Giving Thanks with the Danes

This Thanksgiving was the first Thanksgiving in my 21 years of life that I've spent away from my family.  I was a little upset about this, as was most everyone else in my program.  So, as soon as my friend Jordan invited me to a Thanksgiving dinner with her visiting family (basically a host family from Denmark but you don't live with them) I jumped at the offer.  I was thrilled to have somewhere to go and some family and friends to share it with.  And, as with most everything I do here, it was quite an experience.

What to expect at a Danish Thanksgiving:

1 roasted turkey

2 servings of "sweet potatoes" (potatoes cooked in butter and sugar)

1 host dad who picks you up from the train station wearing a Patriots jersey

1 giant bowl of a traditional Danish radish type dish

1 roasted duck

1 untouched bowl of turkey neck, heart and other internal organs

2 grandparents who speak a great variation of broken English

5 servings of a delicious homemade gravy

78 (approximately) toasts - the Danes like to drink

2 different types of stuffing - one for the duck and one for the turkey

1 banana cream pie that they were convinced was a very traditional Thanksgiving dessert because they saw Americans eating it on TV one day

1 giant vat of "lemon fromage" - a Danish dessert that tasted like lemon mousse or something

16 minutes spent watching a traditional Danish clip that's played every year on New Years

8 extremely full and drowsy people at the end of the night

Milan, Budapest and Madrid

For our third and final travel week my three best girlfriends from my kollegium and I went to Milan, Budapest and Madrid.  Kind of random places to go but we picked based on the flight prices (one was less than 8 euros - hard to pass up)

Day One:

Our flight to Milan left early in the morning so we all met bright (actually still dark) and early to catch the bus to the airport together.  At one point during the flight we looked out the window and saw this...

Just flying over the Swiss Alps

We got into Milan in the early afternoon and spent about an hour or so trying to find our hostel.  We had to take a bus and a metro and then walk.  Gotta love public transportation though

We tend to get lost a lot

When we finally got to our hostel (soaked from the rain and exhausted from all the traveling) we were greeted with a welcome drink.  Obviously, being in Italy, we all got a glass of red wine and signed into the hostel which was great.  I think it's rated one of the best hostels in Europe.  We paid a little more than we did in the other cities to stay there but I think it was definitely worth it in the end.  Each morning we got a free breakfast of eggs, yogurt, cereal, etc. and at night if we bought a drink at their bar (for about 4 euros) we could help ourselves to their dinner buffet.  It was usually homemade pasta and salad which was great.

Anne, Gaby and Sasha enjoying our welcome drink.

We were all starving so we went to the nearest grocery and picked up some snacks (a baguette, mozzarella and pesto - very European of us) and ate it in the "living room" area of our hostel.  Then we relaxed for a little before getting the dinner buffet and resting up for the night.

Day Two:

For our first full day in Milan we began by walking around the Duomo, a very large cathedral and pretty much the only touristy thing to do in Milan.  It was gorgeous both on the inside and the outside but it seems like all cathedrals in Europe are.  

The outside of the Duomo

A woman who I thought was praying but was actually reading a tour book

Milan isn't the biggest touristy city there is, so after visiting the Duomo we just wandered around for a little bit.  Then we wandered around a little bit more before getting our daily snack of mozzarella, baguettes and pesto.  Our nightly routine was pretty much the same every night and we weren't very busy at all in Milan but it was nice to have a different type of touristy experience.  We felt very European just sitting and talking and sipping wine without having anywhere to be or anything to do.  

Day Three:

We started out our third and final day in Milan by heading over to the main square and finding a bull that is supposedly a good luck charm if you spin around on it.  

Spinning around on the bull

Afterwards we went to the big fashion street because Milan is such a fashion capital but of course none of us could afford anything there.  After hitting up an outlet store or two we found a grocery store and stocked up on our nightly snacks, had some of our dinner buffet and went to bed before our early flight the next morning.

Dusk in Milan

Day Four:

Our alarms went off around 4 AM for our flight to Budapest.  It was rough waking up so early but I'm so so glad that we had a full day in Budapest; it was definitely one of my favorite cities that I've visited in Europe so far.  We arrived in Budapest before 10 AM and made it to our hostel (via a bus and metro) sometime before noon.  [By the way, the currency in Budapest is hilarious.  1,000 Hungarian forint is equal to about 4.5 US dollars.  So I was spending thousands of forints left and right and felt like a millionaire but was really spending less than $10.  It was unreal and so fun.]  We only had two days in Budapest so even though we were all exhausted we decided to take advantage of how early we landed by exploring the city a little bit.  Budapest is actually two separate cities connected by a couple big bridges - one side is Buda and the other is Pest.  Our hostel was located on the Pest side so we spent most of the first time exploring that area.  

Exploring Pest

Pest in the foreground - Buda in the background

One of the big bridges connecting Buda and Pest

Anne's twin brother has a friend who's studying abroad in Budapest so he met up with us after our little self-guided tour and showed us a few more monuments and a castle that was gorgeous all lit up at night.

That night Anne's friend Andrew took us to a "ruins bar".  It was really unique I don't even know how to describe it really.  It was super casual with a lot of really cool and random accessories and lights all over the place.  

A picture of the bar that I found online

Day Five:

One of the things that we were most looking forward to in Budapest were the famous baths.  We spent most of Tuesday there.  They had a bunch of hot swimming pools and thermals and saunas.  For about 20 dollars we got a couple hours in the baths and a 20 minute massage (I think that was our first massage for all of us).  I'm so glad we got the chance to do that - it was definitely a once in a lifetime opportunity.

One of the outdoor swimming pools

A thermal - it was almost too hot in there

After we finally dragged ourselves out of the baths and got to see Parliament lit up at night.

Parliament in Budapest

Then we met up with Anne's friend again for a traditional Hungarian dinner.  We ordered a lot of their famous goulash soup and veal tarragon soup.  Between 7 people we split a bunch of orders and the bill turned out to be 750 forint (about 3 bucks) which was great.  

Day Six:

Our flight for Madrid took off around 4, so we had one more morning left to spend in Budapest.  Sasha Jordan and I woke up relatively early and went to the market.  I'm really glad we did - it was a lot of traditional Hungarian food on the ground floor and little souvenir stands on the top floor.  I spent the rest of my forint and then we went back to the hostel to get a train to the airport.

Hungarian market

I'm pretty sure this flight was the one that cost 8 euros and it soon became clear why.  We got to the "gate" which was a tent with a concrete floor and a couple overhead heaters.  And the flight was delayed an hour or so but they never told us this.  They just had us waiting in this cold concrete tent without any information for an hour.  Then we finally boarded the plane and there was no room for anyone's carry on suitcases in the overhead compartments.  So they were shoving suitcases under people's seats and mine got literally kicked into a very tiny space behind the back row of seats.  And throughout the entire flight they tried to sell us everything from calendars to lottery tickets.  But we made it to Madrid safe and sound.  We took a cab to our hostel and all just fell asleep immediately.

Our room wasn't exactly the biggest

Day Seven:

We started our time in Madrid by meeting up with a bunch of our friends from America who are studying abroad there.  They took us to a "fast food" type place that served tapas which is a very Spanish thing.  We all ordered a bunch of little dishes and shared everything.  Our friends took us to do some sight seeing and saw a giant church, palace and the market.

Church

Palace

Traditional (and delicious) paella at the market

After leaving the market we went back and hung out at the hostel for a little before going out later that night.

Day Eight:

This was our last day in Madrid and we started it by going back to the market and actually eating there (we were too full of tapas the day before to eat anything).  We got paella and a really good mango smoothie and our friend Merry got this unbelievably fresh mozzarella.  I've never had anything like it.  It tasted like whipped cream and mozzarella combined - it was weirdly fluffy but so good.  After we left the market we walked over to a really big park area that also has some museums.  The rain held off and it was a really really pretty and huge green area.

We eventually made our way back to our hostel and got ready to go out for the night.  We went to the most famous club in Madrid.  It's seven stories and each story has a different theme to it.  For example, the second floor was karaoke and the third floor was hip hop themed.  It was a lot of fun but because we had such an early flight we ended up just not sleeping and going straight to the airport afterwards.  We got on our flight and made it back to Copenhagen safe and sound.

And now we have less than a month left here before we all go home.  Definitely a lot of mixed emotions but it's been an unbelievable experience so far - so lucky to have had so much time to travel during my time here.

Hamburg

This past weekend I went with my Holocaust and Genocide class to Hamburg, Germany to tour concentration camps from the Holocaust.  Not exactly one of my more fun trips but I'm definitely glad I went.  I learned a lot and it was definitely something else actually walking through all the buildings where it all happened as opposed to just reading about it on a sheet of paper.

Day One:

We left early Saturday morning by bus for Hamburg.  The total trip was 6 hours from Copenhagen to Hamburg and included a 45 minute ferry ride.  I slept for most of it - the only good thing about early morning trips.  Our bus came with us on the ferry and everything which was nice because we were then given everywhere around Hamburg.

Our first stop was what is currently a kindergarten.  During WWII the building was abandoned and was therefore the "perfect" place for the execution of twenty Jewish children: ten girls and ten boys between the ages of five and twelve.

Picture of the house taken from Wikipedia because I didn't know if it was appropriate to  bring a camera.

**If you have a weak stomach feel free to skip this paragraph.  A "doctor" named Kurt Heissmeyer wanted to do experiments involving tuberculosis.  These experiments had no real medical value.  He first conducted them on guinea pigs but then decided to conduct them on humans.  He ordered twenty children from Auschwitz to be sent to Neuengamme concentration camp in Hamburg.  There, these children were infected with tuberculosis of the skin and later of the lungs via a catheter which was put down their throats into their lungs.  Heissmeyer then cut out the lymph nodes from under their armpits for further study.  He said the children's skin was melting like cheese (this is when I started to get nauseous).  Nothing conclusive was found from these experiments and he decided to have the children murdered so no one would find out about the experiments.  That is when they were transported to the Bullenhuser Damm school were they were hung in the basement.  But the children weren't heavy enough to die from their own weight so members of the SS basically hug the children in order to hang them.  Later when asked on trial how they could do such a thing the SS members said it was quite simple and described how they physically accomplished it.  Of course the judge was talking about how they could do it emotionally.  Just goes to show how messed up these people were.

There was a rose garden out back which was a memorial for all the children.  It didn't look like too much now because it's basically winter time but it's still pretty neat that people are still planting flowers for the children so many years later.

There were plaques for each of the children.

After leaving the school we checked into the hostel and then went to a group dinner at a traditional German restaurant where we had tomato soup, schnitzel and lemon sorbet.  So that was a fun end to a rather depressing day.

Day Two:

Our second (and last - it was a short trip) day in Hamburg started out at a church.  At first I was confused as to why we were going to a church because it didn't really seem relevant.  I was wrong.  Apparently this church was used as a target for Allied bombers during the war.

The tower was used as a target for the bombings

They were bombing the city of Hamburg and the civilians in particular in an attempt to demoralize the country.  Apparently they succeeded in bombing pretty much everything except their target.  Pretty much everything around the church was leveled except the church's tower.  It was pretty powerful to see.  Then we got to go up inside the church to the top of the tower which was also unreal because it was completely hollowed out (I think from the bombings).

At the exhibition there were pictures of what the town looked like after the bombings.

I love going up to the top of things (feel free to look back at those pictures from the top of Notre Dame) so I was excited.  Hamburg is a surprisingly beautiful city.

View of Hamburg from the top of the tower.

After spending some time at exhibitions there we went to a delicious brunch.  Then it was off to our main stop of the trip: Neuengamme concentration camp.  This camp had about 100,000 prisoners come through and about 55,000 die, making it the concentration camp with the highest mortality rate (not included death camps like Auschwitz).

Our professor gave us a tour of the grounds which were huge.

Buildings where the prisoners would've slept.  Most of them are burned down by now

What used to be the crematorium.

The best jobs to have were jobs that were indoors because prisoners didn't have proper clothing for outdoor jobs and the outdoor jobs generally required greater manual labor.  The worst jobs, according to our professor, were those involving creating this canal.  The prisoners were forced to dig all day in the cold water with just clogs on.  If they clogs fell off (which could happen easily since they were backless and could easily get stuck in the mud) the prisoners were at risk of being shot on the spot for losing the "property" of the SS.

Beautiful canal until you realize how it was made.

After walking around the grounds for a couple hours we went to the exhibition then headed back toward Copenhagen and I got home around 10 pm.  Again, it wasn't the most fun or exciting trip I've had but it was definitely a sobering experience that I'm really glad I had.