Blomster og Maj Dag i København

'Tis spring at last!  Granted, it's still kind of rainy and cool, but it's that much less so than it was in the winter, so it's hard to complain.

I got to keep the parents for Monday, Tuesday, and part of Wednesday after our trip to Oslo.  In between classes, we wandered up to the Little Mermaid and the nearby park, strolled on the Strøget, and chilled with Niels Bohr (or his bust, anyway) at Frue Plads.  We also went to the ballet to see the lovely but tragic Onegin, which featured some impressive pointe stamina and gorgeous sets with oversized lace and a magic mirror.  Tuesday night, we did dinner with the roommates plus Jen (the virtual fifth roommate) at the Atlas Bar, and ended up staying there talking for so long that they all but kicked us out.  

Wednesday morning brought a trip to Rosenborg, the royal summer palace within walking distance from home (as so many things are).  We wandered the gardens (which featured the usual lovely rows of trees and flowers, plus an odd art piece with a tree growing out of a block of concrete on wheels) and popped into the castle when it opened at 11.  The rooms were ornate and contained some nutty artifacts, but I again discovered just how lower-key Danes are compared to much of the rest of Europe.  Also, the displays didn't feature anything to read aside from a map with a line about each room; this nicely removed the pressure of reading a bunch of things you won't remember anyway.  In the cellars, we admired the Crown Jewels, which, though perhaps fewer in number than, say, the House of Windsor, I found no less spectacular.  Also, I do love that every Christian monarchy gets its own Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch.

After splitting a Wednesday snail from Skt. Peder's Bageri (a giant pastry that can only be had there once a week), I bid farewell to the parents (and a good amount of my stuff), and headed with Jackie to the Copenhagen police station for a presentation and some demonstrations.  I overestimated the amount of sleep in my system and missed a decent chunk of the presentation on protest procedures (although I did note that beating rioters was legal until 1993), but the demonstrations were fun, if short!  We observed a guy donning full body armor--he looked like a cross between a baseball catcher and a Transformer before the outer shell went on--and a group showing how to restrain someone with (apparently) fire extinguisher foam.  Nice.

Thursday was May Day, which Denmark observes with an all-inclusive day off (even the gym was closed!) and a carnival of sorts at Fælledparken in Østerbro near the soccer stadium.  A number of workers are currently on strike over a wage dispute, so there were a fair number of Communist Party types out, too.  I bussed over with the roommates, but the rain was bad enough that we walked through for about half an hour before catching the bus back.  Definitely glad we went, though, particularly when I found I could understand a lot of the signs about workers' rights and "Rød 1 Maj."

Next week is the last week of classes here, which for me includes the all-important EU Simulation Game for my European Politics class, followed by a week of finals and term papers and Danish oral exams.  It should be busy, though I plan to get to a couple more museums in that time as well.  Closing ceremonies and one more party on DIS come Friday the 16th, and I ship out to Paris to meet Emily the next morning!  This semester has gone by awfully fast...