The Flying Danish

Budapest Diaries - Margaret Island and Óbuda

2007-08-06T16:52:00.001-05:00

Anyway, Sunday (day four) I slept in a little later than normal. The plan was to go to the Parliament building around 11 to get tickets for sometime in the afternoon. So I putzed around and did some planning for the rest of the my trip. When I got over to the Parliament there was already two long lines and neither were moving. I won't get into the details as to how their little system works but let's say "user friendly" is not a word I would use to describe it. After about twenty minutes a lady came out and said that the tickets were sold out for the day. I was a bit frustrated, but I had figured this was a possibility so I just planned to come back the next day.

The rest of the day was filled with spots that are not typical tourist destinations. Although Parliament didn't work out, I headed north towards Margaret Island. On the way I passed a building called the White House, the former headquarters of the Central Committee of the Hungarian Social Workers Party. Margaret Island is a shady island in the middle of the Danube, about 2 km from top to bottom. Most of the people you will see on the island are locals sunbathing on the shores, jogging or walking on the park's many paths, or riding around on a rented bicycle. If you are heading north, the first interesting thing you see is the Centennial Monument. It is an odd looking split-cone sculpture built in 1973 to celebrate the union of Buda, Pest, and Óbuda a hundred years earlier.

From there, there are a number of things to see on the island. There are some ruins of a Franciscan church and monastery. There is also an open-air theater which houses plays and opera during the warmer months. Next to the theater is the octagonal water tower. Which contains the lookout gallery. The tower as far as I can tell is not, nor has ever been, filled with water - but it does have a pretty good look over the island. From there lie more ruins, this time of a Dominican monastery best known for being the place where King Béla's daughter St. Margaret. Legend has it that Béla promised to commit his daughter to a life of devotion in a nunnery if Mongol invaders were defeated (as everyone knows, no sacrifice is as noble as the sacrifice you force others to make on your behalf). Going further north there is a reconstructed Premonstratensian Church. Other spots on Margaret Island include a Japanese garden and a musical fountain.

After my tour of Margaret Island, I headed westward towards Óbuda ("Old Buda") which is now a district of Budapest. I checked out the Óbuda Parish Church and the former Óbuda Synagogue. The main thing I wanted to see here was the Imre Varga Exhibition House. A number of sculptures throughout Budapest were designed by Imre Varga, including a neat set of women with umbrella's a block south of the museum (which is quite difficult to find, if I do say so). The Exhibition House itself was one of the gems of the day. I'm not always into the artsy-craftsy kind of stuff but the small building was full of some really great art. I was kind of surprised that there was nobody else here, but my impression is that most tourists who visit Budapest may only have a few days and Óbuda and Imre Varga do not make the top ten list.

After that I was headed south, basically towards the Castle District, to check out a few more out of the way places. This was definitely not a tourist spot, and few stores on the way were open this Sunday. The first noteworthy spot I ran into was a 2nd century Roman military amphitheater, which took up an entire block in the middle of a residential neighborhood. Apparently it was actually bigger than the Colosseum in Rome and could house up to 15,000 spectators. Today it only housed me, a large pile of trash, and a young woman sunbathing in a micro-thong. After that I went to find the tomb of Gül Baba, a poet and companion of Suleiman the Magnificant. The tomb itself appeared to be in a contest with the Imre Varga Exhibition House for the most-difficult-place-to-locate-in-Budapest award, and let me add that Gül Baba certainly could have chosen a far less steep incline on which to die. Anyway I made it and took a brief look around the tomb before heading off yet again.

I was getting tired at this point so there were only a few more stops. I checked out Millennium Park but after I realized there was pretty much nothing to do here other than a movie theater I moved on. By this time I was right next to the Castle District, and headed south along the eastern edge of the base from the Vienna Gate. I got a few snapshots of Fishermen's Bastion from down below and headed back home. On the way, I passed over the Széchenyi Bridge which was closed to traffic for some kind of street festival involving, well, mostly beer. It took a while to wade through, but I suppose it at least offered a few good people watching moments.

Back in Minneapolis

2007-08-06T11:49:00.001-05:00

Well gang, I am finally back in Minneapolis. The trip home was long but other than a 40 minutes delay all went went - all aisle seats and an emergency exit row on the trip from Reyjkavíc to Minneapolis. Plus I had a rather grandiose pick-up service from the airport, so other than a general source of disorientation and having to clean some mold that took up residence in my freezer everything in hunky-dory. Today I'm unpacking, getting everything back up and running, and catching up with people, but I should have some time to get some blogging done.

Budapest Diaries - Saint Stephen's Basilica, Andrássy Út, and City Park

2007-08-04T05:36:00.000-05:00

My third day in Budapest started early, and I went north to take a tour of Saint Stephen's Basilica. Saint Stephen was the first king of Hungary and generally considered to be the founder of modern Hungary. The Basilica is always on the top list of things to see in Budapest and rightfully so. It's a pretty incredible building, with really ornate ceilings, columns, frescoes, and altars. In addition, entry into the basilica is free although you do have to pay if you want to go up to the tower. It is tied with the Parliament building for being the tallest in Budapest at 96m, which is a reference to the millennium of the founding of the Kingdom of Hungary in 896. The building took an astounding 54 years to complete, in large part due to the collapse of the dome which required the builders to tear down the rest of the building and start over again. Besides all of the other stuff it contains, the Basilica also holds the right hand of Saint Stephen which has quite a story itself, which you can read about here. I tried to get a good picture of it for you but the reliquary is kind of dark. After snapping some photos of Budapest from the dome I headed back down to take a walk up Andrássy Út, probably the most famous street in Budapest.

First I had to stop back at the hotel to get a replacement photo card and batteries, which turned out to be a wise decision. On the way I stopped to take a look at the Dohány Street Synagogue (more commonly known as the Great Synagogue) as well as the Memorial of the Hungarian Jewish Martyrs which commemorates the some 600,000 Hungarian Jews killed by the Nazis and the Arrow Cross Party. Andrássy Út is a very pleasant street to stroll down, with a lot of trees and gorgeous buildings, such as the Hungarian State Opera House.

The one building I actually went inside was the House of Terror, which sounds like a cheesy amusement ride but is actually a really great museum detailing the former occupants of the building at 60 Andrássy Boulevard: both Ferenc Szálasi and the Arrow Cross Party, as well as the dreaded ÁVH (State Protection Authority, known as the PRO and the ÁVO at other times). Unfortunately they do not allow cameras in the building because they really had some great exhibits (heck, they even had a pretty good soundtrack). If you listened to and read and saw everything there is in here you could be here for a whole day. I have to admit I didn't know much about the Arrow Cross Party or Hungary's participation in World War II. I didn't know much about the Communist government there either, although their story is unfortunately similar to other countries under Soviet domination. The museum itself is not without controversy. There are number of critics who think that it puts too much emphasis on foreign occupiers rather than the role that Hungarians played, and that the museum itself is a swipe at current socialist parties. Having seen it, I tend to agree with the former and not really with the later, but perhaps I am not the one to ask.

Next it was on to Heroes' Square and the Millinery Monument. Definitely the most impressive monument in Budapest, I would place it on par with the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin. It has two arcades with fourteen statues representing fourteen important leaders in Hungary's history. And yes before you ask I took pictures of each of them individually, just for you. The statues on top of the arcades represent Work & Welfare, War, Peace, and Knowledge & Glory. At the top of the Corinthian column is the Archangel Gabriel, and at its base are Árpád and the seven chieftains of the Hungarian tribes, who settled their people in the present territory of Hungary. In front of the column lies the tomb of the unknown soldier. All in all, its a pretty awesome site.

Beyond Heroes' Square lied City Park, which beyond offering shade on another scorching day has a number of attractions to see. Vajdahunyad Castle houses the Hungarian Agricultural Museum, and it seemed like there were about three weddings going on at the nearby Ják Chapel. Then there is the Statue of Anonymous close by, as well as a statue of George Washington built by Hungarian-Americans. Besides a couple amusement parks the Széchenyi Thermal Baths are here (which I went to on Monday). At this point in the day I was pretty tired, so I did what anyone else would do - I went to the zoo.

The City Zoo and Botanical Garden was a pretty good trip, although most of the animals looked as tired as I felt. Besides wanted to punch a few people (not to mention unidentified members of the zoo staff) for feeding the hippos a whole bunch of bread it was a pretty good trip. They had a closed building which housed a whole bunch of tamarins that climbed around only a couple feet from you (I assume tamarins must not be known for throwing their feces at people), as well as a sloth who was either on vacation or doing a very good job blending in. After strolling around and seeing the animals it was time to call it a night, and I trekked back to home to get some rest for yet another day of adventure.

Budapest Diaries - Castle District & Trip to Aquincum

2007-08-04T04:04:00.000-05:00

It was back off to visit the non-Palace-related parts of the Castle District. I don't know if there was anything terribly important to report here. For the most part I just strolled around and looked at buildings and stuff. I had wanted to see the statue of the Holy Trinity (a plague pillar, built to celebrate the end of the plague) next to Matthias Church but it was being completely reconstructed so that was a no go. I did get to see a number of statues, including an equestrian one of András Hadik best known for the fact that students are known to give the horse's testicles a shine for good luck before exams, resulting in them being much shinier than the rest of the statue. I also visited the much-touted Buda Castle Labyrinth which turned out to be an overpriced piece of junk. I saw the Mary Magdalene Tower as well as the tomb of Pasha Abdi Arnaut Abdurrahman, the last Turkish Grand Vizier of Buda. After scouting out some other buildings (and seeing a strange street seemed to imply that one was not allowed to walk him grnadchild across the street), I headed back to the Corvinus Gate and took a trip down the Sikló, which is a funicular railway that runs from Buda Castle down to Adam Clark Square.

I hopped on the HÉV line going north to visit the Acquincum ruins, the largest site of Roman ruins in Budapest as far as I know. It was pretty quiet here, with only a handful of other people around. Apparently ruins are not as big of an attraction as Buda Castle, although part of it was the fact that they were kind of out of the way. It took quite an imagination to think about what things looked back in the day, but there were a few identifiable structures and a lot of maps. The Aquincum Museum occupied a small building, with most of the displays of stone carvings on the outside. Inside were the small blocks of mosaics as well as the usual assortment of tools and armor and stuff.

At this point my throat was pretty parched so I decided to eschew the long hike south and hopped back on the HÉV and headed south the Margaret Bridge Station where I planned to cross the Danube and come down on the Pest side and take some close up pictures of the Hungarian Parliament building, the most amazingest building in the whole world. Seriously I could just stare at the building all day. The tours are all around midday so there was no getting in but as you know if you've looked at Facebook I spared no expense taking a million shots of the building. The Parliament is very large so it is hard to get a great shot of it with a better angle and camera but I did my best people. I took the one of the left, but below I have attached one I found on the web below. Tonight there was some cheesy looking movie festival that was taking place in front of the Parliament which looked to me like the Hungarian equivalent of Telemundo. Anyway I let you go with that, you'll be hearing a lot more about my adventures trying to get into a tour of the building later.

It was getting fairly late to visit anything else so I took a winding path homeward. I passed a monument to Imre Nagy, a reformist Communist Prime Minister executed for his role in the 1956 Uprising. Then I passed the Soviet War Memorial (one of the few left standing in the city), the Contra Aquincum ruins, and a bunch of other statues. I think the one I liked best (possibly because I had to go quite out of the way to find it was the aforementioned Shoes on the Danube memorial to the Jews killed by the Arrow Cross Party.

Budapest Diaries - Buda Castle District

2007-08-04T02:23:00.000-05:00

I got up bright and early (although not by Copenhagen standards) and headed off to Castle Hill, which is a smaller hill just north of Géllert Hill along the Danube. Buda Castle as you might expect occupies most of Castle Hill. The day turned out to be a real scorcher, somewhere in the low nineties requiring a large number of pit stops to buy water. I think I must have had at least three gallons in addition to a couple of Coke Lights. Buda Castle involves a large number of small streets and pathways which are not always clearly marked and it can get a little confusing, but it is relatively small and the sheer number of landmarks makes navigation fairly easy.

The day started off by crossing over the Elizabeth Bridge* and headed north until I hit Adam Clark Square, and headed up a path that took me to Matthias Church and the Fishermen's Bastion. Several corronations and royal weddings have taken place in Matthias Church, although after the Turks conquered Budapest in 1541 the church was converted into a mosque. Legend has it that during the Holy League's siege of Buda in 1686 a piece of wall came down revealing a statue of the Virgin Mary to a group of praying Muslims, causing the morale of the garrison to collapse. Unfortunately Matthias Church is largely under construction so it wasn't possible to get a great shot of the whole church. Fishermen's Bastion is pretty awesome as well. It has the look of a fairy tale whitewashed castle wall complete with towers and staircases, although methinks Buda might have had a better time of it if the castle was not defended by the guild of fishermen. The Bastion itself was not actually built until around 1900, but the fishermen had been defending this stretch of the wall since medieval times. Besides just being cool in general, Fishermen's Bastion has some great views of the city and a kick-ass statue of Saint Stephen (more on him later). I took a tour around the very impressive interior of Matthias Church, and learned a little bit more about its history. FYI for future visitors most churches in Budapest will not let you visit if you are wearing a tank top or sports bra, so make sure you bring a sleeved shirt with you. Fortunately I telegraphed this one so I just pulled a quick Superman before going in.

NOTE: you may have noticed that Budapest has a lot of saint-related stuff going on. As you will notice if you ever visit it is a rather Catholic city, with Catholics outnumbering Protestants by about three-to-one. Political correctness towards Protestants and Muslims is sometimes absent from historical descriptions around here, with Transylvanians and Turks being common foils in Hungarian history.

After I took my leave of Matthias Church I headed south along the castle grounds, passing a number of important buildings, statues, and gates, including the Sándor Palace, a large statue of the mythical turul - a sacred bird of the ancient Magyars, resembling a large falcon - that sits at the head of the Hapsburg Steps, and the Corvinus Gate which leads into the Buda Castle a.k.a. the Royal Palace. Going through the gate leads to the courtyard in front of the east side of Buda Castle, where a large statue of a mounted hortobágy csikós (basically a Hungarian cowboy) stands triumphantly.

I decided I would take a break from the sun, and headed inside the Hungarian National Gallery which occupies this wing of Buda Castle. It turned out to be a great choice, since the museum was full of some great stuff including a restored altar of Saint John the Baptist from Kisszebes. Most of the art centered on war and religion, two of the favorite pastimes of Hungarians apparently. There was also some neat modern art to see, as well as some surprisingly interesting art from Hungarian children. In addition there were a number of older stone carvings to see. Note number one billion to future visitors to Hungary if you want to use your camera in any museum in Budapest you will probably have to buy a photo ticket but don't worry they don't seem to be very expensive in general.

During my tour of the Hungarian National Gallery, I was introduced to Hungary's most potent natural resource: little old ladies. I swear every museum I visited had an army of small grandmas who shuffled after you to make sure you weren't doing God only knows what. They are apparently even hired by small grocery stores to make sure people put their croisants in a little plastic baggy lest perchance they get some crumbs on the floor. In general they didn't speak any significant amount of English although many of them were very effective at standing around and looking cantankerous. Some of them were very friendly though, particularly the ones at the Imre Varga Exhibition House.

After I was done with the National Gallery (which, even though I only saw about half of it, took a while since it's huge) I strolled around the Palace grounds for a while. I got to survey a number of more statues, fountains, gates, and tours, as well as take a stroll into what appeared to be a highly restricted area. Pictured here is the Matthias Fountain, which shows the young King Matthias Corvinus and Szép Ilona (beautiful Helen) who according to a poem fell in love when she saw him hunting and then died of a broken heart because she felt unworthy of him after learning of his true identity.XThen I headed back north to explore the rest of the Castle District but that as they say is another story (or post... whatever).

*Speaking of bridges I never saw the bridge that was supposed to be named after Stephen Colbert. The M0, or Megyeri bridge, is several miles south and not on the way to the airport.

Budapest Diaries - Sojourn to Géllert Hill

2007-08-04T00:52:00.000-05:00

It was still pretty early in the day, so I was off like a rocket to explore Géllert Hill, which was located about a half mile to the west of Kalvin House. Now there are a couple of things you learn about Budapest pretty quickly after you arrive there. In no particular order:

1) The Hungarians (or Magyars, as they refer to themselves) love diacritics - those little accent marks over letters. Every other word has one, and some words have two, three, or even four diacritics in them. Although cute, it makes typing and searching for things on the Internet kind of difficult, the later because the a letter with a diacritic is considered by most search engines to be a completely different letter than one without. I don't know how easy it will be to make out but I took a picture of the keyboard in the hostel.

2) Budapest is the PDA capital of the world. Seriously when I went up Géllert Hill every time I turned a corner there was another couple making out on a bench. This also holds especially true when you are walking along the Danube. I can see why though, Budapest is chock-full of a lot of romantic views - rivers, bridges, parks, great views. There were several times I was looking around for someone to smooch, but usually the only person within lip-locking range would be some older German dude.

3) There are a ton of feral cats in Budapest. Besides the ones in the courtyard next to the hotel, there were a mob of them along the base of Géllert Hill, where it appeared a park maintenance worker left food out for them (this was also the case of the other cats). You would other cats running around in other places as well. This is very different than places like Copenhagen or Stockholm, where you pretty much never see cats running about.

4) There is construction everywhere in Budapest. Fortunately, this never really got in my way although a few of the buildings and monuments I wanted to see ended up being partially obscured by reconstruction efforts (Independence Bridge, Matthias Church, the Holy Trinity Column, and part of Parliament being the ones I remember off hand).

I'll save other observations for later. I headed west over Independence Bridge (BTW I am going to use the English spellings here on the blog, but if you are weird like me you can check out the Hungarian spellings on my photo comments on Facebook - again the link to my photos can be found here). After passing the semi-famous Géllert Hotel* I found a road that started to lead up Géllert Hill. Although the paths here were a little all over the place you could generally keep your way by simply following the ones that went up (or down). My first stop was at the Cave Chapel, which was closed for mass when I first visited although I checked out the interior on the way back down. The caves here had been in use for a while, but monks built a modern entrance to them in 1920s. The Cave Chapel was shut down in 1951 as part of the Soviet crackdown on the Catholic church, and the entrance was sealed until after the fall of the Communist government. Outside the cave is a stylized statue of Saint Stephen, be sure to check out his feet.

Moving up the hill, the view of Pest (the part of the city on the east side of the Danube) kept getting better, as you might expect. After a relatively short but sweaty hike up the hill, I reached the Independence Monument, one of the unofficial symbols of Budapest. It is tall column on top of which there is a lady holding a palm leaf above her head, and there are a pair of statues flanking the base of the column. Apparently there were several other statues that were removed along with most of the Communist statues monuments and dumped into a place now called Statue Park. Originally built as a thank-you to the Soviets for liberating Budapest from the Nazis, it soon turned into a symbol of Communist oppression and after 1989 it was changed to the Independence monument. It is a pretty cool monument I must say, and it is visible from most parts of the city, especially at night when it is lit up.

After that I went on to explore the Citadella, a fortress built by the Hapsburgs in 1851 (back when Hungary was basically part of Austria) to prevent an uprising but was never really used as such. Currently it is mostly a tourist trap filled with seedy vendors (still, I was glad for the ice cream and bottled water. Oh, another FYI if you are buying bottled water in Hungary and someone asks you "gas, no gas?" they are asking if you want carbonated water or not). Besides a hostel and a restaurant, for a couple hundred forints you can roam around the Citadella and check out wax exhibits that detail some of Hungary's history. There is also a bunker you can visit that was used by the Nazi Air Defense Ministry during World War II.

When I was done checking that out I went back down the hill and stopped by the large cross on the hill, and then went back and went into the Cave Chapel. After saying hello to the local cats, I followed the road up the Danube until I got to the far side of Géllert Hill where I found the monument to Saint Géllert himself. It is a nice looking monument if I do say so, sitting over a bridge which itself is over a waterfall. Saint Géllert is one of the patron saints of Hungary, and is generally known for helping convert Hungarians to Christianity and for being killed by those same Hungarians during a pagan uprising. The monument is supposed to be the place where Saint Géllert was hurled off of in a spiked barrel.**

Finally it was off to the night cruise along the Danube, brought to you by Legenda. I choose the night cruise because according to several sources it was more exciting than the day cruise. That it was, although it definitely tested my ability to take pictures without a flash. It was a pretty classy ride, complete with headphones that offered thirty different languages as well as a complementary glass of champagne and another beverage of your choice. I choose a beer, which turned out to be Budweiser, the King of Beers. The tour itself was of course kind of sappy, but it was a great way to see a lot of Budapest lit up at night, in particular Géllert Hill, Buda Castle, Parliament, and many of the bridges, as well as pick up some more Hungarian history. Finally, a little drunk and not having anyone to snuggle with along the Danube I headed back to Kalvin House in search of rest to get ready for my big day tomorrow exploring Castle Hill.

*Hey if it has a Wikipedia entry it has to be at least semi-famous, right? Right?
**No, I don't know why they didn't just stab him or something. I guess the pagans just had too much free time on their hands.

Budapest Diaries - Arrival in Budapest

2007-08-03T05:07:00.000-05:00

First off, in case you haven't noticed I uploaded about 450 photos from Budapest onto Facebook. Almost all of them are labeled so you should be able to tell what the heck is going on. And yes, I know I took about fifty photos of the Parliament building. Deal with it!!

Also, for those who need more info on the missing luggage situation, what happened was that I had a very short layover in Vienna while flying from Budapest back to Copenhagen. And by short I mean I have no idea how the airline thought this would work. The scheduled time between landing and the closing of the next gate was thirty minutes. Keep in mind that this was a smaller flight that had to take a bus to and from the terminal. Plus I didn't realize that traveling between Denmark and Hungary requires that you have your passport and carry-on checked again (it turns out that only works for countries that are party to the Schengen Agreement, which Hungary will not be a part of until March 2008... thanks a lot). And of course this plan assumes that the flight will actually take off on time which didn't happen either. However Tyrolean Airlines (a.k.a. Austrian Arrows) at least had a plan to get me on board the next flight. I was hurried off the plane and onto a special van that took me to an expedited customs and baggage check and then I got to through a top secret door straight to the jetway and onto the plane.

My checked luggage on the other hand was not so lucky, so I got to be the guy who sits next to the conveyor belt for an hour with an increasingly dour look on his face as he starts to realize that the baggage from his flight has been completely unloaded. After an hour or so I gave up and looked for a place to report missing luggage. Never having lost any before I didn't quite know what to do. There was no place with a sign saying "lost luggage," but I went to a security desk and asked. After some confusion we concluded that I needed to go to the SAS arrival counter. I went over and took a queue number, and I think I was about twenty five or so from the top. I walked around pretending like I might actually find my bag lying around and came back after ten minutes to discover that the line had moved one spot. I repeated this exercise in futility again and once again the line had moved one spot. It was a little past 11 o'clock at night. I don't know about the train from the airport to downtown, but the last train from central station to home stopped running around 12:40 or so. People were crying. There was an announcement every fifteen minutes or so that started with the phrase "due to extraordinary volumes..." Things were not looking good for the Pete-ster. Fortunately the line started to move much faster and I think it only took another twenty or twenty five minutes or so to speak to someone. Although I was half expecting to be told I was in the wrong line, things started to look up. They knew that the baggage had been left behind in Vienna it was just a matter of getting it to Copenhagen. So I got my service number and went home. I could track the progress online and the baggage arrived the next afternoon. I wasn't fretting too much, since I was completely reassured by the fact that the SAS website didn't even have an option for "lost luggage," only one for "delayed luggage." Anyway it finally got delivered around noon on Thursday so all is well.

So anywaaay back to the fun stuff (sorry, that was a really long explanation of the luggage situation). I landed in Budapest early afternoon last Thursday. My first two tasks were to take get some forints (the Hungarian currency) and get to the hostel. The first was accomplished pretty easily, and let me tell you nothing makes you feel like a pimp than taking 50,000 of anything out of a cash machine. I tried not to think about the fact that the exchange rate was something like 185-to-1. Let me tell you that is not an easy computation to do in your head. From the other travelers I spoke to the general method of converting to dollars (U.S. or Canadian) was to take off two two digits, divide by two, and then add some kind of fudge factor like 10%. Then I found my way to the ticket counter for the airport minibus and got a ticket, and eventually made it to Kalvin House, my hostel/hotel for the week. At $70 a night it was a little spendy for me, but in anticipation of the heat I decided I would need a little pampering - this turned out to be a very good choice in my estimation. It was a very nice place with a very helpful staff, and my room had fifteen foot ceilings, a small patio (from which to watch the ten or so semi-feral cats play in the courtyard), a nice bed, a shower that didn't look like it would be painful to use, and (gasp) an air conditioning unit. It also had free internet and wi-fi, although I didn't bring my laptop. Yep, things were looking good and after unpacking I took off for my first of many hikes throughout Budapest, this time to Géllert Hill.

Back In Business

2007-08-03T00:58:00.000-05:00

Hello y'all, I have been back in Copenhagen in a couple days and finished my second exam yesterday. Right now I'm cleaning my place and and starting to pile things up for packing. I haven't quite decided what to do over the next couple days but I'm sure I won't just sit around in my room all day.

I have a lot of adventures to write about, I think I should create a few more posts over the next couple of days (Budapest, plus Malmo, Odense, Christiania, and generally running around) . For those that knew that my baggage was left in Vienna, it has been delivered and all is good. Other than that I have been trying to process the news of the I35 bridge collapse in Minneapolis. For those of you that don't know where the bridge is or where I live it is about a mile from my condo. I used to drive on it all the time going when I traveled north and walked close to it when going to school. It's going to be really weird going back to see it. From what I can tell from here, it is has been front page news for several days and obvious the hot topic in Minneapolis.

Other than that I am pretty excited to be going home, as there are a lot of things I've been missing (sorry William, not work hahaha). I've talked with a couple people here about it, but I think there is a certain point for everyone when you go someplace where you either want to go home or start setting down some roots and I think I am at that point. I'll be glad to sleep on a real bed with real covers, have access to a gym, catch up with friends, and other stuff. I found a couple of Danish students who are coming to Minneapolis in the Fall so I'm going to help them out once they arrive, and have considered turning that into an ongoing project. I'm sure there be lots of new adventures to tell you about soon.

Anyway, posts about Budapest are coming soon! Hold your horses people!

The Pest Side is the Best Side

2007-07-24T01:31:00.000-05:00

Alright the Flying Danish continues on his preview of Budapest. Now class let us go over the highlights we are going to see in Pest, which lies on the east side of the Danube. Pest seems to be the more modern side of Budapest, and trust me it has a lot more to offer than just a proliferation of accent marks and z's. First off my hostel (Kalvin House) is located here, close to the Szabadság Hig (that's a bridge people), if hostel is even the right word (see photo). Speaking of bridges, the Megyeri Bridge that was almost named after Stephen Colbert (or Chuck Norris) is located about five miles down the Danube from here in case you were wondering.

Belváros (Inner Town) is the part of Pest that is next to the Danube. One of the most awesome sights in here has to be the Hungarian Parliament building, also known as the Eclectic Parliament. Besides being an amazing building inside and out, it also houses a number of artifacts including the Crown of Saint Stephen, which apparently is recognized as one of Hungary's national icons. Speaking of Saint Stephen, the Basillica of Saint Stephen is also located in Belváros. At 96m, it is tied with the Parliament building for being the tallest in Budapest. Besides offering great views of the city, you can apparently also find the mummified right hand of Saint Stephen here as well. Also in Belváros are several statues and monuments, including one called Shoes on the Danube commemorating Jews killed by the Arrow Cross Party in 1944.

Erzsébetváros is a district east of Inner Town, and is home to the Dohány Street Synagogue, also known as the Great Synagogue, the second largest synagogue in the world besides the Temple Emanu-El in New York City. Józsefváros and Ferencváros are districts south and southwest of Inner Town, and house a number of museums.

The best known street in Hungary is perhaps Andrássy Út, which stretches two and a half kilometers from near the Danube to Hősök tere* (Heroes Square) in City Park. Along with Castle Hill, Andrássy Út is listed as part of the UNESCO World Heritage Site, and is chockablock full of famous buildings, restaurants, monuments, and shops. In the center of Heroes Square lies the Millinery Monument. Heading north you can find many great places to visit including the House of Terror** which has many exhibits related to the Fascist and Communist regimes of last century. There is also the Hungarian State Opera House and the Museum of Fine Arts.

The street ends at Városliget, or City Park. City Park has everything you could want, castles (Vajdahunyad), thermal baths (Széchenyi, the largest in Europe), more museums, a zoo, an amusement park, restaurants, ponds, and let's not forget the Timewheel, the world's largest hourglass.

Despite Mindy's recommendation I am not entirely sold on the thermal bath idea. Then again, after India I might as well continue on my tour of cultural uncomfortable massages.

*Seriously dudes, double accent marks plus umlauts? It's a five letter word
**Not to be confused with Dr. Terror's House of Horrors

Want A Piece of That Buda

2007-07-23T07:03:00.000-05:00

Well, I will be landing in Budapest almost three days to the dot since I started this post (Monday at 2 p.m.). As many of the people here have noticed I tend to plan things out a lot before I travel and Budapest is no exception. Fortunately I have five and a half days or so, so I don't think I will be rushed. I've looked into the weather some more it looks like it will be pretty hot on Thursday (87 degrees) but living in a state normally mired in humidity I must say that it appears to be a 'dry heat.' The humidity today in Minneapolis is 71% while in Budapest it is 22%, which is phenomenally low; hopefully, this turns out to be the norm.

Anyway... back to Budapest. The city can be traced back roughly 1,000 years when Magyars settled in the area. Buda and Pest were originally two different cities, which were unified in 1873. Budapest has seen a lot of trouble in its days, from a Mongol invasion in 1241, a Turkish invasion in 1541, controlled by the Austrian Empire, being attacked during World War II, as well as several decades of communist rule. Despite enforcement of Nazi policies by the Arrow Cross during World War II, Budapest has the highest per capita number of Jewish residents of any major European city. It is also believed to be the "gayest" city in Europe, although I'm not sure how one would measure that.

There are a number of districts and attractions in Budapest that are worth noting. One of the obvious ones on the Buda side is Castle Hill, an area that contains Buda Castle complete with labyrinth, the Hungarian National Gallery, National Széchényi Library, Matthias Church, the Holy Trinity Column, and the Fisherman's Bastion among other things.

To the south of Castle Hill are Gellért Hill and area called the Tabán. In the former is one of Budapest's famous thermal baths, the aptly named Gellért Baths. The hill itself is said to be one of the best views in Budapest, looking over Castle Hill and the Danube, and is also home to the Citadella, a castle that now also doubles as a restaurant, hostel, and disco. Gellért Hill is also home to a number of famous caves and statues, mostly prominently the Szabadság-sabor or Liberty Statue.

The part of Buda right north of Castle Hill is called Víziváros which is home to Millennium Park, the Lukács Baths, and the Tomb of Gül Baba among other things. Further north is Óbuda or 'Old Buda.' Here lies the Aquincum museum among the ruins of the ancient Roman settlement, along with a variety of other reconstructed Roman buildings and a smattering of museums. Other areas around here are the Buda Hills and Margaret Island, which actually lies on the Danube between the Buda and Pest.

Alright this post appears to be going on and on so I will cut it off at the Buda side of Budapest. Plus I think it may break the spell checker. I may add some more stuff here later as I peruse my Budapest book and the Internet.

Sziasztok!

You Got Your Buda in My Pest!

2007-07-22T11:42:00.000-05:00

Hello true believers, it's yet another rainy Monday and I have some quick updating to do. I've got two projects for my International Investments class that we have to finish up by Monday and Wednesday respectively. I will probably blog about my return trip through Malmö soon and my ramblings around town and to Odense, once I get those things done.

In the meantime it is my proud duty to inform you that I will be headed to Budapest for a relaxing five night, six day stay starting on Thursday. I have a take home final I will receive and complete on Wednesday night and then Thursday morning I am off to the airport. My final exam is on Thursday afternoon so it works out quite nicely for me.

I was getting a little worried since Budapest is currently going through quite a heatwave. Yesterday it topped out at 100 degrees, with temps of 98, 89, and 96 today, tomorrow, and Tuesday expected. Oof-da! However, the expected temperature on Wednesday is a near perfect 78 degrees, which will hopefully stick around after a while. At least Budapest seems to cool off greatly at night. If the last couple days are any indication it looks like it drops anywhere between 20 and 40 degrees at night. Either way I'll pack for both.

More posts coming soon I promise!

Stockholm Weekend (Day 2)

2007-07-17T12:31:00.000-05:00

Must...

keep...

blogging...

Day number two started out fairly early. Somehow I didn't get woken up once during the night, despite being in a room with twelve other people most dudes who got back after I went to bed and right next to a loud road (not to mention the four o'clock sunrise). We set out to walk around Gamla Stan before the tourists showed up. None of the shops were open when we started, so there was little activity other than a couple of people milling around or getting their store ready.

Gamla Stan looks more cosy when it's not full of tourist groups, and besides the retracing some of the steps we took yesterday, we found some cool nook and crannies such as a statue of Saint George slaying the dragon, and Mårten Trotzigs Gränd - the narrowest street in Gamla Stan. We ended up near Kungliga Slottet again and checked out the Royal Guard. Let's just say if you wanted to attack Stockholm now might be a good time to do it. I know Buckingham Palace is a high standard to live up to but come on guys. These dudes were chatting and taking photos with tourists and looking around, all the stuff everybody knows the palace guards are not supposed to do. We even saw one guy go back to his car because he apparently left the plume to his hat in the trunk.

On another note, we were greeted by the Crown Princess Victoria as she was driven back to her residence. Unfortunately I was just putting my camera away when she turned the corner but that's her in the black car, I promise. She waved at me. One odd thing Laura and I noticed was that on all the postcards we found of the royal family they all looked very plastic and well, less than attractive. But I can vouch for Princess Victoria and say she is quite the looker.

Brunch was at another great little cafe, this time Chokladkoppen ("the chocolate cup"). I had a large chocolate muffin that was very good. I would also give this cafe the thumbs up. Once we had our snack we hurried off to get on a short boat tour around Stockholm. We got there just before it took off and unfortunately got stuck in the middle of the aisle which wouldn't have been a problem but the top windows were really scuffed and hard to see out of. Like most boat tours seem to be this one was a little weird, but we got to see a few neat things and pick up some strange facts about housing regulations in Stockholm.

Our next stop was the Stadshusset (City Hall), which besides being kind of a cool building has a tall tower that gives you a great view of the picture, and is definitely the source of many postcard views of Gamla Stan (the picture at the top of the post was taken from there). They only allow 30 people at a time to be in the tower so it took quite a while but if this is your kind of thing it is definitely worth it.

Once we got our fill of the view we meandered back to Gamla Stan and passed by the Royal Palace to witness yet another bizarre Royal Guard ceremony. It might have made more sense if I spoke Swedish but it involved cleaning the muzzle of their rifles in a pair of tubes that was being dragged around in something that looked like a Radio Flyer wagon. We took a tour of the Royal Apartments but didn't run into my girlfriend, Queen Victoria. The Royal Apartments were a little boring but I thought the Hall of State was pretty cool. We made a short stop at the Nobel Museum although I almost fell asleep watching some short videos about life at Cambridge and I think the Bern Institute of Immunology or something similar.

After picking up tickets for the bullet train (120+ mph) back to the airport we stopped in to the Absolut Icebar. Their reservation system is kind of strange so if you want to go I would either plan ahead and be prepared to get there early and start the line at least by 9:15. The Icebar itself was kind of cool, both literally and figuratively although -5 degrees Celsius isn't all that cold if there's no breeze. Like most things in the bar though the glasses are made of ice so the gloves come in handy though. Not much too it but if you don't have plans the novelty of it is worth a trip.

After spending a chilly forty five minutes or so we heady back to Gamla Stan for a little cheaper fare, and after being rained on again we stumbled into a cellar bar that served mead and had a number of servers who were dressed in medieval costumes. We met up with some locals (pictured here) and chatted them up for a while before retiring for the evening.

Stockholm Weekend (Day 1)

2007-07-17T10:04:00.000-05:00

I was off to Stockholm this weekend for a well deserved vacation, after working hard to get all of my school work down before Friday. Of course, I only had two and a half days to enjoy Stockholm and Malmö. After a near miss Friday morning, Laura and I made it to Malmö airport Friday morning and landed at Arlanda airport outside of Stockholm around noon. For those of you that don't know, I'm about a quarter Swedish.

It would be a couple of hours before we could check into our hostel on Gamla Stan ("The Old City"), right in the heart of Copenhagen. Stockholm is apparently known as the "Venice of the North," although so are a about five other cities so I guess it's kind of an empty title. Either way you can see how someone would come up with that, especially on Gamla Stan. Much more so than Copenhagen, you always feel like you are surrounded by water when you are in the center of Stockholm, since the city is basically bisected by the water that flows between Lake Mälaren and the Baltic Sea. Between the canals, the narrow streets, the cafes, and the Renaissance architecture, Gamla Stan in particular feels very Venetian. Not that I've ever been to Italy but I'm just saying.

Our initial journey mainly would through the area north of Gamla Stan called Norrmalm, through some shopping areas, Sergels Torg, past some well-known statues, buildings, and churches to one of the Stockholm tourism offices where we purchased a Stockholm card which for around $60 gives you free or discounted access to a number of tours and museums as well a unlimited public transportation for 48 hours (for any of you traveling to Stockholm or probably any major city for that matter you can get them for 24 or 72 hours as well). Then it was down to Gamla Stan for lunch at the Martha-recommended (and now Peter-recommended) Cafe Cronan which has a ton of delicious menu items. Then we checked into our hostel, the "cozy" 2Kroner Hostel which by cozy I mean cramped but it was pretty clean, cheap (about $35 a night in the dorm), and had a prime location.

After dumping most of our stuff off at the hostel we set out again. We roamed around Gamla Stan and checked out the Riddarholmskyrkan, one of the oldest buildings in Stockholm dating back to the 13th century. A number of Swedish monarchs are buried here, most notably Karl Knutson Bonde, and if you're a heraldry buff it will probably be on your "must see" list (but no photos allowed). We also roamed around the Storkrykan (St. Nicolaus Church), Riksdaghuset (Parliament), the Riddarhuset (Swedish House of Lords), and the Kungliga Slottet (Royal Palace).

We were running out of time before the museums and such closed, so we trucked over to the Vasamuseet, a maritime museum that houses a remarkably maintained 17th-century Swedish warship, the Vasa. As Mindy can and has repeatedly attested to, it is quite difficult to take a photo of the Vasa because the museum is dark and the Vasa is both dark and pretty huge (I took the photo on the right off the web). We happened on the last tour of the day and got to hear the history of the Vasa, which was quite short because the boat sank a couple hundred meters into its maiden voyage. The Vasa might have been easier to photograph if it still had its original paint which from the samples I saw would have been some horrible combination that would have made it look like some kind of hideous floating gingerbread house.

Then we trekked to the Kaknästornet, a large TV tower that is rumored to have some of the best views of the city. You could see for quite some distance from the top deck, although the tower is kind of far away so most things are pretty hard to see and glare from the sun on the (dirty) windows made it pretty hard to take photos. After we got our share of the view we took a walk through the forest on Djurgården where we unsuccessfully looked for a monument to Gustav something or other and a cool old tower (Bredablick Tower), we did manage to find Rosendals Slott before making our way to Stockholm's Tivoli. The Gröna Lund Tivoli lacked the ambiance and character of Copenhagen's Tivoli and seemed a lot more directed towards kids. Still it was free to get in with the Stockholm Card and we took a look around. Laura went on some ride called the Fritt Fall, which I'm assuming means Free Fall, which basically takes you really high and then you just drop. After eating way too much popcorn we were off to the hostel to get some well deserved rest.

Copenhagen Jazz Festival

2007-07-17T09:40:00.000-05:00

Last Tuesday we took a little jaunt to see some of the music of Copenhagen Jazz Festival (yes, I'm still a week behind leave me alone). Not too much to say about it. We saw a jazz band play near the big anchor at the tip of Nyhavn for a couple hours. I don't do a lot of jazz back in the Twin Cities, but apparently it attracts a lot of old people and backpackers.

Anyway, the music was fine and I got to get in touch with a few students I hadn't seen in a while. I don't know what other jazz festivals are like, but this one goes on for several weeks I think and involves small concerts scattered about town. Once the band stopped, we wandered about the city looking for the other venues but it turned out that they were all in bars and restaurants and you had to pay 40 or 50 kroner just to get in. Since I was traveling with the undergrads that was kind of a deal breaker. Anyway we moseyed around for a while and headed home, time to get ready for another day of classes.

Ich Ben Ein Berliner (Day 3)

2007-07-17T09:10:00.000-05:00

We got up early to leave Berlin and head out to the Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp, which is located in northern Berlin or just north of Berlin depending on how you look at it. As you might guess, it wasn't exactly party time but it was a good trip in terms of experience. Most of the barracks and prisoner buildings were no longer there, but the large stone buildings were mostly still fully intact.

There are several exhibits around the camp, mostly centering around either daily life in the camp or the history of the camp, with numerous smaller exhibits focusing on smaller details. We didn't have a lot of time, but I wandered about the camp looking at some of the old guard towers and buildings, including several memorials.

Finally we loaded back up on the bus and started our trip back to Copenhagen. Unlike the trip to Berlin, this time I actually got a bunch of reading done. When drove back to Rostock where everybody stocked up on cheap German beer and chocolate and we took the ferry back to Denmark.

Ich Ben Ein Berliner (Day 2) - Part II

2007-07-17T01:26:00.001-05:00

Alright, it's time to get to the second half of our second day in Berlin before the memory of if completely escapes me. Now where was I... oh yeah, we had just finished our guided tour of the former East Berlin.

After a little fuddling around we decided to walk towards the Reichstag and stop at any cool shops we saw along the way. Our first stop was the aforementioned Ampleman store and then browsed a long flea market where I think I picked up an "You Are Now Leaving the American Sector" fridge magnet. Unfortunately when the got to the Reichstag the line to go up to the glass dome on top was hundreds of feet outside and not moving noticeably. So we did the next best thing we could think of which is to take a million pictures of it.

Then we headed back to Pariser Platz to buy a new umbrella and get some more trashy souveniers. My crappy (but free) American Express umbrella had finally eaten it on account of the strong winds that decided to accompany the many, many rain showers. I choose a small, sturdy dark blue umbrella that had the word Berlinerin writen on it. I didn't find out until I got back to Copenhagen that Berlinerin means a woman from Berlin. Awesome. Either way it was good timing because a few minutes after we left the store with more fridge magnets and golf balls in hand it started to downpour.

Once the rain slowed down to a more manageable level, the four of us (a.k.a. Melanie, Yaron, Talma, and myself) headed down the Straße des 17. Juni towards the Siegessäule a.k.a. the Berlin Victory Column, which is pretty much another kick-ass Prussian monument. We would have liked to venture over to West Berlin but we were starting to run out of time, so we jumped in a taxi to Al Hamra, the dinner spot of the night. On the way over we passed a couple establishments of note. The first was the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church (not my photo), which is most notably for the ruined belfry of the old church which was bombed during World War II. After the war a new church was built right next to it, but the belfry was kept as is. The other strange siting was what appeared to be a Chinese restaurant called White Trash Fast Food. It actually turned out to some sort of hipster tattoo parlor-barber-club-restaurant deal, which was kind of disappointing to be honest.

The rest of our night was relatively mundane but it was still a good time for all. We had dinner at Al Hamra, some sort of Middle Eastern joint that served ala carte which always seemed to be ala half empty whenever we got to the front of the line (we never did get any chicken, grrrr). The four amigos decided to skip the pub crawl and head out on our own, following the suggestions of a few locals. We walked up and down a few streets where I learned the joy of Original Berliner Weisse Red, a somewhat weak beer which is flavored with raspberry syrup to cover up its sour taste (there is also a "green" which is flavored with herbs and is described as woodruff-flavored, whatever the hell woodruff is supposed to taste like). After that is was off for some ice cream, and then back to the hostel for bed.

Blog Update

2007-07-17T01:13:00.002-05:00

Wowsers! It's been three and a half weeks since I arrived here in Copenhagen and it feels like yesterday. Hard to believe that I'll be back at work three weeks from today. I finally have a little free time to catch up on my blogging. I still haven't finished my Berlin trip and now I have to write about my trip to Stockholm and Malmö this weekend, plus a few smaller events here in Copenhagen. It will be nice to stay off my feet for a couple days... my poor feet are really ripped up and blistered at this point. Yesterday I had two group presentations which went well, so I'm also glad to have those out of the way.

I will probably spend this upcoming weekend in town, although there is a day trip to Odense on Saturday which I will go on. That will give me some time to finish up some work and explore other parts of Copenhagen that I haven't really gotten to yet. I will be planning some other trips including a possible five day Helsinki-Tallinn trip and possibly an extended layover in Iceland on the way back if I can get my flight changed.

I Need to Start Bringing My Camera to the Grocery Store

2007-07-12T03:27:00.000-05:00

On my walk to Fakta this morning I saw two thing that, well, you don't see every day:

A man carrying his groceries home in a wheelbarrow, apparently without realizing that I would find this hilarious (you usually have to pay for bags in Copenhagen so people generally reuse them, but I don't think you could get 24 bottles of soda into a medium sized plastic bag without running into trouble).

The city maintenance crew getting weeds out of the sidewalk by blowtorching them. From what I could make of it, the guy was wheeling around a large garbage can apparently filled with flammable liquid burning the weeds out from between the stones, using a device that looked like a combo weed whacker/blowtorch.

Going to Stockholm This Weekend

2007-07-12T01:39:00.001-05:00

As previously mentioned, I'm going to Stockholm, Sweden, this weekend. We have a trip planned to go to Malmo on Sunday, hopefully on the way back (the actual flight is from Malmo to Stockholm) I can meet up with the group on the way back. As some of you know I'm about a quarter Swedish so I should fit right in. This post will be updated throughout the day as I think of cool places to go in Stockholm.

Ich Ben Ein Berliner (Day 2) - Part I

2007-07-09T15:13:00.001-05:00

Ugh, it's actually Thursday now and I'm trying to finish this post. My sinuses are kind of stuffed at the moment, but The Flying Danish perseveres. It's kind of a mess around here because I'm trying to do three projects at once as well as book a trip to Stockholm this weekend and coordinate that with the trip to Malmö that CBS has planned.

Anyway... Saturday morning we set off for a walking tour around the former East Berlin. There is a company called New Berlin that is somehow related to our hostel which gives guided tours around Berlin. Our tour guide was named Melanie, who actually turned out to be from Georgia or something but was an excellent guide.

We started at Pariser Pladz, one of Berlin's most famous city squares. The most famous structure in Pariser Platz is the Branderburger Tor a.k.a. the Brandenburg Gate. Completed in 1791, it was actually commissioned as a sign of peace by Friedrich Wilhelm II. On top of the gate is the Quadriga (a chariot) which was originally driven by the goddess of peace. Napoleon took the Quadriga back to Paris after he conquered Berlin in 1806, and when it was returned in 1814 the olive wreath was changed to an Iron Cross and the statue now became the goddess of victory. Later the Iron Cross was removed by the East Germans as a sign of Prussian militarism, but was put back in 1990 after German reunification. According to Melanie, the statue now keeps watch over the French embassy which is also located in Pariser Platz. Seriously people, this lady has been through a lot.

Besides those buildings Pariser Platz has a few other buildings of significance. The Hotel Adlon is located there, which is mostly famous as being the hotel that Michael Jackson dangled his baby out of. The Academy of Fine Arts is located there, as well as a building whose inside is supposed to be shaped like a whale.

After that we headed south to visit the Memorial to the Murdered Jews in Europe. I'm not one to get terribly emotional around monuments but this one was quite moving. The design is kind of simple and complex at the same time, being made up of concrete slabs of various sizes. It's a little hard to explain but it's definitely worth seeing if you are in the area.

Next we were off to find the spot of Hitler's bunker which turned out to be a parking lot. The only indication you would have that something is out of the ordinary is a sign. It sounds a little funny, but is kind of appropriate if you think about it. After that we walked a couple more blocks to the former Reich Air Ministry and learned about its history mainly under the GDR. Then we moved on to check out other remaining sections of the Berlin Wall and revisited Checkpoint Charlie which, like much of Berlin apparently, has been rebuilt after it was destroyed or dismantled.

After we strolled passed Fassbender & Rausch, world famous chocolatiers, we moved on to the Gendarmenmarkt, another famous square in Berlin. The square has by three famous buildings, the Duetscher Dom (German Cathedral), the Französischer Dom (French Cathedral), and the Konzerthaus. A lot of the buildings we ran into were designed by Karl Schinkel, who was described by Melanie as Germany's most famous architects. He certainly did have a thing for columns.

Then it was off to yet another public square, this time Bebelplatz, which is best known for being the site of a Nazi book burning in 1933. Famous buildings here include the Staatsoper (State Opera House), the Alte Bibliotek, a big statue of Frederick the Great, Humboldt University across the way, and St. Hedwig's Cathedral, the latter of which we couldn't really see due to construction. Crossing the street we ran into the Neue Wache, originally a Prussian guard house it is now a famous war memorial. Next to that is the Zuegheus, the German Historical Museum and the Schlossbrucke (Palace Bridge). Seriously you couldn't swing a bat around here without hitting some kind of historical building.

We also learned about Ampelmännchen (more commonly referred to as Ampelmann), the character used as the "don't walk" character on East German pedestrian traffic lights. After German reunification the old stoplights were going to be replaced, which apparently created somewhat of an uproar as Ampelmann had become somewhat of a cult figure while teaching children the rules of traffic safety. Fortunately for us Ampelmann was saved and now lives on in East German traffic lights as well as the ice cube tray that makes Ampelmann-shaped ice cubes that I bought from the Ampelmann gift shop. How Ampelmann did not make it onto the They Might Be Giant's song Particle Man we will never know...

The last leg of the walking tour was Museum Island, as you may have guessed named after the many museums that reside here, including the Altes Museum, the Neues Museum, the Alte Nationalgalerie, the Bode Museum, and the Pergamon Museum. Quite convenient if you are really into museums. Finally we stopped at the Berliner Dom, a huge cathedral, and learned heard stories about the Fernsehturm Berlin (the hideous television tower built by the East Germans) and how the Berlin Wall was actually came down.

Wow! The day is only half done and this post is getting really long, so I better split the day in two. I'll be slapping on a post about Stockholm today so things will be a little out of order but you're smart people, you'll figure it out.

Ich Ben Ein Berliner (Day 1)

2007-07-09T12:04:00.000-05:00

Well, I'm back from Berlin and now you have to read about the trip. And in case you were wondering, yes, it did rain the entire time we were in Berlin. Awesome I know. Someone also told me that they had heard that this June was the rainiest June in something like 130 years. Still, we persevered and ended up having a great time.

Anyway, we hopped on a bus and drove down to Gedser where we got on the ferry Pris Joachim that took us to Rostock, Germany. Then we continued our drive down to Berlin. We unloaded at the Hotel Generator, our hostel for the weekend. Despite complaints from Danish (the guy, not the language), I thought the accomodations were decent for a hostel. We got there at 3:30 so after dumping off stuff in our rooms a group of about a dozen of us set forth into the former East Berlin.

The first thing I noticed about Berlin was how much graffiti there was compared to Copenhagen. Extensive graffiti was everywhere, and it was a much more artistic than the amateur graffiti in Denmark. Danish graffiti is 1) almost always in english and 2) usually pretty weak. Typically graffiti in Denmark will be something like "wish me fortune" or "go to hell please" or something like that. The second most noticable thing was that there were a lot more cars, although traffic is still nowhere near what you would see in Minneapolis.

Anyway after hoping a couple of trains we ended up a couple blocks from a remaining strip of the Berlin Wall along Mühlerstaße (if you want a pretty good map of the traces of the Berlin Wall here is one). We walked across the Spree river and passed some cool buildings including Schlesisches Tor and the Church of Saint Thomas before hitting up some Japanese food in Oranienstrasse. After that we just cruised around for a while and managed to find a couple of interesting things, including Checkpoint Charlie, Gendarmenmarkt (home of the Konzerthaus, the Deutsch Dom, and the Französiche Dom), the Rotes Rathaus, and the infamous television tower Fernsehturm (a.k.a. Telespargel or "tele-asparagus"). With a big day ahead of us, we called it a night and went back home on the train.

I'll post more tomorrow about our trip!

Off to Berlin Tomorrow

2007-07-05T02:51:00.000-05:00

Early tomorrow morning we are off to Berlin, so unless something crazy and exciting happens you probably won't see another post until at least Monday night. Berlin is roughly 225 miles as the crow flies, but since traveling by road would first take us due west and then straight south, it sounds like we are first hopping on a ferry to Rostok or something and then getting on a bus to Berlin.

We should arrive in Berlin around 5 o'clock at night and have free run of the city at that point. We have a walking tour of the city that takes roughly five hours and finishes in the mid afternoon. From what I can tell we are going to visit the Reichstag (Germany's Parliament Building), the Führerbunker (Hitler's bunker), the Berlin Wall, Checkpoint Charlie, and what I'm guessing is the SS-Hauptamt (the former S.S. Headquarters). After we are done with the places-where-horrible-things-have-happened-in-Berlin's-history tour, it's off to dinner at Al Hamra, an Arabic restaurant in Berlin. And after that, it's off for a Berlin pub crawl because if there's one thing I need before a ten hour bus/ferry ride is a hangover.

We're off Sunday morning, but on the way back we continue our Tour Tuetonic by visiting the concentration camp Sachsenhausen, located just outside of Berlin. Then we get to eat at McDonald's, another traditional German restaurant, before heading home. I'm sure I'll have a lot to post when I get back.

Auf Wiedersehen!

Canals and Karaoke

2007-07-04T01:05:00.000-05:00

After spending all day studying, it was off to Nyhavn for a canal tour. While Copenhagen does not have canals of, say, Amsterdam or Venice they are nevertheless quite extensive. In fact, Christianshavn was actually modelled after Amsterdam when it was added by Christian IV. After a rainy morning, the sun was shining brightly by 6:30 so there was a big turnout for the tour. Of course, this made it hard to take photos in the direction of the sun but nobody was complaining.

Nobody was really sure where we went, in large part since sot the most part the only thing you could hear from the tour guide through the lousy speakers were reminders to sit down and/or keep your limbs inside the boat (that means you Meghann!). I think we started out by going through the Trangraven Kanal. After some briefing on the local real estate market, I believe we then passed through Københavns Havn, which I believe is the funniest sounding havn in all of København. Then it was back out into the Inderhavnen and headed north along the east bank past the new opera house.

After a while we turned around and made the requisite photo stop at the Little Mermaid statue and then headed back down the west bank passing such buildings as what appeared to be the A.P. Møller-Maersk headquarters and some old warehouses. Then it appears that we went back into the Trangraven Kanal but this time turned south into the Christianshavn Kanal. This stretch was the part that really felt like you were going through a postcard canal. The shores were filled with brightly colored buildings and friendly people. After passing under a bunch of bridges we crossed the Inderhavnen again and circled the Frederiksholms Kanal which goes around Slotsholmen, the island with Christiansborg, Det Kongelige Bibliotek (The Royal Library), the Børsen (stock exchange), and a number of other important buildings.

I have attempted to recreate our journey on Google maps (in red here), although my accuracy may be less than 100 percent.

Finally we landed back at Nyhavn and went our seperate ways. My little group went around and ended up at a karaoke bar called Sam's Bar, somewhere in the Strøget. After a Martha-Jeff duet of A Whole New World and an inspired Martha-Meghann rendition of Girl's Just Wanna Have Fun, (and some impromptu travel planning) we called it a night.

New Facebook Account

2007-07-02T06:09:00.000-05:00

Baby Royalty

2007-07-01T06:49:00.000-05:00

Today the second child of Crown Prince Frederik and Crown Princess Mary of Denmark was christened and publicly named today, and is now to be refered to as Her Royal Highness Princess Isabella of Denmark. Denmark has been abuzz with news about the royal couple and their children for some time now, but I suppose that is better than gossiping about Paris Hilton so I won't say anything. Besides, these two seem pretty respectible and their kids are pretty cute.

The couple also have an son, the year-and-a-half old Prince Christian. Apparently most Danish princes are named either Christian or Frederik, and Prince Frederik made the wise decision to not give his son his name. After all, that might create a lot of "do you mean His Royal Highness Crown Prince Frederik or His Royal Highness Prince Frederik?" types of situations. And yes Mindy, I got a couple of royal fridge magnets and you can have one of them.

For today's bonus, here is a picture of a painting of Princess Mary we saw in Frederiksborg Slot yesterday. Frankly, I think she looks like the spitting image of Posh Spice in this painting but you be the judge.

Club Vega

2007-07-01T05:06:00.000-05:00

After some running around last night, Minnesota Greg and I ventured off to find Club Vega, a nightclub that seems to make it into most of the guidebooks as a Copenhagen hot spot. It was pretty easy to get there from Katherine Kollegiet, just had to hop on the S-Train and it dropped us off about four blocks away. I don't think we say the entire place, but rather just the nightclub - there were two rooms on the second floor and another two on the third floor. There must be other places to go because Vega hosts concerts both large and small, with acts such as Modest Mouse, Rufus Wainwright, Dropkick Murphys, The Game, and Blondie coming up in the next month, among others.

I would say that Club Vega lives up to its reputation. There was a distinct lack of pretension relative to similar clubs in the States, and you didn't have to worry about a dress code. The music was good, and if you didn't like the music in one room you could just move to another. The price of a Tuborg (39 kroners or about $7) was not much more than you would pay at a downtown nightclub in Minneapolis, and water was free. We got there a little before 12:30 so we didn't have to pay any cover charge either. No lines for the bathroom either. Really the only problem was the smoke, but even that was tolerable since the ceilings were high and not that many people were smoking.

Getting back on the other hand was another story. I forgot that the S-Train closes at 1:00 or so, so I ended up walking back home which took about an hour or so. On the plus side, I know what the Carlsberg brewery looks like at night.

The Easiest Job In the World

2007-06-30T15:31:00.000-05:00

Being a weatherman in Copenhagen.

Dear Denmark: You Have Too Many Castles Give Me One

2007-06-30T13:16:00.001-05:00

I haven't travelled much through Europe yet, but Denmark seems to have more than it's fair share of Castles. Today we visited two more of them, first Frederiksborg Slot in Hillerød and then Kronborg Slot in Helsingør. We got up early and took a bus to Hillerød which is about 40 minutes north of where I am staying.

Frederiksborg was my favorite of the two castles, although part of that was that it was the first one we visited. Most of the current castle was built in the early 1600's although like everything else it had a big fire in 1859 that burned much of the interior. The castle was rebuilt, and the Museum of National History was also established. Several floors of the castle hold collections of paintings and other art. The rest of the place is full of rooms that are crazy ornate, often gaudy but always something to behold. This is one of those places where even the doors are impressive. The most famous room in the palace is the Riddersalen, or great hall, which is indeed pretty great (pictured left here). My personal favorite was a series of paintings by an artist whose name I can't remember, but they were a series of paintings of Copenhagen including several ones of Dutch and Danish warships.

Kronborg is very impressive from the outside, with some seriously intense fortification going on. Kronborg is older than Frederiksborg (1420s) and from the outside looks more like a fortress than a royal palace. It was originally built in order to maintain control of the Øresund, which the king collected high tolls (the Øresundstolden, or Sound Dues) from any ship wanting to pass into or out of the Baltic. In 1585, Frederik II rebuilt Kronborg into the castle you see today, although much of it burned down in 1629. The castle was rebuilt, and while the exterior was fully restored the interior was not brought back to its previous splendor. The interior of the castle does not look nearly as ornate as Frederiksborg.

Still, Kronborg has its charms. Although we did not see Hamlet's ghost, we did wander around the tunnels beneath Kronborg. There is a statue of Holger Danske (Ogier the Dane), namesake of one of our dorms, down there though. Above ground, there is a very ornate chapel, one of the few parts of the original castle to survive the fire. The royal apartments were a little bare and lacked the crazy ornateness of Frederiksborg. It really doesn't help that there are a lot of strange modern art and large toy swords and stuff hanging from the ceiling that kind of detract from the romanticism of the building. Personally I found the defensive fortifications more interesting than the Hamlet-related stuff going on inside. Sweden is only 4 km across the straight, and you can see it quite clearly with the naked eye. After an extra line of defense called the Crownwork was completed in 1690, Kronborg was considered the strongest fortification in Europe.

Afterwards we wandered around Helsingør and got dumped on. Most of the time it rains around here it's pretty light and goes away quickly, but today's rain stuck around for a while. It didn't really rain that hard but it was very windy and cold. Once the rain stopped, we walked around some more. Helsingør itself is a neat little town, although at this point most of the shops were closed. Then we hopped on the S-Train back to Copenhagen. Apparently we got into the "quiet car," and for a minute we though a fight might break out but trouble was averted and we got home without incident.

Tivoli, A Fairy Tale For the Whole Family

2007-06-30T12:16:00.000-05:00

Well, last night (Friday) was our trip to Tivoli. I was a little stir-crazy from doing homework all day so I was glad to get out. In one of my classes, my group partners are a brother and sister and their father has fallen quite ill, so there is a lot of confusion at the moment but we decided that I would do most of the work on the first project while they figure things out. Anyway I went to Tivoli with some other grad student, Yaron and Telma (from Tel Aviv) and Melanie another student from my program.

For my taste Tivoli was just about the right fit. It doesn't have any giant roller coasters like Six Flags or anything, and the two big rides they have are pretty short. I went on some mine-esque ride that was obviously made for kids, and ended up going on the wooden roller coaster thing three times. The bigger rides had a number of flips and parts where you were upside down so when people I was with wanted to go I stuck to good old terra firma. Actually the strangest ride I went on was a Hans Christian Andersen ride which was almost kind of creepy (kind of It's A Small World-ish).

My impression about Tivoli was that the rides were not really the main attraction anyway. It's kind of hard to make a lot of huge rides when you are located in the downtown area of a major city. There are a lot of shooter games where you spray water or shoot arrows at targets, we took our hand and throwing some balls at hanging plates that moved up and down (one out of three ain't bad). There are a lot of small shops in Tivoli, mostly souvenirs and kitsch but there was one really nice store with a lot of high concept Danish kitchen and housewares. There are also gardens, and a theater, and an aquarium (and of course a Build-a-Bear store).

Mostly though, Tivoli seems to be about eating and drinking. There are in fact more restaurants in Tivoli (39) than rides (25), and I don't think that includes all the small little ice cream and hot dog booths. Beside some pop corn, I had some french fries at the Asian Station which for some reason served hamburgers, hot dogs, and panini sandwiches as well - you know, traditional Asian food. We also ate at the apparently world famous Wagamama restaurant, a Japanese/Asian food chain I had never heard of but is apparently all over Europe.

The night ended with a concert by the Danish band One Two. We got the plænen (the open-air stadium) after the show started so it was really crowded. The music turned out to be in English but turned out to be some combination of europop and covers of older American songs. We were getting a little tired at that point so after wandering around for a little while and riding the Rutsjebanen one last time we called it a night.

Folk Dancing and Stundenterhue, Oh My

2007-06-30T11:39:00.000-05:00

Well, this week was rounded off nicely with some crazy folk dancing and a trip to Tivoli, Copenhagen's little amusement park in the middle of the city. The folk dancing consisted of eight dancers who I swear must have mugged the Rice Krispies elves and stolen their hats. All were over the age of sixty (probably not a good sign for the future of Danish folk dancing) and there was a Danish emcee that nobody could really understand. After a couple short numbers, the students got down on the dance floor and tried their own hands at it. The dances were not terribly hard, but when your trying to get two hundred people or so to dance in a way the haven't done before well, you know it's not going to be pretty. All said though, only a few people wiped out completely. The second half involved more spinning around, which was not so great for yours truly.

Afterwards there was a gang of people who went downtown to a place called the L.A. Bar which turned out to be a smoky little dive bar (and no, not in the good way). Although the guidebooks say that Americans shouldn't mention the fact that Danes smoke in public but sorry - Danish bars stink!! Anyone who doesn't like the smoking ban in Minneapolis should spend a weekend going out to Danish bars and then reconsider. Anyway, it turned out that nobody was there anyway so we wandered around for a while before heading home on the Metro. One of the problems with hanging around undergrad students is that they constantly complain about how expensive things are, and seem to have already given up on going out to bars to drink.

One phenomenon in Copenhagen that we've seen is that when people graduate from high school they wear little caps called studenterhue, which look like sailor's caps with little flags of different countries around the rim. Apparently they have these in other European countries as well. Anyway we've been spotting them around town all week, and now you can see decorated vehicles driving around town carrying about twenty or so of graduates all wearing these caps, shouting and cheering. Normally I wouldn't stand for this kind of rabblerousing, but for whatever reason it is hard not to find these kids pretty endearing.

UPDATE 7-2 Daga managed to get a picture of said studenterhue-wearing hoologans riding around in a truck:

A Mid-Week Update From Copenhagen

2007-06-28T08:52:00.000-05:00

Well, it's Thursday now and I'm done with classes for the week, although I have a bunch of work to do for next week. Yesterday it rained pretty much all day, and pretty hard. I don't think it's rained yet today which would be the first dry day so far. Oh well, good for sleeping and homework.

The events we have lined up for the remainder of the week all look pretty good. Tonight we get to experience some traditional Danish Folk Dancing with the professional dance group Amagerlands Folkedansere (roughly "Amager-land Folk-dancers," Amager being the smaller of the islands on which Copenhagen is situated), which according to ISUP is one of the highest rated events every semester.

Tomorrow it's off to Tivoli, an amusement park that first opened in 1853. There are a number of attractions to see and do, including 38 different restaurants, shooting galleries, flower gardens, open-air shows, fireworks (at 11:45 on Saturdays), bumper cars, an acquarium, and a cabaret theatre among other things. The night we are going there will be an 80's Danish band called "One Two" playing at 10 o'clock (in Danish). The best known attractions of Tivoli are:

- Rutsjebanen, a wooden roller coaster which was built in 1913.

- The Demon, a roller coaster that I think I will be avoiding, thank you very much (motion sickness).

- Himmelskibet ("The Sky Flyer"), the world's tallest carousel (80m), which opened last year.

- Commedia dell'Arte, an open-air pantomime theatre.

- Koncertsal, a large concert hall where international symphony orchestras and ballet troupes sometimes perform.

Saturday we are off to North Zealand to visit so kick-ass castles. As some of you know, I kind of have a castle fetish so this trip is going to be pretty cool. I'll blog more about that trip on Sunday.

The Amazing Race

2007-06-25T17:45:00.001-05:00

Tonight we had a ISUP event dubbed 'The Amazing Race' where groups of students went on something like a scavenger hunt around downtown Copenhagen, trying to find various landmarks and answering trivia questions about them. This task was a little harder than it sounds since the streets in Copenhagen are marked differently than at least the U.S. and more sparsely. A lot of the stops were places we had visited yesterday. Our first stop, which we hadn't seen before, was the Rundetårn ("The Round Tower") which is the oldest functioning observatory in Europe. Instead of stairs it has seven-and-a-half stories of a helical corridor leading to the observatory.

Other stops included Marmokirken, Amaliensborg Plads, Nyhavn, Christiansborg, and Vor Frue Kirke ("Church of Our Lady"). Our last stop was at a bar called the Dubliner, which was really crowded. After staying there for a while, I went back home on the Metro I can back home to finish up some blog posts and get some cleaning done.

First Day of Classes

2007-06-25T17:44:00.000-05:00

The first day of classes was a bit hectic. I couldn't sleep at all during the night, so I almost ended up being late to my first class but I made it fine. Dalgas Have is a bit of a strange building, but once you get it down then everything is pretty obvious.

My class this morning was International Investments which looks pretty good, although a lot of work. The only real problem so far is that I couldn't get the textbook until after class started, and we were apparently told in the syllabus we didn't have that we were supposed to read the first 3 chapters. There are a number of group projects and we track an imaginary portfolio throughout the course, and then finish up with a final exam. We have two instructors for the course, both of them from the Netherlands. The partners in my group are a Danish brother and sister.

My afternoon class is International Management, which looks roughly as easy and International Investments looks hard so I think they will be a good mix. The professor is originally from Texas, and normally teaches at Benedictine College. Like my other class, this one is mostly made up of Danish and international students with only a couple of Americans. This class has one group project and a take home final, and my guess is that one would have to do reeeeally bad to not pass this class. We formed groups here too, although there doesn't appear to be that much group work here. My group here is made up of three Danes, one of which is actually coming to Minneapolis in the fall to study at my school.

Coursework seems to really depend on your instructor and the courses you are taking. Other students have reported a wide variety of course loads, so for anyone looking to go on this program I would check around to make sure you don't get two classes with huge workloads as this might take away from some of your experience here in Copenhagen.

A Long Day's Journey

2007-06-24T17:51:00.001-05:00

Today is Sunday, a day in which almost everything in Copenhagen is closed except the zoo. So instead of sitting around on our butts all day, a bunch of us took a hike around the city. Since I am prone to do such things, I plotted our trip on Google Maps when we got back. You can check it out here (click on "My Maps" and then select "Day Two Trip").

We started out walking towards the city, and checked out whatever shops were on the way. The only grocery store that seems to be open was Fakta, although a lot of the shops and small restaurants that appear to be run by immigrants were open as well as a number of pastry shops with fancy window displays. I also came to the conclusion that there must be some kind of law that dictates the height of buildings since almost every building seems to have five stories. We made it to the Rådhuspladsen (pladsen seems to translate as something like 'plaza'), which is not surprisingly located in front of the Rådhus, the City Hall. This area is often considered to be the center of Copenhagen.

From there we proceeded to walk up the Strøget which is a long pedestrian street known for its shopping and restaurants, something like Nicollet Mall but a hundred times cooler. We stopped at a coffee and pastry shop, and did a fair amount of window shopping before passing through some plazas with many fountains and statues before coming out near Slotsholmen, an island which has several castles and important government buildings on it, including the Christiansborg Palace (home of the Danish parliament), the Danish Royal Library, and the Børsen (the stock exchange), among others. Slotsholmen also has the ruins of two older castles which you can tour. Around this point we picked up one of our dorm mates Sergiy, who was walking around by himself.

At this point we had reached the large canal known as Kobenhavns Havn, which sounds really funny if you say it quickly. We followed the harbor to the northeast until we hit Nyhavn, which is usually considered one of Copenhagen's top tourist spots and for good reason. It really is a photographer's dream, complete with a beautiful canal, gorgeous multicolored buildings, boats, outdoor restaurants, pretty much everything you could want including a gigantic anchor located at near Kongens Nytorv.

We then headed off northeast, passing a number of embassies before we came to Amalienborg Slot, which is a series of four palaces which all face towards the center of an octagonal plaza. In the middle of the plaza lies a big statue of Frederik V. Although not as famous as the guards at Buckingham Palace, you can see the Royal Guard stand guard when the royal family is at home, although we did not catch the changing of the guard. In one castle Queen Margrethe and her Prince Consort Henrik live, and another is home to Crown Prince Frederik and Crown Princess Mary.

From there we headed north again towards the Kastellet, a old fortification located on an octagonal island. We passed by the Frihedsmuseet (the Museum of the Danish Resistance, a WWII memorial) and the Gefionspringvandet, a large fountain depicting the Norse goddess Gefyon. We first walked along the Langelinie Pavillonen before coming across the infamous Little Mermaid statue, which I have confirmed is an embarrassment to most Danes. We then did something of a U-Turn and came back down through Kastellet itself, and past through what appeared to be a series of old barracks that have been converted to new uses.

We came out and started to head back to the Norreport Metro station, and passed through streets that brought us past the Marmokirken and the world famous smørrebrød shop Ida Davidsen. Finally we passed through Rosenborg Have and Rosenborg Slot (seriously guys, why don't you build another castle?) before hopping on the metro to go home for some grub and a well earned rest from our seven hour journey.

The First Full Day & Observations about Copenhagen

2007-06-24T05:38:00.000-05:00

The first full day here in Copenhagen ended with several hours of adventures. After an orientation at Porcelænshaven, we came back a couple hours later for a barbecue for all of the international students. Apparently the Danish have a different idea of what a barbecue is, since there were no grills and no barbecue, but it was a good meal nonetheless. These kinds of events are nice because you can meet up with other people in the program that don't live in your building.

Later that night, we trekked over to Frederiksberg Have (garden) to witness the annual Midsummer's Night Eve bonfire in front of Frederiksberg Slot (castle), Frederiksberg being the municipality in which most of us are staying and where the campus is. The bonfire was pretty much just a regular bonfire, but you know with a castle in the background.

It rained off and on all day. You realize pretty quick in Copenhagen that it rains all the time and have to make the decision whether to drag an umbrella and rain jacket everywhere you go or reconcile yourself to getting wet. It generally doesn't rain too hard or too long, so it's not that bad. Layering is also pretty important since the temperature goes up and down fairly quickly as well.

Finally, we ended up going to a night club called Park Café which CBS had reserved for students in the summer program. A lot of students complained about the 35 kroner beers (about $7) but living in downtown Minneapolis that price is not exactly a shocker (plus I am not an undergraduate student). The DJ played some strange mixes, starting off with rap music, then switching to a series of techno remixes of early to mid 90's dance music, and then shifted to what appeared to be some kind of Euro pop. Getting home was kind of pain in the ass, since we really didn't have any directions and the club was located in Østerbro, which from home is located at least an hour away by foot. After unsuccessfully trying to flag down a cab, we gave up and got on a bus.

Here are some things I've learned about Copenhagen and Denmark so far:

- It does not appear that there is much air conditioning in Denmark. Generally air conditioning involves opening a window. This is normally fine, although it's pretty humid here sometimes (at least that's what people who are not from the Midwest tell us) so if you pack a large group of people into a confined space it can get pretty hot (so again, layering is important).

- People smoke everywhere here, including in bars and clubs, although in general it is not that big a deal unless you are asthmatic.

- There is dog poop everywhere, so you need to watch where you are walking. I don't think it's that people are particularly lazy, but since Copenhagen is much denser than other cities there are probably a much higher density of dogs as well.

- Nothing in Danish is pronounced how you would expect it to be. I think my success ratio for pronouncing Danish words correctly the first time is less than 10%. The main secret appears to be letting the second half of each syllable trail off and failing that just mumble and you are probably more likely to be right than if you had actually tried.

Signs in Denmark

2007-06-23T04:00:00.000-05:00

This is the first sign I have seen that is pretty hilarious. I believe it is an exit sign, but to me it looks like somebody fleeing a burglery.

First Morning In Copenhagen

2007-06-23T02:16:00.000-05:00

Well, it's about 9 in the morning local time. I woke up around 7:30 this morning (by sunlight more than choice) and went for a run around the city. Nobody else was really up, as I think most of the young 'uns were trying to find a bar last night. At first things got a bit turned around but I had a pretty good sense for a couple of the major streets. After about a mile I kind of felt like throwing up from the jet lag so I walked around for about a mile before running the last mile and a half or so.

The streets here are not marked as well as they are in Minneapolis, but it doesn't seem like it will be hard to get around once you figure things out. Very few streets are pronounced the way you expect them to be, but I'm starting to find a pattern. I took a path that took me close to most of the CBS buildings, although there isn't really a campus of any kind - more like a series of buildings within a couple of blocks of each other. I went through some indeterminate streets but found my way to Roskildevej, up Pile Allé, back through Smallegade which turns into Peter Bangs Vej (a lot of streets change names after a couple blocks, sometimes several times). Vej appears to be the most common name for street, and seems to be pronounced similar to "way"). The route took me by several large parks which I will explore later, the big ones being Frederiksberg Havn and Søndermarken.

It's 10 o'clock now, time to finish up my post. Made another quick run to Farsk with some of my neighbors for supplies and got caught in the rain on the way back. I'm getting the impression that it rains a lot here. Good thing I brought my umbrella.

The Flying Danish Has Landed

2007-06-22T13:55:00.000-05:00

Well, I've managed to make it to Copenhagen alive and in one piece. The flights over went fine and were without any real delays, although we did have quite a landing in Copenhagen. One of the MBA students from Carlson was on both my flights. I have to say though that Icelandair only gets slightly higher marks than Northwest for service and comfort, and despite what Mindy says the stewardesses do not look like Britney Spears from the video for Toxic.

We were herded into the Hilton Hotel next to the airport, and got to meet a number of the other students on the trip. Most were Americans, but there were also people from France, Canada, Australia, Iceland, and Israel. After getting a few documents and sitting around for a while we took a bus to our various dorms. My dorm is Kathrine Kollegiet, and so far almost all of my neighbors are undergraduate students. Despite what the CBS website says, it does not appear that one floor was reserved for grad students. The good news is that the ethernet connection in the room is pretty good, and there was a cable already in the room.

Of course, one of the most important first steps is to find a nearby grocery store and to figure out how to identify foodstuffs. It's harder than it looks. Two blocks up the street from our place is a Fakta grocery store, which along with Netto are two pretty common small grocery stores. The selection is not totally different from an American grocery, but there are some pretty obvious differences. There is very little poultry, and a wide variety of what appears to be ham, sausages, and other pork products. I got some bread called mørkt rugbrød (rye bread) which I had heard of before when investigating smørrebrød. I am not sure whether it is this particular type or whether this is rugbrød in general but it was really gross.

My Google Map of Copenhagen et al

2007-06-17T20:07:00.000-05:00

I have created a map on Google Maps showing the various locations I hope to visit, the school campus, etc. It will continue to be a work of progress.

Check it out here.

Copenhagen: So Much To Do, So Much To See, Part I

2007-06-17T17:43:00.000-05:00

THE EATS

Generally most people in Denmark do not eat out a lot, as it is extremely expensive. When they do, it tends to be a fairly lengthy affair. Most students have their own little kitchenette plus a larger "dorm kitchen" for cooking. One little grocery store that gets mentioned a lot is Nørre but I can't seem to find any locations on the web so you'll have to wing it for now.

Here are Copenhagen's top five restaurants, as selected by Lonely Planet:

Ida Davidson's
Where: Nyhavn
What: generally considered to be the top smørrebrød purveyor in all of Denmark
Cost: 50 to 150 kr ($9 to $27)

Kommandanten
Where: Strøget & The Latin Quarter
What: French-Danish, this restaurant gets two Michelin stars, which means it's very French, very good, and very expensive; make reservations several days in advance
Cost: 340 - 360 kr ($58 - $61)
http://www.kommandanten.dk/

Langelinie Pavillonen
Where: Nyhavn
What: French-Danish, an "upmarket 2nd-floor restaurant with some great flourishes"
Cost: 70 to 200 kr ($13 - $36)
http://www.langelinie.dk/

The Paul
Where: Rådhuspladsen & Tivoli
What: Modern Danish, an über expensive Michelin starred restaurent
Chances of me actually eating here: 0%
Cost: 600 kr ($109)
http://www.thepaul.dk/

Peder Oxe
Where: Strøget & The Latin Quarter
What: Danish, "country grub" with many fish and organic options
Cost: 79 to 199 kr ($14 - $36)

Great Danes: Niels Bohr

2007-06-17T13:07:00.000-05:00

Neils Bohr was one of the most important physicists of the 20th century. Born in Copenhagen in 1885, Bohr received his undergraduate degree at Cambridge and his doctorate from Copenhagen University. Later, he studied under Ernest Rutherford at the University of Manchester.

He published his model of atomic structure in 1913 (the Bohr Model), and many of his theories became the basis on quantum thoery. In 1922, Niels Bohr was awarded the Nobel Prize in physics. During the German occupation of Denmark, Bohr fled to Sweden and ended up in Los Alamos working on the Manhatten Project, mainly as a consultant.

Neils Bohr is on the 500 Danish Kroner banknote, and the Institute of Physics at the University of Copenhagen is named after him. The element bohrium was named after him as well.

"If quantum mechanics hasn't profoundly shocked you, you haven't understood it yet."

Greenland & The Faroe Islands

2007-06-14T21:56:00.000-05:00

Some people might not know, but both Greenland and the Faroe Islands are part of Denmark. For the most part, both have self rule for the most part.

Greenland was home to several groups of people, including the Dorset and later the Inuit. Erik the Red, a Norwegian exile settled there around 984 C.E. Those settlements lasted about 450 years before disappearing (if you want to read more about the early Viking settlements on Greenland try reading Collapse which has around 5,000 pages on it). Denmark-Norway reasserted its claim to the island in 1721, and in 1814 Greenland was officially ceded to Demark from Norway as part of the Treaty of Kiel. In 1979, Greenland was granted self-rule.

Greenland is the world's second largest island behind only Australia, with a total area of 836,109 square miles - over 80% of which is covered by the Greenland ice sheet. The population of Greenland is 56,361 which are entirely located on small coastal towns. Although traditionally most income from Greenland came from mining, currently its most important industry is fishing, shrimp in particular. Inuits in Greenland have faced many of the same issues that indigenous populations have experienced in the Americas and Australia.

The Faroe Islands are a small group of islands about 200 miles north of the Scottish mainland. The name comes from the Faroese world for "sheep islands." The islands started out as the home of Irish hermits who settled there in the sixth century, although they were later replace by Vikings settlers. Currently the Faroe Islands has a population of 50,000. The Norwegians maintained control of the islands until 1380 when control gradually fell into the hands of Denmark. The economy of the Faroe Islands is mostly based on fishing, as well as farming and wool. Every once and a while, the islanders attempt to secede from Denmark.

Coursework

2007-06-14T21:14:00.000-05:00

Not everything in Denmark will involve traveling around, experiencing culture, and flirting with gorgeous European women. There will in fact be some schoolwork involved. My classes meet Monday and Wednesday, in the morning and the afternoon, for five weeks. The sixth week is exam week. Unlike most of my classes here, most of the courses at CBS are generally are graded almost entirely on the exam.

Here are the two courses I'm taking:

INTERNATIONAL MANAGEMENT:
This class goes over concepts associated with international management, such as planning, organizing, staffing, and controlling. It goes into the environments that multinational corporations operate in, cultural issues, communication, and other topics.

INTERNATIONAL INVESTMENTS:
This course is designed to cover the issues that come with investing internationally. Topics include foreign exchange rates, international diversification, evaluating performance globally, among others. Part of the course is managing a fiction investment portfolio that will help students apply the course concepts.

Copenhagen: A Brief History

2007-06-14T17:16:00.000-05:00

You know, after almost 20 posts I realized I hadn't talked much about Copenhagen itself yet. So, I bring to you loyal reader a series of juicy vignettes about my host city Copenhagen. First a brief history lesson on the city. Copenhagen is Denmark's capital and largest city, holding 1.7 million of Denmark's 5.4 million people. The Danish call their capital København, which comes from the original designation Kjøbmandehavn which meant "merchants' harbor."

From the time of Vikings, there was a fishing village called Havn ("harbor"... original, I know) located at the site of modern Copenhagen. It came into the possession of Bishop Absalon who fortified it in 1167 which is generally regarded as the foundation of Copenhagen. In 1254 it received its charter as a city under Bishop Jakob Erlandson. Copenhagen is located at the most important entrance to the Baltic Sea and the rich towns of the Hanseatic League, which had the unfortunate effect of causing it be to attacked frequently. In 1416, Eric of Pomerania took control of the city and it henceforth belonged to the Danish crown.

Despite the attacks, Copenhagen continued to grow, and in 1479 the University of Copenhagen was founded.In 1596, Christian IV decided he wanted to make Copenhagen the economic, military, religious, and cultural center of the Nordic region. He made many mercantilist reforms and added two new districts to the city, Nyboder and Christianshavn, the latter being modeled after Amsterdam. He also increased the fortification of the city.

The next several centuries saw a series of assaults, fires, and plagues, followed by rebuilding and growth. The population grew rapidly starting around 1800. During World War II, Copenhagen was occupied by German troops along with the rest of the country. For the first several years, Denmark was allowed a relative degree of autonomy. Over time, tensions grew and in August 1943 the Germans dissolved the Danish government and declared martial law. The Nazis tried to eliminate all Jews from Denmark, but almost all of them were smuggled out of Denmark to Sweden. Finally in May 1945 Copenhagen and most of Denmark was liberated from German rule by Bernard Montgomery.

Since the war, Copenhagen has grown significantly. The Oresund Bridge connecting Copenhagen and Malmö was completed in 2000, and the Copenhagen Metro was opened for traffic in 2002. In June 2007, I will visit Copenhagen, ushering in a new era of prosperity and cultural flourishing.

Book Review: Smilla's Sense of Snow

2007-06-13T19:54:00.000-05:00

Well, I've finished my first piece of Danish literature not related to Hans Christian Andersen, namely Smilla's Sense of Snow. It's by author Peter Høeg, who unless you've read Smilla's Sense of Snow you've probably never heard of. I remember almost getting the book a couple of years ago when it was on the "staff favorites" section at Border's. It turns out that the guy who's favorite it was still worked there, and got really excited when he saw me buying the book (turns out he studied abroad in Denmark a while back). Anyway, about the book...

The plot of the book is basically that of a murder mystery, although I would say the more interesting parts are about the narrator Smilla (who is half Danish, half Greenlander Inuit) trying to figure out her place in European Denmark. Please there is a lot of stuff about snow. The general plot is that her buddy, a six-year-old kid in her apartment building that she befriended, is found having fallen to his death off of the building. The police decide it was an accident but Smilla knows otherwise. She launches an investigation into things and discovers evidence of a larger plot, which ends up taking her around Copenhagen and then off to Greenland. Overall I thought it was pretty well written, although at one point Smilla gets hit with something about every other page until you're pretty much waiting for her to get run over by a Zamboni. Besides the murder plot, the book mainly focuses on how the Inuit are adjusting to life under Danish rule (spoiler: not very well), with some science thrown in for good measure. A lot about snow. And ice. I was a little disappointed it didn't have more about Denmark and Copenhagen, but that's not a knock on the book.

Pete's Rating: 3 out of 4 stars

Great Danes: Hans Christian Andersen

2007-06-12T18:49:00.001-05:00

Perhaps the most widely recognized Dane is the author and poet Hans Christian Andersen (or H.C. Andersen or the Danish apparently prefer). Born in Odense (one of the cities we're visiting) in 1805, he wrote a number of very famous fairy tales such as The Ugly Duckling, The Emperor's New Clothes, The Little Mermaid, and The Princess and the Pea. Besides his fairy tales, he is also known for his novels and for an unfortunate resemblance to Tiny Tim.

H.C. Andersen's legacy lives on in Denmark and around the world. 2005 was the bicentenary of Andersen's birth and was marked by celebrations, and his birthday is celebrated as International Children's Book Day. In Copenhagen, there is the world famous Little Mermaid statue and of course one of the main roads is H.C. Andersens Boulevard. My guess is that most cities in Denmark probably have some version of the that. I observed a similar phenomena in India, where it appeared that the main street in every city was an M.G. Road (M.G. as in Mahatma Gandhi).

Danish History: The Early Years

2007-06-11T17:57:00.000-05:00

Obviously Danish history is too long and complex to cover in detail on this blog so I am taking the time line approach. I'm also breaking it up into a couple posts to prevent developing mega-post paralysis. I'll cover some of the stuff in more detail later if you're lucky. Also, most European literature uses C.E. (Common Era) instead of A.D. (Anno Domini), and B.C.E. (Before Common Era) instead of B.C. (Before Christ), so in order to prepare myself for heathen Europe I will confirm to these standards.

Around 100,000 B.C.E. - First signs of inhabitation in Denmark show up over 100,000 years ago. At some point, people probably had to abandon Denmark due to the ice cap covering the area because let's face it, ice caps are kind of a deal breaker.

12,000 B.C.E. - Denmark has been continually inhabited since this time.

4004 B.C.E. - The Earth was created.

3,000 B.C.E. - Agriculture, yadda yadda.

1,800 B.C.E. - Roughly the beginning of the Nordic Bronze Age. There are a large number of burial mounds that date back to this period, as well as religious artifacts, musical instruments, and evidence of the world's first rave party.

500 B.C.E. - Denmark starts to enter the Iron Age and begin to extract iron ore from peat bogs. There is evidence of a strong Celtic influence in the area, as well as trade routes with the Roman Empire. People also discover that peat bogs are great places to dump bodies if you want to leave them well preserved for archaeologists several millennium later.

800 C.E. - Beowulf is written around this time, give or take a century. Although in Old English, it describes events in Denmark during the 5th and 6th century, albeit in mythical terms.

800 C.E. - The Viking Age starts around this time. Danish assaults on the British Isles are followed by Danish settlers, and the Danelaw is established in 878 C.E. by Danish chieftain Guthrum and Alfred, the King of Wessex, under the terms of the Treaty of Alfred and Guthrum. Seriously, that's what they called it.

980 B.C. - Harold Bluetooth creates a unified Danish kingdom. Seriously, when did we stop giving people awesome names like that? Anyway, soon after he converted to Christianity. In many ways marks the beginning of Denmark as we know it today. Harold's father King Gorm the Old raised the first Jelling stone, and Harold raised the second.

T Minus 11 and Counting

2007-06-10T21:18:00.000-05:00

Well, we are down to eleven days before the KDM Flying Danish takes off for a half-summer of excitement in Copenhagen. I've started a packing list and pulled out the old suitcase and starting filling it with a few things. I've ordered one of my textbooks and started to read Smilla's Sense of Snow. My new cell phone has arrived and international roaming has been activated. I've started to clean and organize and get ready to shut things down for a month and a half. At work, I'm prepping stuff for my absence and will soon be handing off excess work to my appreciative coworkers.

Alright, back to my to-do list.

Bringing Your Cell Phone to Denmark

2007-06-09T08:55:00.000-05:00

First all, I should note that all of this is based on my experience with T-Mobile and may not entirely apply to you.

Depending on your carrier, you will want to have at least a dual band phone (900/1900 MHz), preferably a quad band phone (850/900/1800/1900 MHz). My current-until-last-night phone was a dual band, and at least according to T-Mobile the frequency of the carriers I would be using in Denmark and most of Europe would be are on a frequency of 900/1800 so coverage might be a little spotty. Hence the purchase of a new phone (be quiet, it is only $30 after the annoying mail-in rebate).

In general, Europe has far superior coverage and I assume that Copenhagen will be no exception.

Also, you probably have to activate international roaming. For T-Mobile this is called WorldClass International Service. It is free, but may take a couple days to activate and you may have to try a couple of times to get it to work.

Also as you probably guessed phone calls on your phone will be pretty expensive, although you probably won't be making many calls. At least with T-Mobile, any call is a $1 a minute, including checking voicemail and including incoming calls even if you don't answer them - if your phone is on (hence, if you're not expecting a phone call I would keep the phone turned off). Text messages are cheaper at 35 cents. I'm not sure if this is cheaper than renting a phone there, but I figured this would be less work once I get over there and I wanted a new phone anyway.

Time in Denmark

2007-06-09T08:11:00.001-05:00

Most of the year, Denmark is seven hours ahead of Minneapolis.

Although it won't affect our trip, Europe starts and ends Daylight Savings Time at different times than we do (it's called European Summer Time over there). Their DST starts on the last Sunday in March and ends on the last Sunday in October, while ours (starting in 2007) starts on Second Sunday in March and end the First Sunday of November.

The clock pictured here is the Jen's Olsen World Clock. It was designed by the astromer Jens Olsen (shocker) and displays the local time, the solar time, sidereal time, sunrises, sunsets, firmament and celestial pole migrations, planet revolutions, the Gregorian calendar including moing holidays. If you want to check it out, it is in a side room of the Rådhuset (city hall) which is one block southeast of the Rådhuspladsen near Tivoli.

The Danish Economy

2007-06-08T19:53:00.000-05:00

Traditionally Denmark’s economy was largely based on fishing, trading, and taxing the crap out of people who passed through the Øresund (see: the Sound Dues). Today, Denmark has a service based economy similar to the United States, which makes up 74% of GDP, while industry makes up 24.6% and agriculture only 1.4%. Not surprisingly its main trading partners are Germany and Sweden, followed by the UK and the United States. It is self-reliant in terms of energy through oil, natural gas, wind and bio-energy. Large Danish industries include fish, meat, and dairy products, textiles, mining, chemicals, pharmaceuticals, construction, furniture and wood products, shipbuilding, electronics, medical equipment, and of course windmills and Christmas trees (and unfortunately mink and fox fur as well).

The Danish workforce is highly unionized, with 75% of workers belonging to a union. Most of the trade unions are part of an umbrella system. The Danish Confederation of Trade Unions (Danish: Landsorganisationen i Danmark, or LO) is the biggest one with 1.34 million members (Denmark has a population of 5.45 million). However, union membership has been slowly declining over time. I'm pretty interested to learn more about how European unions work, because unlike America's crappy unions I hear they aren't too bad.

With over 100,000 employees worldwide and 2005 revenues of $34.8 billion, the biggest company in Denmark is the A.P. Moller-Maersk Gruppen. It is a consortium primarily engaged in shipping and transportation, and is the largest container ship operator and supply vessel operator in the world. It is also engaged in petroleum and natural gas exploration and production, shipbuilding and ship repair, supermarkets, and owns 20% of Dansk Bank, Denmark’s largest bank.

Dansk Bank A/S itself is the second largest company in Denmark. Although it primarily operates in Denmark, it also purchased the banking interests of Sampo which operates in Finland, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, and also banks in Sweden (various banks), Norway (Fokus Bank), Ireland (National Irish Bank), and Northern Ireland (Northern Bank).

The LEGO Group is around the 46th largest Danish company.

One of the Danish companies you are likely to have heard of is Bang & Olufson, who designs and manufactures high-end stereos and audio equipment, televisions, and telephones. They have a store here in the twin cities at the Galleria. Even if you haven’t heard of them or don’t have the cabbage to shop at B & O, you may be using their products and not even know it – B & O makes the popular A8 earbuds that come with most iPods.

In case you're wondering about some of the acronyms after the names of Danish companies, here is what a few of them mean:

A/S (Aktieselskab) A stock based company

ApS (Anpartsselskab) Limited liability corporation

AB (Aktiebolag) Swedish word for corporation (there are a lot of joint Swedish-Danish companies)

Here is a good summary.

The Social Program

2007-06-07T16:40:00.000-05:00

The CBS International Summer University Program (or ISUP for short) offers a pretty extensive list of activities for people to do. They just came out with the list of activities for 2007, and here they are:

Week 1
June 23 (Sat) - Welcome BBQ and celebration of Midsummer Night's Eve: an opportunity to meet your fellow students and eat. Sankt Hans Aften, or Midsummer Night (more properly translated as St. John's Eve) is a celebration of the summer solstice.

June 23 (Sat) - Welcome Party: apparently held at one of "Copenhagen's ritziest clubs," which apparently for security reasons cannot be named.

June 25 (Mon) - Amazing Race: no, we are not auditioning for the TV show. Participants will be broken up into groups and will romp around downtown Copenhagen in order to get to know the place better.

June 28 (Thur) - Folk Dancing: the CBS website says this is the event that gets the best feedback. Sounds like a great opportunity to show off my dancing chops.

June 29 (Fri) - Tivoli: a very famous 19th century amusement park.

Week 2
June 30 (Sat) - DAYTRIP 1 - NORTH ZEALAND: Zealand is the large island that Copenhagen is located on. This trip will visit Frederiksborg Castle and Kronborg Castle, the latter being the setting of William Shakespeare's Hamlet.

July 3 (Tues) - Canal Tour: a one hour tour through Copenhagen's canals. It takes off from Nyhavn, travels through Chistianshavn's Canal, passes by Amalienborg Palace, and arives at the statue of The Little Mermaid, Mindy's favorite.

July 6 - 8 (Fri - Sun) - BERLIN WEEKEND: a weekend trip to the capital of Germany. Yeah!

Week 3
July 10 (Tues) - Copenhagen Jazz Festival: Copenhagen hosts a very famous jazz festival.

July 12 (Thur) - Scary Party: apparently a celebration of Friday the 13th eve, we get to dress up in scary costumes and have a party at the Happy Pig.

July 14 (Sat) - Beach Day: a trip to Amager Strandpark, one of Copenhagen's "newest and nicest beaches" will give me an opportunity to blind an entirely new group of people.

July 15 (Sun) - DAY TRIP 2 - MALMÖ, SWEDEN: this year the program includes a day trip to the aforementioned Malmö.

Week 4
July 16 (Mon) - Christiania: also known as Freetown Christiania, this partially self-governing community has had it's infamous moments.

July 20 (Fri) - World Cup Soccer: basically a free-for-all soccer tournament made up of CBS students.

July 21 (Sat) - DAY TRIP 3 - ODENSE: the birthpace of Hans Christian Andersen.

Week 5
July 27 (Fri) - International Dinner: students bring food from their own country to share. Hmm, what on earth should I bring?

July 28 (Sat) - Movie Night: the Zulu Sommerbio (summer cinema) are open air film showings that take place across Copenhagen.

Week 6
August 3 (Fri) - Goodbye Party: a farewell party at the club Luux.

The Little Mermaid

2007-06-05T20:48:00.000-05:00

One of the tourist attractions you will inevitably hear about in Copenhagen is a statue called The Little Mermaid, as in the Hans Christian Andersen story (and later the Disney adaptation). The Little Mermaid has sometimes been compared to to monuments such as the Eiffel Tower and the Statue of Liberty, comparisons that no doubt even the Danish find embarrassing. Still, the Mermaid apparently gets about a million visitors a year and is plastered all over tour guides and various memorabilia.

The Little Mermaid was built in 1913, and is located at Langelinie quay in Copenhagen. According to Mindy, it is a pretty stupid statue but I will probably visit it as part of a tour anyway so I might as well embrace Little Mermaid mania. Although some people might not find them funny, the most entertaining stories about the statue involve people cutting its head off or some other form of vandalism. Here is a recap of vandalism over the past couple of decades:

- 1961: The hair of the Little Mermaid was painted red and she was dressed in a bra.

- 1963: The Little Mermaid was covered in red paint.

- 1964: The statue was decapitated for the first time.

- 1976: The Little Mermaid was covered in paint again.

- 1984: The statue's right arm was taken off.

- 1990: There was an unsuccessful attempt to remove the statue's head again.

- 1998: The statue was decapitated again.

- 2003: The statue was knocked down from its stone.

Danish Food & Drink

2007-06-04T19:00:00.000-05:00

When travelling, one thing to get excited about (or worried, depending on the country) is the food. Denmark, of course, is no exception. Due to its northerly location, Denmark's historical diet has involved mostly carbohydrates, meat and fish, and shares similarities with Germany and other Scandinavian counties, and has been influenced by French cuisine as well. Traditional Danish foods include sausages, cheeses, breads, fish, and the potato (kartofler). One of the more famous Danish foods is smørrebrød (literally "spread on bread"), which generally is served on a slice of rye bread (rugbrød). The topping (pålæg) is usually roast beef or pork, cheese, fish, or spreads, and then topped with other garnishments. Due to a number of factors including immigration, Denmark's diet is slowly expanding to include a larger number of food items.

Copenhagen is generally considered to be a beer town, with the two most notable brands being Carlsberg and Tuborg. As fate would have it we will probably end of visiting the Carlsberg Brewery as part of our trip. Aquavit and wine are also pretty popular.

In general Danes eat out less than American due, in part due to the high tax rate. So when they do it tends to be a rather lenghty affair. Like many countries, tipping is not customary. Most people don't seem to be able to write about Danish cuisine without mentioning the concept of hygge. It is generally translated to mean "warm and cozy." I don't know about you, but I think I can feel the hygge already.

Skål!

The Best Thing To Ever Come Out of Denmark

2007-05-31T16:24:00.000-05:00

No, it's not Helena Christensen. It's Lego bricks. Is there any better toy than legos? I submit there is not. I spent an inordinate amount of time as a kid playing with legos, and still get a kick out of those little plastic bricks and minifigures.

As you probably guessed by now, legos were created in Denmark. Ole Kirk Christiansen started building wooden toys in 1932 and started calling the company "Lego" in 1934 (which comes from the Danish phrase leg godt, which means "play well"). The first plastic bricks were manufactured in 1949. Lego toys have gone from buildings, to spaceships, to knights and castles, to tie-ins such as Spider-Man. There are now four Legoland amusement parks and several Lego stores, including one in the Mall of America. If you spend a lot of time on the Internet, you can find various Lego-based video games and movies such as the one below.

The Weather in Denmark

2007-05-29T20:47:00.000-05:00

Denmark (and Europe in general) is farther north than most people realize. At a latitude of 55 degrees Denmark is in line with southern Alaska (Minneapolis is just below 45 degrees latitude). However, due to its proximity to the Baltic and North Seas (at least that’s my story and I’m sticking to it) the weather in Denmark is relatively mild, ranging from mean temperatures in January and February of 31 degrees and a mean temperature in July and August of around 62 degrees. The country is also known to be fairly windy at times.

Another side affect of being so far north is that the amount of daylight varies greatly. During the shortest days of winter sunrise is at 8:30 a.m. and sunset at 3:30 p.m. (7 hour days). Fortunately I will be there during the summer when the sun rises comes at 4:30 a.m. and sets at 10 p.m. (17.5 hour days). The shortest and longest days in Minneapolis on the other hand range between 8.5 hour days and 15.5 hour days, respectively. While it’s hard to complain about a couple extra hours of sunlight, most people who know me know that I have a tendency to wake up with the sun. I am a little nervous about waking up every day at 4:30 in the morning, so I am considering investing $10 into some kind of sleeping mask. I am encouraged by the fact that at least the photo of the residence hall I will be staying in seems to have black curtains.

Malmo, Sweden

2007-05-27T17:36:00.000-05:00

Moving outside of Denmark for a moment, one of the places I plan on visiting during my trip is Malmö, Sweden. Malmö is about 30 km from Copenhagen. The two cities are connected by the Øresund Bridge which, at 7.8 km, is Europe's longest. A train runs between the two cities every twenty minutes between 5 a.m. and midnight, and hourly after that.

Malmö was founded around 1275 when this part of Scandinavia was part of Denmark. It rose to prominence as an important port of trade frequented by the Hanseatic League. For a long time it was the second biggest city of Denmark. In 1434, the first citadel was built. In 1527, it became one of the first cities to official convert to Lutheranism. Following the Treaty of Roskilde, Malmö and the Scanian region became possessions of Sweden.

Currently Malmö has about 600,000 residents if you include the metropolitan area. The city has had a rough time adjusting to post-industrial existence but has recovered somewhat over the last decade. Malmö has a relatively high portion of immigrants, including a large number of Danes who commute to Copenhagen for work.

Some places to visit in Malmö:

- There are several famous squares in Gamla Staden (the old town). One is the Stortorget, which has a statue of King Karl X Gustav and many historic buildings including the 16th century Rådhuset (town hall) and the Apoteket Lejonet a pharmacy running since 1571. Other squares include the Lilla Torg and Gustav Adolfs Torg.

- Another attraction is Malmöhus Castle ("Malmö house," pictured left). You can tour the royal apartments, the Stadsmuseum ("city museum") and the Konstmuseum ("art museum"). Located nearby is the Kommendanthuset arsenal and the Teknikens och Sjöfartens Hus, a technology and maritime museum.

- There are boat tours of the cities canals that run from April through September. You can find out more by visiting Malmö's official tourist site here.

Denmark and the Coalition of the Willing

2007-05-26T18:24:00.000-05:00

Many people don't know this, but Denmark was one of five countries directly involved in the 2003 invasion of Iraq. That being said, Denmark's 300 soldiers only made up about one-tenth of a percent of the total invasion force. The other four include the United States (250,000 troops), the United Kingdom (45,000), Australia (2,000), and Poland (194). Currently, Danish forces mainly operate under the command of United Kingdom forces in Basra. To date, they have had seven deaths, five killed in combat.

Currently Denmark has about 460 soldiers in Iraq, although in February Prime Minister Ander Fogh Rasmussen announced that Danish troops will be withdrawn from Iraq by August of 2007. Polls taken in November of 2006 by the Jyllands-Posten found that only 29% of those polled supported keeping troops in Iraq, while 60% were against it. In many ways, the Danish involvement has played out similarly to that of the United kingdom, although Rasmussen has not paid as high of a price as Tony Blair.

The Danish Monarchy

2007-05-26T11:03:00.000-05:00

The Danish monarchy is one of the longest running monarchies in the world, second only to Japan's. Like most monarchies today, Denmark's is a constitutional monarchy, which in layman's terms pretty much means they are basically figureheads. Danish monarchs function mostly as ambassadors and like other monarchies are known for doing a lot of philanthropy, in addition to wearing funny hats.

Currently, the reigning queen is Margrethe II (here's her website), who as far as I can tell is only the second queen of Denmark (the first being Margaret I*). Besides being considered intelligent and progressive , she appears to be best known for chain smoking and illustrating the covers of the Danish version of Lord of the Rings.

With the exceptions of England and Monaco, the Danish monarchy recently seems to be getting the most press of the European monarchies. In large part, this has to do with the marriage of Crown Prince Frederik to Mary Elizabeth Donaldson, a marketing consultant from Australia in 2004 and their first child being born in early 2006.

*In case you were wondering, the names are spelled different because Margrethe is an Icelandic name. When she was born, the King of Denmark was also the King of Iceland, and giving his daughter an Icelandic name was like a shout out to the Icelanders.

The Kroner

2007-05-26T07:24:00.000-05:00

Even though Denmark is part of the European Union, it is one of three pre-2004 EU members to eschew the euro and continue to use its old currency, the krone (DKK, pl. kroners). The only other countries that don't are Sweden which uses the Swedish krone (SEK), and Great Britain which uses the Great Britain pound (GBP). Some experts have theorized that the British continue to use the pound out of respect for the Green Bay Packers who share the same initials, although it appears that Sweden will adopt the euro at some point.

The krone is pegged fairly closely to the euro, and therefore the exchange rate will be pretty lousy, having risen about 30% since 2000. The current exchange rate is roughly DKK 5.5 to one U.S. dollar. Fortunately, most expenses on the trip are denominated in dollars, including the airfare and most importantly tuition.

You can tell a lot about a country by what they put on their money. For example, almost all money in India has a picture of Mahatma Gandhi on it. Coins in Denmark have a picture of King Christian V or Queen Margrethe II on them. Pictures on banknotes include Karen Blixen (author), Carl Nielsen (composer), Johanne Luise Heiberg (actress), Neils Bohr (scientist), and Anna and Michael Ancher (painters). Amazingly, Hans Christian Andersen does not seem to have made his way onto any currency. I'm not sure whether this says that Danes have great admiration for the arts and sciences or that nothing has happened there in a long time I'm not sure but I'll give them the benefit of the doubt for now.

If you want to hear a rap song about kroners (actually, kronur, since this is about Iceland) you can go here.

Home Sweet Home

2007-05-25T19:19:00.001-05:00

This is a picture of my home for six weeks while I am in Denmark, Kathrine Kollegiet. It's a six story building located in the Frederiksberg area of Copenhagen, roughly a ten minute walk from campus. Each suite has its own bathroom and kitchenette. Not very exciting but a lot of people ask me where I'm going to be staying.

The Flying Danish

2007-05-25T18:28:00.000-05:00

Well, tonight is the launch of The Flying Danish, a new blog to chronicle my Denmark related adventures. As many of you know, I am taking off to Copenhagen for six and a half weeks this summer as part of an exchange program through school.

My flight doesn't take off for another month, so up to them the blog will probably cover miscellaneous topics such as Danish language, history, current events, and various travel stuff.