weekend in Arhus

The weekend of April 26, I went to Arhus with my lacrosse team. It was such an awesome time. We road tripped it down in three cars(showing how small the team was). I'm starting to get a sense of how expensive it is to drive in Denmark. I'm not sure if I mentioned new cars are taxed 100-200%. I was in a small car with 3 other guys and my share of gas money was 300 kroners for about 6 hours of driving. In other words, over $60. Crazy, huh?

The day of the tournament was one of my favorite days in Denmark. I slept the whole way down and then we watched a game. After the game we played team Copenhagen, who apparently wanted to beat us really bad. While I was on travel break we had beaten them in an exhibition game and supposedly they had never lost a real game to a Danish team on Danish soil. They had three other American kids, so I think we weren't expected to win. It was an intense 80 minute game(long for a lacrosse game). We came back from three goals down in the third quarter to win 13-8. We scored seven goals in a row and they were speechless. I think I had 4 or 5 points in the 7 goal run. What was cool was at home I usually just catch and shoot and let other people do the work.

In Denmark, I basically ran the show on offense and had to run over the half line sometimes to carry the ball up for my team. What was also cool was our team was basically a bunch of ho-boes. We didn't have uniforms or matching equipment.Team Copenhagen was all decked out with matching gear and stuff. We also had two subs who had each been playing lacrosse for less than a year. They had eight subs. So, we really worked for our win.

After playing Copenhagen, we had a half hour to rest. Then we played team Arhus. They played a zone, so we only beat them 5-2. We were really tired, so just held onto the ball the whole time.

The night was amazing too. Most of us stayed with one of the Arhus guys. His family was really nice and cooked us breakfast the next day. The night was wild. We went all over the town. My team had maybe one Dane on it and then people from all over. A few Americans, Irish, Dutch etc. Arhus was cool because it's the second largest city in Denmark, but doesn't get many tourists. So our English speaking was a huge plus. We would do our team cheers in the street and Danish girls actually thought it was cool.

More to come, lots of exciting stuff in Copenhagen now that the weather is getting nice.

Poland, Dublin, the past 2 weeks in CPH

Last weekend, I went to Warsaw. I went with a Polish friend from my kollegium, which was awesome. I didn't go with any Americans and I realized it was the most time I've went without interacting with a single American; 3 days. There was some international economics conference, so there were lots of other eastern Europeans there from Romania to Ukraine. It was cool meeting all those people and they all spoke English, since they had different languages. I missed most of the conference since it started Monday and I came on Thursday for the weekend. Thursday and Friday, I stayed in a hostel which a bunch of the conference participants. My room was me and three girls, one from Prague, one from Romania and one from China. It was cool meeting them.

I hung out with all the conference participants on Thursday night and then Friday I explored the sights. I saw the remains of the Warsaw ghetto wall and many palaces and churches. The juxtaposition of buildings in Warsaw is really interesting. It's a mix of historic buildings(most of them were bombed), communist buildings and flats and new capitalist buildings. What is interesting is that the native Poles do not have as much disdain for these buildings as you might expect, perhaps because they are young. They almost view the communist structures as a joke, the same way westerners do.
Warsaw ghetto wall:

Pretty cool castle:

Palace of Culture and Sciences(a gift from Stalin instead of a metro apparently)

Friday night, I went to the conference closing dinner. It was a buffett of delicious Polish food, including cabbage, sausages, desserts and lots of wine. After the dinner, we went to a bar in the park. It was beautiful.

Saturday was a more laid back day. I stayed at Szymon's(my Polish friend) best friend's place a little outside of the city. We didn't really do anything all day, except go over there and watch some soccer and nap. Szymon and his friend apologized for not doing anything, but I told them it was fine because I was experiencing Polish culture, which was true. Even though I didn't see any sights, I got to hear about their lives and experiences growing up. Szymon's friend was very generous and we ate a lot of meals at his house. They later told me the dad spoke English, but did not want to speak to me because of my fast accent.

That night we went and just relaxed at a flat in the city with a few of their friends. There, we watched a scary movie. You could really see the cultural differences between Americans and eastern Europeans at this time. When I was startled by the movie I yelled once or twice. When the Poles were scared, they either didn't say anything or maybe elbowed the other ones. I guess they just aren't as loud.

On Sunday, Szymon and his friend took me for a little sight-seeing. They took me to this awesome park where there were some old castle structures and peacocks running wild. It was spectacular.

Then we explored this old neighborhood of Praga and went to a cafe. It was interesting seeing the buildings from different eras in other parts of town. The guys complained that the architecture looked so different.

Szymon and his friend at the cafe:

From this trip, I can make somewhat of a comparison betwen the Czech Republic, Poland and Russia. I can say I think Poland is the most progressive, which shows from its economic figures. They had by far the most ATMs and modern structures. But, I liked that it was still dirt cheap.

The students also seemed less eastern European than the students I hung out with in Prague and Russia. They seemed a little warmer. Granted I don't have much of a sample size, but I believe Poland is moving westward.

I actually really like Warsaw, even though when I went back, my other Polish friends said it was a dump. I look forward to seeing more of Poland. I still need to get to Krakow and the concentration camps. I was looking for a way to see Treblinka, which was close to Warsaw, but I would have had to drive there or go on some crazy hike, so I wasn't able to do it. I figure it was better to take advantage of my Polish friends anyway.

I had a busy week after that. One of my friend's from high school came to visit on Monday. I had class all day and a big paper due, so I let him explore the city and then he hung out with the Polish guys while I did work.

On Tuesday, I had community service. I've been mentioning it in posts, so I should probably explain it a little bit. I volunteer for somewhat of a homeless drop-in center, although many of the people who go are not homeless. Many of them are just pensioners or former drug addicts. It's kind of like a restaurant, but the food is discounted. It is mostly just a place where they can hang out to combat loneliness and allow the people to network. I don't really do much there because they have plenty of staff, but I help out where I can and interact with the patrons. It is sometimes challenging because many of them don't speak English. But, some of them do and it helps me work on my Danish.

After community service I went with Ben and my friends to Christania and we walked around there a bit and got food. I went even deeper in this time and I realized how big it is. Marcel, another one of my Polish friends, gave me a more detailed history of it. Basically, the issue isn't only the self government and the drugs, but also that the dwellers don't technically own the land, so developers want to put high end housing there. If they do that, the many many residents of Christania will riot.

That night I went out to celebrate my birthday. It may not have been the best idea, since I had two field studies on Wednesday. It was a lot of fun though. I share my birthday with the queen of Denmark, so my first field study was going to a royal musem and seeing the queen wave for her birthday. I think I mentioned this in an earlier post, but the queen is very popular in Denmark. They have a constitutional monarchy, so the queen basically has no power. Apparently, she can veto things, but never does. There was a band and a large crowd when the queen came out to wave. Everyone was cheering and waving their Danish flags.

After that I went back to school and took a 15 minute nap and picked up my birthday gifts. I got some nice cards and two books by Muhammad Yunis about microloans. My summer reading list is piling up. I still have to finish the John Irving book I am reading, read my dad's short story book, the two Yunis books and read Ulysses(more on that in a moment).

My second field study was Nazi Occupied Copenhagen for my Holocaust and Genocide class. We saw all the sites of executions and the SS offices. Although some Danes did serve in the SS, many were outright rude to the Nazi occupiers. What is also interesting is the Danish government was allowed to operate until the middle of 1943. They had a policy of cooperation (they liked to call it negotation) with the Nazis, which allowed them to save many Jews. Since they surrendered fairly easily, they were treated pretty well. In class, we have been learning that the rescuers in many cases are not al black and white. While the Danes provided food to the Nazis, they also saved many Jews. Another example we were given was of an SS officer who provided the gas for Aushwitz. He also saved 50 Jews on the side.

The former SS HQ(now a Mcdonalds):

A memorial at the field where the Nazi executions took place:

On Friday, I went to Dublin with a few friends. We stayed with my friend's 32 year old buddy from home just outside the city. It turned out to be great because he lived right by the cost and near the James Joyce tower from the first chapter of Ulysses. So, I went inside the tower and learned a little more about Joyce. My high school senior thesis (kind of a joke) was on Dubliners. Apparently, much of Joyce's fiction was based off people he knew. He angered the people he shared the tower with by talking ill of them in a poem. He was finally kicked out when one of them had a bad dream and fired gun shots into the fire place. The other dweller thought it was something Joyce did and said "leave him to me" and fired his gun at the pans above Joyce's bed. The pans fell on Joyce and he abruptly left.

The tower:

Me by the coast:

We also saw the sites within Dublin. Dublin is not a big city, so in two afternoons we saw a lot of the sites(mostly churches).

Irish people were interesting. Many of them were very drunk. We met a few at the pub with Brian's friend and a couple of my friends received interesting drunken nicknames. Brian was wearing a nice button down, so was referred to as "Tommy Polo" and my friend Nate was somehow called "Germaine." Of course this is a generalization, but many Irish people were either really nice or really mean. When we bumped into someone on the train in many cases they were very polite. Other times, they were outright rude. On the escalator one time, I was not quite to the right. Some people were rushing for the train and rather than saying excuse me just yelled "get out of my way." When I realized they were talking to me and moved, they both called me a jerk.

We had a 6:40 AM flight Sunday, so stayed up all night. I was really tired on Sunday. This week I am going to get ahead on my work because some family is visiting next week. I also have a Danish film and food session for Danish class. I am excited to eat Danish food, since I don't eat it much because it is expensive.

This weekend I am going to a lacrosse tournament outside of Copenhagen. It should be fun and will be nice to escape the city a little.

Russia

What an experience. I had a great time, and so many crazy things happened. I'll start from the beginning, but honestly, so much stuff happened, I definitely won't be able to get it all down. I' sure you will all hear about it though, and I welcome questions.

We flew Scandanavian Airlines to Moscow. That is unfortunate because I was hoping for some rickety ghetto Russian airline that shook the entire time. Oh well. Upon arrival we checked into the Hotel Kosmos, which had a big statue of Charles De Gaulle in front of it for some reason. There was also a space ship statue. It was a huge and was basically a little city. There were multiple restaurants and bars and other crazy things like massage parlors. The security was pretty tight and they stored our passports. We explored the neighborhood and to my delight there were many delicious street vendors with kebab and chicken and bread. Moscow is considered the most expensive city in the world(mainly due to expensive housing), so I was happy to discover my student budget would get me by.

This program was through my study abroad program and they did a great job. That night, we met up with Russian students studying in Moscrow and they took us to Red Square. Red Square was beautiful at night.

Me in front of the Kremlin:

Me in front of St. Basil's Cathedral:

Then we had dinner with the guides. It was 11 American students and three Russians. It was really interesting hearing about their daily life and seeing where they live. We talked about school, the internet, standard college student stuff. Eventually politics came up. We met with the Moscow students twice, but I will briefly explain everything I learned politically from them here. They do not like not having a choice. Since they had no one to vote for, they ripped up their ballots or put exes through it. What was interesting was that, despite their discontent for the regime, they still had Russian nationalism. They believed Chechnya was part of Russia and were skeptical of U.S. military aggression.

The next day, we had a guided tour of the Kremlim. It was so amazing standing in the spot where the Bolsheviks came through the walls in 1917. We also saw some cool cathedrals(a common theme of the trip). Then we had a traditional Russian lunch and had free time.

For free time we went inside St. Basil's Cathedral . Unfortunately, even though Lenin's body was in Red Square, the museum was closed for renovation. I guess they were giving him botox or something. Then we went to a museum. We couldn't find the museum, but ended up seeing a Russian military demonstration/practice. We got caught taking pictures, but I still got a few. It was interesting that this was so standard and they were so proud, just demonstrating in the middle of the street. It was also crazy seeing soldiers who are younger than me, but that is not unique to Russia. I learned later that being in the military is somewhat of a right of passage for anyone in Russia who does not go to college, kind of like becoming a man.

We finally found the museum. Another theme about Russia is everything is huge. The museum is MASSIVE. After getting through all the portraits of inbred royalty, there was cool Christian art and cool military art. One artist I like portrayed the pride of Russian military history which was cool.

The next day we went to a modern art museum with our Russian student-guides. It was really interesting seeing the portrayals of Russian daily life. The main exhibit was this painting that was all black and represented a transition in abstract, since it actually meant nothing. It was called Black Square I believe.

After saying goodbye to our Russian guides, we went to meet with the producer of Russia's number 1 morning tv show. He basically told us that most Russian people were pretty stupid so anything serious did not get good ratings. Most of the stories they feature are like how to find a four leaf clover to make your husband beat you. It was also interesting that he could not have any political opposition on TV. He said he gave up politics because it frustrates him and is basically futile.

Then we took an over night train to St. Petesburg. It was cool because we got our own private sleeping cars. Everyone who didn't go right to bed hung out in ours. We met some shady Russian business men and we invited them to hang out with us(before we realized they were shady). Only one spoke Russian and would attempt to translate for the others. However, sometimes he did not have the opportunity, but they would speak Russian anyway, even if no one understood them. I think they were in the mob because they wouldn't tell us what kind of business they did aside from that it was engineering. When everyone decided to go to bed, the one who spoke English asked if we wanted his number. Being American, we were about to just take it and never call him. But, our Danish tour leader just said no straight up. It was a great Danish - Russian interaction; Danes being so blunt. One of the Americans tried to say that it was so expensive for us to call internationally and the Dane mumbled under his breath "not for me." It was pretty funny.

A few thoughts on Moscow:

- I've heard people refer to cities as dirty and I just assumed it had to do with emissions or something. In Moscow, I legitimately could not take a deep breath. It was pretty gross. I guess I know what dirty really means

- Red Square was unbelievable, but the rest of the city was a dump. Most of the buildings were falling apart, really modern.

- It was huge. It took more than an hour to go to the student's place for dinner.

- The metro was packed. It was crazy going from the cold outside, to a deep underground passage when you couldn't move. They were so deep because they were also meant to serve as bomb shelters.

-Throughout Russia, a cool thing is the old Soviet statues that are not a big deal to the Russians. It's interesting because it shows the continuous stream of Russian history and these guys were mass murderers.

Many ask to compare Moscow and St. Petersburg and usually it is pretty divided. Let me tell you, St. Petersburg was cool. It was like Amsterdam or Venice on steroids. Huge buildings, huge canals and lots of snow.

We checked into our hotel, which was a dump. It smelled funny and was dirty. The water stunk too. Some people said theirs was brown, but mine was just dirty. You can't drink the water in Moscow, but in St. Petersburg the water is known for being particularly full of bad things. In Moscow, all our rooms were near by. In St. Petersburg, we were all on different wings. There were lots of little kids at the hotel in St. Petersburg. We would see lots of little kids and they would say "hello how are you" and when we would answer, they would start laughing. I guess that's just kids being kids and knowing a little English. One interesting thing about Russia is everyone speaks Russian. Not just in terms of a lack of understanding English, but you know how when you are anywhere you usually hear other languages? Like you are on a bus in the U.S. and you hear Spanish or something? In Russia, you only hear Russian. Everywhere.

From the hotel we went to the Kremlin in Moscow and saw some amazing cathedrals. Kremlin means fortress, and every city has one. So, even though the Kremlin in Moscow is the Kremlin, many cities have one. It was pretty spectacular. We also saw a bunch of statues of Peter I, who built up St. Petersburg to match Europe and try to bring Russia into the west. He did a great job building the city. It's beautiful. I'm sure tons of peasants died in the process. But, Russia is certainly not part of the West and has never been.

Afterwards, we just walked around and went inside one of the amazing cathedrals,Church of Resurrection(see above in the canal pic). What was funny was that Stalin made it a warehouse.

That night, we wanted to go out, missed the last metro. So, we decided to find something near the hotel. When we finally found an empty bar, there was a cop at the door and he just yelled at us in Russian. I am still curious what exactly he wanted. Was it a private party? Did he want a bribe? So, we settled for some Japanese food that was opened and had cheap cucumber rolls.

The next day we went to Norvgrad(sp). It's Russia's oldest town and was about 3 hours away by bus. We saw its Kremlin and a WW2 monument. WW2 is still a big deal among Russians. Apparently Russian women of that generation treat men very well because there were so few men around after the war. Russia still swears it won the war.

We drove a little longer and met with a monk who lived in solitude. He told us how religion is growing in Russia and wished us all well. He also told us how everyone has an exam with God and we need to start preparing. Afterwards we stopped off at another cathedral real quick . This one had beautiful crome roofs, but was actually quite dilapidated .Apparently, it was meant to look good from far away, but they hadn't bothered to restore the part that you could see from close up.

When we got back to St. Petersburg we had dinner with some students from there. I was happy because the one I was sitting near just wanted to talk politics. Pretty standard Russian -student political views. Didn't like the government, feared US missile defense etc. I think he did not understand that the bases shot down missiles, not shot them. An interesting question one of them asked me and I was asked again later by some drunk guy was if it was true that all Americans have no friends and see therapists all the time.

One of the guides took us to a bar. A few interesting things happened at the bar. This girl we were with dropped her glass and the bouncer came over and started speaking in Russian. Some bystander who spoke English tried to tell us we owed 100 rubles($4) to replace the glass. My other friend and I did not know that the girl we were with broke the glass, but either way we said we didn't do it. Then some worker cleaned up the glass and the bouncer left. The guy still persisted that we owed the bar money, but it became obvious he just wanted us to give him money. Luckily a few more American guys came over and the guy got scared off. But, yeah, lots of drunk Russians.

We took a few cabs at night, including that night, so I should probably explain the Russian cab system. The actual taxis are really expensive, so when you held your hand out, you actually want an unmarked vehicle. Then you negotiate a price. We called these "sketch cabs." One of my friends on the trip spoke Russian, so I always stuck close to her when it was cab time because we would get a better deal. She would always talk Russian while we were driving. On our last night, she told us after the cab ride that the driver tried to buy her company for the night.

The next day, we had a walking tour of St. Petersburg "behind the facade." We went a half hour outside of the center. We saw typical Russians walking around and a park. They had some grand snow men and cool sledding - one advantage of living in such a cold place. I also finally saw someone passed out in the street (one of my expectations of the trip).

We then went to this really crowded market. One of the girls I was with saw a guy selling a gun.

After lunch, we went to the Winter Palace and the Hermitate. All I have to saw is WOW. Beautiful grand outside. So much history. Such a vast art collection. So, much beautiful interior architecture. We were only there for 3+ hours and I could have spent days there. Here's one picture, but I took about 100. ..


A few other interesting things about Russia:
- On two separate occasions I was asked if all Americans have no friends and see therapists all the time.


I will probably add more Russian details later on. I have more to add about Copenhagen, especially my community service, but I will do that later.