On Wednesday – the day prior to my study tour, I had a day off. It was nice that I got to relax for the day. I didn’t have much planned either. My main goal was simply to get laundry done, walk around my town a little, and go to the grocery store to get some snacks for the next couple of days. The evening was a little more eventful because we went to my host dad’s parents house for dinner, where his mom had made frikadeller – a traditional Danish food, which are simply meatballs with a combination of pork and ground beef (although hers were entirely made of pork). It was nice to meet them and have a relaxing evening in their home.
We then tried to come home sort of early because I told me host parents that I was going to have to get up at 5 to be able to get into the city by 7:15, when my bus left the next day. Therefore, when we got home, I finished my packing and put my snacks and things together so that I wouldn’t have to do them in the morning. I then talked on Skype for a while with Tory and headed to bed.
On Thursday – I woke up ridiculously early at 5:00am so that I coule catch the first bus from my stop, get to the station, head into town on the train, and get on the correct bus to go to western Denmark. The nice thing was that when I got on the bus there was another girl from my class – she lives down the street from me, only by a couple of bus stops. This made the early morning trip a little more doable. When we got into town then, it was a little bit of a challenge finding the correct bus; there were probably 10 trips leaving around the same time, and so there were a bunch of different buses and obviously you had to make sure you were on the right one. We were also there before our instructor and trip guide, so it was even more difficult to know where to go. Overall, it wasn’t too bad though; we simply had to wander from bus to bus until we found the right one.
Luckily, I was able to go to sleep on the bus in the first leg our trip. Our first stop was one of our cultural locations, Kolding Hus. It is castle that was built in the 1500s and progressively added on to during the reigns of different kings. During the early 1800s there was a fire that burnt down a great extent of the building. Since then they have slowly rebuilt it from its remains as well as leaving some of the original structure intact. It is now used as a museum and a small exhibition hall.
We had a short, kind of goofy tour, when we were there just to tell us a little bit about the castle’s history. One of the neat aspects being that this castle is home to the first protestant chapel in Denmark; we actually had our mini info session in the renovated room. Also while we were there, the guide told us a couple of odd stories about the castle. One of which being about a young girl of a nobleman that lived in the castle; she had fallen in love with one of the construction workers there. However, when her father found out, he had the man killed and then arranged for three potential husbands to attend the next party at the castle so the daughter could dance and meet these three suitors. During the extent of the evening, the daughter was dancing constantly, and unfortunately by the end of the evening she died of exhaustion (yea, I know not a happy story). The beauty of the story though is that the girl was able to join the man she loved in death even though she couldn’t be with him in life. Another odd fact is that there is actually a record noting that several other ladies died that same evening. (it is believed to be simply by exhaustion, not anything suspicious).
After the castle, we were given about an hour to walk around the small town. However, there really wasn’t much else there besides the castle and a small shopping street. Following about 45 minutes of walking around, we headed back over to the bus to continue on with our tour.
Our next stop was a business visit. We went to Vestas, which is a windmill manufacturing company. I wont bore you with the details of the visit, but we were given an introductory presentation about the company as well as a presentation on the financial operations of the business. Following that we were given a short tour of the manufacturing sector they have at this particular location. They were constructing the nacelles, which is the box piece that sits at the top of the tower, where the blades will be connected. It was interesting to see the step-by-step process and believe it or not, but all of the assembly is done by hand one step at a time. It was also neat to see this pieces so close up. They are a lot larger than you can imagine when normally you just see windmills from a distance. Overall, the single section they were manufacturing weighed almost 15-20 tons upon completion.
After our visit, we headed over to our hostel for the evening (I have never stayed in a hostel before, but it was a lot nicer than I had imagined it would be) and then went to dinner. It was a good and very filling meal. The best part was that they had ice cream for us for dessert. It tasted more like frozen yogurt. It was SO good, however I was stuffed when we were done. After dinner, we then walked back to the hostel as a group and most of us decided to stay in; one, because we didn’t want to walk back to town (our only way to get there) and two, because we had to be ready to go at 8:00 the next morning.
On Friday, we began our day by going to the Blue Water Shipping. It is an international shipping company, primarily located in Denmark. They also gave us a very nice overview of their company, which is very different in its organization and company strategy than Vestas, and a driving tour around the docks of their business as this particular location. Interestingly the two companies we visited actually do business with each other, and while we were at Blue Water we saw a lot of wind turbine parts that were being stored there and waiting shipment within the next few months.
After Blue Water, we headed to our cultural attraction for the day, which was a visit to the oldest city in Denmark – Ribe. I was actually really excited about this visit because I had heard about the town before from my instructor for my history of Copenhagen class. I was most excited to see the winding streets, old buildings, and the large church, which is the prominent attraction in the town. When we arrived, a couple of us headed over to the church immediately, but unfortunately it was closed for the remainder of the day; I was (and still am) so disappointed it was the one thing that I really wanted to see.
Since that was closed, me and Kris (a girl in my class) decided to walk around Ribe and see some more of the town. However, Ribe is a rather small town, and we had walked the extent of it in about 30 minutes. Since we had about an hour and a half to waste, we found a café/bakery and rested there for a while. When I was ordering my pastry though, I think the lady in the shop was getting a little irritated with me because I couldn’t decided what I wanted (mainly because I didn’t need to be eating something else in the first place). After chatting in the bakery for a while, we headed back to the bus so we could be off to Vejle to get to our hostel for that evening.
This hostel, again, was nicer than I had expected. We also had dinner at the hostel, which had a lot of offerings and ice cream and crepes for dessert. Needless to say this was another rather filling meal. After dinner, we had the option of going out in the town, however it was 7 kilometers away from the hostel and if we went out we were told that a taxi home would be approximately $15 for each person. About half of our class went, and the other half (including myself) decided to hangout at the hostel. They had a nice sitting room, where we simply hung our and talked for a couple hours before heading back to our separate rooms for showers and bed.
On Saturday (today), we didn’t have to leave the hostel until about 10:00, which gave us more time to catch up on some sleep. Our cultural visit for the day consisted of visiting the Jelling stones. They are these two large stones, which have carvings on them that date back to the 10th century. One was erected by King Gorm (who was the first king in the region of Denmark) and it considered a monument to his late wife. Unfortunately this stone was “in its winter clothes”, aka had a wooden box built around it. The second stone was done by Herald Bluetooth in the memory of his parents. It celebrates his conquest of Denmark and Norway, and his conversion of the Danes to Christianity from the original Nordic religion of the region. Random Fact: the Bluetooth technology that is used a lot today was named after Herald Bluetooth because of his attempts to getting neighboring tribes to communicate with each other. While the history of these two monuments is interesting and fun to learn, the sight itself was rather uneventful. The stones are located in a small town in the cemetery of a small church. Also since we were there early in the day, nothing else in the town was open and had very few options o how to pass the short amount of time that we were there.
Once realizing that there wasn’t really anything we could do in Jelling – more than see the stones, we all got back on the bus and went to head to our lunch location for the day. We were there a little early though and got to have this really good hot chocolate while we waited for our lunch to be prepared. After lunch, we had about an hour drive to our next location.
This next stop was by far a highlight of the trip and definitely the most fun. We went paintballing! I had never been before and was a little nervous knowing that it can hurt, but I had the best time. We began by splitting up into 3 teams, which we rotated in rounds so each team could play each other. The first two rounds consisted of simply trying to “kill” the other team first. Then the third round we played capture the flag. It took a little bit to get used to (and the first round wasn’t as fun because my gun got jammed), but it was so much fun! Then at the very end, we had some time – and ammunition – remaining and if you wanted you could go 3 verses 3 shoot out, where you could continue shooting the gun until you ran out of ammunition or you simply couldn’t take getting hit anymore. I actually preferred this to the first several rounds (where you were out after getting hit once) because you were able to shoot back at the person who shot you. It was definitely a little more intense too. Overall, the team that I was on came out victorious every single time – as a larger team and the very last 3V3 round as well.
A funny thing was that our instructor called paintball a “cultural” visit because we experienced a very different kind of Dane. The guy who ran the paintball place was really intense and kind of crude in some ways and nice in others. Overall, very different from any other Dane that I have met.
Once back on the bus, we made our final trip back to Copenhagen. I cannot believe how quickly the past couple of days have gone and that my first study trip is already over. The trip into the city was rather uneventful. I attempted to read but then ended up falling asleep, which was nice because although we didn’t do a lot of active things, I was (and still am) exhausted from the past couple of days. Once in town, I collected my things to head to the station to make my trip home (I headed back with the girl in my class, Tatiana, who lives down the street, which made the trip go a little quicker with someone to talk to). Once home, I had dinner with my host family, unpacked, wrote/writing my blog, and will be off to bed after taking a nice hot shower in a little bit.
PS – I hope you survived. I know that was a long one, but it did cover 4 days, not just one. Also I will try to post a few more pictures, however we were limited in our picture taking at a few places so I am going to have to steal photos from a couple of people before that happens.
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