Alex in Copenhagen

This is my last post – my exchange period is over. I’m not going to write a big post on everything I’ve gotten out of this experience, but I will say this: EXCHANGE! It’s such a fun experience, I’m sure it’s fun wherever you go. You meet so many new people, and most universities take good care of their international students. And it does look good on your CV – really, it’s a win-win:) I like that I now know Copenhagen as more than a holiday spot where I go for a week-end every now and again, and I’m still quite pleased with myself for being featured on the National Geographic blog:) So I feel that I have at least accomplished something, even though I haven’t really prioritised my studies;)

Also, my blog made me help others, which was the sole reason why I started writing this thing. I have been contacetd on several occasions by students who are thinking about exchanging to CPH U or are already here and have questions. One of them even moved in to my dorm; “Sadolin Kollegiet”! I wanted to read such a blog when I was preparing for my exchange period, but there was no such place – so I made one. And I’d just like to say; even though I’m through with CPH, feel free to ask me about anything you may be wondering about. I still know my way around the U:)

So good luck to all future Copenhagians, may you all enjoy your stay! And thank you for reading my blog, and commenting, and all the nice things you have been e-mailing me about.

If you like my writing, you may want to visit my travel-blog; Very Special Places, or my creative writing-blog; Vintage Stories, you would be more than welcome!

Happy Christmas everyone!

-Alex.

Hello everyone!

One of my favourite places in Copenhagen is the New Carlsberg Glyptotheke. I’ve written briefly about this place before, but it’s such a fantastic place that I thought it deserved a post of it’s own!

The Glyptotheke is basically a fancy name for an art museum, which was based on the personal collection of Carl Jacobsen, the founder of the Carlsberg breweries’ son. It consists mainly og sculptures (Rodin included!), but also houses paintings by Monet, Tolouse-Lautrec, Van Gogh, and the like. The building in itself is also a true work of art, with its elaborate winter garden that now holds a cosy tea room. The collection was opened to the public in 1882, and has since been expanded many times.

I really dont like wordpress blogs, because they do a terrible job presenting photos – they take forever to upload and show up very small. So, I made a set on Flickr (you don’t need a Flickr account to see them) for those interested in seeing all the beautiful scultpures!

Enjoy!

Copenhagen is My City

Sorry about the bold headline, but I couldn’t control myself:) You see, I’ve been featured in National Geographic’s Intelligent Travel blog, in their “I Heart My City”-campaign. So, if you <3 your city, why not fill out the same questionnaire that I did and see if they thik you're good enough?

Anyshoozle, this is the feature, for your reading pleasure:

Copenhagen is my city.

The first place I take a visitor from out of town is Tivoli Gardens, one of the oldest amusement parks in the world.

When I crave cake and hot chocolate in old world-settings, I always go to La Glace; the oldest confectionary in Denmark.

To escape the harsh city-life, I head to the free town of Christiania, where one makes love, not war.

If I want to be amazed by beautiful marble sculptures and a breathtaking winter garden, I go to the New Carlsberg Glyptotheke, where they also have a lovely tea room.

For complete quiet, I can hide away in the Royal Library; a vast modern building known as the «Black Diamond».

If you come to my city, get your picture taken with the Little Mermaid, an iconic statue depicting the herione from the famous fairytale by Hans Christian Andersen.

If you have to order one thing off the menu from the Art Nouveau style Café Norden it has to be the famous pancakes.

The Magasin du Nord located in Kongens Nytorv is my one-stop shop for great shopping.

When I’m feeling cash-strapped I go to Rosenborg Castle. There is an entrance fee to step into the castle, but the gorgeous 15th century gardens are accessible to all!

For a huge splurge I go shopping in the main shopping street, Strøget, where they have everything from Topshop to Coco Chanel.

Photo ops in my city include the Wheel of Copenhagen, and the best vantage points are from the top of the Wheel.

If my city were a celebrity it’d be Danish / Australian crown princess Mary, because it’s stylish, international, and friendly.

The most random thing about my city is the hot dog stands on every corner that sell bright red hot dogs.

My city has the most uncouth men.

My city has the most fashionable women in Northern Europe.

In my city, an active day outdoors involves a bike ride around the city.

My city’s best museum is the National Museum, which has everything from Egyptian mummies to modern day Danish culture objects.

My favorite jogging/walking route is around the Botanical Gardens, which is located between one of the main metro stations and the university’s city campus.

For a night of dancing, go to Koloer Bar, where they have a strict dress code but great surroundings. Or, for live music, check out La Fontaine jazz club, which has concerts and jam sessions during the weekends, and a poetry night once every month.

You can tell a lot about my city from looking at the architecture; Copenhagen is clearly the most beautiful city in Scandinavia. Sit by the fountain in Amalienhave (next to the Royal Palace Amalienborg) and gaze across the canal to the new opera house!

You can tell if someone is from my city if they boast a lot about it. People from Copenhagen cannot stop talking about how beautiful they think their city is!

In the summer you should head towards the two main beaches in the city; Amager beach or Islands Brygge.

A hidden gem in my city is Dragoer; a small fishing village on the island of Amager.

For a great breakfast joint try Jensen’s Steakhouse, where they serve breakfast steaks until 4.00 p.m!

Don’t miss the Roskilde Music Festival in the summertime, the biggest music festival in Scandinavia.

Just outside my city, you can visit the castle of Elsinore, where Shakespeare’s «Hamlet» takes place.

The best way to see my city is by going on a canal tour by boat, where you see the city from the waterfront.

If my city were a pet it would be a dog; energetic and always happy to see you!

If I didn’t live in a city, I’d live in the British countryside, in a cosy Marpelian village.

When I think about my city, the song that comes to mind is «Wonderful Copenhagen» by Danny Kaye.

If you have kids, you won’t want to miss the zoo, which turns 150 years this year, and has all kinds of animals.

My city should be featured on your cover or website because in only a few short weeks Copenhagen will be hosting the United Nations Climate Conference ’09, which most Danish people are pretty proud of!

Before I left for Norway, I made a little trip to Tivoli all by myself. Tivoli had been closed for a week, renovating the rides and decorating for Halloween, which lasts from the 9th until the 18th of October. I’ve been in Tivoli when they have their Christmas-theme before, but never during Halloween. -And I have to say, it was really nice!

The ground was a bit too cold for my docksiders, and I realised that I would have to swap them for my fugly, but very snug Uggs. Inside Tivoli, there were pumpkins galore, and lots of those scare crows with pumpkin-heads, there was lots of straw littering the ground, and of course the odd Grim Reaper complete with a savage-looking meat cleaver. The smell of hot churros was everywhere, and I would have bought some if the line wasn’t half a mile long. Sadly, I discovered that the Chaplon tea house was closed, because a little stall selling Christmas-objects d’arts have taken it’s place and will stubbornly remain there until New Year. I don’t want a Santa Claus figuerine in October, stall-lady! I want my chai latté!

Also, I discovered a fun little shop that sells everything from Kelim-bags to sparkling wine, to antiques and scary-looking witches (especially for the occasion, I hope). There were also musicians dressed as scare crows playing big band-music, and workers dressed as pumpkins and witches dancing with all the children – this picturesque scene could’ve been taken straight from a movie. Everything was so colourful, with lots of bright colours such as orange, red, yellow and green. Such warm, comforting colours. With ambiance such as this, you really don’t mind the frosty ground too much.

I’ve just returned from my “efterårsferie” – literally meaning after year (autumn) vacay, which I spent in my home town of Drammen, Norway. It was nice to have a little break from CPH, and I didn’t study ANYTHING:) I did, however, manage to take my sourpuss to the vet for a check-up, argue with some friends about education and christianity, do a bit of research for my developmental psychology-paper, walk my little sister to school a bunch of times, go to Oslo and meet an old school friend, and make brownies. As you can see, a very full and stressing little holiday;) But as nice as it was to be home, it also feels nice to be back in CPH. I love my apartment in Sadolin Kollegiet, Amagerbro, and I’m a bit sad that I have to move – but it’s just too expensive for me. My room is about 50 square metres, unfurnished, no internet, not even a lamp in the ceiling, and the rent is a staggering 4000 dkk per month, but I still love it there, go figure…

But sadly I seem to have caught a bug of some sort, so after writing a little post about halloween in Tivoli, I plan to take two Advils, have some cherry coke and watch an episode of Midsomer Murders. I just adore DCI Barnaby:)

Kulturnat – or culture night in English, is an event that happens once every year in Copenhagen. You buy a pass for 85 dkk, that gives you free access to just about every museum, gallery and attraction the city has to offer, and it also includes transport! There are also lots of happenings all over the city throughout the evening, and the museums often set up special exhibits etc. for it. I went with my boyfriend and my German friend Silvia, and I thought we got good value for our money (which is something all students like!). From 18.00 until 01.00 we visited:
- The National Museum
- The Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek
- The Zoo

The National Museum.
The National Museum is really a place worth visiting (and there’s no admissions fee!). It’s pretty impressing considering that it’s located in Scandinavia – because it contains lots of artifacts from the ancient Middle East – including a mummy room (I think Copenhagen secretly yearns to be the new London, after all, they’ve got their mini British Museum AND their London Eye/Wheel of Copenhagen). The National Museum currently has an interesting display concerning the indians of the rainforests of South America, which is worth taking a look at if you’re in the city. The Museum also has the mandatory Danish history, which I didn’t pay much attention to, so I really must go back and have a closer look at what this place has to offer.

Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek (New Carlsberg Glyptotheke)
This ancient place is really astonishing. Wikipedia tells me that “glypto” is Greek, and means to carve, and the “theke”-bit means a storing-place. This would make sense, because the whole gallery/museum is chock-a-block full of statues from the ancient Greek and Roman era. Room upon room is filled with statues, and is also slightly reminiscent of the British Museum because by the time you’re half done with the place, you can’t bear turning another corner, walking into another room and going “oooooh”, “aaaaah”, “look at that”, “isn’t that beautiful?”. It was just too much to handle at the short time we had allowed ourselves there. Trust me when I say that you would need a couple of hours to really absorb everything this place has to offer – including an amazing winter garden complete with a little tea room, to really give you that old world ambiance. Admission: Under 18: Free. Over 18: 60 dkk, except for Sundays when it’s free!

Copenhagen Zoo.
Well, you’ve all read my post about this place before, and I don’t really have much more to add, except to say that I don’t really understand what all the fuss was about. Everyone told me that the most important thing to do on Culture Night was to go to the zoo, but I could hardly see any animals! This resulted in stupid people flashing lights into the faces of tiger cubs trying to get some rest after a long day, and me getting annoyed at said people. Also, the elephants seemed so stressed, which was really uncomfortable to watch.

Also, I should mention that we tried to see both the round tower (Rundetaarn) and the botanical gardens, but by the time we got there, they were closed. But the good thing is that the pass you buy gives you a chance to attend one attraction once, free of charge, until the 31st of December. So I can still visit Rundetaarn for free if I wish!

I came across this restaurant (situated near the Nyhavn-area, at the bottom of Gothersgade) when I was searching for a place to get some good milkshake in Copenhagen. Someone was raving about this American-style restaurant, called O’s American Restaurant, and said that the shakes were practically the cat’s pajamas. They are so popular that they even have two restaurants in central Copenhagen, so I decided to have a look for myself, and this is how it was: BAD. Do you see? B-A-D. There is no other word for it. It wasn’t terrible, it certainly wasn’t good, it was just plain old BAD. And I’ll tell you why:

I went there, hoping to get some lunch. I walked in (seeing the form from ministry of food’s check-up last month and O’s hadn’t exactly aced the test, to put it that way – I should have known straightaway that this was a bad sign), saw the décor, which was sad (lots of dark wood and everything looked worned down), and the locale was practically empty. A very soft-spoken waitress told us to “sit down anywhere – it’s all available, as you can see”. We sat down in a booth and had a look at the menu, which did look promising. The prices were sympathetic, and they had lots of different courses, but based mostly on burgers and sandwiches. I had the BLT and macaroni and cheese side order, and a lemon iced tea, and my boyfriend had a burger and a glass of tap water. Now, first of all, the waitress (you know, the soft-spoken one) took about 20 minutes to come and take our order, even though there were no other customers and we had our menus closed so she would see that we were ready to order. When she finally trotted along, we ordered, and about a million years later the “food” arrived. My BLT was basically some soft lettuce, one piece of tomato, and bacon and toast which resembled charcoal more than it did food. I even cut my gums on the toast, that’s how hard it was! Also, there were unidentifiable flakes of something-or-other at the bottom of my iced tea. Gross. And according to my boyfriend, the burger was also pretty nondescript.

After finishing the meal, we tried to get the waitress’ attention for a looooooooooooooooooooooooong time, and finally succeeded in ordering one banana milkshake. We were apprehensive, but since we had been told that the shakes were so good, we felt we had to try them. So, were they any good, you ask? My reply would have to be – it was okay. It was certainly nothing to write home about. It tasted pretty much like something I could have made at home.

And what really bugged me on the whole was the complete lack of creativity with the dishes. There was no cherry in the milkshake, no garnish of any kind on the toast, and not even a french fry was seen with the burger. Really – the whole meal was BORING. I was overjoyed when I had finished, and was also irritated that I had spent the good part of an hour which I would never get back in that place.

Oh, and I should add that this is another of those places in Copenhagen that doesn’t accept foreign credit cards, even though they’re Visa. This is in theory fine with me, but I think they should let customers know in advance!? So end of story was that I had to roam the block, looking for an ATM and coming back to settle the bill. We left there feeling completely disillusioned, because we had so looked forward to enjoying a nice meal. It’s really dissapointing when the people who work in a restaurant show so little interest in food and customer service. I’d give this restaurant a big, fat F.

I’ve been writing letters for years. I had lots of pen pals when I was small, and I remember scouring the kiddies magazines for other children wanting pen pals as well. -But it somehow ended for me when I replied to one of these ads, only to recieve a letter made on the computer that said something along the lines of “dear (insert name). I’ve gotten so many replies, so to save time I reply to everyone at once”. What a loser! He didn’t even give me the time of day! I mean, if he was going to reject me, he could just as easily not have replied to my intitial letter at all, but the thing was that he DID want to be pen pals with me. He just didn’t want to write thousands of letters a month, is all. So, as I said, there ended my career in letter writing with strangers.

But my friend Sara and I have written each other letters since I moved out of town to go to university in 2006. We could have called each other, or sent e-mails, but there’s something special about writing letters. No one does it anymore, and I think it’s sad. Who would read Oscar Wilde’s collected e-mails? Or Jane Austen’s? It doesn’t have the same ring to it, I’m afraid. So we choose letters as our way of keeping in touch. And it’s always such fun getting a letter and seeing my friend’s horrible hand writing, and reading about the things that go on in her life, and I suspect she likes to read about me as well:)

So my point is, don’t underestimate the hand written letters! It’s nostalgic, vintage, retro, whatever word you fashionistas like to use these days – and isn’t there something charming about the thought of your letter traveling miles and miles, for days perhaps, just to reach that one person? You write until your arms ache, you put it in an envelope, stick a stamp or two on it, and pop it in the mailbox – and it appears in your friend’s mail a couple of days later. It must be magic…

Hello everyone!

A couple of days ago I visited Copenhagen Zoo, which turns 150 years this year. The tickets were 130 dkk for an adult, and 70 dkk for a child. No student discounts, though, tut tut! But overall it was a pretty impressing place; they have lots of different animals  and many of them seem very happy there. Well, content, at least. Some of them, like the turtles, were there because they had been rescued from someone planning on selling them as gourmet food. Personally, I believe that eating a turtle is just the same as eating a cow, morally, apart from the fact that some turtles are rarer than cows. But in principle, eating animal a) is just the same as eating animal b) in my book.

Other animals also looked like they were enjoying themselves. The tigers, f.ex, had lots of space and seemed to be having a good time playing with a bright blue ball or gnawing on the leg of something-or-other. But then there were some animals that seemed to be very unhappy, and this upset me greatly. The polar bears were the worst, I think. There were two polar bears, and they were situated next to the ordinary brown bears. The brown bears seemed to be relaxing and having a good time, but the polar bears couldn’t stop pacing back and forth in the same fashion all the while I was observing them. They appeared to be completely stressed out, and reminded me of poeple waiting outside the operation room while some loved one was inside, and that the operation was very risky - do you get my drift? I also think that the polar bears had WAY too little space, after all, they’re BIG! They’re huge! They need their space! They just looked so unhappy. This kind of stuff really breaks my heart.

If you want to visit a zoo while in Denmark, I’d rather suggest Givskud lion park. I was there this summer and it was really a beautiful place. My mother (who is a frilance travel writer) has a blog post about it that explains it a bit more, and also directs you to the lion park’s web site.

If you don’t have a facebook- account, I can tell you right now: GET ONE NOW! In Norway, I barely know anyone who doesn’t have an account, my mother even has more friends than me. Gawd… But my Polish and German friends Sarah and Agata tell me that FB is not all that usual in their respective countries. Hmmm… I can barely remember a time pre-FB. Sad, but true.

Anyways, my point is that if you look at my wall on FB I will look like I live there 24/7 – which, in some respects, I do. Now that I have internet access in my dorm (I live in Sadolin Kollegiet, a private dorm in Amager, which for some reason doesn’t have internet installed in the building – I know! Danes, eh?) I just have FB open when I’m online. And boy do things happen!  Let me give you an example: