about making absolutely sure the dough was fully closed. Once we figured that out, they were a cinch.

One of our master chefs.

Intently folding our pirogies.

Stegosaurus-shaped dinner!

Those of us who were going to stay home at night were convinced to come to the student house. A few people had to split, so we agreed to meet back up around 9:30, but since we finished the dinner around 7, we figured we should just hang around until the time. We began playing a card game called “Coach Ride to Devil’s Castle”. By the time we figured out the rules and got into it, Daria suggested, “How about we don’t go out tonight and just stay and play cards?” Perfect suggestion. We ended up staying much later than expected – almost 1:00 – playing that game and then logic games/story games (a man died in a forest with ___, ___, and ____...what happened? Etc.) until we suddenly realized we still had class the next day and the busses had stopped running. Claudia, Daria, Angela, and I ended up taking a cab to the main Metro station and taking the Metro from there.

Days 17, 18, and 19 - January 17-19

Sunday night was night number two of national dinners – this time it was a Bavarian/Tyrolean meal. Also quite delicious!

(I apologize, the quality of these photos is not the greatest).

A contented bunch.

Our cultural activity of the day Monday was watching the movie Maria Larsson’s Everlasting Moments (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0961066/), which, it turns out, is actually a Swedish movie, not a

Danish movie. No one believed me that they were speaking Swedish, not Danish, despite that the events were taking place in Sweden, until we got home and looked it up. But it makes sense – if we’re learning the Danish language, why confuse us with Swedish? Whether Danish or Swedish, the movie was a masterpiece. Turns out, with a bit of research, it was even nominated for the Golden Globes foreign language film (but didn’t win). It’s not the happiest movie, that I’ll warn you, but I do think it’s uplifting in its own way at the end, and it certainly invests you in the story. I highly recommend it.

For dinner, I attempted to make my first ever homemade macaroni and cheese. I think it turned out alright…tasted good. Hopefully it’s good enough to display as an American national food in my American dinner (but if they don’t like that, I’ve never had anyone dislike the family chocolate chip cookies!). I think proportions might have been a tad bit off, as they measure things in grams rather than in cups (and besides having no scale, I’m stubborn and like my way of cooking!), but I did manage to find a 2 pint pitcher that marks off on one side liters and the other side U.S. Pints. So I simply have to estimate, and they do use teaspoons and tablespoons. The recipe nicely told me what to preheat the oven to in Celsius, but I’m not sure how good our oven really is here, so it’s also possible I did not cook it quite right, but it tasted fine to me (I’ll just have to wait and see the general reaction – strangely, I prefer the fake cheese of Kraft to any homemade macaroni and cheese I’ve ever had, no matter how delicious…must be the memories).

I also saw that I was not, in fact, charged for my flight screw-up. Apparently (I’m not questioning my luck), there must be a grace period of cancelling flights and not getting charged – as I cancelled it within seconds of booking the flight, it must have fallen into that grace period and/or did not register. Thank goodness!

An interesting fact – we were doing a reading comprehension exercise in which we learned that Copenhagen was the 5^th most expensive European city, I believe, but the book is at least a year, possibly two years, old. Curious, I did some searching and discovered that the cost of living in cities has dramatically changed in the last year. Japan suddenly appeared on the top of the list, with Tokyo being the most expensive city to live in. But more surprising to me (and perhaps a little dismaying), Copenhagen is the 7^th most expensive city in the world, beating out even Paris and London. Eep! I also learned that Boston is the 8^th most expensive city in the U.S. – I must like them expensive cities!

Day 16 - January 16

Talk of going to the Carlsberg Brewery had been thrown around for a while, and someone had the brilliant idea – why don’t we get 15 people together and get a group discount? So we did, and we had in the end a count of 21 people. It was a pretty neat place, but we didn’t get to see anything actually being made. It was mostly about the history.

History of beer from 4000 BC.

The brewery cat came to say hej.

So what do you do at the bar in the Carlsberg Brewery? Drink Coke, of course!

(Normally I don't drink any diet/sugar-free type sodas because my tastebuds are really sensitive to aspartame and I can't stand the tasted. But the regular coke came from a fountain and I really, really wanted the glass bottle.)

And put on your game face for a game of foosball!

Skål!

Day 15 - January 15

Another museum day – this time to the National Museum! It’s a outstanding museum, and I maybe saw 1/6 of it, at most. Sadly, I was told there were no cameras allowed when there actually were, but it’s free and there’s so much more to see, so I’ll be back! It has exhibits on Danish history from prehistory to now, a children’s museum, everything. The most exciting part of the trip, though, was being able to understand some of the posters, making connections with the Danish words we know to those we don’t know.

The day did not end quite so pleasantly. I decided to buy my tickets to Paris (my main trips while in Europe: Paris at the end of February, England in the spring, and Hungary in the summer – with maybe a stopover in Vienna). I have this amazing website – skyscanner.net – that finds the cheapest flights, and, for some reason, it’s actually cheaper to buy there than through the airlines themselves. However, my card did not work with the website I was using, and the website, seeing that my IP was from Denmark, switched the language instantly to Danish. If I tried to switch it to English, it gave me the UK site which had the same flights for about triple the price. So I went to the Norwegian Airlines site directly, and decided to pay the extra $40, but I was so flustered by the fact that my card wasn’t working that I went through quickly, planning to just see if my card was working on that site, and I had already searched the site, so I knew what I was doing…but I realized as soon as I hit “buy” that I hadn’t double checked the dates. Sure enough the return flight was for the wrong date, and because it was a cheap flight, no refunds, or even partial-refunds with cancellations. So I ended up having to buy another return ticket, and while I’m grateful that this is Europe and flights are cheap, so I only paid an extra $60 rather than, say, $200, it’s still an extra $60. And, I realized later (after translating what was now in Norwegian, that while you could not get money back on cancellations, you could change flights for a fee…but I guess that’s what I get for trying to navigate a site in Norwegian). But hey, now I’ve taken the wrong train and bought a ticket for the wrong date…so two things that won’t happen again (hopefully)!

Day 14 - January 14

One of my favorite things so far is sitting on the back or the front of the metro, at the window. I only wish the outside leg of the trip was longer, but even in the tunnels, it’s really neat to watch everything traveling past. Undeground looks like some sort of less-high-tech Star Wars hyperspace vortex. It’s really neat to just sit at the window and watch everything.

The view from the back of the Metro at my stop; the gigantic shopping center Field's.

We took a visit to the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, a collection of art from Carl Jacobsen, the son of the original Carlsberg brewer. It had quite the collection, from Danish artists to French to Egyptian artifacts and Greek statues. Oh to be a rich man living in the 19^th century.

Walking to the Glyptotek.

The earth mother.

A hippo attacking a child??

At home, I attempted to put up the curtains I was finally given. I’ve never hug curtains before, but it seemed pretty simple, although it took forever to get the hanger out. But as I was loading the curtains onto one side, suddenly, the entire other side fell off from the ceiling. Turns out the contraption was not put in very well, and the screw is in by a very loose hold. I cautiously returned the hanger to its screw and prayed to God that it wouldn’t fall again. It didn’t, but whenever opening or closing my curtains, I do it very cautiously.

On the way home, I saw an amusing advertisement for the movie Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs. In Danish, it’s “Det regner med frikadeller”. Literal translation? It is raining with frikadeller (a Danish dish of meatballs). Ironically, that night, my Danish flatmate, Bo, was cooking us dinner – we wanted a Danish dinner, so he made frikadeller. I offered to help and he set me to chopping vegetables for the salad, but then set about critiquing my slowness of chopping. In my defense, he gave me a VERY large knife to cut with, which was rather unwieldy :). But the dinner was delicious, so I can’t complain!