FCK Game, Not for the Kiddies

This is my first post in ages since my computer has been acting up, not cool. A lot of stuff has been going down here in København, so I will try to sum these things up.

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.

The next day, Thursday, we set off to see another local Viking after class, Rikke. She was currently staying at her husband's father's summerhome in southern Denmark. Tyler and I took a long train ride down and met her, her husband Peter, and their two kids. She took us out to eat in the local beachtown and then left us. She told us we needed to go out and gave us 200 kroner for the drinks she would have had with us if she wasn't busy with her new born kids. Rikke also told us that it didn't matter when we came back and encouraged us to stay out late, so we did. We bought some drinks at a bar, checked out the moon/stars on the beach, and then headed back to a dance club. 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.

The next morning we went to the beach for a bit. Tyler ended up destroying his newly bought phone by jumping in the sea with it in his pockets, not good. We came back to Rikke's and they took us out to the local medieval park, which is basically like the Renaisance Fair in Wisconsin. 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.

Viking Encounters of a Danish Kind

This past week we had the unique opportunity to visit two local vikings Mikkel and Ilya who showed Tyler and I a great time. The first, Mikkel, planned on meeting us to hang out Wednesday evening. He showed up at our dorm to pick us up with Becky (a visiting viking) and his nephew Emil (who's in the danish royal guard). His car pulls up blasting his horn and his nephew is holding beer out the window for us. Once we were in the car, Mikkel proceeded to say "In Denmark it's ok to drink and drive...if you want." 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.

That Thursday night Ilya invited us to his apartment for dinner and he said we could bring dates so Abby and Kara came along as well. Ilya greeted us and gave us a tour of his apartment. An amazing place, he even had American made furniture, which is unheard of in Denmark. His wife, Natasha, made us the best meal we've had so far on this trip. Ilya busted out quite a bit of wine for the occasion as well. After dinner we sat in his living room for hours discussing all sorts of things. Ilya was even gracious enough to have us finish off his cognac stock. Needless to say we had a great time.

Friday we made another venture up to Helsingor to visit Lars and get some cash money. He took us out for brunch and we had another great time. Most people in the program went on the Copenhagen Business School trip to Oslo, Norway for the weekend. It wasn't so much a trip as it was a booze cruise with a 6 hour stop in Oslo. We didn't go because we are planning to visit the city after the summer program is over. 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.

Tonight we are going to an F.C. Copenhagen game and this upcoming weekend we have a busy schedule, but not much else as of late.

Can't Stop, Won't Stop

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.

Birthday? How Bout Roskilde?

Oh boy, so last Thursday was my birthday if you didn't know and it just so happened that one of the biggest music festivals in Europe, and probably the world started, that day, Roskilde. The website says 67,000 paying guests and 25,000 volunteers who get free admission by working part of the festival. First of all, I'd never been to any sort of music festival where you camp and party all weekend and of course nothing ever this big. The festival music ran July 3-6 (Thursday-Sunday), but people can move into their campgrounds the Sunday before, and they even camp in line before that just to get good camping spots inside the festival grounds. The festival is about a 20 min train ride to the west of Copenhagen. We showed up that Sunday and found a nice spot in one of the more relaxed area, not to say that it wasn't crazy. Since we had our first week of class that week as well, we left our tent their and headed back to Copenhagen. After my last class on Thursday we headed out for the weekend. We managed to collect some friends to bring as well. Three girls Abby from Wisconsin, Kara from North Dakota, and Megan from Oregon. They were a little iffy, but they managed to get tickets. The festival had loads of music of all types, 180 acts on 6 stages with one being a large main stage. The music we saw goes like this:

Thursday - Lupe Fiasco, Radiohead
Friday - Kate Nash, Band of Horses, Gnarls Barkley, Kings of Leon, Sunburned Hand of the Man, The Streets
Saturday - Swollen Members, Neil Young, The Chemical Brothers
Sunday - Babylove & the Van Dangos, Static & Noise, Jay-Z

The three groups on Friday turned out to be my favorite ones of the festival. Swollen Members is a crazy hip-hop group who I wanted to see because they had actually opened for a Brother Ali show in Union South in Madison. They consisted of two MCs and one DJ. It turned out one of the MCs had a bad accident and could come, but they still managed to play. They put on an amazing show even though the DJ had to cover some of the lyrics.

Before the Neil Young show, I was a little worried it might be like the Bob Dylan show where he just stood there and played the guitar without moving. Even in his old age he still rocked the main stage, he was all over the place and on point with everything, hands down the best show of the festival. He played a moving 3 hour concert that ended in a Jimi Hendrix style destruction of his guitar, except without the fire. All the strings were ripped and he played his last notes by shaking the guitar.

We wandered around a bit after the Neil Young show in amazement and came back to check out the Chemical Brothers in the front "pit" area. The Chemical Brothers are an intense electronic music group consisting of two guys. This show wasn't so much good due to the music, but more the intensity of everyone in the crowd. Everyone was just going crazy and we were right in there dancing like crazy with everyone. The music was still good and they had some great visualizations.


Besides the music it was a party all the rest of the time. We would wake up in the morning like a Wisconsin football game day and start drinking. It wasn't so much planned as is was hard to lay in your tent while the sun was already baking you at like 9:00 AM. Then we would hit up the music and wander around the grounds. There was a lot of great food like Mexican, burgers the size of your head, Chinese, African, and other simple stuff. The festival also has a lot of random activities for people like the naked race, a place to pay for a hot shower while girls in bikinis wash you, some ponds to go swimming where they play music from speakers underwater, a graffiti teaching area (I graffitied our tent at one point), a huge maybe 40 foot tower that shoots out flames when people beat on he drums around it, random game areas with bizarre little games, an outdoor movie theater, an indoors lounge area covered in sand with a DJ, and a ton of other random stuff. After the last shows of the day we would come back around 2-3 am and just drink and party with all the people in the tents around us. We met a bunch of guys who had been doing this for years, so they gave us a lot of good advice. Each night could be described as the end of a great house party. People stumbling around crashing into tents, yelling and screaming, blasting music, breaking chairs and tent poles, and what not. We would be up to 5-6 each night, but there was always something going on. After I had gone to bed at one point I got woken up by a soccer ball to the head that was kicked at the tent. Cleanliness was lacking for the most part, but it didn't bother me or most people at the festival. Just a little splash of cold water and you're good to go. I heard that if the festival stopped now, in 1000 years they would be able to detect the layout of all the walls by the leftover urine in the soil.

We left after the last show Sunday night, Jay-Z, around 1-2ish in the morning and made it home at around 3-4am since the metro train stops running in Copenhagen around midnight. Thankfully we managed to eventually catch a bus. Tyler and I were both in pretty rough shape and passed out in our beds instantly. I managed to set my alarm for class at 8:55, but my phone battery died in the night and I slept right through it. It's probably better I didn't go because I had the best sleep ever.