The Beginning

What’s up? I plan on using this blog to relay all the good times I am having here in Europe to you. I thought I might start off with a little overview of what I’m doing here. Back in the fall I applied and was accepted to the Brittingham Viking Organization (BVO) Scholarship Program, which sends students from Scandinavia to the U.S. and vice versa in order to study, but more importantly, be part of a close organization with a lot of history. I was accepted to study at the Copenhagen Business School in Copenhagen, Denmark for the summer. I’m taking two classes, Intro to Marketing and Cross-Culture Negotiation. My original goal was to have these classes be helpful later in life, which I hope they will. Another note, I’m not doing this all alone. The other Denmark BVO scholarship winner/travel partner/partner in crime is Tyler Falish. Before classes start on the 29th of June, we planned a trip through some of northern Europe. The trip includes The Netherlands (Amsterdam and Utrecht) and Germany (Hamburg). We departed the 15th of June and come back to Denmark by bus on the 26th. We then start studying and once school is done on the 9th of August, we travel again. This time it’s all around Scandinavia and is planned by an official travel coordinator of the BVO in order to visit all the local Vikings. Then we fly home only to stop in Iceland for two nights for some hot spring action.

I have sparatic internet access during this whole first travel phase (mostly from jacking other wireless signal) and I’ll try to update this thing as much as possible. I’ve been keeping a written journal, so I can jot down random thoughts and then organize everything in this blog for everyone to read. Since its a few days into the journey, I’ll update you on everything that’s happened so far.
I checked out of Madison Saturday the 14th and then hopped a flight out of Milwaukee the next day. Due to the flooding in west Wisconsin, my gracious mother purchased a quick flight from Milwaukee to Minneapolis off of frequent flyer miles. After going through the first security checkpoint I was already searched and given a nice massage by the security. Tyler met up in Minneapolis and we jumped on the IcelandAir plane to Reykjavik, Iceland and on to Copenhagen, Denmark. One of the flights offered interactive TV screens in each seat, pretty cool except I think mine was the only on to freeze and not work, not cool. The biggest difference on this plane ride was probably the hotness factor of the stewardesses. Just like in “Catch Me if you can.”

Once in Copenhagen we took the train into town to find our host for the night Nicolai Ellehus, one of the Vikings in charge of us having a good time. He was still at work so we hung outside his place for 3 hours listening to a bit of young weezey and just trying to stay awake, since we got no sleep on the flight. Nicolai cooked us a great dinner (pasta with some bacon) and we crashed hard, sleeping on a pull out futon and bed. The next morning we made some travel arrangements and then toured a bit of Copenhagen, checking out the main shopping area and then the little mermaid statue, where we were told that in order to top the last 4 summer Vikings, we’d have to get a picture hanging on to her while naked, in the middle of the day since the others did it at night. We made our way back and were able to make it to our next flight to Amsterdam.

We came in late (around 9:00pm) and we were worried about not finding a hostel with rooms still available. We walked into Bob’s Youth Hostel while the Netherlands was playing in the Euro Cup. They had two beds left and they gave us a beer, so we waited until after the game was over until we checked in. The last two beds were also the best, being right next to the window and not bunk beds like the others. We went out on the town after that and had a crazy evening, ending with seeing a man taken out of the 4th floor of a building by a fire ladder.

We toured Amsterdam the next day and ended up finding a traveling exhibition on the World Press photojournalist competition. Basically the best photos from world events in this really old church, amazing stuff. We hung around town and eventually met up with two cool Canadian girls who took us out to places they had been and were apparently now regulars, getting us free drinks after a meal and what not. We ended up in “Sally’s Saloon,” which just seemed like a country/northern Wisconsin bar. Although I didn’t find much, I rocked some tunes on the jukebox.

The next day we left Amsterdam for Utrecht, which is a smaller town south of Amsterdam about an hour on a train. Tyler had studied here and had loved it. Here we’re staying at the Strowis hostel, which has a great closed in backyard garden area, which is where I’m chilling now, typing this. The first day in Utrecht we hung out around town and then made some pasta in the hostel kitchen for dinner. We went out to this place, Café Belgie, which had over 100 different types of beer and then to this other bar where we saw some live. The music was a really bad cross of funk and 90’s pop hits, it was enjoyable though. We stumbled back to our place only to meet some hostel folk drinking out in the garden. One was from Virginia and the other was from Bulgaria (Tony). He told us hilarious stories about his views on self-importance and drinking. He kept pouring more and more Jack Daniels into our glasses, which ended our evening. The day after we went on a huge bike ride seeing a castle, windmills, hookers on boats, and what not all day.

The garden area at Strowis -->