On a whim, I decided to take advantage of the nice sunny weather and do some exploring this afternoon. The plan was to catch the Metro and get off at a random station and then walk around and see where I ended up! Well, the Metro was delayed for quite some time. Of course I couldn’t understand the announcements over the speakers, so I asked a man nearby to translate. Apparently there was a technical problem with one of the tracks. He also said there were people walking around on the tracks…I’m really hoping he meant repair people. :o
Anyway, after nearly 30 minutes of waiting, the system was up and running again. I decided to get off at Nørreport Station, which led to a part of the central city I’d never visited.
I walked around, enjoying the buildings and the newness of it all. Of course most of the stores were closed as it was after 14:00 (in Copenhagen, stores close early on weekend afternoons). I didn’t intend on doing any shopping however — I just wanted to explore!
This part of Copenhagen seemed so different from the suburb where I live…it’s hard to believe that it’s all part of the same city! Copenhagen is funny, it’s a big and modern city but feels small and old as well…that’s what I like about it!
Anyway, I don’t know how, but I stumbled upon this nice-looking botanical garden (I later learned that the gardens are part of Copenhagen University). I spent a great deal of time there, playing around with the camera. There were plenty of paths (too many to cover in a single trip), friendly ducks that roamed freely, benches at every corner, water and of course plants. There were also many greenhouses, but they were closed. Maybe next time!
After the botanical gardens, I walked around some more. At one point, my purse bumped against a bicycle (no one was on it) and accidentally tipped it over on its side…oops! This couple walking by chuckled. Thankfully it wasn’t damaged or dented. I set it back up and hoped no else one saw. Just reminds me that I need to be more watchful for bikes, both moving and stationary. There are just so many of them here.
Well, after walking for another 20 minutes or so, I decided to call it a day. On the way back to the Metro station, I stopped at this Thai place called Eastern Corner for dinner. I hadn’t tried the Thai food here until now. Took the food back to the dorm and it was delicious!! I will definitely be back.
So that was my day. Going to spend the rest of the evening finishing up the reading for class on Wednesday. I’ve uploaded a bunch of new photos from today, you can view them on Flickr!
I will do some more random exploring like this on later weekends.
Here I am with another post! I attempted to do my laundry Sunday night. The laundry room for my building is located in the basement. I started it around 11 p.m. because all of the machines were free then. The nice thing is that the machines provide bleach. Too bad I didn’t realize that before I went out and bought some. I had my laundry card and stuck it into the washing machine. It kept saying 0.25. So I assumed that the balance on my card was 25 øre (100 øre = 1 Danish krone) left over from the previous person occupant of my room. I had no idea how much it cost to do a washing. I had no idea how to put more money on my card. There were no instructions anywhere on how to do this stuff.
I proceeded to load up the machine. It automatically sensed how many clothes were in there and adjusted some settings accordingly. There were some English instructions posted on the walls, but unfortunately the instructions only said things like, “choose X setting – A, B, C, D.” When I looked at the machine to find those settings, they were all in Danish. So I just guessed and hoped for the best!
Well the machine did not turn on after I loaded it, so I suspected that I needed more than 25 øre on my laundry card. Sure enough, the washing machine flashed 12.25 kroner on its little LCD screen. I looked around the area for some kind of adding-money-to-your-card-machine and found none. So my next guess was to walk over to the Administration building. Voila! There was a machine located in the far right corner of the building! I proceeded to add money, and then headed back to my building’s laundry machine.
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Well it’s now the wee hours of Saturday morning as I write this, but I had a wonderful time yesterday (Friday). Class went well, and then after class everyone had lunch together in the school’s canteen and then a few of us went to the “Friday Bar” at the nearby IT University (IT-Universitetet i København). The Friday Bar is a tradition at colleges in Denmark. The schools and dorms have a bar area where they sell a variety of drinks and play music. Students sit and talk over a drink and relax after a long week. Everyone is happy because of the weekend ahead. This week’s Friday bar at our school was only for the new bachelor’s students or something, so we went to the one at the IT University. It’s a gorgeous building, very open, almost all window. I took some photos of it which I will upload later to Flickr!
After that bar we headed over to another bar which was in a somewhat obscure location and spent several hours there, talking about many things (movies, music, dogs, gypsies, languages, cultures and more stuff I can’t remember at the moment). It was really interesting because each of us was from a different country — Finland, Ireland, Denmark and the US! The other people in that bar were quite rowdy to say the least. Lots of laughing and pool playing. A good time had by all. We went to a delicious Italian pizza place afterward. It was a pleasant night.
Tuesday marks the start of Interaction Design class; I’m looking forward to that. I really like how our International Master’s class is so small and intimate. After class is over, we go to to lunch together in the canteen. I know it’s still early in the year and our routine isn’t set yet, but so far I like the intimacy!
This weekend I will be reading my part of the book (3 chapters) for the presentation on Wednesday. We have a third person in our group now. It should go well, I hope. I also hope to do some grocery shopping, tackle the laundry and have a strawberry ice cream cone. The strawberry ice cream (jordbær in Danish) here is amazing. I remember when I went to Spain in ’05 I fell in love with the strawberry ice cream there, too. What is it with me, foreign countries and strawberry ice cream?!
