Legoland!

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:

Me and HC Andersen

Nyhavn

Amelienborg

Lego Solar Farm

Japan

Working Dutch Canals

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?

Dogs in the Park!

Thanks for reading!

Western Denmark (Saturday)

On the final day of our study tour, we were exhausted, but I still had a really great time. We started out the day by visiting a castle called Egeskov Slot. This was my favorite castle I've seen in Denmark by far! It was crazily beautiful, with a moat and some beautiful flowers, and gardens. There were mazes in the shrubbery, which I wanted to do but didn't end up doing for fear of getting lost and missing the bus. Inside the castle, there were some rooms with all kinds of animal skins, including lion and tiger. Other rooms held armor, plates, dollhouses, paintings and other strange items. The strangest single item was probably a small wooden doll in the attic of the castle, which according to legend must never be moved or the castle will sink into the moat on Christmas. Also on the castle grounds was a 'treewalk,' where you walked on a shaky footbridge through the tops of the trees. My mother, and anyone with any fear of high up unstable things, would have hated it. It didn't look very scary from the ground, but that bridge was really wobbly. Eek! What really struck me as strange is that people actually still live in the castle. I can't imagine ever living at a castle, not just because it's a castle, but also because there would be tons of tourists running around my house every day. It would be cool to have a moat though.

Here are some photos from the castle:

The Castle, surrounded by the moat

One of the fountains

View from the attic window of the castle

The wooden doll that can never be moved

Animal Skins on display.

Walking through the trees

After the castle we went to the city of Odense, which is where Hans Christian Andersen was born. The city really prides themself on this fact, as can be seen by their pedestrian crossing lights, street names, and signs all showing their allegiance to Andersen. Funnily enough however, HC Andersen never considered Odense his home. Rather, I've been told he really hated Odense. But nonetheless, I thought Odense was a cool place.

The pedestrian crossing light, made to look like HC Andersen

We ate lunch at a place called the Ugly Duckling (another tribute to Hans Christian Andersen) and went off to see the Robot Festival. There were certainly some cool displays of robotics at the festival, including one that took a plastic ball, engraved my name in it, and shot it at me with a ping-pong paddle (probably the first free thing I've gotten in Denmark!). Finally after a very long three days we loaded up on the bus and headed back to Copenhagen. The short study tour was awesome, educational (in a good way), and fun but it was nice to be back in Copenhagen where we could just relax.

Robot that gave me the plastic ball with my name on it

Western Denmark (Friday)

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!

Western Denmark (Thursday)

This past weekend was spent in Western Denmark with DIS. Every program (mine being public health) spends a weekend in Western Denmark studying things relevant to their class. For some reason, my expectations of Western Denmark were fairly low. Perhaps it was the reaction I'd gotten from a few Copenhagen-ites whose reaction to our DIS sponsored travels to western Denmark was "Why would you ever want to go there?" And to be honest I really didn't know was there at all. Plus, since this was a DIS event, with our health-care class, I was expecting it to be all... boring and academic. (Not that I think health-care is all boring, but I really just didn't want to spend a whole weekend learning about health care while abroad.) However, the entire weekend in western Denmark was awesome! It wasn't all academic stuff, and even the parts that were academically oriented were really interesting and educational in a good way! I have a lot to say about the weekend, and I'm not really in the mood to write for two hours right now, so I'm breaking this blog entry into a couple parts, so stay tuned for parts two and three.

Last Thursday started out bright and early as we met by DIS at 6:45 in the morning. We loaded up onto our bus, took off towards the town of Svendborg, about three hours away, where we had an academic visit. This was my first time in Denmark that I had been of Zealand, the island where Copenhagen is! At the local hospital they told us about their tele-medicine project, which means that when a patient leaves the hospital, instead of having to come in to the hospital all the time for follow-appointments, the patient can video chat with the doctor. They can run tests on themselves, the results of which are automatically sent to the hospital. This was pretty neat and we even got to watch one of these video-chats as it was happening! The woman was a super-nice elderly woman with COPD who kept smiling and waving at us and telling us to smile more. That was really cool.

Our day continued in the town of Rødding (which I don't think I could pronounce properly for a million dollars) where we visited a general practitioner's office. Again, this was really cool and really showed me that having universal health care does not detract of the quality of care in any way. People in the US worry about long wait-lists. At this office, the doctors said that if someone needs it they'll be in within a few days. And even without an appointment, the GP we talked to said that if someone just shows up and their sick/hurt, they'll find a way to fit them in that day. It seems like the the doctors are really accessable as well. Every morning, from 8 to 9 the doctors spend an hour at the phones, so that patients can call and ask any medical questions they need to a doctor! Plus the office was just really really nice. The exam rooms were a lot bigger and a lot more comfortable than in the US. In the facilities, they have an x-ray machine, a paramedic with an emergency van, and an acupuncture room. One of the GPs will perform acupuncture on patients if he thinks it will help them, which he kindly demonstrated for us. He asked for volunteers out of our group, pulled out some needles and stuck them into the volunteers' hands, as shown in the photo below! Ouch! Actually, the volunteers said it didn't hurt at all, that it just felt a little strange.



The day ended as we made our way to a højskole for the night. A højskole is like a very small rural campus where college-aged students take classes, but not for credit. Only about 30 students lived on this campus, which was really pretty, although I can't ever imagine living somewhere that rural with such a small group of people. The food at the højskole was really good! It was a nice change to not have to cook for myself and to have food that wasn't spaghetti. After eating, we hung out with the kids from the højskole. Living seems like an interesting life. They sing songs together every morning; they aren't allowed to drink on weeknights, even though they're all of legal age to drink; they take classes but receive no grades. According to the principal of the højskole, about 10% of Danish kids go to a højskole after graduating high school but before college. It's a way to study new subjects without the pressure of not being good at it. It's definitely different from the US, where almost everyone goes straight to college right after high school and it's considered unusual to take time off before college. In Denmark, I've been told that almost everyone takes time off before college. It seems much more relaxed and like much less pressure on students than in America. Below, of course, are a few pictures from the højskole.

Strange tree.

Strange sculpture.