Glucose

Some quick notes on sweets and sugar in Denmark:

a) these people have a massive sweet tooth. In terms of size, the sheer volume of candy Americans produce and consume is probably far in excess of what the Danes do, but when you talk about frequency of candy-store appearance and the quality of candy, Denmark, I would guess, comes out ahead.

b) Gummi candy is very popular here. Kiosks, which are sort of like corner gas station food marts but everywhere, often have whole walls dedicated to gummi products. There are a variety of texture and flavor available to choose from.

c) ICE CREAM. if you like ice cream, come to Denmark! People eat ice cream ALL THE TIME and it's super delicious high quality ice cream and it comes in all sorts of flavors. I'm trying to try as many as I can without developing diabetes, and here's some highlights:
green apple
creme caramel (paired with green apple! Yum!)
chocolate. A vanilla flavor (hah!) but incredibly dense and satisfying
Straciatella - an italian version of cookies and cream. Fantastic.
Tiramisu

I am still waiting to check raspberry, watermelon, lemon, kiwi, and some others off of the list.

d) The Danish people have an affinity for licorice, one variety of which is made with, I believe, ammonium phosphate (Chloride?). For those of us unfamiliar with this chemical, it's a deadly cleaning agent. There are upwards of 40 Danish deaths each year from incidents involving consumption of this licorice.

e) Soda: All year is Passover in Denmark. What I mean by this is that they only sell Passover Coke/Pepsi/Soda here. Passover Coke is slang for soda/coke that is made the old fashioned way, with cane sugar instead of corn syrup. It is, in my opinion, far more delicious than the sodas that use the syrup.

f) there are bakeries spread all over and it's a little dangerous for me and my girlish figure.

Burgeoning addictions: gummi candy. Crap.

OH and I learned that red meat stays in your colon or some scary stuff like that. You can get it cleansed out (purged? Vacuumed? flushed?) but to think that a portion of every hamburger you eat doesn't ever leave is a little creepy to me.

BABIES! BAAAAABIES!!!!

I few posts back I mentioned that they use massive Baby Carriages here, as opposed to the small strollers we're more used to in the States.

Amendment: most people use carriages. I have, to date, seen three baby backpacks/papooses and a handful of strollers. BUT the overwhelming majority of parents or people in charge of babies use massive contraptions that could probably shield their infants from nuclear fallout.

I've been super sketchy with my camera, lurking near people who have baby carriages trying to get pictures, or using the super zoom on my camera from across the street. It honestly feels a little creeptastic, but I feel it's worth it to get the pictures. And here you go!

Some of these, needless to say, are not the best quality pictures, but I think they show how large and intricate the baby carriages are.


ALSO FANTASTIC SHIT THAT HAPPENED

Before we left for Bornholm, I was chilling in one of the squares near the bus stop, and suddenly a police motorcyle roars around the corner. What?

It was followed by literally hundreds of yelling people on rollerblades. WHAT?! I was SO happy. Got some pretty crappy pictures. At night with no flash = should've filmed it. oh well.

When Feminism Goes Too Far

So at Bornholm, I was in a hostel (an hostel?) room that held 8 people and was right next door to a bathroom.

The girls' bathroom.

The little boys' room was clear across a very cold quad, and it was pretty consistently blustery. SO a few male bodied individuals who happen to also be heterosexual men (not to out them or anything) decided that it was more practical to use the ladies' room for their business.

I was in the room when they were done, and started talking about the massive dump they just laid in the girls' room, etc. At first I got all indignant and was thinking "do they realize the implications of their actions and conversation with regard to gender politics and power dynamics?" and then promptly thought

Get a grip, Jacob. They're straight boys who like talking about poop.

Thanks, Brandeis.

Lance Armstrong ain't got nothing on us

This past weekend was the Bornholm Bike Trip.

You take an overnight ferry to the island of Bornholm, arriving at 7 AM. Check into the hostel, eat breakfast, grab a bike, and you're free until 7 PM, at which point you eat dinner. Day two: repeat, and leave at 8:30 for the overnight ferry back to Copenhagen.

Details:

I was with a largish group, which was made up of:

Myself
A., a triathlete
A., who is Navy ROTC
L.,
N.,
C.,
and A.

We had biked for maybe an hour and a half when it was realized that we were following the triathlete and the ROTC-er, who had us set to bike 65 km. Uh-uh, Helllllls no.

So we split, with the triathlete, ROTC, and N. going one way, and L., A., C., and myself heading back into town for lunch. Mind you, it's about noon, we've been biking for over an hour, and we spent the night on a boat. I had slept decently, but none of the others had. Exhausted! After lunch, L., A., and C. wanted to nap, but I was recharged, so I biked around by myself for about three hours. Bornholm is BEAUTIFUL! Pictures below.



I can't even begin to describe how excited I was when I saw her. I almost crashed my bike.

I also saw these really neat, itty bitty module homes. IKEA-esque module homes. Check it out!
"Little boxes on a hillside" indeed!

Bornholm, by the way, is a small island that is criss crossed by bike trails like Cher should be criss crossed with wrinkles.

Also, it has so many birds it was a little like Hitchcock and Little House in the Big Woods exploded all over the place.

DAY TWO

Biked maybe 25 km very at a very leasurely pace, just taking in the good vibes and enjoying having a sore ass. Here's the other thing about Bornholm: it's hilly as all hell. When the Danish students in my kollegium told me that I thought, "yeah, but you think a three hour drive is a long trip. How hilly can it be?" The anser: very. Bornholm is the product of undersea volcanic activity, so it's damn bumpy. Thankfully, it's highest at the north end relative to where we were staying, and we biked mostly north, so it was downhill almost all the way home.

Met some animals:

We got sidetracked by this FANTASTIC antique shop, specifically old records, and then suddenly it was three in the afternoon. In Denmark, nearly everything closes by three on Sundays. Restaurants, shops, all closed. So there we were, starving, and all the places to eat were shutting their doors. Then it started to drizzle.

Thankfully, the grocery store was open, so we (oh! I was with N. and the triathlete) got a half loaf of bread, peanut butter (fuck yeah!), jelly, juice, and a Danish Little Debbie esque dessert. We found a nook in the building to shield us from the wind. Catch: it was by the recycle vent, so there was a nine foot tall pile of bags. Plus: there was a tiny table for people who came to drop off loads of stuff, and it was EMPTY!

Lunch was delicious.

OH we also saw one of the Round Churches - in fact, we saw the oldest Rouch Church in Denmark! Hooray! It was large, white, and round.


Lastly, I made a new friend: Ferdinand, the THREE LEGGED SWAN/GOOSE

Observations:
1) Danish lasagna does not include cheese. Seriously, Denmark. What?
2) White carrots exist, and taste like orange carrots
3) Bikes are rad

Danish phrase of the day:

"Jeg kan lide kartofler" (yai/ya cn li kahtohfluh) = I like potatoes. Actually, it translates more to "I endure potatoes" or "I tolerate potatoes" but it's the closest we can get.

USA! USA! USA!

I FOUND PEANUT BUTTER!!!!!

Yes, it's super American and yes, it totally marks me, but it's
a) delicious
b) a balanced part of a breakfast or snack
c) a terrific source of protein

and so I don't entirely care. YUM!

BEER.

Quick heads up: I am not a beer person. For those of you who don't drink with me, I generally prefer mixing something sweet up or just taking some shots of something and going dancing. Beer culture is not something familiar to me.

Denmark is inundated with beer and beer culture.

To help bridge this culture gap, and because I haven't yet been able to find tequila or limes, I signed up for a beer tasting event that my program put on. For 50 dkk (about 10 USD) we got to try six different beers and were walked through the process by one of the program's staffers, a self identified beer connoisseur. To date, he has tasted over 3000 beers. That's a lot of beer!

I found out that I liked the beers that he said most people wouldn't like, and I didn't like the beers he thought would be popular. I have no idea what this means, since beer people are a little like wine people. Beer can be described to be "bitter, with fruity, oiled overtones" or possessing "an emergence of dry wood [that] finishes off the nutty taste of this fine lager." A picture below shows the six that we tried:


And here below are the two that I liked:
Quick disclaimer: This blog does not represent, nor is it affiliated with, any of the breweries whose products are featured above. Moving on!

It was exciting that I liked some of the beer, 'cause when I've tried it in USA, it all tastes equally awful to me - it really hasn't mattered who brewed it. I guess it could be argued that I just hadn't tried a good beer, but since I have no conception of relative beer quality, I wouldn't know one from the other. Except Keystone. That shit's nasty. (nor is this blog affiliated with, nor does it represent, whoever brews Keystone beer.)

That was my first baby step into Danish beer culture.

This weekend was the European Beer Festival 2008. Beers, Ciders, and beer themed stuff from all over Europe was concentrated in Copenhagen. It was really exciting, I met some wonderful people, tried some wonderful beers, and don't have pictures to put up. SORRY! Some highlights:
1) hot beer served with whipped cream on top. It was strong, sweet beer, and was sort of like a warm blowjob shot. Although you sipped it.
2) Beer ice cream. YUM! I went for Guinness but they were out
3) Figuring out the taste difference between light and dark beer. I can't actually explain it, but I probably know more now than I did before the festival.

Low lights:
1) banana beer. It tasted like someone filtered a beer through a loaf of banana bread and poured it into my cup. Good in theory? BAD in practice.
2) I was seduced by a beer that contained hibiscus for a floral aroma, fig for a fruity flow, and something else for a silky finish. It was significantly less than floral, fruity, or smooth.

I gotta say, even the beers I didn't like showed an impressive array of creativity. There was beer brewed with champagne yeast, sour cherry beer, super sour cherry beer, beers with old wood, beers with birch tree, beers with all sorts of fruit, vegetables, and spices, and I wouldn't have been surprised if someone brewed a batch in a tractor or a limo to see how it came out. There was definitely a beer for everyone.

My favorite? Hoegaarden, but that may change. Oh, and it's true that you can be walking around at 11 AM and see someone biking around with a beer in hand.

Ribe

I had my first Study Tour this weekend. We bussed out of Copenhagen and westward, ending at Ribe (the oldest town in Denmark).

The entire trip, from one side of the country to another, on a bus, took less than four hours.

On the way we passed through a town which was at one point the center of the European lace industry. There, we ate fish. Honestly, I would have to say that cold pickled herring is not really something I'd want to eat more than once.

Ribe, being the oldest town in Denmark is also home to the oldest cathedral in Denmark as well as the oldest street. NOT, however, the oldest houses. Denmark suffered through a lot of fires in the fifteen hundreds (Ribe and Copenhagen, at least) and so most of the architecture from earlier than that burned to a cinder.

Fun Ribe facts:
-The smallest home in Ribe is 25m square. It was, when it was built, home to seven people.
-If you buy a home in Ribe, you have to live in it. This is so the town will not become a time-share tourist town or a vacation town.
-The night watchman in Ribe carries a mace and sings to you.
-The Cathedral building has some of the most wonderful churchy insides I've ever seen. Pictures below. The man who did the work at the front studied with Chagall.
-Bits have been dug up/found lying around in Ribe that date back to the 700's.

Observations:
1) Denmark being so small makes it much more sensical that many Danish people consider a one hour car ride to be a long trip
2) Rollerblades may be making a comeback. Or, for some people, perhaps they never left.

If perhaps you would be so kind as to maybe make me the falafel which you are selling?

The Danish language reflects the egalitarian nature of their culture. Like Spanish and other Romance languages, Danish is gendered. It is not, however, divided into a masculine/feminine binary, but rather words are marked as being either gendered or neuter. That's it. Neat!

Also, formal conjugations and terms of address, such as the Ud. in Spanish, are vanishing, and some more 'polite' structures are being phased out. At least, that's what it seems like. "Skal" translates essentially to "will" and as far as I can tell after a whole two weeks of Danish class, is sometimes to indicate future tense as well as to indicate immediate desire/future, as in "Jeg skal have en koppe kaffe" or "I will have a cup of coffee." "Gerne" carries a more polite, formal tone to it, although it translates essentially to the same thing. I suppose you can think of it as "would like to," but I probably haven't wrapped my head around the word yet. I have heard many more people use "skal" as opposed to "gerne" and one of my friends was told that "no one uses 'gerne' because it puts people above others socially" or something to that effect. I have no idea if this comes from an authority on Danish culture or a flesh eating zombie, but if it's true, it fits in with the overpowering egalitarianism that seems to motivate a lot of Danish culture. Or at least how I've interpreted what's been presented to me. Anyway, it's part a relief to realize that people aren't being rude, and I'm not if I use it, and it's also funny to me as another example of how textbook language teaching falls somewhat short in the real world.

Adventure update:

I went to the forest by Bakken, which is the oldest amusement park in Denmark. I missed the season, sadly.

The forest began life as where a bunch of rural farmer people, etc. lived. However, King Christian IV wanted some private hunting grounds, and so he offered everyone living in the woods land and houses on the coast. Then he put up a fence around the forest and declared it the Royal Hunting Grounds. And that's where we went as a Field Study for my Danish Language and Culture class! It's huge and old and amazing and what noticed primarily was that unlike forests in, say, California, there's virtually no undergrowth. Just grass and big old trees. Oh, and it's deer mating season, so there's bucks with big scary racks making their mating calls, which sounds like a cross between the biggest belch ever and a moo. Try it, and see if any lady deer come running.

We played what was billed as a traditional Danish game that was also very BDub (Breakaliscious for all you folks in Miami):

It's sort of baseball - there is a place of hitting, a first base, a second base, and a third base. Once you round third, though, you automatically go home. The pitcher stands to the side of the person at bat, though, and the pitch is vertical rather than horizontal (so the pitcher throws the ball up and then the batter hits it as it descends). Also, the person at bat has the option of self pitching. If they get it, they have to run/go to 1st, etc. Of note is that there are only two pitches, and even if you 'strike out' you still get a walk.

The team in the field has a pitcher, and then everyone else is scattered around the field to help catch. There is no official infield or outfield.

There are no points. You don't keep score, and there are no official winners and losers.

If you hit the ball and someone catches it (on the fly) or if the pitcher touches home and shouts 'stop" while you are not on base, then you are out. Except they don't call it out, they call it "dead." In a game with no winners, losers, or score, you're supposed to kill people. Maybe a last remnant of their Viking roots struggling up through modern Danish culture :p

The object is to be the last team at bat when the time limit runs out. Play rotates when there are three people dead at the same time.

Overall? It's a lot of fun and I think it would be even more fun to introduce a noncompetitive baseball to my students!

After the game:

HOT CHOCOLATE. We were taken to this old house whose historical significance I cannot remember, but now functions as a place to get fantastic hot chocolate. It's similar to the places I've been to in Cambridge where they melt slabs of chocolate into your cup and mix in milk or spices. This place was adorable, and it's all-you-can-drink, and served with freshly whipped cream. The catch is that it's so unbelievably decadent that you can't even make it through one tiny cup without pausing for a water break. It was probably the best antidote to the grey, moist weather.

Word of the day:

Kartofle = potato

Observations:

Shout out to my lovely Aunt L. for her many questions! If anyone wonders anything by all means let me know and I'll see if I can find out for you.

Clothes: 'dressing down' is more dressed up than the US. For example: no one would ever go to class in sweats. You'd be super put together, and probably wearing skinny jeans. 'dressed up' though is more relaxed than in the USA. Business wear, for example, is more often than not jeans and a nice button up as opposed to a suit or chinos. That's not to say no suits, but fewer. Though those that I have seen have been a lot nicer than the majority of suits I've seen in the states.

Food: easy to find: beer, gummi candy, bread products (baked goods and bread, pita, etc). Hard to find: limes, tequila, peanut butter. Also: tupperware = absent as yet.

Lastly: My dorm has Mega-Washers. They have settings in celsius (of course) and one of them is 95!!! For those of you not familiar with celsius, that's almost boiling. I have no idea why I would ever need to boil my laundry in a power washer that could probably take over a small country by itself. Oh, and they're 'smart' washers - they can tell how many clothes are in them and adjust accordingly. Really impressive, but somewhat curious. Oh, and American students who think Brandeis/your school sucks for laundry: We have six washers and three dryers FOR MY WHOLE BUILDING of 5 floors each about 45 students...

Med venlig hilsen (with kind regards, which is how most of the emails from Danish people I've received have been signed)
-Jacob

Homeless...my ass!

I'm still really conscious of being American, and so I get really excited when strangers come up to me and ask for directions in a foreign language. I usually assume they're speaking Danish, but it could be Tagalog for all I know. It's happened a few times now; one of my favorites was an American couple who told me, "you speak really good English! I couldn't even hear an accent!" when I gave them directions to the Metro stop. I dunno, I'm realizing how much of my identity is relationally established, and without those relations directly around me, it's somewhat validating to be taken for someone who knows what he's doing, even if it's a mistaken impression.

So when a rather disheveled man approached me this afternoon and started speaking Danish, I got really excited. When I responded, "I'm sorry, I don't speak Danish," and he started talking in English, however, I just got mad.

"I'm homeless. Do you have any spare money?"

Ok, I realize that he could be from another country, but since the language he was speaking sounded like Danish, I'm going to assume (making an ass out of both of us) that he's a Danish citizen. Which means he's full of bull.

Denmark, as you may know, is a welfare state. The government pays for literally almost all of your needs. Education, health care, if you lose your job they help you find one, if you don't want to work there are government established places to live. Essentially, the only reason you'd be without a roof over your head is because you made a conscious choice to live like that. OR you're hooked on heroin. This gentleman may very well be hooked, but given all that I've seen so far of Denmark, I have a hard time believing they let drug addicts roam around without being cared for and supported.

I don't really know why I got so upset. Well, actually I do. I was just starting to feel as if I'm getting the hang of this culture and was starting to be able to blend into the woodwork and not stand out as a tourist when this bloke comes up and starts treating me like some dumb, ignorant foreigner. I want to be compassionate and caring and feel bad for him and his situation, but I'm a little too upset with his behavior to do so at this moment.

Readers note: If someone panhandles you in Copenhagen and they are probably from Denmark, they're yanking your chain. If they're foreign, give them a sandwich.

P.S.

New key phrase:

"Jeg tale ikke Dansk" = I don't speak Danish

OH and Danish has 28 vowel sounds. I think I may look into joining the choir because they sing all in Danish and I really wanna try a round, pure "æ" which sounds like the "ay" in "day" but more hard, forward, and stretched. You kind of make an orange slice with the inside of your mouth, I think. So basically the opposite of round and pure.

Obervations:
a) Gender difference (surprise): Danish male youth are much more willing to be physically expressive than the American male youth I've been exposed to. I don't mean huggy or touchy, but I have seen several young Danish males who involve their whole body with whatever it is they're saying. They jive, boogie, get happy with Jesus, gesticulate, and act out various parts of their narratives. It's great to see, and I bet it would be more fun if I could understand what on earth they're saying. They include in this noises that no American of similar age or gender identity would be caught dead making. I've heard falsetto singing, "vroom vroom" ing, noises that may or may not have been actual speech but were still in falsetto, and some other stuff too. Two kids, for instance, perhaps 12 years old, went from having rather adult posture and body language to sprinting past me on imaginary motor cycles. Brilliant.
b) No one has a stroller. Everyone takes their babies out, and they all have enormous Baby Carriages. High tech, hard core, could-probably-plow-a-field baby carriages. They're breathtaking and more than a little intimidating. I'm wondering if it has to do with being able to take your kids with you even when it's sleeting and blustery.

Ice Cream, Erotica, Barbar Bar, and Castle

OK so I had my first weekend in Copenhagen and it was surreal.

FRIDAY

So DIS, my program, rented out this swanky nightclub called Luxx for our welcome party. In our welcome bag we got coupons for free entry and two free drinks from 8-11 PM. I got two coupons that had sneakily stuck together. Needless to say, I pretty thrilled. I spent Friday afternoon after classes hanging out with some friends from my program and seeing things in windows that I really want to buy, and we split up around 4:30. I went back to my kollegium planning on taking a nap, cooking dinner, and showering, showing up to Luxx around 8:30 and then going somewhere else with the people I'd been hanging out with earlier.

I slept through my alarm and didn't wake up until 10:49 PM. Remember, free drinks ended at 11. I swore a lot, changed shirts, and ran out the door to the Metro station...but even if the train was waiting for me, it wasn't physically possible to get to Luxx before 11. So I forked over 80 kroner (divide by five, so $16) for cover, and wandered around. Even though I was a little bitter about sleeping through the party, I had to admit that Luxx is pretty swank. Small, too. No pictures, sorry. I didn't bother bringing my free drink coupons...perhaps a mistake. I mosied around a little, of course the friends I was supposed to meet up with had left, but I ran into some other people I knew by the bar. They were schmoozing it up, and had gotten some 10 dkk shots of something they said tasted like menthol. Ok, so if a cheap shot comes out to $2...a Long Island Iced Tea comes out to...

250 dkk, or FIFTY FUCKING DOLLARS!! WHAT?! This was the first time I really got slapped in the face by how expensive Denmark (and Luxx, too...) is. So no cocktail for me at Luxx. I got a shot of the mouthwash and left with the friendly peeps who'd been smooth talking the bartender.

SO we meandered around central Copenhagen a little bit. Bought a cheap bottle of wine from the 7-11 and drank it in a square with a fountain, which was incredibly surreal. Then we hit up two bars, I think one was called "Aussie Bar" and the other was "The Scottish Pub." One had really fun live music - Danes playing "Sweet Home Alabama," etc., and we met some neat locals hanging out. Quick thing: this was at like one in the morning, and in the bar, there were really cute old people dancing together!!! That's how I wanna roll when I turn grey and wrinkly. The other bar had more of the same, but it was maybe a little less grey and a little more female bodied and middle aged. The music there was a great selection of '80's dance hits. As far as I can tell, Denmark loves the American '80's. Having spent my money on the cover charge for Luxx (BLATT. WRONG ANSWER), I didn't have enough on my to buy any beer at the bars. Lame sause! So week one in DK and no beer yet. After the bars we split and I slept a lot.

SATURDAY

Morning tour: "The Other Copenhagen" Billed as a way to walk around and get exposed to trendy shops NOT on the major shopping thoroughfare, neat cafes and restaurants, and bits of Copenhagen culture that we probably wouldn't find on our own.

Ups: So you go to the remnants of Copenhagen's meatpacking neighborhood. Walk through this alley framed by big ugly warehousy buildings and bigrigs, and hang a right. Surprise! You're in a cafe courtyard! There's tables, chairs, umbrellas, and a fountain. Also some art galleries and shops and a cafe/bar that was all designed by local artist(s). Really neat.

This is the fountain. When you approach, the line perpendicular to your angle of approach (or the closest one to you, if you come at it from the side like a sneaky Viking) turns off, allowing you to lurk in the center and look like a tourist or a small child. As you can see, I opted for both. We also passed by this wonderful piece of street art:

When the tour was done, our guide took us into a cute, leafy nook off of the main street we were on, and said something to the effect of, "It's been nice getting to know you; I hope you had fun, and I'm taking off! Good luck getting back!" Fortunately I was with some people I knew, one of whom is brilliant with getting around. We stopped in an ice cream shop for some ice cream (still unseasonably warm), and met something I wish I had a picture of: The Danish Ice Cream:

a) A regular, pointy cone.
b) Three (3) scoops of ice cream, each a different flavor. The flavors were ostensibly determined by our gender, the season, our personality, and our eye color. I kid you not, the ice cream man told me, "Let me see your eyes. Champagne!" The champagne flavor was delicious.
c) Squish onto the ice cream a cookie composed of layers of ultrathin wafer and marzapan flavored marshmallow-fluff type substance
d) Pile vanilla (more like Cold Stone's Sweet Cream flavor) soft serve over the top
e) drive a heart shaped sucker through the cookie and into the ice cream. The color of the sucker is also dependent on your sucker and personality. I had green, but I don't know what it means.

We were full for literally three hours. And none of us had a real lunch. Oops!

Wandered through Copenhagen's International Festival, which was much larger than I thought it would be for a city like this one. It was set on one of Copenhagen's beautiful lakes, and there were booths with food, booths with cultural brochures, booths with travel information, and booths where people just kinda hung out and chatted. Very neat! There were also live performances and some cultural dancing that went down (we were there for an Indian group).

Went also the Museum Erotica. Pictures not suitable for general internet display...or certain small beings in my family who may eventually read this. BUT know this: I saw a male chastity belt with a slot you'd poop out of. That was what struck me more than the overall horrendous discomfort and chafing that would result if you wore it - when I've thought of chastity belts before I always concentrated on the front end and the fact that I thought it was funny to lock up a vagina (who'd want to go there anyway?). I never considered the fact that you'd need some way to eliminate from the other end (insert someone's tasteless gay joke here). More exciting for me, at least they had two things: a full pole to dance on (I didn't, and I'm not sure if you're supposed to, but I wanted to nonetheless) and a room full of biographies of the sex lives of famous people. Highlights:
Dick Clark
Charlie Chaplin
Billie Holiday
Martin Luther
Hitler
Mae West
Marylin Monroe

Went home and did some work around 5 in the afternoon. Made myself dinner. I'm kind of happy that I've avoided eating out for dinner so far - and for the most part I'm packing lunch! It's cheaper, and delicious! It's simple coooking, 'cause I don't have key access yet to the shared kitchen - it's an electronic lock and my zapper key has to be put into the system. FOR SHAME, DIS! Once I get an oven and more than a saucepan and a giant wok, I might get more creative :p.

Although you can boil pasta for two in a wok of this size.

Went to Barbar Bar Saturday night. It's a cool place in Vesterbro (I think) that has relatively affordable drinks and a nice ambience. The weather was such that we chilled outside, since in a week we'll be forced by rain to pack inside, or so we hear. Oh, and my friend found 150 dkk (about 30 bucks) on the street, so our bottle of wine was, essentially, free! For us at least. Barbar Bar was rather dead except for us, so I kinda want to go back and see what it's like when there's more people there.

SUNDAY

Whew! I SAW THE HAMLET CASTLE!! Kronborg Castle in Elsinor was for a while the historic seat of the Danish monarchy, and the site of Shakespeare's incestuous play Hamlet. Hamlet never existed and Shakespeare probably never saw Kronborg, but it was really neat to know that I was walking on the same floor that a famous ficticious family fucker (ha!) did. Ok, maybe Hamlet and his mom didn't have real sex. Whatever. Moving on. The castle was GORGEOUS. Oh, and Shakespeare fans: You can get married in the Grand Ballroom of Kronborg Castle. It costs, I believe $150 (that's USD) per head, and you have to have at least 300 guests. This is not including catering, etc. So if you or whomever is paying for your wedding has a hundred grand to throw around, this might be a good way to do it!

We also went into the Castlemates, or the dank underground area that housed horses and prisoners:

This nice man below will allegedly wake up and defend Denmark when the kingdom becomes imperiled. He slept through WWII, though. Although the major Danish resistance group that formed after Hitler occupied Denmark took it's name from this dude, but I forget what it is.

After the tour? More homework.

I'm planning my travel break right now and I'm REAL excited. I could be doing immediately productive things, like homework, but who does that?