A weekend in København, Danmark

As I mentioned in my last post I left for Copenhagen or København in Danish on Saturday morning!  It was a very quick trip but it was definitely fun!!  This trip was with a group I am in at school called the Växjö International Students (VIS) and we take trips around Scandinavia with other international students so it was really nice to go with a big group of friends!  We left Saturday at 8:30...we were supposed to leave at 8:00 but when you study abroad you quickly learn that the Spanish and Italian's run on their own time which is not on time...not saying I don't love them but this is the reason for the late start.  We took a bus about 3 and a 1/2 hours to Copenhagen in Denmark which if you are not good at geography then you may not realize that this is the country below Sweden or above Germany.  I flew into Copenhagen when I came to Sweden but did not get to explore it before heading to Sweden.  When we got there we checked into our hostel which was nice...better than I thought.  This was my first hostel experience and I was told that it was a really nice one so maybe I haven't gotten the full experience yet but nevertheless it was a hostel.  Then we ventured out on our own to get some lunch and the first restaurants we saw were Burger King, McDonald's, and KFC in the city center so after talking about fried chicken basically everyday since I've been here I was sold on KFC.  It's interesting what a few months out of your country and away from normal food will do to you...I can't imagine being on Survivor...sometimes it feels like I'm on it....okay just kidding :) Anyway Kaitlyn, Ewa, and I decided to eat there.  After lunch we started doing some sight seeing.  Copenhagen is not very famous for many things, that I am aware of, but we walked all through the city and saw canals with all of the different shops and restaurants. 

In the City Center where the main shopping and restaurants are.

This is a famous Copenhagen postcard photo, I know I'm a surprisingly impressive photographer...I get it from my mother.

This is where the boat tour left from.

Melodie (France), Kaitlyn (Georgia), Gonzalo (Spain), Luis (Spain), Maxime (France), Me, Luis (Spain)

This is the parliament or government buildings protected by guards.

Walking on water...okay its frozen still I was pretty scared!

Luis (Spain), Pardo (Spain), Maxime (France), Melodie (France), Me, Kaitlyn (Georgia)

We were walking to see the famous statue of the Little Mermaid and the water was frozen and my french friend Maxime decided we should go walk on the water and that it was frozen enough.  I was very apprehensive but after everyone started doing it I of course had to also.  You notice that the ice is not smooth, this is because the boat's that give the boat tours drive through and break the ice up and then it refreezes.  As we were taking our boat tour the following day and we broke the ice up very near to where we were walking around the day before I realized perhaps that wasn't the best idea but we got some cool pictures and we survived so who cares right?

The Little Pardo...I mean Mermaid 

The Marble Church

After our city tour from Maxime who has been to Copenhagen several times we decided to stop to eat dinner at a place that served Mexican as well as Italian and it was called Mama Rosa.  It was a decent restaurant, actually Kaitlyn and I realized it was the first restaurant we had been to that we got served.  We have only been to fast food or cooked since we have been here.  One thing we quickly noticed was how poor the service was.  In a lot of Europe you do not tip and because of this you get poor service.  One thing was for sure the margaritas were good and that made the whole dinner worth it!

Nothing like cooling off after walking around all day in the windy 10 degree weather  with a frozen margarita!

After dinner we walked back to the hostel to get ready for a night on the town.  The VIS had arranged for us to all go to the same nightclub in Copenhagen.  We got the "VIP" treatment which was fun of course!  We had a very eventful night that ended with a cab ride to Burger King which of course was even better at 3 or 4 am!  The next morning we woke at 8 to take a boat tour of the city.  This would have been really great had I not seen everything the day before.  As you can imagine I did not mind sitting for an hour while I could take a short rest.  After the tour we went on our own to get lunch.  My friends and I had pizza at a small pizzeria which was really good.  After the pizza we went to Christiania which according to wikipedia is a haven for people with certain alternative lifestyles, and was founded in 1971 when the hippies took over an abandoned military zone.   Basically it is a in the middle of Copenhagen but claims that they are not a part of the European union and it is a large hippie commune with lots of "art work/trash".  I would love to show you pictures but due to the fact that they are not allowed while you are in Chistiania I have none...well one....

I can't describe Christiania you really just have to go see it to understand.  I can list off some things that were going through my head while walking through there, I'm scared,  how interesting , this is amazing , I've never seen such long hair on a man, like I maybe knew what the 60's were like, what living in a tepee with a bunch of hippies might be like , do I have a sign on me that says I'm a tourist, where is my wallet, do they accept credit cards here...to name a few.  After walking around this amazing place for a little bit my group of friends and I sat on a hill and people watched for the next hour in the sun because we had seen everything we wanted and we were just plain tired.  Finally at 3 we headed back into town to our bus to head back to Sweden.  I slept most of the way home and then when I arrived on campus I came home and went to bed.  It was a fun weekend exploring a new city.  I am so excited to see what other adventures Europe holds for me! Today I had class and I have class tomorrow then the rest of the week off.  I still can not get over all this free time I have.  It is incredible...I am sure that I will never have free time like this again in my life so I am enjoying every minute of it!
Until next time,
Allie