September 16, 2015 continued- Study Tours and Ice Cream Cake

What more could a girl want, right?

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On Tuesday, I began my morning with a Royalty in the Land of Equality visit to Rosenborg Castle, King Christian IV’s little summer home. And by “little,” I mean “gorgeously ornate and not small in the slightest.” The home is now a museum containing some of the most treasured items of Denmark’s past. Now, I’m talking about some intense stuff.

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BEHOLD, the coronation crown of Christian IV, the most famous Danish King. Seriously, zoom in on this picture so you can see just how ridiculous this crown is. Yes, those are diamonds. Yes, those are tiny cherubs. Yes, that is gold and those are pearls. This guy does not mess around with his accessories.

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And speaking of accessories, these are the crown jewels. I am normally not a fan of gigantic stones and sparkly things, but I would wear that tiara so good………… These are some of the current Queen’s favorite things to wear on big events. Can’t blame her.

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And then there is the ballroom. (I danced this time.)

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After Danish, I had yet another field study for European Art of the 19th Century. We travelled (for my third time) to the National Gallery, or Statens Museum for Kunst.

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I finally managed to get a decent picture of the outside, to give you an idea of just how vast this museum is. It’s no wonder I haven’t gotten bored going back. There are still a couple of exhibits (albeit none of the free ones) that I have yet to see. Some new favorites:

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I think there is a clear theme to my favorite works of art: geometry and pretty colors. Also, this last one was in a room called “Deceiving the Eye,” (or something along those lines). Guess what? That is a flat painting! Such 3D. Very trick. Wow.

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I finished off my visit with a quick sketch. How’d I do?

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To end my day, I attended a homestay network dinner set up by DIS. Sara was pretty upset that we weren’t chosen to host one, so we may organize something of the sort later on. There were five extra girls at Kandice’s house, and we ate way too much lasagna along with some homemade ice cream cake for dessert.

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Here’s the ice cream cake. SO GOOD. Kandice’s host mom promised to send us the recipe, because I could eat that stuff all day.

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A blurry picture of their puppy, Oreo. She was so hyper! I miss my own puppy back in Seattle….

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Alright. On that homesick note, I will bid you adieu and get back to the mountains of homework in front of me.

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Venlig hilsen/ best regards,

Lizzy-wa

September 16, 2015 – Spiders, Churches, and LEGOs, OH MY!

I say “study.” You say “tours.”

Study.

TOURS.

Study.

TOURS.

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Yes. My life with DIS basically consists of study tours, field trips, reading, and flight-booking. Oh, and bugs. My room has been relatively free of spiders for the last week or two (KNOCKIN’ ON THAT WOOD), but I finally found another intruder a couple days ago. I was too tired to deal with it, so I left it trapped under a cup until last night, when I realized IT WAS ALL LUMPY AND STUFF in its back end, which of course were EGGS. As in SPIDER EGGS. Needless to say, I almost burst into tears, tried to flush it down the toilet (took two flushes), had to read three chapters before I could forget a bit (though that backfired when RON WEASLEY started talking about spiders, too), and then finally fell asleep amidst a fit of spider nightmares. It was horrible. I am still shaken.

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Also, on the subject of flight-booking, I need a personal travel agent. Planning trips is just horribly stressful and I do not like it. This morning, I even found myself wishing for half a second that I could do a London study abroad instead of, like, graduating and stuff, just so I can go to London. All of the cheap flights are only on my busy weekends. It is terrible. My life, man. I just want to look at pretty museums and listen to accents like Rebecca!!! (Rebecca has been my roommate in Seattle for the past two years and is currently studying art for a month in London, though she is a Computer Science major. The lucky duck….)

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I feel like this blog will be too lengthy now after this ranting, so I will probably break up the last few days into two? Is that fine? Kay, cool.

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In fact, this post will just be a ranting post, and I will supplement it with my Monday adventures, which consisted of shopping with Sara, running into Maria, buying a watch (finally), and taking a look at the Trinitatis Church, which is connected to the Round Tower, or Rundetårn.

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I also ventured into the LEGO store in Copenhagen. (Did you know LEGOs are Danish???)

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Check out this adorable Nyhavn LEGO model. The back of the store is filled with candy-store-like dispensers filled with all different types and colors of LEGOs (main photo for the post). I told Jackson we will be going back to buy some and build something the next time he is down here. Muahahahaha. I refuse to grow up.

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Alrighty, guys. You’ll hear from me again in about… thirty minutes.

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Venlig hilsen/ best regards,

Lizzy-wa

September 13, 2015 – Pig, Pork, Ham, Hamburg

That pretty much sums up my weekend. Kay bye!

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Just kidding. But honestly, I ate so much meat this weekend. I think my fat intake has been capped off for the month. (Until I eat that roast my host dad made for dinner. Oh well.)

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So I spent my Thursday through Saturday in Hamburg, Germany with my Sustainable Development class, the final sheBANG of Core Course Week with DIS. I’m going to go ahead and give an immediate disclaimer: I didn’t have that much fun. Like, two out of five on the fun-ness scale. Not sure why. A combination of things, obviously, but I think I just wasn’t really feeling it the whole time, and there was a lot of alcohol involved that I did not enjoy (and for the most part, did not consume). Regardless, I’ll just go over the stuff we did and the stuff I took pictures of, whether I liked it or not… Haha. Sorry.

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Day 1:

Woke up at 5am, packed a million different snacks for the five hour train ride, and hopped on a bus toward Copenhagen. When I got to Central Station, my professor told the class that all trains between Denmark and Germany had been canceled in order to stop the travels of refugees fleeing Syria. Immigration of refugees is one of the main topics of conversation amongst Danes right now, so this notification was shocking, but not entirely surprising. (Shocking in the way that I obviously was not expecting that, but not surprising because Danes are generally iffy on the acceptance of immigrants.)

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Spoiler: we took a bus! It was a nice charter bus and all, but the train would have been roomier and more steady. Oh well……. Presenting, pictures from the trip!

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When we arrived in Hamburg, we set off on a biking tour of the city. From this tour, I’ve decided the following: I need to purchase a Dutch bike (you know, the cute kind where you sit up straight with a pretty brown basket on the front), and I want to do a biking tour of Seattle, just for fun.

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Hamburg’s version of the space needle. (It’s actually just their TV tower, and because of renovations and new safety laws, nobody can go up it anymore.)

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The wealthy and expensive part of town

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Town hall- a little more impressive than that of Auburn, Washington, if I may say so. I couldn’t even find a respectable picture with which to compare.

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The great Hamburg city concert hall– It was supposed to open in 2010 and cost around a hundred million dollars to construct, but it has yet to reach completion. The new predictions are an opening date in 2017 and a final cost of around a billion dollars. All three of our tour guides emphasized the fact that the hall can never earn back its cost. Check out this sad banner we found on our last day in the city:

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It’s an advertisement joking about this new building opening before the concert hall ever will (“philharmonie”)

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St. Michael Church: my next great disappointment, as I never got a chance to climb to the top

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One of those chain-yourself-to-someone-forever-and-throw-away-the-key bridges, still standing unlike the original in Paris!

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Right. That was a lot of pictures. Next, we went to dinner in “a traditional German restaurant.” This basically meant beer, pork, and accordion.

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A gigantic barrel that you can reserve for your table if you want some privacy. Ha!

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One of our tiny kegs that had to be opened with a hammer and was brewed in-house. After getting my originally 2/3 full glass down to around 1/2 full, I decided I needed to bite my tongue and chug the rest. I successfully choked on my first gulp and stuck with water for the rest of the night. I’m a winner.

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Our meat platter at the beginning of the night: radishes, sauerkraut, small sausage, large sausage, stuff that resembled roast pig, some sort of chewy spam-like substance, and ham slices. Not gonna lie; I felt pretty bad for the vegetarians.

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Our platter at the end of the night. We done good!!!

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All the beer

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Day 2:

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We started off with a really long (as in seven hour) walking/ metro tour through Hamburg. It was tiring and unengaging for the most part.

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Here’s a model map of Hamburg! I gotta say, whoever is making those tiny town models in Hamburg must be raking it in, because we saw three or four of them during our stay.

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A still creek that I thought was a bike lane because THERE WAS SO MUCH ALGAE it looked identical to the bike paths in Seattle

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Some windmills on top of Energy Hill. This place used to be a gigantic rubbish heap, but when they realized someone had disposed of toxic chemicals here, the city began a ten-year project to contain the mess by adding a lot of filter and containment systems to the surrounding water and by gluing down miles of plastic over the garbage to create “the world’s largest umbrella,” effectively keeping rain water from reaching the garbage. Crazy stuff. Now, the three windmills up there provide electricity for nearly 4000 homes. BOOM. Sustainability.

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The headquarters for Hamburg’s urban development offices. The building was huge. I am not quite sure what all of those people are doing in there.

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This is “Energy Bunker,” an old WWII bunker that has been repurposed into a cafe and energy production plant. It provides heat for about 3000 homes and electricity for 1000. But still, it was kind of weird being in there, especially considering it was constructed by prisoners of nearby concentration camps. (Another bunker across town now contains some offices and two rooftop clubs.)

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I had a waffle and hot chocolate in the cafe. In the bunker. Again, weird.

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That night, we were set free at four. My personal desires were to shop around for some souvenirs and possibly a sweater, but that did not align well with the desires of anyone else, considering everybody just wanted to nap and drink… So I napped.

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Then we went to dinner in Reeperbahn, the largest red light district in Europe. (Yay?) Needless to say, I wasn’t the most comfortable, even once we made it to the line of food trucks. I ate a scone and chilly cheese fries for dinner because I wasn’t feeling up to finishing any of the gigantic burgers offered by most of the other stands. Then bed.

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Day 3: more walking tours

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Some pretty harbor views- I want that purple sailboat for my birthday, ‘kay Mama?

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Then we went to THE MOST AMAZING PLAYGROUND EVER. I was yelled at by two different adults for wandering in to play because apparently I am five. This did not help my mood. But still, revel in this amazingness and be jealous and go there:

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Pictured: in-ground trampoline, see-saw, and hammock-circle-swing

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Water pumps, water guns, and obstacle-course-like sandpits (what the heck?!)

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The main climbing structure

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That child is on a tiny elliptical. I mean, come on!!!

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Some scattered and non-captioned photos for your pleasure:

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To end our trip, we found out that Central Station was shut down due to Neo-Nazi and anti-Neo-Nazi demonstrations. I think they brought out every police officer in the greater Hamburg area. There were hundreds of them, often clad in armor and helmets. There were police tanks, dozens of police vans, and troops of about a dozen officers lining each side of every entrance to the station. It was positively terrifying, though I didn’t see anybody actually demonstrating anything….

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Needless to say, I am glad to be back in Denmark. The streets are cleaner, the bike lanes are more defined, the architecture is less erratic, and I feel a lot safer in general. However, I will say that the German grocery stores DOMINATE any I have seen in Denmark with regard to snack foods. I stocked up on granola bars, cereal, and chocolate.

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My overall views of Hamburg after this weekend: it seemed like an American city. WAY less homogeneous than Denmark, both in the areas of ethnicity and cultural variety in the shops and restaurants. And.. I don’t know. There was just a lot going on in terms of rebuilding and redesigning the city. So much so that I had a hard time deciding what was working and what wasn’t. I guess that’s what that gigantic urban planning building is for…

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Sorry for the long post! Congrats for making it to the end!

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Venlig hilsen/ best regards,

Lizzy-wa

September 9, 2015 – Jackson Adventures

GUESS WHAT I GOT TO SEE JACKSON. Very adventures. Such tired. Wow.

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Hamming-it-up outside Kronborg Castle, the setting for Hamlet! We also got a tour through the castle by Horatio himself, and he tried flirting with me and stabbed Jackson in the neck during a reenactment. ‘Twas fantastic.

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The castle facade, looming over its enemies to the soundtrack of marching soldiers (all of the sounds were rigged to motion sensors)

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A meal fit for kings at the Louisiana museum for modern art. I became a member haha…

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Some of my favorites (people, art, and paintings):

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Yes, there was even art in the toilets.

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Sunday:

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Entering Kastellet, an old military fortress

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Jackson and his dream windmill house inside the fortress

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The map! The place is actually shaped this way!

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Here, you go Mom! I finally found your favorite statue in Copenhagen (by accident)! We hung around and just stared at it for a while because it was so cool.

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An amazing close-up

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Some more sight seeing followed. You’ll see me with the famous Little Mermaid statue on the water, and then you’ll see Jackson with The Other Little Mermaid statue. Different sculptors, I think…

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Then we went to the Statens Museum for Kunst again, because how can you pass up a free museum full of beauty?

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There were also some… very interesting Modern art pieces, including an entire home that was crafted to perform as “The Naked Magician”‘s living space. Not sure I would want to be friends with this guy.

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The only clean thing in the entire home was the inside of the microwave– perhaps a purposeful juxtaposition to the typical first world home?

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We finished off the night with dinner in Nyhavn. I finally tried some smørrebrød, a super typical and traditional Danish dish in the form of an open faced sandwich. (Ours had smoked salmon, liver pate, beets, bacon, cilantro, and other unidentifiables.)

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Note that neither of us are looking at the camera, as we are too busy gazing into each other’s eyes. Because romance and stuff.

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On Monday morning, I began Core Course Week with DIS. This week, I am spending every ounce of class time with my core Sustainable Development in Northern Europe course. We spent the day travelling around Nørrebro (cleverly nicknamed NørreBronx), and learning all about urban livability and public spaces. On the topic of art:

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Some cool street art/ grafitti

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A library in a small community garden, with a bring-one-take-one set-up. Adorable!!!

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Afterwards, Jackson and I wandered around the city a bit, discovered some new lunch stops, ate lots of pastries and drank some of the best hot chocolate around, and visited Christiania:

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I’ve heard lots of cool things about the place, and it is technically a “must-see” in Copenhagen, but we were pretty uncomfortable in there. It used to be a military barracks, but was taken over by squatters in the seventies and has continued its existence as a relatively independent little village. The inhabitants all make their own houses, quite a few people live here, and some of the art was really cool. However, the weed trade is real.

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I had to say goodbye to Jackson Monday night, but not for long! We just booked tickets last night for Paris in November. Hashtag Romance.

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Yesterday (Tuesday) I spent more time exploring with my core course. We found this awesome tree in my favorite park (Ørstedsparken), and then we got some free, organic, vegan dinner and smoothies at Botaniq near Nørreport Station. I had some delicious pinto bean stew and left way too full.

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So yes. I believe that counts as being up-to-date. I am currently in a flurry of catching up with school/blogging and packing, because TOMORROW MORNING I LEAVE FOR HAMBURG. Should be great. I’ll be travelling with my Sustainable Development course again, and we start off our trip with biking around the city! Wish me luck!!!

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Venlig hilsen/ besten grüßen/ best regards,

Lizzy-wa!!!

September 8, 2015 – Field Studies, Graveyards, and Radiant People

I’M BEHIND. BECAUSE I AM BUSY EXPLORING THE WORLD AND SEEING THE THINGS AND TASTING THE CHOCOLATE (lots of chocolate) AND BECOMING THE ENLIGHTENED YOUNG THING THAT SOCIETY EXPECTS OF ME. Sorry, Mom.

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Friday morning in a nutshell:

  1. Field study with Equality in Scandinavia and my ridiculously entertaining and hilarious instructor Steffen (seen below leading the class on a bike in a standard Polo outfit while holding an umbrella to hold off the torrential rain/thunderstorm that ensued immediately after we began our tour)
  2. Continued attempts at ordering coffee in Danish, with little success
  3. Field study to the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, with special entrance to the director’s office and the workshop of the assistant professor for the sculpting department
  4. I BOOKED MY TICKETS FOR ICELAND

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^Professor Steffen

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This adorable 400-500 year old building with extremely beautiful and ornate decoration (and copper roofs!) still remains amongst the throng of modern buildings crowding the rest of the street.

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A sculptor’s workspace. So clean. So tidy.

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Then Sara met up with me so we could travel over to Nørrebro.

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She can be seen here looking extremely classy in the beautiful garden graveyard that houses Hans Christian Anderson, Kierkegaard, and many other well-known and good-doing Danes.

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This is a typical grave. The surroundings had a very interesting effect on the feel of the area– people were respectful, but not sad and mournful as in other graveyards. I feel like this design can help us celebrate the lives of those lost rather than despairing over their gone-ness. (Sorry, having trouble forming poetic sentences at the moment.)

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Then we walked over to Superkilen, a large new urban park in the heart of the neighborhood.

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There were hundreds of Albanians gathered in the Red Square (part one of the park), pre-gaming for the Denmark-Albania game that night. I was supposed to go, but the airport pull was stronger. A little upset about that, but I’ll live.

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Me and my little buddy modeling-it-up at Mimer Square, the second part of Superkilen.

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My Sustainable Development in Northern Europe class returned to this park on Monday and learned the ins and outs of its design, creation, ideas, and functionality from a fantastically compelling architect and urban planner. One of my favorite quotes of hers: “People are more radiant than the sun.”

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We finished off our Friday by waiting in the airport for The Significant Other, but he ended up ruining our surprise plans by sneaking up from behind. I’ll recount the adventures that followed in my next post. Until next time!

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Venlig hilsen/ best regards,

Lizzy-wa

September 3, 2015 – Ny Judosberg Glyptotek

Hold up. That is not the correct name. Yes, yesterday I saw both Judo AND Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek. But they are not one. I wish, because that would be amazing and probably cheaper.

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To kick off my Wednesday, I was taken on another fantastic study tour/ field trip through DIS, this time for my Classical and Renaissance Rome course, which will BE TRAVELLING TO ROME later. But anyway. As a teaser, we visited Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, a gigantic museum housing countless statues, portraits, and all-the-moneys from the time of the Roman Empire. Nearly all of the statues were missing noses, arms, hands, or uhm… manly appendages. HA! Poor suckers. There was actually a gigantic case of noses and ears that had fallen off during transport and what have you, but I was running to catch up with my extremely fast-paced professor and failed to take a picture. Instead, here is a portrait of The Great Caligula:

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I think he’s pretty cute, but according to my textbook and my professor, he was “raving mad.” Something about *PG-13 ALERT* impregnating his sister and then cutting out the fetus and eating it or something? He was trying to emulate Zeus’ actions during the birth of Athena. So yeah, I guess he was probably raving mad. Or just Roman. Since they, you know, watched men fight to the death for entertainment and all.

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Also, my favorite statue in my favorite room of the museum:

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I did not get a chance to figure out what the statue was, but I could definitely chill here for a while.

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Some broken men:

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AND THEN I FOUND THIS GUY:

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I had the special, which was schnitzel, which was not a form of sausage as I had thought upon ordering, and the waitress treated us like such Americans it made me sad. “English menu, of course?” Ah, well. She was nice.

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BUT YEAH. Judo followed me here all the way from Seattle. That PNW bond cannot be broken. Fo’ rlz.

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This is Judo standing six stories above the geographical center of Copenhagen, suspended by a plate of plexi-glass. It was terrifying.

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The view from the top of The Round Tower! I also should have gotten a picture with this Irish guy who was trying to point out things on the Swedish coastline from up here, but I didn’t. ‘Twas adorbs.

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Speaking of adorbs, we ended the night in Nyhavn with nougat ice cream and two other flavors I can neither remember nor pronounce, topped with jam and whipped cream. We also got to listen to a group of three super attractive Danish seventeen-ish-looking-year-olds jammin’ on some acoustic hipster music in the middle of the street. WordPress won’t let me share their beauty with you, though, because it doesn’t support the file type. *sigh*

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A spectacularly busy, glorious, and exhausting Wednesday if ever there was one! More adventures are abound this weekend.

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Venlig hilsen/ best regards,

Lizzy-wa

September 1, 2015 – Kunst Crew

“Should we dance another one?”

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I know, right? The silliest question. Needless to say, dancing in Copenhagen is pretty fantastic. Double dances seem to be the norm, all of my partners have so far been especially talented, and the accents are many. The only way this could be made any better is if I were joined by some friends from back in the states. (OH WAIT. That will happen this weekend. Color me excited.)

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Since the dance was free, I decided to pamper myself with some cheesecake from a pretty large weekend market tucked away near the train station.

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I know it’s not the greatest photo, so I’ll describe it: a delicious, creamy, crunchy, mouth-watering composition of chocolate crust, New York cheesecake, chocolate mousse, Oreo, caramel, candy, and brownie. So yeah. I had to take breaks between bites. (:

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The rain has continued, and with it, the slugs are out. The many, many, slimy, gigantic, slimy, mushy, slimy, disgusting slugs. They are everywhere. Walking to the bus stop in the morning is reminiscent of hop scotch. But on the plus side, some of the Danish slugs have shells:

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Pretty, right? Apparently they are all called snails here, shell or not, and they are all considered disgusting. Oh well.

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Today, I had this fantastically saucy and flavorful bagel sandwich for lunch before wandering over to the National Gallery of Denmark, or Statens Museum for Kunst. (Kunst means “art.”) Some of my favorites:

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A super colorful room created from squares of over a thousand different colors created from only three original pigments, starring Jordan and Sam:

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And a bird’s-eye view of the cafe inside:

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Plus the beautiful grounds around the back:

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We liked the museum so much (and left so much of it unseen), that we decided to form a nature/ art/ brunch group (entitled “Kunst Crew”) with our sights set at exploring the city, enlightening the mind, and pleasing our taste buds. Can’t wait!

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Until then:

Venlig hilsen/ best regards,

Lizzy-wa

August 30, 2015 – Settling In

‘Tis true. I am finally a Dane.

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Just kidding. But I am feeling the rhythm of things, now. Homework is a constant chore lingering in the back of my mind (and most of it is reading, which I haven’t been used to), and I can now count to ten in Danish. Woo-hoo!

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On Thursday, I was reminded that it does, in fact, rain in Copenhagen:

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It was pretty, don’t get me wrong, but I wasn’t really prepared for it. I bought a cute, cheap, portable umbrella though. (:

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On Friday, I got to visit a museum DURING CLASS instead of, you know, listening to lecture. So that was fantastic. My European Art of the 19th Century class took a walk over to Thorvaldsen’s museum so we could catch a first-hand glimpse of the work we’ve been learning about:

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This one was my favorite. It is called Gratierne med Amors pil og Amor med lyren, or Graces with Cupid’s Arrow and Cupid with the Lyre. The coolest thing about the museum was that some works were plaster casts and some were in the marble stage. I found lots of duplicates from different stages in the sculpting process.

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On Saturday, Sara and I went to an Allerød community fair (a little get-together in the next town over). We saw belly dancers, ponies, and Danes in cowboy hats dancing to Alan Jackson.

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It was pretty great.

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Also, Danish pastries. (I was reprimanded for calling the one in my hand a “Danish,” since it is technically a spandauer.) The other cake-looking pastry is a studenterbrød, which is just a conglomeration of a bunch of leftover pastries mixed together in this super dense sweet that I had to take breaks from between bites.

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Then we went for a bike ride around the lake near our house. So pretty so pretty.

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I finished off the night with chicken tikka masala and Ghirardelli brownies at Tonia’s house.

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Check. Out. That. View.

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Now off to swing dancing!!! (I’m going to make this a regular thing.)

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Venlig hilsen/ best regards,

Lizzy-wa

August 27, 2015 – Castles and Other Pretty Things

My eyes are numb. My feet are sore. My hunger for adventure is shaken AND stirred in all of the right ways. I have seen The Promised Land.

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Just kidding. But I have seen lots of ridiculously beautiful and positively overwhelming sites of enormous historical importance. And I have tasted the wine. (It was gross.)

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The double cone fountain in the Royal Library gardens

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The Royal Library/ Black Diamond

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My blueberry cheesecake and Italian wine from BioMio, an entirely organic and delicious restaurant where a Scan|Design (my fellowship supporters) welcome-to-Copenhagen dinner was held on Tuesday. I tried, but I didn’t get through much of the wine…

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AND THEN. Frederiksborg Slot. The Danish castle that dates back to the early 1600s. It experienced a horrible winter fire in the 1800s and was reconstructed and repurposed as a museum in 1878. Alright. Now I’m just going to bombard you with pictures for a little while…

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It was a dark and stormy night…

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The beautiful facade of the castle!

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The castle grounds

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Me. And trees. (I didn’t have a prince to take a stroll across the grounds with me, so I just sat and sulked for a while.)

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The church– the detail in here was unbelievable.

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And to top it off, this. Is a door handle. Like what the actual heck. It led to the ballroom, where I had to sulk yet again at my lack of princes (you know, for dancing and stuff).

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Alright, time for bed. Maybe next time I’ll give a Danish lesson.

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Venlig hilsen/ best regards,

Lizzy-wa

August 24, 2015 – Beer, Butts, and Dancing

An elegant title, no? This has been my weekend.

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But first, the lead-up. On my trip home from school Friday, I had even more bussing troubles. I hopped on the first bus I saw, but it ended up driving the wrong direction. I didn’t notice at first because I was enraptured by my book (Feed by M.T. Anderson, a Christmas present from Brother- HAPPY BIRTHDAY, BY THE WAY. GO SEE AN R-RATED MOVIE.) Once I noticed the rolling golden fields, I knew I was in trouble. I reached up to press the “STOP” button, and a lovely old Danish man in the seat behind me swiftly began a conversation. With me. In Danish.

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Now, a sensible person would probably return his words with a look of utter confusion/ horror/ distaste, or perhaps turn around and pretend to be Deaf, or even better- they may, like, say something to the effect of, “I’m sorry, do you speak English?” or, “No hablo Dansk,” or, “Uhhh.. uhm… Yeah… What?” BUT NOT I. No, sir. I am a survivor. So I smiled openly and nodded enthusiastically, and I watched as he pointed to his fingernails, and I even looked down at my own and nodded as though I understood and HOPED TO HOPE that he was not asking me any questions.

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Some time later, he stopped talking and smiled. I took this as my cue to return to my book. After a slight pause, the man said to me, in English, “Did you understand what I just said?” Imagine. My. Embarrassment.

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It’s okay, though! We’re buds, now. His name is Sven (of course), and he told me about his fortunate life of surviving a kidney transplant form thirty years ago. I told him of my studies with DIS and explained the phenomenon of The Party Nail (in answer to his original Danish conversation-starting question).

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So that was fun. After dinner, I ventured back into the city with Tonia and Mikayla (DIS girls) in search of Copenhagen Art Week, to be met with cheap canned beer (I had lemonade.. ha!), loud non-live music (they were between sets), urinals where men literally stood there and peed with no doors for all the world to see (sorry, no pics), and little boys running around collecting beer cans. OH, and there was no art. Uhm. Yes. That was something. We ended up going to a board game bar instead, and we played Settlers of Catan while listening to another DIS student and her new-found Danish tattoo artist reminisce over the pain of tattooing one’s spine. So that is not on the to-do list.

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The most hilarious thing was that everybody biked there. There were literally hundreds of bikes parked outside this raving party of hipster Danes. I couldn’t believe it.

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Saturday, I tried my hand at orienteering for a DIS homestay get-to-know-your-neighbors event. We were handed a map and dropped into a forest via helicopter with nothing but our bare hands and taste for adventure.

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Just kidding. About the helicopter part. All the rest is true. It was like a map-guided hunt for clues. Followed by cake! Yum.

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There was a swing. (:

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Then Sara and I went to the beach to cool off a bit. It was beautiful, the food along the shore smelled delicious, and I will be back. The one thing that really got me though was all of the male nudity. They all showed up in street clothes and just… changed on the beach. Right there. In front of me. I saw two butts and one… Well… I guess two, actually… Uhm… Yeah…. Anyway. They took their time, too, drying off and just enjoying the breeze, I guess. I wanted to hand them a kilt or something as a more modest alternative.

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Sail boats!

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That’s Sweden behind me….

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Sunday started off with some banana bread-baking and triathlon-viewing near our house.

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Some boys even cheered us on, as we rode our bikes to our viewing post under the shade.

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And then. The Final Frontier. The greatest joy of my life. The One. The Only. SWING DANCING.

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Ba-Bam. Ka-Chow. Ca-Chigga. And a doo-wop, doo-wop. The room was way too hot and the band was way too swingin’ (as if there is such a thing). The band was a bunch of hipster jazz boys from London (hell-ooooooo), and of course I took the time to chat them up at the end (my most favorite pastime). The crowd was a bit older than what I’m used to in Seattle and Portland, but they were GOOD. Like, really good. As in, I saw not a single beginner. Every one of the men who asked me took a second dance right away (not sure if it’s a culture thing or if I’m just that adorable), and they all had accents! I think I may have heard some American snippets at one point, but I did not meet anyone from The Homeland.

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All in all, I would chalk that up as a fantastic First Real Weekend Abroad. Can’t wait to see what else Denmark has in store for me.

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I come to you this fine afternoon from the Copenhagen Library, and these truths are brought to my attention for the hundredth time: that the kids and the musicians always has the most fun.

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You’ll be hearing from me shortly!

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Venlig hilsen/ best regards,
Lizzy-wa