A Visit from Deutschland

YAYY!! My camera charger has made it and so has a brand new blog entry!! This last week has been fantastic and soo busy with finishing up classwork before our study trip (holiday!!) and having Irina in Copenhagen to visit!

I was so happy to host Irina and both Antonio and Agneta were wonderful to let me have a friend stay at the house. I'll try not to bore with the details and hopefully some of the pictures will speak for themselves!


















Tuesday Irina and I were tourists around Copenhagen. I left the tour guide part up to Irina for the most part - she brought a map along with her! How clever the Germans are : )
It was an absolutely beautiful day. It was definitely colder than it has been but the sun was shining and we were very fortunate for a blue sky. We spent a bit of time walking down the harbor, Nyhavn, which is basically as much as a postcard stroll as you can possibly have in Copenhagen. We even saw a boat in the harbor with a great pirate flag, the pirates were aboard enjoying a smorebrød lunch - I had to be sneaky about taking a picture : )















































Irina posing (unwillingly) with the GIGANTIC sandwiches that we decided to eat on the sidewalk for lunch. It wasn't exactly a sidewalk cafe ... more like, "Can we take these chairs outside?" ... "You're allowed to ask silly questions when you're clearly a tourist" ...


















Copenhagen really is a great walking city. It is extremely flat and if you are armed with a map (or a friend with a map) then you are sure to find the city very easily accessed. We wandered through the central neighborhoods and made our way past the Royal Opera house and to the Little Mermaid. The Little Mermaid is of course mandatory for any visitors. We even ran into the national bird of Denmark! The swan!




























Appx. two seconds after this the swan was unhappy being paparazzied and hissed at us!



After finding our way through hoards of Danish children in their one pieces (the snowsuits that toddlers waddle around in) we ventured into the Østebro and Nørrebro neighborhoods. In Østebro we happened upon a cemetery containing the burial plots of H.C. Anderson, Niels Bohr & Søren Kierkegaard. Ok, well we found the cemetery ... but we couldn't find any of the names listed ... nonetheless it was interesting after having seen a few cemeteries in S. America and after having been to the cemetery in Paris to kind of be able to see how distinctive the Danish cemetery was. It was very simplistic and subdued. Whereas in S. America it was more like brightly colored mini-houses at times!

In Nørrebro we found lots of great antique shops. This one was pretty funny though ... you could only really take two or three steps into the shop without bumping into the stacks of items for sale.



















great Danish mannequins.
































Can you tell ... IT'S SNOWING??!!!
The first snow of the year!! How great!!! We took a bus from Nørrebro back to the city center in order to head home for the evening and realized that it had begun to snow! By the time we were on the train it was nearly a snowstorm! Thank goodness I had my big green coat (thanks grandma!) and my fabulous purple scarf (thanks Shelley!)

Wednesday I was completely free from school - thank goodness!
Irina and I headed to Sweden to meet up with a cousin of hers who goes to law school in a small University town, Lund, which is right outside of Malmo (the third largest city in Sweden).
What struck me most about our time in Sweden was how much slower life seemed to be moving and how cleaner and quainter it seemed. Of course the majority of my experience in Denmark has been in the big metropolitan but it was nice to take a break and enjoy life on the other side of the Oresund (the sound).


















Taking the train to Malmo. It only took about thirty minutes and our train ticket also meant that we could use the buses in Malmo for free! How great, thanks Sweden. Also, you can't see them but we passed probably 30 windmills (Vestas??) in the middle of the sound (body of water) as we were crossing into Sweden. Yay for wind energy!!

The first thing we did when we got to Malmo ... ate Danishes : )
They were pretty delicious. But I wonder if in Sweden they are called Swedishes?
(hahah, I think I'm soo funny)


I'm going to come home as one giant vienerbrød.
Seriously, and the first step is admitting you have a problem.














A lesson in Danish & Swedish language:

To say hello --
Danish: Hi!
Swedish: Hey!

To say goodbye--
Danish: Hi, Hi!
Swedish: Hey, Hey!

Irina had spent time in Sweden before and mixed the two up a bit. Lets just say that the Dane/Swede love/hate relationship still exists ... to a certain extent.

Oh, Sweden.














Clogs!! With a picture of the amazing bridge we took from Denmark to Sweden!! They didn't have my size : )



















The Swedish flag.




















This building is called the Turning Torso - if it isn't clear enough in the picture the building actually rotates as it climbs. It is one of the few (if not the only) "sky-scraper" in all of Scandinavia and a really amazing piece of modern-day architecture.




















More Malmo!
















Irina & her cousin Niclaus posing while on a walk around his University















"So, your classes are in a castle?"














Lund! How great.



















How amazing that Niclaus made us Kanelbulle - kind of a cinnamon roll. Definitely tells you about the Scandinavian hospitality. They were soo delicious!!



















Wednesday evening Irina and I headed back to Copenhagen after a really great day in Sweden and an amazing time with Niclaus. We spent a bit of time at the Danish Design Center which had a great exhibition on the Danish design pieces of history and through time and also they had hosted a design contest for the marketing of the Copenhagen 2009 UN Climate conference which was really neat.



















The "Egg" created by Arne Jacobsen in 1958. This piece is a design icon and is actually produced by Fritz Hansen, the company that Antonio works for!! He has the chair in the house now : )

















Our quick dinner after the design center. The thought of having a full meal was not even possible after all of the delicious pastries we had. But you really can't leave Copenhagen without having a pølser (hot dog) and these were especially delicious!


















After the pølsers we decided to find a nice bar to sit and chat in instead of heading right home. We decided to check out this little bar which was a host to Danish microbrews. It turned out that the bartender was one of my tour leaders from the western Jutland tour and we ended up spending nearly an hour chatting with him and his girlfriend.
It's a small world! (Denmark is a small country!)

Unfortunately Thursday was the Irene has to go to school day. I spent the early afternoon prepping for an exam and finalizing group work before my evening class. Luckily Irina had already planned to spend the day in an outlying city, Koge, with her Aunt & Uncle. It worked out great and we were able to meet at home that evening for a nice dinner. When Antonio came home that evening he and Irina chatted away in German (one of Antonio's five languages) and we had a really nice time telling Antonio and Agneta all about our day in Sweden.

Friday, after a bit more class, Irina and I shared a lunch at DIS (leftovers and sandwiches!) before heading out towards the free city of Christiania. I actually don't know so much about Christiania but it was definitely interesting to go and see it. It is literally a "free" city which means as you can see in the next picture it is leaving the European Union. I have no idea how that works but, I guess you could say there are reasons why people would go to do things you couldn't necessarily do in the "real" world. It was interesting to see, but not so nice on such a gray day.



















After a bit of shopping, girl talk & more pastries we headed to see the Royal library and the Black Diamond. I've just taken one shot inside but it really is a neat structure (kind of like a ... black diamond) it was just that we went in the evening and the pictures didn't come out so great.




















Tomorrow I leave for Prague!! This semester is seriously flying by wayyyy too fast! After this week of traveling in Prague and Berlin I will be on my way to China!! Wow!! Before then I have to think about a phone interview which I'll be doing next Friday, in Berlin ... and how I plan on packing efficiently enough to get as much as possible home from China : )

I will definitely have more pictures up next weekend of my travels.
Until then ...

Hey, Hey.

: )


Just to add a shot from the Rådhuspladsen - center square which I walk through everyday from the s-train to DIS. This line from Carlsberg that you see about "Probably ..." is because they are not allowed to claim they are the best. If they did they would have to quantify it in some way.
But, I think people like the probably : )