The poster rule:

As a student of architectural theory, I should have come up with this ages ago: the poster rule.

The poster rule goes, "One cannot feel truly settled or at peace in a place, unless one's wall is festooned with the trappings fit for a long-term abode -- posters."

Simply put, "Until you've got some posters on your wall, good luck feeling at home, Sport."

Well, the other day I finally went out and bought some posters, and things have been on the up and up ever since. The posters themselves (highbrow art prints, of course -- Magritte's Empire of Light and Rauschenberg's America: the third century) cost me an arm and a leg, but the financial hit was well worth it. It's funny how symbolic a move spending a couple minutes to tape some paper to your wall can be, but simple as it may be, actually manipulating one's space gives it a sense of permanence that is otherwise unachievable. This summer, despite the fact that I would be living in my room for only three months, my room was fully decked-out with posters, and I had the time of my life. In comparison, during my postgraduate year at Northfield Mount Hermon, I never took the time to put anything on my walls, and my experience there reflected it. While my year there was an enjoyable and successful time in my life, I still treated it as nothing more than a stopping-over point. I owe the school a lot and I look back on it fondly, but my lack of communication with friends from that time is a testament to my lack of personal investment in making my stay a lasting one. I should have learned from all this, I suppose.

Here in Denmark, I've acted in much the same way. I've resisted altering my environment to reflect the time I will be spending in it, instead treating it as borrowed space that I will be leaving shortly. I'm pretty sure that if Denmark broke its streak of peacetime tomorrow and the military started moving into Copenhagen, I could have been out of here in under twenty minutes. Now, that's still mostly true, but at least I'd have to take my posters down first.

Undoubtedly, in the past few weeks I have been reluctant to really emotionally make the commitment to being here long-term. I've failed to make the investment both financially and mentally in my next few months, instead washing the dishes and sweeping the floor with thoughts of keeping them in good condition for the next person to temporarily occupy this space.

But now, posters, and the difference is clear. I don't mean to pretend that within seconds of admiring my masking-tape handiwork my perspective on Denmark was completely changed, because it wasn't. However, I do feel that much more settled at the end of the day, and mentally I've been able to make future plans for my time here besides remembering when to be at the airport for my departure.

I think I've realized that I may even be having a better time here than I thought. I've reconsidered my real goals, which, although running contrary to those that I elucidated in an earlier post, are that much more reasonable:

1) Get to know as much about Denmark as I can.
2) Travel extensively.
3) Search for the perspective that only time in a foreign environment can provide.
4) And maybe meet some new people.

With those new goals in mind, I've realized that I have accomplished much more than I originally thought. I may not be fluent in Danish or nightly making love to my Danish bride-to-be, but I've gotten to know the country pretty well. I've only scratched the surface, for sure, but I still think that I've been able to identify what exactly makes this country work so well, and what might not. I haven't traveled extensively yet, but with my tickets now booked and my plans solidified, that will happen soon enough. I've certainly come to some new conclusions about myself, Denmark, and the United States -- conclusions I couldn't have reached without this experience. And while I still might not have accumulated as many good friends as I would have hoped, there's time for that too.

In short, I've realized that just because I'm not having the time of my life out on the town every night or filling volumes with rewarding work from my classes doesn't mean that I'm not having a good time. That's not what I'm here for. I can go to the bar anywhere, and academic exploration would be better served elsewhere. Instead, I'm here to learn what I can, immerse myself in the Danish experience, and get a better idea of how the world works.

So while I've previously lamented the fact that I spend more time cooking dinner and riding my bike than collecting crazy stories to tell, I think I'm fine with that. Chalk it up to the posters.



Also, I just finally wrote about day three of my western Denmark study tour, and boy is it a doozy! (I'm being sarcastic. It's mostly unentertaining.)

I'm a ramblin' guy:

To quote the great Patrick Johnson: Holy fucking shit balls.

I have nothing else to say after just spending nearly two hours trying to book plane tickets for various travel around Europe. At this point, I'm not sure if I could come up with a less enjoyable process of booking tickets, even if I was being held at knifepoint in a Moroccan alley (more of that to come later).

In two hours, I have booked (attempted, at least) five different flights on four different airlines. Each one of course required me to reenter all my information, and three of them required trying multiple different credit and debit cards, as each airline has its own master Roulette wheel to determine which cards it will be accepting on any given day. To make things even better, my flight on Transavia (a Dutch airline -- the entire transactions of which were conducted online, in Dutch, with great help from Google Language Tools) decided that it would be fun to charge my card twice, even though, as directed, I did not try to refresh my page or navigate away at any time. Lucky for me, this double charge was just enough to send my bank account into the negative. Now, due to no fault of mine, I have an account balance of -$123.

I am looking forward to the overdraft fee from the bank almost as much as I am looking forward to the struggle of trying to recoup my $600 from an airline that conducts all of its business in Dutch. I also look forward to my cell phone bill, which will probably have higher numbers than I was planning on after being put on hold for a couple of minutes on an international call. All this and more to come in the next few days -- stay tuned!

On the bright side of things -- and it is a significant bright side -- I am in the process of hammering down some of the best three weeks of travel I will ever see.

My three week midterm break starts on October 11th, at which point I will begin a week-long trip to Sweden and Finland with my architecture program. I'm looking forward to seeing more of Scandinavia, and after seeing some Finnish design in my 20th Century Danish Design course the other day, I think that Finland may be the last great hope for impressive Nordic architecture.

Following that week of travel, I will be returning to Copenhagen to meet up with the ole Pops. We're planning on one day for me to drag him around Copenhagen via bicycle, and then shuttling off to elsewhere in Europe. In this case, Elsewhere is Germany, Switzerland, and Austria, where over the course of a few days we will spend time in Munich, Geneva, Zurich, and Vienna. I'm really looking forward to it.

On October 25th, I bid my dad farewell as he flies back to the states, at which point I will be hopping on a train (or two, or three) to Prague. I'll be meeting up with some Middlebury friends in Prague, and crashing on couches there from Saturday, the 25th through Tuesday, the 28th. On Tuesday I fly to Madrid via Dublin, hopefully arriving in Spain in time to see my friend die (not literally, we hope) on his 21st birthday. A couple days to see the city and let him recover from his hangover, and then on Thursday (or Friday, depending), a group of us are flying from Madrid to Marrakesh, Morocco. In Morocco I hope to have some exotic food (hopefully not "exotic" as in, "diarrhea-inducing"), enjoy a favorable exchange rate for the only time in a four month period, and successfully fend off any would-be rapists of my female friends. Finally, on Sunday we all hop a camel and get back to Europe. I'll be flying to Copenhagen via Amsterdam.

And that, assuming it all goes off without a hitch, will be my big European (and African) adventure for now. Perhaps in the remaining weeks of the semester, as I finally get some rest and maybe even save some money, I'll be able to do a couple of long weekends to Amsterdam, Berlin, or Brussels, which are all still on my list. In the meantime, that's still a pipe dream, as -$123 doesn't buy too many train passes.


And for more ramblin' guys, I've been listening to a lot of Steve Martin to pass the time here. He's probably my favorite comedian (if you know me well enough, you probably see where I get my particular brand of humor), and since I can't resist embedding YouTube videos into posts now that I've started, here:

60 Minutes / 90 minutes:

Yesterday in Danish class we watched the popular 60 Minutes clip on Denmark again being voted the happiest country in the world. In the clip, it is mentioned that Danes are the world's happiest people primarily because of their low expectations for life. Keep your expectations low, and you're never disappointed.



I hadn't really encountered any situations where the Danes were much more practical about their expectations than people would be in the US, but after watching the video, I started thinking again.

It had struck me as odd last weekend when in his pregame pep talk, my soccer coach talked about how important getting the win was for our future prospects. At the time we had four games left, and if we won all four, we'd be assured of second place and the chance to move up a division next year. Needless to say, getting the win on that particular day was of the utmost importance. He related as much. However, he followed it up with, "But in the event that we don't come away with all three points today, that's okay too. We will just have to work harder in our next few games."

That comment caught me off guard, and while it seemed odd, I couldn't quite figure out why. But as I realized while sitting in my Danish class, there go those famously low expectations again. I have been privy to many a pep talk in my time in the states, and they never end like that. To even consider the potential for a loss is like already admitting defeat. If we need to win all four of our next games, we're going to win all four of our next games -- even if we don't.

I think in this case, the American Way is far superior. After all, when have we ever been wrong? By ignoring the possibility of defeat, that possibility just goes away. For example, the war in Iraq. WE CAN'T LOSE IF DEFEAT DOESN'T EXIST.

I think language can tell you a lot about a society. For example, the Danes don't have a word for "please" -- a mark of the informality of their culture -- and when white settlers encountered Australian aborigines for the first time, they learned that they didn't have any word for "tomorrow." With that in mind, I think it's about time that the word "defeat" was struck from the English language. This could reflect our brash attitudes towards global discourse and would be emblematic of our unyielding faith in the American Dream. Sure, the connections between language and culture would be retroactive, but when you can't lose, why worry about that?

The home stretch (Day Three, finally):

Ahh, Day Three. Why, it feels like it was two weeks ago -- and it was. At long last, I have gotten around to writing about day three of my western Denmark study tour, and quite frankly, it will probably be a short one. Compared to the sensuous pleasures and exotic sights of days one and two, day three was quite pedestrian. But onward, anyways:

We awoke early, again, hoping to make the most of our day (and by "we," I mean, whoever organized the tour in the first place), rolled out of our clean and comfortable hostel beds, and headed down to the dining room for a quick breakfast. As it turned out, breakfast was a feast compared to most of the meals I've been eating for, and I heartily devoured a large plate of eggs, bacon, and anything else I could get my hands on. In the past few months I've noticed that as I've had to be responsible for an increasingly large portion of my own meals, I've approached eating with the attitude of a black bear in November. Whenever food is put in front of me, I eat as much of it as possible, as I rarely know exactly when or what I will be eating next. To be honest, this consumption of large quantities of food isn't much of a change for me, but at least now I try to formulate rational reasons for why I'm stuffing my face with food (nourishment).

After breakfast it was back on the bus and off to Koldinghus Castle, a really interesting renovation of an older building. I can't remember when the castle was built, but it was a while ago. Then, something like 200 years ago, it burned down, leaving only its stone exterior. Over time the castle became even more of a ruin, until the 20th century when a renovation was proposed. As is customary in Denmark, this proposal was batted around for several decades before any action was taken, but when something was done, it was quite extraordinary. The renovation created a Koldinghus Castle museum inside the original frame without changing any of the preexisting structure. The castle is a really incredible combination of the ancient ruins of the original castle and the inspired design of today. The level of detail in the building is really impressive; even the smallest aspects of the design were tweaked to be just right. The pictures (which I'm stealing from the museum's website) hardly do it justice.


Anyways, we spent about an hour at the castle exploring and sketching our ways to carpal tunnel syndrome before it was time to get back on the bus for an hour and a half. We actually ended up doing a lot of driving on day three, which is normally impossible in Denmark. I didn't realize that we were capable of doing as much driving as we did that day, and I'm somewhat suspicious that we just kept zig-zagging across the country or driving in a circle past the same few barren fields.

Our next stop was an art musuem in a small-ish town on the water. The musuem really served no other purpose than giving us the chance to have lunch in the museum cafe, as we all just walked through all the exhibits on our way too and from lunch. We had priorities. After exiting the museum, we had about an hour to kill in town, which would have been fine if we weren't all running on fumes from the previous two days. I grabbed an ice cream cone with a couple of friends and went down to the water to kill time before the bus came. Luckily, it was a gorgeous day, so this was quite fine. Sitting by the water is probably all I would have done had I had more energy, anyways.

So, an hour by the water thus passed, we again got comfortable on Sally Bussen and headed out for what was thankfully our last stop of the trip. On the way there, we got to pass over Denmark's Great Belt Bridge, the third-longest span for a suspension bridge in the world (1.6 km). In total, the bridge is about 8 miles long, so it's pretty neat to just feel like you're in the middle of the ocean for a while.

Once back on terra firma, we reached our final destination, which was also probably our oddest. We were stopped at a vacation complex for children who have muscular dystrophy. The architecture was interesting enough, yeah, and it was set on a nice spot by the ocean, but muscular dystrophy? Seriously? As we found out, we didn't technically have a contact at the place, so we were really just there to explore and check out the architecture on our own. So basically: "Don't mind me, poor muscular dystrophy patient, I am a student from American, and while you spend your last weeks here in peace and quite with your families, I'm going to peer in your windows and draw all your buildings."

Perhaps the absurdity of this situation isn't clear enough. To spell it out: the complex is a collection of small units that families can rent out in order for their loved one to have a nice place to die. It's not a particularly uplifting spot. And there we were, piling off the Sally Bussen with our cameras and sketchbooks, shattering their tranquility for the sake of architectural exploration. Needless to say, I feel like that probably wasn't the classiest thing I have been involved in in my life.

After some time awkwardly exploring, it was time to get back on the bus and return to Copenhagen. But first, alcohol! Some of my busmates had spotted it earlier in the trip, but apparently our tour leader had a couple of bottles of alcohol stowed away in preparation for when the time was right. Well, the time was right. So there, on the muscular dystrophy center lawn, we all said "Skal" and tossed back a celebratory shot. It was an odd scene.

And that concluded my western Denmark adventure. All in all, a good trip. The stops weren't always enthralling, but the company was good and the change of pace was welcome. It's got me looking forward to my longer tour to Sweden and Finland.

Tales of transport:

A couple of stories from my commutes:

1) The other day it started raining in the afternoon, so I left my bike in the city center and took the bus home. Obviously, the next morning I had to take the bus back in to get it, and it was one of my more memorable bus rides. After a couple weeks of riding my bike, I've begun to dread the unpredictable nature of the bus and the potential for uncomfortable trips. However, on this particular day, it looked like things were in my favor.

For starters, the bus showed up at my stop within a minute of me getting there, which is always nice -- plus it looked fairly empty from the outside. I got on, and was greeted by a somewhat over-enthusiastic bus driver who was dancing along to the pumping techno that he apparently had decided to blast over the bus speakers. As I headed back to my seat (the bus was relatively empty, and I got a seat, which is not usually the case), I wondered whether I had unwittingly stumbled onto some sort of joke party bus that was taking us to a rave at 11:00 in the morning. I sat in my seat, and the bus driver thankfully turned down the music, the volume of which until then had been set to somewhere between "11" and "sonic boom." The ride was fine and uneventful for a couple of stops -- although the bus driver did at one point start honking along with the music for a solid twenty seconds -- but within minutes, the ride had degraded into the misery that I've found is common on good old 6A. We pulled up at a stop that looked like Times Square on New Years Eve, except that the millions of screaming people are all small, hyperactive young children. Sure enough, all fifty of them (and, inevitably, their two or three underprepared chaperons) piled on, which was more than a little snug. One friendly little guy hopped into the seat next to me, which was fine until he started trying to wrestle with the kid in front of him. I passed ten more lovely minutes on the bus being jostled and generally unhinged by a horde of wild Danish pre-adolescents before they thankfully all streamed off and I was able to continue my ride in peace. Needless to say, I'm sticking with the bike.

Speaking of biking, more tales from the rat race:

2) Yesterday I was biking home after school when some unwitting pedestrian looked like he might step into my path. I was just about to say something and/or start ringing my bell accusingly at him (see previous posts), when he turned around, and I noticed his dark glasses and white and red cane. My bad.

3) Less than a minute later, I was passing another biker, when I noticed something odd. As he was riding his bike, he held crutches in one hand (his right foot was in a walking cast) while talking on his cell phone with the other. With common sense like that, I wonder how he could have gotten hurt in the first place...

4) And finally, also on yesterday's ride back from school (an eventful one, for sure), I was just pedaling along, minding my own business, when something caught my eye. There are a lot of bikers in Denmark, so naturally we end up packed pretty tight sometimes, and in this particular case, I was riding close behind a woman in her late twenties or early thirties. Although it is difficult to confirm from a bicycle, I'm reasonably certain that this woman was one of the two or three women in Denmark who are not certifiably gorgeous, and fortunately enough for me, an enormous portion of her thong was hanging out in my face. I'm sure this happens a lot, but it's the first time I've noticed. Regardless, I dropped it into a low gear and hightailed it out of there. All I know is, by the time she got home, she probably needed a pair needlenose pliers or minimally-invasive surgery to take care of that wedgie. Good times.

Ruminations on a lonely Friday night:

I'm sure (hopeful, at least) that in three months (three weeks?) I will look back on this post and laugh. But in the meantime:

I really hate it here. Hate is probably (definitely) too strong a word, but I can't say I like it. Even though I'm over the hurdles of the first few weeks -- trying not to get lost, figuring out where to buy food, making new friends -- I still feel like I'm not really enjoying myself. I can't say I'm not settled, because I've fallen into somewhat of a routine, but for whatever reason, none of this is making sense with me.

It's not Denmark, really -- although I can now identify both the country's strengths and weaknesses, I don't think that it's the country itself that could be affecting my good time -- and it's not the people -- I'm sure they're all good, fun people that I just need to get to know better. I'm sure it's just me (it always is). I'm just not that excited to be here.

I'm not sure I really understand the whole study abroad thing, in general. It's like, you spend the first two years of college cultivating these great friendships, and then you go and intentionally separate yourselves for a couple months at a time, under the guise of broadening horizons and searching for new experiences. Granted, the following statement should probably be qualified, but as far as I'm concerned, you have the whole rest of your life to be separated from your friends -- why do it now? College is the one time in your life when so many of the people you love can be found in one place. Sure, people argue that the likelihood of traveling when you're older is that much less, or that college ultimately is about challenges and finding oneself, but I don't buy it. I think that if travel and self-exploration is really that important, we'll all find a way to do it at some point or another. In the meantime, why put ourselves through the misery of leaving our friends during the one time that we're all together? What are the chances that we all will live anywhere near any of our closest friends 5, 10, 25 years after college? With that somewhat predetermined (though not fated) separation in mind, why sacrifice time spent together now with a couple thousand miles of water and foreign soil?

Looking back on the lead up to this trip, I could have expected this. I never really felt like I got excited to go. All spring and summer, I was pretty lukewarm on the whole thing, and by the end of the summer, I really had no desire to leave. In the days leading up to departure, sure, I got more excited, but I think that that happens anytime one embarks on something different. My heart was never really in this, I'm afraid, and worse, in order to compensate for my ambivalence about the whole thing, I just built up my expectations more and more. People had told me that this would be the time of my life -- that it is "soooo fun" -- so naturally I told myself that, "Yes, you might not be excited now, but it will be awesome once you get over there." I countered my lack of enthusiasm with unrealistic expectations that have made the reality of the situation that much harder to deal with. And now, that's the mindset I have continued, to a certain extent: "I'm sure in a couple more weeks you'll be having the time of your life." In the meantime, I'm not.

As I've slowly become more and more aware of my unhappiness over here, I've tried to look for solutions whenever possible. I've kept thinking about the cheesy "Study Abroad Adjustment" graph that Middlebury provides, showing the ups and downs of one's time abroad, but I wonder, do I fit into that graph? Will I ever follow the logical progression of things and climb back up the graph to the level of "acceptance abroad?" I don't know, and only time will tell.

In the meantime, I've got to stay positive, and accept this feeling more as the result of an unsatisfying Friday night than as the overarching theme of my time abroad. I'm still holding out for the great times that were promised me in only a few more weeks time, and I know that to find them, I'll have to be proactive and keep an open mind. For my own mental health and for those undoubtedly worrying about me at home, I just have to stay positive, be active, and enjoy myself. In the meantime, only 90 more days until I fly home...

Day Two:

The sun rose on day two, and so did we, after a surprisingly restful and scabies-free sleep on our thin hostel mattresses. After a brief shower and a traditional Danish breakfast at the hostel, we all piled into the Sally Bussen and set off for whatever the day had in store.

Stop one was Århus University, another masterpiece of Danish Functionalism. Again, I was underwhelmed, as I frequently am with Modernist buildings, but the campus itself was lovely. On a nicer day (it was wet, cold, and windy -- a precursor to the Danish winter, methinks), it would have been great to sit outside by the duck pond or read a book in the amphitheater, as long as one could overlook the hideous architecture. All of the buildings were the same yellow brick and followed the same language of proportions. This would have been a pleasant effect if the buildings themselves were pleasant, but otherwise it was less than inspiring. The insides, again, were nice enough, and if I'm allowed to make an enormous generalization, I think the Danes are more adept at creating spaces and industrial design than they are at true architecture. But that's just me.


Next up was the Århus Crematorium Chapel (if you think it's weird that we visited a crematorium, you ain't seen nothing yet), which was a pretty cool building, but I don't really have any pictures, so I'll spare excessive descriptions. Maybe if I ever get really motivated I'll scan in some of my sketches, but probably not.

Our next diversion was Komfort Husene, a new Danish development that looked suspiciously like 1950s suburbia. Our tour leader touted the subdivision as cutting-edge, progressive design, because all of the buildings are passively heated and cooled. However, she seemed to overlook the fact that the buildings were all in the middle of nowhere and would require a minimum of fifteen minutes' drive to get anywhere relevant. In fact, she later told me, some people living there would probably end up driving an hour each way to work in Århus. I didn't realize that it was even possible to drive an hour straight in Denmark without running into the ocean, but I guess it is.


I find "cutting-edge" new developments like these particularly infuriating. It's one thing to build a new subdivision and rape the land and place where you put it, but it's another thing completely to do it under the pretense of creating environmentally-friendly housing. How long will it take people -- in Denmark, of all places -- to realize that American, car-oriented suburbs will never be environmentally friendly? Until we start building places more readily accessible by bike and public transportation (they need not even be traditionally urban, for those less willing to live in a city), our towns and cities will never be as efficient as they could be. Furthermore, besides their increased insulation, the buildings on this particular site ignored countless important factors when considering good building in general, not to mention sustainability. The houses are built on a green fields site (industry jargon for, "green fields that used to not have anything on them"), they're all surrounded by conventional sod lawns that will require fertilizers, pesticides, and maintenance, and the development might as well be in Tornado Alley, because the wind was a howlin' when we were there, and Denmark is a pretty windy country. Why the architects (a collection of noted Danish designers) didn't opt for trees for shade and wind protection or two-story construction to minimize the building footprint is beyond me. Sometimes I just don't get it. Oh, and did I mention the cost? 6 million Danish kroner per -- also known as $1.2 million dollars. If I wanted a long commute and a one story suburban starter home, I would have lived in Dallas.

I got on the bus early at Komfort Husene, unwilling to sketch faulty design, and sat for a while while our bus driver was passed out in the front seat. The driver had actually made for great entertainment thus far on the trip. He seemed new to driving, as the bus stalled four times on day one and five on day two, and he also didn't seem to realize that none of us spoke Danish, because he kept getting on the microphone and saying things really enthusiastically in rapid Danish, expecting that maybe we had learned to understand him in the minutes since he last spoke.

After leaving suburbia, it was off to Jelling, where we looked at some sweet mounds. There was a pretty good modern art museum there, and the town itself was quite charming. I always think it's weird how things like art museums always seem to be in completely random rural towns, but hey. I guess the mounds keep a steady stream of tourism going. God I love mounds.


Just say "mounds" a few times, and you probably will too.

Our final stop for the day -- our days were absolutely packed, and were almost as tedious as I'm sure this blog post is -- was the "Municipal Building" in Vejle. To me, "municipal building" essentially means, "town hall," but apparently to the Danes, it translates to, "mystical land of wonder and awe." I have no way of describing the point of this building, but it was awesome. The structure itself had some cool parts, but again, without pictures my descriptions are mostly pointless. What was awesome about it, though, was how much random stuff they managed to cram in there. Apparently, the building is somewhat of a museum, and has various children's exhibits on Vejle, nature, and other random things. There is a big aquarium in the basement. It seemed that around every corner was something that much more surprising, fun, and absurd than that which came before it, and we were enthralled. Kids' museums rule.

Finally, the day was done, and we again stocked up on alcohol before heading out to our hostel, which was removed from the rest of the city. We were initially disappointed that we wouldn't be able to spend a night walking around the city, but our disappointment was made up for when we found out that our hostel was more of a really nice motel than trashy hostel (private, clean bathrooms; spotless rooms; and sweet ammenities), we and another DIS group would be the only ones there, and it had a trampoline.

Another fun and notably hilarious night was had, which included the by-then-traditional sitting outside and freezing our asses off for a while. It was great. Also, there were lots of bros there, so incredible advances were made in the "bro" lexicon -- terms such as, "brozone layer," "brocery store," and now that I think about it, "brocabulary." Talking bro is so fun.

Jutland and elsewhere (Day One):

Thursday through Saturday of last week was spent on a bus, traveling the roads of western Denmark in search of inspiring architecture and real Danish culture. Whether any of either was actually found is neither here nor there, but the trip in general was a welcome change of pace and a good opportunity to meet some new people.

Buses departed at 8:00 AM on Thursday. We traveled with our programs, and within the Architecture and Design program there were three groups. Each group followed a slightly different itinerary, and my group set out for our first stop, Hagested Kirke, a somewhat historic church in the middle of Nowhere, Denmark. The Danish countryside was nice to see, and while I can't say that it was always gorgeous or was particularly worthy of comment, after three years in rural environments, I was ready to escape the city. The church was nothing special, but it presented an opportunity to sketch, something we would all be encouraged (required) to do over the next few days. So it was out with the sketchbooks, cameras, and critical eyes, and everyone took part in quiet contemplation and furious scribbling for the period of an hour. While in general not a particularly interesting spot, it is worth noting that Danish cemeteries are apparently the best landscaped areas in the entire country. The one at Hagested Kirke was meticulously maintained, with each particular gravesite demarcated by its own bonsai-esque hedge and surrounded by an assortment of ornamental plants and trees. Pretty cool. After an hour, it was back on the bus and off to our next stop.


We next hit the ferry for a ride to Århus, Denmark's second largest city. The ferry was surprisingly plush on the inside -- a far cry from any salt-soaked harbor ferry in the US -- and traveled at a ridiculous clip. The ship threw off an absolutely monster wake, and while it was entertaining to imagine wakeboarding back there, it would have been completely impractical, as one basically would have been dragged behind the boat while be soaked with the entire contents of an Olympic sized swimming pool every second. Trust me, it was big. About an hour and one catnap later, we arrived in Århus, which it turns out is almost completely different from Copenhagen.

Århus appears to be much more of a working city than Copenhagen: the waterfront is dotted with various docks and factories -- as opposed to Copenhagen's various opera houses and museums -- and the skyline is marked by several smokestacks. It turns out that Århus is also correspondingly less fussy than Copenhagen, making it generally that much more fun to be in and hang around; I didn't feel like I was going to get yelled at for stepping into the street every single second.

Our first stop in Århus was the Århus City Hall, designed by the Danish architectural equivalent of Jesus, Arne Jacobsen. The building is notable primarily for the fact that due to its prolonged design schedule, Jacobsen and a few others had the privilege of designing everything, both inside and out. Outwardly, the building is a disappointment. Supposedly a landmark structure, its appearance is no more notable than any exurb office building back in the states. We later learned from our tour that the entire structure is clad in marble "from Norway," but after years of wear, the effect is more concrete stained by birdshit than gorgeous Norwegian marble. It is a seriously ugly building.

Inside, it has its moments. A lot of the furniture and several light fixtures are quite beautiful, and the quality of light in some spaces is really sensational. Besides that, I was underwhelmed. Parts of the building resembled a prison, while others brought to mind the tackiness of someone's grandmother's house, albeit without the requisite plastic-covered furniture. One room -- "The Wedding Room" -- had walls made of a special hardwood imported from western Africa, yet they had decided to have some two-bit Danish artist paint all of the wildflowers of Denmark all over the room. The effect was more Bob Ross than Leonardo da Vinci, and without the awesome hair. The most egregious addition to the building, however, had to be the mural that graced an enormous wall in the front lobby. Honestly, it has to be the single worst piece of artwork I have ever seen in my life. And remember, I was in preschool once.


I think the building would actually have been better off getting a group of preschoolers to fingerpaint the entire thing; instead, it looks like they sent out the B-Unit from the Perkins School for the Blind (and quite frankly, that is an awful insult to the Perkins School for the Blind -- I am sorry already). The colors are awful, the people are portrayed like department store mannequins, and there are at least five different perspectives in the mural -- all done incorrectly. The worst thing about it has to be the fact that the painter painted himself in in the bottom left corner, just plugging away at his work. He has a ridiculous mustache. This comes as no surprise. Our tour guide informed us that at first when the painting was revealed, the townspeople were angry, because they did not want nude people running around the walls of their respectable public building. I am surprised that is all they took offense to. However, the nudity is perhaps the most irksome thing when one has taken to hating the artist (as I have, if I have not already made that clear): people are portrayed in various poses in their birthday suits all over the mural, and yet our hero, the painter himself, is shown surprisingly modestly. I think that's just cowardly. The painter went through great pains to depict the genitalia of every other person in the work, in his characteristic, cartoonish style, and yet he deprived us of the chance to laugh at his own manhood. Personally, I would have loved to see this tragically awful egotist attempt to paint his nether regions. Progress probably would have stalled for months until he got it just right, and by then the townspeople would have been left with nothing more than a man, a mustache, and a comically large phallus -- something I think would have made for a much more pleasing composition. But enough on that.


Perhaps the highlight of the Århus City Hall was getting to climb to the top of the tower, where we were rewarded with views in all directions. There are very few tall buildings in Denmark, so the tower put us comfortably above the level of all other structures. There was plenty to look at.


After a few minutes, we descended, and it was off to ARoS, the Århus museum of art. The building was somewhat cool on the inside, though not all that different from other buildings of similar purposes, and the art was similar. As one would expect, the museum's collection consists mostly of Danish artists, and in a country of only 5.3 million people, finding artists worthy of praise at the global level would of course be difficult. There was one work from Robert Rauschenberg that was impressive to look at, but besides that, there was little else. Some of the most recent work from the 1980s-on was entertaining and provocative, but any Danish work before that seemed far too derivative of everything else. There were several times when I walked up to a painting hoping that it might be a little-known work from some 20th century master along the lines of Picasso or Matisse, only to find that it was just a bad Danish knockoff. Why anyone calling themself an artist would knowingly copy someone else is beyond me, but I guess that is why there are only a few great artists who have been able to separate themselves from the rest of the mural-painting horde.

Our lodging for the night in Århus was the Århus City Sleep-In, a hostel with some sort of globe-trotting tortoise as its mascot. The accommodations were typical hostel fare, and the five other gents in my room and I were all wary about putting our clean, disease-free sheets on the dingy hostel mattresses.

By then the night was ours, and I shared a meal ($20 Cobb salad, $10 beer) with some classmates canalside in downtown Århus. The food was good, the beer cold, and the conversation lively, and after the meal we joined up with more of our American brethren and made a mass exodus to the last grocery store open (it was 7:45, and pretty much every store in the entire city was closed already) to buy alcohol. Minutes later, we all tumbled out, carrying as much as we could, and elected to sit on some benches next to the canal, as it was obviously far too early to go to a bar.

What resulted was one of the most enjoyable times I have had so far in Denmark. Conversation ranged from squirrels (really) to politics, and it was nice to have an earnest conversation and get to know some new people. I'll spare details from the rest of the night, but we spent quite a while freezing our asses off by the canal before moving to an Irish pub for a bit (where everyone was speaking English! ...It's kind of pathetic how comforting that can be), and then retired on the early side, as it would be a 7:00 AM wake up call the next morning.

This concludes day one.

But first, more thoughts:

I've found that rarely do my experiences follow a logical, building formula towards a great understanding or epiphany; instead, realizations happen irrationally in quick, unexpected bursts. I notice small things, from time to time, and months later, I am able to look back on a period of collected insignificant recognitions with the hindsight and comprehension that the passage of time has afforded me. Perhaps predictably, trying to find my way in a new country has progressed similarly. While it is hard to make generalizations about the quality of life or the quality of my experience here, it easy to tally the things I notice along the way as a larger summation of what I have experienced. In time, I'm sure looking back on all this will provide me great insight and a greater understanding of what will soon (but not too soon) be my four months in Denmark.

Enough philosophizing. On to more trivial (at least for now) things:

Thought One: Today at the grocery store I paid over twenty dollars for a small jar of pesto, a bag of muesli, and a bottle of ranch dressing. Holy fuck. I think I may need to stop shopping at Irma, the Whole Foods of Denmark. I think I may also need to take out a loan.

Thought Two: Apparently there was a shooting in my neighborhood, Nørrebro, this weekend. I didn't know anything about it since I am incapable of reading Danish newspapers, but everyone in my kollegium received an email assuring us that we are all safe. Well, that's good news. Also, funny, since none of the other Americans I talked to had any idea about either, so that reassuring email just made people more nervous. The shooting, as most in Denmark are, was related to gang matters, so unless I happen to make the wrong hand signs or wave guns around in the street, I should be okay. Fingers crossed.

What is hilarious, and also kind of pathetic, about this whole thing is that it probably makes Denmark the most dangerous place I have ever lived. When Denmark is the most dangerous place you've lived, most people probably wouldn't be surprised to hear that you spent the majority of your life in a hermetically sealed environment (like Sarah Palin!) and not out on the streets as a gangbanger. But I don't know, I have heard of members of the Crips and Bloods shuddering at the thought of a night alone on the mean streets of Copenhagen. I'm just not sure whether Copenhagen qualifies as "East Side" or "West Side." In the meantime, I'll just use both and wait until I get shot at to figure out which one is right.

Thought Three: On Sarah Palin, I've spent the past hour or so watching lots of footage of her on the internet, including Charlie Gibson's recent interview on ABC. The interview is certainly worth watching, and I think makes even clearer the fact that this woman is in no way qualified to take a tour of the White House -- let alone work in it. Straightforward questions seem challenging, and she actually repeats the ridiculous assertion that the fact that Russia is visible from some parts of Alaska gives her foreign policy experience. Watch it here.

Perhaps some of the best commentary on this whole Sarah Palin charade comes from Matt Damon:



Absolutely spot on.

Thoughts:

Thoughts on soccer, namely, the game I just played in: Man, am I fucking tired.

Thoughts on life in Copenhagen: I had my first experience of quasi-belonging just now, as I was riding my bike home, exhausted from aforementioned soccer game, when I had my first chance to get irritated at an obnoxious tourist. There I am, just riding along, when some complete ignoramus just walks out into the bike lane. He's talking on his cell phone, to boot. I'm riding past a touristy spot -- one of Denmark's numerous castles -- so it's clear: this guy doesn't belong. He doesn't know the rules of the road the way I do. So I ring my little bell with a sense of calm urgency -- ding. No response. I give it another go -- ding! Again, nothing. So I ring that little jingling bell for all it's worth -- DINGDINGDINGDINGDINGDING -- in a tone that very clearly says, "What do you think you're doing, you foolhardy foreigner? It is clear you don't belong here, you ignorant tourist, you obnoxious visitor from distant shores. Why don't you understand the way things are here -- the way I do? Please, sir, follow the laws of the land, or I will be required to force you to comply by running you over on my seven speed bicycle -- in a particularly Danish, removed sort of way." There was still no response, so hopped off the curb into the road, passed him by, and shot him The Look. I don't think he got the message.

Other thoughts: ...will be coming later, including a very thorough description of the past few days' study tour to western Denmark.

A walking tour of Copenhagen:

I didn't go on a walking tour of Copenhagen. This isn't one, either. Rather, it is a brief overview of some interesting areas within the city -- and Copenhagen has a lot of interesting areas.

1) Brumleby is a really neat neighborhood located in Østerbro, made up of several long, yellow buildings arranged in rows. It doesn't sound interesting, and it didn't look it, either, when I was assigned to study and prepare a presentation on it for my architecture class. Lucky for me, however, a visit to the neighborhood itself made me change my mind completely. I'll spare you most of the details, but Brumleby was built in the 1850s as healthier housing for the working class after the cholera epidemic of 1853 (which killed roughly 1/3 of Copenhagen's population at the time). It was occupied for several decades, but by the middle of the 20th century, it had fallen into disrepair. In the 70s, students moved in and squatted the neighborhood, even though it lacked facilities like interior plumbing. Over the next couple of years, there were significant conflicts between the students and the authorities, as some groups wanted to demolish Brumleby and redevelop the valuable inner city land it sits on, while others wanted to renovated and preserve the community. Finally, by the 1990s a decision was made, and the buildings were renovated, restored, and converted into apartments of varying sizes.

Today, Brumleby is an awesome little community that still maintains some of the aspects of its past as a squatters' residence. There are numerous community councils, public gardens, community spaces like a meeting hall, party space, woodshop, and dark room, and neighborhood relationships are very strong. The apartments are small, so a lot of time is spent outside. Cars aren't allowed inside Brumleby, so the entire neighborhood is this great, quiet oasis from the rest of the city. Well-established trees create a beautiful promenade between the buildings, and private patios open onto public gardens. More time is spent outside than in. The best way to appreciate Brumleby's aesthetics is through pictures, and there are quite a few good ones here.


2) While normally I wouldn't voluntarily spend much time in a cemetary, Assistens Kirkegård is actually a really nice spot. Located in Nørrebro, the cemetary is home to nearly every famous dead person in Denmark. Hans Christian Andersen, Søren Kierkegaard, and the three other famous people in Danish history are all buried there. In all seriousness though, it's a nice spot. One would think it would be weird hanging out near gravestones the whole time, but the area is much more park than cemetary. It's pretty secluded, and at least from my first visit, it doesn't seem like it ever gets very crowded. I could easily see myself taking a girl on a romantic stroll there, assuming that she finds dead people as romantic as I do. Not sure that'll ever happen, however, as the one time I went in I almost didn't get back out, as they locked the gates behind me. Apparently I went in right before closing time (6:30?), because a couple minutes later when I returned to the entrance, it had been closed and locked behind me. It took a couple of minutes of wandering, but luckily I found another exit and managed to get out. Otherwise, I probably would have curled up around Kierkegaard's tomb and called it a night.


3) Finally, a touristy spot. Nyhavn is the spot that appears in every picture one will ever see of Copenhagen (you know, the row of brightly colored buildings on the water?), so it's the quintessential touristy area for anyone visiting the city. Anyway, I took a swing down there this weekend, and despite being the biggest tourist photo-op in Copenhagen, it's actually quite nice -- and not tacky at all. There are lots of restaurants in the aforementioned brightly colored buildings, and hundreds of people were outside eating and drinking on the waterfront. On a nice day, a beer and a meal canalside at Nyhavn would be hard to beat.


One word of warning, however: if you decide to partake in an ice cream cone in Denmark (as one typically would on a warm and sunny day), get the small. Not because Danish proportions overwhelm the US's gargantuan serving sizes, but because after more than a few bites, you'll start feeling nauseous. At Nyhavn I got a medium cone, which was at first delicious, but by the time I was halfway done, I was ready to puke. Danish ice cream (soft-serve, anyway), is much thicker and richer than American varieties, so eating it is that much more of an ordeal. It's like if you were forced to eat a tub of vanilla frosting in one sitting -- maybe the first few bites would seem really delicious, but by the end, you'd be ready to empty your stomach contents into the nearest receptacle and switch from birthday cakes to birthday carrot sticks for the rest of your life.

Please note:

My blog will now -- until it is unceremoniously pulled, that is -- be included as one of the "DIS Student Blogs" on the DIS website, which I am now required by contract to link to from this site (I have done it twice so far). Why subject myself to the strict guidelines set by DIS, you might ask? It's simple, really.

1) There is a cash prize for the best blog entry at the end of the semester.
2) I am desperately seeking new readers in the event that someone sees my blog and offers me a position as a travel writer, a profession that I have recently decided would be quite a lot of fun.
3) After reading some of the stuff whipped up by previous DIS students, I felt like providing a more entertaining (and informative?) view of good old Copenhagen.

Of course, this important shift from a net readership of approximately zero (0) readers per day to the incredible figure of several (3? 4?) readers per day does not come without its downsides. For example, DIS has standards about what constitutes acceptable content. Thus, my blog will no longer contain the detailed database of child pornography and links to terrorist websites that it once did. This is just one of the unfortunate sacrifices one has to make when selling out to The Man.

For those of you just joining us now, the previous paragraph contains what is known as sarcasm. And there's plenty more where that came from, so get used to it, Toots.

Fly whips and l'Alpe d'Huez:

I got me some wheels the other day. It's a hot ride, sitting on 20 inch (or metric equivalent) dubs, with a bumpin' soundsystem. It's my bike.


After nearly two weeks of consideration, all it took was a little peer pressure for me to finally make my decision and fork over the roughly 500 kroner it costs to rent a bike for five weeks. And let me tell you, I knew within minutes that I had made the right decision. I should have figured this out beforehand; that if a full third of Copenhageners ride bikes to work everyday, there's probably a good reason for it. Having a bike shrinks the city immeasurably. Copenhagen is a relatively small city already, but it's still hard to explore on foot, as reaching new areas from the familiar city center takes time and energy. But with a bike, everything is that much closer. Riding around the other day with a few friends, we crossed nearly the entire city in a matter of minutes (riding bikes is probably just as fast, if not faster, than driving in a car), so my prospects for future exploration look good.

Riding a bike has also made my commute that much more predictable (in a good, reliable way). No more waiting for the bus while the little screens for estimated time of arrival remain unchanging on "four minutes" for what is at least ten, and no more worrying about whether the bus will get really crowded and uncomfortable. Plus, the bus is really hot. In general, Copenhagen's bus system is efficient and effective, but after a couple of rides where the door has gotten stuck, the bus driver has decided to get everyone off for no apparent reason, and I've sat one seat over from a homeless man talking to himself -- loudly, the freedom provided by a bike is a welcome change.

I rented my bike from CPH Bike Rental, with whom DIS has struck up a relationship that entitles its students to reduced rates on rentals. Spending one's hard earned Danish kroner there has additional benefits, as well. CPH Bike Rental is the fundraising end of Baisikeli (Swahili for "bicycle"), a project that works to assist developing economies in Africa through the donation of secondhand bikes from Denmark. Some of the bikes that Baisikeli collects are rented out through CPH Bike Rental, while the rest are shipped to Africa to provide a reliable form of transportation for small businesses there. So in addition to getting yourself a sweet city cruiser for checking out the local sites and scenes, you can provide an African small business owner with a sweet village velo for checking out his or her sites and scenes (and, you know, business stuff).

So far I've been having a grand old time getting my Lance on on the way to and from school, but, like everything, there were first some things to learn. Copenhagen has some pretty well established norms for biking -- stay to the right except for passing, anyone riding at night needs working lights, and use hand signals liberally but subtly -- but it's well worth it for the chance to be drafting off some Danish babe with her hair and scarf waving gracefully in the wind.

Danish women know how to ride. At first it was a little disconcerting being passed by a blond beauty wearing a skirt and heels, but I've forced myself to get used to it. Granted, I'm just out for a leisurely ride to school, so I have no reason to push the pace the way Danish women apparently do. They're probably all running late for some sort of meeting where they brush their golden locks, make up more words that are impossible to say, and the government pays for everything. Of course, I'm sure that if this were a mountain stage in the Tour de France that I could put these Danes in their spot. I'd challenge Debby Gorgeous Danish Woman to keep pace with me up l'Alpe d'Huez anyday, and you can bet your government funded education and ungodly beauty that she'd be feeling the burn. Nearing the top of the peak, I'd make my move, breaking away from the group while Phil Liggett and Paul Sherwen remark with their usual urgency, "Oh my...he's absolutely dancing on the pedals!" At that point, I'd turn around to my beautiful, but soon-to-be-defeated competitors and give them The Look, which of course means, "I'll meet you in the hotel at the top of the mountain. Bring the massage oils."

Weekend update:

My room looks like a bomb went off in it right now. And one did -- a drunk bomb. Stuff is everywhere: coins and bottle caps cover my desk like spent shells, and clothing is strewn across the room like casualties of a particularly bloody battle. One of my particularly effective late night drunken bombing raids, I would say. Now, on to other things. There is a lot to cover.

1) I made an awesome, yet somewhat terrible decision last night. Luckily, it was completely unlike my typical bad decisions, but 'twas a bad decision nonetheless.

On my half mile walk from bar to bus stop last night, I ingested two "hotdogs with everything" and two hamburgers. Disgusting, yes -- but awesome? I think so. It was simple, really. It was late, I was hungry, and I had Danish Monopoly money to burn.

It started innocently enough. I went to one of Copenhagen's many sausage stands, and asked for a hotdog with everything -- technically, the "ristet hotdog," but I decided that in my inebriated state I would avoid any attempt of proper pronunciation. Plus, when I had tried to ask for one completely sober a couple days earlier, they still didn't know what I was talking about. Dutifully, the nice man working the stand began to prepare my dog. A "hotdog with everything" is a wonderful arrangement of the finest Danish junkfood delicacies. It starts with the 'dog itself, which is awkwardly long, and protrudes significantly on either side from the bun, which is correspondingly small. Next, the dog-bun arrangement is covered with a medley of substances: ketchup, mustard, some other mustard, some mayonnaise-like thing that is probably more mustard, diced raw onions, diced fried onions, and a blanket of pickles to keep everything in good order. It is quite delicious, and can be had for the tidy sum of 22-24 Danish kroner, depending on the stand (just over $4).
Back to the story at hand. I got my hotdog, and it was summarily devoured within seconds. Delicious, yes, but satisfying? Far from it. I kept walking, my hunger yet to be sated. Luckily, sausage stands are to Denmark what fat people are to America -- they're everywhere. Especially in touristy places. So within the space of maybe one hundred meters, I encountered another stand, where with no hesitation I got in line, got my dog, and dispatched another ristet hotdog directly to the gut.
I kept walking, but I was still hungry, so I made the executive decision that I would stop at every sausage stand I encountered on the walk back, until I either: a) arrived at my destination, b) ran out of money, or c) puked three different mustardy substances onto Copenhagen's cobbled streets. I was a man on a mission.

I got to another stand about a minute or two after leaving the last, and again waited my turn. This time I decided to go out on a limb and ask for the "bøf sandwich," or, in American, "hamburger." My request was granted, and for only a bit more money, I received a significantly larger portion of food -- a burger piled high with all of the accoutrements previously described on the ristet hotdog. It was quite good.

I kept walking, feeling around in my pockets for more loose change. I felt like a junkie looking for his next score -- stumbling, glancing around all shifty-eyed, not sure whether he'll have enough money to get what he needs. I think if my money had run out, I wouldn't have been opposed to selling my body on the street to pay for my next dog. Of course, in that case, I'd probably be getting enough sausage as is.

I finally arrived at the station, where I bought another burger at the last sausage stand on my walk. It was as good as the first. I waited a couple minutes for my bus, then wasn't sure whether or not I was at the right place, so I walked back up the station a bit. I tried to decide whether passing by another stand (it was probably fifty feet from the other one) as I walked through the station counted as part of my journey, but I refrained from indulging in another meaty snack. It was probably for the best.

While I had a great time and was, eventually, fully satisfied, by this morning I began to regret my culinary adventure. I awoke with the taste of three different mustards in my mouth, which is not all that delicious when not combined with a loaded dog or burger. Regardless, I wouldn't be opposed to embarking on a similar journey at some point in the future, and I might recommend my Sausage Stand Crawl to all my friends. It's like a pub crawl, but meatier.

2) An interesting article in the New York Times yesterday questioning the wisdom of America's abstinence-only policy towards sexual education. Notable, because of this information:

A 2001 Unicef report said that the United States teenage birthrate was higher than any other member of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. The U.S. tied Hungary for the most abortions. This was in spite of the fact that girls in the U.S. were not the most sexually active. Denmark held that title. But, its teenage birthrate was one-sixth of ours, and its teenage abortion rate was half of ours.

So while Americans are getting lectured in health class only to blow the whole thing later, the Danes are getting it on, but putting one on first.

3) My soccer club had a party last night. Dinner was served, the Danish national team was watched (a 0-0 draw with Hungary), and alcohol was consumed. After the game, everyone hung out and talked for a while, and it was nice to talk to the Danes about something other than where I should be on corner kicks. I ended up debating the merits of the US political system with two guys whose names I never actually caught, and it was a long conversation. Earlier, I had a long talk about American football with one of the Danes sitting at my table. He was shocked to hear that I'm from Boston and I've never been to a Patriots game (or a Red Sox game, for that matter -- sacrilege, I know). Apparently, he's an avid fan. The Danes watch football -- American football. Who knew?

I've noticed that in my conversations with the Danes, for some reason I take on this weird, quasi-Euro accent, as if to pretend that for me, too, English is a second language. Perhaps I've taken the Danish idea of equality in every aspect of life to heart, and have lowered my English speaking and pronunciation ability to their level. Whatever it is, at various points in conversation I realize that I'm speaking in some vaguely British accent, or that I'm using the intonation of someone uncomfortable with the English language. It's odd. Not sure why it happens -- it's not a conscious decision -- but I have found that observations about the American political system seem that much more insightful when delivered with an accent that says, "Why yes, I am a cultured, cosmopolitan European -- and did you know that we have universal healthcare?"

The running of the Danes:

Danes are skinny people. Not across the board, of course, but in general. They're a pretty fit society, something that I attributed to the fact that they 1) are not American, 2) probably eat healthier, and 3) walk or ride bikes nearly everywhere. I think this is most likely pretty accurate, but I may have failed to incorporate actual, purposeful exercise into this equation.

My knowledge of Danish exercise at this point consists of my experience playing soccer for my Danish club (website here), one fact-finding mission to a Danish sports club, and my casual observation of sweaty Danes jogging down the street. The Danes seem to have a different attitude towards exercise and sport (and life in general) than Americans.

For example, this past weekend I had my first soccer game for my club here, OKF. I was the only American on the team, and when I showed up at 12:00 to meet before the game, nearly all the Danes were already there, talking casually in a circle, smoking. I found the whole idea of smoking before a soccer game patently ridiculous, but as I would later have confirmed for me in my Healthcare in Scandinavia class, Denmark has one of the highest rates of smoking in the world (around 25%). Clearly, lighting up before a match was not unheard of. As far as the game itself went, the quality of play reflected the quality of preparation. We played solidly and with good pace in the first half, the score at halftime being 2-2. But by the second half my Danish teammates were all dead, and some were literally walking around the field. The speed of play dropped correspondingly. 45 minutes and several goals later, the whistle blew, and we walked off the field, 5-2 losers. My teammates recovered from their efforts with a therapeutic postgame cigarette.

In terms of pure exercise, I've noticed that Danish joggers are also particularly hilarious. For some reason, no one in Copenhagen knows how to run. Being a serious runner myself, I tend to notice these things more. For whatever reason, every jogger that I've seen here (several) has been completely incapable of running with proper form. Most shuffle along at a sluggish pace, their arms swinging limply by their sides. Some run leaning too far forward, and the others lean too far back. Most have the gait one would expect from someone recovering from several knee surgeries, not a fit Dane in his or her prime. There are hordes of these people, ambling awkwardly down the sidewalks, outfitted in flourescent running gear and lacking any real understanding of why they're running in the first place.

I think that's the biggest problem: the Danes just don't seem to get running. Most are moving too slowly to be called runners, and none of them are ever breathing very hard, what with the required stopping at every crosswalk and everything. I'd be breathing easy, too, if my "run" consisted of a couple 100 yard jogs, followed by a recovery period while I wait for the light to turn green. I imagine the Danes' attitudes towards running to be similar to that of Ron Burgundy, he of Anchorman fame. From my perspective next to them on the sidewalks or passing them in buses, I think that most Danes view running as an odd but charming sort of pastime -- why anyone would run long or hard, let alone fast, seems beyond them. Instead, jogging is just an excuse to put on some flashy running gear, get outside, and commune with your pedestrian countrymen -- even if you are going the same speed. Perhaps this is not the worst thing in the world.

I guess at this juncture, I'll drop my contempt for the joggeurs I see each day. At worst, they are a form of mild amusement. And besides, they're still doing better than most Americans:

Walking back to the bus today, I spotted a man who could be nothing except for American: tall, wide, and sweating profusely. Clearly he'd been out on a run and got lost in the city, something I gathered from his labored breathing, the aforementioned perspiration, and the enormous map he held in front of him. His running attire was different, though no less eye-catching than that of the Danes -- Titlelist baseball cap, tight running shorts, and a skin-tight, baby blue FC Dallas soccer jersey, soaked through with sweat. Oh, Texas.


PS: I feel that this post would be vastly improved with some photographic evidence. I'll break out the zoom lens and hopefully return tomorrow or the next day with some pictures of real, live, ridiculous Danes.

From my satellite phone:

Hello from Copenhagen, capital of the Third World!

I hadn't realized that I would need malaria shots and a portable generator for my time here, but apparently that is the case. I awoke this morning to huge bangs and my building vibrating from time to time. It happened sporadically, so I tried to ignore it and go back to sleep. No dice. It was pretty loud.

Anyways, I figured the noise must be some sort of construction nearby, so I figured I'd just wait it out. I got onto my computer to check in the with semi-real world, but there was no internet connection. At this point I realized that no power was going to my computer either. A quick check of the lights confirmed that the power was indeed out.

"Nice," I thought, not really knowing what to do. Luckily I don't have class today, as showering in the dark would be a challenge, as would trying to get out of the building without working elevators or lights in the stairwell. So, I took a page out of FEMA's playbook and did nothing.

Success! My strategy of laissez-faire worked! The power came back on a few hours later, and the banging stopped, thankfully. Good thing I still have no clue what it was, but I imagine it was connected to the power recovery effort.

I didn't really expect the power in my building to be anything less than assured, seeing as how I'm studying in what is by all accounts one of the most efficient countries in the world, but apparently the conveniences of western civilization are not as much of a fact as I had assumed. For now, I'll be out buying flashlights and water, because you never know when something will fail next.

Hope the reception on the satellite phone wasn't too bad! Got to go -- I'm running this thing off goat power, and she looks tired.


PS: For more fun with goats and electricity, a YouTube classic.

Call me Thom:

This summer, fed by stories of Clark Rockefeller (or, more accurately, Christian Gerhartsreiter) and an article about Frederic Bourdin, a famous con man and impersonator, I developed somewhat of a fascination with aliases. Though seemingly the stuff of film and wild news stories, aliases must be far more prevalent than any normal person would assume.

So much so, in fact, that it was completely normal for the US Embassy to have a question about any of my aliases while I registered with them before leaving the country. If aliases are mainstream enough to make an official government questionnaire, then surely many people are using them.

I refrained from creating an alter-ego through government records, but the idea stuck in my mind. Now, I don't plan on conducting any international bank fraud schemes or infiltrating the circles of Danish elites, but something about having an alias seems intriguing.

So while waiting in a particularly long line outside a bar this past weekend with a group of my peers who were being particularly American, I put my ideas into action. Mentioning what I was doing to my friends beforehand, I began speaking in a British accent -- hokey, perhaps, but from all observers, I pulled it off pretty effectively. No real cons were pulled of course, except that I somewhat hilariously separated myself from American student stereotypes. I no longer felt quite as bad if asking for imposing the English language on Danes, as we had much in common: a longstanding monarchy, universal healthcare, and the Queen's English.

The whole accent was short-lived, and mostly just a joke, but I've slowly been developing my persona. The name's Thom, though if I were pressed for a last name, I'd have to do some quick thinking. I'm still working on a surname that seems appropriate and not overly British. Perhaps in time I'll come up with a believable backstory, as well. I'll be opening Swiss bank accounts in no time.

Actually, Saturday night, I introduced myself to another American as Thom, but the bar was loud and I doubt she heard my falsified identity over the din. That's probably for the best anyways.