Cake

Today I went on a Hans Christian Andersen and Kierkegaard themed walk. While we didn't walk as far as I thought - I guess I'm saving The Little Mermaid for another day - it was still interesting to learn about the buildings closer to where I live.

We ended up at a very old cafe - so old that Hans Christian Andersen could have been there himself - and had hot chocolate. I also bought this piece of cake. It was very expensive because it is a well-known place with very good cake. I picked a type of cake called H.C.A. and it was delicious!

I blend!

Jeg vil gerne have en burger og en Coca-Cola.

That's how I ordered dinner on Monday night. And I was served a burger and a Coca-Cola, so it seems to have worked. Knowing a sentence in Danish is useful - but it's not that useful.

It kind of amazes me how easy it is to blend in in Copenhagen without speaking the language. I've been here just over a week. And I've studied Danish for less than that. I've been having the "asking people to speak English" experience - buying a public transportation pass at (get this) Seven Eleven, asking for directions, buying school supplies, ordering a pastry (more on that later). Which is normal. It's Denmark, and when you walk up to the counter, the person working there speaks Danish. But today, I was approached by three people trying to speak Danish to me.

This morning, walking towards my 8:30 class, there was a group of people handing out rolls in bags that had information about donating to charity written all over it. At least, that's what I assume is written on it, because a man offered me one of the bags, and when I clued him in on my inability to speak Danish, he told me to remember to donate to Africa and to have a nice day. After class ended at 4, I saw a big event with tents and music on the square, and I kind of think it was a fund raiser related to the delicious breakfast roll I had been given earlier. So then I decided to take a walk, and as I was strolling down Strøget, a young man smiled at me and said something in Danish. The only thing I understood was that he wanted to talk about Unicef. And I only understood that because he was wearing a jacket that said Unicef on it. When I informed him that I am fluent in English only, he told me he worked for Unicef and then he went to talk to someone else. So I continued walking, and I walked into Matas, which is kind of a drugstore except that it's got a ton of perfume and make-up and skincare products, and little to no medication. And as I was looking around, a woman came up to me and asked me a question - in Danish. And then I told her I didn't understand her question because I don't speak Danish, and she walked away. She had a clip-board, making me assume she was asking me to take a survey or something.

So I fit in and look Danish enough that people assume I speak Danish. I don't stick out like a sore thumb, and I don't have a figurative (or literal) neon sign over my head declaring I'm an American. And I think that means I am fitting in well for someone who has been here a week and a half.

Elsinore

I went to Elsinore on Sunday. Here are pictures!

This is the outside of the castle.


And the view looking out from the castle. It was very foggy, but if you look closely, you can see Sweden in the background.


Of course there was a Shakespeare plaque. The tour guide told us that nobody knows whether or not Shakespeare ever went to Elsinore. She said it was very possible that he had actually been there. From the specific detail in the Hamlet, it is clear that either Shakespeare visited in Elsinore or he talked to somebody who had.


I like this door. You can see the C4 at the top of it, which means it was the door of King Christian the Fourth. Every king for quite a very long time has been named Christian or Frederik, so they can "label" things - doors, churches, other things they have built - with their initial and number.

Found

When we were in North Carolina for Christmas, my aunts found a puzzle of Copenhagen at the dollar store. So they got it for me, and we put it all together, and then my pop-pop challenged me to find the picture when I got to Denmark.

Surprisingly, the picture on the dollar store puzzle happens to be one of the most photographed places in Copenhagen. With the exception of The Little Mermaid. So it wasn't that difficult to find. On Saturday, I walked over to Nyhavn, the street the picture is from, and took these pictures!

The picture above is, obviously, me. The actual stretch of street from the puzzle is right across from the buildings all the way to the left. And the picture below is what the puzzle looked like - only it was panoramic, so I think it went a bit further on both sides. And the puzzle didn't have all the cars in it. Oh well.

Yogurt

Carton of yogurt?
Kiwi vanilla flavor?
This is fantastic!

Orientation

I have been going through orientation for my program. Apparently, “orientation" is Danish for “scavenger hunts.” Monday, we did a scavenger hunt for practical places. Yesterday, we went on a scavenger hunt for tons of historical and cultural sites around Copenhagen. Today’s scavenger hunt was hunting for food in a Danish grocery store. I speared the elusive ground oksekød and my foraging for the exotic æble -fruit was successful.

Dulles was Dull

This is a picture of me sipping a Starbucks strawberry smoothie last Saturday at Washington Dulles International Airport. I was there for almost five hours. I read and people watched for a while and then I got this smoothie and opened my laptop to charge my iPod. Which I, of course, didn't use on the plane.

And then I boarded my flight to Copenhagen, ate some not-bad-at-all airplane food, tried to sleep, ate more not-bad-at-all airplane food, ending up in Copenhagen at seven in the morning to be driven towards a glorious two hour nap.

Confession

I've been thinking about plan write-a-blog-post-before-I-leave for about a month now. Even though I created this blog to share my experiences studying abroad, I wanted to get the first post out of the way before getting there. And then I could say, whenever people told me they wanted to hear about my study abroad: "I have a blog." Instead of what they got to hear - "I'm kinda thinking about maybe starting a blog . . . yeah."

First, I was going to write about seeing Much Ado About Nothing. My friend from church choir, Mara, invited me to go with her. It was amazing, partially because I love Shakespeare, and partially because Beatrice and Benedick were spectacular, and partially because the Department of Theatre and Drama did a very good job. But mostly because Joey Richter, who played Ron in A Very Potter Musical, was in it.

My second plan was to write about the drive to North Carolina to visit my grandparents for Christmas. We hadn't driven there in a few years, so the plan was to catch all the thoughtful reflections on past trips and post them on the internet. Thoughtful reflections: The backseat was smaller than I remembered and Ohio took a lot longer to drive through than I remembered. And my first trip to Chick-fil-A yielded a very tasty chicken sandwich. Not-so-thoughtful reflections that were not-so-deserving of their own blog post.

And then the plan was a New Years Eve post. I played Loaded Questions and ate Jell-O. I highly recommend both activities.

I'm sure you can tell which plan I chose - plan wait til the night before my plane leaves, and then give you a lengthy account of the plan. So let's just hope that plan catch-a-plane-to-Denmarks works out better than plan start-my-blog-before-plan-catch-a-plane-to-Denmark!