(View of the main courtyard of Koldinghus. The water in the fountain is flowing from a cornucopia)
The bus left for Koldinghus Castle in the town of Kolding. It was a nice little suburban cultural area, with plenty of shops and bars in the town center. The castle dated back to the 13th century, if I remember correctly, when it used to mark the southern border of Denmark. Now, the building is preserved as a cultural landmark, and some of the space is also used for museum exhibits. The one that stuck out to me most was a silversmithing exhibit which included a lot of modern silverware (including not just flatware, but also spiceboxes, bowls, candlesticks, and a variety of other things). A lot of great art, albeit needlessly expensive and fancy.
One of the wings had a fire in the 1800's, and they preserved that wing of the castle by building a new wing around the ruins. It's pretty cool; reminds me of a lot of the ancient landmarks I saw in Israel years back, although these are admittedly 1500-1800 years newer.
(a room built around the ruins of one of the old sections of the castle, burnt down in a fire in the 1800's)
At the top of the main tower of the castle, the view of the town was great. When the tower was originally built, there were statues of Greek/Roman figures on the four corners (Hercules, Scipio, Hector, Hannibal). Only Hercules is still there, and he's propped up on a tripod-type thing. I rarely picture Hercules as needing help standing up straight.
(Hercules The Frail, surveying the town)
At the gift shop, I bought my first gift for someone back home. I'm keeping it a secret, because s/he may guess that it's for her/him based on the item. I decided (and forewarned my friends) that I am not going to return to the states with a pile of keychains, refrigerator magnets and t-shirts, but only buy gifts for people if I happen to find something that makes me think "this is a thing that they will like." Or, of course, if they make a request for a type of gift (even a keychain). So, I was happy that found something that felt right; hopefully I'll find other things like that for other people close to me.
We went and hung out in town for lunch. After walking around a number of expensive restaurants, we settled on a highly Americanized pizza-and-burger joint owned by a very friendly Muslim family who clearly spoke three languages better than some people speak one. The son looked to be about 14, and had no trouble asking for my order in Danish, realizing I wasn't Danish and switching to English, then relaying the order back to his mother in his native language (which may have been Arabic, but I don't have the linguistic skill to guess). My friends all got pepperoni pizza, I went with the pita salad. I don't know if that makes me any more cultured than them, but it was certainly tasty. We sat outside for lunch, and an Irish band started playing at the English pub across the street (The Troubles don't exist here, apparently). The place was called "The You'll Never Walk Alone Pub." Adorable. After a few songs, it was time for us to head back.
(Many of the buildings in Kolding looked a lot like this. Very old-timey)
Our other stop for the day was the Trapholt Art Museum, about 20 minutes away from Kolding. About half the museum was abstract art, specifically concrete art. Apparently concrete is a subset of abstract when you're talking about art. Even though in English language classes, they are opposites. The other half of the museum was a furniture design exhibit. A lot of it, as a classmate of mine said, was "pointlessly Scandinavian." Things that were just curvy for the sake of being curvy and (according to some) pretty. But not... comfortable. At all. Which would be my first priority, to be honest. There were a few things that had a clear intentionality to them that were functional as furniture AND in terms of the artistic makeup of a room, and I liked those.
(To answer your question: yes, this is theoretically supposed to be furniture).
We also saw these cool customizable houses that were made out of roughly 3m cubes that could be built together, and when you had some money, adding an extra room-cube would be cheap and easy. They never caught on because the concept really only works in an undeveloped countryside where there aren't existing buildings in the way, but it actually seems like a really cool way to create affordable housing.
(The Cube-Flex house, as it is officially known)
So, we finished at the museum and rode the bus for three hours back to København. The whole study tour rocked, the group was positive, and even though I have some strong opinions about huge modern art exhibits, I enjoyed my time at every single place we went. The other DIS folks in my class are great, and I met a lot of cool Danes. It was a great three days. Quite possibly the best three-day stretch of my life, actually. No exaggeration. It was awesome; even just Kaospilots would have made the trip worthwhile, but it was much more than that. Looking forward to what the next thing brings.
-Eli
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