The End

So this is the end of seven months of crazy traveling adventures. I'm writing this from Massachusetts, which is colder but sunnier than Denmark. I will certainly miss Denmark. It was an absolutely amazing semester and I met some really awesome people. But there are some nice things about being home. As I said it's sunny. I don't have to cook. I get to see my family and friends.
Still, I hope I can go back to Denmark at some point.

Awesome ride

So ever since I arrived in Denmark, I'd really wanted to go on the ride pictured above. It's basically a cross between the swingset rides and the elevator amusement park rides. You're on a giant spinning swingset and it's brought up and down that giant elevator style shaft.
And I finally lived out this dream last night! It was really cold but well worth it. It gave an amazing view of Copenhagen and of Tivoli, where it is. It was also fast, high, and thrilling, which is everything I love in amusement park ride!

Malmo Trip!

Yesterday I went to Malmo, Sweden with DIS and it was a really awesome time! The day started with me discovering the most amazing bar in Copenhagen. I didn't even have to go inside to know that it's the best bar ever. Just take a look at it:

Boston Sports!

Next we got on the train to go from Copenhagen to Malmo. The train ride pretty short, considering it goes between to cities in two different countries. And we got to go over a really long bridge between Denmark and Sweden. Transportation didn't go as smoothly as it could have. When we got into Sweden, they made an announcement on the train that the train would not be stopping at Malmo central station. Rather we would have to get off at Malmo South Station, which was a half hour or so bus ride away from where we wanted to be. So, inconvenient but not the end of the world.
When we did arrive in Malmo, we saw that it was like Copenhagen in many ways. The buildings and atmosphere were very similar. But it was still cool to walk around. There were a number of cool sculptures, buildings and a ferris wheel. And Malmo, like Copenhagen, was very Christmassy!

The Giving Tree

Marching Band sculpture

City hall or other important building, I think

We spent most of the afternoon just kind of wandering around and looking at the city. We also found time to eat one of the most delicious meals ever! It was a middle eastern buffet, with all sorts of falafel, hummus and other random things that I had never eaten. It was really really delicious and kept me full until bed!

Middle Eastern Buffet. Much more appetizing than it looks.

So, Sweden is also really cold. Much colder than Denmark. (Actually that was probably just a coincidence, since it's like two feet away from Denmark.) But anyway, we decided to go inside a mall and wander around. In the mall, we encountered a mini-procession of people celebrating Santa Lucia, which is a Swedish holiday, where girls dress in white and sing songs and put candles on their heads and eat buns. I'm sure there is also a deeper meaning than that, but I'm not sure. But it was really cool cause these girls (and a few guys) were just standing in the middle of the mall, in white dresses with candles. One girl, had the candles on her head, which looked uncomfortable as she had wax all in her hair. Later we had some Santa Lucia buns, which are a traditional pastry eaten on Santa Lucia.

Santa Lucia in the Mall

Santa Lucia Bun

We wandered around some more at night and saw a lot of really neat things, like this giant lamp in the middle of a square. Then we saw even more Santa Lucia singers! These ones were outside right in the main square and were really amazing and beautiful to listen to. And it started snowing which made it even more beautiful. Here are some photos and a short video of the first song the Santa Lucia girls sang.

Giant Lamp

Ferris Wheel

Santa Lucia on the Balcony

Climate, Christiania, and Christmas

Random Photo: I bike CPH, even in the winter

My last full weekend in Copenhagen was an amazing one! Of course, every now and then I'd be standing somewhere, and think, wow, the odds that this is the last time I will ever be in this place (or at least for a very long time) are increasing at an alarming rate with every passing day. And that makes me extremely sad. But I've been trying to enjoy my last week here as much as I can.
Friday was my last day of classes. Honestly, I'm not all that sad about no more classes until January. Sitting in class on Friday was so hard with all the climate excitement going on outside. I could hear people marching down the street with drums and chanting and I really wanted to see what the excitement was about, but it was my last class of the semester, so I stayed put. But we did have some good tasting cookies in one of my classes, that kind of looked like dog kibble, but tasted much much better.

Much better than dog kibble

I then spent a good chunk of the rest of Friday wandering around the city looking at all the climate stuff. You may have heard, but Copenhagen is hosting a really major conference on climate change with like every world leader in the world in attendance. This means that there are also all sorts of protests, climate exibits and general coolness (no pun intended) going on. Among these exhibits are a trailer saying "Brad Pitt is saving planet earth in Copenhagen." Brad Pitt has no actual affiliation with this trailer. Instead they are taking random people off the street and filming them imitating Brad Pitt talking about saving the earth. I got some nice photos of a DIS student imitating Brad Pitt. (Check out www.bradpitt.dk for more info about this interesting exhibit.)

Not Brad Pitt

Another favorite exhibit of mine is the ice sculpture of the polar bear that the WWF put out right near my school. It started out as a complete polar bear. But then obviously it slowly started melting away and underneath was a metal polar bear skeleton. This symbolized how global warming is killing the polar bears. It earned creativity points for presentation in my book.

Global warming killing the polar bear

I also happened upon a small but cool demonstration, with people wanting to save the Himalayas. There were tons of Nepalese flags and a large group of mountain climbers. There were also a few Nepalese politicians. It was cool though, cause on stage they had a group of ten or so climbers who had all summitted Mt. Everest (and one who had climbed the tallest mountain on every continent.) So that was neat. Here's a photo from that and a few other random ones from climate exhibitions around the city:

Himalayas Demonstration

That giant plant and that giant ball aren't normally on the streets of Copenhagen

One of many painted globes in Kongens Nytorv

The next day was perhaps even more exciting! Two friends and I decided we wanted to see what the Christiania Christmas market was like. On my way biking down I saw a man biking with no pants on, just underwear and knee socks. That was kind of strange, especially since it was quite cold. Then I met Katherine and Kyle down on Christianshavn where we happened to be when the most massive climate demonstration EVER came through. It was so big! Estimates place somewhere between 60 and 100,000 people at the demonstration! Really, they just kept coming and coming and coming. Most of the people had various climate signs . There were people who were just against global warming, vegans, people telling us to save the polar bears, people telling us to save the panda bears. And then there were people who really were just using it as a platform for their own non-climate issues. This included people wanting out of Iraq, union workers, marijuana smokers, communists, socialists, and more that I probably am forgetting or simply didn't notice. Ultimately the protest resulted in 900 arrests

After watching the climate demonstration for about an hour we headed over to the Christmas market. It was packed, but it was still pretty cool. Inside a giant barn, there were all sorts of vendors selling all sorts of weird things. I was hungry so Kyle and I tried something called risengrød cause it looked like rice pudding and I like rice pudding. And it was really delicious and warm. We weren't really sure what went good on it, but they had bowls with sugar and cherries so we added both and both were really good. Also, as we were leaving Christiania, about ten police vans SPED onto the street, sirens and lights blazing. And piled out of the van and ran off sprinting. We weren't completely sure what that was about, but I read in the paper the next day that a bunch of cars were set on fire outside Christiania and that a policeman had a brick thrown at his face. So maybe we saw something to do with that.

Christiania Christmas Market

Risengrød

After visiting Christiania I walked back to the center and saw some cool stuff. There were christmas carollers in the middle of Strøget, and they were really good. There was also all sorts of litter, leftover from the environmental protest. A little ironic in my opinion. And finally, I ended my walk at the city hall, which is really awesomely decorated for the climate conferences, with a giant globe, stationary bicycles to contribute power to the event (which I of course rode) and all sorts of interesting exhibits.

Giant Globe

A final point of success: I have figured out what I am doing for Christmas presents for my family. But it would be silly of me to post it here, considering my parents make up more than fifty percent of this blog's readership, so that would really defeat the point :)

Returning to Prison

I should be writing my 12 page 1.5 spaced paper that is due Friday about how Nestle kills babies.
But instead I am going to write about my second visit to a Danish prison, with the same class that I went with before. Once again, this was one of my favorite Danish experiences of the semester. It's really just so fascinating to see how completely different it was than in the US.

The last prison I went to was shocking because it was an open prison and we have absolutely nothing like that in the US for drug users and robbers. However, this closed prison, Vridsløselille, was almost as surprising in its own way. With the open prison, I did have some idea of what to expect. I had seen photos in my class lectures and had heard from my teacher about how different it was from an American prison. But in regards to the closed prisons, she had always told us that it would be a lot more like what we pictured when we pictured a prison.

Well, at least this prison had gates that lock. But other than that, it still was not very close to what I imagined to see in a closed prison. The prisoners still dressed in normal clothes. They still wandered around within their unlocked wards at will. The knives in the kitchen (although this time attached to the wall), the tanning bed, the soccer fields, the friendly conversations between guards and prisoners that I had seen in the open prison still existed in the closed prison. And these are not prisoners in for minor drug offenses or pickpocketing. The prison we visited had murderers, serious drug offenders, gang members, the worst criminals in Denmark. Prisoners can go to the gym, school, work (well, work's a requirement), and even the prison grocery store! They aren't allowed to leave the grounds obviously, or to go outside their ward past a certain time, and they are locked into their rooms at night, but as far as prisons go, this didn't seem all that uncomfortable. There were even pool tables and ping pong tables on all the wards!

They also place a large emphasis on education in the prison, which seems like a good thing to me. Instead of going to work, prisoners can go to school to receive an education in the prison. They will still be paid as if they were going to work! While I know Americans would have a problem paying prisoners to go to school and not even to work, it probably helps with giving prisoners something to do when they get out of prison other than go right back to crime.

At the end of our visit, we talked to a prisoner for a little while, which was a little disconcerting. He committed a double homicide of two Finnish police men, which is like... a really horrible crime. But he seemed extremely nice and seemed genuinely sorry, which was the disconcerting part. I had to keep reminding myself that he was a serious criminal and that in all likelihood isn't as friendly as he seems. Or maybe he is, who knows?

Also, when we were leaving, I saw a cool sculpture at the train station:

Christmas in Copenhagen

So Denmark is very very Christmassy. And I love it! Christmas season here began even earlier than it does in the United States, at the end of October. The official start of Christmas season here, as far as I have been able to tell was J-Dag (or J-Day), which is when Christmas Beer comes out. That's right. Denmark makes their own Christmas beer and its release is a national holiday! I walked around downtown the night that it came out and it was wild! People were dressed in entire outfits, head to toe, that were put out by Tuborg, the maker of the most popular Christmas beer. I was even lucky enough to be given a free Christmas beer hat. Basically, it's a giant blue Santa hat, with white polka dots and something written in Danish on it. I didn't stay out too late, as I was recovering from the flu that night, but I heard every bar in Copenhagen was packed. Interestingly, one of my friends tried to get into one of our favorite bars and was told that on J-Dag they only let Danes into the bar and she was given a similar response at a different bar. Even Danish people who I've asked about that were surprised and were not aware of that policy.

Me in my J-Dag hat

After J-Dag, we left for our travel break and upon our return we were greeted with Denmark's Christmas season in full force. And as the weeks have continued it has become more and more apparent. Every street is lit up. There is a giant tree in front of city hall. My bus stop has turned into a Christmas tree farm. Nyhavn has turned into a Christmas market.
And there's tons of Christmas themed food. I tried something called æbleskiver, which are like spherical pancakes that you put in powdered sugar. They were one of the greatest things ever and it makes me sad that I won't be able to have them on return to the states, cause I don't think I will be able to buy them anywhere and you need a special pan to make them yourself. Another common winter drink is gløgg, which I haven't tried but I have heard quite a bit about. It's like hot wine with rum and rum raisins and nuts in it. It's supposed to be really good and is quite a big thing to some people apparently. I have one Danish friend who showed me his supply of raisins that he has been soaking in rum for THREE MONTHS so that they will be good and strong for Christmas season gløgg. I definitely plan on trying this.
I also used this Christmas season to finally visit Tivoli, something I have been wanting to do all semester. Tivoli is the second oldest amusement park in the world and was really really cool. The Christmas decorations were amazing and I had the most delicious caramel apple that I have ever eaten! The highlight of the evening, however, was the Crazy Christmas Cabaret or Mamma Mafia. It was a English performance in Tivoli about a bunch of mafia families in America, complete with singing, cross-dressing, dancing, making fun of Americans, making fun of Danes, and all around ridiculousness. They do a Crazy Christmas Cabaret in Tivoli every year and it it amazed me that at the beginning of the night, when they asked how many people had been to a show before, everyone except my small group of DIS Americans raised their hands.

Entrance to Tivoli

Inside Tivoli

But I would also say I'm taking a lot more notice of the Christmas season here than at home. At home, I know Christmas decorations, music, and festivities start around Thanksgiving, but I'm usually so busy with finals that I don't notice. I do have finals and work here, but because I'm in Denmark and trying to savor every last minute of it, it's so much easier to notice and enjoy the Christmas joy here.

Norway!

I just got back from an amazing trip to Oslo, Norway. It was short but sweet (and cheap, due to a friend getting tickets from her host family!) To get there we boarded an overnight boat. The boat ride was fun, with plenty of Christmas decorations and cool people to hang out with.
When we arrived in Oslo, the first thing we saw was the Opera House. It was really neat. Basically it looked like a giant sled hill. It was all white and looked like snow and you could see people walking all over it. So we went over and climbed to the roof of the Opera house, which was provided some pretty cool views.

Opera House

Top of the Opera House

Next we walked a little throughout Oslo. We went up some walking streets, which were extremely Christmassy, which was no real surprise considering that Christmas-Spirit is what I have come to expect from Scandinavia. Walking through the streets we realized that Norwegian (at least in its written form) is extremely similar to Danish. We were all pleasantly surprised at how much of the language we could read on the streets. It was especially surprising because I really don't know much Danish at all either!

Merry Christmas

Eventually we made it to the Norwegian National Gallery, which had a whole bunch of paintings. Some of them were of Norway and really impressive. Others were also impressive because I'd actually heard of them, which is unusual when it comes to me and paintings. Among the ones I recognized were a self-portrait of Van Gogh and Norway's most famous painting, The Scream.

Scream (photo from google, no cameras allowed in museum)

Our walk continued to the Nobel Peace Prize institute. We didn't go inside the museum but looked at it from the outside. Obama will be there next week to get his prize, but he'll be in Copenhagen too, so I didn't feel like I accidentally came to Oslo a week too early.

Sign at the Nobel Institute. When I saw it, I thought it said "King Obama" which seemed strange. But upon closer look it says "Fra King Til Obama" or "From King to Obama"

The Nobel institute was right next to the City Hall and a giant ice rink in the middle of a square. There were some impressive figure skaters on the rink, which was neat. And a giant "Julemarked" (Christmas market) that we would make our way back to later. From the city hall, we caught a ride over to the highlight of my day: the Viking Ship Museum. This museum is the home to three 1100 year old Viking ships. When important vikings died, they were buried inside whole ships. And they managed to dig up three of these ships, which are impressively preserved. Along with the ships, there were tons of other things in the ships and now in the museum including carriages, horses, pots and pans, smaller boats, human skeletons. It was really quite an amazing museum.

Viking Ship

Going back to the center, we happened upon the changing of the guard at the royal Norwegian palace, which was my favorite changing of the guard I've ever seen. The guards had amazing furry hats and knives and guns that they used in the ceremony. It was pretty impressive.

Royal Palace

Guards, with their hats and guns

We ended the day walking around that Christmas market. It was really cooly lit and there was a Santa and Christmas music and nice smelling foods.

Julemarked

Eventually we had to go catch our boat back to Copenhagen. Another fun boat ride back. We played people watching Bingo. Our board included such items as "Christmas sweater" and "pants tucked into socks." All in all a very fun day in Norway.