Time has been flying since my last post and I feel like the pace is only increasing. There's so much to do here in so little time that I believe this trip will help my time management skills over anything else. I just added some links on the side of this page including a link to Tyler's blog, so you can see this trip from two different views.
Tyler and I spent most of last week recovering from the Roskilde music festival while anticipating the trip to Berlin, through the Copenhagen Business School, at the end of the week. We had to leave on a bus at 7:30 AM on Friday, so naturally we went hard Thursday night. Most of the residents here gathered in the social area and shot the shit then moved on to the Kulør Bar. At this place you pay 60 Kroner to get in (~$12) and you can drink free from 11pm-1am which is a great deal. One of the other Vikings, Thomas, was there as well as one of the guys we met at Roskilde, Daniel. We danced all night and I ended up being one of the last ones to leave.
I made it back around 3-4am and set my alarm in order to make the bus at 7:30am. As a contingency plan I left my door unlocked, so someone could possible wake me up. I fell asleep and a few hours later I'm woken up by tyler, who's fully dressed with his bag in hand, saying "it's 7:20, we gotta go now!" I flew out of bed and grabbed everything I could think I would need and we shot off down the street. Thankfully the same thing happened to everyone, so the bus was delayed.
The trip to Berlin was great, but a little rushed. Once we were in town Friday we searched the city for what Tyler declared was the best Doner Kabob place in the world. We found it and gorged ourselves. After that we hit up the local Pub Crawl, which just takes people on a tour through all these different bars.
They took us to some nice places, but we never got many drink specials like they promised. The next morning we took a walking tour of the city for 4-5 hours. It was a great tour thanks to the guide who gave a lot of good info. We had some freetime and went back to the Doner Kabob place for another round and explored the city on our own for a while. At Checkpoint Charlie street vendors were selling all sorts of Cold War gear like uniforms, military hats, medals, etc. The thing that caught my eye as a great buy was a gas mask.
I managed to haggle the guy from 25 euro to 10 euro AND the mask came with a sweet carying case.
Everyone on the trip went out to dinner to a nice restaurant, but not before we took advantage of the hostel bar that was selling great drinks and shot for half price during happy hour. After dinner we went out, but ended the night back at the hostel bar till the wee hours of the morning.
The next day we woke up early as usual and headed out to tour Sachsenhausen, a model concentration camp that was put to use to show people how it worked. It was a very sobering/moving experience, but I'm glad I had the opportunity to see something of such historical importance. I walked around and saw the inferemery where medical experiments were done, the shacks that the prisoners lived in, and there was also a huge monument in the middle to honor those people who lived in the camp.
Whoever runs the camp did a great job of getting personal information and stories from the actual prisoners of this camp and putting on display. The had a few videos of those people walking around the camp in the present day and describing horrible stories. We left the concentration camp and drove straight back to Copenhagen, making it in at around 9pm with everyone being dead tired.
Thomas, one of the local vikings, had invited us to a boat party that same night and for some reason I decided to go check it out even thought I was dead tired. No one wanted to go with me for the same reason. I made it to Thomas's dorm where we had partied one of the first nights and met a few of his dorm mates. We ventured out on bikes to find this party that this boat hosts, on the boat. It travels around to different ports throwing parties on Sunday nights. Eventually we found it in a dark harbor area where nothing was going on. The boat was completely dark, so Thomas and I decided to sneak on. We walked through all this random scrap metal and what not until we came upon a guy drinking a beer and smoking a cig. He told us that there was no party because they didn't have the riht permit to throw a party. So we left...fail.
Monday night our dorm had a little cookout on our own, which was good times. We even got into a game of 3 on 3 basketball on this tiny court behind our place. They didn't seem like they knew how to play and complained when I set a pick on someone. Last night Tyler headed out to visit some old friends, from when he studied in Utrecht, who were now living in Sweden. I stayed back to hang out with an American viking who was in town, Becky. Nicolai had us over for dinner and Thomas was there along with a different viking Thomas who lives near Roskilde. We ate pasta, as per usual at Nicolai's, and drank some fine Akvavit, the traditional Scandinavian schnapps. After dinner new viking Thomas went home, since he had an interview in the morning. Nicolai, Thomas, Becky, and I left to pick up two friends of Thomas's from Massachusetts, who we took straight to a party on a different boat that actually existed this time. There were too many people there since it was a Tuesday night, but they had live music which was crazy.
That night made for a difficult morning at class, but I made it through and even got a haircut today, BAM. The upcoming days should be pretty intense. Tonight a viking name Mikkel Morup is taking us out on the town, no idea whats planned, the only info is that he's picking us up in an hour. Tomorrow night a viking named Ilya is taking us out for unknown activities. Friday night the other Thomas from Roskilde discussed having a big Viking party although nothing is planed yet. Should be an interesting next few days.
The place was completely empty, but we were supplied with sleeping pads. Throughout the week we had the chance to meet numerous Vikings, and even the two Finnish scholars coming to Madison this spring, Otto and Mattias. Both of these guys were quite the characters. Otto made sure to show us a good time all of the nights we hung out with him and even gave us a private tennis lesson (he used to be on the Finnish national team). Mattias invited us out to his family's farm on the coast for a night. This was an amazing experience. We were able to tear up his land in his ATVs and then took a boat ride out to one of his family's cottages that they rent out to tourists, mainly Russians. It even came with a private sauna, which we put to good use.
Things looked grim, not many people. There was a DJ scratching some good music, but the place was empty. We proceeded to solve this problem by ordering liters upon liters of beer. Aparently this worked because the place soon filled up and it was a party. We got our groove on and headed out for a nice walk back since we were on the other end of town and the trains had stopped running, but we eventually made it back.
My height was a bit of a hinderence while getting into rides, but I managed all of them. One of Tyler and I's favorite rides was an interactive one. It was a ride where there is a firetruck and you get in and pump these cranks to set it in motion towards a fake burning. Once you get there you get our and pump a fire hydrant while the other person aims the hose at the fire. Accuracy counts to put out the fire. Then you get back in and pump your way back. The main part was that it wasn't just one firetruck, it was about 8, and you all race. The whole while we were standing in line we were analyzing the logistics and working out methods of domination, looking at each part, figuring out the best technique. Once we got to the front of the line I think we both had dreams of greatness in the competition, along with lumps in the backs of our throats due to worries of complete failure to little kids. The bell rang to start and we bolted into the lego fire truck. We each pumped hard and took off fast, putting everyone in the dust. We came to the fire so fast that the truck hit the boundary and threw me to the front of the truck. Tyler grabbed the hydrant pump and I took control of the sharpshooting. Tyler pumped that thing with all his strength sacrificing his body for the good of those poor Lego people who were on fire. I shot with pinpoint accuracy and the fire was out. We hopped back in the truck and took off pumping as hard as hell to get back. At the finish line we looked back to see no one had even finished and gotten in the truck...FLAWLESS VICTORY!!! We exited the truck expecting to here hundreds of people cheering while we waited for our parade. None of that happened, so we just gave each other a huge, good ol' fashion American high five and left. We asserted America's dominance that day. 
I left off by saying we were heading out to an FC København game. We hadn't planned on getting too wrecked before the game, but somehow a bottle of shitty flavored vodka changed that. It was a decent game with København winning 1-0, but the best part was just witnessing a soccer game abroad. The fans were going crazy in what could be best described as a "student section" of a badger football game. We continued to put back some beer during the game and then afterwards we followed the girl in charge of the summer social program to a relatively close bar. Cheap beer and a local crowd of København fans made for a good time. I started talking to one guy from a big group of fans who was in disbelief at my sweet FC København jacket that I recently purchased for 150 kr or about $30. He was just excited that an american would be supporting his team. 
You couldn't deny their dedication to the team due to all of them having tattoos of the København logo, a lion. I bought these guys a round of drinks, which set them off to buying us all these drinks for a while. The night proceeded on until one of the rowdy København fans punched a guy we were with in the face.
The next day one of Tyler's flatmates came into town and we went out around town. First we walked through the King's Garden, which is a beautiful and elaborate garden/park. After that we toured the Statens Museum for Kunst...FOR FREE!! It's a large art museum that recently had a quite large edition. There were all sorts of interesting pieces there. That night we had yet another BBQ outside our dorm and I headed out to a hookah bar right down the street afterwards. From there a small group follwed two friends who said they knew of this great place to drink that is always hopping. We got there and saw just two people sitting at the bar, so we ordered a round. As we stood there thinking about what to do this guy, around 60 years old, walked in by himself absolutely smashed. He couldn't make to many english sentences at first, but we eventually found out he had a Masters in Economics and was a profesor. That was supposedly the beauty of this place, that no matter who you were you could come here, since its open all night when other places close.
On the way we encountered these two local girls who insisted that we don't go to the club because no one was there, so we ended up following them back to the same place we were before except with more people. We met all of their friends and a ton of locals. It turned into an interesting evening, which didn't end until 5am for me, so I got to see the sunrise on the beach.
We saw some trebuchets launch rocks into the water, very close to boats, and then we witnessed a jousting match between the "good guy" (a Dane) and the "bad guy" (a German). Our side was the good guys side and after the Dane won, the German guy rode over with a goblet of water and threw it in our faces. I managed to duck a little, but Tyler got all wet. Damn Germans.
Mikkel drove us up to the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art to view the exhibits and have dinner as well. We saw some great art by people like Pablo Picasso, Andy Warhol, and Roy Lichtenstein among others. They also had an exhibit on the architecture of art museums, which displayed the miniature models, floor plans, and graphic representations of current and future art museums all over the world. However, I was dissapointed that they did not include the Milwaukee art museum. The dinner we had was excellent and came with a great view over the water. 
The next day Mikkel invited us to Nokia, where he works. He gave us a quick tour of the facilities, which were quite impressive, and then took us to the all you can eat buffet for the employees. Again, more great food.
Saturday we visited Assistens Kirkegaard, which is the cemetary for famous Danes. We saw the graves of Niels Bohr and even Hans Christian Andersen. The cemetary itself was stunning. Sunday we made our way back out to Roskilde to check out the viking ship museum. Back around the year 1000 the locals sank five viking ships in the harbour to create a barrier against attacking ships. These ships were recovered and put in the museum. Along with the old bits of ships, there were also fully working replicas that you can pay to ride in.
I made it back around 3-4am and set my alarm in order to make the bus at 7:30am. As a contingency plan I left my door unlocked, so someone could possible wake me up. I fell asleep and a few hours later I'm woken up by tyler, who's fully dressed with his bag in hand, saying "it's 7:20, we gotta go now!" I flew out of bed and grabbed everything I could think I would need and we shot off down the street. Thankfully the same thing happened to everyone, so the bus was delayed.
The trip to Berlin was great, but a little rushed. Once we were in town Friday we searched the city for what Tyler declared was the best Doner Kabob place in the world. We found it and gorged ourselves. After that we hit up the local Pub Crawl, which just takes people on a tour through all these different bars. 
They took us to some nice places, but we never got many drink specials like they promised. The next morning we took a walking tour of the city for 4-5 hours. It was a great tour thanks to the guide who gave a lot of good info. We had some freetime and went back to the Doner Kabob place for another round and explored the city on our own for a while. At Checkpoint Charlie street vendors were selling all sorts of Cold War gear like uniforms, military hats, medals, etc. The thing that caught my eye as a great buy was a gas mask. 
I managed to haggle the guy from 25 euro to 10 euro AND the mask came with a sweet carying case. 
Everyone on the trip went out to dinner to a nice restaurant, but not before we took advantage of the hostel bar that was selling great drinks and shot for half price during happy hour. After dinner we went out, but ended the night back at the hostel bar till the wee hours of the morning. 
The next day we woke up early as usual and headed out to tour Sachsenhausen, a model concentration camp that was put to use to show people how it worked. It was a very sobering/moving experience, but I'm glad I had the opportunity to see something of such historical importance. I walked around and saw the inferemery where medical experiments were done, the shacks that the prisoners lived in, and there was also a huge monument in the middle to honor those people who lived in the camp. 
Whoever runs the camp did a great job of getting personal information and stories from the actual prisoners of this camp and putting on display. The had a few videos of those people walking around the camp in the present day and describing horrible stories. We left the concentration camp and drove straight back to Copenhagen, making it in at around 9pm with everyone being dead tired.
