http://www.dis.dk/Students
Wish me luck!
Luck for getting home all the cheap Chinese goods I want to buy
: )
Monday, March 17, 2008
China Itinerary
This is a link to my Itinerary for the next two weeks:
http://www.dis.dk/Students/StudytourPDFs/china.pdf
Wish me luck!
Luck for getting home all the cheap Chinese goods I want to buy
: )
http://www.dis.dk/Students
Wish me luck!
Luck for getting home all the cheap Chinese goods I want to buy
: )
Sunday, March 16, 2008
Ich Bin Ein Berliner
Onto Berlin!
The time we spent in Berlin and Prague was very different ... from the weather to the bar scene. I enjoyed both cities but you can't really compare the two. Berlin was devastated after World War II and the rebuilding of the city took part mostly in the 50's and 60's. What this means is that the Berlin architecture is, well ... not spectacular. Granted, more modern buildings are being built and the reconstruction of previous structures have also helped the overall look of the city.
A bit of the city architecture - near our hotel
It was incredibly interesting to see the path the Berlin wall took around the city. Keep in mind that Berlin is nine times the size of Paris (says my guidebook) and extremely expansive. Both East Berlin and West Berlin grew out and with the fall of the wall in 1989 the city became one again, one HUGE city. This was another one of the huge distinctions between our first few days and our time in Berlin. The city has a really great public transportation system and DIS arranged for us to have welcome cards which entitled all of us to travel freely. The problem was that there was a transportation strike! Luckily the S-Bahn (one of the train lines) was running and we were able to get around ... but it meant at times that we had to get on the bus and sit through traffic instead of using the metro.
The first evening we had a guided bus tour of the city. We hadn't arrived until nearly 4pm so it was dark towards the end of the tour. Our guide was really hilarious, as we passed a big banana phone (B&O) like sculpture he told us that, "That was a gift from France, they didn't want it" adding, "No, really". This was when we sort of did a speed trip through Berlin ... and you can probably imagine how big the city really is considering we had a 3 hour driving tour. Wow.
We did get out and take pictures at the wall and a few other stops along the way.
The East Side Gallery - The Wall
West -- East
A wonderfully crooked shot --Brandenburg Gate
The next day was our final academic visit. I was in the group that went to Bayer Schering Pharmaceutical. It was really interesting to hear about their strategy and product lines. In my Global Business Strategy class last week we had a guest speaker with a Danish biotech which had spurred my interest in the industry. That afternoon we bussed it out to the Olympic stadium. This was a really great trip and we had a fantastic tour of the stadium. It was so interesting to understand how the architecture was typical of the Nazis, which seat the Chancellor sits in and to see the locker rooms. We had a bit of blue sky as well!
List of winners - including Jesse Owens four gold medals
VIP Room
For dinner we went to the new trendy district of Berlin and had a nice dinner. The only problem was that they seated all of us in the smoking room and it was extremely smoky. One of the girls asked to be moved because she was allergic to the smoke, I decided to sit with her as I had a nasty cold and was really bothered by the smoke. It was also a really great way to sit and chat with her one-on-one. We even had our own candle : )
After dinner I was tempted to just head back to the hotel and rest up, but hey ... what's a few hours ... : ) I headed to a really neat bar that had originally been a department store in the 30's and 40's and then after near devastation during the war was transformed into an art gallery, music venue and bar. It was INCREDIBLE. We got there early enough to have our own table and realized that there would be a live band. It wasn't until the band came out -British 5 piece with a violin! - that I decided staying out was the best decision I could have made.
The deconstruction of a Russian building -
in order to rebuild the original palace
I even felt slightly better when I woke up : ) Maybe just happier after such great music!
We had a trip to the DDR museum or the German Democratic Republic museum. This was a neat museum designed for total integration. It meant that we were supposed to touch everything. We were even encouraged to get into a car, turn on the engine and rev it! I was kind of unable to get past the thought, "but, I'm in a museum" ... and had a hard time touching anything : ) but it was really neat and our tour guide had lived in the former Eastern Germany until he was 16. One of the more interesting things we learned about life in the GDR was that it was very common for families to go on holiday to nude beaches. Ok, to each his own.
A typical GDR living room
Our lunch was at the German Parliamentary building, the Reichstag, and I have no idea how DIS managed to get a group of 40 of us into this really posh restaurant on top of the building regularly frequented by the parliamentary members. It was pretty great. It also meant that we skipped the long entrance line which was halfway down the front lawn ... kind of a VIP treatment. Afterwards we explored the dome which had been recreated postwar and is a really interesting meld of modern and historical design.
View from atop the Reichstag
Taking a group shot
I had to stop and think just now, how many days was I in Berlin? We saw an incredible amount in so little time.
Right, that afternoon I went on the optional tour to the Jewish Museum. I really liked the new exhibit which was very simplistic and powerful. The permanent exhibit was just a little overwhelming and I had a hard time sifting through a thousand years of Jewish history, but it was definitely interesting.
This is from an exhibit documenting a family fleeing to Valparaiso, Chile!
A church partially destroyed during the war
& it's modern additions
I spent the rest of the afternoon and evening walking around on my own. After having been in group settings all week it was very peaceful and relaxing to just explore and go at my own pace. Of course it meant that I got lost, a lot. But eventually I made I did make it back to the hotel : ) after a trip to the Galeries Lafayette (shopping!), a few more tourist sites (Checkpoint Charlie) and a beautiful sunset.
The Reichstag again ... I was lost, turned around and whoa it's the Reichstag!
Last on our agenda was a trip to the Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp. I was very glad to have seen the site and I learned a lot from the audio guides DIS provided us. I had no idea that the camp was used during the sixties for Soviet use and was surprised to find that very few pieces survived from the 30's and 40's.
The gate for prisoners - "Work Liberates"
We dropped off half the group who continued their travels from Berlin and headed back towards Copenhagen. Our ferry between Germany and Denmark was delayed two hours and it meant a late arrival but I was just so happy to get into my bed last night! I think I slept off my cold and have spent the entire day uploading pictures and preparing for China!! Only a few hours until I head to the airport!
A bit from Eddie Izzard --
The time we spent in Berlin and Prague was very different ... from the weather to the bar scene. I enjoyed both cities but you can't really compare the two. Berlin was devastated after World War II and the rebuilding of the city took part mostly in the 50's and 60's. What this means is that the Berlin architecture is, well ... not spectacular. Granted, more modern buildings are being built and the reconstruction of previous structures have also helped the overall look of the city.
A bit of the city architecture - near our hotel
It was incredibly interesting to see the path the Berlin wall took around the city. Keep in mind that Berlin is nine times the size of Paris (says my guidebook) and extremely expansive. Both East Berlin and West Berlin grew out and with the fall of the wall in 1989 the city became one again, one HUGE city. This was another one of the huge distinctions between our first few days and our time in Berlin. The city has a really great public transportation system and DIS arranged for us to have welcome cards which entitled all of us to travel freely. The problem was that there was a transportation strike! Luckily the S-Bahn (one of the train lines) was running and we were able to get around ... but it meant at times that we had to get on the bus and sit through traffic instead of using the metro.
The first evening we had a guided bus tour of the city. We hadn't arrived until nearly 4pm so it was dark towards the end of the tour. Our guide was really hilarious, as we passed a big banana phone (B&O) like sculpture he told us that, "That was a gift from France, they didn't want it" adding, "No, really". This was when we sort of did a speed trip through Berlin ... and you can probably imagine how big the city really is considering we had a 3 hour driving tour. Wow.
We did get out and take pictures at the wall and a few other stops along the way.
The East Side Gallery - The Wall
West -- East
A wonderfully crooked shot --Brandenburg Gate
The next day was our final academic visit. I was in the group that went to Bayer Schering Pharmaceutical. It was really interesting to hear about their strategy and product lines. In my Global Business Strategy class last week we had a guest speaker with a Danish biotech which had spurred my interest in the industry. That afternoon we bussed it out to the Olympic stadium. This was a really great trip and we had a fantastic tour of the stadium. It was so interesting to understand how the architecture was typical of the Nazis, which seat the Chancellor sits in and to see the locker rooms. We had a bit of blue sky as well!
List of winners - including Jesse Owens four gold medals
VIP Room
For dinner we went to the new trendy district of Berlin and had a nice dinner. The only problem was that they seated all of us in the smoking room and it was extremely smoky. One of the girls asked to be moved because she was allergic to the smoke, I decided to sit with her as I had a nasty cold and was really bothered by the smoke. It was also a really great way to sit and chat with her one-on-one. We even had our own candle : )
After dinner I was tempted to just head back to the hotel and rest up, but hey ... what's a few hours ... : ) I headed to a really neat bar that had originally been a department store in the 30's and 40's and then after near devastation during the war was transformed into an art gallery, music venue and bar. It was INCREDIBLE. We got there early enough to have our own table and realized that there would be a live band. It wasn't until the band came out -British 5 piece with a violin! - that I decided staying out was the best decision I could have made.
The deconstruction of a Russian building -
in order to rebuild the original palace
I even felt slightly better when I woke up : ) Maybe just happier after such great music!
We had a trip to the DDR museum or the German Democratic Republic museum. This was a neat museum designed for total integration. It meant that we were supposed to touch everything. We were even encouraged to get into a car, turn on the engine and rev it! I was kind of unable to get past the thought, "but, I'm in a museum" ... and had a hard time touching anything : ) but it was really neat and our tour guide had lived in the former Eastern Germany until he was 16. One of the more interesting things we learned about life in the GDR was that it was very common for families to go on holiday to nude beaches. Ok, to each his own.
A typical GDR living room
Our lunch was at the German Parliamentary building, the Reichstag, and I have no idea how DIS managed to get a group of 40 of us into this really posh restaurant on top of the building regularly frequented by the parliamentary members. It was pretty great. It also meant that we skipped the long entrance line which was halfway down the front lawn ... kind of a VIP treatment. Afterwards we explored the dome which had been recreated postwar and is a really interesting meld of modern and historical design.
View from atop the Reichstag
Taking a group shot
I had to stop and think just now, how many days was I in Berlin? We saw an incredible amount in so little time.
Right, that afternoon I went on the optional tour to the Jewish Museum. I really liked the new exhibit which was very simplistic and powerful. The permanent exhibit was just a little overwhelming and I had a hard time sifting through a thousand years of Jewish history, but it was definitely interesting.
This is from an exhibit documenting a family fleeing to Valparaiso, Chile!
A church partially destroyed during the war
& it's modern additions
I spent the rest of the afternoon and evening walking around on my own. After having been in group settings all week it was very peaceful and relaxing to just explore and go at my own pace. Of course it meant that I got lost, a lot. But eventually I made I did make it back to the hotel : ) after a trip to the Galeries Lafayette (shopping!), a few more tourist sites (Checkpoint Charlie) and a beautiful sunset.
The Reichstag again ... I was lost, turned around and whoa it's the Reichstag!
Last on our agenda was a trip to the Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp. I was very glad to have seen the site and I learned a lot from the audio guides DIS provided us. I had no idea that the camp was used during the sixties for Soviet use and was surprised to find that very few pieces survived from the 30's and 40's.
The gate for prisoners - "Work Liberates"
We dropped off half the group who continued their travels from Berlin and headed back towards Copenhagen. Our ferry between Germany and Denmark was delayed two hours and it meant a late arrival but I was just so happy to get into my bed last night! I think I slept off my cold and have spent the entire day uploading pictures and preparing for China!! Only a few hours until I head to the airport!
A bit from Eddie Izzard --
But back in the 60s, though, back in the 60s, President Kennedy became the President of the United States of America, and he we went to Berlin, stood on the Berlin wall and he said, "People of Berlin..." (hearty American)” People of Berlin." I can't do an impression of President Kennedy, so this is... James Mason playing him... (imitates Mason) “ People of Berlin, I have come to you to tell you something about the American states. I sound a bit like God, don't I? Yes. But I have come to say to you that every free citizen of the world is a citizen of Berlin. And I wish to say to you, 'Ich bin ein Berliner.' " And the crowd went wild!
Trouble is, "Ich bin ein Berliner" means "I am a donut," and... This is true, and this is what he said, he said "I am a donut!" And, as I say, 70% of how you look, 20% of how you sound, only 10% is what you say. He said "I am a donut" and they went wild! Because "Ich bin Berliner" is "I am a Berliner." But "Ich bin ein Berliner," is - that's the name of a donut they have there.
Czech this out
"Czech me out" was the wordplay that someone really clever : ) came up with for nearly half the Czech Republic's tourist wear.
These sweatshirts read: "Czech drinking team"
I have to put this last week up in two entries ... mainly because Prague was just too beautiful to not have its own entry. I took sooo many pictures that I cannot believe we were only in Prague for just two days! Well, we should have had three days in Prague but there was a miscommunication with our bus. Instead of leaving Saturday evening and driving through the night we got on the bus at 7:00am after having spent the night in a Copenhagen hotel. Sunday turned into one extremely long day of sitting on the bus. Which was a bit of a reoccurring trend as the week went on. We watched some really good movies on the bus which helped the time pass. A danish movie, Prag, set in Prague about a marriage in trouble. We also watched The Lives of Others, a German movie set in East Berlin in the late 80's. Last year this movie won the Academy award for best foreign film. I thought it was really great and a good prelude to traveling to Berlin.
When we arrived in Prague that evening we went straight to dinner and had our first taste of traditional Czech food and drink. Yum! There was plenty of meat as well as a type of potato dumpling. We were all just so happy to get off the bus!!
The next day we were extremely fortunate to have a beautiful blue sky and sunshine! I guess we really did leave Northern Europe : ) The first stop of the day was at the Czech National Bank where we had our first academic visit. We have a group assignment associated with the three academic visits that we made during the week (14 page strategic analysis ... eeeh). It was interesting to hear from the bank about the Czech Republic's future adoption of the Euro and how they were affected with entrance into the EU.
After our visit we had an amazing lunch, or should I say feast. It was maybe the touristy version of a really traditional meal but it was amazing nonetheless. We basically went down into this dungeon and had HUGE platters of food come out to share around the table. The platters included every type of meat that you could imagine, seriously. There were even dessert platters which came out ... of course with these the food went much quicker : )
This was seriously LUNCH!
The menu - please note the whole turkey.
Once we had digested ... a little ... we had a guided walking tour of the city. What is so great about Prague is that its beauty is very concentrated. Maybe that sounds strange ... I mean that you could literally walk for thirty minutes and have seen all of the beautiful sites. Especially once you are looking across the Charles Bridge, WOW.
Prague has been very wonderfully restored as well. It hadn't sustained much damage during the wars and has been able to maintain most of its beauty. Some arguing that it is the most beautiful city in Europe. I was thinking that if you were to consider only aesthetics that Prague is more beautiful than Paris ... but of course, I was in Paris in January which isn't exactly the most beautiful Paris can be.
After the tour we we had the rest of the evening on our own. A group of friends and I walked around the old Jewish quarter, took a stroll along the bridges and explored a bit outside the tourist zone. That evening we found a microbrewery and enjoyed a glass of excellent Czech beer. I was really surprised by the number of tourists in Prague. I guess because in Copenhagen you hardly ever see tourists and it seems so early but with the Easter holiday there were a lot of young school groups and the streets were very crowded at times.
Cemetery - The old Jewish quarter -- from a peephole
The bridge - Joe & Tim
The trolley
On the Charles Bridge
Easter decorations
On our second day we had a visit to the Czech subsidiary of Skanska, which is a Swedish construction company. I liked the visit and thought they seemed like a really great organization working very hard to be sustainable and green in an industry which is anything but.
We had a bit of free time and I decided to check (Czech : )) out a Salvador Dali exhibition that was happening. I learned about his range as an artist and saw a collection of photographs taken by a Czech photographer in the late 1970's.
We spent the afternoon at the Prague castle, apparently the biggest ancient castle in the world (says the Guiness book of world records). It felt more like its own village. It also gave an absolutely beautiful view of the city.
Part of the Castle & a beautiful sky
Our group - waiting
View from the top
cool reflection : )
Interesting Czech art - integrated into the city
For our last evening we had a final Czech meal which included a show! Dancing, costumes, singing and amazing instruments were a great way to be fully immersed in the Czech culture. During the final number the two performers started getting students out to dance with them ... for whatever reason my friend Andrew turned to me and said, "Well, should we go up before they pick us" ... of course with 40+ people it wasn't a sure thing we'd be picked out but I said yes anyways and considering that neither of us knew the steps we did a pretty good job. Of course when I said "OK, now we are going to spin ... " and then he spun right along with me ... I couldn't help but laugh. I had meant that he should spin me : )
Where we had our finale dinner
The main course- dumplings & sausage
That night a group of us found a really great place to hang out and enjoy a few hours before the next bus ride. It was a bit of a cave, extremely smoky and really fun. Most of us took for granted the fact that Copenhagen has a smoking ban in nearly all of its establishments ... wow, the smoking in restaurants seems so horrible now.
Right, so the next morning meant a six hour drive to Berlin (more movies) and unfortunately when we got there the blue sky had vanished ... but more about Berlin in the next entry!!
Read more about the city of Prague here
Ciao!
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