I've been busy, leave me alone!

Ok, yes, I know, it's been a while. A long while. Excuses: I've been studying, sleeping and pretending to have a life. You know that the sleeping part is the most true part. Anyway. What I've actually been doing these past "few" weeks is embracing my Swedishness, a lot! "Oh really?", you might be wondering (or not, I mean, I can't read your mind or anything), "How so?" Well, I'll tell ya! Starting with...the school trips!

#3 - Travelling "abroad"

So, apparently, embracing your Swedishness means you also have to embrace your Nordicness. Crazy, huh? (Not really, it's just how we do things up here) At least, if you are to become a Swedish teacher in Sweden, you have to embrace your Nordicness, or at least your Scandinavianness. (As an aside, let's once and for all clear up this whole "what's the difference between Scandinavia and the Nordic countries" thingy: Scandinavia is Sweden, Norway and Denmark, while the Nordic countries consist of Sweden, Norway, Finland (also Åland), Iceland and Denmark (with the Faroe Islands and Greenland). If interested, you can read more about it here. Got it? Ok good, moving on.)

Anyway, as I was saying, if you are to become a Swedish teacher, which I am to become, you need to study Norwegian and Danish too. It's because of this whole Scandinavian thing of being good neighbours and loving each other instead of all the hating that we normally wallow in. The basic idea behind it all is that we need to feel some sense of community up here in the cold, dark north, and to do that, we need to be able to understand each other. Fine idea, I guess, sounds good (except for the part about understanding Danish, that's fucking impossible).

So included in our Norwegian and Danish studies were two trips, one to Schæffergården north of Copenhagen, or København as the Danes say (pronounced Kööbenhaun), and one to Voksenåsen, just outside Oslo (in Norwegian it's pronounced Oschlo). I signed up for both trips, because hey, they were cheap and it's always fun to travel, even if we Swedes don't really consider Norway and Denmark "abroad" (hence, the title for this installment). Since most costs for the trips were paid by scholarships, we only had to pay 500 SEK per trip and student. That is what we like to call "najs prajs". Anyway, on with the show. (Next post will be about the trip to Denmark. Read it. Now.) (Or, previous post, whatever, this blog does not like me today.)

Denmark 17/10 - 21/10

So, the trip to Denmark:

October 17 I woke up bluuuaaaaarrrgghhhh-early to go from Borås to my school in Gothenburg. The bus toward Denmark was supposed to leave at 7.30 am or some ungodly time like that. I don't think a single person on that bus was very cheerful that morning. I know I wasn't. But the fact that our bus looked like a space ship on the inside was a big plus. Anyway, I slept most of the busride. Until we came to Helsingborg to take the ferry over to Helsingør (that's in Denmark). The bus driver told us to get the fuck off his bus during the trip over Öresund.

Space ship!

Bye bye Sweden!

Hello Denmark!

I still haven't eaten my chocolate lady bug, it's too cute!

The first lecture we had about Danish politics, in Danish...my head hurt a lot after this.

At least Adam and Anton look somewhat...fine...

Basically the only thing we could do for fun was to go for a walk. So we did.

This is the place where we stayed, Schæffergården.

Apparently Danes are all about the beech tree. Whatever.

I went for a walk by myself one day and stumbled across a park called Bernstorff Slotshave. There I found a small castle and a statue of some king or the other.

I also found an old regiment, complete with their own fairy tale tower!

And a nice parkway. I like trees. They're green and leafy and stuff. Nice.

And a pond in autumnal colours. Complete with ducks, woho!

This is a picture of our everyday lunchtime buffet. I kid you not. Every. Day. This. For lunch. And this was only the salad portion of the lunch. The warm food had its own table, as did the dessert.

Good times.

Sara (one of the Finnish students who were there with us) enjoyed the shrimp. I actually never even bothered to eat any. Too much of a hassle, plus, I eat shrimp at home every now and then, so, you know, whatever. That's just how Swedes roll.

A big-ass oak i Dyrehave (animal garden in English), plus lots of students from various different countries. Sweden, Finland and Latvia, represent!

In Dyrehave deer just prance around wherever they feel like.

Apparently we thought that was both scary and amazing....

Like I said, apparently deer are amazing... Maybe they don't have a lot of deer in Latvia? I don't know... I wasn't impressed.

Me: Adam, give me sexy!

Adam: I can only do indifferent.

Our last day, we went to Copenhagen to do some sightseeing.

We took a boat ride. It was cold. And I'm Swedish. Screw you Denmark.

Copenhagen

The opera house

Den lille havfrue - The little mermaid

Adam is extremely entertained.

Copenhagen

Den sorte Diamant - The black Diamond, an extension of the Royal Danish Library.

Christiania

In Christiania

In Christiania

The last fun thing I did in Copenhagen was to ride the underground. There are no drivers, so you can sit right at the front and watch as you speed through the tunnels. It was pretty awesome, kind of like riding a roller coaster.

Long story short, despite my preconceptions of Denmark and previous visits there, I really enjoyed the trip and I am definitely going back to Copenhagen. Especially since I am now fluent in Danish! Hrm...