My last trip before I am homeward bound was nearly a disaster. Like a crash and burn disaster. Or like a "MAYDAY MAYDAY" disaster. Or like this guy's marriage. All of these are good analogies. Between sleeping through my 6am alarm, almost puking on the ferry from Denmark to Germany, and missing the Bundesliga game I had tickets for, I really dropped the ball. First of all, whomever thought it was a good idea to plan on getting on a 7:45am train on a Saturday morning was an acceptable idea is a real oblivious son of a gun (yeah, that one was on me). Secondly, I was never made aware of the ferry between Denmark and Germany. Being hungover on a small ship in the open ocean is a recipe for a seasick disaster. Thirdly, how did I manage to screw up a chance to go to a game between two of the top teams in Germany?
Oh well, I guess. I made it to Damme either way. I've been doing nothing but playing video games, drinking beer, and sleeping all week. I've literally played NHL with Jens (my friend and host) for 12+ hours the last three days. This has been the perfect way to relax and recover before my long journey home. Tomorrow, it's back on the railway to Copenhagen for one last night in Europe before I get on a long flight back home. It's really bitter sweet, and I'm getting all sentimental about now. I've gotta stop myself before I get all sappy like my last post.
I looked at all my classes for next semester, and when you get deep into your major classes, it's pretty awesome that you get most of the same people in your classes. There is friends in every class, and you know pretty much everyone. This semester is the first time that I basically have the same general group in all of my classes, it's gonna make studying a lot easier, Bart Scott. Plus, I only have three real classes + choir, badminton, and yoga. Spring semester has some potential to be pretty awesome this year.
Anyway, this is my last post in Europe. My next one will be written state-side, and hopefully they will stop being me bragging about cool adventures I'm having and more about what I intended this blog to be originally. I have been pretty bad at posting this semester, and hopefully I can increase my output soon. That being said, I plan on starting another project or two in the near future, so my activity on here may not see the surge I am hoping for. Here is some music. All of these are awesome songs off a few of my favorite new albums (and mixtapes) of 2011. Enjoy and see you soon.
Run Right Back - The Black Keys (El Camino)
Rigamortis - Kendrick Lamar (Section.80)
Homeboy - Eric Church (Chief)
Outside - Childish Gambino (CAMP)
HAM - Kanye West & Jay-Z (Watch The Throne)
Mind of Logic - Logic (Young Sinatra)
Strawberry Swing - Frank Ocean (Nostalgia, Ultra)
The Wilhelm Scream - James Blake (James Blake)
American Rapstar - Big K.R.I.T. (Return of 4eva)
Song For An Actress - Hoodie Allen (Leap Year)
Wednesday, December 21, 2011
Sunday, December 11, 2011
Homeward bound. Soonly at least.
Well, I'm leaving Europe in eleven days. Time really flies. After every semester I always think "Damn, thought this just started", but this time I'm convinced it did just start. I've done so much the past four months, yet so little. I've been places and lived on my own in a foreign country, but this semester was quite easy academically. I've mastered the art of figuring out public transportation in any country, but the art of studying is long removed from my memory. It's about time to start preparing myself for some reverse culture shock. Back to a country where every woman isn't pretty, where the weather will be colder, and where I can't legally drink. I'm gonna miss Europe a lot, especially Copenhagen. That being said, at home there is family, my dog, the Cloudians, GAC, driving, Taco Bell, real Mountain Dew, video games, and having my god damn groceries bagged for me. And I can't wait to go to McDonalds and get a McDouble for a dollar rather than a single cheeseburger for two.
Leaving is going to be bitter sweet. It's going to be incredibly bitter upon my departure and incredibly sweet when I land in Minnesota. It may even be sweeter when I get Taco Bell on the way home. But I came up with a plan to avoid the stress and sadness of leaving that I know will build up as the week goes on, since basically everything from here on out it "the last ______ in Denmark". I am just gonna take a few hours, sit around in a circle with all my friends and talk about all the fun shit we did this semester and all the memories we are going to take with us. Instead of panicking about having not done enough in my limited time abroad, remembering all the things I did do will be therapeutic.
When one chapter ends, another begins.
/endsappyshit
In more important news, I'm officially hooked on The Wire. I urge you, no I implore you, not to start it if you have anything important that needs to get done in the next 3+ weeks. It is only something that should be picked up if you literally don't have a thing to do, which is why I picked it up last week. While most people struggle over finals, I sit back, put my feet up, and throw one back for all my fallen comrades (or just mentally defeated) around the Midwest. You folk ought not to start it. It's more of a J-Term activity.
Anyway, I'm going to Germany to hang out with an old high school foreign exchange friend of mine, Jens the Germ. We're gonna check out a Bundesliga game, and hopefully I can learn how to drive a stick and hit the autobon because if there is one more thing I need to do before I go home it is to recklessly driving a car at dangerous speeds in a car I will not be familiar with in a country where I cannot read the signs. It's the responsible play. I only have one final before I am completely free of work and only have to worry about relaxing for my last 10 days in Europe. Twill be glorious. Tuesday night will not be a cozy night in, that's for sure.
I will chime in before I depart. Peace.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EsIqEq9OFxE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nx1ee_6fH60
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wa4wR4G-5eE&ob=av2e
Leaving is going to be bitter sweet. It's going to be incredibly bitter upon my departure and incredibly sweet when I land in Minnesota. It may even be sweeter when I get Taco Bell on the way home. But I came up with a plan to avoid the stress and sadness of leaving that I know will build up as the week goes on, since basically everything from here on out it "the last ______ in Denmark". I am just gonna take a few hours, sit around in a circle with all my friends and talk about all the fun shit we did this semester and all the memories we are going to take with us. Instead of panicking about having not done enough in my limited time abroad, remembering all the things I did do will be therapeutic.
When one chapter ends, another begins.
/endsappyshit
In more important news, I'm officially hooked on The Wire. I urge you, no I implore you, not to start it if you have anything important that needs to get done in the next 3+ weeks. It is only something that should be picked up if you literally don't have a thing to do, which is why I picked it up last week. While most people struggle over finals, I sit back, put my feet up, and throw one back for all my fallen comrades (or just mentally defeated) around the Midwest. You folk ought not to start it. It's more of a J-Term activity.
Anyway, I'm going to Germany to hang out with an old high school foreign exchange friend of mine, Jens the Germ. We're gonna check out a Bundesliga game, and hopefully I can learn how to drive a stick and hit the autobon because if there is one more thing I need to do before I go home it is to recklessly driving a car at dangerous speeds in a car I will not be familiar with in a country where I cannot read the signs. It's the responsible play. I only have one final before I am completely free of work and only have to worry about relaxing for my last 10 days in Europe. Twill be glorious. Tuesday night will not be a cozy night in, that's for sure.
I will chime in before I depart. Peace.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EsIqEq9OFxE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nx1ee_6fH60
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wa4wR4G-5eE&ob=av2e
Monday, November 28, 2011
Been awhile...
Been awhile since I've written anything, I have been a combination of real busy and real lazy. I had friends from GAC here for eight nights to host, then I had a crazy busy academic week, then I went to Sweden this weekend for fun. Been quite the stretch, but that isn't to say I haven't had half an hour to bang out a post, I've just been too busy wasting time watching Community during downtime. Here it goes.
There is a time and place for everything. This belief trumps my deep-seated hatred for trashy television and magazines, I just always believed that the time and place for this was at a slumber party for junior high school girls. I've never seen an episode of Jersey Shore, I have never opened a Cosmo, and I would rather watch that new shit they put on Nickelodeon and call cartoons than MTV. I am very proud of all of these accomplishments. But, with all this being said, I just spent an hour reading a GQ and regrettably enjoyed it. It's not easy for me to admit this, but I am trying to be honest. In my defense, they put Mila Kunis on the cover, and that's just not fair. I didn't buy it myself, it was a gift, so it would have been very much rude to not.
I was going to tie this whole thing into some nice feel good story about trying new things, but I realized I don't have a story. Just this intro and a conclusion, so that isn't happening. I'm gonna have to reroute here.
I had kind of a break through today. In class today, we were talking about multi-tasking, essentially people saying they can or can't. It got me thinking that I am only good at doing things when I am multi-tasking. In fact, I can't single task. My mind is always running through so many different things that I am not capable of doing one thing at a time. In fact, I've been writing this blog while on Facebook, Twitter, ESPN, Draft Countdown, email, Forum, GMAD, the Economist, and iTunes. I've been home for 30 minutes and have signed up for laundry, unpacked clothes from the weekend, unpacked groceries, gone to the bathroom, made a bacon-wrapped toasty dog, checked in through all of those websites, emailed my professor a paper, and written this paragraph. I am incapable of doing one thing at a time. I wrote a six page paper last week in an hour and a half with six tabs open and a house playlist on. I guarantee if I had to do it without the internet to distract me it would have taken me twice as long. I figure that the reason for this is that my attention span is so short that in order to keep my mind occupied and not bored, I need to bounce around between a million things with short bursts of 100% focus. I can't sit down and read a book for an hour. I can read a magazine for an hour because there are different articles, but I still guarantee that the magazine will get set down at least three times in that hour. I'm not sure why I will set it down, but I will probably just think of something and not be able to concentrate on anything else until I satisfy whatever is on my mind. I'm not sure if it is a good thing or a bad thing yet. I will have to decide about that later.
I took two brief breaks in writing that last paragraph alone. Anyway, that is just kind of a psychological breakthrough I had with myself today. And I have no more motivation to write anymore. I will check in later.
Anyway, here is some music. This is my friend Darren, aka DefSeed. He is a kid studying abroad with me from Bucknell, and it turns out he is a pretty dope rapper. Download his mixtape, I give it my endorsement.
http://www.mediafire.com/?2oc4ftb2t7es2uv
There is a time and place for everything. This belief trumps my deep-seated hatred for trashy television and magazines, I just always believed that the time and place for this was at a slumber party for junior high school girls. I've never seen an episode of Jersey Shore, I have never opened a Cosmo, and I would rather watch that new shit they put on Nickelodeon and call cartoons than MTV. I am very proud of all of these accomplishments. But, with all this being said, I just spent an hour reading a GQ and regrettably enjoyed it. It's not easy for me to admit this, but I am trying to be honest. In my defense, they put Mila Kunis on the cover, and that's just not fair. I didn't buy it myself, it was a gift, so it would have been very much rude to not.
I was going to tie this whole thing into some nice feel good story about trying new things, but I realized I don't have a story. Just this intro and a conclusion, so that isn't happening. I'm gonna have to reroute here.
I had kind of a break through today. In class today, we were talking about multi-tasking, essentially people saying they can or can't. It got me thinking that I am only good at doing things when I am multi-tasking. In fact, I can't single task. My mind is always running through so many different things that I am not capable of doing one thing at a time. In fact, I've been writing this blog while on Facebook, Twitter, ESPN, Draft Countdown, email, Forum, GMAD, the Economist, and iTunes. I've been home for 30 minutes and have signed up for laundry, unpacked clothes from the weekend, unpacked groceries, gone to the bathroom, made a bacon-wrapped toasty dog, checked in through all of those websites, emailed my professor a paper, and written this paragraph. I am incapable of doing one thing at a time. I wrote a six page paper last week in an hour and a half with six tabs open and a house playlist on. I guarantee if I had to do it without the internet to distract me it would have taken me twice as long. I figure that the reason for this is that my attention span is so short that in order to keep my mind occupied and not bored, I need to bounce around between a million things with short bursts of 100% focus. I can't sit down and read a book for an hour. I can read a magazine for an hour because there are different articles, but I still guarantee that the magazine will get set down at least three times in that hour. I'm not sure why I will set it down, but I will probably just think of something and not be able to concentrate on anything else until I satisfy whatever is on my mind. I'm not sure if it is a good thing or a bad thing yet. I will have to decide about that later.
I took two brief breaks in writing that last paragraph alone. Anyway, that is just kind of a psychological breakthrough I had with myself today. And I have no more motivation to write anymore. I will check in later.
Anyway, here is some music. This is my friend Darren, aka DefSeed. He is a kid studying abroad with me from Bucknell, and it turns out he is a pretty dope rapper. Download his mixtape, I give it my endorsement.
http://www.mediafire.com/?2oc4ftb2t7es2uv
Sunday, November 13, 2011
Oh to be young and free..
I was planning on taking a few days to reflect on my trip before I blogged about it, but when I looked at the extraordinary amount of stuff I have to do this week before my friends come visit me, I realized that this needs to get done sooner rather than later. Another option was to just start homework right now and do this later. That was just a fleeting thought, homework isn't happening tonight. So without further ado, I present the craziest weeks I ever have or ever will experience.
Part I - Amsterdam
OK, maybe a little bit more ado... I am annoyed with myself for the absurd amount of cliche-ness I'm about to drop right here, but I believe life is 1% what happens and 99% how you react to it. Luckily it isn't the other way around, or my life would be a whole lot different right now. As awesome as Amsterdam was, it did not go well. In fact, shit started going array from the moment I arrived. I had a wonderful night train ride in, as I was roomed with an old Aussie guy who bought me beer all night, but the downward slide started the next day. From accidentally choosing a hostel 45 minutes out of the city to being homeless for a night to having to stay an extra night because the train from Amsterdam to Paris was booked one day, our trip could have more smoothly. The worst part was probably having to move hostels every single day. Never being able to settle in one spot is pretty terrible actually. The city of Amsterdam itself was awesome though. Anyone who thinks it is just about weed is completely ignorant, there are so many cool things to do in the city. It is incredibly beautiful. I could sit on a bench on a canal forever and not be bored. I was there for five nights and I still didn't feel like I had enough time to do everything I wanted to. A lot of this had to do with the fact the first three days were loaded with stress and figuring out places to sleep, but there is so much more to the city than sex and drugs, and the negative connotations associated with the city actually make me upset. That being said, those are two prominent components, and this is exemplified in the (in)famous red light district. Let me start off by saying that place makes me really quite uncomfortable. I mean it is definitely an awesome experience to see something to incredibly outlandish, but more than an hour walking around got to be real weird. You can't walk for more than five minutes without some clown offering you just about every drug in the spectrum, and you can't walk for more than twenty seconds without some girl dressed in lingerie behind tapping on the glass trying to get your money. Both are entertaining for awhile, but unless you are going there with the intentions of utilizing the variety of services offered in this Mecca of sin, it isn't a place to just hang out. It is one of the best places in the world to people watch, though. It is really funny how easy it is to tell who is there as a tourist and who is there for indulgence. In fact, let's play a game. Guess what the people described are at the Amsterdam Red Light District for!! Here we go.
So while Amsterdam was unreal, five nights there was plenty of time, and I was ready to move on to Paris.
Part II - Paris
How was that for a flawless segway? OK fine, it was terrible. But anyway, I took a train to Paris because it was only supposed to be three hours, which definitely makes it worth it to not have to get on a plane. I hate flying. My legs don't fit in seats. There is always a god damn baby crying. I never feel good on the decent. A train is a much better alternative, especially for such a short trip. Plus, this way I got to get off the train for 10 seconds in Brussels so I can say I've been there, and no I don't count that as cheating.
We were on the train, about half way through, and I saw these two big bald dudes in all black with a German shepherd walking towards me. Obviously this made me uncomfortable. I turn around, and there were two more big dudes walking from the other direction. It's pretty obvious at this point that some shit's about to go down, and being that we were coming from Amsterdam, it's a safe bet that it's a drug bust. They started talking to the African woman behind me. She was a big, loud woman decked out in traditional African attire, not your typical smuggler. They brought her out and talked to her between the cars for awhile. I just tuned back into my Hardcore History podcast and forgot about the whole thing until five minutes later I hear screaming from behind me. This lady is swinging away, and I was fortunate enough to see these dudes give her a solid body slam and handcuff her. When we got to the next station, they take her off the train, and I saw a dude walking off the train with a big cardboard box covered in packaging tape that was opened up just enough to see that the box was filled with bags of white powder. This confused me because I don't know why anyone would need to smuggle artificial sweetener. I know Europe is hardcore about junk foods, but damn, it seemed a little excessive to me. Poor lady.
Besides that my trip went smoothly into Paris. My friends were waiting for me at the train station and escorted me to the hostel safely. What wonderful friends I have, huh? Overall I wasn't a huge fan of Paris though. The sites and touristy stuff is cool, but the city itself I didn't find to be anything special. We went to the Louvre, the Eiffel Tower, Notre Dame, Versailles, and all those obvious destinations and had fun, but the French suck a lot. That is, of course, unless you speak their language. But I'm an arrogant, monolingual American asshole, so I don't speak your Frenchy language, Pierre! Maybe I will have more respect for your country when Germany doesn't take over your whole country in five days. Boom.
On to Barca before I say anything that will make a Frenchman fart in my general direction or taunt me a second time.
Part III - Barcalona
Ahhhh, sunny Barcelona, where it only rains 25 days a year. What a wonderful change up this will be from cold, rainy Denmark. Well, luckily for Catalonians, there will only be 22 days of rain left after I left their city. Beaches and clubs are normally a lot more fun when it doesn't rain. And who would have thunk it would have been warmer in Amsterdam than Barcelona? Screw you, Weather, I didn't deserve this.
Actually the worst part about Barca wasn't the rain. That title goes to the pick pockets. One of my travel partners got her shit jacked by some sneaky, soulless bastard. That really put quite the damper on the vacation. The city of Barcelona is actually really beautiful when it's nice out though. We were able to fit a Camp Nou tour in our short trip, so I was content.
Believe it or not, there are probably more drug dealers and prostitutes in Barcelona than in Amsterdam, only here they are so much more annoying. In a three block walk, you will be talked to by at least five drug dealers and at least three prostitutes, that's a conservative estimate. It's kind of unfair for me to judge Barcelona based on this one experience considering how wrong everything went. I will have to be back again before I slap a real negative review on such a wonderful (allegedly) place.
Part IV - Prague
In life, there are little lessons that you pick up casually throughout you're journey. They seem lots like common sense retrospectively. Disregarding hindsight, if you have never encountered such an experience before you wouldn't have ever needed to even think of it at a common sense level. It is in this that experience makes you wiser. Most of the time these things don't really have consequences, like if you had never been to a beach or pool before you might forget a towel. Oh well, you're friends probably have one, and if not, evaporation will be your friend. But, sometimes they get a little dangerous, like when you take a day trip to a tiny undeveloped Czech town with no cash and assume they take cards or have ATMs, with not enough to even buy a trip back. There are some things that are best to learn the hard way, but this is one of those things that it would be nice to just be told instead of exposed to. I mean it all worked out fine, as there happened to be one ATM in some random corner of the town that took about 20+ minutes of walking to stumble across, but I wouldn't be an honest man if I said I wasn't pretty nervous.
Besides this, literally the entire stay went smooth as Ryan Schmidtman's skin after he spends three hours getting ready to go to a bar. We had a wonderful place to stay with wonderful hosts (shout out to Sioux Falls), ate wonderful food, and the city itself is wonderful. Prague is absolutely my favorite city I have ever been in my entire life. I have lots and lots of pictures somewhere on someone's camera that I would love to post, but the amount of uncertainty in the beginning of this sentence disallows that. So unless you have ever been there (or know how to use Google Image), you are gonna have to take my word for it.
There were so many great activities we undertook during our stay, such as the Prague Castle, a giant hill over looking the city, a club in an old church, the Communism museum, etc, but there was one place that really stood out for me. It stood out more as an awesome business model that could never exist in America, especially not a big city, but was such a cool concept that it would be an fun experiment for a business man with some spare cash. The joint was called Big Lebowski's, which would normally be enough for me to give it a try even without the stellar recommendations. It's this tiny, off the beaten path hookah bar. This small little establishment serves food, has a full bar, and hookah in any flavor you could think of. There's tables as well as cushions to sit on, and it's always playing relaxing, not-shitty-club-music. Ryan and I went here to indulge in some hookah and throw a few back, but what I wasn't expecting was that this bar is name-your-own-price. The entire model is based off trusting in people's good faith. I asked the guy on the way out if 100 krone would cover us, and he replied with "Uh yeah sure, I mean we don't even know what you ordered." How cool is that? Could imagine this working in a big metropolitan in America? Hell no. It could in a smaller town I believe, but I think this would be an awesome project for someone with some spare change to throw around. I have no idea if this exists anywhere in the States, but if it doesn't, I will be opening something like this in ten years when I am a multi-millionaire, retired thirty year old who needs a hobby. OK, I will be more realistic, make it twenty years. But either way, this needs to be implemented. Immediately.
I guess that was my trip summary. The only thing left to mention is the 10 hour layover in a Warsaw airport over night, but I don't need to delve deeper into that since it's pretty clear that that was absolutely terrible without me having to bitch and moan about it for a paragraph. I cut out a lot of details to avoid writing a novella, but there were lots of other notable events. Maybe I will come back and write about them later. In fact, I should write about the concentration camp later... Oh, better idea! I'll just force Ryan to write about it in the comment section. I hope he doesn't let me down. Here are some neat tunes. Enjoy!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fu2gxZDquzA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-XD4EjeXe1A
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BEN9ZcrN76k
Part I - Amsterdam
OK, maybe a little bit more ado... I am annoyed with myself for the absurd amount of cliche-ness I'm about to drop right here, but I believe life is 1% what happens and 99% how you react to it. Luckily it isn't the other way around, or my life would be a whole lot different right now. As awesome as Amsterdam was, it did not go well. In fact, shit started going array from the moment I arrived. I had a wonderful night train ride in, as I was roomed with an old Aussie guy who bought me beer all night, but the downward slide started the next day. From accidentally choosing a hostel 45 minutes out of the city to being homeless for a night to having to stay an extra night because the train from Amsterdam to Paris was booked one day, our trip could have more smoothly. The worst part was probably having to move hostels every single day. Never being able to settle in one spot is pretty terrible actually. The city of Amsterdam itself was awesome though. Anyone who thinks it is just about weed is completely ignorant, there are so many cool things to do in the city. It is incredibly beautiful. I could sit on a bench on a canal forever and not be bored. I was there for five nights and I still didn't feel like I had enough time to do everything I wanted to. A lot of this had to do with the fact the first three days were loaded with stress and figuring out places to sleep, but there is so much more to the city than sex and drugs, and the negative connotations associated with the city actually make me upset. That being said, those are two prominent components, and this is exemplified in the (in)famous red light district. Let me start off by saying that place makes me really quite uncomfortable. I mean it is definitely an awesome experience to see something to incredibly outlandish, but more than an hour walking around got to be real weird. You can't walk for more than five minutes without some clown offering you just about every drug in the spectrum, and you can't walk for more than twenty seconds without some girl dressed in lingerie behind tapping on the glass trying to get your money. Both are entertaining for awhile, but unless you are going there with the intentions of utilizing the variety of services offered in this Mecca of sin, it isn't a place to just hang out. It is one of the best places in the world to people watch, though. It is really funny how easy it is to tell who is there as a tourist and who is there for indulgence. In fact, let's play a game. Guess what the people described are at the Amsterdam Red Light District for!! Here we go.
- A group of five 20-something girls linking arms and laughing (answer: NOT buying drugs or whores)
- Four middle aged Asian men dressed in fly ass suits (answer: Buying drugs and whores)
- Old couple with an appalled look on their face the whole time (answer: regretting their choice of vacation spots)
- A lone dude inspecting every girl in the window closely (answer: hand selecting his dream girl)
- Dude on the corner in a hood, smoking a joint (answer: entrepreneur of sorts)
So while Amsterdam was unreal, five nights there was plenty of time, and I was ready to move on to Paris.
Part II - Paris
How was that for a flawless segway? OK fine, it was terrible. But anyway, I took a train to Paris because it was only supposed to be three hours, which definitely makes it worth it to not have to get on a plane. I hate flying. My legs don't fit in seats. There is always a god damn baby crying. I never feel good on the decent. A train is a much better alternative, especially for such a short trip. Plus, this way I got to get off the train for 10 seconds in Brussels so I can say I've been there, and no I don't count that as cheating.
We were on the train, about half way through, and I saw these two big bald dudes in all black with a German shepherd walking towards me. Obviously this made me uncomfortable. I turn around, and there were two more big dudes walking from the other direction. It's pretty obvious at this point that some shit's about to go down, and being that we were coming from Amsterdam, it's a safe bet that it's a drug bust. They started talking to the African woman behind me. She was a big, loud woman decked out in traditional African attire, not your typical smuggler. They brought her out and talked to her between the cars for awhile. I just tuned back into my Hardcore History podcast and forgot about the whole thing until five minutes later I hear screaming from behind me. This lady is swinging away, and I was fortunate enough to see these dudes give her a solid body slam and handcuff her. When we got to the next station, they take her off the train, and I saw a dude walking off the train with a big cardboard box covered in packaging tape that was opened up just enough to see that the box was filled with bags of white powder. This confused me because I don't know why anyone would need to smuggle artificial sweetener. I know Europe is hardcore about junk foods, but damn, it seemed a little excessive to me. Poor lady.
Besides that my trip went smoothly into Paris. My friends were waiting for me at the train station and escorted me to the hostel safely. What wonderful friends I have, huh? Overall I wasn't a huge fan of Paris though. The sites and touristy stuff is cool, but the city itself I didn't find to be anything special. We went to the Louvre, the Eiffel Tower, Notre Dame, Versailles, and all those obvious destinations and had fun, but the French suck a lot. That is, of course, unless you speak their language. But I'm an arrogant, monolingual American asshole, so I don't speak your Frenchy language, Pierre! Maybe I will have more respect for your country when Germany doesn't take over your whole country in five days. Boom.
On to Barca before I say anything that will make a Frenchman fart in my general direction or taunt me a second time.
Part III - Barcalona
Ahhhh, sunny Barcelona, where it only rains 25 days a year. What a wonderful change up this will be from cold, rainy Denmark. Well, luckily for Catalonians, there will only be 22 days of rain left after I left their city. Beaches and clubs are normally a lot more fun when it doesn't rain. And who would have thunk it would have been warmer in Amsterdam than Barcelona? Screw you, Weather, I didn't deserve this.
Actually the worst part about Barca wasn't the rain. That title goes to the pick pockets. One of my travel partners got her shit jacked by some sneaky, soulless bastard. That really put quite the damper on the vacation. The city of Barcelona is actually really beautiful when it's nice out though. We were able to fit a Camp Nou tour in our short trip, so I was content.
Believe it or not, there are probably more drug dealers and prostitutes in Barcelona than in Amsterdam, only here they are so much more annoying. In a three block walk, you will be talked to by at least five drug dealers and at least three prostitutes, that's a conservative estimate. It's kind of unfair for me to judge Barcelona based on this one experience considering how wrong everything went. I will have to be back again before I slap a real negative review on such a wonderful (allegedly) place.
Part IV - Prague
In life, there are little lessons that you pick up casually throughout you're journey. They seem lots like common sense retrospectively. Disregarding hindsight, if you have never encountered such an experience before you wouldn't have ever needed to even think of it at a common sense level. It is in this that experience makes you wiser. Most of the time these things don't really have consequences, like if you had never been to a beach or pool before you might forget a towel. Oh well, you're friends probably have one, and if not, evaporation will be your friend. But, sometimes they get a little dangerous, like when you take a day trip to a tiny undeveloped Czech town with no cash and assume they take cards or have ATMs, with not enough to even buy a trip back. There are some things that are best to learn the hard way, but this is one of those things that it would be nice to just be told instead of exposed to. I mean it all worked out fine, as there happened to be one ATM in some random corner of the town that took about 20+ minutes of walking to stumble across, but I wouldn't be an honest man if I said I wasn't pretty nervous.
Besides this, literally the entire stay went smooth as Ryan Schmidtman's skin after he spends three hours getting ready to go to a bar. We had a wonderful place to stay with wonderful hosts (shout out to Sioux Falls), ate wonderful food, and the city itself is wonderful. Prague is absolutely my favorite city I have ever been in my entire life. I have lots and lots of pictures somewhere on someone's camera that I would love to post, but the amount of uncertainty in the beginning of this sentence disallows that. So unless you have ever been there (or know how to use Google Image), you are gonna have to take my word for it.
There were so many great activities we undertook during our stay, such as the Prague Castle, a giant hill over looking the city, a club in an old church, the Communism museum, etc, but there was one place that really stood out for me. It stood out more as an awesome business model that could never exist in America, especially not a big city, but was such a cool concept that it would be an fun experiment for a business man with some spare cash. The joint was called Big Lebowski's, which would normally be enough for me to give it a try even without the stellar recommendations. It's this tiny, off the beaten path hookah bar. This small little establishment serves food, has a full bar, and hookah in any flavor you could think of. There's tables as well as cushions to sit on, and it's always playing relaxing, not-shitty-club-music. Ryan and I went here to indulge in some hookah and throw a few back, but what I wasn't expecting was that this bar is name-your-own-price. The entire model is based off trusting in people's good faith. I asked the guy on the way out if 100 krone would cover us, and he replied with "Uh yeah sure, I mean we don't even know what you ordered." How cool is that? Could imagine this working in a big metropolitan in America? Hell no. It could in a smaller town I believe, but I think this would be an awesome project for someone with some spare change to throw around. I have no idea if this exists anywhere in the States, but if it doesn't, I will be opening something like this in ten years when I am a multi-millionaire, retired thirty year old who needs a hobby. OK, I will be more realistic, make it twenty years. But either way, this needs to be implemented. Immediately.
I guess that was my trip summary. The only thing left to mention is the 10 hour layover in a Warsaw airport over night, but I don't need to delve deeper into that since it's pretty clear that that was absolutely terrible without me having to bitch and moan about it for a paragraph. I cut out a lot of details to avoid writing a novella, but there were lots of other notable events. Maybe I will come back and write about them later. In fact, I should write about the concentration camp later... Oh, better idea! I'll just force Ryan to write about it in the comment section. I hope he doesn't let me down. Here are some neat tunes. Enjoy!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fu2gxZDquzA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-XD4EjeXe1A
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BEN9ZcrN76k
Sunday, October 23, 2011
Getting a hair cut shouldn't be this difficult.
Alright, this is embarrassing, but definitely more frustrating. I spent two hours today writing the longest blog post I've ever written. It was great, I was real happy with it. I go to click publish and it sends me to a screen that says Error 404 and my post is gone. I cursed loudly. I slammed my desk. I punched my bed (walls are too hard, I like punching soft things). Over 1500 words gone forever, into the wind. But I still need to write today, because it's the last time I likely will for a few weeks. So here is my effort to try and recreate what I had written, and it will be shorter. Here goes nothing...
Ever since I've had hair, there's been one constant in my life. There was one woman that stuck by my side through thick and thin, fads, trends, and phases of all sorts. Her name is Claudia. Her hands are thin and delicate, yet strong. Claudia has been the only lady cutting my hair my whole life, except for a few flings with other women that were all one night stands and never brought the same satisfaction. She was always willing to look over these brief lapses of loyalty and always serviced my hair needs. But I can't go four months without a haircut. Some people can, I can't. Others can just buzz their head and it looks good, I can't. Something about having large ears and a very prominent widow's peak that makes a buzz a last resort option. By now, I've been in Denmark for two months, and my hair was getting to be pretty ridiculous. My hair doesn't grow long really, get a little curly, and get a nice flow. My hair is ultra thick, and just gets big. It's like a straight haired afro. To sum this all up, I can't have real short hair or real long hair, so I need to actually get pretty frequent haircuts. It was about that time last week. Friday was the day I decided to make it happen. I had been scouting places to go for awhile, trying to find the right combination of cost and quality. There was the Copenhagen school of hair and shit (that's just the technical term, the kids call it CSHS). It was real cheap, even by American standards. But do I really want to put something as important as my striking good looks in the hands of a high school drop out who was sick of working at Burger King and decided "Hey, I like hair and make up and stuff, I'll go to cosmetology school!" The answer is an obvious no. There was a real nice place down the street from CSHS, it looked like some real pros working the scissors in this joint. But this place cost like 300 kroner, and I was not paying over $50 for a haircut. I found this other place which seemed like a pretty good in between. It was just a Middle Eastern, middle aged couple running it. It was real small and cheap, but they seemed like they could give a good cut. I wasn't quite sure though. You need a certain element of trust with your hair dresser. There has to be chemistry. Claudia and I had that, so trying to find a decent hair cut in Denmark proved to be an arduous task. I decided on the last option. They spoke basically no English. I didn't think of this at the time, but maybe it wasn't a great idea to get a hair cut at a place where your only methods of communication are hand signals and the few mutually understood words that they possess in their very limited. Once in the chair we were able to settle on what they were gonna do to me. "Machine side, scissors top, just make it look good." That last part was my downfall. I didn't want to watch. I was borderline sweating, just real nervous. The end result was essentially a crew cut with really long flared bangs. It looks incredibly Danish, but terrible on me. I Skyped my mom tonight and was immediately told to cut my bans. I look kind of ridiculous. Claudia would have done me better. Claudia would have done me perfect. Random Middle Eastern lady in Roskilde, Denmark did me poorly. My hair might have a date with the clippers soon. All pictures have been confiscated and burned.
This weekend, most of my friends in my kollegium went on the booze cruise to Oslo. I already did this, so I was back in Denmark with a few friends. Saturday we decided to go into Malmo in southern Sweden. It's only like a 20 minute train ride from Copenhagen, so it's real easy. This 20 minute train ride wasn't smooth though. We forgot (OK, it was my fault) to buy tickets since we have all zones passes, so we just got on the train without a ticket. We narrowly avoided that 750 kroner ticket on the train by playing the ignorant American students card. That works a lot in Europe I've noticed. Upon our arrival into Sweden, my leg was starting to feel a little cramped. I didn't think anything of it, so we just kept on walking for about two miles. We ate lunch around noon, and when we got up, my lower leg completely locked up and I couldn't walk. I got to a park bench to check out my leg. I could barely even pull my pant leg up since my leg was so swollen. My entire lower leg is hot, swollen, and red, and there's a bite mark looking thing in the middle of my calf. The only diagnosis I could think of is a spider bite, especially because it actually looks like a bite. Luckily one of my friends had Benedryl, so I popped one of those and chilled for an hour or so. After this wait, my leg loosened up a bit and we were able to walk back to the train station to call the day early on account of a mystery leg wound. I've been taking Benedryl today to keep my leg loose, but I am absolutely going to the doctor tomorrow to get this checked out. I feel like that would definitely be the medically advisable reaction to this situation. Maybe if I'm lucky I will have to get it amputated, then I can get prosthetic limb and people could call me Peg Leg Pete! That would be the best result of this predicament.
I watched the entire first season of Community in 26 hours this weekend, and that includes sleeping, eating, and time spent out drinking. It is a fantastic show, I haven't been this hooked on a show since Weeds. I was more hooked after one episode of Community than I was after one episode of Breaking Bad, and that's saying something. But I literally did nothing by lay in my bed and watch this show all weekend. I was a bonafide couch potato, and it was awesome. I mean, I could have been productive and done homework, read, or file a police report about my stolen pink lady's model bike, but none of those options are funny. Community is so hilarious, yet incredibly deep and emotional. If you haven't seen it, I highly recommend it. On a scale of 1-10, I'd give it 8.94 spankings.
This is going to be my last post for a few weeks unfortunately. I leave for a two week vacation from heaven on Thursday night. Four nights in Amsterdam for Halloween weekend, four nights in Paris, three in Barcelona, and four more in Prague may be the craziest/most expensive two weeks of my life, but I won't ever be able to do this again in my life in all likelihood, so I will definitely be living in all senses of the word. But it is going to get in the way of me blogging for that period. I probably won't write one before Thursday either, as I got lots and lots of shit to take care of before I go. I got ducks on ducks on ducks to get in a row. Hopefully I'll write a giant report of my trip when I get back, the only problem will be determining what is appropriate for this forum. But it's about time to watch the Vikes get slaughtered. But I'm gonna man up anyway and watch. The Minnesota sports scene is sad to have allegiances with this day and age. So instead of posting music this time around, I'm gonna cheer up all those Vikings fans out there with a little reminiscence. Enjoy.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bE8sJI7PxQU
I'll talk to ya later.
Ever since I've had hair, there's been one constant in my life. There was one woman that stuck by my side through thick and thin, fads, trends, and phases of all sorts. Her name is Claudia. Her hands are thin and delicate, yet strong. Claudia has been the only lady cutting my hair my whole life, except for a few flings with other women that were all one night stands and never brought the same satisfaction. She was always willing to look over these brief lapses of loyalty and always serviced my hair needs. But I can't go four months without a haircut. Some people can, I can't. Others can just buzz their head and it looks good, I can't. Something about having large ears and a very prominent widow's peak that makes a buzz a last resort option. By now, I've been in Denmark for two months, and my hair was getting to be pretty ridiculous. My hair doesn't grow long really, get a little curly, and get a nice flow. My hair is ultra thick, and just gets big. It's like a straight haired afro. To sum this all up, I can't have real short hair or real long hair, so I need to actually get pretty frequent haircuts. It was about that time last week. Friday was the day I decided to make it happen. I had been scouting places to go for awhile, trying to find the right combination of cost and quality. There was the Copenhagen school of hair and shit (that's just the technical term, the kids call it CSHS). It was real cheap, even by American standards. But do I really want to put something as important as my striking good looks in the hands of a high school drop out who was sick of working at Burger King and decided "Hey, I like hair and make up and stuff, I'll go to cosmetology school!" The answer is an obvious no. There was a real nice place down the street from CSHS, it looked like some real pros working the scissors in this joint. But this place cost like 300 kroner, and I was not paying over $50 for a haircut. I found this other place which seemed like a pretty good in between. It was just a Middle Eastern, middle aged couple running it. It was real small and cheap, but they seemed like they could give a good cut. I wasn't quite sure though. You need a certain element of trust with your hair dresser. There has to be chemistry. Claudia and I had that, so trying to find a decent hair cut in Denmark proved to be an arduous task. I decided on the last option. They spoke basically no English. I didn't think of this at the time, but maybe it wasn't a great idea to get a hair cut at a place where your only methods of communication are hand signals and the few mutually understood words that they possess in their very limited. Once in the chair we were able to settle on what they were gonna do to me. "Machine side, scissors top, just make it look good." That last part was my downfall. I didn't want to watch. I was borderline sweating, just real nervous. The end result was essentially a crew cut with really long flared bangs. It looks incredibly Danish, but terrible on me. I Skyped my mom tonight and was immediately told to cut my bans. I look kind of ridiculous. Claudia would have done me better. Claudia would have done me perfect. Random Middle Eastern lady in Roskilde, Denmark did me poorly. My hair might have a date with the clippers soon. All pictures have been confiscated and burned.
This weekend, most of my friends in my kollegium went on the booze cruise to Oslo. I already did this, so I was back in Denmark with a few friends. Saturday we decided to go into Malmo in southern Sweden. It's only like a 20 minute train ride from Copenhagen, so it's real easy. This 20 minute train ride wasn't smooth though. We forgot (OK, it was my fault) to buy tickets since we have all zones passes, so we just got on the train without a ticket. We narrowly avoided that 750 kroner ticket on the train by playing the ignorant American students card. That works a lot in Europe I've noticed. Upon our arrival into Sweden, my leg was starting to feel a little cramped. I didn't think anything of it, so we just kept on walking for about two miles. We ate lunch around noon, and when we got up, my lower leg completely locked up and I couldn't walk. I got to a park bench to check out my leg. I could barely even pull my pant leg up since my leg was so swollen. My entire lower leg is hot, swollen, and red, and there's a bite mark looking thing in the middle of my calf. The only diagnosis I could think of is a spider bite, especially because it actually looks like a bite. Luckily one of my friends had Benedryl, so I popped one of those and chilled for an hour or so. After this wait, my leg loosened up a bit and we were able to walk back to the train station to call the day early on account of a mystery leg wound. I've been taking Benedryl today to keep my leg loose, but I am absolutely going to the doctor tomorrow to get this checked out. I feel like that would definitely be the medically advisable reaction to this situation. Maybe if I'm lucky I will have to get it amputated, then I can get prosthetic limb and people could call me Peg Leg Pete! That would be the best result of this predicament.
I watched the entire first season of Community in 26 hours this weekend, and that includes sleeping, eating, and time spent out drinking. It is a fantastic show, I haven't been this hooked on a show since Weeds. I was more hooked after one episode of Community than I was after one episode of Breaking Bad, and that's saying something. But I literally did nothing by lay in my bed and watch this show all weekend. I was a bonafide couch potato, and it was awesome. I mean, I could have been productive and done homework, read, or file a police report about my stolen pink lady's model bike, but none of those options are funny. Community is so hilarious, yet incredibly deep and emotional. If you haven't seen it, I highly recommend it. On a scale of 1-10, I'd give it 8.94 spankings.
This is going to be my last post for a few weeks unfortunately. I leave for a two week vacation from heaven on Thursday night. Four nights in Amsterdam for Halloween weekend, four nights in Paris, three in Barcelona, and four more in Prague may be the craziest/most expensive two weeks of my life, but I won't ever be able to do this again in my life in all likelihood, so I will definitely be living in all senses of the word. But it is going to get in the way of me blogging for that period. I probably won't write one before Thursday either, as I got lots and lots of shit to take care of before I go. I got ducks on ducks on ducks to get in a row. Hopefully I'll write a giant report of my trip when I get back, the only problem will be determining what is appropriate for this forum. But it's about time to watch the Vikes get slaughtered. But I'm gonna man up anyway and watch. The Minnesota sports scene is sad to have allegiances with this day and age. So instead of posting music this time around, I'm gonna cheer up all those Vikings fans out there with a little reminiscence. Enjoy.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bE8sJI7PxQU
I'll talk to ya later.
Saturday, October 15, 2011
Not sure why I'm up and chipper and 7:30am on a Saturday morning, but ain't nothin wrong with starting the day with a run, a cup of coffee, and a post
The creative world can sometimes be a cruel mistress. You gotta draw the line between trying to please the public and staying true to your art. While I am not an artist myself (except when I'm trying to stay awake during a lecture), I do get attached to work that a group member produces. I always have ideas, but the physical display of the idea isn't my strong suit. Luckily for minds like me, there are artists in the world. To give a little background, we have a project in my Creative Industries class where we have to design the t-shirt for DIS (our study abroad program). It has to say DIS on it somewhere and has to be symbolic of Copenhagen. We got lucky and got a very talented photoshop guy in our group, and through a little brain storm sesh this is the design that came ou
t in the end. Pretty sick, right? Jeff (the artist) did an awesome job on the design if you ask me. Got the hip, urban hat on the very contemporary portrayal of a Danish elephant with a Danish flag (elephants are big here, not sure why but they are everywhere). But we had a focus group anyway to discuss our design to see if we could make any tweaks to make it better. To put it bluntly, we got roasted in this group. They all hated the design. The hat is dumb, the elephant looks stupid, why would you make a black t-shirt, rabblerabblerabble. There wasn't much positive feedback on our work. We talked about improving it for awhile afterwards, and we came to the conclusion that we can make a few adjustments to make it more popular, but we are sticking with what design we like and not selling out our design because a small sample size didn't like it. Outside of the focus group, we have gotten nothing but positive feedback for the design, and we feel pretty confident that our design is going to win just because it's so cool (in my ever so humble opinion). I'm not sure if this strategy is going to pay off, but we are going to take the Punk Royal route here and stick with what we think is best. Hopefully this doesn't crash and burn like that route sometimes tends to do, and maybe the mistress will be kind this time.
If anyone has any feedback on the design, I would love to hear it. We still have a few days before it has to be finalized. Afterwards I need to find another project I can work on that will keep me working, since as you can imagine, a study abroad workload isn't really enough to keep me busy. I'll take any suggestions. Otherwise I'm going to spend the next two weeks applying for internships and writing an incessant amount of cover letters, and that doesn't sound quite as much fun.
On a completely unrelated note, I have wasted approximately an entire week (give or take) listening to Stuff You Should Know podcasts. "Wasted" probably isn't the best word to use, but I feel like "spent" wasn't strong enough. There's gotta be a middle ground between there. But I can proudly say I know everything there is to know about the Underground Railroad, Amelia Earhart, memory, parallel evolution, quantum suicide, Ponzi schemes, moonshine, Friday the 13th, scientists who use themselves as guinea pigs, microloans, and Jack the Ripper. What better way to spend your time than learning? Besides learning about things that are actually relevant, I mean. I highly recommend checking it out, it's got my stamp of approval.
If you don't like being sad, don't click this link. The state of popular music is depressing.
When shuffle treats you right: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZOXG8wtxx_w. Thank you, iTunes.
That is all.
t in the end. Pretty sick, right? Jeff (the artist) did an awesome job on the design if you ask me. Got the hip, urban hat on the very contemporary portrayal of a Danish elephant with a Danish flag (elephants are big here, not sure why but they are everywhere). But we had a focus group anyway to discuss our design to see if we could make any tweaks to make it better. To put it bluntly, we got roasted in this group. They all hated the design. The hat is dumb, the elephant looks stupid, why would you make a black t-shirt, rabblerabblerabble. There wasn't much positive feedback on our work. We talked about improving it for awhile afterwards, and we came to the conclusion that we can make a few adjustments to make it more popular, but we are sticking with what design we like and not selling out our design because a small sample size didn't like it. Outside of the focus group, we have gotten nothing but positive feedback for the design, and we feel pretty confident that our design is going to win just because it's so cool (in my ever so humble opinion). I'm not sure if this strategy is going to pay off, but we are going to take the Punk Royal route here and stick with what we think is best. Hopefully this doesn't crash and burn like that route sometimes tends to do, and maybe the mistress will be kind this time.If anyone has any feedback on the design, I would love to hear it. We still have a few days before it has to be finalized. Afterwards I need to find another project I can work on that will keep me working, since as you can imagine, a study abroad workload isn't really enough to keep me busy. I'll take any suggestions. Otherwise I'm going to spend the next two weeks applying for internships and writing an incessant amount of cover letters, and that doesn't sound quite as much fun.
On a completely unrelated note, I have wasted approximately an entire week (give or take) listening to Stuff You Should Know podcasts. "Wasted" probably isn't the best word to use, but I feel like "spent" wasn't strong enough. There's gotta be a middle ground between there. But I can proudly say I know everything there is to know about the Underground Railroad, Amelia Earhart, memory, parallel evolution, quantum suicide, Ponzi schemes, moonshine, Friday the 13th, scientists who use themselves as guinea pigs, microloans, and Jack the Ripper. What better way to spend your time than learning? Besides learning about things that are actually relevant, I mean. I highly recommend checking it out, it's got my stamp of approval.
If you don't like being sad, don't click this link. The state of popular music is depressing.
When shuffle treats you right: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZOXG8wtxx_w. Thank you, iTunes.
That is all.
Sunday, October 9, 2011
London Part II
I've had a few days to reflect on my week and get some perspective on it. I wrote down a list of things I wanted to talk about in this blog awhile back, but I may have lost the booklet, so I'm going to have to go off my memory here, which is notoriously unreliable. I will do what I can.
So picking up where I left off, I woke up the next morning after the adventure at like 8am, which was nice because I got a whole 6 hours of sleep. This was my most eventful story of the week. Most of the rest of it consisted of getting up really early to do academic/tourist visits after a night out on the town. The cumulative exhaustion from five consecutive nights of no sleep definitely KO-ed me when I got back Friday at 3am. It was a real deep recovery slumber. But there were a few other notable points from my trip.
I hadn't had a real high fructose corn syrup Mountain Dew in like two months, so when I saw they had them in London, I went a little bananas. Oh sweet syrupy goodness, how I missed thee. Not only did they have real Dew, they had Chipotle. One of like two non-US Chipotles in the entire world, and it was in my city. Needless to say I ate five burritos in five days. I want to say phenomenal, but it might not do it justice. It was identical in flavor, but the satisfaction of eating that first burrito in months was not comparable to most other pleasures I've had in my lifetime. It was a surreal moment. As you can see, I'm a big proponent of burritos.
This leads me to another point. England is the exact same as America. They speak the language, they have all same fast food, they do high fructose corn syrup instead of sugar like the rest of Europe does, they aren't on the Euro (other countries aren't either, but the pound isn't even linked to the Euro like other country's currencies are like the Danish kroner and the Polish zloty), and they are all fat. The only thing that is different is there awesome accents (which are actually 100% sexy) and they drive on the wrong side of the road, which caused many near death experiences crossing the roads. But when you go to London, everything seems so American. We took a train to Wimbledon for an academic visit, and I thought I was in north side Chicago. Unless you go to a super British futbol pub, which I never went to because they are actually rather intimidating, the place is America. In my eyes, it reaffirmed the choice to study in Copenhagen rather than London. The cultural differences between home and London isn't significant at all, and I am really happy I am
getting exposure to such a different culture.
But even a better affirmation tool of choice of home abroad is the SCIENTIFIC FACT that British people are ugly and Scandinavians are gorgeous. It is so noticeable in even a casual walk down a street. The beautiful women in London were few and far between, whereas in Denmark they are everywhere.
As I said, I lost my notes, so this is all I can remember for now. I feel much dissonance, I know I had lots more to say. Oh well.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4c6KeQmXnEw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JcjoGn6FLwI
So picking up where I left off, I woke up the next morning after the adventure at like 8am, which was nice because I got a whole 6 hours of sleep. This was my most eventful story of the week. Most of the rest of it consisted of getting up really early to do academic/tourist visits after a night out on the town. The cumulative exhaustion from five consecutive nights of no sleep definitely KO-ed me when I got back Friday at 3am. It was a real deep recovery slumber. But there were a few other notable points from my trip.
I hadn't had a real high fructose corn syrup Mountain Dew in like two months, so when I saw they had them in London, I went a little bananas. Oh sweet syrupy goodness, how I missed thee. Not only did they have real Dew, they had Chipotle. One of like two non-US Chipotles in the entire world, and it was in my city. Needless to say I ate five burritos in five days. I want to say phenomenal, but it might not do it justice. It was identical in flavor, but the satisfaction of eating that first burrito in months was not comparable to most other pleasures I've had in my lifetime. It was a surreal moment. As you can see, I'm a big proponent of burritos.
This leads me to another point. England is the exact same as America. They speak the language, they have all same fast food, they do high fructose corn syrup instead of sugar like the rest of Europe does, they aren't on the Euro (other countries aren't either, but the pound isn't even linked to the Euro like other country's currencies are like the Danish kroner and the Polish zloty), and they are all fat. The only thing that is different is there awesome accents (which are actually 100% sexy) and they drive on the wrong side of the road, which caused many near death experiences crossing the roads. But when you go to London, everything seems so American. We took a train to Wimbledon for an academic visit, and I thought I was in north side Chicago. Unless you go to a super British futbol pub, which I never went to because they are actually rather intimidating, the place is America. In my eyes, it reaffirmed the choice to study in Copenhagen rather than London. The cultural differences between home and London isn't significant at all, and I am really happy I am
getting exposure to such a different culture.But even a better affirmation tool of choice of home abroad is the SCIENTIFIC FACT that British people are ugly and Scandinavians are gorgeous. It is so noticeable in even a casual walk down a street. The beautiful women in London were few and far between, whereas in Denmark they are everywhere.
As I said, I lost my notes, so this is all I can remember for now. I feel much dissonance, I know I had lots more to say. Oh well.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4c6KeQmXnEw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JcjoGn6FLwI
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