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.
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