I Heart DK (Denmark)

Greetings from Korsor, Denmark!

I am sitting on the MV Explorer, and it’s about 2 PM here. We depart Denmark in 9 PM this evening and will be on our way to Antwerp, Belgium, expecting to arrive at 8 AM on Monday. It’s crazy to think that Antwerp will be our fourth port on the trip; which means only four to go! But the final four are the ones that I am looking the most forward to—I’m so excited.

I thoroughly enjoyed Denmark. While it was probably the country I was the least excited about visiting, I would rank it #2 behind Russia at this point in the journey. Korsor, where we are currently docked, is about an hour and a half away from Copenhagen. Students were pretty disappointed to learn this at first, but due to the cost associated with docking in Copenhagen versus Korsor, Korsor won out in the end. But it is an absolutely charming city that I thoroughly enjoyed visiting. Let me break down the week for you.

We arrived in Korsor on Tuesday morning at 8 AM. And we were met by the locals with a great deal of hype. Apparently, we were a pretty regular item in the Korsor paper, as the town prepared for our arrival. Apparently a ship with 600 American college students invading a sleepy harbor town of 12,000 is huge news. We were met with a band, and literally, a red carpet out at the gangway. The students were pretty excited to see this. After a quick disembarkation process, Megan, Zuri and I met up to travel into town. Megan and Zuri have become two of my favorite traveling companions, as they are really up for seeing anything and aren’t really super structured in terms of staying on a schedule. The walk into downtown Korsor, we wandered into some shops and strolled around. Korsor reminds me a little bit of my hometown of Marine City, in that it is very quaint, quiet and cozy. On some parts of the street, it was so quiet you could easily hear a pin drop. The main mode of transportation in Korsor is bicycle, and they are everywhere. The weather was phenomenal, so strolling along in the sunshine and a cloudless sky was quite lovely. At one store that we stopped in, we learned that there was a free outdoor concert at the old medieval castle in town that happens every Tuesday night during the summer. Armed with this information, we had our plans for a Tuesday night on the town J

After perusing some stores, we came across a delightful local bakery….OMG, THE DANISH KNOW THEIR PASTRIES! Some of have posed the intriguing philosophical question is, “do Danish people call danish pastry danish?” The answer to that question, my friends, is no, the Danes call danish pastry, “weinerbrod,” and let me tell you, I love weiner(brod)!!!! So scrumptious and yummy.

After a light lunch, we headed back to the ship for a day of relaxation (ie, a nap). After napping, we ventured out again to pick up a picnic dinner that we could take to the outdoor concert. We stopped at the local grocery store, Fotex, and picked up a few picnic staples including olives, wine, bread, cheese, crackers and of course, more weinerbrod. The concert was delightful, it is in a natural open-aired pavilion, where everyone camped out with their checkered blankets on the slopes of the large hill, and watched the concert in the shallow valley below. The concert material was surprisingly Americanized, including Tina Turner, CCR, Blues Brothers, James Taylor and Bette Midler. Overall, it was a delightful way to spend a summer evening in Korsor. We returned to the ship to make our plans for Copenhagen the next day. I was really sad that a lot of our students did not experience the charm and communal feel of Korsor, as many of them literally got off the ship and headed directly to the train station to go into Copenhagen. Everyone is amazingly friendly!

Wednesday morning, Justin, Zuri, Megan and I headed to the Korsor train station, where we picked up the train to go into Copenhagen. Trains from Korsor to C-town run every half an hour and for a round trip ticket, it cost roughly $40. Expenses in Denmark are a lot like Norway—everything was WICKED expensive!

When we emerged from the train station, I was immediately struck by the old-world European feel of Copenhagen. It was so charming, lots of brightly colored buildings, and many squares break up the large-city feel. Much like Korsor, the vast majority of Danes ride their bikes, and it is the main mode of transportation in Copenhagen. Fabulous! We immediately headed to our Bed and Breakfast to set our luggage down and head out to explore. The B & B was fabulous! The B & B is in the heart of downtown, located on the third floor of an old apartment building. It was amazing and the views from our room were incredible! After freshening up, we grabbed some coffee at a coffee shop right around the corner from the B & B as we had some time to kill before meeting up with Aaron, Marco and Courtney, who had gone into Copenhagen on Tuesday.

Off we went to explore the city. Armed with only a city map, we just set out to walk and see what the city had to offer. I really enjoyed the fact that we had no plan in place, we just went where instincts told us to go. We walked along the gorgeous canals (from what I am told are a lot like those found in Amsterdam) and stopped for lunch at a lovely Mediterranean restaurant called Riz Raz, located in the Latin Quarter. A cheap lunch in Copenhagen costs anywhere from $15-$20 USD. After enjoying some delicious veggie lasagna, falafel, tomato couscous and spinach on an outdoor patio, we went exploring some more….the people watching was incredible! Let me give you my insights into Danish people:

Denmark is a very family-oriented country, in which the men get two months of paid paternity leave. Most of the school-aged children I saw where being escorted to school by their fathers.

Danish women and men are STUNNING! Honestly, it’s just the land of gorgeous people. Everyone is very fit, blonde, blue-eyed and uber stylish and sophisticated. And so very nice! Danish also speak fluent English, a lot like in Norway, so that was also very helpful.

Denmark is also a very gay-friendly country and passed laws back in 1989 legalizing gay marriage and all of the rights that come with being married.

Danish pregnant women are STUNNING! I don’t know what’s in the water over here, but even 8-9 months pregnant, the women are just gorgeous and effortlessly put together. So cute!

Saying “hi hi hi” means “goodbye.” That was confusing for about 10 seconds.

Enough of my gawking, let’s continue on. Wednesday afternoon was just roaming the city squares, window shopping and taking in some coffee at the lovely outdoor cafes. The Copenhagen Jazz Festival, one of the biggest draws for the city, is also going on right now, so it was great to be able to hear live jazz music at the outdoor cafes. We went to the Danish Design Studio, which was pretty cool. It was a museum of sorts in which showed up and coming designs for food packaging and furniture. There was also a very neat exhibit in the basement of the building, which was a series of statements made about the human condition and that the innate instincts of humanity cannot be packaged or bottled or sold. It comes from the human heart and spirit. I will post some pictures on facebook so you can see what I am talking about a little bit better. It was pretty neat.

We met up with Marco, Aaron and Courtney later that evening at one of Copenhagen’s classiest gay bars, “The Jailhouse.” Needless to say, it was hours of fun for me as I sat in smoke-saturated rooms while paying $10 for a drink. However, I decided to make my own fun and took some pictures of me “behind bars” and wearing a Danish policeman’s hat, so I was quite entertaining. Thank goodness MJ was there. Later, we went out for dinner and the gays wanted to go to a lesbian bar, Chacha, and that’s when I called it a night.

Thursday was a fun-filled and fabulous day!!! We woke up and hit up the city on another gorgeous day. We had heard there was an amazing pastry shop around the corner from our B and B by the name of St. Peter’s Bageleri, and we were not disappointed. The pastries were to die for!!! Yum!!!! We met up with Marco and Courtney and headed out. Part of Copenhagen is divided by canals, so we transversed some canals and ended up visiting the micro nation of Christiania. Christiania is a hippie commune in the middle of Copenhagen that takes up about a full city block. Established in I-don’t-know-when, Christiania, is not affiliated with Denmark, and the people there do not consider themselves Danish, but “children of the Earth.” They have their own national flag, schools, and local government. They do not use the Danish kroner, but they barter for their own goods within the government, but do accept Kroner from tourists. The micro nation’s main source of income is tourism. They also smoke weed opening in public and they were huge. That is what I will take away from my very brief time in Christiania—the land of weed and un-neutered dogs. Fun.

The day definitely picked up from there. We walked a little further across the bridge and spotted a delightful bakery/café. Let me tell you Panera doesn’t have anything on Danish café/bakeries. OMG—delicious. You can spot the really good pastry shops a mile away because all of them have a distinctive sign hanging in front of the shop—an upside down pretzel with a crown on the top. That is the universal symbol for delicious Danish goodness as far as I am concerned. It was so good, our friend Justin bought an entire baguette, just to snack on. Out of control.

At this point, the group split up and Megan and I decided to go check out the Copenhagen Opera House, which is world famous for both its design and the performers that it attracts to Denmark. Lou Reed performed there as part of the Jazz Festival Wednesday night.

The Opera House is only accessible by boat, so we took some pictures from across the harbor. After the Opera House, we ventured to the Royal Palace to see the changing of the guard. I was pretty excited to see this in part because when I was in London a few years ago, all of my pictures of London were lost, including those of the changing of the guard, which was a major bummer. We got to the palace and had a few minutes before the guard change, which was pretty neat. I snapped some video of it, which is pretty neat. Unfortunately, the royals were not home, but it was cool nonetheless. After the palace, we skipped over to see the Danish Parliament Building and the Supreme Court, which was pretty cool. From there, we went to the Danish National Library, dubbed as the Black Diamond, because, well, it looks like a Black Diamond. We walked into some more little shops and headed back downtown to meet up for dinner and write out some postcards. After dinner, Megan and I took the train back to Korsor and spend the night relaxing, and sharing stories with other students and staff members who had also returned.

Today was a relatively low-key day. I walked into Korsor to enjoy the beautiful weather and mail my postcards and now I am back on the ship, updating the blog and uploading some photos.

We sail tonight for Antwerp, so catch the latest post sometime next week. Also, I am sure that you have heard about the shooting outside of the American embassy in Turkey. Not sure how that is going to effect our stop in Istanbul. We go on the instructions and advise of the State Department, so we could be re-routed from that port…..perhaps to Spain or Morocco, but I will keep you posted as we hear of those developments.

Love you all! Take care and I hope wherever you are, you are enjoying the sunshine! Also, please keep my grandma in your thoughts and prayers. I found out on Wednesday that she broke her pelvis and is currently at home and resting. Please keep her in your thoughts! Hope to hear from you soon!

Love you! And as the Danish say, "hi hi hi!!!"