København

Hej friends and family!

Yesterday I came home from a trip out to Copenhagen.  It was an exchange student trip planned by some Rotary students.  I was fortunate enough to here word of the trip through a girl in Rotary who goes to Vejen Gymnasium og HF, the same school I go to.  It was a very fun weekend and I learned a lot about being more comfortable with talking to strangers and with transportation.  It is required to learn to talk to strangers.

While in København most of the exchange students went to a concert in Tivoli.  Tivoli is an big park with roller coasters and other fun things almost directly in the center of København.  The concert was Alphabeat, which I didn't know of before I decided to go.  I think there music is pretty good though, and very european.  I met a lot of new friends and met a few people from Canada and USA.  I had a lot of fun while I was there and gained a lot of new experiences.  I will list the new things that I learned from my trip.

1) How to get a train ticket to travel across the country.

2) Never rent a hostel called CPH Airport Hostel (it is hardly even a shelter)

3) How to ask directions from 500 people and still be lost even though they are saying the directions in english.

4) "Du taler engelisk?" and normally they will say "Yes I do"

5) Don't order any drinks ever... they cost more then the meal.

6) When you get on a train, find the section that says your destination or else your cabin of the train will go somewhere else.  And find the section with the least amount of sleeping people.  (this prevents them from waking up and yelling at you in Danish)

7) Rotary is bigger then AFS, so pay attention to their events as well and sneak in with their groups.

8) It's okay to meet random people who are on exchange and pretend you already know everything about them... exchange students are your best friends.

9) Latin Americans kiss on one cheek, Italians kiss on both, and everyone else... try not to kiss them or they freak out.

Maybe I should explain some of these learning experiences.

I left Friday morning after first period to go to the train station.  I had my backpack with enough cloths to make it through the weekend.  I felt like such a world traveler getting on a train in a place I now call my home town and going to the big city in a country that I consider myself a part of.  It was really cool.  So we traveled the two and a half hours on train to the city and met a few people there.  We checked into a hostel called DanHostel.  A very nice 19 story hotel.  We had rented the whole room so it was not like more people would come in and sleep with us.  I had reservations at another Hostel, but decided not to go after going there once.  (It took an hour to get there by train then bus, then a half hour walk, and it was not a very nice building... with a cardboard sign)  So I took the safe path and just stuck with the hotel that seemed safe and close to where we were hanging out.  

The first night I had the concert with Alphabeat.  After that I found one of my friends from Hungary who had been on the same soccer team as I was at introcamp.  We decided to invite some girls and go walk the town.  We walked for a few hours and then split up the group at about... 1 am.  Thats when I went with 4 of the girls and we went to a club.  It was a very boring club.  The most exciting thing all night was a fight between a girl and guy where a lot of anger went into a really really hard slap.  I just tried to get out of the way.  So that was friday night.

Saturday was basically a long walking day.  Some of the guys went to get breakfast and ended up at a really nice place.  The only problem was there was no menu and there was no english speaking waiter.  So although the buffet was easy enough to eat from, I really wish I had not gotten the 30 kr chocolate milk.  I guess all drinks cost that much, including water, but still, that is 5 dollars for water or pop or milk with no refill ever.  So it was a bit confusing to order food that day.  Then we walked that night to and I met a nice girl from the States and talked with her while the group of 16 of us walked around all night.  I split from the group and went home around 1 that night, so I got plenty of rest for the train ride home.

Over all it was just a lot of walking.  It was a lot of fun though, and was cheaper then going to a big city in the USA.  

If you have any question just write a comment... cause I still need more comments, and you don't have to sign up to post a comment!  Sorry I can not post pictures from this weekend, my camera is doing some weird thing and won't turn on... BLAH.  I will post pictures if I find some from facebook off my friends photos.

Cya