winter in borup

I just wanted to post some pictures really quick of the recent snow! We got about four inches in Borup and about two in Copenhagen. These are pictures from right around my house:


Back behind our neighborhood is wideeee open space and theres a little walking/biking path that I'll use once the weather gets a little nicer.

There's the open space I'm talking about!

The first two pictures were taken when I continued just a little further down this street. You can see the open space a little bit in the background of the above picture

The street sort of parallel to this picture is the one that I take to get to my house. Just about 100 yards to the right of this picture is my house. The following picture is the intersection on the left side of the above picture.

I liked that someone built a snowman! It's all really pretty in the snow...but I can do with out snowy bike rides! Back to homework :)

Day trip to Malmo, Sweden

I spent a few days last week (from Wednesday-Friday) on the DL with a stomach virus so by the weekend I was itching to get out of the house. I missed class on Thursday and 2 out of 3 classes on Friday. The one I went to was international advertising and I had to go because I was giving a big group presentation about coffee purchasing in Denmark vs. the US. Riveting stuff, I know. But in between all of that my friends and I decided to take a trip to Malmo, Sweden. It's literally right there and was easy enough to get to. We met at about 10:30am at the Central Station in Copenhagen and it's about a 40 minute train ride for about $12 each way. Sort of like going to NYC or DC on NJ Transit or MARC Trains. Not bad at all, and we got into a new country! We sort of neglected the whole planning process...but my friend, Claire, had a tourist book that had a small chapter and Malmo and we stocked up on tourist maps from the tourism center at the train station.

We just decided to start walking and see if there was anything we could happen upon something interesting. We came upon St. Peter's Church, which is the oldest building in the city. It was built in the early 14th century.

This is the main tower of the church

The altar in St. Peter's

After that we walked around a little more, found some shopping and consulted the guide book. There was a chocolate factory listed so we knew this was a must-see! Unfortunately when we got there it was a bit of a bust. The chocolate was good, but the factory was really more of just a room. And there was supposed to be a museum but it was really just a few glass cases of old wrappers. We weren't discouraged though, and continued on in pursuit of museum island which also had a castle. We never got to the museums, as it was getting late in the afternoon and they close early, but we were able to see the castle (Malmohus) from the outside (there was some sort of a wedding going on inside that prevented us from going in)

This is a picture of Malmohus...taken by Claire because my pictures weren't as good. I am still waiting to see a palace-type castle...but at least this had a moat!

So we walked around the castle and found a nice area in the back with a small canal and there was also a huge windmill

Next we saw this building through the trees (photo taken by my friend, Kaitlin)

Here is where we're going to play a little game of: What do you think this is??!! We thought maybe it was a huge mansion, or some state-owned building, or another castle...but no. It's actually a casino. Kind of a let down. But we pressed forward...because after playing on the playground of the casino for like 25 minutes, it was beginning to get dark. We really wanted to see this building called the Turning Torso. Claire had seen a Discovery channel special on it or something and it was apparently an architechtual wonder when it was made. Here is a picture from far away (taken by Kaitlin):

I know it's kind of hard to see, but hopefully you get the idea. We walked towards it which should have taken another 30 minutes or so, however we got sidetracked when we saw the Maxi store, aka the closest thing to a Wal-Mart or Target here. It was great! Usually everything here is smaller. Grocery stores are usually very little, sometimes the size of a super Wawa or so....so the Maxi was a breath of freshair! I was really thirsty and I got a litre of water for 7,50 Swedish kroner, which is under $1. My friends got things like shampoo and makeup for cheaper for our travelling and there was even an aisle simply devoted to candy that we dabbled in. We finished up and continued to the Turning Torso. The point of going there was to stand at the bottom, and look directly up to see how the building was built to look like it was turned. It's kind of bizarre but here's the best picture I could get...the lighting is really weird because it was dusk but hopefully you can see it:

By the time we finished up here it was getting close to 6pm and we had been walking around in the windy freezing weather so we took a cab back to the train station to buy our tickets to get back to Copenhagen. Of course, nothing goes without an adventure with us. We got back, bought our tickets and saw we could make the 6:22pm train. The big Departures board still had x for the track number meaning that it wasn't decided yet. We waited, and waited, and realized that the next train coming from Copenhagen to Malmo was delayed. Not a problem, except then we realized that alllll of the trains coming from Copenhagen to Malmo for the next two hours were delayed. Time to investigate. I asked someone who looked important who turned out to know practically nothing except that "there may be a bus somewhere outside...a special bus..." We went outside and found a family who looked equally lost and decided to follow them. Eventually the "special bus" came, we all crowded on and we embarked on the journey back to the next train stop closer to Copenhagen. Except since this was a local bus, it took about 45 minutes. We eventually got back into Copenhagen around 8:15pm, I just missed the train back to Borup so we went to McDonalds for a McFlurry and waited for my next train at 9:12 and I was home by 10:15. It was a long day but a lot of fun. It was a trip we realized we could just walk around and take in the sights and still have fun. Today after class we spent a few hours trying to come up with some weekend trips and other travels so I'll keep you updated as they come up and as they are finalized! Hope all is well with everyone and I'll talk to you soon!

Love,
Olivia

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 :)

first snowfall

I was not paying any attention to the weather report recently but apparently they were calling for some snow...so I awoke at the crack of noon to a white ground outside my window. It was only about an inch but here is a picture of the backyard.









Here is a link to a satellite map of directions of where I live to the train station. Joe: you thought Glen Mills was the country? Welcome to Borup, Denmark.

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=M%C3%B8lleparken+34,+4140+Borup,+Denmark+to+18+hovedgaden+borup+denmark&sll=55.494874,11.972968&sspn=0.00162,0.004807&ie=UTF8&ll=55.501173,11.981063&spn=0.012956,0.038452&t=h&z=15


Just to address a few comments from my last post:
Joe, I explained that we have been doing hard labor since we could walk, but she didn't think this was the case. She is more concerned that I eat breakfast everyday.
Aunt Kim, I think you're forgetting my all-time favorite vacation--to Annapolis, Maryland. Or to Aunt Sue's house that time when she freaked out at a telemarketer. It's a close call.
Feel free to ask questions or anything in the comments section. I'll try and answer them in the following post. I'll write again probably on Wednesday to preview my first trip that I'm taking to Western Denmark with my communications program.

Love,
Olivia

by the numbers

I've been here a little over a week now and here are some statistics of my daily life in Denmark versus my daily life in America:

Average daily wake-up time for an 8:30am class:
In America: 8:20am
In Denmark: 6:30am

Average number of kilometres biked per day:
In America: 0km
In Denmark: 4km

Average length of shower in minutes:
In America: 20-40min
In Denmark: 1-3min


Some other interesting facts about my life here:
1. My host mother, Helle, insists on doing my laundry
2. I found a delightful bakery right around the corner from my school buildings that have daily specials for 12KR, which is ridiculously cheap (like $2)
3. I have successfully reduced my biking time to 8 minutes to the train station
4. I have watched plenty of Danish handball to last a lifetime. Apparently there is some sort of European tournament or something happening. It's intense...that's all I know.

This past weekend I went to a sort of farmer's market in Roskilde, which is a bigger town than where I live (Borup). It sort of reminded me of State St. in Media...but bigger. Then we drove around the area and Helle pointed out places that we'll go to....I thought she meant that weekend but turns out they're places we'll go to when it's warmer out. Like the Viking museum, and a lake where we can barbeque.

That's all for now!
Vi ses! (See you later!)
Olivia

The first posting

Alright, I'm going to try and keep this updated fairly frequently....I arrived on Sunday after about 10 hours in planes and luckily my luggage arrived with me! It was a tad hairy though, because Lufthansa decided to try and sabotage my travels by giving me the wrong gate information for my transfer in Frankfurt. This was after the hour delay in Philly. At about 8:55am germany time we landed and my next flight was to board at 9:15am. my ticket said gate b5. so i got off the plane, proceeded to passport control where I had to wait in line for about 7 minutes. they basically look at your passport and tell you you're aloud in the country. sometimes they ask why you're in the country but because i had my Danish visa that said i was a student they didnt. naturally, I picked the slowest line out of about 8...i finally get up and theres like 2 people ahead of me. and the line next to me there was an older guy at the counter. the passport control lady was like"why are you in the country" and i didnt hear his response but he either didnt say, or refused to answer or was sketchy and so the POLIZEI were called. They come and i'm just standing next to this guy whose mumbling and talking to the polizei. I don't know what ended up happening with him...as I got through, went down an escalator, and BAM we hit security. not an issue, you're thinking. WRONG. i take my laptop and camera and cell phone out of my bag place all of my items on the conveiour (sp?) belt to be x-rayed and they say okay walk through the metal detector. BEEP BEEP BEEP. it goes off. so now I am legit FRISKED in the middle of the security checkpoint by some frightening German TSA character. this is awkward and i am ticklish so i laugh. again, i'm still standing my arms held out and theres like an entire plane full of people waiting for me to finish. so i'm laughing which makes some of the other passengers laugh, but my security officer didnt find it too amusing. so finally im cleared, except it's not about 9:14. again, my flight is boarding at 9:15. so im running to gate b5. i get up there and theres like 10 people sitting there. BAD SIGN. so i ask someone if theyre going to copenhagen. they look at me and tell me in something that they dont speak english. someone else informed me they were going to poland. i knew that was wrong so i walk through the airport and finally find a lufthansa person excpet there was a line 4 people long, so i was going to have to wait. so i go back and look around b5 again and see a girl from Gettysburg that I know standing in the b5 gate looking equally confused and so we go to a coffee shop next to the gate and this guy looks up the correct gate in a computer and gives us directions to get to the gate and we're runnnnning throuhg the airport and luckily we made it. eveyrone is great....my family is really funny.....it'll take some time to get used to life here but im excited. i have my own bedroom with a bed, desk, tv and closet unit.

To get to school is about an hour long trek. I ride a bike for about 10 minutes to the train station, take a train about 40 minutes into Copenhagen and then walk to my school about another 10 minutes. Living here would sort of be like commuting from my house in Glen mills to a school in Philly (Temple, Drexel etc). It's really not too bad...the train gives me time to read and the bike and walking give me my exercise!

This picture is from Nyhaun...it's a canal and there are streets on either side of the canal. It's a tourist attraction and pictures of this are often used to promote Copenhagen. It's a really pretty area with lots of restaurants and cafes...

This is a street somewhere in the city that I walked through yesterday when we did a 'scavenger hunt' around the city. We also saw the Queen's palace, the Parliament building and Denmark's largest department store....

This is just a random grouping of buildings on a canal near the Parliament building. I just thought it looked pretty...I'm going to set up a webshots account or something like that to upload all of my pictures and will put that address in here when I set it all up. Classes start tomorrow and I already have homework (?!) so I have to go do get started on that but I'll talk to you later!

Tak! (Thanks!)

Olivia