Denmark: The Friendliest People on Earth

Day 1:

We arrived in Denmark to find it much less of a hassle than Russia. Students were allowed to disembark by sea after getting their passports. Although we didn't need to carry our passports with us, The Voice told us that they were necessary if we planned to stay overnight at all. I got my passport to be safe but I never needed it. I had planned to go immediately to Copenhagen on a train with several other students I was staying with. At the last minute, I decided to get on the SAS city orientation in Copenhagen. It was like $80 but I was able to buy a last minute ticket for $25 from a girl selling hers. To correct something I said in an earlier post, students are NOT allowed to get on SAS trips last minute for free. Apparently my friend going on the Norway in a Nutshell hiking trip for free was a mistake by the trip leader. SAS does sell trips with open space at the last minute for full-price, but there is a binder on the field office desk where people can buy and sell trip tickets, and if you wait until last minute you can usually get them cheaply. Train tickets to Copenhagen were like $22, so for about the same price I was able to get the SAS Copenhagen orientation. We took really nice coach buses to Copenhagen, where we got a tour of both Parliament and the Palace. It certainly wasn't comparable to the palaces in Russia but it was nice to see nonetheless. After the tour, we were driven around to see the Copenhagen Opera House and Little Mermaid Statue. It was really nothing special to see but our bus tour guide gave us the true (and depressing) story of the Little Mermaid, as written by Hans Christen Andersen. The bus was nice enough to drop off students staying in Copenhagen at the city central which was in reasonable distance to all of our hotels. Alissa, a girl on SAS who also goes to Cornell (which was an awesome surprise), and I walked about a mile to the Copenhagen Island Hotel where we stayed. We planned to meet our whole group in the lobby at 5:30 p.m. and everyone made it there around that time. We had a group of ten - Jason, Zach, Adam, Mike, Steve, Arielle, Meaghan, Alissa, Marlee and myself- and 2 hotel rooms. I had put the charges for 3 nights on my debit card over hotels.com 2 days before. I am the only one in the group who is 21, which is the minimum age to reserve a hotel in many European countries. Although I got a great last-minute discount, the hotel was still really expensive and I'm in the process of getting everyone to pay me back- easier said than done.

We were all really pleasantly surprised to find out how nice the hotel was. It was built right in the water (hence being called the island hotel) and had a great fitness center with a steamroom and sauna! The one downside is that it was sort of a long walk from the city center, although it was right next to a train station so you could get anywhere in under 10 minutes for about $2. Marla, Julia, and Lauren met up with us later that night and one of Marla's family friends who is currently studying in Copenhagen was kind enough to show us around. We ended up at a cute little pub on Stroget Street, a pedestrian street full of nightclubs and boutique stores. While there, I met a few college students from the Faroe Islands (owned by Denmark) along with a girl from Australia. They were very energetic and made us feel very welcome in Denmark. I think I was most surprised to hear that they were all pro-America. While many Europeans disagree with American politics, everyone I have met says they dream of one day being able to come to America.

Day 2:

On Wednesday, we got a late-ish start. Around 11:30 we headed out of the hotel. The entire group except for Zach (my nextdoor neighbor. I've already met 4 Zachs on the ship!!) and myself decided to take a canal tour of Copenhagen- there was some deal where you could buy an all-day canal pass and take the boat to wherever. I was all toured-out from the day before and just wanted to wander around. We headed to the city center and then found our way over a bridge to the Freetown of Christiania. Take the 1970's and multiply it by about 10....It was like a hippie community, the only interesting thing there was the graffiti-art that's all over the trailer-park-esque neighborhoods that comprise Christiania. Zach and I wandered around some more and ended up in the main shopping district, and ended up at H&M where we saw quite a few SAS students. It was really remarkable to me how easily I recognized SASers. We were 90 minutes away from our ship in a city of 1.5 million people and yet we can all recognize each other somewhat easily. I can tell because SAS girls wear flip-flops religiously and I have yet to see a European woman wear them. Tuesday evening I went to Tivoli Gardens with Jason and Zach. It turned out to be expensive, and I thought it was overrated. Keeping in mind that I am a thrill-seeking roller coaster junkie, Tivoli was okay to spend a few hours at but I wouldn't want to be there for a significant amount of time. While there, I ran into Richard, who is in my econ class. When Jason and Zach left Tivoli to head out for the night, I stuck around with Richard etc. for a while and then headed back to my hotel around 11. I was tired and wanted to take advantage of the free wi-fi at my hotel!!! I hadn't checked my cornell.edu email in like a month and was starting to get concerned that my advisor and/or registrar thought I went AWOL.

Day 3:

I got up at 7 a.m. and did some research on the internet for my plans in the rest of our ports. I was out the door of our hotel shortly after 8 and on my way to Malmo, Sweden! First, I took the train from my hotel to Central Station, where I got a round trip ticket (about $35) to Malmo. The train left around 8:30 and I was in Sweden shortly after 9. I hadn't realized this until my little excursion to Sweden, but prior to Thursday, I hadn't been alone in over a month. Not that it bothered me, I love being social with everyone on SAS, but getting away for just a couple hours by myself made me realized how much I needed to just take some time alone and enjoy the peace and quiet that you don't often find when traveling in groups. Malmo is a cute little city which was just waking up when I got there. I walked around it for a while and saw just about everything there. In fact, I found where all of the watches in Europe have been hiding out. I didn't bring a watch on SAS which was really stupid. Nobody really has their cell phones on them around the ship, and there aren't many clocks. Anyways, I had been looking for a watch in Norway, Russia, and Denmark and found nothing... then I get to Malmo and there are literally 8 watch stores all right near each other. So, I finally got a watch for the rest of the trip!! Yay!!! Around 11:30 I headed back to the train station to head back to Copenhagen (not before buying my necessary Sweden souvenirs). A lot of SAS kids were filtering into Malmo as I was leaving, but I was glad I went alone in the morning and had the entire rest of the day for whatever. I know that as soon as this gets posted I'll have frantic voicemails from my parents asking what on earth I was thinking traveling alone. Well, Sweden and Denmark are the number 1 and 2 safest countries in the world, respectively. I cannot travel alone in any of the other ports we are going to, so I figured I should at least capitalize on the opportunity while I still had it. I was really glad I went- I can now say that I went to Sweden for coffee and was back by noon. I spent the rest of the day checking out the less-touristy parts of Copenhagen. It seems like a really great place to be, especially for the younger crowd, since it draws study abroad students from all over the world. Thursday night I went out with Heidi, Hannah, Lisa and Alaina and we had quite the adventure. We spent over three hours just sitting outside and talking with a large group of locals- including 2 girls from Malmo who commuted to work in Copenhagen every day. I learned a lot about Danish social and political programs. Three of the people we talked to were immigrants from Libya who had really interesting stories as well. Danish people might be the friendliest people in the world- they just saw us wandering around aimlessly and invited us to join them! They spoke perfect English and were probably more grammatically correct than we are. We ran into a lot of SAS kids Thursday night, many of whom went to the Ice bar which seemed highly overrated. I'm glad I didn't go.

Day 4:

We spent most of Friday getting back to Korsor from Copenhagen. The train was quite nice and the ride went by quickly. Many students took advantage of the wi-fi at the library close to where the ship was docked in Korsor. I had some kroner left over and spent it on 2 new notebooks and some index cards so I can study for my Global midterm which is coming up right after Antwerp (aaarghh!). I was on the ship by 5 and took a muchly needed nap after dealing with my whole laptop-breaking incident. That aside, I thoroughly enjoyed my time in Denmark, and it was a nice change of pace to have a relaxing port visit where I didn't have too many SAS trips. Right now it is really late on Sunday night and we are already docked in Antwerp but not allowed off the ship until after our debriefing tomorrow morning. I am excited to see the EU headquarters in Brussels tomorrow!! You'll be hearing from me in a few days when we start our 5-day trek to Italy.