It Has Been a While

Hello everyone! It has been a while since I posted last and I apologize for the lack of communication on my part. The past two weeks have been filled with homework, research papers, presentations, and other little things here and there. Usually I think that teachers plan this type of mass work load (everyone knows that is the real reason that faculty lounges exist). However, here we have three week-long breaks throughout the semester, meaning that DIS teachers have to fit in assignments where they can; therefore, my judging is temporarily suspended!

In the past two days it has snowed about 7 inches (or at least what looks like 7 inches). So, tearfully, I had to bring my winter boots back out of the depths of my closet.

Besides playing in the snow all day every day this week I also learned some more Danish culture tid-bits! So here they are:

1. The Danish health care system: Once you are a temporary resident (like me) you get a CPR card in the mail. This little yellow card is the key to your health and happiness in Denmark. Just kidding, but it does lead to an increase in your general happiness! When you get sick all you have to do is call the phone number on the card and go see your doctor (whose name is also on your card) when they have walk in hours. My doctor is one block away, and despite the speculation that it takes forever to get a doctor's appointment, I called at 8am and had an antibiotic prescription within two hours. Take that Marquette Student Health Care! There was no co-pay, but this is because Danes pay a huge medical tax. 

2. Danish libraries: That little yellow CPR card I just talked about is also your library card. Not to mention you check out your books yourself. They have these really cool nifty little machines where you put your book inside a square outline, the book is scanned, and you are free to go. Finally the library website allows you to search and READ all books from home. All you have to do is enter your CPR number and a pin code.

3. Don't talk about money: One unspoken norm here in Denmark is quite the opposite of American tradition: You don't brag about money. My teacher explained this social rule perfectly today, "You just don't talk about it, it's rude. In fact, having an extra amount of money is shameful. Last week there was an article in the paper about the life of a Danish billionaire, and the man was insistent upon remaining anonymous because it's just a shame to have all that extra money when nobody else does."

4. Dane's like ticket machines: There aren't any long queue's here, and that is because 9 out of the 10 places you have to take a number. 

5. Easter is not called Easter here. Silly mistake, I should have known!

Tomorrow evening I leave for another week! This time my trip will be a study tour with my Core Course Class (European Humanities), and we shall be stopping by Strasbourg, Verdun, and Paris. I love you all and i'll talk to you later! 

Reebs

Studying/Chocolate/More Chocolate

Hi everyone! This week has gone by insanely fast (I blame science). My week consisted of mostly studying, and a crazy chicken enchilada night thrown in there on wednesday. It has been great to be back in Copenhagen....never before had I realized how magically clean the public transit system is here....On Monday I was seconds away from kissing the floors of the 5A bus I ride to school, then I thought, "nah, better not." In the past two days I have had two midterms and a paper due, so now that that is all over it's time for the weekend! As a celebration for having three midterms finished, Kira and I went to the famous cake/candy place I told you about a while ago: La Glace. This time we actually sat down and ordered cake and hot cocoa (or Varm Chokolade in danish). 

I ordered the Chocolate cake (that brown one if you were wondering), and Kira got the pink Raspberry tea-cake type of thing, and both cakes were almost perfect 10's on the desert rating scale. Although, since La Glace's hot chocolate definitely tastes like a melted down chocolate bar, I almost had a heart attack after consuming that AND the cake. Said consumption then resulted in the biggest sugar crash I eva did see. I actually think I am still sugar-crashing from it. 

Happy St. Patty's everyone!

Italy: part 2

OK! My computer is charging and we are good to go!

Jumping right back in:
After skipping around the rocks of Pompeii and hanging out with Mount Vesuvius and the Pompeii Dogs (which all have tags and are taken care of by the money the site brings in), we hopped on over to Sorrento.

Pompeii Dog!

Side note: If you are going to this area of Italy it is highly recommended that you hit up the Amalfi coast (of which Sorrento is a part of). I hear it is verra verra beautiful.
Once in the city of Sorrento we snuck through a hotel gate to see the ocean view (which was mind-blowingly gorgeous), and then went shopping on some of the small pedestrian streets. Each shop was tucked neatly against the next and bordered a cobble stone road that was barely as wide as a small car. Our most memorable stop was inside a Limoncello shop. The owner thought we were italian at first (score) and began speaking to us in rapid-fire italian. We just kinda stared at him (I find that happens a lot here in Europe...haha...it's the "Oh god, what are they saying to me" face.) until he realized that we, in fact, were not italian. After we told him where we were from, he offered us tastes of Sorrento Limoncello and Crema di Limoncello (which is basically a lemon flavored Baileys). He explained a little bit about how Limoncello is made (from lemon rinds) and asked us why we were in Sorrento. After a lovely conversation we bought some of his wares then left to wander the city streets some more.


That night we returned to Naples with plans to go to the best pizza place in the world: Da Michele. If you have seen the movie Eat, Pray, Love starring the lovely Julia Roberts, then you have seen Da Michele's. Unfortunately the line was eons long. (I just remembered I already told you about this). But anyway! While we were waiting for our food at another restaurant, Sarah and I went back to Da Michele's just to see how long the wait really was. We asked about how to get a number and magically ended up with a pizza (there was a lot of hand gestures going on and I can't exactly remember what happened). Long story short, we accidentally cut the whole line.....I have never been so scared in my life as I was when we were walking out of that restaurant with a pizza after only 5 min....death stares galore. Then, so as not to be rude to the other restaurant, we ran the pizza back to our hostel. Explaining all of this to Vic after disappearing for 15 minutes was probably harder than actually getting the pizza.

Thursday morning we caught the 8am train out of Naples and back to Rome. We went to many of the sights again since Vic hadn't seen them yet and because it was day time.

 Pompi Tiramisu! Thanks Ali and Johanna for telling us about this place! I couldn't find it at first, so I asked a lady in a bank and she helped us out. It didn't really occur to me at the time that walking into an italian bank and saying, "do you know where the Tiramisu is?" was an odd thing to do. Luckily she helped us anyway!

Oh! Speaking of italians: Every Italian we encountered was very friendly and helpful - the bank lady is a prime example. She didn't have to help the crazy americans, but she walked outside with me and told us exactly where to go, which just put a smile on my face for the rest of the day. Also there is a strange comfort that knowing that if you say, "Ciao" to a store on your way out, you will get a response of a million "Ciao's" in return (or a "ciao bella" if you are lucky).

 Trevi fountain during the day.

 Spanish Steps during the day. It was a semi rainy day (as you can see the umbrellas are abundant).

 The front of the vatican. See those people? That is not even a fifth of the line to get into the basilica. Yeah it's crazy! Luckily the line went by really fast.

We climbed to the very top of the basilica (or the cupola), and about half-way up the stairs spit us out at the top of the dome. The people look like ants! Sorry about the wire....I wasn't tall enough to see over it for once. 

 Sarah and I at the very top!

 Inside the Basilica.

The Pantheon at dusk.

Cappuccino's with chocolate and cinnamon.

That night we went to a restaurant called Miraggio's (recommended by Ali of course :) and we had another amazing italian dinner with some amazing house wine. We all got something different: Mediterranean Spaghetti for me, Veal for Vic (A for alliteration), and the Lasagna (Ali's favorite) for Sarah. We had Suppli for an appetizer, which is basically a deliciously glorified mozzarella stick. So again, thank you Ali and Johanna for helping us see and eat the best of Rome! It really wouldn't have been the same without your advice.

A Cannoli! Now that I have documented proof that I had indeed found a real cannoli, I can admit to the world that my mission of this trip was to find a real live CANNOLI. AND I DID IT! I would like to thank the movie The Master of Disguise for giving me endless inspiration and my brother Will for singing "...Mama is gonna make her little pistachio a cannoli tonight..." on a regular basis. 

Saturday we decided to spend the morning at a cafe (see above picture). And later as a perfect conclusion to the trip, Sarah and I sat on the side of the Fountain of the Naiads on the Piazza della Republica for a good 2 hours in the sunshine. I could have stayed for the rest of the day sitting in the sun...except sweet sweet swedish Sarah got sunburned. She's ok now though, and she says hi! 

This was such an amazing trip and I was definitely sad to see it end. However, coming back to Copenhagen was a comfort in and of itself. I hope you guys are having great days and enjoying life wherever you are! Talk to you soon!

Rebecca

Italy: part 1

Good morning everyone! I hope you all had a great week full of ponies, sunshine, and music.

We just got back from our trip to Italy on Saturday night, and I have definitely needed the past 24 hours to recover. Our first night was spent in Rome, and even though we landed at 7pm we still got in a full nights-worth of sight seeing.

Colosseum....and a taxi

 Roman Forum

 Trevi Fountain! You could hear the fountain from blocks away and It was packed with people even at midnight.

 Sarah at the top of the Spanish Steps. She so pretty!

Spanish Steps

We ate dinner at 12:15 am and then dragged ourselves back to our hostel. Rome at night was definitely worth the walk, and I don't know how anybody could ever get used to seeing monuments so old and majestic on a daily basis. 

Tuesday we caught a train, a bus, and a ferry to the Island of Elba (an island off the coast north of Rome). 

 Elba through a window

 Our ferry/cruise (which had a café and a ball pit/jungle gym on board).

These two weirdo's are Vic and Sarah: my traveling companion extraordinaires!

The view from our balcony! Elba was so beautiful even on a cloudy March day like this. I can't even imagine what it would be like during the summer time. Oh wait, yes I can, it would be MAGICAL.

Napoleon's house! After he was exiled from France for the first time he was sent to rule Elba. I wonder if that is Napoleon's bathtub as well....

That night we went down into the city, Portoferraio, for dinner. At the suggestion of our hotel hostess we had dinner at a restaurant that specialized in Elban style cuisine (which apparently involves a lot of sea food). We were even served wine that is made and sold only in Elba. The whole menu was in Italian, so I picked a safe looking dish that had pistachio gnocchi in it. I must have missed something though because when the waiter put my plate in front of me there were two massive crawfish/shrimp things staring back at me. 

Wednesday am there was a big rainstorm and our ferry was canceled due to the weather. Luckily there was an even bigger ferry, so we took that one. Yay for modern technology!

After a long day of traveling and barely making various modes of transportation we made it to Naples! 

Naples was...interesting...and by interesting I mean kinda sketchy. There were multiple trash piles spilling into the streets at every corner that looked as if they had been sitting there for days. The bigger side walks were lined with the homeless and street vendors. Some of the buildings on our street had plants growing through the roof's and through cracks in the plaster, and countless other buildings seemed to be rotting from the inside out. Every time we left the hostel we were warned of pickpockets, and every time we returned we had to be buzzed in through three separate locked doors. Albeit we did only see the central section of the city, so perhaps the rest of Naples is not as impoverished. On the positive side: the pizza in Naples is fantastic. Over the course of 1.5 days we had 5 pizzas, and they were all phenomenal.

Also as you can see I didn't take any pictures in Naples...because I was afraid my camera would get stolen. But the pizza was great! And the people inside all the restaurants and at our hostel were very nice.

Thursday we went to Pompeii and Sorrento. We met a lovely couple from Canada who are backpacking through Europe for 5 months (after previously studying the French language in France for 4 months). They were checking out Pompeii for the day then heading back to Rome to catch a flight to Greece (woaaah!). They gave us some directions to the best coffee shop in Rome and wished us luck in Naples before we parted ways. I don't have a picture of them but they were wonderful; classic Canadians being nice.

To preserve the preserved people of Pompeii molds are made to display on site, while the real remains are in museums across the world (and in the Archeological Museum in Naples). Most of the people of Pompeii escaped, however the 2000 that didn't mostly died of asphyxiation.

The baths. On the right is our tour guide Pascal: a sassy, spit-fire, tell-it-like-it-is Italian historian.

Hot baths in Pompeii.

This is the biggest house in Pompeii! Most houses had gardens inside their homes and a section of the ceiling was left open so that rain could drain into a pool in the front room of the house. This water was mostly used for house-hold chores. Mosaic tile was also a symbol of affluence, and there are many houses in Pompeii with their original tile floors still intact.

gladiator!!!

I think this was the cemetery?

TO BE CONTINUED! My computer is about to die!

What happens when I live on my own:

Hello everyone! Its been a pretty laid back week here in floogey flag (<what the milwauk-ers call Copenhagen). So here are some of the things that have happened to me in the past few days. I'll keep it short. No pictures unfortunately, so i'll just have to make do with words.

Yesterday I finally decided to do my laundry. Unfortunately some of my clothes are now Build-a-Bear sized. Although, one shirt actually shrunk perfectly! It used to be a long sleeved shirt and now it is short sleeved. Hey, i'm not complaining, It had to happen sometime.

Friday night I went to a cocktail bar with some other humans. (Cocktail bars = the place that people go to feel fancy and drink socially acceptable fruity drinks). The first cocktail I ordered seemed innocent enough: Honolulu Sunrise. What could that be? Meh. Probably some pineapple juice and orange juice with rum or something. However, there was nothing fruity about the cocktail I was given. In fact, I think it was the cocktail that the Dos Equis man probably drinks. The next drink I ordered was called "Rosemary Me," and it was much sweeter. The bartender tried to warn me about how sweet it was, and as much as I would have liked to pretend I was a strong-drink-only-bad-ass, all I could say was, "No please, sweet is good, trust me."

Last night I went with Kira and some others from the Kolleguim to a hookah bar downtown. I had never tried hookah before, so I thought, "why not?" We got Lemon-Mint flavored hookah, and it tasted just as weird as it sounds.

Today will consist of packing for our Italy trip tomorrow and making sure I have everything set to leave. Even though I feel settled in Copenhagen, I am very ready for a change of scenery.

A fra poco! Stay thirsty my friends!