Anyway, two weekends ago I went with my class on study tour of Western Denmark. We took a bus from Copenhagen up to Jelling, where there are a couple of massive boulders with some special significance that has to do with the founding of Denmark as a nation. The Jelling Stones are considered Denmark's Stonehenge.
After the brief stop at the Jelling Stones, we headed over to Ebeltoft, home of the European Film College. The European Film College was amazing. It's located in this beautiful little spot in the middle of nowhere (basically all of Western Denmark was incredibly rural with flat, white plains and farms). The EFC was essentially one huge building. Inside are multiple movie studios where they build sets and film movies, lots of editing studios, a huge cafeteria and kitchen where the students are given three gourmet meals per day (we're talking amazing quality stuff), a huge game room and lounge area, many classrooms and conference rooms, and to top it off, a full size movie theater where they screen multiple movies (big-time Hollywood movies mostly) per day for the students for free. The way the college works is this: there are a little over 100 students from all over the world (only a few from the US). They pay a lot to go there, but the money is well worth it. The program is for only one year, with the only break being a week for Christmas. Otherwise, these students literally don't leave the small campus. They are working 24/7 on multiple movie projects simultaneously. They are constantly writing, creating, watching, analyzing, and become experts on films.
So we spent most of the day and night at this place, getting a tour, eating food in their cafeteria, learning about the place, meeting the students (who somehow seemed so happy and upbeat despite the never-ending workload of death). At the end of the night, we were treated to a screening of "The Twilight Saga: New Moon," which was terrible as far as quality goes, but for purely entertainment, it suited me pretty well. The best part of the day was sitting in this unbelievable private theater where the chairs were basically La-Z-Boys. Needless to say, I had a great 3 hours lying back in my chair in a mostly empty private movie theater watching a (mildly) entertaining movie.
The remainder of the trip wasn't quite as fun as the first day, but was still very fun nonetheless. Over the next two days we visited Odense and Kolding, as well as a few other small towns. We took a tour of the main TV2 (the primary broadcast company in Denmark) and some art galleries and other sights, such as the Koldinghus (big castle). My favorite part of the last two days was when we had some free time to explore Odense on our own, at which point I went to explore on my own (everyone else always slows me down). After exploring for a few hours, I realized that Odense was one of the coolest places I'd ever been. It was such a great little city. I snuck into the back door of this large church (I will try to put up the video of me alone inside), explored some more, and eventually made my way over to the little village where Hans Christian Andersen was born and raised (see pictures). Unfortunately I couldn't go into the actual museum because of its ridiculously high price. Instead I just walked through the beautiful little village.
The trip as a whole was very nice--I became closer friends with a lot of my classmates as well as my teacher, I had a bunch of nice meals that were paid for, and overall it was just a fun break from the city, my apartment, and classes.
The following weekend was a little bit more packed. My three friends (including my roommate and the two guys next door) decided to go to Berlin for the weekend. We flew in on Friday night and had about two days to see all of Berlin--and that's what we did. From the get-go on Saturday morning we were out and about in the city going everywhere and doing everything we could. We were all stunned at how beautiful the city was. The architecture looked like it came straight from Rome itself (what's that called...neoclassical? I'm not an architecture guy...). Some of the buildings and churches were simply stunning. We took a trip to the top of the big tower in the middle of the city to get a nice panoramic view. Early in the afternoon we rented bikes and proceeded to ride all over the city for the next four hours (see pictures). It was interesting because nobody in Berlin rode bikes, and we were all so used to seeing at least 50 percent of the population in Copenhagen in transit on bikes. So it was just us--four American boys--going all over the city on our bikes (it was so unusual that people looked confused when they saw us riding around).
On Sunday, to look even more out of place, we rented a little trabi-car (tiny, cheap little car) that was painted like a leopard (yup...everyone looked at us the whole time. So we started honking and cheering as we drove around the city). We were in a group of 6 other cars and drove around the city in a convoy. A lot of the places we had seen the day before, but we weren't doing it to see the sights--we were doing it for the experience of driving this wacky car all over Berlin.
We had some nice meals in the city, and were pleased to find that most things in Berlin were about half the price as in Copenhagen. So we treated ourselves to some nice meals. It was a great weekend...until the plane ride home, which was delayed by around 2 hours. I was starting to feel sick and was pretty frustrated by the delay, particularly because I know Mom and Dad were waiting for me in Copenhagen. Eventually, though, we got on the plane, and 40 minutes later, we were back in Copenhagen. I dropped my stuff off at my apartment and then walked across the city to the Centrum Hotel where...yes...Mom and Dad were waiting! (Mom was actually standing in the lobby peering through the window as I approached).
We had a great week together, eating great food and seeing as many sights as we could (and walking really far to see them). We watched the Olympics and went swimming at the fancy pool. We ate more. We went to Malmo in Sweden. We went all over the city and beyond and had a great time together. Needless to say, I couldn't have asked for a better week with them. I doubt they could have had a better 25th Anniversary.
On one of the days, we walked all the way up to the statue of the Little Mermaid (for Mom). It was anticlimactic. So is the ending to this blog post.
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