Day 4: 5/25
Yay, first weekend! The weather has still been a bit gross, raining on and off and cloudy all the time.
This morning I tried to find the bike shop, but I must have gotten off at the wrong stop because I could not find the address. I also didn’t have any wifi or a map to look at so I just kind of was wandering around aimlessly. I saw some really cute shops and boutiques (that also look really expensive). Kongens Nytorv is a pretty busy commercial area by the Royal Theater and Nyhavn. I remembered seeing a flea and arts and crafts market right by where I got off the bus so I decided to check that out.
Cute Cupcake Shop
There were lots of tables selling a variety of things. Some people sold their own artwork, jewelry and even their own handknit hats, while others sold antique knicknacks. I stopped by one table that was selling vintage (among other things). The poor seller was trying to just seal the deal while the Chinese tourists who were buying the cameras from him wanted written documentation that it was an authentic camera.
Tables at Kongens Nytorv
After poking my nose around a little longer, I decided that it was time to go back since I wanted to go to the park to get to know other people from my dorm. The bus was just not coming. Normally the bus comes at least every 10 minutes, but I had waited for 25 minutes when I finally saw why. Turning the corner were police on motorcycles and a bunch of people holding signs. My first instinct was, protest? but as they came closer, I realized that it was a charity walk. They were walking for Multiple Sclerosis. After the bus passed, there were 3 of the buses I wanted in line. We were stuck behind the crowd for a little bit too, so we were moving at a crawl for a little bit.
Charity Walk
Of course, by the time I got back and tried to go to the park, people were on their way back, so I turned around to come back only to find another group of people with another SRA going to the Carlsberg Factory for the Beer Fest that comes around once a year. It was only about a 20 minute bus ride to a side that I hadn’t explored yet. Carlsberg is a local Danish beer brand that seems pretty popular, I’m not sure if that’s because it’s widely found or if it’s because it’s cheap or if it really is that good.
Carlsberg Brewery
The beer festival was held from May 23-25 and featured many different brewers. You had to first pay a 100dkk entry fee which included an adorable beer glass and then you would pay an additional 12dkk for each token, which you could redeem for drinks at different booths. Some of the booths were very creative in their marketing. We ended up leaving early to make it back to our dorm in time for some free dinner (never pass up free dinner here, food is expensive!) and actually left our SRA there with all of our leftover tokens.
Flying Couch!
Guessing the type of hops
Dinner was really nice since I got to talk a bit with another one of my SRAs. She is currently working on her Master’s in Art History at the University of Copenhagen. I got to learn a bit more about the Danish education system and just her life in general. She told me that college tended to be more specialized and led toward a certain study, whereas most people in the US have their core classes or gen. eds and have an opportunity to figure out what they want to do.
After resting up a bit, it was time to meet up with my group to go visit a gay bar for class! There was a decent group of us since other people came from the same Kolligiums and invited their friends. The first gay bar we went to was Masken. I had heard good reviews about it, so I was expecting it to be big with a dancefloor. Unfortunately I was mistaken. There were two floors, but it was quite small and intimate. Oh man, was it smokey inside. After a little bit, we decided to move onto a different bar. The second one we went to was more like a cafe. It had more of a family like atmosphere to me with groups of 4-6 people. It seemed to have more of a mix of people in terms of age and sexuality. Afterward, we walked around for a bit longer and found the other big group again. At that point we were basically just hopping around from gay bar to gay bar, not spending too much time at any one place. I wasn’t very interested in drinking and people didn’t really seem to be doing much else, so I decided to head on back, especially since I would have to take the bus by myself and the bus ran only once every hour at night. On the bus, I managed to find more people from my dorm and we stopped by a McDonald’s before walking home. I totally caved and bought a McFlurry… All and all it was a very interesting night.
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