So ever since I arrived in Denmark, I'd really wanted to go on the ride pictured above. It's basically a cross between the swingset rides and the elevator amusement park rides. You're on a giant spinning swingset and it's brought up and down that giant elevator style shaft. And I finally lived out this dream last night! It was really cold but well worth it. It gave an amazing view of Copenhagen and of Tivoli, where it is. It was also fast, high, and thrilling, which is everything I love in amusement park ride!
So Denmark is very very Christmassy. And I love it! Christmas season here began even earlier than it does in the United States, at the end of October. The official start of Christmas season here, as far as I have been able to tell was J-Dag (or J-Day), which is when Christmas Beer comes out. That's right. Denmark makes their own Christmas beer and its release is a national holiday! I walked around downtown the night that it came out and it was wild! People were dressed in entire outfits, head to toe, that were put out by Tuborg, the maker of the most popular Christmas beer. I was even lucky enough to be given a free Christmas beer hat. Basically, it's a giant blue Santa hat, with white polka dots and something written in Danish on it. I didn't stay out too late, as I was recovering from the flu that night, but I heard every bar in Copenhagen was packed. Interestingly, one of my friends tried to get into one of our favorite bars and was told that on J-Dag they only let Danes into the bar and she was given a similar response at a different bar. Even Danish people who I've asked about that were surprised and were not aware of that policy.
Me in my J-Dag hat
After J-Dag, we left for our travel break and upon our return we were greeted with Denmark's Christmas season in full force. And as the weeks have continued it has become more and more apparent. Every street is lit up. There is a giant tree in front of city hall. My bus stop has turned into a Christmas tree farm. Nyhavn has turned into a Christmas market. And there's tons of Christmas themed food. I tried something called æbleskiver, which are like spherical pancakes that you put in powdered sugar. They were one of the greatest things ever and it makes me sad that I won't be able to have them on return to the states, cause I don't think I will be able to buy them anywhere and you need a special pan to make them yourself. Another common winter drink is gløgg, which I haven't tried but I have heard quite a bit about. It's like hot wine with rum and rum raisins and nuts in it. It's supposed to be really good and is quite a big thing to some people apparently. I have one Danish friend who showed me his supply of raisins that he has been soaking in rum for THREE MONTHS so that they will be good and strong for Christmas season gløgg. I definitely plan on trying this. I also used this Christmas season to finally visit Tivoli, something I have been wanting to do all semester. Tivoli is the second oldest amusement park in the world and was really really cool. The Christmas decorations were amazing and I had the most delicious caramel apple that I have ever eaten! The highlight of the evening, however, was the Crazy Christmas Cabaret or Mamma Mafia. It was a English performance in Tivoli about a bunch of mafia families in America, complete with singing, cross-dressing, dancing, making fun of Americans, making fun of Danes, and all around ridiculousness. They do a Crazy Christmas Cabaret in Tivoli every year and it it amazed me that at the beginning of the night, when they asked how many people had been to a show before, everyone except my small group of DIS Americans raised their hands.
Entrance to Tivoli
Inside Tivoli
But I would also say I'm taking a lot more notice of the Christmas season here than at home. At home, I know Christmas decorations, music, and festivities start around Thanksgiving, but I'm usually so busy with finals that I don't notice. I do have finals and work here, but because I'm in Denmark and trying to savor every last minute of it, it's so much easier to notice and enjoy the Christmas joy here.
This morning began with a very early wakeup. After my alarm went off at 6:30 AM and I biked downtown as the sun was rising, however, the tiredness was completely worth it. After all, I was biking to catch a bus to the coolest place in the world: LEGOLAND! It was a very long ride to Legoland, almost three hours. But honestly it wasn’t that bad. I got together with a group of three other students and taught them one of my favorite card games ever: whist! The bus ride passed pretty quickly, so much so that I was actually annoyed when we arrived at Legoland, given that I was about a third of the way through one of the best hands I have ever been dealt, a hand which I was never given the opportunity to finish. But the unfinished whist victory, like my early wakeup, soon paid off as we entered the park. First off, the weather was gorgeous. We’ve been having our share of cold and rain recently, but you never would have known that today. I was very warm with just my jacket, no scarf or gloves necessary.I just hope it lasts.
Once we entered the park we were greeted by mini-land, where you can view all of your favorite world sites, except miniature. And made of Legos. It's amazing what you can build out inch long plastic bricks. Everything from Nyhavn, to the Mt. Rushmore, to Mt. Fuji was replicated in mini-land. And some of it was awesome realistic looking! The Lego model of Amsterdam, for example, had canals filled with real water running through it, with lego boats and a lego drawbridge, that actually worked and lifted up when the boat needed to go through! And some of the models were huge! I can't even imagine the work that goes into some of them! The Statue of Liberty, for example, was made of 1.4 million lego bricks. That's a whole lot of Legos. And some of the models, of course, were distinctly Danish, such as Amelienborg, the Danish royal castle. I also enjoyed posing with Hans Christian Andersen. And I loved the lego solar farm and windmills. Take a look below at some of the highlights of Miniland:
As we continued, we saw more cool Lego models throughout the day, including my personal favorite of vikings fighting a sea serpent. There was also a safari, with rather large Lego elephants, giraffes, zebras, lions and other wildlife. It was amazing just how detailed the park got with their Lego models. In the trees there were Lego birds. The benches had Lego tourists sitting on them. Even the mailboxes in the giftshop were made of Legos.
Me in Firetruck
Lego Zebra
Lego Lion Pride
Lego Vikings in battle with Lego Sea Serpent
Lego mailboxes. Really work!
Trash barrel, with Lego-looking top
Probably the coolest exhibit in the park, however, was Atlantis, which was a real aquarium, with real fish and sharks and rays, with Lego decorations. There were Lego scuba divers, Lego submarines, Lego treasure chests, and more! And the real wildlife was pretty... wild. The aquarium had one of those tunnels that you walked under so we were walking directly underneath the fish. It was awesome to be directly underneath a rather large shark, less than a foot away, separated only by a piece of glass. Also there were these GIGANTIC crabs. Seriously, move over Baltimore, these crabs weighed 22 kilograms apiece. That's about fifty pounds of crab!
Real Fish, Lego skeleton
No Legos here. Sure hope the glass doesn't break.
These crabs weighed 22 kg!
Tunnel through the fish.
And of course, since Legoland is an amusement park, there were rides, including a couple of pretty neat roller coasters. One of the cooler rides was called "The Dragon." It started out with a slow tour through a medeival lego world and ended with a couple of pretty sweet roller coaster drops. Another awesome ride was the "Power Builder" which is difficult to describe, but it was really innovative. First, you and a friend are given a plastic card which you load into a computer. Then the computer shows you pictures of various spins, flips, twists, and turns and you choose the ones that you think look the best. Then, you and that friend are strapped into two side-by-side roller coaster seats at the end of a really long, mechanical arm and are spun, flipped, and turned in the manner you selected. It was definitely faster and tougher than pretty much any standard coaster! There were also a number of water rides in the park, which we elected not to do. I know I said it was warm, but still a Danish October is seriously not warm enough for water rides. I was amazed at how many people in the park were doing those rides though! The Danes must just be used to it.
Scenery on the way into "The Dragon"
Finally, as a closing note, they allowed dogs into the park! They were everywhere, and I loved it but it really made me miss my dog. But how cool is that that they actually let people bring their pets into an amusement park?
The next day of our travels around Western Denmark was nearly as exciting as the first. The highlight was definitely visiting a place called Danfoss Universe. Basically Danfoss Universe was like a giant science museum amusement park with indoor and outdoor exhibitions. One of the exhibits was a car on a pulley that you were able to lift up by pulling on the ropes on the other side. There was also a room where they created lightning, another where you walked through a short ice cave. A lot of their exhibits were focused on climate change and sustainable energy. This building below has water flowing down all its sides, representing global warming.
Other exhibits talked about wind energy and other renewable forms of energy. It's really interesting to see how much emphasis Denmark puts on other sustainable energy. It's so different than at home, but it's something that's really nice to see! However, the two most exciting parts of Danfoss Universe were getting to control an excavator and dig a really big hole in the ground and finally getting to ride a Segway! Riding the segway was probably one of the sweetest things ever. We got to go around this obstacle course, with hills, bumps, twists and turns. At first it was kind of hard to control but once you got the hang of it, it was really easy and fun.
Later that evening, we checked in at our hostel in Sønderborg. I'd never stayed at a hostel before, so I expected them to be kind of small and dirty, but this one was neat and clean. That was definitely an unexpected to surprise. After dinner a group of us were walking around the town and came across a crowd in front of an empty stage. Curious, we decided to stay and find out what it was. A short time later, a band called Johnny Deluxe came on. Apparently they're pretty popular in Denmark. It certainly seemed so as most of the crowd knew the words to their songs. We stayed for their entire performance, even though couldn't understand any of the words. Still, it was really lucky that we just happened across a free outdoor concert of a popular Danish band! That was just completely awesome! On the walk back to our hostel, we were walking behind this Danish girl who had caught the wristband that the singer threw into the crowd and she saw some of her friends and was super-excited showing them her wrist. All in all, it was quite an exciting night!
Another exciting week (almost) on the 4k has come and gone and it's hard to believe.
Day 7: Cleveland We had a fantastic day off in Cleveland. I have to say that I was skeptical about Cleveland. I hadn't really heard too many exciting things about it, but I had a really great time. We visited the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, which was really really cool. They had all sorts of Beatles paraphernalia, like the jackets from Sgt. Pepper's. I really got a kick out of all the outfits they had on display, like the ones worn by Queen and David Bowie. They were really out there. The entire waterfront area of Cleveland was pretty cool and entertained us for a while. We ended the day by seeing Up, which was a very good Pixar movie. The day off was very needed and let us all catch up on our sleep and let our muscles heal a little.
Day 8: Cleveland -> Sandusky
This was definitely a pretty easy day. The ride was short and relatively uneventful, except for towards the end of the ride when we hit an unpaved road that lasted almost 4 miles. That really was pretty miserable and we were extremely glad when it ended. The scenery along the road was definitely nice, as it went right along Lake Erie and we had one of our water stops right along the water. My group made such good time that we stopped and got ice cream on the ride. We stayed at a middle school in Sandusky, which had a pool. We played a team game of water polo before dinner. Then after dinner, we all went to Cedar Point, which is one of the greatest amusement parks in the world. I accidentally threw my ticket out though, right after paying for it and had to go digging through the trash to get it back. But they have so many roller coasters that just insanely fast and high. And because we were there on a Sunday night, there were no lines and we were just able to walk onto all of the roller coasters as many times as we wanted.
Day 9: Sandusky -> Fayette
This was our first century. We rode 100 miles! It was extremely difficult but we did it. The day started out easy. We flew through the first 20 miles, but soon it started raining. Raining makes biking much harder because the roads get all slippery so we had a couple of teammates wipe out on the same set of railroad tracks. Plus the rain made us all cold and wet, so not too much fun. But the rain did let up, and the ride stayed pretty easy until around mile 70. This is when everyone in my group began to get tired. And the knowledge that the ride is nowhere near over did not really help. A pit stop at a fruit stand helped for a short while. We bought a giant basket of the biggest, juiciest, freshest strawberries that I have ever seen for just $2.50! After the last water stop (80 miles), every pedal stroke was torture. My legs really did not want to keep going but my group worked through it together. We distracted ourselves with 20 Questions and I Spy to keep going. When we finally arrived at the church for the night, most of us just laid on the grass and didn't move for a little while. Physically, everything hurt, but mentally I felt really really awesome. I just found it so hard to believe that I had biked 100 miles. That night was a little scary because there were tornado warnings for the district. I really don't like tornadoes, so I was nervous, but we got through the night tornado free.
Day 10: Fayette, OH-> Elkhart, IN This was an eventful day of lots of miles and state lines. So we did our first century the day before and I was hoping for a short day to give myself time to recover, but no such luck on this 90 mile long day. Breakfast was a seemingly delicious egg and sausage casserole that just didn't sit right in anyone in my group's stomachs, we all started out the day feeling pretty ill. My group aptly named ourselves Team Vomit. On the bright side, we crossed two state lines. The first was from Ohio into Michigan, just three miles north of Fayette. We got our photos and kept on trekking. Then about twenty miles later (after a water stop and some vomiting) we crossed the state line into Indiana. Yay for state signs! The day was really tough again. I was already extremely tired from the previous day's century and really not feeling to great, so the day kind of dragged on until mile 80, when I miraculously felt completely fine! The last ten miles flew by and I felt fantastic after finishing 190 miles in two days. It was pretty cool biking through some Amish country. We saw several horses and buggies, which was neat.
Day 11: Elkhart -> Michigan City, IN This was a pretty easy day. We accidentally biked on some highway and some of our team members got pulled over but other than that it was definitely a good day. We exploded a bottle of diet coke at a water stop. We got in early enough to go to some sand dunes near the beach. We got an amazing view of the beach, a nuclear power plant, and could even see Chicago! Also the church we stayed in was really really cool. It was definitely haunted, with all sorts of secret passages and hidden hallways. It was creepy.
