first travel adventure

This weekend we had our first study tour of the semester. The communications program went to Western Denmark. There were a few other programs there as well, but some went to Berlin. Here is a map of where exactly we went:


























I have to begin my post with how my trip began: hitchhiking onto our tour bus.


As I've said before, I live a ways outside of Copenhagen. You can see on the map where it is....and directly left, where there is a yellow dot is the town Roskilde. I love slightly south of there. My class was supposed to meet in Copenhagen right near our school buildings at 7:15am in order to leave CPH by 7:30. Trains generally only run about once an hour during off-peak times. I could have taken the 6:28am train out of Borup and it would have arrived in Norroport Station at 7:10am. Then I would have the 7 minute walk to the bus. That would definitely cut it close in the time department, however the one prior to that left my town at 5:47am getting me into CPH at 6:30am, when nothing is open. I figured I would just take the 6:28am train and pray that it wasn't delayed. Helle had a different idea. She decided it was ridiculous for me to take an early train into CPH just to come right back out and practically drive by our house. She formed the brilliant idea to have the instructor call us when they got to a certain point on the highway (picture....I-95) and we would meet them at Exit 34. The bus got off at the exit and stopped on the ramp where Helle and I were waiting in her car. I jumped out in the middle of the ramp and got on the bus. The class had been driving about 45 minutes at that point, so most of the bus was sleeping. The instructors hadn't explained to everyone that I was going to do this...so half the bus was confused, about a quarter of the bus thought I woke up late and that's why I had to meet the bus on the highway, and my 6 friends naturally picked seats in the BACK of the bus and laughed at me the whole way as I walked my fat ass down the aisle of the bus. It was about another 3 hours or so before we got to Arhus, the yellow dot up north.


Arhus:


Despite being the 2nd largest city in Denmark, what we did wasn't super exciting. We began with a lecture at the Danish School of Media and Journalism and visited Midtjyske Medier--a media company that produce many smaller papers in Jutland, the peninsula part of Denmark. We finished our day by visiting ARoS Museum, which had kind of bizarre modern and contemporary art. If I learned anything on this trip, it's that anything can be considered art.





This is a big giant wax figure of a guy. It's creepily realistic...even the feet have realistic toenails and visible viens. And it always seemed like it was staring at you. Not cool at all.









That night we stayed at a hostel. It was basically like girl scout (or indian pricesses) camp all over again. There were 6 girls in my room, all bunk beds. We had to find our own dinner that night so we walked around a little and found the cheapest good-looking food we could find. It was along this canal in the middle of the city and was actually good. There was supposed to be a trivia night at some Irish pub near there that our teachers told us about. We figured it would be in Danish, but decided that could still be fun. We got to the bar and it was PACKED except there was no trivia to speak of--so we left and found another bar with some small band playing that most random American music ever and left on the last bus available to get back to our cabin hostel.

Kolding:








We had to stop in this very small town to visit a castle. Now, when I think of a castle I think of a regal palace. We were never led to believe that Koldinghus would not be a regal palace. We got there and turns out it's some dumpy ruins of a castle on the outside, and they've added all sorts of modern things like platforms to walk around and these creepy faux animal statues on the windowsills---and not just any normal animals they had a fox, ferrets and a squirrel.


Odense:






We finally made it to Odense for my favorite part of the trip. We began by taking a tour of Denmark's TV2 and speaking to a managing editor of the channel. The TV channel's are completely different over here. There arn't that many to begin with (no Fios or digital cable or directv etc) so there's really only 2 news channels: TV2 and DR1. TV2 is the most popular in the country and is actually more than one channel. They have TV2, TV2NEWS, TV2Sports, TV2radio, TV2Zulu, and TV2Film. I have a tv in my bedroom and I generally watch TV2zulu because that's one of the channels that plays a lot of American films and tv shows. During the tour we even got to stand just off camera during the beginning of the 4pm newscast. None of this compares to the highlight of my trip though:


As we were waiting outside of the building to start the tour a guy left the building. I saw him and thought I recognized him and as he walked away I realized who it was!!! I can't find a picture of him online, but he's one of the analysts from the handball world championships I had been watching for the past few weeks. Naturally I got really excited. Later we walked by him again but he was outside...so I decided if we saw him a third time I was going to ask for a picture. Unfortunately (or fortunately depending on how you see it) I never saw him again.



The whole trip ended with a long walking tour of Odense, where Hans Christian Anderson was born, lived and died. Basically this town is around in order to talk about him. EVERYTHING is Anderson related. It was a cute little town. Here are some pictures:
















This is the home where Hans Christian Anderson grew up.









That's pretty much it. It was a busy few days but a lot of fun! It was nice to get out and see a new place besides Copenhagen. My friends and I are now in the midst of planning some local and further travel so I'll be updating you on that in the coming days and weeks! Miss you and love you all!
Olivia :)