Since this week is my spring break, I decided to take the opportunity to visit Phil, a friend of mine who I hadn't seen in about 5 years. We used to fence together years ago, but he eventually had to move back to Denmark. So as weird as it felt making travel plans without my mother's guidance, I booked a flight and here I am.
(Forgive the current lack of eloquence, it is currently 8:30 am here and I'm only about halfway done with my coffee.)
Since my last post, I safely arrived in Denmark. Luckily, Phil met me at the airport and was able to help me navigate the bus routes back to his apartment. I'll spare you a description of my first day in Denmark because it largely consisted of me being kind of grumpy because I was running almost entirely on caffeine and 4 hours of sleep. So there was Doctor Who and a nap involved before I started feeling human again. Luckily I was properly awake when his mother dropped by with some fantastic homemade pizza dough (I desperately need the recipe) and a camp bed for me.
The next day, Phil had to go to class because he isn't on spring break and takes his education seriously. So I had the chance to settle in and get some much needed sleep. Luckily for me, the apartment complex is literally a stones throw from the grocery store. They share a very small parking lot. Unluckily for me, absolutely everything is in Danish. Which is reasonable considering that I am in Denmark. But it was still quite an adventure trying to find food that I recognized that I could prepare quickly in a microwave (I was starving and not in the mood to figure out a new kitchen for real cooking). It took a few laps around the store but I did eventually find something that I'm still pretty sure was lasagna that had microwave instructions on the back (at least numbers are pretty universal if a language uses the same alphabet)
Even though everyone I passed was perfectly pleasant, or at least indifferent, to me, it was actually rather scary being somewhere on my own where I spoke absolutely none of the native language. At least in Paris I as with a group and could manage a few basic words. Hello and thank you get you a long way, I've found. Plus, in Paris, I was with a group. Here, I was on my own and feeling very much the ignorant American. Even though I know most Danes speak some English, I still felt weird being completely ignorant of their language.
Despite this grocery store experience only lasting about 15 minutes, I left it with a very different perspective. I've never had much occasion to think about how fortunate I am to have grown up in an area where my family and I speak the dominant language. I really can't imagine moving somewhere and having to make a living in another country that speaks an entirely different language, particularly if they also didn't speak mine. I like to think that I could make it work, but I know it would still be terrifying.
Later that night, Phil took me into the nearby city of Århus (or Aarhus) to meet his friends from University. We wound up at the Sherlock Holmes pub, which was surprisingly similar to the pubs I've been frequenting in London. But I learned that Danish beer is pretty fantastic and that the stereotypical American to Danes is a southern, conservative Republican. Denmark is a very liberal country so I was thankfully able to smash that stereotype to pieces. That plus the fact that I was able to keep up as far as beer went seemed to make a good impression. About halfway through the evening there was a pub quiz which was good fun even though I wasn't much use. Though there were a few America related questions so I didn't fail entirely.
Yesterday, Phil's classes let out earlier than usual so we took the opportunity to catch a bus back into Aarhus and wander a bit. The main stop of the day was an art museum called Aros, which was pretty cool. It contained a wide variety of work and was a reasonable size, so we actually got through the whole thing! I particularly enjoyed the basement, which featured 9 rooms of various light art (some short films projected uniquely, a few optical illusions and things like that) which had a really unique quality to them. Also, the director's choice exhibit upstairs contained a room full of art based in horror which I was fascinated by. So I'm a bit twisted...
After the art museum, we wandered around a bit more. It is apparently art week in Aarhus so there were odd installations of modern art all over the streets. That was neat to check out in addition to the city itself. Aarhus is composed mainly of red brick, very unlike London. Plus, I was walking around with an archaeology student so I learned far more than I could retain about the history of nearly every building. Eventually, hunger forced us to stop for a small lunch. We picked up fairly traditional hot dogs from a stand on a corner. The Danes are rather clever about this actually. Instead of the bun Americans are used to, the bun is actually round and hollowed out in the middle so you don't have the problem of the hot dog falling out so much and the bun didn't fall apart on me. I think that this needs to catch on in the US.
That night, Phil took me out to the restaurant where he works. I don't even know where to start with that. Not only was it a fairly upscale restaurant, the food was AMAZING and we were served a different type of wine with every course. I'm not sure how I'm going to go back to the cheap wine I've been drinking in London after that! Since Phil works there, we had a chance to chat with the manager and waiters a bit more than normal and it was neat to get to know them. Apparently it was a big deal that he had a girl with him and everyone in the kitchen seemed to be taking turns bringing us water refills and such. But anyway, I'm feeling very spoiled and enjoyed dinner immensely.
With that, I'm more or less up to present. I'll post another entry with some pictures when I get the chance. At the moment, I'm in class with Phil because we're going to Copenhagen this afternoon and I can't get my phone (that has the pictures online). So I've been writing this on a Danish keyboard, which has been an adventure. They moved some of the keys on me! But at least I understand this better than the lecture on archaeology that is all in Danish!
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