HATB and the art of the low bridge (Jutland, part 1 of 4)

Yesterday evening, I returned from the first of our two study tours. In under a month, I will be going to Scotland for a week, which I am, of course, thrilled about. However, the past three days have been spent in Western Denmark, which was amazing beyond belief. So many things happened in those three days that I couldn't possibly compress it into one post. So, consider this part 1 of a 4 part series.

Note: many people took awesome photos of the trip, and there was a plan to create a group photo album somewhere on the web. The plan hasn't materialized yet, but I'm going to bring it up in class tomorrow and get people to post their pictures ASAP. Once they do, I'll edit this post to include beautiful pictures that perfectly counterpoint my brilliant prose.

------

Thursday, September 10th

We drove four hours across the country from Copenhagen to the region of Jutland. Jutland is the half of Denmark that is actually attached to mainland Europe; most of Denmark consists of islands. Our first stop was the second-largest city in Denmark, Århus, which contains about 300,000 people. The four hours and the 300,000 people gives you some idea of how big Denmark is (i.e. not very big).

Along the highway (E20) we passed by mostly farmland, especially sheep and horses. The scenery was beautiful, and the two main bodies of water we crossed provided an incredible view.

We arrived at Århus (rhymes with door-loose) around 12:30PM, but had some trouble getting to the headquarters of Kaospilots, our first stop. See, Århus is not a very large city, and we were in a Huge-Ass Tour Bus (HATB for short). Our bus driver, a very friendly and very adept Swede, kept having to find alternate routes as our HATB was repeatedly stopped by low bridges. At one point, he actually had to back into a four-way intersection to turn around due to one such bridge. After quite bit of maneuvering, he got us to the headquarters, where there was much fanfare.

I don't know if it's a Scandinavian thing or it's just our group, but we invited the two bus drivers along to just about everything during the study tour, except a couple of the academic workshops. DIS treated them to meals when we went out as a group, and they came with us to all the museums and cultural sites that we visited. The two drivers spent most of the time chatting with each other, but we got to talk with them a bit as well. They both seemed to love life. Our driver was more amused than annoyed by the low bridges, and laughed along with the professor and a few of the students every time we had to turn around.

So, we finally arrived at the Kaospilots HQ. The first thing that stands out about Kaospilots' HQ is the fact that all the buildings are covered in graffiti. Not "I wrote fuck on the bathroom wall 'cause I thought it was funny" graffiti, but serious art. Most of it was made by Kaospilots students, with the blessing of the organization. It was good stuff. More on them in the next post.

-Eli

(credit to my friend Katia for the following picture. There are several buildings with more, equally awesome stuff on them, but this one sums it up).

The Conclusions To Which We Have Jumped

I want to take a post to address a few more things that were in our welcome handbook, phrased in the form of a "Danes are like this" statement. It turns out that a lot of generalizations we were given about the mythical Average Young Dane are either untrue or irrelevant. For example:

There's a bar in the basement of the Kollegium, open Friday and Saturday nights (admittedly, that's a little different than a US dorm). I've hung out there twice, and between what Danes say and what our welcome handbook says, I've heard the following things about Danish drinking:

1) Danes can hold a lot more liquor than Americans, in part because most of them have been drinking since a younger age (like... 13). Don't try to keep up with them, they'll drink you under the table.
2) As a result of the younger start, they also are, for the most part, just interested in getting a bit tipsy and having a good time, not getting wasted. The thing that American college kids do where we show up freshman year and go "WOOOO PARTY TIME LET'S GET EFF'D UP!" is something that the Danes all did when they were 16, so the older college kids are over it.

Statement 1 is true, on average. But they're not magic. It's not like they're downing a dozen drinks without feeling a thing. They can hold their liquor about as well as my friends back home who drink regularly in large quantity. Sure, they could drink me under the table, but I don't drink much, so where's the pride in that?

Statement 2 is just patently false. They get wasted. Many people in my Kollegium, at least. I saw a group do the asshole frat-boy thing where a guy passes out, and rather than help him out, they decide that the 60-degree-and-somewhat-wet outdoor courtyard would be a good place for him to sleep it off. I also saw a girl not be able to lift her drink to her mouth of her own power (this is #2 after "passed out" on the list of signs you've had enough). So, naturally, a "friend" offered to "help" her by more or less pouring it down her throat (oh, don't worry, she was appreciative).

I'm not saying they're doing anything beyond what goes on every weekend at a US state school. It's pretty much the same stuff, and it does feel like there's less of it here, at least slightly. And yet, I'd be lying if I said that the 30 people in the bar last night went down to have four or five drinks and get lightly buzzed. One of my DIS friends and I were berated several times for not currently having a drink in hand (because they can't drink until they've clinked cups with everyone).

Hvidovre Hospital Kollegium

My home for the next three and a half months is a "Kollegium" (koh-lee-gi-um. Hard "g"). It's sort of a shared student housing building. Most universities do not have their own dorms, for a number of reasons. Many Danes continue to live with their parents through college, and many live in their own apartments with friends. However, some people want a dorm-type setup, so they come to live in one of many Kollegiums.

They're more or less dormitories, but they don't belong to a particular school. The only requirement is that you have to be a student somewhere in the area. It's sort of like if there was a big dorm somewhere in Baltimore where Loyola, Goucher, Towson, Hopkins, MICA, and other students all lived. Sounds like a crazy idea, huh? Well, there's a couple reason why I think it works here, (and why it wouldn't work quite as well in the US).

The big one is that people get a little too wrapped up in the notion of "school spirit" in the States. Goucher kids spend so much time ragging on the other schools in the area that it would take a lot for many of us to live with Hopkins kids. What with preconceived notions and all. I spent the summer in Boston, and it's the same there. I think it's not until a couple years after college that many people come to the startling conclusion that people who go to other schools are still decent human beings. I'm exaggerating only slightly. It's certainly not true of everyone, though, and I think there are many people who would enjoy living in such a setup.

-----

Onto the dorm itself (I've got pictures, albeit taken awkwardly with my laptop camera) The dorm is divided into 8 halls, each with two floors. The halls are set up off a main hallway (think of it as a spine, with four ribs on each side). This leaves space between the halls for six small, enclosed courtyards, each of which has a picnic table and a tree or two. This is my hall, and some of me:

You'll notice the hall has these red circles on the tile floor (just trust me on the "red" part). When the sun is beyond the end of the hall, as it is in this picture, those dots are completely invisible until you get close. The dots continue down the hall, but you can't see beyond the first two. They just blend into the glare.

On the first day, as I walked down to the end of the hall, I noticed that dots were appearing as I approached them. It reminded me of something from a sci-fi movie, or maybe a Miyazaki film.


My room has its own bathroom, complete with sink, toilet, and shower. No shared bathrooms here. Coming from Goucher dorms, a private bathroom seems kind of unnecessary (that's a lot of extra infrastructure to build), but I don't mind having it.

You might be looking at this picture and thinking "but Eli, where's the shower?"

Well...

It's behind the door. It's a little hard to wrap your head around it if you're used to the standard setup, but the whole bathroom is the shower. Everything is made to be able to get wet, (sink, toilet, etc) so the curtain isn't strictly necessary for anything.

No, scratch that. It protects the roll of toilet paper. That's literally the only thing in the bathroom that can't get soaked.

Anyway, I've been told some Kollegiums are like that, but most standard homes have the setup we're all used to.

That's one challenge I've faced here: I'm open to the idea that things are different in Denmark, but I'm somewhat indiscriminately open to it. I saw my bathroom and thought "Oh, that's how they do it in Denmark." Or, I'll be at the supermarket and be unable to find beans, and I'll think "Oh, I guess they don't eat beans here." Neither of those things are true; I started generalizing the moment I saw anything different.

They actually told us during orientation (without any prompting) "Yes, peanut butter is sold in Denmark, you'll just have to look around, it's not at every store." It's as though they know we're going to jump to conclusions after one store.

Anyway... my room. It's a bit of a mess. I haven't found any blu-tack equivalent yet, so I've got a pile of posters laying in the middle of my room. The room came with a bed, some bedding, a small desk/table, a desk chair, a comfy floor chair, a lamp, a shelf, and three bottles of toilet cleaning solution (two are on top of the shelf, one is out-of-frame in my closet). I'm going to take the high road here; insert your own joke as you see fit.

The door in the right half of the picture leads out to the courtyard. Sometimes I go play guitar out there.

That's pretty much all I can think to say about the captain's quarters. I don't know which things in my room were from the Kollegium, which things were from DIS, and which things were left by a previous tenant. I might find that out sometime, so I know what the expected situation is for an average Danish student living here. DIS coddles us a bit in terms of making us deal with the "real world," although not as much as the average college student (I am cooking for myself, after all). And I wouldn't want it otherwise; I'd like to know how to be a "real person" before graduating, if at all possible.

-Eli

Best. Moment. Ever.

The housing post will still happen, but I had to pop in to share this story. God, I wish I had brought a camera today (or at all to Denmark, now that I think about it. I'm just using my macbook camera to take photos of my dorm, and that's it).

Today, I was walking past where the harborbus picks up (a boat that travels up and down this canal near the center of town). This is, of course, a natural tourist stop, and pickpockets love tourists. So, on the booth, there is a sign (in English) warning that this is a high-zone for getting pickpocketed. Leaning against the side of the booth, not more than a foot away from this sign, is the sketchiest man I have ever seen. Shades, cigarette, hands in his pockets leaning against the booth, his emotionless face silently scanning the streets. He was that guy, for lack of a more descriptive term.

And that pretty much made my day.

København, if we want to be technical about it...

...and not look like stupid Americans.

Hi all, this is Eli Cohen ('11), welcome to my Study Abroad blog. You'll notice that there are old posts from when I was keeping a blog during my internship at EnerNOC. However, as of Monday, August 24, 2009, this is my study abroad blog for Copenhagen. København. So far, this place has been nothing but awesome. I'm glad I spent the summer in Boston prior to coming here so I could adjust to challenges of learning a transit system, cooking for myself, etc. before coming here to do all that in another language (well, partially in another language; there's plenty of English speakers).

Some things I've learned about money in my first 36 hours that are worth sharing.

1. "Everything costs more in Denmark" is only somewhat true. Most things cost more, and certainly eating out costs more. However, many common groceries have proven to be the same price or even cheaper than American goods (note: I've only been to two supermarkets, one which I'm told was cheap, one I've been told was average). I got a large box of corn flakes for about $2-$3 and a 1.5L carton of fruit juice for $2 (usually something like $4 for a half-gallon). And this is including the 25% sales tax. Which brings me to my next point:
2. It is the law in Denmark to include sales tax in the posted price. That means that when it says something costs 50 kr. (Danish kroner or DKK) that is the amount you will pay the store. None of that fussy "This $30 thing actually costs $31.50" business.
3. All that said, anything that could be thought of as a luxury item definitely costs significantly more. I went into a board game store thinking, "These are German board games, they'd probably cost a little less here than in the states." Turns out, the opposite is true. Games that cost $40 in the US cost about $70-$80 here. That also goes for movie rentals and purchases, video games, CDs (although those are less inflated), cafe food, and many other items.
4. Public transportation is expensive. DIS is buying passes for us, but we paid for them in a sense when we paid for tuition. Same goes for books; they're "free" for us in the sense that we're not paying for them right now.
5. Larger grocery stores are required by law to be closed most Sundays. It's an equalizing measure, of sorts. You're only allowed to be open every day if you're small; once you hit a certain size of store, you can only be open the first Sunday of each month. Helps the mom & pop stores out, I suppose.
   

That's all the insight I can muster right now. I'm going to go to the grocery store to get some dinner things. Unless something really interesting comes up, my next post will be about where I'm living (there will be pictures!)

Revving up for Denmark

It's true, my Denmark trip is less than a month away, and I'm learning new lessons about the power of serendipity.

I picked the DIS program as my study-abroad for a number of reasons; the choice of classes, positive reviews of the program, etc. However, since committing to the program, two pieces of news have come out that I'm extremely excited about.

1) The UN Climate Change Conference is taking place in Copenhagen in December. Sure, it'll be happening while I'm trying to write my final papers and whatnot, but it will be a great change of pace to see environmental issues become local news.

2) Greenland is taking steps towards independence from Denmark. There are definite environmental and economic issues involved, and it will be great to talk to Danes about this.

Neither of these things were public knowledge (at least among the average American college student) when I chose this program, but now that they're happening, I feel like I got lucky. It's like Denmark is actively working to help me with my Peace Studies research!

Less than four weeks to go!

The views expressed here are my own and not necessarily the views of the company (EnerNOC, Inc). If you thought otherwise, you probably thought Greenland was thriving with plant life.

Sweet Caroline (BAH BAH BAH...)

On Saturday I attended the big July 4th celebration on the Boston esplanade. The main act was Neil Diamond, who was cheesy as ever. Plus, the Boston Pops and a few other musical acts were part of the show, and the fireworks were set to music as well. It was a pretty fun time.

There was one particular song in the lineup that reminded me of a number of conversations I've had during the school year about American identity. For the time-constricted, the song more or less says that America is about lemonade stands, high school proms, and driving around in a Chevy. You may be surprised to find out that I don't feel particularly represented by that version of America. Another verse mentions helping out the neighbors, and I couldn't help but think, "...as long as they grew up in the same white, rural area as I did."

Admittedly, I knew what I was getting into when I went to a 4th of July fireworks show. I wasn't expecting anything more out of the show. For example, when Neil Diamond failed to point out that women in the Congo died for his audio equipment, I wasn't particularly surprised or disappointed. Like I said, I knew what I was getting into. And yet, I couldn't help but notice the cultural, social and environmental issues at play.

We blew up 2500 points of fireworks on the 4th, and that's just one show in one city. Looking just to the right of the flashing lights, one could see a huge, slow-moving cloud of thick smoke. Thankfully, we weren't downwind of it, but some folks were, and that can't be healthy. Plus the material costs. Tons of metal and plastic wasted for, more or less, a big shiny thing. It's a very pretty shiny thing, but no amount of shiny things are worth that level of damage, in my opinion.

The views expressed here are my own and not necessarily the views of the company (EnerNOC, Inc). If you thought otherwise, you probably also yell "BAH BAH BAH" and "so good! so good! so good!" during Sweet Caroline, but don't actually know any of the lyrics.