Copenhagen Weekend

Last week was fairly uneventful, work wise. I started analyzing all my data, which tends to result in me sitting in front of a computer all day long. I am not too big a fan of this, which is probably the cause of my recent case of the lazies, in which I want nothing more than to lay in bed all day reading and eating cereal. Seriously, I never get the lazies this bad! How do I cure myself?!? Tips, anyone?

On Thursday, I hung out with a Dutch girl, Isa, that I met through couchsurfing. She was living in Denmark with her Danish boyfriend and working for Vestas, a wind power company. We had coffee and just hung out. She was really interesting to talk to, and we spent a lot of time talking about the differences between Holland and Denmark. Although the two countries would seem to be quite similar, it turns out they are more different than one would expect. It was also fun to spend some time with another foreigner and poke fun at the silly things Danish people do, such as: eating massive amounts of potatoes, not allowing stores to be open on Sundays, and taking absurdly long summer vacations. Seriously, half the stores in town are closed right now for what is called "industry holiday", a three week long vacation in the end of July.

On Friday afternoon, I headed over to Copenhagen to visit my host family. Earlier in the day, I received a text message from my host mom Mona, asking if I liked sushi. I love sushi, so of course I replied yes, and it turned out that we would be eating sushi for dinner that night. My host dad, Peter, has recently fallen in love with sushi, since it is quite new to Denmark. However, none of Peter or Mona's children like sushi, so they were excited to spoil me with some. But then I started to worry...what if this sushi was super market sushi?!? As much as I love real sushi, I am completely grossed out by super market sushi. I think it is the idea of raw food just sitting around all day in those not-very-cold-open-refrigerator cases. One of the most effective methods that Claire uses to gross me out is buying super market sushi and eating it with gusto. However, my fears were assuaged when Mona picked me up at the train station and we picked up some take-out sushi at a very respectable looking restaurant. I helped Peter conquer his fear of wasabi by showing him how to mix it with the soy sauce, and we had a great dinner.

The next day, the weather was pretty rainy, so we all had a nice day inside. The whole family stopped by to say hi. My host brothers Lasse and Jakob stopped by earlier in the day to say hi, and then my host sister Line and her boyfriend, as well as my host grandma, came for lunch. We had a great Danish lunch with rye bread and tons of types of herring and other meats. And, lots of beer, of course. I was especially glad to meet Line finally, as she was an exchange student in Brazil while I was one in Denmark, so I had actually never met her before. After lunch, the rain finally cleared up and I went for a long walk on the beach and ended up wandering into a really cool nature area with marshes that I had never seen before. The rest of the day consisted of watching Tour de France coverage (Peter is really into cycling) and making more delicious food. We had salmon for dinner. Salmon wrapped in bacon, that is. This is a very common Danish thing to do - have a completely normal and rational meat choice for dinner, but then swaddle the whole thing in bacon. Normally, I am not a fan of mixing meats, but this was so darn tasty that it made me reconsider my meat-segregation stance a bit.

On Sunday morning, I caught the train up to Copenhagen to meet one of my professors from Harvey Mudd, Dr. Nancy Lape, as well as another Mudd student who were there for a conference. I met them at their hotel and we headed to the downtown. We took a short walking tour of the main square and the walking street. Then, I introduced them to some delicious Danish pasteries at a cafe on the town hall square. We then went to the Statens Museum for Kunst (State Art Museum), which I actually had never been to before. It was full of cheery Danish art, such as this piece.
This museum really ran the gamut, from traditional Danish art from the 1700s, to really crazy and shocking modern art. What was neat is that I saw a lot of the same Danish artists that I saw in the Aarhus art museum, and I enjoyed seeing these other works by artists that I recognized. Next, we headed to Nyhavn, which Nancy and Kristina (the student) wanted to see. I guarantee you, if you have seen one tourist picture of Copenhagen, you have seen Nyhavn:
Until around the early1990s, Nyhavn used to be the sketchy sailor's quarters, full of seedy bars and tattoo shops. Now, it is still full of bars and tattoo shops, but they have cleaned up and become trendy. So trendy, in fact, that most Danish people don't even go there - it's mostly full of tourists. Because it's frequented mainly by tourists, most things are more expensive there than other places in the city. But, Harvey Mudd College paid for lunch, so I didn't really care...thanks HMC! It was pretty warm and a halfway sunny day, so it was quite nice to sit on the docks and eat lunch and ice cream. Finally, I said goodbye and made my way out to Kastrup, where I was having dinner with one of the Rotary members, Kenneth, and his family from the club that sponsored my exchange. We had a nice barbeque dinner (Danish people always make really good BBQ, they call it "grill food"). Their son was about to leave for Brazil on exchange, so it was fun to talk to him and it reminded me about how excited I was right before I left for my exchange.

Finally, it was time to make my way home. Kenneth's house was right on the metro line, which is new and runs really quickly and often, but does not interface with the rest of Copenhagen's transportation very well. To catch my train to Aarhus, I had to take the metro to another Copenhagen station, then get on a commuter train back to the main train station, where my train to Aarhus left from. However, it turns out that the commuter trains were running off schedule. Nowhere had there been warning or information about this, so I completely didn't plan for the new schedule. I ended up on a train that arrived at the main station just in time to see my train to Aarhus pulling away. Missing the train by 30 seconds was way more heartbreaking than missing it by, say, 5 minutes. With an hour to kill until the next train, I bought a beer at 7-11 and headed out to the town hall square. It was quite pretty at dusk. Here is the town hall:
And the gates to Tivoli, the famous amusement park:
Here is H.C. Anderson. Danish people are crazy about him. This statue very popular with tourists, and the tradition is to climb up and sit on his knee to get your picture taken. I tried to climb up on his lap once, but it's harder than it looks. I did not succeed, and ended up falling down on the ground.
Finally, here is my favorite Carlsberg advert, "Probably the Best Beer in Town". In this picture, you can also see the large thermometer on the left side of the building. There are two figures on top - one on a bicycle and one with an umbrella, which are supposed to show if the weather is going to be nice or rainy. More often than not, both figures are peeking out, which indicates that Danish people have no idea what the weather is going to do on any given day. Also, the thermometer only goes up to 20C.