In the west of Denmark…

After last semester’s short study tour to Germany, I wasn’t quite sure what to expect from this semester’s trip to other parts of Denmark.  I went along with the other students in the Migration and Identity program at DIS (I was in European Politics and Society last semester) to Odense and Århus.

Our first stop was Odense, Denmark’s third largest city.  Odense is on Funen, an island to the west of Zealand where Copenhagen is located.  On the bus ride to Odense, our professor turned on a film and was pretty intense about making us watch it, which was a change from the more lax attitude that my tour leaders adopted last semester.  I thought right away that this trip was probably going to be more rigidly structured than either of my study tours last semester, which is odd considering that our long study tour visits were to the actual bodies of the European Union.  When we arrived in Odense, we went to a presentation by the Ethnic Job Team and Odense Immigration Council in Vollsmose.  The presentation was pretty interesting, if only because all of the people speaking were from very different backgrounds (various parts of Africa and Southwest Asia, mostly).  Hearing about the work that they all do and how difficult it can be was a reminder of just how much of a struggle it is to be a non-ethnic Dane living in Denmark.

After this visit, we went to the Brandts Museum to see an exhibit called I-Lands, which was a collection of modern art depicting various types of islands – literal, metaphorical and everywhere in between.  The exhibit was interesting and our tour guide made it worthwhile.  It was actually a pretty good follow-up to the previous visit, since living in Denmark as an ethnic minority can definitely make someone feel isolated, as if on an island.

We had lunch at a restaurant called The Ugly Duckling (that was the translated name, anyways) – appropriate, considering that Hans Christian Andersen was born and raised in Odense.  I wish we had gone to see his house and all of the other HCA tourism that is available.  Lunch was a buffet that I mostly found to be unappetizing.  We actually had a buffet at every DIS-provided meal on this study tour, which made it easier to find food that I liked but was not as good – nor as warm – as most of the food that we had last semester.

After lunch, we headed to Syddansk Universitet to hear a lecture from Mehmet Ümet Necef.  His lecture was titled, “Is Denmark Really a Racist/Islamophobic/Xenophobic Society?”, and his answer to that question was a resounding “No.”  According to Necef, Denmark’s immigration laws are “not that strict.”  He made quite a few good points throughout his lecture and was a bit over-the-top and charismatic in making his claims, but the idea that Denmark has lenient immigration laws is ridiculous.  One might say that Muslims have a harder time getting into this country than Americans have getting troops out of Muslim countries!  Necef made some unfair and untrue statements about the United States (homosexual sex is not banned in any state; see Lawrence v. Texas 2003), and he was constantly comparing Denmark to the US when it was not always relevant, but overall his – albeit frustratingly lengthy – lecture was one of the more interesting parts of the trip.

After this lecture, we continued on our bus to Århus.  I was a bit upset that we didn’t get to properly see Odense – I have no pictures of the city, and we didn’t take any kind of walking tour at all.  I know that these trips are supposed to emphasize academics, but I think that tourism, culture and individual exploration are vital!  If what we’re going to study is integration and multiculturalism, it would be nice to get a better sense of the culture into which people are being integrated.  Last semester, we at least got to take a guided tour of Lübeck and had about 4 hours to explore Hamburg on our own.

In Århus, everyone was so famished that we immediately decided to head out to dinner.  My group of friends decided upon Piccolo, an Italian restaurant whose name is quite literal – our dishes were really small!  At least the prices were relatively reasonable (by Danish standards), and the white wine sauce was delicious.  We then met up with our professors at a brewery and had a night cap, and after that I went with a few new friends to a bar called Under Masken that had what I think was a Jamaican theme.  There was a huge fish tank in one of the walls!

The next day started a little too early and was a bit too packed for my liking, but it included one of our best visits of the trip.  We went to Søndervangskolen, which I guess I would call a grammar school – it’s called an “all-day-school” if you translate it from the Danish, and the students are mostly aged 8-16.  Over 3/4 of the students at this school were of a non-Danish ethnic background, which made it very interesting.  We began by hearing some of the teachers speak about their experiences at the school, and then we were split into groups and guided around by ninth graders who spoke – no surprise, Denmark! – near-perfect English.  Ninth grade here does not necessarily correspond to ninth grade in the US, but it’s more or less the same age group, except in Denmark it is always the last year of all-day school and is not part of their equivalent of high school.  Touring the school was really fun, as we got to actually interact with students and talk to them about a wide variety of things.  Even the ethnic-Danish children there were clearly from less affluent families than most of the Danes I’ve met in and around Copenhagen.  It is shattering to realize that Denmark is not as classless as it leads the world to believe (although income disparities really are much, much lower than in the United States), but it was also refreshing to see people who were not rich, white epitomes of Scandinavian “perfection.”  It was much different from visiting a gymnasium in one of the posh suburbs of Copenhagen last semester, where we talked to students who were going on a field trip – to America!

After this, we went to a huge bazaar (Bazaar Vest) where we had lunch.  It was mostly Turkish and Arab vendors, and included an unimaginable number of shops, ranging from enormous produce markets to tiny ice cream stands.  The food was not so much to my liking, and I ate fish and chips and purchased some dried fruit, but I still had a fun time with my friends.  The bazaar was cool, but nothing like I had expected – it was entirely indoors and very labyrinthine.

Our next stop was Gellerup Parken and the Brabrand Housing Association.  Here, we listened to a man talk about the plans to renovate an old neighborhood that is generally known as a ghetto (it’s so much less ghetto than almost anywhere in the United States).  To be honest, I did not really enjoy this lecture.  The man’s interest in the project was clearly genuine, and I have a great deal of interest in and respect for what he had to say, but it was presented in a rather boring way.  After we heard him speak, however, a group called Youth 4 Youth gave us a tour of the neighborhood and a presentation on their volunteer work as role models for the local youth.  This was more interesting, as the presenters were closer to my age and very passionate about helping out in their community.

After this event, we had dinner at a restaurant called Cucos – another buffet, much better than the last one but not completely delicious.  My class went to the brewery again after dinner where we had free drinks on DIS, and then we all followed our professor to a bar that was rather classy and expensive, but very lively.  Coincidentally, the security guard at that bar was one of the volunteers from Youth 4 Youth, so he got us all a 20% discount on our drinks, which made them much more affordable.

The last day in Århus started early for anyone who wanted to go ice-skating, but I decided with my friends to forego that activity and instead sleep in a bit and explore the city since we hadn’t seen much of it (by daylight, anyways).  We found out that it’s a very beautiful but not very busy city (even the bars weren’t so busy on Friday night, and it’s a major university town).  That day also involved a scheduled trip to the ARoS museum, which was a really amazing modern art museum.  In fact, I enjoyed this museum almost as much as the Centre Pompidou in Paris!  We didn’t get to go through every exhibit, but it was really interesting, and I finally got my picture taken with the enormous statue of a crouching boy – one of the major touristy photo ops for DIS students!

We had lunch after the museum – another buffet, with a weird combination of breakfast foods and lunch foods, but not really brunch foods – and then headed back to Copenhagen.  Our professor put on another movie, but we were all sleeping and talking through the whole ride home.  I wish I had seen more of Århus, as it was truly very pretty and quaint.  Last semester’s study tours had much, much more free time during the day, giving us a chance to pursue our own objectives and take in the sites, meet locals, etc.  I really preferred it that way, and I hope it will be like that when we go to Istanbul.  Still, even if it sounds really corny to say it this way, I made amazing friends on this trip and can’t wait to see them in class – and for those in the other section of the class, in Turkey!

J’aime des gaufres.

I’ve been rather lazy about updating my blog this week, but it’s hard getting back into the swing of things. On Saturday (October 10) morning, I returned from my week-long study tour in Brussels, The Hague and Amsterdam, and since then I’ve been trying to get my sleeping and studying patterns back into a normal cycle.

The trip was overall fantastic. I won’t go into an hour-by-hour breakdown of the events as I did with the shorter study tour to Germany, simply because that would make this post almost unmanageably long. I will, however, give a rundown and general overview of everything that my class did.

We left by bus from Copenhagen to Brussels at 8 a.m. on Sunday morning and did not arrive in Brussels until about 11 p.m. after a few stops on the way for food. Our tour leaders were Frazer, a DIS intern, and Jacob, the professor of the European Union class with which I was on this tour. When we got to Brussels that first night, everyone was too tired to really do much but too restless to sleep, so we walked around the city in groups and admired the gorgeous night-time views of the city center. We checked into our hotel – Maison du Dragon – which was run by a Chinese family. It was actually a rather nice hotel, but it was on a street lined with porn shops and all of the newspapers and television programs in the hotel lobby were in Mandarin.

Every morning for the whole week, we woke up rather early (usually before 8 a.m.) to get dressed in business attire and have a quick breakfast in the hotel before heading off to a different EU insitution. On Monday, we went to the Council of the European Union and got to sit in one of the rooms where the ministers actually meet to hear a presentation. After visiting the Council, we went to Planete Chocolat, where a woman taught us about the fine art of chocolate making – and where I had the most amazing chocolate seashells and hot chocolate! Later that day, we toured the Cantillon Brewery, where I was not particularly interested in learning about the way beer is made, but I did find out that Belgian beers actually do taste quite good, even to someone who doesn’t much like beer (and according to the tourguide at the brewery, Belgian beer will not give you a hangover!). The Cantillon beer had a certain fruity flavor to it that made it quite drinkable. Our group then had dinner at Le Grand Café, where I had already gone with two friends for lunch. Lesson of the day: read the itinerary before heading out on your own.

On Tuesday morning, we went to the European Commission to hear another presentation from a woman who told us all about milk prices. We had already heard about milk prices the day before and would continue to hear about them all week. On Monday, there had been a huge demonstration outside of the Council building, where farmers were showing their anger about the “milk crisis” in the EU. (You have to understand that the EU has a Common Agricultural Policy.) The woman at the Commission seemed alarmingly bored with her life and was not thrilled to be giving us a presentation so early in the morning, but they offered us free coffee and orange juice, so I was more than content to be there, filling my veins with caffeine. That afternoon, we went to the Permanent Representation of Denmark to the EU. It was stiflingly hot in the room where the Dane gave his presentation, but I do remember that he was the epitome of a Dane – gorgeous, tall, blond, blue-eyed, physically fit, intelligent. I couldn’t help but wonder if Denmark had hand-picked their most Danish Dane to represent their national interests.

Wednesday was a great day because we got to sleep in, and the presentation we were to hear that morning was done in our hotel instead of across town and several Metro stops away. This presentation was from the US Mission to the EU, which is sort of like the United States’ embassy for the European Union. The two presenters mostly talked about what they do at the EU, which wasn’t particularly unique from any other function of the State Department. I think that people who didn’t know much about the State Department’s work found it informative, though, and the presenters were much more lively than the Danes we had been listening to all week. That afternoon, we had to interview political actors (meaning lobbyists) in small groups for a paper we wrote upon our return to Copenhagen. My group interviewed a reprsentative of the American Chamber of Commerce to the European Union.

Wednesday night was also a great night because we went to Chez Leon for dinner – better known as “the place to eat mussels in Brussels.” I had never had mussels before, but I can safely say after this meal that they are delicious (just like everything else in Belgium, but more on that later). We had so much fun as a group stabbing the mussels, pulling them out of their shells and devouring them whole. I even got a second helping, and my friend, Heather, and I filled up a huge bowl with the shells of our mussels!

On Thursday, we had to be awake particularly early for our visit to NATO headquarters – so much for sleeping in the day before. Security was tight, and we couldn’t even get off the bus in the parking lot until someone came to fetch us and escort us to the security gate. We heard a presentation inside from an American, which was truthfully only milding interesting. That afternoon, we headed back into the city and visited the European Parliament to hear a presentation from a Danish MEP. It wasn’t the most exciting presentation ever, but I was excited to sit in the chamber of parliament where the MEPs actually convene, and the enormous glass building in which the parliament is located is stunning!

In all, I loved Brussels. I think that many of the students in our class were underwhelmed, which is especially understandable considering the awful rainy weather that we experienced for most of our stay. We had almost no time to sight-see, but I went with friends whenever we could squeeze in a few minutes, and we did see Mannekin Pis and the royal palace. Also, a major tourist attraction is Delirium Café, a bar that holds the Guinness World Record for having 2,004 beers in stock. We went there with Jacob on the first night, and the other group of EPS (our DIS program) students turned up with their tour leader and one of my all-time favorite people, Julia. It was at Delirium that I found out there is such a thing as cherry-flavored beer – delicious! Other than Delirium, I didn’t go out a whole lot in Brussels, but instead played drinking games with friends in the hotel and had late-night conversations. We did search in vain for a discotheque one night and almost went to a party with a group of Belgian college students we met on the streets, but in general we just stayed in the hotel. I don’t regret that as much as one would think – it was during our conversations in those hotel rooms that I felt as if I were not only hanging out with my DIS classmates, but actually making friends for life. There is something to be said for a group of Americans stuck together in a random situation – we really know how to bond with each other and make it meaningful.

The academic events in Brussels were not the best, as far as I was concerned. They were informative, to be sure, but every presentation we heard was from a Dane working at the EU. I understood that this must have been easier for DIS to coordinate given Jacob’s connections, but it would have been nice to hear the perspective of different member states, particularly powerful old members, like France and Germany, and poor new members, like Romania and Bulgaria. Still, going into the EU institutions and seeing how it’s all actually done in Brussels was potentially a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, and I don’t regret my decision to do this program at all.

I was glad for the opportunity to (successfully!) practice my French in Brussels, but my favorite part of the city aside from the great people and great memories had to be the food. The waffles were TO DIE FOR, and the pommes frites (French fries) more than live up to their reputation as the best in the world. The chocolate is fantastic, the beer is delicious, and the mussels were very tasty. Belgian waffles are particularly good because they are not crispy like American waffles, but soft and coated with a sugary glaze, and often eaten with ice cream, fruit, or chocolate on top. I’m pretty sure I could spend the rest of my life eating my way through Belgium.

On Thursday night, we left Brussels and headed to The Hague. Our hostel was disgustingly dirty, but as Jacob shared our collective disdain for the place, DIS paid for us to have several drinks at dinner that night. After dinner, I walked around with a group of friends and had a bit more to drink in some of the local bars. We wanted a discotheque, but the only one in the center of town was playing some kind of Jewish folk music that didn’t seem particularly appealing. I was surprised by two things about The Hague – one, that there were lots of beautiful skyscrapers (I pictured it as much quainter and traditional looking), and two, that there were lots and lots of people out and about on a Thursday night (I pictured it as a city full of rather mundane international lawyers).

The next morning, we went to a presentation from a prosecutor at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, and afterwards, we got to witness part of the trial that was going on! This was probably the biggest highlight of the trip (well, other than the waffles). The prosecutor was interrogating a witness in the Ante Gotovina case. She slowly built up her case in proving that the witness had changed his previous statements solely to favor the accused – it was getting really dramatic right when we had to leave. I’m so glad I was able to see this, especially since the Court’s mandate will expire in the near future, and so few people ever get the opportunity to witness such a trial. I couldn’t believe that on the other side of the glass behind which we were viewing the trial sat a man who is responsible for the deaths of hundreds of people. It was an experience I do not take for granted!

After the trial, we boarded a bus to Amsterdam. Here, we didn’t have anything academic planned, so after lunch and a canal tour of the city, we were free to go on our own. Amsterdam is really the most beautiful city I have ever seen! I had never really thought about going there – most Americans who go to Amsterdam go for the weed or the prostitutes, so it never occurred to me that there was actually a city worth seeing. The canals were gorgeous, and literally every street from any angle was photogenic and beautiful. In terms of appearance, I could not imagine a more perfect city. When we got there, Queen Beatrix drove by us in her motorcade! I went with a group of friends to the Anne Frank House, which was really moving (much more so, I think, than the Holocaust Museum in DC), and then when just walked around, took pictures on the Homomonument (a pink triangle that extends over one of the canals), and explored the red light district. Walking through the red light district really changed my perception of prostitution – my inner feminist was bleeding when it saw dozens of women standing behind glass windows, waiting to be purchased. It was as if they were no more than pieces of meat in the window of a butchershop! Still, even this could not detract from the beauty of Amsterdam and the wonderful experience that I had there. We even ended up eating dinner at an apparently famous restaurant by chance when a local pointed us to it after we asked him where we could get something to eat.

Overall, I really enjoyed the study tour. Sure, there were some downsides (not enough time to be a tourist, not enough time to meet the locals, early mornings and late nights, dressing up every day), but I had experiences that I could not have had without DIS, and I bonded with classmates who I will now always consider my friends.

Ich liebe Deutschland!

I’ve hardly had time to process everything that’s happened in the past four days of my life, but wow – what a whirlwind!

On Thursday morning, I departed with my fellow European Politics and Society classmates (that’s our core program at DIS) for a short study tour.  We boarded a bus in Copenhagen and headed for a ferry to Germany, where we continued on to the town of Lübeck, which was an amazing place to visit!

As soon as we arrived in Lübeck, we had lunch at a very German restaurant, decorated with a maritime theme.  They served us some kind of roast beef, and I actually ate and somewhat enjoyed the meal.  So much for being a picky eater?  Okay, I won’t go that far…

We then visited the Willy Brandt museum, commemorating a man who fought for Nazi resistance and, I believe, became Chancellor of Germany.  Overall, I wasn’t very intrigued by the museum, but it did include a large cement panel of the Berlin Wall, which was quite moving to see.  After the museum, we were given some free time to walk around the city while we waited to check into the hotel.  I have to say, Lübeck is more beautiful than I could have ever imagined.  The architecture is all very old and German (or at least what I think of when I think “German”), and it was almost entirely preserved during World War II.

That evening, we went to our hotel in Lübeck and were given roommates.  It took a while to find our room, mostly because the hotel had a ridiculously confusing layout in which room 503 was on the second floor, and the woman directing us to our rooms did not speak English and therefore didn’t know that we were saying “five, zero, three.”  After we finally got settled, we went to a beer garden – well, it was a set of tables and umbrellas outside in a sort of town square and I had chardonnay, but I’ll call that a beer garden – and had drinks.  Randomly, almost half of our class crossed paths with us in this beer garden, and we collectively decided to search for a restaurant.  Luckily, we found one of the only open restaurants in the town and our waitress actually spoke English.  I only had french fries, since I wasn’t hungry, but it was a cozy little place, and everyone seemed to have a good time.

Dinner ended late in Lübeck and most people went back to the hotel to sleep, like reasonable human beings.  I, however, chose to search for a discotheque with three other students.  We were told by a few young German girls that the discotheque wouldn’t be very exciting for a couple of hours, so we went to a ridiculously overpriced (though still much cheaper than anywhere in Copenhagen) bar and had drinks.  As a side-note, the girls also told us to look for something that translates to “Hamburger Mountain” if we had the chance to go out in Hamburg, but unfortunately we did not find said mountain.  At the discotheque, Germans continued the general trend I have observed in Europe – that is, to dance without really touching the people around you; at least it was dark in this particular club, even if the music wasn’t especially danceable.  I left the discotheque relatively early, but some DIS students stayed until the wee hours of the morning.  I’m not sure that they were thrilled to wake up at 8:00 a.m. the following morning for a walking tour of Lübeck, as I myself was not overjoyed to be there and had at least had a solid five hours of sleep.  Still, the tour was worth doing, as it was led by a man who lived up to our professor’s promise of having “the most impressive mustache you will ever see.”  I couldn’t hear the tour guide for a lot of the walk, but there was a point at which he – for some incomprehensible reason – sang sailor tunes in English.  I decided that the tour was a success for that reason alone.

After the walking tour, we boarded the bus for Hamburg.  I have always kind of thought of Hamburg as the Pittsburgh of Europe – still bearing an industrial and depressed look, kind of cool, but mostly just a city that is only still a “city” because it has no option of being anything else.  Take note, because I don’t say this a lot: I could not have been more wrong!  Hamburg was full of life and absolutely beautiful!  Upon arrival, we went immediately into a restaurant where we served schnitzel, which I actually sort of enjoyed despite my dislike of pork.  After lunch, we walked over to the Hamburg Parliament (sort of the equivalent of a state capitol in the US), which was one of the most gorgeous buildings – inside and out – that you could ever fathom to exist.  We listened to a lecture and then continued through the entire building.  Every room was ornate and beautiful, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that it was all so extravagant.

Everyone in our class was disappointed that we didn’t get to spend the night in Hamburg, but we did convince our tour leaders to let us have the afternoon and evening to explore the city.  During exploration time, I passed a group of socialists protesting Nazis in parliament (at least, that’s what I gathered from the imagery – it was difficult to understand the people speaking into a megaphone since, well, I don’t speak German).  I continued to walk around with some classmates until it was time to board the bus again for the all-too-long ride to Sønderborg in southern Jutland (the peninsular part of Denmark).

It was amazing how much cheaper everything had been in Germany.  The Value Added Tax in the Federal Republic still renders things far more expensive than they would be in almost any US city, but everything still felt like a steal compared to Denmark where I spent $4.00 on a bottle of Coca Cola Zero as soon as I arrived in Copenhagen on Sunday.  A lot of students stocked up on goods in Germany before crossing the border into Denmark.

Sønderborg seemed like kind of a ghost town when we arrived, so a large group of us (I’m normally so against traveling in packs of Americans, but there were few other options if you wanted to have a social life on these study tours, and as I don’t really have close DIS friends, I was in no position to spend the time alone) wandered around until we found a pedestrian street where we heard music.  We followed the sound to a concert that was just ending, so we decided to go into a nearby bar playing great (and remixed-to-be-danceable!) music.  The bar was called “Maybe Not Bob.”  The name alone was reason enough for me to go into the club, but I was even more enticed to do so when we realized that it was going to be hilariously awkward: the club was packed with two very distinct groups of people – DIS students from other classes that were also visiting Sønderborg and blonde-haired, blue-eyed, non-English-speaking Danes, mostly around the age of 16!

No DIS students were dancing in the club, so I obviously decided to break the ice by gathering some brave Americans and joining some of the young Danes who were dancing on top of the tables.  In no other place that I have been has the difference between Danish and American attitudes towards alcohol been more pronounced: there were girls dancing on tables to promote “Cuba,” a new kind of liquor which was being poured – for free! – down the throats of anyone who danced underneath these girls.  And by anyone, I do mean the 16 year-old Danes included.  When the DJ realized that so many people in his club were American, he began to do what all DJs seem to do when Americans show up, and that is to play ridiculous rap music from the early 2000s, mostly because they love seeing everyone in the club sing along to the words.  I have heard “Who’s That Girl” by Eve in four different night clubs thus far.

The next day in Sønderborg was vastly less interesting than the three day trip as a whole.  We first attended a lecture on the development of the German-Danish border region, which I will admit was the most academically significant portion of the trip and basically the entire reason DIS footed the bill for this excursion.  Afterwards, we walked around Sønderborg, which I found to be surprisingly gorgeous in the daytime (we had arrived after dark the night before).  We walked around the pedestrian street and had lunch at a café where I discovered that “Americanstyle pankager” translates to “American-style pancakes” IN NAME ONLY.  If you like your pancakes flat, porous, doughy, covered in runny fake syrup and mixed with melons, Sønderborg is the place for you (I subsequently had better pancakes in Copenhagen the next morning).

On the way from Sønderborg to Copenhagen, our bus stopped in at a famous battlefield and in a small, picturesque town where we went to a museum commemorating abstract art and Danish furniture design.  I was rather bored by the battlefield and the museum as a whole, but we did go into the summer home of the inventor of the Egg Chair.

My general reflections on the study tour:

• Not everyone in Europe, or even Denmark, speaks English.  Even in Hamburg, it was not always easy to find English-speakers, and that is the sixth largest city in the EU and therefore an obvious tourist destination.
• Danish history is no more interesting than American history.
• Europe, could you please have just one ugly city/town/village/hamlet?
• Germany has a lot of punks (black pants, chains, purple hair).
• All in all, I was glad for the chance to travel with my fellow DIS students.  So far, I have mostly gone out on weekends with my Danish friends, or just stayed in.  Even though I have doubts that I will hang out with the same people in Copenhagen, it was refreshing to spend time with Americans and bond a bit so that we are poised to have even more fun on our trip to Brussels.