sorry, still not pictures of danes driving. can i blame it on losing most of my pictures?

Once again, I have neglected my poor blog for far too long, so this entry will either be one enormous entry, or it will be broken into several different entries and I'll milk it for all it's worth.  I'm not quite sure how it will turn out yet; either way, I'm blawgin again, ya'll!

Two Thursdays ago, my Migration and Identity class went on a field study to Malmö and Göteborg in Sweden.  In class, we compare Danish and Swedish migration and integration policies and this trip served as an opportunity for us to look at them on a closer level.  Our first stop was Rosengård, a "ghetto" in Malmö. The word ghetto is deceptive, though; it looks like any reasonably well-off, middle-class neighborhood I've ever seen.   I think the only reason it is referred to as a ghetto is because over 60% of the population was born outside of Sweden. Specifically, we visited Tegelhuset, or The Brickhouse, which is an after-school program for Rosengård's youth.  The speakers were very good (as were the cookies they served us).  I found it especially interesting that Rosengård employs people who are more or less professional neighborhood watchers.  Between these pro neighborhood watchers, all 50-some languages (or sumpin crazy like that!) are spoken, and the gap between the ethnic population and the public services in the city such as the fire and police department is bridged a bit more.  


Anyhowz, after that, we visited the Red Cross House of Humanity in downtown Malmö and then walked around a little bit.  We stopped by this super good cafe for lunch, and it was waaay cheaper than in Denmark!

Made this picture X-TRA LARGE so you can appreciate the texture of the avocado and brie sandwich and the mousse pastry. give me more now, plz.

But while food in Sweden may be cheaper, their alcohol policies = ridiculous.  The lady at 7-Eleven told us that you need your passport for identification.  Um, what the heck, SVERIGE? Did I take a bridge from Copenhagen to the US or something?  Oh, and I forgot to mention that before this 7-Eleven debacle, our professor took us to this French restaurant where we were showered with bottles of wine and salads and then took us to a micro-brewery across the street where we were showered with hops.  Europeans have a very different view on education.  

But I'm getting ahead of myself again.  A few weeks without blawgin and I'm all over the place!  Before the 7-Eleven and French restaurant and entire intoxicated class, we took a bus from Malmö to Göteborg.  On the bus, we watched a movie by Fatih Akin called "Head-On" in English and something else in German.  It was a good, though pretty heavy, movie about Turkish immigrants living in Germany.  We also had this super-good Danish candy that is sweet on the outside and filled with salt.  Gets u erry time!  In Denmark, they have Big Salt Candy Mountain. Anyway, I'm totes bringing some back to the US with me.  ERRY TIME!

In Göteborg, we visited the Museum of World Culture.  It was a very interesting museum.  They attempt to avoid ethnography (whether or not they actually succeed is another matter), so they have no constant exhibitions.  We saw an exhibition on the legitimacy of museums' collections of foreign culture/whose culture belongs to whom; specifically, the Göteborg Museum of World Culture put its collection of Paracas textiles on display and extended an offer to the Peruvians to reclaim possession the textiles.  We also visited an exhibition that confronts migration and movement around the world.  It had a very powerful collection of abandoned items found at the US-Mexico border.  I would have pictures, buuuuuutttttt...

Since everything Apple I've ever owned lets me down at some point in time, many of my pictures were lost with the S.S. Jordy's iPhone when it sank in the sea of fail.  

Luckily, diving teams were able to recover some from the wreckage of the S.S. Jordy's iPhone! Yayyy!

So after the museum, we visited the University of Göteborg and had a roundtable discussion with a professor there and then went to the French restaurant and all that fun began, but this is starting to come full-circle which is kind of cheesy so here r sum pix!

We went on a boat tour in Go:teborg and had to duck our heads when we went through the CHEESE GR8R, a super low bridge.  

Sweden just had its national election yesterday -- The Swedish People's Party lost 24 Hitler-moustache-clad seats in Parliament

On the way back 2 Copenhagz, we stopped by the Varberg/Getteröns Nature Reserve and kayaked in the Kattegat + ate wild blackberries + chatted about our trip!  It was a pretty awesome weekend, and all I can say now is that our study tour 2 Turkey should be legen - wait, if you r lactose intolerant, you might want to stop reading cuz the next part of the word is - DAIRY!

We also visited an open-air flea market in Frederiksberg that was super awesome, and afterwards we got pizza which was equall awesome but also delicious.

Half of my pictures so far have been of food. Hmmm.

FATALITY!  Another X-TRA LARGE picture of food to push the balance in favor of food-related pictures!  Sanct Peders Bageri, one of my favorite bakeries/producers of delish chocolate cinnamon snails since 1652.  

On Wednesdays, we don't have classes to allow for us to go on study tours.  Two Wednesdays ago, my Danish (Dansk!) class went on a boat-tour of Copenhagen.  Luckily, I saved most of these pix before the day that Apple failed me (for, like, the twentieth time).  

Opportunistic picture of Nyhavn, tour boat railing and all.

Ditto.

Water reflected on the Black Diamond Library! Craaay-cray!

Whoever made this bridge clearly loves Star Wars

Church o da Savior

Danish Royal Fam's pad!!~~

Reeeeaaaaaalllllll funny, Denmark.

After our boat tour, we paid a visit to the National Museum.  The highlight of this experience was definitely when our elderly professor explained the sale of "mar-jahna" in Christiania to us.  

Let'z see.  This past Thursday, Lauren, Rachel, Peter and I went to see The New Pornographers and The Morning Benders at Loppen in Christiania.  We ate at a lil' cafe first and tried to get the cafe pup to come say hi, but he was too shy =[ .  The show itself was pretty amazing.  I was especially blown away by The Morning Benders and got a poster FO FREE!  I was also blown away by how old The New Pornographers are now.  I thought rock stars stayed, like the Alphaville song and Mel Gibson movie, forever young.  Either way, it was an amazing show!  And I would definitely recommend seeing both groups if the opportunity ever arises!

Yesterday, my Danish class went on another field trip to the F.C. København - Brøndby I.F. soccer match.  The game itself was pretty intense, and the Brøndby fans got pretty rowdy!  They lit chairs on fire in the stands and threw firecrackers onto the field like a bunch of hooooooligans!

Firecrackers in the stands

aaaannnnddd firecrackers on da field!

~~sunday nite lites!!!~!

Okay, that'z all I can think of 4 now, so I'ma end w/ sum more pix!

Clearly, there's some kind of envy here... A real American could eat that tiny ice cream cone in ONE. BITE.

Pretty please with jell-o cheesecake and gold on top?

and, to end, some of the cows who live on the farm next to Krogerup and greet us when we get back from the train station because much like the Wu-Tang Clan, they ain't nuttin 2 fuck w/!

obligatory first post

WELL well well! I've been in Denmark for about a week and figured it's about time to lay the crack down on this blogging business. 

Walk back from the train station!  Farm buildings on the left, Krogerup in the back!

I'm living in Krogerup folkehøjskole in Humlebæk.  To say it, make the "k" and "r" sounds as far back in your throat as you can then pretend that the rest of the letters in the word don't exist.  "Folkehøjskole" sounds like "folkemay4jklaynkayiynkfschooluh" to ears from the United States.  It is a school designed for Danish and international students generally between the ages of 19-25ish who would like to learn for learning's sake and figure out what they would like to do in life.  The classes mainly center around discussion and experiential learning and don't assign homework, papers, or grades.  I've never actually attended one of the discussions, but maybe it can best be described as the late-night conversations that occur in college study lounges.  Or my freshman year FYS class. 
Our folkehøjskole consists of 13 students from the United States in my program, about 50ish Danes, and about 15-20ish international students from all over the world.  There are people from relatively nearby places like Iceland and Hungary, and also from as far away as Japan, the Maldives, Ghana, Mauritania, and Israel! The folkehøjskole invites us to most of their evening programming which often consists of folk dances, group talent shows, and community-building games.  It's like Danish summer camp during the school year!
Krogerup is located towards the northern part of the Zealand island (right across the water from Sweden) and sits next to the largest organic farm in Denmark, and let me tell you IT'S GORGEOUS! We have to walk through the farm and a nearby forest where is rains prehistoric monster slugs to get to the train station, and it's like walking through a scene from _Everything Is Illuminated_ or something!
(These pictures are from my phone camera.  I'll have better ones up as soon as I buy some batteries for my camera!)

Look at those sunflowers! And that sun glare!

This is where Danish kids learn to tend the earth.

I'm not quite sure where this path goes, but I'll find out someday soon!

It takes about 15 minutes to walk to the train station across the farm and through the slug forest and then about 25-45 minutes to get to København, depending on which train you catch and finally about a 10-minute walk to the classrooms. Oooorrrr, on Tuesdays and Fridays, a 20-minute bus ride to the København Universitet classrooms.  Tuesdays and Fridays are also the days that I have class at 800.  I'm not even going to think about when I have to wake up, but here are some pictures from my veryveryveryvery early-morning commute!  Sorry they didn't come out too well; my phone's camera must have been sleepy.

A slug from slug forest

  We had orientation during our first few days here.  It was pretty much like freshman year orientation. BUT IN DENMARK.  We learned how to navigate the Danish streets, that Danish people are ketchup, and where to buy the cheapest groceries and eat (i.e., which places charge two dollars instead of three dollars for tap water).  We had our commencement in the city hall, which was super cool and modeled after an Italian plaza.  I have pictures on my other camera, but it died right after I took them because I left my batteries at home.  LIKE A DUMMY.  Anyway, commencement consisted of lots of really tall Danes talking to us with really literal Google-image-search pictures relating to their speeches on a projector.  It culminated in a speech given by a person with arguably the coolest title in the world, the Lord-Mayor (LAWD-MAYYOOROROR) of Copenhagen.

After orientation, we had a few more days to wander around before classes started, so we explored Denmark bit more.  This is some of what we found: 

Hmmm...I see what you're doing here, Copenhagen.  Where's da Little Caesars?? Daz all I wanna know.

Free lattes in Copenhagen!  (The number I had rhymes with "free").  Let's turn the label and see who's crazy enough to give out free stuff in Denmark!

H&M!??? what are you doing making coffee????

Danish people don't know what window screens are apparently, so we always get lots of visitors.

We went out to Helsingør to hang out with Hamlet, Ophelia, and Hamlet's dad-ghost at Kronborg (on the left), but they weren't home so we hung out with this double-rainbow instead.

Dani$h ca$h!!11!~~ (This is about enough to buy a chocolate milk. MAYBE.)

Building with the dragon-tail spire!  I'm not sure exactly what it is.   Probably some tower like the one where Christian Bale fights the dragon in...

  Since I'm technically in Denmark to study, my classes are Cross-Cultural Encounters in a European Context; Muslims in the West; Youth, Language, and Society; Service Learning Seminar; and Danish I & II.  They are all pretty self-explanatory and straightforward.  There's a lil' bit more work than I was expecting, especially in Youth, Language, and Society, my class at Københavns Universitet that has three Danes with Bachelors in Linguistics already.  I bet they feel reeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaaal smart taking a class with a bunch of American undergraduates.  

I'm going to end this entry with a resolution -- I want to write more!  I used to do a lot of writing in high school, but fell out of it at Wooster.  Hopefully Denmark will help to put me back in the groove!  Okay! daz all!

Hey hey!

OH! P.S.  my blog is named "watching danes drive" because 5/4 Danish people ride their bikes everywhere.  I don't really get the sense that most of them are exceptionally comfortable behind the wheel of a car which leads to some very entertaining experiences watching them try to park or maneuver cars into small spaces.  When I get ballsier, I will snap lots pictures as proof!

OKAY! Vi ses!