Budapest, Venice, Florence

I'm hanging around at my host family's, waiting to leave for the airport to head to Turkey (unfortunately my flight doesn't leave until 1:30 am). More travel break updates:

End of Berlin: The DIS part of the trip ended in Berlin after a visit to a concentration camp, but instead of going back to Denmark, my friend Karen (from the program) and I stayed in Berlin for an extra night. DIS was supposed to drop us off at the train station, but instead dumped us off at an abandoned train station. In the middle of nowhere. I think (hope) that was a mistake. Luckily we found a police officer who spoke English and had her call a cab for us. Oh adventures in public transportation...

I was really happy that we stayed in Berlin an extra night as there was still so much to do and see. (Topography of terror exhibit, National Gallery art museum, etc.)

Budapest, Hungary: Jillian (my friend from NU) is studying math in Budapest for the semester and offered to let Karen and I stay in her lovely apartment. It was great to see Jillian and Budapest was a beautiful city to spend a couple of days in. While Jillian went to her classes during the day, Karen and I explored the city. We climbed St. Peter's Basilica, went to castle hill, visited a museum of medical history, ate honey nut cookies and pastries, and relaxed in thermal baths. I was expecting it to look and feel similarly to Poznan, mostly because of their shared communist history, but was pleasantly surprised that they were very different.

There are about 180 forints in one dollar, meaning that I spent most of my time in Budapest having no idea how much I was spending. If a price was in the thousands, I could come up with a rough estimate, give or take several dollars. We had some really nice dinners out, I ate pumpkin pasta with goat cheese and chicken paprikash.

We went out dancing one night and I was suprised to bump into someone from DIS that I know from one of my classes. The world is small. Also, the guys in the club would sketchily dance by themselves really close to girls, hoping the girls would turn around and start dancing with them.

Venice, Italy: Went here from Budapest with Karen, Jillian, and Jillian's friend Amelia. Lots of canals, very pretty. We walked everywhere and were hopelessly lost, which was the whole point. It also had a lot of tourists, for obvious reasons. We opted out of the $80 an hour Gondola ride, but rode the water bus down the Grand Canal at night to enjoy the light reflecting off the water.

I encountered my first ever "cover charge" that restaurants had added to their menu, just to sit down. For one of our dinners, we tried to not order any drinks and our waitress went "no. that is against the rules. The rules are you must order drinks." This made me miss eating in the US where the waiters are mostly kind, tap water is free, and no one makes you order anything. Luckily my gnocchi al ragu was delicious, so I didn't mind the forced water consumption so much.

Florence, Italy: Amelia, Jillian and I took the train here from Venice. Our hotel was really great, so that was a good surprise. We spent our days wandering the city. We climbed all 438 steps of the Duomo, saw the famous art work at the Uffizi, and ate far too much (or not enough?) gelato. I also had roasted chestnuts for the first time and they were amazing! Our dinners here were also really great. One night I managed to meet up with my friend Katie from DIS, and we all went to a bar with a live cover band. We also experienced the stereotypical Italian men who followed us around wanting to know our names and where we were from.

My second week of travelling was successful. I'm amazed that nothing went wrong. This was my first time making travel plans all on my own and it was a lot of work. We had to book the plane tickets, find the hotels and make reservations, figure out how to get from the airport to the hotels, etc. I used the internet for all my directions and reservations and everything ended up working out.

This week was a good break from the structure of the first travel break. I liked getting to make my own plans and being free to do exactly what I wanted to. However, I am looking forward to being part of a tour group for Turkey again. It is nice to not have to worry about transportation, getting lost, etc.

I also feel lucky that I had such great people to travel with. Karen, Jillian, and Amelia were all really fun be with and I think everyone got along well.

on to Turkey (Istanbul, Izmir, Bodrum)...

Back in Copenhagen... for 24 more hours

After 2 weeks of travelling, I am back in Copenhagen! I'm here until tomorrow night, when I leave to spend a week in Turkey. Here's a brief recap of the beginning of my trip, when I was travelling with my Human Health and Disease class through DIS (my study abroad program)

Poznan, Poland: It took about 12 hours to get here by bus, but the ride wasn't bad at all because I sat in the back with my friends and ended up having a good time. Poznan itself was... sad. Really really sad. There were all these buildings that looked like at one point they had been glamorous, but instead they were abandoned or in desperate need of repair. The city was gloomy and the people walking around matched their surroundings a little too well. You could tell that the city had not yet recovered from communism. Public transportation involved really old trams that everyone jammed themselves into, making sure to validate tickets every 15 minutes or risk getting an on the spot fine (or jail, if you don't have enough money on you).

Admittedly, my views about Poznan were tainted by what happened my first day there. I woke up feeling a little bit off, and ended up dramatically running out of our pathology lecture to go throw up in the bathroom. I spent the rest of the day either throwing up or sleeping, and alternating between being feeling feverish or freezing cold. Not good. Any time I tried to sit up in bed, I had to lie back down. I've never experienced anything like it before and I hope to never again. Luckily I woke up the next day feeling mostly better. I thought it was from the water (I found out too late that in Poznan the tap water is only fit for consumption after boiling), but now that I'm back in Copenhagen I found out that my host mom had the same thing happen to her on the same day so I'm guessing I actually got whatever that was in Copenhagen.

In Poznan we spent a morning shadowing a pediatrician around a hospital. This was eye opening. And sad. The hospital was very outdated, and one of the first things the pediatrician mentioned was that all of their equipment was really old and the government doesn't give them nearly enough money. We looked at hospitalized babies, like a premature baby that was really small and had jaundice and had an extremely puffy abdomen. Or a baby with fetal alcohol syndrome who was blind and has lived in the hospital for 1.5 years since it was born. I was still feeling kind of weak and dizzy from my day of illness and these children were hard to look at. At one point we were talking with a resident, and she was at the end of her call and so tired she could barely concentrate on talking to us.

Of course Poznan wasn't all bad. When I was feeling a little better I managed to go shopping in the largest mall I have ever seen. The exchange rate with the polish zloty was really good so everything was cheap. A welcome change from Copenhagen. I spent about $16 the whole time I was in Poland. The best was soft gingerbread from a small shop- a whole bag was only about $1. I bought some chocolate covered gingerbread for my host family. I also saw an opera, which was beautiful and I enjoyed it even if the subtitles were in polish.

Berlin, Germany: My new favorite city ever. I could write pages and pages about how much I loved Berlin. So much history! Such a great mosaic of old and new buildings! I saw the wall, checkpoint charlie, the Berliner Dom, went in the parliament building, ate dinner at a blind restaurant, went dancing until very late at night, went on a pub crawl with my entire group, bought perfume and marzipan, and got lost in the largest department store in Europe. That's only the beginning! Such a gorgeous place, I'm determined to go back there.

The bests "academic" part of the trip was our visit to Charité hospital. We went to a cadaver room and were shown dissected cadavers. We put on lab coats and gloves and were allowed to poke around. I held a brain in my hands. I picked up a heart, and lungs, my hands were inside of someone else feeling the small intestine or lifting up the liver. It's hard to wrap my brain around that.

I'll update more later (there's still Budapest, Venice and Florence)

Night before the 3 week break

Last night was Kultur Natten (Culture Night) a big celebration that Copenhagen has once a year. Things were open all over the city that are normally closed to the public. The city was packed with people. My friends and I toured Nytorg prison, climbed 7 flights of stairs in an attempt to find reindeer soup, went inside Christiansborg castle and made pancakes in a campfire outside. So it was a good night.

I've done a lot things in the past couple of weeks. I went to Legoland, went fishing on the Baltic, and toured Carlsberg Brewery. Last week was "midterm week", but like most weeks here I still had a good time and found myself completely free of stress. I like that I can take an exam here everyday for a week, write two papers and have two presentations and not be worried about them.

Tomorrow I'm leaving for 3 weeks. I'm spending a week in Poznan and Berlin with my Human Health and Disease class, then it's on to Budapest, Venice, Florence, brief 1 day back in Copenhagen and then Turkey! I'm ridiculously excited. I'd like to say that I'll blog about it in depth when I return but to be honest I probably won't.

Bye for now...

Bank of America

Bank of America put a hold on my card for suspicious purchases. When I called the operator he goes: "let's see... we have a purchase for 1 am at a 7-11 in...uhhh...kobe..koben..kobinvn...? Where is that? Is that in the US?"

Copenhagen is spelled København in Danish so he must have seen that. I thought it was pretty funny. Also 7-11's are open 24 hours in Denmark and they are everywhere and amazing. Not at all like the 7-11's at home. These ones are fancy (and expensive!!!) and sell baked goods and hot dogs in addition to candy bars and magazines, etc.

I'll update more later, right now I'm busy packing and organizing. Or I should be packing and organizing for my big trip tomorrow, I'm actually watching Danish television. I have no idea what's going on (wrestling and dating show combined is my best guess) but I still think it's pretty hilarious.

Summer house

I am typing this from my host family's "summer house" in northern Zealand. We are watching a movie and in true Danish fashion there are candles lit everywhere. Earlier we went for a walk along the beach and I spent the morning sitting by the fireplace, drinking coffee and eating fresh bread with blue cheese.

I pretty much got no sleep last night and last week was really busy (more on that later), so I'm appreciating a relaxing weekend. Plus dinner: shrimp with lemon over avocado for starters and roasted lamb for the main course. mmmm