Wednesday morning, we woke up at a lovely little hotel with a great breakfast spread in Innsbruck, a small Alpine town in the western arm of Austria that to me was entirely reminiscent of Mont Tremblant in Quebec, in the sense that Mont Tremblant was completely designed to look like a place such as Innsburck. We wandered its streets for an hour or two, mostly marveling over huge mountains towering over the charming little buildings.
After a quick train ride to Feldkirch, Austria, we set out to achieve the day's main objective: visit the micronation of Liechtenstein. Though for most intents and purposes it's part of Switzerland (down to using the currency), Liechtenstein is in fact its own country (I have the stamp on my passport from the tourist office to prove it!) with its own bus system (aptly titled the Liechtenstein Bus), capital (Vaduz, where we spent our time), and history (there's a whole museum!) to enjoy. Half of the visit, of course, was marveling that we could see Switzerland from Vaduz's main street. The other half entailed a very brief tasting at the Prince's Winery and visits to the National Museum (complete with an English audio tour to teach us how such a tiny little state comes to be) and the Post Museum. Apparently Liechtenstein is known for its postage stamps, but the museum was only one room and fairly dull besides (though, fortunately, it was also free).
We caught the Liechtenstein Bus out of Vaduz to Buchs, Switzerland, which, after a couple of transfers and more marveling that we could drive through an entire country in less than an hour total, got us to Luzern, Switzerland. More on that in a bit.
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
Tuesday, March 18, 2008
No kangaroos in Austria.
Day One in Vienna began with, of all things, smørrebrød. Apparently Austria has its own version of open sandwiches...but I've got to tell you, they're pretty much the same thing, down to the love of lox. We also got a good look at the Wien Rathaus; I guessed based on my detailed knowledge of Danish that this was City Hall (rådhus in Danish) and was right! Go me. Parliament was quite a sight, too, but I was so government-building-ed out after my study tour that we went to the Hofburg palace complex instead. First stop was the Crown Jewels exhibit, which included a heck of a lot of royal clothing, very funny hats, and no shortage of reliquaries. Despite not really appreciating the latter category, the artistic value of everything was fairly high. Austrian royals really liked their washing bowls fancy! The Spanish Riding School, also in Hofburg and home to the Lipizzaner Stallions, was closed, sadly.
We walked through the Albertina museum next; the Max Ernst surrealist collage-novels were a bit above our heads, but the impressionist exhibit was phenomenal. There was everything from Picasso to Monet to Rothko and anyone you can think of in between, organized roughly by school. Everything was translated into English, happily, and we spent a solid hour or two perusing. Man, I love a good art museum, and Vienna, we found was chock-full of them.
Lunch for me was spinach strudel and mushroom soup-- look at that, family! Somehow this whole study abroad experience has nixed a lot of my picky eating tendencies of old. I don't eat meat, of course, but I now love vegetable soup, and can do Indian and Thai food, and had no problem eating anywhere I went for the whole three weeks of traveling. I think Andy (who sampled wiener schnitzel, of course) was starting not to recognize me at a few points.
Anyway, lunch was followed by a walk through Stephansdom, a beautiful cathedral with a pretty funky roof. To counteract the church visit, we went to Judenplatz, which is home to a small museum housing archeological finds of the Viennese Jewish community, including the foundations of the city's first synagogue from the 1300s or 1400s or so. Only the bottoms of the walls really remain, but to be there, and imagine standing in the women's section or on the bemah with just a few like-minded families so long ago in a place that may or may not be friendly to them was really extraordinary.
The later afternoon brought my favorite part of Vienna, the KunstHausWien. It's a four-story art museum in one of my favorite buildings ever-- I'll get pictures up as soon as I can, because I really can't do it justice in print. The first two floors were filled with the art of Friedensreich Hundertwasser, who apparently loved very bright colors, spirals, and metallic flecks. His style was pretty uniform, but the work was really gorgeous! There was also a section on his architecture, some of which looks like the museum building, and some of which was never built but involved models of Hobbit-like homes build into rolling hills for minimum human impact on the environment. I ended up with a posted depicting the museum building to go along with my older one of the exterior of MoMA for my room next year.
We took a tram back in the direction of our hotel and stopped for dinner at 7 Stern Braü, a restaurant and microbrewery. It was terribly fun, enjoying Viennese-style gnocchi and brie with 20 cl brews you can't find anywhere else. One of several meals in which we definitely ate too much because it was so different and good!
We slept in a bit the next morning-- travel is tiring!--and then rented CityBikes near the hotel Metro stop to get to the center of the city. That was fun! We did go over a cobblestone road at one point, though, which I do not recommend. It snowed right before we parked the bikes at our destination, which was really special-- that was also the point at which a traffic light got us stuck on opposite sides of the street, so we took it as a prime photo op.
Brunch was Starbucks (in German!) and a raisin challah that we demolished while watching the Anker Clock, which has a little music-accompanied mechanical show of sorts at noon in which various figures in Austrian history move across it. The description was in German, though, so I'll need translation at some point to fully appreciate that one.
We spent the early afternoon at Schönbrunn, a palace apparently modeled after Versailles located not too far from the city center. My guidebook had recommended the "Grand Tour," which includes all 40 rooms in the Prunkräume (palace rooms), which was totally worth seeing. It's not quite clear why people thought it would be good to invest so much in making way more than 40 rooms so individually detailed and ornate and uniquely beautiful, but at least the results were drool-worthy. Schönbrunn also has some spectacular gardens, called the Schlosspark, with a pavillion-restaurant that we scaled for--you guessed it--more amazing views of a different city.
The next stop was the Belvedere Museum, which has an upper palace housing a lot of Klimt works, including "The Kiss," which was (unlike other 'great works' I've seen in the past) very worth seeing in person, mainly for the colors and metallics and details. The lower half of the Belvedere had a temporary exhibit that was cool, too, but we lingered there for too long, it turned out. By the time we left, it was a major and unanticipated time crunch to rush back to the hotel for our bags (which took a long walk, a tram ride, and a several Metro stops) and then to the train station to get the last train out of town.
We made our train with no more than a minute and a half to spare. I'm still not sure how. I think it was two hours before my lungs fully recovered, and that was in spite of Andy's wonderfully volunteering to carry my not-quite-20kg backpack. We treated ourselves to a nice dinner in the dining car in celebration and relief, and spent a good chunk of the ride to Innsbruck in awe of the fact that we'd actually gotten on the train.
Vienna, in short, seems to be characterized by going to museums, and staying there for longer than you'd expect. But I'm smiling just thinking about it. Not as much eye candy (to my taste, anyway) outdoors as Prague-- and the whole place was of course much more manicured--but well worth our visit.
We walked through the Albertina museum next; the Max Ernst surrealist collage-novels were a bit above our heads, but the impressionist exhibit was phenomenal. There was everything from Picasso to Monet to Rothko and anyone you can think of in between, organized roughly by school. Everything was translated into English, happily, and we spent a solid hour or two perusing. Man, I love a good art museum, and Vienna, we found was chock-full of them.
Lunch for me was spinach strudel and mushroom soup-- look at that, family! Somehow this whole study abroad experience has nixed a lot of my picky eating tendencies of old. I don't eat meat, of course, but I now love vegetable soup, and can do Indian and Thai food, and had no problem eating anywhere I went for the whole three weeks of traveling. I think Andy (who sampled wiener schnitzel, of course) was starting not to recognize me at a few points.
Anyway, lunch was followed by a walk through Stephansdom, a beautiful cathedral with a pretty funky roof. To counteract the church visit, we went to Judenplatz, which is home to a small museum housing archeological finds of the Viennese Jewish community, including the foundations of the city's first synagogue from the 1300s or 1400s or so. Only the bottoms of the walls really remain, but to be there, and imagine standing in the women's section or on the bemah with just a few like-minded families so long ago in a place that may or may not be friendly to them was really extraordinary.
The later afternoon brought my favorite part of Vienna, the KunstHausWien. It's a four-story art museum in one of my favorite buildings ever-- I'll get pictures up as soon as I can, because I really can't do it justice in print. The first two floors were filled with the art of Friedensreich Hundertwasser, who apparently loved very bright colors, spirals, and metallic flecks. His style was pretty uniform, but the work was really gorgeous! There was also a section on his architecture, some of which looks like the museum building, and some of which was never built but involved models of Hobbit-like homes build into rolling hills for minimum human impact on the environment. I ended up with a posted depicting the museum building to go along with my older one of the exterior of MoMA for my room next year.
We took a tram back in the direction of our hotel and stopped for dinner at 7 Stern Braü, a restaurant and microbrewery. It was terribly fun, enjoying Viennese-style gnocchi and brie with 20 cl brews you can't find anywhere else. One of several meals in which we definitely ate too much because it was so different and good!
We slept in a bit the next morning-- travel is tiring!--and then rented CityBikes near the hotel Metro stop to get to the center of the city. That was fun! We did go over a cobblestone road at one point, though, which I do not recommend. It snowed right before we parked the bikes at our destination, which was really special-- that was also the point at which a traffic light got us stuck on opposite sides of the street, so we took it as a prime photo op.
Brunch was Starbucks (in German!) and a raisin challah that we demolished while watching the Anker Clock, which has a little music-accompanied mechanical show of sorts at noon in which various figures in Austrian history move across it. The description was in German, though, so I'll need translation at some point to fully appreciate that one.
We spent the early afternoon at Schönbrunn, a palace apparently modeled after Versailles located not too far from the city center. My guidebook had recommended the "Grand Tour," which includes all 40 rooms in the Prunkräume (palace rooms), which was totally worth seeing. It's not quite clear why people thought it would be good to invest so much in making way more than 40 rooms so individually detailed and ornate and uniquely beautiful, but at least the results were drool-worthy. Schönbrunn also has some spectacular gardens, called the Schlosspark, with a pavillion-restaurant that we scaled for--you guessed it--more amazing views of a different city.
The next stop was the Belvedere Museum, which has an upper palace housing a lot of Klimt works, including "The Kiss," which was (unlike other 'great works' I've seen in the past) very worth seeing in person, mainly for the colors and metallics and details. The lower half of the Belvedere had a temporary exhibit that was cool, too, but we lingered there for too long, it turned out. By the time we left, it was a major and unanticipated time crunch to rush back to the hotel for our bags (which took a long walk, a tram ride, and a several Metro stops) and then to the train station to get the last train out of town.
We made our train with no more than a minute and a half to spare. I'm still not sure how. I think it was two hours before my lungs fully recovered, and that was in spite of Andy's wonderfully volunteering to carry my not-quite-20kg backpack. We treated ourselves to a nice dinner in the dining car in celebration and relief, and spent a good chunk of the ride to Innsbruck in awe of the fact that we'd actually gotten on the train.
Vienna, in short, seems to be characterized by going to museums, and staying there for longer than you'd expect. But I'm smiling just thinking about it. Not as much eye candy (to my taste, anyway) outdoors as Prague-- and the whole place was of course much more manicured--but well worth our visit.
Sunday, March 16, 2008
Czech out our Prague-ress!
(Title credit goes to Andy, whose love of punning was inspired by our first stop.)
Brussels wrapped up nicely, with Friday morning spent on one last academic assignment. In groups, we were sent to interview EU lobbyists; my group had a delightful British woman from Amnesty International, which made for a very interesting hour. I kind of want her job now-- it's a combination of lobbying, communications, and policy analysis. And Brussels would be a fabulous place to spend a year or two...although I'm definitely glad to be in Copenhagen for my semester abroad.
Once the study tour wrapped up, I hopped a plane to Vienna, where I was supposed to meet Andy for the night before heading to Prague early Saturday morning (it was cheaper to do it that way). I made good on the whole plan, but Andy missed his plane out of Gatwick and thus met me in Prague the next day. We were both a bit tired, but, armed with my awesome Rough Guide to Europe and a list of must-do's from my friend Carly who spent last spring there, we were nonetheless ready to take Prague by storm!
We started out on a big main street, Vaclavske Namesti, and immediately sampled trdlo (me), sugar-sprinkled bread baked wrapped around a rolling pin, and kloebasa (Andy), the apparent Czech answer to hot dogs. We wandered up a tower called St. Henry's for an amazing view of the inner city and quickly discovered why Prague is known for its 'thousand spires'-- though, to be fair, a lot of the things they count as spires are poking out of one large one, which I think is cheating a little bit. The tower also had a nifty bell tower and a small display on Prague's spires, many of which we closer contact with over the course of the weekend.
We wandered through a big square or two in Stare Mesto, the old town, doing much admiring of the architechture and the marionette shops that lined every street. I don't think I've ever seen so many souvenir shops in such a small area, let alone that many selling puppets! The Charles Bridge was our next stop, and we took our time crossing over the River Vltava. The view was amazing, to begin with-- I think that was the first point that I realized just how stunning Prague is. The whole city really ended up being eye candy for me. The bridge is also crawling with kiosks and things to look at. Andy was teasing me for stopping to peer at every jewelery stand, but, to be fair, he took a picture at the caricature booth of Jack Nicholson's head growing out of a foot with some flowers. There was also a fantastic five-man band playing up a storm and featuring a very talented and excellently goateed gentleman on the washboard.
Once over and in Hradcany (which we started calling 'Hard Candy'-- our Czech is awful bordering on nonexistent, so this sort of thing happened a lot), the wandering took us up a number of stairways and hills-- as if I hadn't been crisscrossing Brussels for the last three days in heels!--to loop around several gorgeous palaces and buildings. Schwarzenbersky Palac was my particular favorite; it was closed to visitors, but each individual brick on the outside was decorated and the overall effect was stunning. Next came the Prague Castle complex-- at this point, it was too late in the day for a tour, which ended up being fine with us-- where we took a few moments to appreciate the sheer size of it, what we thought was a Lenin statue (actually Prague's first president), and the exterior of St. Vitus Cathedral. Aside from being spectacular in the sense that many big, grand European cathedrals seem to be, St. Vitus also has a few gargoyles that, upon closer inspection, proved to be men sticking out their tongues.
We found a small and apparently one-way walking street, which led to more amazing views-- Hradcany is set into a hill, so wherever we were on that side of the river meant that you'd turn around and gasp. We stopped for crepes and hot wine (apparently a Czech thing) in a lovely little park-- the crepes were yummy, the wine resulted in an amusing series of pictures of Andy trashing it. The fooding continued from there, as neither of us had really had lunch; we split something that may be called smazyny syr that was sort of fried dough with garlic sauce, ketchup, and cheese on top. It sounded (and looked and smelled) more than a bit odd, but it was surprisingly good. This was topped off by a bit of risotto and Pilsner Urquell (another Czech thing--fortunately, their beer is far better than their wine) back in Stare Mesto. We headed back to the hostel after that. It was only about 8 or 9, but we'd both been up early to get there, and we'd done so much walking that bed was more than welcome. Plus, our hostel was in a totally different neighborhood, one that looks way more Soviet than the older parts of the city, so we got to "Czech" out a different look of the city and experience the subway system, which turned out to be very easy to use and to do so without buying tickets (which, for the record, we did anyway). And the whole place was painted a very cheery yellow!
Day 2 of Prague began with a fake breakfast of stroop waffles (from Amsterdam) and strawberries and then a real breakfast of apple strudel in Josefov, Prague's Jewish quarter. There are about half a dozen synagogues within a few blocks, so we got the general pass and went about being good Jewish tourists. The Maisel Synagogue had a great little Jewish museum, which taught us a bit about what we'd be seeing elsewhere; the Spanish Synagogue was possibly one of the most gorgeous interiors that I've ever seen in a shul, ever-- I wish I'd disobeyed the sign and taken pictures! So intricate and colorful on every possible surface, my lord. We did go to the Pinkas as well, though this interior no longer looks like a synagogue: the first couple of stories have been redone to bear the names of every Czech Jew killed during the Holocaust. The memorial is simple and effective, particularly when paired with an exhibit of children's art from the Terezin concentration camp upstairs. Outside of the Pinkas Synagogue, we looped around the old Jewish cemetery, marveling at the sheer number of burials there despite the relative lack of space. Some of the tombstones were so old as to be illegible; others had been replaced, with the originals in the Maisel museum. It was interesting to me that those we could read were totally in Hebrew-- no other languages the way you'd see at home. We peeked into the Old-New Synagogue (it had been the New Synagogue at one point, but then all the older ones were destroyed), which was very cool in its being the oldest operating temple in Europe.
Next, we headed back over the Charles Bridge, stopping to admire a guitar-playing marionette and the city's metronome on a not-so-distant hill. We took a very fun funicular train ride up Petrin Hill, which provided us with more amazing views, a fun little Hall of Mirrors at the top, and a lunch that included something called fried cheese on a bun. We walked down a long and winding road through hillside back to Hradcany to see the inside of St. Vitus Cathedral. The crypts were closed, apparently for technical reasons, but the Art Nouveau stained glass and a few really interesting altars were well worth the (free) price of admission and the (five-minute) wait in line to get in. Andy, navigator extraordinaire, walked us through a lovely more suburban area to get back to the subway; among other things, we passed by the Ministerstvo Obrany Czeche Republiky. I'm not sure what it was, exactly, but the place had more surveillance equipment out for the viewing on its lawn than we'd ever seen before.
Once back at the hostel, we picked up our bags, checked email (and Andy's finalized his flight to come visit me in April!), and caught our train to Vienna without too much hassle. We had some delicious soup on the train, discovered the Vienna subway system has security measures like Prague's, and found the Hotel Geblergasse fairly easily.
In short, Prague was great. I was astonished at how much food I found to like there, and I found the entire city to be essentially eye candy. Those vistas! The Spanish Synagogue. Wow.
Brussels wrapped up nicely, with Friday morning spent on one last academic assignment. In groups, we were sent to interview EU lobbyists; my group had a delightful British woman from Amnesty International, which made for a very interesting hour. I kind of want her job now-- it's a combination of lobbying, communications, and policy analysis. And Brussels would be a fabulous place to spend a year or two...although I'm definitely glad to be in Copenhagen for my semester abroad.
Once the study tour wrapped up, I hopped a plane to Vienna, where I was supposed to meet Andy for the night before heading to Prague early Saturday morning (it was cheaper to do it that way). I made good on the whole plan, but Andy missed his plane out of Gatwick and thus met me in Prague the next day. We were both a bit tired, but, armed with my awesome Rough Guide to Europe and a list of must-do's from my friend Carly who spent last spring there, we were nonetheless ready to take Prague by storm!
We started out on a big main street, Vaclavske Namesti, and immediately sampled trdlo (me), sugar-sprinkled bread baked wrapped around a rolling pin, and kloebasa (Andy), the apparent Czech answer to hot dogs. We wandered up a tower called St. Henry's for an amazing view of the inner city and quickly discovered why Prague is known for its 'thousand spires'-- though, to be fair, a lot of the things they count as spires are poking out of one large one, which I think is cheating a little bit. The tower also had a nifty bell tower and a small display on Prague's spires, many of which we closer contact with over the course of the weekend.
We wandered through a big square or two in Stare Mesto, the old town, doing much admiring of the architechture and the marionette shops that lined every street. I don't think I've ever seen so many souvenir shops in such a small area, let alone that many selling puppets! The Charles Bridge was our next stop, and we took our time crossing over the River Vltava. The view was amazing, to begin with-- I think that was the first point that I realized just how stunning Prague is. The whole city really ended up being eye candy for me. The bridge is also crawling with kiosks and things to look at. Andy was teasing me for stopping to peer at every jewelery stand, but, to be fair, he took a picture at the caricature booth of Jack Nicholson's head growing out of a foot with some flowers. There was also a fantastic five-man band playing up a storm and featuring a very talented and excellently goateed gentleman on the washboard.
Once over and in Hradcany (which we started calling 'Hard Candy'-- our Czech is awful bordering on nonexistent, so this sort of thing happened a lot), the wandering took us up a number of stairways and hills-- as if I hadn't been crisscrossing Brussels for the last three days in heels!--to loop around several gorgeous palaces and buildings. Schwarzenbersky Palac was my particular favorite; it was closed to visitors, but each individual brick on the outside was decorated and the overall effect was stunning. Next came the Prague Castle complex-- at this point, it was too late in the day for a tour, which ended up being fine with us-- where we took a few moments to appreciate the sheer size of it, what we thought was a Lenin statue (actually Prague's first president), and the exterior of St. Vitus Cathedral. Aside from being spectacular in the sense that many big, grand European cathedrals seem to be, St. Vitus also has a few gargoyles that, upon closer inspection, proved to be men sticking out their tongues.
We found a small and apparently one-way walking street, which led to more amazing views-- Hradcany is set into a hill, so wherever we were on that side of the river meant that you'd turn around and gasp. We stopped for crepes and hot wine (apparently a Czech thing) in a lovely little park-- the crepes were yummy, the wine resulted in an amusing series of pictures of Andy trashing it. The fooding continued from there, as neither of us had really had lunch; we split something that may be called smazyny syr that was sort of fried dough with garlic sauce, ketchup, and cheese on top. It sounded (and looked and smelled) more than a bit odd, but it was surprisingly good. This was topped off by a bit of risotto and Pilsner Urquell (another Czech thing--fortunately, their beer is far better than their wine) back in Stare Mesto. We headed back to the hostel after that. It was only about 8 or 9, but we'd both been up early to get there, and we'd done so much walking that bed was more than welcome. Plus, our hostel was in a totally different neighborhood, one that looks way more Soviet than the older parts of the city, so we got to "Czech" out a different look of the city and experience the subway system, which turned out to be very easy to use and to do so without buying tickets (which, for the record, we did anyway). And the whole place was painted a very cheery yellow!
Day 2 of Prague began with a fake breakfast of stroop waffles (from Amsterdam) and strawberries and then a real breakfast of apple strudel in Josefov, Prague's Jewish quarter. There are about half a dozen synagogues within a few blocks, so we got the general pass and went about being good Jewish tourists. The Maisel Synagogue had a great little Jewish museum, which taught us a bit about what we'd be seeing elsewhere; the Spanish Synagogue was possibly one of the most gorgeous interiors that I've ever seen in a shul, ever-- I wish I'd disobeyed the sign and taken pictures! So intricate and colorful on every possible surface, my lord. We did go to the Pinkas as well, though this interior no longer looks like a synagogue: the first couple of stories have been redone to bear the names of every Czech Jew killed during the Holocaust. The memorial is simple and effective, particularly when paired with an exhibit of children's art from the Terezin concentration camp upstairs. Outside of the Pinkas Synagogue, we looped around the old Jewish cemetery, marveling at the sheer number of burials there despite the relative lack of space. Some of the tombstones were so old as to be illegible; others had been replaced, with the originals in the Maisel museum. It was interesting to me that those we could read were totally in Hebrew-- no other languages the way you'd see at home. We peeked into the Old-New Synagogue (it had been the New Synagogue at one point, but then all the older ones were destroyed), which was very cool in its being the oldest operating temple in Europe.
Next, we headed back over the Charles Bridge, stopping to admire a guitar-playing marionette and the city's metronome on a not-so-distant hill. We took a very fun funicular train ride up Petrin Hill, which provided us with more amazing views, a fun little Hall of Mirrors at the top, and a lunch that included something called fried cheese on a bun. We walked down a long and winding road through hillside back to Hradcany to see the inside of St. Vitus Cathedral. The crypts were closed, apparently for technical reasons, but the Art Nouveau stained glass and a few really interesting altars were well worth the (free) price of admission and the (five-minute) wait in line to get in. Andy, navigator extraordinaire, walked us through a lovely more suburban area to get back to the subway; among other things, we passed by the Ministerstvo Obrany Czeche Republiky. I'm not sure what it was, exactly, but the place had more surveillance equipment out for the viewing on its lawn than we'd ever seen before.
Once back at the hostel, we picked up our bags, checked email (and Andy's finalized his flight to come visit me in April!), and caught our train to Vienna without too much hassle. We had some delicious soup on the train, discovered the Vienna subway system has security measures like Prague's, and found the Hotel Geblergasse fairly easily.
In short, Prague was great. I was astonished at how much food I found to like there, and I found the entire city to be essentially eye candy. Those vistas! The Spanish Synagogue. Wow.
Thursday, March 13, 2008
Je parle en français!
Two days of Brussels have been very, very good to me. Wednesday morning, we spent about twice as long in line at NATO security thanks to some confusion with the group ahead of us. By the time I finally got through the metal detector, the guard was standing so close to it that he set the thing off. Once we finally got inside, the presentations--by an American diplomat and a NATO representative who hapened to be American--were quite good, and we learned lots about the organization's 21st century role in the world, which seems to have little to do with Russia and more to do with overlapping with the EU as a world security/peacekeeping force. The downside (besies the long wait) was that all we got to see of the building was a random conference room-- no offices, no big fancy meeting chamber or anything, which was kind of disappointing. (Amusingly enough, I think our security clearance may not have been high enough.)
After a quick lunch in the city's Europan Quarter, we got to wander around the European Parliament for a while (the building was practically abandoned, as the members are in Strausborg for the week), including watching a few (albeit uninteresting) votes (by a different committee that was using the space). We had a bit of downtime at the hotel (very necessary after that early morning), a lovely group dinner (several people enjoyed actual mussels from Brussels), and more wanderings, which took us to the famous Café Delirium, holder of the Guiness World Record for the number of beers it has on tap (something like 2000 kinds, all local Belgian microbreweries).
Today brought two of the more interesting presentations: one by cabinet member of the Danish European Commissioner's office (ask me questions about the EU agricultural policy!) and one by a higher-up in the eschelons of command surrounding the EU's foreign policy, which, as I said, seems to overlap quite a bit with NATO's. In between, a fez of us did some serious walknig and sightseeing, which was way more fun during the day, and we feel like we've really been able to see a lot of the city. Plus, I got to bust out my high school French over lunch, and I'm remembering a lot more than I'd expected. (Someone should tell Mr. Warsaw for me...)
I should hop off the computer now-- there's a bit of a line. Tomorrow's our last day here, so my next update will likely be from Vienna or Prague...stay tuned!
After a quick lunch in the city's Europan Quarter, we got to wander around the European Parliament for a while (the building was practically abandoned, as the members are in Strausborg for the week), including watching a few (albeit uninteresting) votes (by a different committee that was using the space). We had a bit of downtime at the hotel (very necessary after that early morning), a lovely group dinner (several people enjoyed actual mussels from Brussels), and more wanderings, which took us to the famous Café Delirium, holder of the Guiness World Record for the number of beers it has on tap (something like 2000 kinds, all local Belgian microbreweries).
Today brought two of the more interesting presentations: one by cabinet member of the Danish European Commissioner's office (ask me questions about the EU agricultural policy!) and one by a higher-up in the eschelons of command surrounding the EU's foreign policy, which, as I said, seems to overlap quite a bit with NATO's. In between, a fez of us did some serious walknig and sightseeing, which was way more fun during the day, and we feel like we've really been able to see a lot of the city. Plus, I got to bust out my high school French over lunch, and I'm remembering a lot more than I'd expected. (Someone should tell Mr. Warsaw for me...)
I should hop off the computer now-- there's a bit of a line. Tomorrow's our last day here, so my next update will likely be from Vienna or Prague...stay tuned!
Wednesday, March 12, 2008
J'aime les gauffres!
Bonjour aux Bruxelles!
The study tour is off to a great start, and now I know I definitely need to get back to Holland at some point. We got there Sunday night after a long drive from Copenhagen, which included a ferry and two unhappy Danish films (for having the happiest citizens in the world, that does seem to be the only kind of movie they make). Upon arrival, we enjoyed dinner at a local Thai place (yes, Mom and Dad, I ate Thai!) and spent the evening exploring the town center. Monday started delightfully late, with a meeting with a University of Amsterdam professor on the Dutch veto of the proposed EU constitution a few years ago. After lunch, we took a canal tour in the rain-- fortunately, the boats are glassed in and heated, so we didn't miss out on too much, including photo opportunities. We also did the Van Gogh (apparently pronounced Van Gock?) Museum, which involved getting slightly lost with my friend Carrie on the way back to the hotel, and a fantastic three-course meal at a place called Simpel. Yum! A bunch of us hung with the trip leaders afterwards-- they're both pretty young and pretty great, so that was fun, too.
Tuesday dawned much earlier than Monday, and it took us to the Hague, where we passed through security into the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY). A prosecutor there from Dallas gave us a talk explaining their operation, which was quite interesting. Most of the guys they have on trial everyone pretty much knows are definite war criminals, it seems, so a lot of the challenge lies in making that into a fair, balanced, and valid legal argument, which gets interesting because this tribunal is the first court of its kind since Nuremberg. After the talk, we actually got to watch the proceedings for one case for a bit. We listened to a man testify in Serbo-Croatian (with simultaneous translation--it was odd hearing this big Slavic guy speak in a British woman's voice) about his detainment and torture at the hands of soliders who answered to an uninterested but smirking guy sitting just a few yards and one glass panel away from me. Very creepy.
After a quick bus ride and a screening of Dr. Strangelove (!), we reached Brussels, met with Denmark's permanent representative to the EU Commission (the legislature, or sorts), and then had a free evening. I wandered extensively with a group of five or so. We dined on crêpes and Belgian waffles and marveled over every church and fancy building we could find, and believe me, there are a lot. Also, only two of us knew any French, which was kind of fun for me. We loved how a city so utterly different from dear Copenhagen could be equally awesome, if more grandiose.
This morning, we have a really early start, as apparently NATO security takes forever to go through. Au revoir, mes amis!
The study tour is off to a great start, and now I know I definitely need to get back to Holland at some point. We got there Sunday night after a long drive from Copenhagen, which included a ferry and two unhappy Danish films (for having the happiest citizens in the world, that does seem to be the only kind of movie they make). Upon arrival, we enjoyed dinner at a local Thai place (yes, Mom and Dad, I ate Thai!) and spent the evening exploring the town center. Monday started delightfully late, with a meeting with a University of Amsterdam professor on the Dutch veto of the proposed EU constitution a few years ago. After lunch, we took a canal tour in the rain-- fortunately, the boats are glassed in and heated, so we didn't miss out on too much, including photo opportunities. We also did the Van Gogh (apparently pronounced Van Gock?) Museum, which involved getting slightly lost with my friend Carrie on the way back to the hotel, and a fantastic three-course meal at a place called Simpel. Yum! A bunch of us hung with the trip leaders afterwards-- they're both pretty young and pretty great, so that was fun, too.
Tuesday dawned much earlier than Monday, and it took us to the Hague, where we passed through security into the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY). A prosecutor there from Dallas gave us a talk explaining their operation, which was quite interesting. Most of the guys they have on trial everyone pretty much knows are definite war criminals, it seems, so a lot of the challenge lies in making that into a fair, balanced, and valid legal argument, which gets interesting because this tribunal is the first court of its kind since Nuremberg. After the talk, we actually got to watch the proceedings for one case for a bit. We listened to a man testify in Serbo-Croatian (with simultaneous translation--it was odd hearing this big Slavic guy speak in a British woman's voice) about his detainment and torture at the hands of soliders who answered to an uninterested but smirking guy sitting just a few yards and one glass panel away from me. Very creepy.
After a quick bus ride and a screening of Dr. Strangelove (!), we reached Brussels, met with Denmark's permanent representative to the EU Commission (the legislature, or sorts), and then had a free evening. I wandered extensively with a group of five or so. We dined on crêpes and Belgian waffles and marveled over every church and fancy building we could find, and believe me, there are a lot. Also, only two of us knew any French, which was kind of fun for me. We loved how a city so utterly different from dear Copenhagen could be equally awesome, if more grandiose.
This morning, we have a really early start, as apparently NATO security takes forever to go through. Au revoir, mes amis!
Saturday, March 8, 2008
Jeg skal til Europe!
Well, less than 12 hours from now, I'm on a bus (yes, unfortunately, bus) to Amsterdam! The grand Spring Break 2008 tour, as scheduled, is thus:
Amsterdam (3/9-3/11): With the DIS European Politics & Society program, we'll be meeting with folks from the university, taking a canal tour, and perusing the Van Gogh Museum. The Anne Frank House may or may not happen, but at least we'll have the nights free!
The Hague (3/11): International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia
Brussels: (3/11-3/14): All things EU, NATO, and chocolate (we're touring a factory!)
Prague (3/15-3/16): With Andy! My Brown friend Carly, who studied there last semester, gave me a whole list of places to go and see and eat.
Vienna (3/17-3/18): We welcome any traveling tips you might want to leave in a comment!
Liechtenstein (3/19): Mostly to say we've been there. Not sure what their currency is.
Luzerne (3/20), Grindelwald (3/21), and Geneva (3/21-3/22): Switzerland, the Alps, lakes, snow, and more chocolate!
Russia (3/23-3/29): With DIS again, to Moscow, St. Petersburg, and Novgorod. I'm very excited, although they unnerved me a bit at the info session by telling us, essentially, to bribe policemen, pay to hitchhike, and not to worry about the not-potable water for showering, because it's not like you'll change color or anything.
In any case, that's my travel plan in a nutshell! I'm not sure how much Internet access I'll have over the next few weeks, but I'll try to update if I can. Either way, expect a very long post three weeks from now!
Thursday, March 6, 2008
Jeg drikke chai på Café Retro
I thought I'd take a break from writing a paper about the development of agriculture in Europe (the broadest topic ever assigned for a five-page paper ever, even if the pages are A4-sized) and report on my current surroundings.
I discovered this week that, in the 24 hours between my Sunday Baresso reading session and my Monday Baresso pit stop before my Human Rights in Africa class, prices on everything there had gone up. The change only equates to about 20¢, but that's on top of a drink that already costs way more than it really should, particularly given its addictiveness. Fortunately, this unfortunate revelation (which, according to a Dane in said Human Rights in Africa class, may be part of a food-pricing conspiracy among some of the big producers that's being investigated) coincided with the discovery that the lots-of-local-flavor, non-profit, charity-supporting Café Retro is not only a great study space, it also has equally amazing chai lattés-- and its biggest size is still cheaper than en lille chai-cino at Baresso. I'm sold.
Café Retro itself is a really great space. Dimly lit-- lots of hyggelit candles and hanging ceiling fixtures-- with squashy couches and chairs and barstools, plus tables of all sorts (including foosball), the downstairs has textured red wallpaper, funky retro clothing for sale, and bathrooms with English quotes from mostly-English-speaking luminaries. The bar has coffee drinks, alcoholic beverages, and food (Jen and I shared nachos yesterday, and at some point I'm so going for the vegetable tapas trio) that, for Denmark at least, is reasonably priced. The upstairs has an open center overlooking the ground floor, a meditation room, and more couches and things. Apparently there's live music on weekends, too. In any case, as far as I can tell, it's a mostly local hangout-- we actually met an American guy here yesterday who was astonished to hear people speaking in English--which makes it that much more awesome. And, like most of the other awesome locales, it's within easy walking distance of home.
I feel that I've spent an oddly large amount of time and thought and love here on the chai, to the point that my roommates are now (lovingly, they assure me) referring to study time with tea at a coffee shop as "pulling an Alli." Can I help it if I like the café culture and really like this one drink that everyone in Denmark seems to be able to make better than Starbucks?
Monday, March 3, 2008
Jeg er meget øm.
I actually specifically asked my Danish teacher this morning how to say "I'm sore," as we were practicing dialogues about maladies and things anyway.
For anyone considering taking up Thai Bo in the near future, be advised: ow. I'd seen my gym holding classes before and it had looked fun, so I dropped into Sunday morning's session before hitting the books (it's midterms week at DIS for everyone). The class itself was fairly fun in an "I don't think I've ever sweat so much voluntarily" sort of way-- lots of bouncing and jab-punches-- and felt like a great workout. But then I woke up this morning and my upper back and shoulders are not happy with me. Taking off my peacoat has been quite the experience today, let me tell you, as was sitting comfortably during my Russian history test.
On the upside, my work seems to be in decent shape, as does my thesis proposal for Brown, which is due in a month. And I posted more photos, including those from last weekend in Cambridge! Enjoy!
Saturday, March 1, 2008
Til Dansk Røde Kors Asylafdeling og Club Mambo
This week I had two very interesting cultural experiences that had very little to do with Danishness.
Wednesday, my Migrants, Minorities, and Multiculturalism class went to the Danish Red Cross Asylum Center headquarters. See, the state of Denmark employs the Røde Kors to run its asylum centers, which are home (plus school and community center and soup kitchen and various other things) to would-be immigrants to Denmark live while their applications for asylum are processed. Which, in most cases, become some indeterminate period of time because when 90-plus percent of their applications are turned down but they refuse to return to their countries of origin. And most of the countries of origin in question don't exactly have an extradition agreement with Denmark just now, as they're Iraq, Afghanistan, and the like. So the asylum seekers stay at the centers for years, until they manage to get actual permission to be somewhere or Denmark manages to get an extradition agreement out of the country of origin, which would send however many quasi-resettled people back to a war zone, albeit one that according to EU standards isn't a state that's actively prosecuting them as individuals.
We spoke in small groups to a few men, from Iraq and Algeria. Norell and I questioned Salim, a middle-aged Iraqi who left the country for Jordan with his family in 2002 after repeatedly being taken in for interrogations. He had a history of being involved with the Communists, but it sounded like the Baathists mostly didn't like his active brother and uncle, who both managed to get out, too. Salim's family stayed in Jordan while he tried to get into Denmark properly, which he couldn't (see above), and the situation didn't change at all after the 2003 invasion. His wife and children are now living in San Diego, so he's trying to get there, but in the meantime he hasn't seem them in years and has had only limited communication with them because of the distance.
The others' stories aren't that much different. The employees and volunteers we met at the center seemed to do their level best to give the residents (plenty of whom are women and children (unaccompanied in many cases), though most are male and single, apparently) a meaningful life and activities and education and so forth, but when you're caught in political limbo for seven years...
We had a short talk-back as a class after the meetings, and we were all surprised at this sort of "dark side" of the wondrous Danish welfare state we've heard so much about, which seems to be a recurring theme when it comes to questions of migrants and integration. Denmark is an incredibly ethnically homogenous state (something like 90% of people are Danish Danes, if you will) that didn't even really have immigration until the 1970s. Looking at their immigration policy, you can see that the state really just wants everyone to be Danish. Religious freedom and laws against discrimination are there, of course, but so are pledges to conform to certain standards and learn Danish language and culture and so forth. It's an interesting if not quite successful approach; see international headlines about Denmark from the last few weeks if you think a policy like that might be working. (Hint: it's not. Ethnic Danes aren't the ones burning cars and blowing up tanning salons. It's also unfortunate that the mostly-Muslim immigrant youth are living up to some stereotypes.)
On an entirely different note, Dara and I spent an hour or so last night at Club Mambo, which is a salsa club not far from home. It was fun (if slightly awkward)! Neither of us really knows how to salsa, which prompted a pair of friendly Latin American guys to intervene. One was from Ecuador and one from Argentina; they both work for Mærsk in Panama and were here for training. Good times, nothing too strange, and we looked slightly less silly than we might've on our own.
Tonight, after a day of working (this upcoming week is pre-spring break midterm craziness for everyone), Dara and I attempted to see "Juno" (in English with Danish subtitles) but due to some confusions that I won't get into, we ended up at "Things We Lost In The Fire." Which was good, but less merry. On the upside, we can now check "See a movie at the 'candy palace'" off of our ever-shortening to-do list!
God nat, all.
Tuesday, February 26, 2008
Dansk mad!
Tonight, my Danish class enjoyed a quasi-traditional Danish dinner! Nina, our teacher, set things up and gave up preparation instructions, which included literally whipping cream (something I'm apparently horrible at), setting the table (Danes put plates in the very edge), and putting together a couple of layer cakes (think thick crepes with Nutella-infused whipped cream in between). For dinner, we enjoyed traditional smørrebrød, open sandwiches with interesting combinations of things on rye bread. There were some delicious vegetarian options, too, fortunately-- the mushrooms, tomatoes, and cucumbers in a sort of egg salad was my personal favorite.
There were candles on the tables, of course, as Danes love having candles everywhere. There's even a trio in the entryway of my gym every morning! After eating, we sang a long, Danish "Happy Birthday" song to one of my classmates, which was entertaining both in its repeated mentions of "lovely chocolate" and our utter mangling of the words and tune.
The night ended with a screening of "The Celebration," a Danish "Dogma"-style film. I'd already seen it, and the Dogma handheld camera style had given me a bad case of motion sickness, so I was excused from a second screening, to my full and otherwise happy stomach's relief.
On the upside, I heartily approve of Danish vegetarian food, as well as desserts. (But we knew about the latter already!)
Sunday, February 24, 2008
Sammen med min kæreste
Cambridge was absolutely lovely!
Apparently the trade-off to flying cheaply, at least on EasyJet, is significant delays; at least they like apologizing for them profusely. We got into Stansted about two hours late, but once I'd finally made it through customs and everything all the frustration sort of melted away when Andy met me on the other side. We had an hour or so to cuddle and catch up on the bus ride back to Cambridge, which looked only vaguely familiar (I'd been there on a day trip in 2003 when I did a summer program at Oxford).
After a delightfully late start on Saturday (neither of us had been sleeping well the week before), we did a bit of sight-seeing on the quick-fast half-hour walk to the train station, where (after some credit card frustration) we caught a train at the last second to London. Lunch, a couple of Tube transfers, and one inconveniently closed Victoria line later, we made it to the theater for Billy Elliot: The Musical. Major brownie points to the boy, whose idea seeing a West End show was.
The show itself was pretty cute-- I like Elton John scores! The set had a solid working-class feel to it, even as stuff moved around on hydraulics (and we were sitting high enough to see backstage a bit, which was nifty). I thought it trivialized a few things I remembered from the movie (like the gay best friend and the father's epiphany), and some of the artistic choices (dancing dresses and the entire cast doing a curtain call/finale in tutus) were less than wise. But overall, it was incredibly endearing and uplifting, the music was fun, and the performances were stellar, particularly the super-talented little teenage kid who played Billy. The choreography was really remarkable, too.
After the show, we high-tailed it back to Cambridge. We missed the train we'd meant to take, and the later one got us back just in time to rush to Andy's room to change and be slightly late for Formal Hall. For those unfamiliar with this Cambridge tradition (as I was), it involves a formal dinner with the college fellows-- formal as in wearing long black academic robesover your suit. And everyone brings their own wine bottle to finish over the course of the meal. If someone tosses a penny successfully in your glass, you have to drain it on the spot. A fun bit of tradition, I discovered, even though there were inexplicably no fellows that night. (And I'm not a big wine drinker.) They even had a vegetarian option and excellent creme brulee.
After dinner, we met some of Andy's British and Americans-in-Britain friends over at the Eagle, the nearby pub where Watson and Crick announced their discovery of DNA. A few of the people in the group actually go to Brown, though I'd never met them before. That's something I've found here in Denmark, too-- I had forgotten how big my school is. There are about 20 Brown kids here, and I didn't really know any of them coming into this. It sounded like the same story at Cambridge: you meet someone new, exchange pleasantries, and then sort of goggle awkwardly when you realize you've probably had classes together in the last two and half years and never noticed.
In any case, that was the end of Saturday-- nice folks in a non-smoking pub with some kind of sweet pear cider.
Sunday brought another late morning, followed by a two-mile walk through the countryside to the Orchard, a brunch sort of place where Virginia Woolf and various other notables had once worked. We had tea and scones and baguette sandwiches (brie and cranberry sauce-- major Oxford flashbacks for me!) outside under the trees, where it was wonderfully not that chilly. I'd also forgotten how much I love a real British scone--possibly more than wienerbrød here (not that I'm complaining).
On the way back, we wandered through the town-- Andy had several of the grander collegiate sights he wanted to show me, and wow. Kind of crazy to think that people go to school in some of those places (try Googling Trinity College!), rather than, like, languish there as royalty. The gardens and college-specific cathedrals were just as stunning. I'll post pictures soon.
The trip back to Copenhagen involved far fewer delays, although there was one incident in which I had to dash down an "up" escalator at the airport to retrieve the purse I'd left on the bus. So now I'm back in class-mode for another couple of weeks before spring break, missing the boy already. But it was a wonderful, wonderful weekend; it's hard to believe but very happy to realize that it's been two whole years together!
Thursday, February 21, 2008
Hygge og glad!
With the exception of Netto's recycling station on Monday where a local kept insulting me, apparently Denmark is the happiest country in the world. The U.S. ranks somewhere around 23-- well below Canada and Costa Rica, according to "60 Minutes," but way ahead of Pakistan and Iraq. Definitely something to be proud of there.
In other news, Jackie and I visited the Glyptotek yesterday; the museum's name actually means something akin to "collection of sculptures," and that is indeed what we saw. Lots of marble (and bronze and wood)-- the catch is that most of them were made in the last couple of centuries, so the poses and styles are a bit different than, say, Renaissance art. You also get busts of Victor Hugo and the like. There was an excellent French selection (Degas! Little Dancers!) and a bunch of Van Goghs and Impressionist work, which we definitely preferred to the ancient artifact rooms. I'm starting to be really impressed with the productivity of the Greeks and Egyptians, though-- it seems like every museum has wings for artifacts from those two ancient societies, so they must have left behind and preserved an awful lot.
I was going to spend this afternoon exploring, but the weather is frigid and windy and overcast today, so I'm thinking a better use of time would be working-- I have a test, paper, and in-class debate tomorrow, and it'd be nice to get a chunk of work for next week done so I can really enjoy my weekend in Cambridge with Andy, which starts tomorrow night!
In other news, there's a bagel place right near DIS that serves tomato bagels warm with pesto cream cheese. Holy cow. This is the happiest place on Earth. And you thought Mickey Mouse was a necessary ingredient!
UPDATE: I decided to brave the weather and wandered all the way to the end of the Strøget to Kongens Nytorv (big round plaza with a seasonal skating rink) and wandered up and down Nyhavn (the short stretch of old harbor that you see in all the pictures), finally. Not the nicest day for it, but the area's adorable with lots of nice-looking restaurants and a bar called Havfrue with a carved mermaid out front that made me think of home :)
Sunday, February 17, 2008
Jeg slapper af i Sønderborg
Skål (cheers) to the short study tour! (See Facebook for pictures of everything.)
It began unfavorably early on Thursday; the bus was motoring out of Frue Plads before the klokken struck 8. Fortunately, we had a decently long drive to our first stop, Lolland Kommune, where we learned about governing a shrinking, rural-ish municipality in Denmark and how such a thing relates to the EU (because it does). More napping preceded a short but pleasant ferry ride from the southern bit of Sjælland to northern Germany, which was made marginally more exciting than it might've been because the ferry route will be replaced by a bridge someday quasi-soon.
We ended up in Lübeck, a large town in northern Germany that among other things is home to an inimitable tour guide named Manfred. He knew his stuff, for sure, but his English alone was mildly entertaining ("literation" instead of "litearture," for instance-- I seriously thought he was bragging about historical figures' ability to repeat consonant sounds for a while). And he had some dramatic rhetoric, coupled with a strange lack of respect for the girls' personal space. Cases in point: poking about five of us in the bellies to make a point about the Devil lacking a navel; getting right in the face of Sara to inform her that women like Mrs. Putin (who apparently came to Lübeck desperate for some of its famous marzipan) will do what they will--"Have you ever heard the story of the serpent and the apple?" Ridiculous, but memorable. I think someone started a Facebook group called "WWMD -- What Would Manfred Do?" It's one of those odd things that gets the 23-person group (including two chaperones) to bond quite immediately.
Thursday's dinner was provided by DIS, at a Marine lodge complete with wooden model ships hanging from the ceiling, dark murals, and long tables that dated back to something like the sixteenth century. Amazing hot chocolate and ice cream bookended an actual (and actually good) vegetarian meal-- for once I didn't just get the main dish sans flesh!
After dinner we drove to the Jugendherberge Kiel, our hostel for the night in Kiel, Germany, which was absolutely freezing but otherwise fine for one night. The town itself was fairly quiet; I ended up exploring a bit in the cold with a couple of my roommates, Kate and Alissa, but we gave up and played Go Fish over a can of Pringles.
Friday brought a guided tour of the Kiel Maritime Museum, which everyone including our tour leaders agreed was utterly dull, except for the life-size model of a 1930s German submarine that was made with two leather arm-mittens on the front so that someone could chuck dynamite at an enemy ship. How one might do that underwater, in mittens, and get away fast enough on a pedal-powered craft apparently never occurred to the designer.
After lunch (more good vegetarian dining and dessert), we went to the Kieler Landtag, the regional parliament for the Schleswig-Holstein region of Germany. The chairwoman of the Danish minority's political party spoke for a bit, and kindly answered my many questions afterwards. The SSW sounds an awful lot like an ethnic party (including its specially lowered threshold of representation in the Landtag), but Anke Spoorendonk did her best to explain to me why this wasn't the case. I'm still debating what I think of her response, but I think I'm writing a paper on the subject for Friday, so that should be resolved soon.
Later on, we crossed back into Denmark without any more fanfare than a "Velkommen til Danmark" sign (the Schengen Agreement nixed the need for passports between EU states) and met with the editor-in-chief of Denmark's German-language newspaper, Der Nordschleswiger, which was much less interesting than it sounds, unfortunately. The evening got much better, though-- we checked into the Danhostel of Sønderborg City and spent the rest of the evening by the waterfront, having dinner and then checking out the nightlife.
I ended up spending most of the night at a too-smoky bar called Penny Lane, enjoying Hoegaarden and about half a dozen of my classmates in a room that looked like someone's old-fashioned library. We took an appropriately dignified picture or two, sang along to a techno cover of Paul Simon's "You Can Call Me Al," and turned in significantly earlier than the rest of the group, which was just fine with me.
Saturday began with a tour of Dybbøl Bank, the location of a key battle between Denmark and Germany in 1864 that was repeatedly referred to as the "Danish Gettysburg," which some people took offense to. Not one of the more interesting stops on the trip, I'm afraid, but the all-you-can-eat Italian pizza buffet afterwards made up for the cold!
We took another ferry from Jylland (mainland Denmark) to Fyn, the big island in between Jylland and Sjælland, where Copenhagen is. We stopped in Odense, Denmark's third-largest city, to tour the Brandts Kunstmuseum, which has a fantastic modern art collection. Particularly notable were two series of rooms: they were totally separate exhibitions, but similar in that the pieces were a series of connected environments. One involved children's play and included a slanted room decorated like a ship's belly with a video porthole-- I actually had to leave it to convince myself we weren't moving. There was also a round black room with spinning dotted lights and big silver balls to roll around, which I especially loved.
The second piece was called "From someone who nearly died, but survived." It began with a room of stuffed ravens with creepy glowing eyes that followed you through several rooms of strange space-related technology reminiscent of The Matrix and 2001: A Space Odyssey, among other things (apparently what the artist intended), followed by a room filled with foam spikes, and lastly, a pegasus (I believe it was a taxidermied horse with wings attached) behind glass that was clouded in such a way that a viewer has to kneel before the display to see what's inside. Crazy and bizarre, but that's part of why I love modern art.
We hit Copenhagen around dinnertime, but not before the bus's Denmark trivia contest, in which I scored fourth place (did you know Denmark has one peninsula and 406 islands?) and thus some gummies.
Overall, I had a great time. The people were pretty fun, and our tour leaders were particularly great. One of them, Jakob, teaches my Migrants, Minorities, and Multiculturalism class, so I was happy to get to know him outside of the classroom; the other, Tyler, is the European Politics program assistant, who, besides being generally great, was on DIS two years ago with my friend Desha. Small world!
Of course, all the fun meant I spent most of today getting work done, but at least I've mostly caught up on sleep, too. This week should be a busy one with work, but I get to head to Cambridge at the end of it! Plus, Jackie and Dara and I had a lovely dinner at Café Katz and decided we should maybe make Sunday suppers a weekly thing so as to hit up all the cafés on our communal to-do list.
Actually, speaking of which, skål to goat cheese as well!
Wednesday, February 13, 2008
Min tirsday og onsdag
This Tuesday had two events of note. First off, I was standing in the DIS building with Jen when I noticed a package slip fall into the mail folder with a name on it that I recognized. I sort of yelped and then explain to Jen that I wasn't (entirely) crazy-- "I think I went to camp with that girl." It had to be the same person-- her name is pretty distinct. Someone behind me says, "That's me." I turn around, and lo and behold, it's Yarden from my Environmental History of Europe class. She's a full-year student and we've already met. I say, "I think you came to my Bat Mitzvah" (she did), and immediately she makes the connection and we both get excited for several minutes while playing quick catch-up trying to figure out how the heck we hadn't recognized each other. Talk about your small world! We both had places to be, but hopefully we can do coffee or something after class and catch up properly.
Later on, my three roommates and I went to La Glace, the pastry shop and oldest bakery in Denmark, which is across the street, in celebration of Jackie's birthday. I had a flat wafer-y thing that tasted like a delicious apricot hamantaschen; the others opted for something called a "Sport Cake" that seemed to consist almost entirely of mousse. Dara's and my birthdays will both be during our stay in Copenhagen, too, so that's definitively going to be a place to return to. Those chocolate croissants looked positively deadly.
I had Wednesday off again (no classes and no field trips for any of said classes), so after a leisurely morning filled with exercise and dried fruit from a street vendor on the Strøget (the big walking street), I found Jen over in Østerbro and we explored her neighborhood. Good sushi, cute little boutiques of every sort, and a cheaper-than-Netto grocery store-- she may have to commute to DIS, but it's not a bad area to live at all. In my own wanderings, I also found the gorgeous little Ørsteds Parken (near Nørreport Station)-- check the links from my last post for pictures.
Vi ses på lørdag (after the short study tour)!
Monday, February 11, 2008
Jeg skal spille computerspil!
After much effort and one evening when I just couldn't fall asleep, I present you all with the long-awaited photos!
Sunday, February 10, 2008
En fødselsdag, to museeter, og syv timer i Malmö
Jackie's 21st birthday was delightful! Pussy Galore's Flying Circus turned out to be merely a funky café with some *interesting* wall art, but the food was good, and my grilled tuna salad was big enough to provide lunch the next day, too. As for the Absolut Ice Bar, it was totally touristy and gimmicky and completely worth it. It's not a huge place, but the entire room is in fact made out of ice, down to the benches and glasses. Picture-taking took up most of our stay, and as other people have managed to upload them, I will find a way to do so soon. I have to warn you, though, they're a bit ridiculous-- everyone was issued a giant blue poncho-parka upon entry (apparently more to keep your body heat from melting things than to keep you warm), so we all look more silly than we might otherwise. Dara and I saved our ice-glasses! Not sure what to do with them, as they can't really live outside of the freezer, but they're still fun to show off for now.
Thursday also brought a trip to the Frihedsmuseet, the Danish Resistance Museum, with a couple of girls I found through the Jewish Students group on the DIS Forum. The trip to Østerbro alone was nice-- I love seeing different neighborhoods, as it's all too easy to just hang around in my own--and the area was all along the water and quite lovely. Plus, we found a small but endearing (and blue) cafè on the walk back.
The museum itself was small but well-done, which seems to be a trend. What I think was most interesting was that in all of the time I've spent learning about World War II and Nazis and the Holocaust, I don't think I'd ever considered the experience of any Gentiles off the front lines. This comes back to the utter lack of Scandinavian history to be found in American schools, as far as I or anyone else with whom I've discussed this can tell. I know all about hiding people in attics and French Resistance and food rations in American, but other than reading Lois Lowry's Number the Stars ages ago, nothing of smuggling Jews in fishing boats to neutral Sweden or King Christian & co.'s acquiescence to occupation or Danish plots to divert trains and take down planes. So the museum contained a lot of totally new information, and the sheer amount of artifacts it contained to back all of that history up was amazing.
After an uneventful Friday, I met up with half a dozen other girls (Jackie, Dara, Jen, and new friends Ilana, Hannah, and Sara) Saturday morning to catch a train to Sweden! Yes, the country is so close to København that we can take a day trip to Malmö and still be home in time for dinner (I had an omelette). We didn't even need passports, which was kind of disappointing to those of us seeking new stamps.
Malmö was quite fun-- we kept marveling at how different it was from other European cities we'd each been to, including Danish ones. There were a few squares that made you go, 'Oh, I'm definitely in Europe,' but a lot of the city (and, for reasons I'll get into in a moment, we saw a lot of it) was surprisingly modern, with a whole different aesthetic. Before hunting down lunch, we hit up the Turning Torso, an apartment building whose structure twists 90 degrees from base to top, and the waterfront, where we had an amazing view of the Øresund Sound and the bridge from Sjælland to Sweden, which only just opened in 2000.
After a quick lunch, we backtracked slightly to Malmöhus Castle. Though it's almost 500 years old and clearly holds a lot of history, we didn't get much out of it-- almost all of the exhibits were only in Swedish. And most of them seemed to have little to do with each other, or even with the castle! Cases in point included the aquarium downstairs (accompanied by an exhibit of nocturnal creatures), some strange mirror-tunnel painted with stars, a hall of taxidermied megatrons literally entitled "Really Old Stuff" (of all the things to translate into English there...), and a two-room installation of modern art called "Law and Disorder." Bizarre, all of it, but at least it only cost 20 kr., which in Sweden meant about $3.
After that jaunt, we made it to a few quick sightseeing sights-- City Hall and St. Petri Church in the Stortorget square, the smaller square Lilla Torg, and the pedestrian shopping street Södergatan. Mid-afternoon, we split into two groups; Ilana, Dara, Jackie, and I went in search of the Malmö synagogue. I don't think there was anything of extra significance about it (other than being the only one marked on our tourist map), but it seemed exciting to find Jews in Sweden.
We got majorly lost on the way despite my otherwise superior map-reading skills, which is why we've now seen so much of the city-- although in my defense, I did get us un-lost, to the synagogue, and to a bus stop just in time to meet the others at the train states. The synagogue was lovely from the outside but closed; still, it was worth seeing and we were all glad to have found it. At that point, we pretty much made it home just in time to crash.
Today was entirely quiet and almost unscheduled-- slept in, Pilates class and workout at the nearby gym, some reading, etc. I did go to a screening of the apparently landmark Danish film "The Celebration," which left me more than a bit nauseated (hand-held camera technique) and a bit horrified with humanity.
On the upside, the screening was preceeded by my ordering a chai at Baresso entirely in Danish! The barista even responded in kind, which they never do when it's totally obvious you're not a native speaker, and we only switched to 'Engelsk' when I didn't understand her query if I wanted the drink to go or not. Definitely exciting, however minor. It's like discovering the boots-over-jeans fashion statement-- the little bits of things that click and make you feel kind of assimilated are really, really fun, no matter how trivial or unnecessary. And it's an added bonus that I'm surrounded by Americans that totally understand my reaction.
It's a short week of classes, as we leave Thursday morning for the short study tour, where I'll be learning about local government and the Danish and German minorities on either side of the Danish-German border. Hej-hej!
Thursday also brought a trip to the Frihedsmuseet, the Danish Resistance Museum, with a couple of girls I found through the Jewish Students group on the DIS Forum. The trip to Østerbro alone was nice-- I love seeing different neighborhoods, as it's all too easy to just hang around in my own--and the area was all along the water and quite lovely. Plus, we found a small but endearing (and blue) cafè on the walk back.
The museum itself was small but well-done, which seems to be a trend. What I think was most interesting was that in all of the time I've spent learning about World War II and Nazis and the Holocaust, I don't think I'd ever considered the experience of any Gentiles off the front lines. This comes back to the utter lack of Scandinavian history to be found in American schools, as far as I or anyone else with whom I've discussed this can tell. I know all about hiding people in attics and French Resistance and food rations in American, but other than reading Lois Lowry's Number the Stars ages ago, nothing of smuggling Jews in fishing boats to neutral Sweden or King Christian & co.'s acquiescence to occupation or Danish plots to divert trains and take down planes. So the museum contained a lot of totally new information, and the sheer amount of artifacts it contained to back all of that history up was amazing.
After an uneventful Friday, I met up with half a dozen other girls (Jackie, Dara, Jen, and new friends Ilana, Hannah, and Sara) Saturday morning to catch a train to Sweden! Yes, the country is so close to København that we can take a day trip to Malmö and still be home in time for dinner (I had an omelette). We didn't even need passports, which was kind of disappointing to those of us seeking new stamps.
Malmö was quite fun-- we kept marveling at how different it was from other European cities we'd each been to, including Danish ones. There were a few squares that made you go, 'Oh, I'm definitely in Europe,' but a lot of the city (and, for reasons I'll get into in a moment, we saw a lot of it) was surprisingly modern, with a whole different aesthetic. Before hunting down lunch, we hit up the Turning Torso, an apartment building whose structure twists 90 degrees from base to top, and the waterfront, where we had an amazing view of the Øresund Sound and the bridge from Sjælland to Sweden, which only just opened in 2000.
After a quick lunch, we backtracked slightly to Malmöhus Castle. Though it's almost 500 years old and clearly holds a lot of history, we didn't get much out of it-- almost all of the exhibits were only in Swedish. And most of them seemed to have little to do with each other, or even with the castle! Cases in point included the aquarium downstairs (accompanied by an exhibit of nocturnal creatures), some strange mirror-tunnel painted with stars, a hall of taxidermied megatrons literally entitled "Really Old Stuff" (of all the things to translate into English there...), and a two-room installation of modern art called "Law and Disorder." Bizarre, all of it, but at least it only cost 20 kr., which in Sweden meant about $3.
After that jaunt, we made it to a few quick sightseeing sights-- City Hall and St. Petri Church in the Stortorget square, the smaller square Lilla Torg, and the pedestrian shopping street Södergatan. Mid-afternoon, we split into two groups; Ilana, Dara, Jackie, and I went in search of the Malmö synagogue. I don't think there was anything of extra significance about it (other than being the only one marked on our tourist map), but it seemed exciting to find Jews in Sweden.
We got majorly lost on the way despite my otherwise superior map-reading skills, which is why we've now seen so much of the city-- although in my defense, I did get us un-lost, to the synagogue, and to a bus stop just in time to meet the others at the train states. The synagogue was lovely from the outside but closed; still, it was worth seeing and we were all glad to have found it. At that point, we pretty much made it home just in time to crash.
Today was entirely quiet and almost unscheduled-- slept in, Pilates class and workout at the nearby gym, some reading, etc. I did go to a screening of the apparently landmark Danish film "The Celebration," which left me more than a bit nauseated (hand-held camera technique) and a bit horrified with humanity.
On the upside, the screening was preceeded by my ordering a chai at Baresso entirely in Danish! The barista even responded in kind, which they never do when it's totally obvious you're not a native speaker, and we only switched to 'Engelsk' when I didn't understand her query if I wanted the drink to go or not. Definitely exciting, however minor. It's like discovering the boots-over-jeans fashion statement-- the little bits of things that click and make you feel kind of assimilated are really, really fun, no matter how trivial or unnecessary. And it's an added bonus that I'm surrounded by Americans that totally understand my reaction.
It's a short week of classes, as we leave Thursday morning for the short study tour, where I'll be learning about local government and the Danish and German minorities on either side of the Danish-German border. Hej-hej!
Wednesday, February 6, 2008
Jeg skal på Nationalmuseet.
Apparently DIS-provided Internet does not want to allow me to upload pictures, so that project is at least temporarily on hold. My apologies.
I finally saw Tåsingegade, one of the other DIS apartment buildings where Jen and my new friend Ilana live. It's much more of a 'normal' building than mine is; actually, it looks kind of like a dorm. The rooms are all identical doubles along one long hallway (DIS only owns one floor of the building), plus there's a common room with a television and a bigger kitchen than the ones in each room. While I'm over the moon about my location, it'd be kind of nice to have that dorm-style setup, just in terms of meeting people. We do have a common room here, fortunately, complete with a foosball table and some couches, if no television, but people don't use it much because it's kind of tucked away in the back behind the courtyard.
Skindergade's layout, on the other hand, is just downright bizarre. Each floor is the same size and shape, but they're all laid out totally differently. The front room that's a huge double on the first floor is two smallish doubles on the second, and it's a living room with a small single on the third. The middle room on each floor is a double, but it's size and orientation varies, and do the kitchens on each floor. The back rooms on the other floors are like ours-- a bathroom and two walk-through bedrooms-- but we got lucky enough to have our little downstairs space with the kitchen and dining table, whereas the other floors have 8-10 people sharing one kitchen. And then on the ground floor in the front is an apartment for the guys who serve as our RAs (ignoring for now that Morten is only 18), and nestled in the back of the ground floor is another tiny little double with its own kitchen.
I'm still counting myself lucky, despite the quad thing. The girls I'm living with are really great and we've been doing a lot of food and touring together, though I'm of course trying to meet new people. We're talking about a day trip to Sweden (specifically to Malmö, which is something like half an hour by train from Sjælland and apparently very fun to visit) and more København sight-seeing this weekend. The following weekend is a short study tour with our respective academic programs (the European Politics & Society track goes to Jylland (mainland Denmark) and northern Germany to see local government in action), and the weekend after that I'm off to Cambridge to visit Andy. So, we need to pack in some good activities! Fortunately, we're keeping a running to-do list.
Today was my first field study, with my European Union class. We don't have Wednesday classes here; the day is reserved for field studies with your various classes, and if you happen not to have a field study, it's a free day to wander around the city! I managed to do a bit of both today. My class went to the Folketing, which is the Danish Parliament, which is within easy walking distance of home. We didn't really see Parliament itself (disappointing), but we did get to sit and talk for an hour and a half with the chairman of the European Affairs Committee (which controls Denmark's EU policy) in the committee room, which was interesting and very, very cool. He and our teacher apparently led an effort to get Denmark into the Eurozone when said teacher was in Parliament himself, but that (obviously) failed, and Denmark is still on the kroner, which exchanges at about 5 to the dollar. Of course, everything is way more expensive here, so it always feels more uneven. He also seemed pretty okay with the controversial idea of adding Turkey to the EU, which was surprising.
Afterwards, a couple girls from the class and I wandered to the Nationalmuseet, which was on the way back. It's basically a big history museum, charting Denmark's saga from the Middle Ages to the present, as well as, inexplicably, ancient Greek and Egyptian history. We got a bit lost trying to get out of the drinking horn display room, and a couple of guards grumbled at us for not checking our schoolbags (we didn't know! we swear!), but it was otherwise very interesting. Why don't European history classes at home cover Scandinavia at all? I feel like I could explain a lot of the stuff to see in Paris or even maybe Germany, but I hadn't a clue what went on up here before I arrived. I've also come to realize that recounting Danish history is just a little bit funny-sad, because the short version of it is that the Danes ruled a huge chunk of Scandinavia, including Sweden and Norway, and now Denmark is just this cute, charming little country that looks on a map like it's being eaten by Sweden and Norway.
Tomorrow is my roommate Jackie's 21st birthday, so we're going to the pastry shop La Glace, out to dinner at a place in Nørrebro called Pussy Galore's Flying Circus (?), and for drinks at the Absolut Ice Bar. The latter is clearly a gimmick but involves a bar that is actually made out of ice, so we're falling for it.
Vi ses i weekenden!
Sunday, February 3, 2008
Helsingør og min weekenden!
Two notes:
1) I fixed the commenting function, so you should be able to leave me comments whether you have an account set up or not. Please do!
2) I tried to post pictures last night, but the wireless in Skindergade has been irritatingly problematic and uncooperative this week. Sorry; I'm working on it.
We had a great group of people-- me, roommates Dara and Jackie, Ilana from upstairs, my friend Jen, Hannah from Dara's psychology class, and Eugene from my Migrants class (who also happens to attend UVa with a quarter of my high school and blogs for Campus Progress-- small world). It's not a very big town, so upon arrival we went in search of food-- meaty smørrebrød for those who wanted, veggie sandwiches for those of us who didn't. Someone thought it was supposed to rain, but, aside from the wind that we all could have done without, the day was absolutely gorgeous. We also saw three of the biggest dogs that, I think, have ever walked the Earth. Do the Danish genes carry over to canines? The coastline, like in Roskilde, is rocky and gorgeous-- we snapped several pictures of waves breaking on the shore and of Helsingborg, Sweden, which is only a very short boat ride away.
Kronberg Slot itself was very cool. We took a guided tour of the casements, which included dungeons, storerooms, stables, defense set-ups, and such. Think stony, extremely dark, extremely cold, and extremely eerie spaces-- particularly the prison cell that narrowed to a point in the back of the room, forcing at least one unlucky prisoner in a crowded cell to stay standing. There was also a statue of Holger the Dane, who is supposed to awaken if the country is in trouble, with lighting that slowly dimmed.
The royal apartments were elegant and classy, but simpler than you'd expect. Like Roskilde Cathedral, the castle lacked a lot of the embellishments and expenses of the Danes' western neighbors. That's not to say the place lacked splendor: there were rooms of tapestries and large paintings detailing much of Danish history, including a table canopy, a prop that we'd never heard of. Apparently it's a canopy that hangs over a table and behind the diners on one side of it; in this case, that would be the king and queen who commissioned it. The chapel was a bit more intricate, with great tiled floors, brightly painted woodcarvings, and a big organ.
At this point, though, Kronberg was closing (at three in the afternoon!), so there was little else to do but sample the local pastry shop and catch the train home. For the record, in Danish, danishes are called wienerbrød--literally, "Vienna bread"--even though I'm told the Austrians call them danishes.
Back in København, a group from the building hit up a nearby dance club called Celcius for the night. It was my first time at a club, and it was excellent (minus the apparent lack of ventilation)! Well worth the cover charge, and quite a cultural experience, even if none of us managed to talk to any Danes (aside from a couple of guys who asked if I knew of the NFL, and then walked off when I said I didn't know much). They played lots of American pop music-- the kind that it's fun to half-belt along to while you're grooving, even if it's a bit outdated-- and some seriously strange techno was involved, too.
Today brought a late morning (thank goodness), and a short visit with Jackie and Dara to the Dansk Jødisk Museum at the Royal Library. Their collection of Danish Judaica and related artifacts were great, with plenty of depth and variety despite the surprisingly small building. The architecture of the place was interesting but a little disorienting; everything (including some of the floor) was at a slant. Dara said she'd heard the architect used no right angles, which I believe. The snapshot stories of Danish Jews' assimilation (never quite complete but much more smooth than those of other European countries) made me particularly interested in visiting some of the nearby synagogues and especially the Danish Resistance Museum, which gets into how Denmark saved most of its Jews from the Holocaust by smuggling them to Sweden in 1943. It's only open until 3 pm, but I'm hoping to get there in the next week or two.
Vi ses i morgen!
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