Odense!

ok, i really should be preparing for my exam, but i realize that i really should write my blog entry on our trip to Odense

but before i begin, i'm wondering if my writing style bothers people ._. cause i read some of my friends' blogs and they all write in complete sentences with proper punctuation, capitalization and such so i'm wondering if the way i write is bothering people...but if it is, i'm still not going to change =P (at least i know the difference between there, they're, their and too, to, two!)

Tuesday - so i had class, but i left 30 min early to meet up with Dora and Amy (we were just reviewing in class - don't worry)

i did buy a mini sandwich and croissant from fotex before i went though - the croissant was sooooo good :)

we actually forgot to get off at Norreport and had to ride back one station lol looks like those 3 long days in Berlin made us forget the metro

anyways, our tickets were so expensive! X| i think it came out to be 396 dkk per person! but then again, Odense is pretty far away - you have to cross the sea to get there...that's probably why it was so expensive haha

it takes about 1 hour 15 minutes to get there by train

but i think it was worth a visit even though Odense is a really tiny town

our first stop (after wandering around cause we were a little lost): the H.C. Andersen Museum

the admission price is actually 60 dkk but "children" 0-17 yrs old get in free and i got away with being 17 yrs old =P yay for saving money! haha

all the pictures are up on facebook, so you can take a look there - but i honestly didn't know that H.C. Andersen wrote sooo many of the fairytales that i read when i was little! he wrote The Emperor's New Clothes, The Ugly Duckling, Thumbellina, The Princess and the Pea, and a lot of other stories

and i also found out that the book i read, Daughter of the Forest by Juliet Marillier is based on one of his fairytales as well

we spent around an hour in the museum which included a history of his entire life with a couple artifacts, a library of his work translated into different languages (apparently they say he's the author with the work translated into the most languages - i think it was over 150?), a replica of his childhood home, and some of his paper cutouts (i thought they were really cool)

Dora and i also sat down and listened to a recording of The Emperor's New Clothes - it was pretty nice and childhood memories came back =)

then we headed outside to watch the show - it was basically a run down of some of his fairytales accompanied by song and dance and some words, but all the performers spoke in Danish

the narrator though spoke in Danish, English and German haha so after a slur of Danish, you'd hear, "The Princess and the Pea!" and then some German

my favorite is definitely the mini performance of The Emperor's New Clothes cause the guy who played the emperor was hilarious


so after this performance, we went to Sct. Albani Kirke and walked/sat around the garden behind it

and then we went to look at Hans Christian Andersen's childhood home, but since it was closed already we just looked at the outside

random note: while walking along the street, we heard someone blasting techno music from inside their apartment - A LOT of people listen to techno music here (i always hear it coming out of cars when i leave my window open)...it's kinda weird lol

next: shopping! =)

but like i said, it's a small town so there really wasn't anything to buy, but there was some interesting window shopping

i did get a strawberry and vanilla swirl of soft ice coated in chocolate =D

it was good except my experience was kinda ruined by the massive amount of flying ants (you know, those big ones with white wings?)/flies flying around the shopping street

so after that, we went to another church - Sct. Hans Kirke

it's near the King's Garden? and we were thinking about hanging out there but it turned out to be small and there weren't that many flowers either haha - we were like...this is it?

but even if it was nice, we really wanted to get away from all the flying ants

i really like visiting the churches here cause they're so beautiful - you don't really see churches with beautiful carvings and such in the US

Dora saw that there was a museum for Denmark's most famous composer? and we walked to the museum which is also near the Odense Concert Hall
the museum had already closed so once again, we just looked inside lol

then we took the train back to CPH and ate at some restaurant in Norreport that all the ISUP students seem to know about cause it's cheap Sat-Tues haha

if you buy a drink, everything else is 50% off so i bought a frozen limonade that had lime, lemon, ice, elderflower, and MINT in it =) it kinda tasted like something you'd be able to drink at a Vietnamese restaurant or something but it was still pretty tasty despite it's weird green color

my meal was a big plate of really really really really really good lasagna =) it was nice and hot and the cheese wasn't that heavy and the inside was like some cannellonis that i ate in a good Italian restaurant in Austin

so yup, i finished the whole thing cause it was that good =)

then we headed back to Porcelaenshavn with really full stomachs!

random note: another thing that i noticed (i don't know if i've mentioned it before since i always forget what random tidbits i've written and which ones i have written haha) is that people in grocery stores place the "next customer" divider thing after they place their things on the conveyor belt (so i'd place the divider between my things and the customer after me)

i have no idea if this is just their way of dividing things or being nice to the person after them - i just thought i was interesting since we always place the divider between our own things and the person before us in line

while i'm here, i'll just write about what i did yesterday (Thursday) - i went to Kongens Nytorv after class to look at the sales one last time (didn't buy anything cause there isn't really anything left worth buying)

but i did buy a ridiculously yummy tasting belgian waffle with soft ice on top =) haha more ice cream!

looks yummy right? :D it was

then back home to work on marketing...which i should be doing now - i read information about our exams and we have to be in the examination room 30 min before the exam or we can't take it! 30 min??? i have no idea why we even need to be there that early considering the exam lasts 4 hours but oh well, i'll have to be there at early next week!

Malmö!

so, yesterday i reached the halfway point! =(

3 weeks before, i landed in here in CPH absolutely miserable and 3 weeks from now i'll be leaving - noooo =(

but enough of that, there's still 3 weeks to go and lots of stuff to do!

yesterday i went to Malmö!

first, met up with Claire and Fey at central station where be bought train tickets (if you travel in pairs, it's cheaper apparently) to Malmö! i love saying Malmö haha it's such a cute name

so when we got there, we walked around for a bit and saw the HSB Turning Torso from a distance

we also saw a fish market =) and since we were there pretty early stalls were still open

then, we went to the Technical Museum, where there's lots of cool stuff - you can see how the ferries used to look like on the inside, old cars, planes, inside a control tower, a full length submarine, bicycles, etc. just lots of cool stuff =)







and next was the Malmö Museer which was in the Malmöhus Castle (which is apparently Scandinavia's oldest surviving Renaissance castle) and there's just basically stuff from waaay back in the past and onto settlements and stuff in the middle ages and things like that - then you can go see the king's bedchamber and antechamber - i'm not helping much with my description but it's just a loooot of stuff in there



then thing Claire and i went to Malmö for - shopping! i was kinda disappointed, kinda not

and whoever said it was cheaper to buy things in Sweden were wrong - it really depends on what you buy

for example, at H&M, buying things at regular price is a just little cheaper than buying it in Denmark - and their sale items are waaay cheaper too (but then again, it said "even more on sale" outside)
but there were barely an sizes left, so it was kinda hard to find things - i was lucky enough to buy two 10 sek belts (around $1.40) though cause i'm so skinny haha - there were only xs left

however, at ZARA (even though it was the "second markdown"), some stuff on sale was more expensive than in CPH (like the dress and jacket i bought), but i did find another jacket that i'd never seen before

the sign said 99 sek, but when the girl rang it up, it was 79 sek - around $11
it kinda looks funny with flash - i think it looks cooler in real life, but anyways who cares? it was an $11 jacket from ZARA - can't get that in the US

so it was a semi-nice shopping experience - lots of stuff was gone at H&M, there's definitely more stuff at the H&Ms in CPH

but we only went into one H&M (there were 3 on the same street lol) =\ i kinda wanted to go into the other ones cause i know there's different things in each one

anyways, we ate ice cream for lunch lol i got cinnamon and toblerone
Claire tried the cinnamon but she thought it was gross lol but i loved it =) it's the best i've tasted so far since they actually seem to use a decent amount of cinnamon

so we walked around some more trying to find the souvenir shop Fey saw the last time he was there, but it was closed =( so we just went paddle boating on the canal - it was pretty fun =)



then we walked around and looked for a place to eat dinner and some girls were handing out free chips! they kinda tasted like Ruffles...which makes me wonder if they are Ruffles in disguise haha

we ended up at Mando steakhouse and we figured it'd be good since there were a lot of people


it was nice to finally get the chance to sit down and have a nice dinner at a restaurant - haven't done that at all since i've arrived cause everyone mostly cooks

and it was so nice sitting outside in such nice weather ♥ oh yea, the forecast said it was gonna be rainy all day, but we were lucky cause it didn't rain at all while we were there =)

after dinner we walked to St. Peter's church, but we couldn't go in since it closed at 6 =( but at least we saw the outside

next, we walked all the way to this nice park and chased the flocks of ducks there haha - there were so many of these ducks everywhere!
random note: when we were walking there, we saw a bride-to-be? (she had a veil on) playing in a fountain in front of the opera house - i'm thinking it was her bachelorette party or something haha

i think i have to agree with Fey that these tall hedges were the coolest part of the park - there's three streets like this all next to each other and they're super tall!

and finally, we headed back to the Malmö central station, but not without spending the last of our Swedish kroner first

and what better to spend it on than a towering swirl of soft ice cream?
and i have to admit, the ice cream did make the long walk back to the train station more bearable haha

took the train back to Valby and rode the bus back to Porcelaen since the metro (subway) was closed and metro buses are so slow

and thus ended my fun but exhausting day in Malmö!

random note: i forgot to mention something that a Danish guy told me before - he said that Europeans always comment on how Americans don't know the countries in Europe, but at the same time, lots of Europeans don't know where a lot of the states are in the US (he didn't know where Wisconsin was) - which is totally true but Americans are still horrible at geography though since a lot of people don't know where all the states are either

ridiculously beautiful!

ok before i get into what i did today, i'll talk about what i did yesterday!

went to class, ate lunch, it started raining, watched a couple episodes of Bones and went to a shopping mall i looked up online called Fisketorvet

shopped around - bought this jacket for 100 kr from H&M - it was the last one!
it's pretty nice inside - of course not as nice a mall in HK, but nice enough
they have a pond/waterfall thing with fish in it
and there's a view of the harbor from behind

so yup, spent a couple hours there and looked around

then i went grocery shopping and bought some interesting stuff

you can buy a cup of mousse for dessert haha

and here's so yogurt - there's two compartments - i'm guessing you mix some fruit in with the yogurt?

yup and that was my afternoon! then i watched more Bones haha and made dinner for myself =)

pasta with chicken, tomatoes, tomato sauce and bits of spinach

dessert was bread with nutella and bananas - yum~

and then got ready for the Mid-Summer Party at Vega

it was a really small place - actually supposedly it's bigger, but the other floors were closed so there was only this room and like an outside (smoking) balcony - which we spent the most time in cause it was SO HOT in this room - geez, the windows weren't even open or anything

we also got one free jager shot
my opinion? looks like cough syrup, tastes like cough syrup - gross

also tried half of another shot and my friend's rum and coke - geez it tasted like it was half rum and half coke haha..and a sip of my friend's pear cider - it was good!

anyways, it was a fun night =) met some new people, hung out with people, danced a little (you know, it was like good, wholesome dancing haha no bumpin or grindin - and people say asians can't dance? i say europeans aren't that great either lol)

random note: it's also not really that fun when the room is freakin hot and a lot of people don't wear deodorant X|

then we finally went home around 1:40ish am? had to wait for the bus - and since the metro wasn't working, we had to take the metro bus (apparently some people didn't know that the metro is a subway - that wasn't working, so we took the bus that goes to all the metro stations) - and it was just our luck that the one we needed to get on just left when we got there, so we had to wait 20 min for the next one

and then i got home, showered, went to sleep and voilà, thursday was over!

NOW it's on to today =) getting tired or reading? well, you have to at least hear about this castle, cause it's absolutely gorgeous!

today, amy, dora and i went to Frederiksborg Slot, which is a Renaissance castle and also houses Denmark's Museum of National History

it took us a metro ride, s-tog ride, and two buses to get there (it's pretty far away)

anyways - here's the castle!!

doesn't look that big but it's huuugee - it's three floors - the first two floors are actually rooms that have been restored after a fire in 1859 (it was built in the late 1500s) and the third floor is a modern museum of the monarchy in the 20th/21st century - which wasn't that interesting

but anyways, my favorite part of the castel? definitely the Great Hall and the church! absolutely gorgeous! =D it was definitely worth coming here - too bad for the people we invited but decided not to come

Church

Great Hall

and my favorite part of the rooms was the ceiling! haha but seriously, don't you wish your ceilings were this pretty?

the rest of the castle pictures will be on fb, but anyways, onto my next favorite thing! the garden outside! i feel like agnes, but instead of "it's so FLUFFY" i wanna yell "it's so pretty i wanna die!" yes, lame i know but seriously, it's soooo pretty there - i love it ♥

then after walking around we ate dinner - i ate a pita and it was really good too - it had shawarma inside and it was only 35 kr for this huge thing



and of course, a beautiful day would not be complete with some soft ice :D

i also bought a souvenir cup from a store there since it was sooo much cheaper than the ones at Nyhavn - so this cup was only 39 kr compared to cups at Nyhavn which cost 59-79 kr and they're also all the same cups so yea, got mine a whooole lot cheaper =D

and when we headed back, we all fell asleep on the s-tog haha lucky that amy woke up right at Nørreport or else we would have missed our stop lol

and that's how my lovely friday went!

random note: i wore my new zara black jacket yesterday, and i think i've found my new fav jacket :)