Dinosaur Bear

A Blog about Stuff and Things

Visting the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek

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Today started out pretty bleakly, it was cold and grey outside, and it looked like it could start raining at any second. Since I slept a lot yesterday I couldn’t really sleep in much today, even in spite of the perfect conditions for doing so. I decided that it would be a good day to head to the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, an art museum which holds the former private collection of Carl Jacobsen (1842-1914), the son of J.C. Jacobsen, the founder of Carlsberg Breweries (which was named after Carl). The museum is primarily focused around statues, but there are some paintings as well, with Picasso, Monet, and van Gogh all being represented.Sunday was the best day to go not because it was raining, but because Sunday is the one day of the week where entrance is free, so naturally that’s when I went.

Of course things can never be easy, and as soon as I left the kollegium it started pouring outside. My cheap umbrella did as good as it usually does (i.e. not very) and I made it to the bus stop where I waited.. and waited.. and waited. Until I finally realized that for some reason, which is still unknown to me, the buses had been rerouted. This is problematic because this is the only way for me to get to class, without walking 15 minutes to a train station, that doesn’t even get me that close to class. But I figured it out, via a different route. Right as I got to the museum it stopped raining (of course).

After entering through the massive glass revolving door, I noticed that the air was a little warmer inside than I might have expected. I didn’t think much about it at first, especially since while I was depositing my backpack in the lockers things were much cooler. But as I progressed back up to the main lobby, I noticed why things were so warm, the “center” of the museum is a giant tropical greenhouse, complete with a cafe and multiple fountains. I was naturally drawn to the small, semi-hidden statute of a hippopotamus.

Proceeding from the central garden area, there were several wings to the museum, which had themes from ancient sculpture (Greek, Roman, Egyptian, etc.) to French Impressionists, to Danish Works. It was a little confusing, but every museum I’ve been in thus far, with the exception of the Museum of Danish Resistance, has had a confusing layout. The first portion, the ancient art, was undoubtedly my favorite part of the whole museum. I got to see loads of extremely old sculptures, including several Roman Emperors, a bust of Alexander the Great, Egyptian Hieroglyphics, and even pieces of the Babylon Gate! Several of them you could even touch, which was way cool, I think the oldest thing I touched was about 4500 years old! In the center of the ancient area was the “Great Hall” which was home to statues of a vast array of Roman dignitaries and Gods. I got a picture of me chilling out with Marcus Aurelius, one of my all-time favorite Romans.

After walking around amongst naked statues, disembodied heads, and all sorts of other pleasant things I proceeded onto the paintings and more modern works of art. There was a lot of really fascinating stuff, especially some of Rodin’s work, but I was still most impressed by the ancient area. The final exhibit was devotedly solely to Danish artists, and while a lot of this was relatively new (past 250 years onwards), there were still some really awesome statues.  My two favorites of this area were “Death and the Maiden” and “The Panther Hunter,” the later seen here.

By this time I was especially hungry, so I headed out, having seen every single room in the entire museum, which took about 2.5 hours I would imagine. It was around 3:30 in the afternoon, and here most things start closing around 4 or 5, but mainly 4 on Sunday (if they are even open). So I took off in search of food, and literally every place I found that was still open was catering to tourists, and therefore was crazy expensive. So, I decided to just live with my hunger and start working my way home, as the weather had improved (it was bright and sunny the entire time I was in the museum). I decided to head to the University’s Botanical Gardens, the largest in Denmark since it was free and it was sunny. Well, by the time I got there, which included walking and taking a bus, things had clouded up, got windy, and got cold. Naturally, within 15 seconds of me entering the gardens it started pouring, and I couldn’t even go in the vast greenhouses because they were all closed due to issues with the alarm system. So I found a small open glass shed, and waited for the rain to calm down a bit so I could head home.

Having resolved myself to return to the Botanical Gardens on a nicer day when I’m not quite so hungry, I boarded the bus, made a quick stop at the store for some milk, then plopped down here. Naturally the sun came back out once I was inside, and has pretty much been out ever since, its one of those frustrating days where it starts to rain the instant you go to do something, then is sunny as soon as you go inside.

Tidbit of the Day: The Danish Flag

Since it works its way into a good amount of my photos, I figured it would be nice to share the story of the Danish flag. Unlike many flags around the world, the Danish flag has a name, its called Dannebrog, and it has its own “mythical story” which is pretty cool.

The legend dates the origin of the flag to the Battle of Lyndanisse, in Estonia (against the Estonians), on June 15, 1219. The battle was going badly for the Danes, and defeat seemed imminent. However a Danish priest on top of a hill overlooking the battle prayed to God, which meant that the Danes moved closer to victory the more he prayed. At a one moment he was so tired in his arms that he dropped them and the Danes then lost the advantage and were moving closer to defeat. He needed two soldiers to keep his hands up and when the Danes were about to win, ‘Dannebrog’ fell from the sky and the King took it, then showed it to the troops and their hearts were filled with courage and the Danes won the battle.  According to the legend the flag, Dannebrog, was given to the Danes from God himself, and from that day forward, it has been the flag of Denmark and the Danish kings.

Christian August Lorentzen painted this iconic event in 1809, the painting below is the original, which I saw in the National Art Museum. The Dannebrog is also the oldest state flag in the world still in use by an independent nation.

-Taco

Strolling down Strøget

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Today started pretty uneventfully, I slept in until I could sleep no more, which is the first time I have done such without an alarm waking me up in about three weeks. While that was nice and all, I got pretty bored just sitting around my room. It was the typical situation, I had looked forward to not running around, but once I stopped running around I wanted something to do. The good news is that the 90% chance of rain for today was undeniably wrong, and in fact the weather was quite pleasant and mostly sunny. So around 2:30 I decided to head out into town to try to find a bakery, because I wanted something sweet. Well, every bakery I found was closed for the day already, so I ended up just walking around the city center. I decided to walk along Strøget, which is a long pedestrian street, the longest in Europe in fact. I have been on Strøget multiple times before, as it is pretty impossible not to find yourself on it when you are walking around downtown, it tends to intersect just about every major street. Strøget has tons and tons of shops, and tons and tons more people, so during a nice day like today it can be pretty cramped. As I had not yet walked the entire length of Strøget, I decided that I would do so today, hoping I would find a bakery in the process. Well, about.. 30 seconds into my walk I found..

Now, I love me some Ben & Jerry’s, but I have never, ever been to an actual Ben & Jerry’s shop. So, after some intense debating, mostly over cost (you think its expensive in the states? HA), I went for it. I tried “Baked Alaska” which I had read about, but never seen in a store back home, it was pretty good. So I had my first ever freshly scooped Ben & Jerry ice cream, I just had to travel to Denmark to find it. After sitting in the sun at once of the squares listening to the street performer music while enjoy my ice cream, I head off down Strøget again, straight into a massive wall of people. Long story short, I made it from one end to the other, but this is pretty much what the entire stretch of street looks like:

Its mainly for shopping and food, all of which very expensive since its right in the middle of the city. I primarily enjoy the street performers, which vary from musicians, to people doing all sorts of oddball stuff, be it eating fire, or pretending to be statues. They always seem to have a fair amount of coins in their buckets when I pass by, so they must do fairly well, though some probably do better than others, as many didn’t really some to have much talent beyond sitting there with a cup. After growing tired of the crowds on Strøget, I headed off onto side streets, I left the map in my backpack and decided to just walk, though I was never really lost as I do pretty well with directions at this point. I came to the round tower, which is actually home to Europe’s oldest planetarium. It cost money to go to the top, but I figured I would go ahead and do it, since it was less than 5$. Right as I was about to go up, and entire group of string-instrument players came out onto the street and did a performance, which was really cool. I’m not sure what it was about, or why they had been in the tower, but it was still really neat. The tower was much easier to climb than the church spire, as almost the entire way up (save for that one crazy spiral staircase at the very top) was a ramp. It was built that way because the king wanted to be able to ride a horse and carriage to the top, oh the pompous days of yesteryear. The view wasn’t as good as the church, as it wasn’t nearly as high, but as it was situated right in the middle of the old medieval part of Copenhagen, you could really take in just how winding and gnarled the streets are.

Once I descended, I was swarmed by beggars, as they tend to gather around the popular attractions in downtown. My usual tactic of being somewhat aggressive, and speaking German, worked as well as it always does and they gave up. I have no idea how I will get rid of them in Germany, maybe I will pretend to speak Danish. My feet were pretty tired at this point, so I hopped on a bus and headed home, ending a relatively pleasant, if not expensive day. I quickly dropped in the Fakta to grab a thing of juice, as it sounded good and I all I’ve really had is beer and water. It turned into.. an experience, so on that note:

The Tidbit of the Day: Shopping (When you know none of the language)

While I outlined in another post how I somewhat enjoyed not speaking a language when out and about in the city, shopping is quite difficult. I really have to “sight shop” because things are not as easy to decipher as you might guess. For instance, I have been eating what I believe to be turkey breast lunch meat, it could be chopped up donkey for all I know. I often times Google what I’ve purchased so that I can learn, but when I’m at the store, there’s no such help as most employees at the discount stores don’t speak any English. Things like pasta and pasta sauce are easy to purchase, though much more difficult to determine what specific “kind” you have. Bread is surprisingly difficult, so I’ve just reverted to buying cheap loaves of white bread (which existed in two varieties, aesthetically identical, but one costs 50% more than the other, same brand, no idea). But all in all, I have done well finding the off brands, and the good deals, though it requires a lot of time and guess work. However, today, I had my first real mess up, and that was with the juice. The last time I was in Fakta, I saw this juice called “Fun One,” I was immediately drawn to the English. So I went in today and purchased it, came home, put it in the refrigerator while I was cooking pasta, then opened it up and took a big drink. And then I spewed it out. Turns out, it is not juice, but rather a syrupy juice paste concentrate. This one bottle is designed to make like 10 liters of drink, yes 10 liters. I took a big huge gulp of like 15 glasses of pineapple juice at once. Needless to say, I don’t want to eat pineapple for awhile. No where on the bottle did it mention this little bit of information. Here is a picture of it, next to a bottle of water where I placed like 1 teaspoon of the concentrate into. You get the picture.

-Taco

Helsingør and Hamlet

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Today I took advantage of having no schoolwork whatsoever and hopped on a (very expensive) train to the very northern point of Zealand to the city of Helsingør. Helsingør is home to Kronborg Castle, the famous castle from the play Hamlet. While Helsingør itself is more of a quaint town with not a whole lot to do, Kronborg is totally awesome, and sets on the narrowest point between Denmark and Sweden (who waged so many wars against each other in the past that its hard to count them). Because of its extremely critical vantage point, the castle was expanded multiple times, from its origin in the 1400s all the way up to the 1700s. Its a mixture of stone walls, moats, and earthworks. The train ride took about 30 minutes I would imagine, maybe a little longer. Helsingør Station was a smaller station than I am used to, but it had a nice charm to it because of that.

After getting out of the station, which is attached to the Town Hall (there is a 7-Eleven inside the Town Hall), you are greeted with a nice view of the harbor, and in the distance the imposing Kronborg Castle, standing ever resolute over the sound. Walking to the castle took a bit, mainly due to the construction that had engulfed the usual route, as I mentioned before, construction is everywhere here. But I was able to find the way thanks to makeshift signs which had been spray painted onto the sidewalks. At one point I couldn’t help but wonder if someone had just painted the signs to really mess with tourists and send them wandering to the outskirts of town. The road to the castle is actually a small dirt path, which was pretty cool, it definitely increased that feeling of stepping back into time. In typical Danish style, there were about 3 or 4 “layers” to the fortress, with the outer most layers being dirt and stone mounds with a moat, then as you worked inwards the walls got larger, until eventually you came to a really deep moat, and some REALLY large walls. This picture shows some of the inner walls, by this point I had past through no less than 3 gates, walked up a huge hill, and crossed over 2 moats. I think you get the idea of how fortified this place was.

Once passing through the swarm of walls and moats, you get to the actual castle itself, which dates from the 1600s, as the original keep was almost completely burnt in a fire. The only original part that remains is the chapel, which was pretty cool, only the church survived the blaze. The first gate to the interior (Yes, 3 more gates to get to the inside), has a picture of Shakespeare carved into the wall next to it, this was obviously added at a later date after the release of Hamlet. I decided to get the tour ticket for 95 Kroner (15$) which allowed me to see everything I wanted to see. I checked out the chapel first, then from there I headed to the “casements” which is actually the cellar to the castle, and wow, was itdark down there. I have a few picture with flash, which was actually how I navigated part of the passageways. The fact that they were selling flashlights at the entrance should have been a sign that things were going to get crazy. Down in the casements is a very forlorn statue of Holger Danske (which is actually him “sleeping,” not a statute), a character of Arthurian Legend who has saved kingdoms in the past, and will wake when Denmark needs him again.

I got a cool picture of myself with ole’ Holger, but out of fear of having the wrath of the Nordic Gods befall me, I’ll refrain from posting me crawling on him here. And just as a way of giving you an idea of just how dark it was down there, here is a picture I took without flash RIGHT next to the lights, I would post a picture away from the lights.. but its just a black square.

After being under the castle in 500 year old stone passages, I ascended into the blindness that is the sun, then proceeded through the area where the  royals used to live. The ballroom was the highlight of that portion, as it was way, WAY larger than I would have anticipated. From there I headed into the maritime museum, which was ok, but the real highlight was ascending one of the towers (conveniently placed inside the maritime museum, forcing you to pay to get to it). From the top you could see most of Helsingør, a big chunk of the bay, and of course Sweden. Being up on top of the tower made the entire trip worth it, as the views were really awesome (though the billion steps in the tiny spiral staircase were not).

After heading back down, I walked around the outskirts of the castle, checking out a few things such as the armoury, as well as seeing the world’s oldest cannons still in regular use, which come from 1766. The whole area was just really gorgeous, and the way the landscape had sort of just grown up around the aging castle had a sort of melodramatic effect that I can’t accurately describe in words or in photos. Before leaving I headed down to the beach, as Kronborg actually contains its own stretch of beach, complete with batteries where crap tons of cannons used to sit. From down there I was able to capture this picture, which shows a bit of the actual “keep” itself. I actually had to walk up from the beach a bit, all the fortifications kept getting in the way, its crazy to think that Sweden actually took this place once!

I then started back home, where I missed the train I needed twice, because I wasn’t really sure which train I did need. Luckily the third time was the charm, and I made it on the train and back to Copenhagen. Since I took a little bit of a weird route, I also got to see a station I hadn’t been to before, Østerport Station. By the time I got home, which involved walking > train > walking > bus > walking, I was really hungry, so I set down for my pasta dinner, which is every dinner. I’ve now got a few beers, 2 of which I have never had before in my life, and I am getting ready to enjoy a Friday evening with no homework. Tomorrow its supposed to rain (which is precisely why I went to Kronborg today!) so I’m not sure what I will do, outside of sleeping in.

The Tidbit of the Day: The Drinking Culture of Denmark

As I went to Carlsberg yesterday, beer has been on the mind, as partaking of it made me want it more, as I had been avoiding it due to budget concerns. Anyways, I have noticed a great deal of different between America and Denmark when it comes to drinking. First of, America’s drinking age is 21, Denmark’s is NONE. Yes, you read that right, there is no legal drinking age in Denmark. Now what they do have, is a legal purchase age, which is 16. For the most part, stores don’t care about selling light alcohol to minors, and I’ve seen kids who can’t be any older than 14 buying beer. Where things start to matter is bars and liquor, both of which have more hefty requirements. For instance, 18 is the age to buy hard alcohol in stores, and some bars go up to 20, and I believe I’ve seen one bar that requires 21, and they card you like crazy. But outside of bars and hard liquor, the culture is very relaxed and binge drinking is most definitely not an issue here (whereas its a massive problem in America). You’ll see people drinking on trains, while cycling, while pushing baby carriages, while shopping, and so on and so forth. The concept of “public drinking” here has no stigma attached to it at all. For me, its nice being able to get beer without having to tell someone my life story (F*&K you Bloomington), and since alcohol-poisoning deaths aren’t common, I can’t fault the system a whole lot, at the very least its just different, certainly not worse than our own.

 

Gettin’ Bergy with It.

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I SAW MY FIRST SQUIRREL TODAY

Anyways..

So today was the last day of my first class, and I am now really regretting the lack of studying I did for the final exam. I am a poor studier at home, therefore it is not surprising that I am an even more horrendous studier 4300 miles from home. But its over, and I dropped off my two books ..and picked up 3 more for the next class which begins Monday. Sunday will mark the half-way point for my time in Denmark, and I’m neither really “sad” or “excited” about that, as there is still so much to see and do.

After finishing up with school-related stuff, I came home, grabbed a sandwich (still eating that free bread from Sweden, which is AWESOMELY good), then headed out to Carlsberg Brewery, and yes I bolded that specifically because it is a brewery. I had been planing on going for awhile, and going as a form of celebration for finishing my first class seemed like a good enough excuse. Someone from my kollegium wanted to go as well, so we headed off to catch Bus 18, which goes way into Western Copenhagen, a land completely foreign to us Northern/Middle city folk. The bus ride was long, very long, as construction slowed us to a snails pace and as such the bus was extremely packed. But we made it! At first we thought we were lost, but then we realized that Carlsberg takes up multiple city blocks, in fact you could even argue that it is a city within a city. I won’t drone on about Carlsberg’s history, as a more thorough account can easily be found on Google, so let’s just say that they were very important. As we approached the brewery, I reached for my camera to grab a picture, only to realize that I had charged my battery, but had failed to reinsert it into the camera. Luckily the person with me had two cameras, one small digital one, and one larger fancier one. She let me use her digital one, so hoorah for company, otherwise I would have been S.O.L. Carlsberg was really cool, and while the historical aspect of it was nice, I think the 2nd room on the tour was the best:

It is the world’s largest beer collection, in total numbering around 20,000 bottles of beer. Yeah, I couldn’t help but wonder how many people would die singing those down to zero beers on the wall. After going through the tour (where I fed one of the Carlsberg horses, Marcon!), and seeing the still functioning part of the factory, I headed to the bar, where I took advantage of the two free beers that came with the tour. Naturally, I got a Carlsberg Special, and a Tuborg Classic. Seen here is the Tuborg, as the Carlsberg was consumed so rapidly that I didn’t get a good picture of it.

Yes, it was extremely good, they both were. Beer on tap in Europe, how could it not be good? After jivin’ my skivies’ in beer land, we decided to walk to the somewhat nearby Frederiksberg Palace, which used to be one of the many royal palaces, but is now an Army Academy. This was sort of on a whim, since we were in the area, but I am extremely glad we did, despite the dropping temperature and approaching rain the area (which also included the Frederiksberg Gardens) was absolutely beautiful. In fact, since I updated my theme for WordPress and lost all my pictures, I changed my header over to a view taken in the garden. Anyways, right before we got there, my 2nd camera died, as the battery had been low to start with. Luckily the 3rd camera was still going strong, though it had a low battery as well (Lesson learned about Cameras). Once it started to sprinkle and we almost left, but ended up staying, which was awesome because:

Yes, Elephant friends. After walking around, I found out that the Zoo and park run parallel to each other, and thanks to a 2007 renovation you can see into the ElephantHus (House) from within the park. I was pretty freaking excited, since by this point I had also seen about 15 trillion boid friends, though the Swans are mean and can be scary as hades since they are HUGE here. After meandering around some more, we headed out, and I figured out how to get us back home by taking a bus route that was completely foreign to me. Luckily I’m learning more about the city than most seem to be, though I can’t actively summon the information until I’m on the ground and need it. I really think that getting epic lost for an entire afternoon oriented me in ways that the other DIS students haven’t had a chance to experience. And of experiences lead us straight into:

The (Not so bitty) Tidbit of the Day: Living in a Foreign Country Where you have no Understanding of (Or even prior exposure to) the Language.

When I first got here, I was really prepared for the worst, having had no experience with Danish. In fact, I couldn’t have picked Danish out of a list of languages to be honest. And to be even more honest, I still can’t pick Danish out between Swedish and Norwegian, but there’s a lot of overlap. The truth is, its really not so bad. And no, not as many Danes speak English as all the happy guides and interwebs would have you believe, I’m convinced that 95% number is absolute b.s., but many do, however 99% of the time they don’t use it (naturally, why would they?). So, wondering in a sea of noise where you can understand nothing might seem a little bewildering.. well, for me, its awesome. I enjoy being able to walk around in rambunctious silence, I enjoy being incapable of deciphering the conversations around me. I feel like for the first time in my life, I can walk down a crowded street and truly listen. While it is true that my meager knowledge of German has helped me somewhat (Danish has Germanic roots), its only increased my understanding by about 5% at most. Oddly I seem to do better than many of the people here in deciphering things, but I think that’s because so many people ignore the ever-so-important context of what’s being said or read. You’d be surprised how easy it is to get along speaking only a few words such as “Thank You” “Excuse Me” “Yes” and “No”. So future me, when you think back to this, whenever you may read it, remember just how awesome it is to walk around in a roar of silence.

In the Sky and in the Past

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Today was a fairly exciting day, for a few different reasons.

First of, it was my second to last day of my first class, which means I’m getting fairly close to the half-way mark which is Sunday (I believe). I have a final exam tomorrow, that I haven’t studied for yet, and even writing this post is a form of procrastination. This first course, which deals with human trafficking has been a very depressing affair overall, and I’m somewhat ready to move onto Positive Psychology, so I can learn about happiness. Granted, the fact that the class gets me nothing as far as transcripts go is a little bit of a buzz-kill, but I knew that from the get-go, I just wanted to go to Scotland.

After finishing up with class, which was only 90 minutes, making it the shortest class of the summer thus far, I headed over to the National Museum of Denmark. This is a massive museum situated directly across a canal from the parliament, so it really wasn’t much of an issue to find. I spent more time trying to find the door to the building than I did the building itself. The scope of the museum was pretty broad, with an obvious emphasis on Denmark, but not solely limited to that. What the museum likes to highlight is its “Sun Chariot” which is around 3500 years old, which is pretty crazy:

It wasn’t really the highlight for me though, I was more drawn to the museum’s extensive collection of weaponry from through the ages. Overall I enjoyed this museum more than I did the art museum yesterday, but I believe that’s to be expected given where my interests lie. They also had a quite a collection of Greek Pottery, but naturally I sailed straight past the sea of nearly immaculate dishes to check out this:

They also had a Roman collection, though it was pretty much centered around Roman glass, and wasn’t nearly as fleshed out as the Greek exhibit. Other nifty items of note included: Egyptian Mummies, Renaissance Art & Arms/Armor, Stone Age items, Bronze Age items, Iron Age items, and everything in between and before and after. There was really too much to list here and the slew of photos I took do a better job of displaying the diversity. In fact, I’m a little burnt on museums for the time being, as despite my affinity for all things historical, I was ready to leave once the last exhibit was behind me, being ravenously hungry probably contributed to that.

After leaving the museum, I took to the streets in a new direction.. which led me straight into.. construction. Yes, construction, as in the U.S. everything is under construction at all times here in Denmark, ruining otherwise awesome city-scapes. In fact, many of the pictures I’ve taken have required very odd angles to remove a metal jungle of scaffolding and industrial machinery from the image. Regardless, I made my way down to one of the harbors, where I caught bus 66 (Which was 10 minutes late) down into Southern Copenhagen, where I had only been once, and that was on day one, in a bus, northward bound. My target was Vor Frelsers Kirke (Our Savior’s Church), which was constructed in 1682, then added too, and changed many times since. The main reason I went, is the church’s (in)famous spire, which towers over Copenhagen.

There was a fee to climb the tower, but none to visit the church itself, so despite my reservations I broke down and spent the money, though I did get an unlisted student discount. When you first begin to climb the tower, you are greeted by a multilingual sign which reads “Climb at your own risk.” It was a nice start, but was actually pretty accurate. The way up was a labyrinth of aged wooden staircases, rickety ladders, and massive timbers forming a web-like network in the musty lofts. It was also much longer of a climb that one would expect, as stairs led to more stairs, all the while the creaking of the building (the tower is entirely oak) grew louder and the howl of the wind stronger. Upon finally making it to the spire, you are greeted by a thing ledge of metal stairs, that grow increasingly more narrow as you head towards the top, until eventually they just end, no platform, just you teetering on a 6″ wide step 300′ in the air.

On the way down the clock struck 3pm and the bells began a thunderous ringing, that was almost cool had I not been RIGHT NEXT TO THEM. But still, It was really awesome, however if you are out of shape, or agoraphobic, then do yourself a favor and stick to the ground. However, the “ground” was amazing in its own right. Based on the church’s relatively small stature (the spire is the only thing that sticks out), I was not expecting much in the way of extravagance, however my expectations were far surpassed when I entered and saw this:

Not pictured is the ENORMOUS organ behind me, which has over 4000 pipes and was constructed in 1698, under authority of King Christian (Taco) the Fifth. There were a lot of really awesome things in the church, and I am superbly joyed that I decided to visit the rest of the church beyond the spire, as apparently many people don’t. After touching the sky, I decided to start working my way back home, which was all the way on the other end of Copenhagen. On the way I took at detour to Strøget, the longest pedestrian street in all of Europe, so I could stop by the Lego Store. Which brings me to the..

Tidbit of the Day: Denmark & The Lego

If you didn’t know, the Lego Brick (NOT “Legos,” you will be flogged here) was invented by Ole Kirk Christiansen, a Danish Carpenter, in 1932. The term “Lego” comes from the combination of two words, leg and godt, which means “play well.” Needless to say, the Danes are quite fond of their Legos, and the first Legoland was even built in Denmark, but sadly its like 6 hours away and costs a lot to get to, and to get in. Additionally, Lego are no cheaper here than they are in the states, in fact I believe they cost more, simply because they are Lego in Denmark, which makes them better I suppose!

The picture is sadly not of the two Lego Men Royal Guards, as I couldn’t mash myself between them and the window from the inside and get anything in the picture, I tried, but was shouted at in Danish 🙂

-Taco

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