My creative travel writing class met at the Little Mermaid statue at 1pm. I thought I wouldn't have a problem finding it, but I did. I looked it up ahead of time and used Rejesplanen. I wrote down the directions and felt pretty confident.
I took my usual train, planning on getting off at an earlier stop (Hellerup). I heard an announcement in Danish that mentioned Hellerup so I got off. It wasn't actually that stop. It was the Kokedale stop. I was mad at myself for not knowing Danish and the announcement for misinforming me. I just hopped on the next train because it was going to Hellerup too.
I got off and boarded the right bus. I think I made a mistake by getting off at the wrong bus stop. I wrote down two names for what bus stop to get off and I got off at the second name but maybe I should've gotten off at the first name stop. I don't know. My written directions said I was three minutes walking distance away. I knew the little mermaid was near water and saw no water around me. Desperate, I used my iphone and looked up directions. It said that in walking distance I was 35min away! Disappointed, I began walking. I allotted 30min of extra time so I wasn't very worried about being late. I was more worried about being in an unfamiliar place. The stupid directions took me in strange parts of town and I had to walk .8 miles on a walkway sandwiched between a major road and the train tracks. I felt like a homeless person, walking alone on the sidewalk by the street. That was a major low point. I wanted to cry. I felt lost, mad at myself, confused at where I went wrong, cursing technology, I was cold, my feet hurt, and I was alone. I followed the directions and turned off that awful road. I walked by another girl and I'm sure she saw how lost I looked and asked if I was with DIS. I said yes and so we walked together. I was relieved to find someone and be lost together. My face and lips were numb, so I'm surprised she could even understand me. We went the wrong way, asked for directions, walked past the frozen harbor and finally found our group. I said Hallelujah aloud.
Our professor wanted us to talk to other tourists there and ask why they were there. Most of us just took more pictures of the underwhelming statue. A girl near me asked a woman why she was there and she said she was from Holland and was on holiday here. She was told that this was a sight she ought to see and so that's why she was there. Pretty typical response.
Like in elementary school, we took a class picture in front of the statue. The statue wasn't veyr big or anything grande. It seemed silly all the hype that is around it.
Then we moved onto the next stop on our creative travel writing copenhagen tour. We went inside the marble church that was dome shaped for about ten minutes. We sat in an eerie silence. There was a homeless guy sleeping in the pews.
Next we went to Nyhaven and our professor told us how it used to be a very rundown area but the city tried very hard to clean it up and tell everyone to go there. Clearly it worked. Now it's a spot that only tourists go. We took some more pictures and headed to thaw out in a Baresso coffe shop. He bought us all hot drinks and we got to relax and leave when we wanted. I ordered a neat chocolate mint latte that had chocolate mint candies at the bottom of it. I sat with two or three other girls and we had a nice casual chat.
I walked with a girl who was in another one of my classes, Liz, to the Studenterhuset. We just wanted a place to relax. I was planning on going to the Communication program social but decided not to because of my terrible travel experience this morning. The social was in the meat packing district and even though I wrote out directions, I didn't feel excited about getting lost again. So I stayed in the studenterhuset and did reading with Liz.
I looked up and recognized Liesje. I walked over and Miaja was there too. She explained that she was there for a climate seminar which would have free wine and cheese after. Liz was also planning on going there, so on the spur of the moment, I decided to go too.
It was a powerpoint presentation about bike culture in cities and how this guy's company is working to promore biking. He talked about why copenhagen is a model biking city and the benefits of biking. He made me feel bad about loving my car so much. I still liked the presentation.
After, we gathered in the back of the room and ate bread, crackers, cheese and drank white or red wine. I chatted with a couple other girls I knew.
It was a nice way to end a rather "out of my comfort zone" day. Just chatting, drinking wine, pretending to be fancy adults.
Oh yeah, I made chocolate chip cookies with my host mom tonight. She went to the store and bought the ingredients. I wasn't sure if it was for chocolate cookies or chocolate chip (I guess they call them chocolate cookies but they are chocolate chip cookies). Baking was different because she measured things on a scale. It would call for like 360 g of flour rather than 3 cups of flour. Weighing the ingredients seemed easier to me. Instead of buying a pack of choco chips, she chopped up the chocolate. She said the chocolate chips weren't good quality. I started to eat the cookie dough and she lightly scolded me about getting salmonella and I explained I do it all the time at home and have never gotten sick but am aware that I shouldn't do it. She nodded and said she used to do it too when she was younger. The cookies came out great. They tasted weirdly better than American cookies. haha.
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| I found these on google images |
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