Helsingør

Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.

Just kidding. Nothing has been rotten about Denmark yet. However, Denmark is the setting of one of Shakespeare's most famous plays: Hamlet. Hamlet takes place in Kronborg Castle in the city of Helsingør, which is where I visited today with a group of DIS students.

After our buses arrived in Helsingør, we were all given some free time to explore the town's walking streets. The walking streets were filled with cute shops and cafes. For a while, my group entertained ourselves with the free samples that a couple stores were giving away. One store was giving free samples of various types of cheese. One of the cheeses was particularly satisfying, not just for the flavor, which was delicious, but for the fact that I understood the Danish written on it's label. "Hvidlog ogs," I knew from class means "garlic cheese." I'm pretty happy that I can pick up on a few Danish phrases even after only a couple of sections. After the cheese, we found another store giving away samples of bread with some sort of dip on top and wine, both of which I enjoyed in the street. You gotta love Denmark's 16 year old drinking age and lack of open container laws. We continued the afternoon by wandering in and out of the various shops, including the one selling those gigantic looking fish pictured above and relaxing by a really pretty fountain pictured below.

Finally, we made our way over to Kronborg Castle (below, left) more commonly known to the world as Hamlet's castle. The castle was really awesome The outside was beautiful and the inside had a lot of really old impressive things, including some tapestries and globes. Definitely worth looking around the castle for a couple hours. Of course, I kept an eye out for Jude Law, who apparently was going to be performing as Hamlet in the castle later that night.
The highlight of the castle tour was definitely the dungeons though (below, right). They were pitch dark, narrow, and at points couldn't have been more than four and a half feet high. I really had to be careful not to hit my head. Thank god, I wasn't claustrophobic cause I don't think I could have taken it. It was pretty creepy being in there thinking about all the unfortunate souls who were forced to live there several hundred years ago. You certainly couldn't have seen anything like them in America, in part because we're only 300 years old and we don't have castles, but also because I'm pretty sure someone would have hit their head on the ceiling and sued and tours would have been shut off. So I'm really glad I had the opportunity to see those dungeons.