Cycling-Copenhagen is the place where cycling is a part
of your body and I wanted to experience this attachment that Danes seemed to
have with their bike.
Copenhagen is SO “green”-due to the bikes, Denmark seems to
be leading the world in the how to be “green” and responsible when it comes to
living on this earth
Scandinavia-I felt like going to either Spain or Italy
was not as exciting as going to a Scandinavian country because let’s face it
people, it’s not really destination number one on many American’s list of
places to visit. I wanted to go somewhere that would challenge this idea of
going to the “regular” study abroad destinations.
Reasons I’m glad I studied abroad: (after)
Winter: I now know how to properly dress for winter. You
may laugh but I find this is an essential skill that everyone needs to know how
to do. Winters in Denmark can be very brutal and I went through my fair share
of frozen toes, fingers and the dreadful cold that won’t go away to know that
it’s nothing to play around with.
Danish language and Culture: one of my favorite classes.
It was just fun to learn how to say each word even though the pronunciation and
spelling differ a lot. The culture is just fascinating. Let’s just say I can
see why this is the happiest country.
Friends: here comes the cheesy moment. I've made so many
friends while in Denmark that I would have never met. I was able to study with
a friend from high school which I didn't think would happen again.
Fashion: yep, you read right. These people are so
fashionable it’s a little scary. They can rock anything with a pair of
sneakers. Black is not seen as gothic or emo but the preferred color for every
event. Now just because I'm talking about the fashion doesn't mean I've become some kind of fashion expert.
Biking: What an experience. It seemed as though the wind
was always going against me whenever I biked but I can proudly say that I can now
ride with no hands, even if it’s only for about 30 seconds.
Traveling: I've seen and done so much and I hope to never
forget the lessons I've learned from these places I have been to.
Host family: I’m definitely going to miss my host family
the most. They took me in without knowing what I would be like and they are
just amazing people. Tine, my host mom, is one of the coolest, most caring
people I know. I feel as though she is my other mother.
With those reasons said, how can I properly describe my
experience abroad?
………..hmmm………………I wish I could describe to you everything
I’m feeling right now. It’s not fear or sadness or happiness or nostalgia or
courage. Try to imagine all of those things plus some all wrapped up in a box
with a beautiful ribbon. I feel like a young child on Christmas morning coming
downstairs to see a big box waiting for me. As I approach it, my hearts begins
to beat faster and faster as my imagination runs wild with the thoughts of what
lies in the box. As I open the box, I know that nothing will disappoint me at
that specific moment in time. This is what I feel about my study abroad
experience. Nothing can disappoint me about it. Everything I’ve done here, the food
I’ve eaten, the experiences I’ve had, and the places I’ve traveled to are
forever engraved in my memories. And whenever I think of it, it will be as
though I’m opening that big box on Christmas day.
I am currently packing and boy do I seem to have a lot of things with me even though it will all come down to two suitcases, one carry-on and my backpack which to some isn't very much for a girl. I seem to accumulate many little things during the year but when it comes time to pack to leave (which I do frequently) I always pick and choose the most important things to take with me. So while many may hate packing, I see it as a way to discard myself of the useless things I've bought. And what do I do with these things? Well I usually try to donate them. Ok, I guess I should go back to packing now, wish me luck! I leave tomorrow morning.
I had my core course presentation this past Wednesday and what a day that was! I'll start from the beginning with my trip to the station.
This started off as any other day, you know I woke up, had my yogurt for breakfast and took a shower. The only difference was that it was raining here and there. Nothing fancy. It was around 10:56am and I was supposed to meet a friend at 12:00 at school to go over my presentation. When I left the house, it was drizzling a little bit and I was 80% sure that I would make it to the station within 10 minutes. 2 minutes into my bike ride, well wouldn't you guess it, the clouds let loose everything they had inside of them. And I mean EVERYTHING. Stupid me thought "Oh it's fine, it's just a little rain". Well no. It was more than a little rain, I felt like I was swimming in the ocean and I was not having a good time. After the brutal realization that I should probably not bike during this stormy weather, I thought "hey! I can take the bus". I started biking to the bus station which was in the direction back towards my house. I get there and literally 2.5 minutes later, everything just stopped. No rain, no wind, no cars, no life. I was soaking wet and there was no proof that it was due to the rain.
I checked the timetable at the bus stop to see when the next bus would arrive and just my luck, I had missed the bus by 3 minutes and the next one wasn't arriving for another 45 minutes. I had two options, wait for the bus and be extremely late or just bike. I chose to bike of course in hopes that the rain had stopped for good. I began to bike and it wasn't bad. I get about 1/2 way to the station and it starts drizzling again, I just bike faster because the rain is beginning to come down faster. 3/4 of the way there, I can't see very well because of all the rain drops covering my glasses and by this time everything but my torso was wet (thank you raincoat!). I decide that before something bad happens, I should just take a break from fighting with mother nature because I was obviously not going to win. And so, I pull over, park my bike and enter into a random store. As soon as I walk in, the receptionist looks at me and can already tell i'm just using their facility as shelter from the rain. All I say to her through my wet face is "hi". While in there, I use the bathroom to get paper towels to try and pat myself "dry". Once out of the bathroom, I start starring longingly outside the window saying "rain rain go away" and unlike those creepy witch movies, my chanting did not work. Something came over me though, why was I going to let some rain (even though it technically already beat me) win? I still had to meet my friend and so, I went out one last time. I mounted my bike and rode through d torrential rain, stopping once again just to clean my glasses of all the water. As I peddled through the last stretch of the bike ride, I knew I learned a few things.
Lesson 1. Invest in rain pants and rain boots.
Lesson 2: if you are going to bike in the rain, try to wear black because when it gets wet, it only looks better!
Though it took me 30 minutes to bike to the station, I was only 20 minutes late to meet my friend. Not too bad. Once at my school though, I went into the bathroom and started using the hand dryer to dry myself which it worked very well.
At about 15:00 (3pm), I went to my class to do my presentation. My group did a really good job presenting. We had our final core course dinner afterwards and it was great. The brew-house we went to had a drink named Flora which I of course had to get. And it was delicious! The sad part was saying goodbye to everyone afterwards. My friend Meredith was saying "Have a great life" to everyone and it was so bitter sweet. We will most likely never see each other again even though we say we will. It's crazy how in life you will meet people that change your life for either that moment in time or for hears to come. You tell yourself you will meet again but that's not always the case. It's as if we are protecting our own feelings from the reality that "hey, this is it buddy, see you never...". Are we as humans so scared of experiencing such emotions that it has become first nature to act that way? This needs to stop! Why are people so afraid of telling each other the truth? People say the truth hurts. Well gosh darn it, I can handle the pain. I'm not saying it doesn't suck to know I won't see the people I've met abroad again but just hit me with it. I promise I can handle it.
So enough rambling, I've only got a 5 days left in this beautiful country called Denmark, 5 days left with my wonderful host family who I can't even begin comprehending that I won't be living with them anymore. I need to make the best of it. NO. I WILL make the best of it.
Wednesday May 1st: May 1st in a public
holiday in Denmark so I went to Faelledparken which is a huge park in
Copenhagen to celebrate what is essentially Labor Day here in Denmark and listen to some live music. I went with my host family and a few of my friends. It was such a nice day (weather wise). Different political parties also gave speeches with one of them not going so well... Many protestors began booing I believe it was the mayor of Copenhagen and smoke was involved and it was getting really intense and a little bit scary as well. But the police was not involved so I guess it was a good “riot”.
Another blog post so soon, I must either have a lot more
time or just don’t want to do my work.
As my time to Denmark comes a quickening halt, I decided
it was time to be a tourist again in Copenhagen. So what do you do when you
haven’t really explored the city you've lived in for about 3 months now? Make a Google document with everything you want to do and just add as many people to
it as possible and hopefully someone will do one of the things with you.
The first day of my tourist journey began on Wednesday
April 25th with two friends: Claire and Jake. We began the morning
by meeting at the train station and walking towards the Little Mermaid. As soon
as we got there, it was inevitable to us that tourist season had started. A
huge group of about 30 tourists were standing around taking pictures of the
Little Mermaid. After getting a picture of the Little Mermaid, we kept walking
and found ourselves in Katellet which is a star shaped fortress that has been
well kept. We walked around this fortress and once we walked around it, we went
to go take the harbor bus. This is essentially what you might be thinking of
right now: a water bus.
I should also mention here that one of the great things
about Copenhagen is that their public transportation passes can be used for ALL
of their public transportation unlike some cities I’ve been too, aka Venice. We
got off this harbor bus at Nyhavn which is where you can find the postcard
picture view that is seen of Copenhagen.
Our second to last stop was the Round
Tower where you can
pay 25 Danish Kroner to go up and get a “high” view of the city. On the way up,
you will pass a museum which has different exhibitions and this months was of
Syrian art portraying the current situation in Syria. It was very powerful. So
a ways further, you will pass one of the two bathrooms of the tower and after
that you continue your journey up this round spiral and eventually find your
way on the top.
Once up here, you realize that it actually isn’t as high as it
looks. Going down the tower is similar to going up because you feel as though
you are just walking in place since you are going down a non-stair cased path.
I didn’t like feeling as if I’d walked nowhere -__-
After the round tower, we went to the glass market. The
glass market is a type of farmers market but it’s pretty expensive. You will
find people who sell cakes, cupcakes, fruit, wine and pastries there. It’s a
fun place to go see and you can walk through it in about 10 minutes or so (and
that’s at a small pace); it’s not very big.
Once we were done with the glass market, I went home, and
decided to go for a run with a neighbor’s dog whose name is Buller. Buller is
an older dog and running with her was fun but frustrating. It was fun because I
got to run with a dog, it was frustrating because Buller would go slower than
what I wanted to run so I had to slow down my pace tremendously. But it was
definitely worth it and I would run with Buller again.
I had another travel break last week and 2 friends and I decided to explore Italy for 7 days. We went to Venice,
Naples, Sorrento, Positano, Amalfi, Pompeii Ruins, and Vesuvio. Yes, that’s a
LOT of places. My feet are still hurting from all the travelling.
I won’t bore you with every detail of each place I went but
I will give you a quick overview of what my friends and I did in each place.
Just know that each days weather was sun sun and more sun! Such a nice change
from Denmark.
Venice: Walked around, went to Murano (a little island 30 minutes
away from Venice) and visited a glass museum. Had a TON of delicious gelato. While
on the island of Venice, we were able to climb the bell tower to get a great
view of Venice, made a new friend named Daniel, got a pair of sunglasses but then
lost them two days later. I don’t know how I could have lost them. L
Gelato for life <3
Naples: On our way to the hostel, we realized how scary
Naples is so we quickly found another hostel in Sorrento which is a much safer
city because more older people live there. Though it was scary, Naples’ culture
seemed very rick and the pizza was phenomenal.
Sorrento: Walked around, saw multiple beautiful sunsets and
ate more pizza. Bought some souvenirs for my family.
Positano: Gorgeous place. Went to the beach to collect sea
glass. Ate pizza.
Amalfi: Found the ruins, climbed a lot of stairs and had an
amazing view of Amalfi. I was a little disappointed with Amalfi because it wasn’t
as beautiful as all the pictures I had seen of it. Oh and had more gelato.
Pompeii Ruins: Did the only thing there is to do, see ruins.
Vesuvio: Also known as Mount Vesuvius that buried the city
of Pompeii and Herculaneum. You are able to go walk to the crater granted you pay
the 22 euro bus fee which includes entrance to the crater and hike up 20
minutes at a 14% incline. Making it to the crater was amazing, I got to see
steam coming out of the rocks since this is still an active volcano.
Archeological museum: Went here to see all the things that
were excavated from Pompeii and also got to see some great sculptures of which
one was named Flora!
Now a video of some random clips I combined from my Italy trip. Till' next time!
So, last week I went on my long study tour to Berlin/Prague. This is part one of my adventures there.
We (my class and I) left Sunday March 24th and returned Friday March 29th.
Berlin: AMAZING
So Berlin is legit an amazing city with over 100 years of history there. My class and I took the Fat Tire Bike Tour of the city which gives you the summary of the most important sites that Berlin has to offer. It was three hours long but it felt like 1 hour. Out bike tour guide was this young fellow from London who was a history major so that meant he knew his history very well. Before the tour started, he asked if anyone could be in the back of the group to make sure no one got lost; I rose my hand and thank goodness I did because at the end of the tour, I got a free soda and a few pieces of the Berlin wall. I'm not lying to you, people CAN get pieces of the wall that have been pre-packaged. So yes, always volunteer because you never know what the reward it.
(Side note: my friends and I started writing down famous last words that we thought could be famous last words and here is our first one:
Flora: Always volunteer for things
Holly: What about as tribute? (referring to The Hunger Games)
Flora: No!
so yes, this game of figuring out famous last words went on throughout the week. It was definitely entertaining).
Now back to what I was saying before. The bike tour allowed us to see such as where Hitler committed suicide with his wife, the monument for all the Jews whose lives were lost during the WWII period, the place where the burning of the books took place, parliament, the Square that has the hotel where Michael Jackson dangled his baby from, and the TV tower. We were also told some pretty funny stories that came along with each site. For example, there was a French church built for all the french that came into Germany and the Germans were a tad bit jealous so they built what seems like an exact replica of the same church but on the other side; the German's church is of course just about a few inches taller than that of the French.
I also went to a chocolate store where you could actually make your own chocolate! I didn't make my own but I did get some delicious and cheap chocolate. At night, I went out with a few of my friends to a bar where I met some awesome Dutch guys (they were also in Germany for a school trip; they were architecture business students) I danced the night away along with them and my friends from school. Here are what the boys from Netherlands looked like: I think the one in the middle of the 3 boys was the cutest!)
But I wish I could have gotten their numbers because I want to go to the Netherlands before I go back to the states. Oh well. Man, my hair is getting longer and even bigger in poofiness! After a little hick-up with a girl in my class that I went out with (she basically wanted to go home with a guy and I told her no), I went back to the hotel. Oh the girl basically ran away from my friend and I and I had no energy left to spend looking for her but don't you worry, she came back to the hotel at 6am and was fine.
As for academic visits while in Berlin, we visited Andels Hotel which opened in 2009, the unfinished Berlin Airport, and the Brewers association of Germany. The hotel was beautiful and everyone in my class decided that we should have stayed there instead of our non-magnificent hostel. The airport looked HUGE but I along with other students were exhausted from our nights shenanigans to truly pay attention. The Brewers Association was everyone's favorite visit because we got beer and pretzels. I had the most delicious tasting wheat beer I've ever had and I wish I could remember the name of it so you the reader can try it but I can't.
With our visit to the Brewers Association over with, there was another pause to the tour when one of the students had to go to the Hospital to be checked out because he felt very dizzy. We waited about 2 hours or so and he came back feeling good and all that was wrong with him was that he was dehydrated. Guess from what? bingo, drinking 70% alcohol. So children, please drink responsibly and don't use 70% alcohol, it will destroy your insides. I wish we had been given more days in Berlin because it's a great city that has a lot to offer. But we were back on the bus and off to Prague.
*the Bear is the symbol of Berlin so they were found everywhere!
Prague: Everything is sooooo cheap
Our hotel in Prague or Praha as was written everywhere was much nicer than that in Berlin. It was called Ibis Hotel. We went on a tour of the old castle and "parliament" but it was FREEZING! The tour was supposed to be 4 hours or something but it was only one and a half hours. Even the tour guides were cold and always tried to bring us inside. We got some amazing views from where we were located.
My friends Holly and I also visited the Basilica S. Apostolorum Petri et Pauli and the church looks amazing from the outside. There is also a beautiful cemetery that is on the church property. We looked at each tombstone and kept seeing the word Rodina so we thought it was a first name and guess what? Every tombstone we saw had that on there and we couldn't believe that everyone was named Rodina. After getting back to the hotel, we asked one of our leaders, Lucie who is from the Czech Republic, what it meant and it just means family. So if it said Rodina Christopher, it meant Family Christopher blah blah blah. That cleared up a lot of things for us. One more interesting fact about the cemetery is that whole families were buried together in one spot. Pretty crazy I think because there was a tombstone that had 9 names on it. Talk about a tight squeeze.
It was a ton of fun. That night we went to eat and a bar while most of my class mates went on a pubcrawl and let's just say, they had A LOT of fun but not very many memories except for the pictures of the night. One kid got mugged but he fought his attacker off, he had the biggest lip I've ever seen. Many people threw up. It was a mess but! we everyone made it for our academic visit in the morning.
*I think college students are pretty incredible because they can have the wildest night that's filled with fights, drama, drinking yet still wake up when they have to and look presentable. It's a great skill to have.
We also went on a dinner cruise that lasted 3 hours that was fun; I got to see some cool penguins and the Charles bridge at night. After that, the majority of the class went to the Mafia bar and then a club that Rihanna filmed a video at. Mafia bar was dead when we went there but the club was a ton of fun. Entrance fee for Girls: FREE. I danced the night away with my friends and the unbelievable amount of sweat that came from each surface of my body was worth every second of it.
As for academic visits: we spoke to the Danish Trade Council, T-Mobile, and Lego which was everyone's favorite because it's Lego! A great toy company and the presenter was the best out of the rest.
On the last day, we went to see the clock tower and the line was long but the view was incredible. We had to climb stairs (of course) but my friend and i took the elevator on the way down because the stairs were too "crowded"..we were just lazy.
There was also a cool market near the tower where I got a ton of food to eat, I'm still a hungry girl so I need a lot of food.
Prague was amazing and what made it amazing wasn't the fact that food and drinks are cheap (seriously though, $2 for a mixed drink is NOT bad), it's the fact that I was able to make these great memories with people in my class. When else will I ever get to do this again with 27 other people? And I hope you don't think my class is full of alcoholics because we went out almost every night, we are just college students trying to enjoy this great opportunity that has been given to us.
But I am now back in Denmark and everyone is very glad to be back because this has become our home. I will leave you now with a few video clips I took from the week.
