Short Tour: Day Two

On the second day of our study tour we woke up at 7:00 am (yuck) and had breakfast at our hostel. It was pretty much the standard European breakfast: break with jam/cheese/butter and yogurt, and I had an epiphany: I REALLY miss American breakfasts. All I want are some eggs and pancakes! BUT that is really the only thing that I am sick of so far, which is good. Right after breakfast we packed up the van and headed to Aarhus. They put on a movie, but I just slept through it, so I don't even remember which one it was. Right when we got to Aarhus we had a lecture about the patenting procedure for biotech products as well as how biotech companies are funded from start-up at Østjydsk Innovation. Afterwards we ate lunch and headed to ARoS, the modern art museum, which was pretty cool.

ARoS

The most famous exhibit is this giant, lifelike sculpture of a little boy, aptly named "Boy".

"Boy"--from this angle, he kinda looks creepily angry...

...But from this angle he has a kind of Mona Lisa smile!

According to our tour guide, groups of students try to spit on "Boy"s back by leaning over the balconies above him, which is bad for the materials because of the "enz...enzy..." And here her English failed. I think most of our program was a little lost because we didn't quite understand all the "moods" and such each piece was supposed to enduce, but this was probably our most exciting moment of the tour. We all happily and enthusiastically shouted the word "enzyme" for her, and I think she was a little taken aback by our excitement, but then, we are science majors...who really understands us anyway?

Aarhus from inside ARoS

The very famous clock tower of the town hall of Aarhus
After the tour, we were able to wander around the museum, and there was a pretty good mix of the completely absurd and normal paintings and such.



Giant ball...thing.
While we were walking around I had a little panic attack because I thought I had lost my phone, I left the rest of the group to find it. Luckily it was in my coat pocket in my locker, but I decided to wander the city and check out this area where I saw a bunch of old buildings. I was pretty impressed that I found it without any problems. It turns out it was some sort of open air museum...kind of like the Strawberry Banke of Denmark (if any of your New Hampshirites know what I'm talking about). It took a little while to find the entrance, and I wasn't totally sure I was supposed to be there because there was construction going on at one end, but no one said anything, so I just wandered around and took pictures. It was soooo gorgeous, and I wish it was summer so I could have gone into the buildings, but for now I am content just to have seen it.






Windmill!



I have a LOT more pictures of this place (I'm pretty sure I took pictures of every building or street), but I won't put them all up here. You get the gist, and you probably don't all share my obsession with half-timber houses and super old buildings. So after my adventure at this open air museum, I headed back up to the town hall to meet my group to go out for coffee at a cafe. Right near the meeting place was this statue of a sow and her piglets. Now, to the out-of-towner, this might be confusing; but Denmark's biggest export are probably pigs. There are actually 5 times more pigs than people here, and I believe most of those farms are on Jutland (where Aarhus is...aka mainland Denmark). Now, I know the Danes love ham and pork and bacon, but I'm pretty sure this statue captures the essence of why Copenhageners call those from Jutland and Aarhus in particular stupid; while I'm sure the Copenhageners enjoy en ost og skinke sandwich (cheese and ham sandwich) just as much as the next Dane, they don't have statues of pigs. I have yet to run this by my Danish teacher, but I remain convinced that I have found the essence of the long-running Aarhus-Copenhagen "you're stupid" "no, you're stupid" rivalry.


Our whole program went to this cafe called "Ziggy". I got a hot chocolate...and here you find another difference between the US and Denmark. When you get your hot drinks, they are at drinking temp, so if you wait any longer, they will be cold enough to be a little unpleasant to drink. I can't decide whether I like this or not, because I like being able to drink it right away, but sometimes I also like to get it just to warm my hands up for a while, THEN drink it later to warm up my insides.

Some buildings in Aarhus across the canal from the cafe

After the cafe, we headed back to meet the van, which took us to our hostel in Skanerborg. And OH. MY. GOD. This place was BEAUTIFUL. This is somewhere I would go for a vacation. We stayed in these GREAT cabins which smelled like they are pretty new. They had a full kitchen, with stove and fridge and all. It reminded me so much of summer camp.

Our cabin!

The lodge/reception area

The lake

The inside of our cabin

Kitchen area

We even had a couch!

AND a porch...too bad it was winter and we couldn't use it.


My bed in the loft <3

We had dinner at the hostel...good ol' American burgers. Afterwards we had a short-lived bonfire where we made s'mores with a Danish twist. I got a splinter in my tongue from the toasting stick, then I called it quits. Our whole program decided the best thing to do in the middle of the woods was to start a dance party. It was pretty great, even if the other program was judging us a little. Bottom line was we had more fun.
So I still have one more day to talk about, but I will do that some other day. Hej hej!