Before I left home, I did a bit a research and decided that it might be fun to check out Egeskov Castle. Of course, once I got here, I found out that it’s not open this time of year. Someone suggested Kronborg Castle because it is “Hamlet’s Castle”. The problem with that is, from what I can gather, Kronborg Castle was built after Hamlet was written (I guess I’ll have to go the UK to see the real Hamlet Castle). The other problem with Kronborg is that it takes a long time to get there. I finally settled on Rosenborg Castle in Copenhagen.

So, this morning I took a train back to Zealand and into Copenhagen. The castle has short viewing hours, so I hightailed it up to the city center. Along the way, I went through the city hall square:

I’m not entirely sure what’s so fun about the constant fear of being pooped on.

When I got to the castle, I had one of those “Wait, that’s it?” moments. Rosenborg is not an especially big place and the interior didn’t so much make me think castle as it did fancy house. I was not impressed.

Maybe this is why the castle is so small.

Afterwards, I went over to Round Tower:

Certain roads in Copenghagen are for foot traffic only and have lots of shops. There aren’t many places that sell what I would think of as souvenirs, and a fair number of the ones that do are run by people who certainly don’t look native to Denmark. There’s no sense of authenticity at all.

When I got done with the tower I happened upon an international market and ate lunch. It’s a bit odd going to a foreign country and then eating food that is specifically foreign to that country, but after my prior experience I was glad to eat food from somewhere else, anywhere else for that matter.

I wandered around the city for a while after that, but when it started to get dark, I headed back. All told I was out for about 11 to 12 hours, 3 of which were on the train, most of the rest I was on my feet. What I really need to do now is figure out how to say Ibuprofen in Danish.

[Joe]

Tonight we went out to dinner with the professor and a student from Finland. We went to a place that was approximately called kraez, but I’m not going to take the time to properly render it here. I ordered the beef salad partially because I could have sworn that the menu said it had deep-fried parsley on it, and that was too intriguing to pass up. Sadly, I saw no such thing on my salad.

Conversation started out about Vikings and their ways. The professor commented that probably the reason vikings were no longer around was that they had raided the people around them so much that there wasn’t much left to loot. I thought (to myself) that this was a fantastic example to use when discussing liberal policies, specifically their plan to take money from one group and give it to another, always assuming there will be more to take. Apparently I wasn’t the only one with the financial situation on my mind as after the professor got some beer in him, he seemed to want to make it the focus of the conversation.

I’ve heard it before but I was annoyed to hear the professor say that in schools they teach that in order to get rich someone else has to become poor, so you should “find your victim now”. It is usually my policy in these situations to say something that seems insightful but is really little more than a tautology, especially since I have a vested interest in not aggravating him, but this galled me. I pointed out that one can create wealth, but he quickly dismissed my that as irrelevant. It became apparent that I was dealing with the kind of person mentioned in the article that Jenny linked to recently:

“By thinking that because they are knowledgeable — or even expert — within some narrow band out of the vast spectrum of human concerns, that makes them wise guides to the masses and to the rulers of the nation.”

He then went on to ask a question, saying that now that communism and capitalism have failed, what do we do? He’s a smart guy, and the question seemed to be so ignorant that I started to wonder if there wasn’t some agenda behind it. Partially, I think there’s just a certain amount of megalomania, or at least elitism, that comes from these kind of people thinking that everyone else is too stupid to run their own lives. Needless to say, I was relieved when the meal was over.

Of course, people around here are driven by some strange need to, after eating a meal, go somewhere else and have a drink, whether it be coffee or beer. So we ended up walking across the street to a bar. I had some misgivings about the place, which may have come from the sight of the Domino’s noid-like statues proudly displaying their sizeable noid-hoods. I had to go to the bathroom and snapped this pic on the way:

It wasn’t until after I had my camera out that I realized the precarious situation I was in, especially if someone opened that door. It’s probably a good thing that I cut myself off after one drink.

[Joe]

This is right in front of the university:

The design wrapped around the obelisk seems to be part of a common theme around the campus. I’ve yet to figure out if it means anything.

I mentioned before that the hall that connects the university felt like the Death Star, but I think it could equally well fit into Asimov’s universe. The hall does have windows, but they all seem to look out on patios that are surrounded on all four sides. I can’t fathom the purpose of these patios, other than to allow people to be rained on. In New York, the lack of outside looking windows would be a grievous offense, but that’s not necessarily the case here for a couple of reasons. One is that it rains and rains and rains and two, when it’s not raining, Denmark is still a rather boring place. It may not be as pancake flat as some of the places that I’ve been to in West Texas, but it certainly compares.

It seems as though a good 90 percent of the houses here are all of this same design, brick building with that same style roof. They all look like they came out of some WWII movie, which makes sense, I suppose. And yes, we did finally get some sunlight this morning.

I don’t want to jinx it, but I think I have the weekend to myself. If things go well I’m going to try to find the appropriate place to recite that monologue I memorized back in high school.

[Joe]

For dinner last night, we went to a cafe on campus. I drew a few smiles when in desperation I just asked ‘What are those sandwiches over there?’. Today we figured out that we have to take a bus to the station and transfer from there to the one that gets us home, so we decided to eat out downtown tonight. It took us a while to find a place that actually sold food. Our first stop only sold “the drink”. I knew something was wrong at the ‘restaurant’ when the person we were ordering from told us she was a volunteer, but it wasn’t till after we paid that she told us that we were at some type of YMCA thing. Oh well, in for 50 ore, in for 5 kroner as they say. What we ended up eating were three different kinds of Smørrebrød. One was topped with liver paté and some sort of beet thing. I’ve washed my hands and still haven’t gotten the stink off. Another had slices of hard-boiled egg and something that was referred to as a curry. The last had a slice of ham topped with “Italian salad”, which my Italian colleague didn’t seem to recognize. I’ve decided to consider it an “authentic” experience.

I’ve begun to pick up bits and pieces of the language. I learned what lufthavn means before leaving the airport, but most of the words I now know are prepositions or other short words. Nothing that’s going to help me order food anytime soon. I guess there’s some talk of going out to eat with the professor here on Friday. It would be nice to have some real food.

[Joe]

I have to say, Denmark has been an interesting experience. There’s so much that’s fundamentally the same as in the US, that the things that are different seem all the stranger. Breakfast this morning was a good example. When we got to the place there was a table set for us with a plate of fruits, cheese and some sort of salami type meat. We were offered a poached egg and pointed to the cereals and yogurt. I went for the cereal, and picked up the carton that I thought was more likely to be milk. It was labeled Formula A38, if I remember correctly. Anyway, I’m now pretty sure these people don’t know how to make a proper bowl of cereal. *shudder*

People here are generally helpful, but also at times brusque in their formality. When my fellow visitor asked to have his egg scrambled, he got a very quick, “I don’t do scrambled eggs”.

Residential areas seem to be all residential. This proved to be the doom of my ill-fated attempt to find food last night. I ended up eating the sugra-free Mentos I picked up at the Bus station so that I’d have change which I didn’t need. I paid 15 kroner for them, which is a ridiculous sum.

The main campus of Syddansk Universitet (University of Southern Denmark) is almost completely connected by one hallway. There’s even a painted path for vehicles. I felt like I was in the Death Star. For lunch we went down the hall to the ‘kantine’. Aside from the sandwiches, all food was priced the same by weight. I saw some stuff there that must have come directly from Willy Wonka’s secret stash, but I decided to stay with things I could at least make a guess at.

The bus schedule is a difficult thing to figure out, even for someone who lives here, which is why I ended up walking to the store and then home tonight. The name of the department store here is ‘Bilka’, which I find terribly amusing. I went in to try to find some shower soap and shampoo, but the thing about being in a country where “everyone” speaks English but everything is in Danish is that I am effectively illiterate and to some degree deaf. I had to make almost a complete circuit around the Walmart-esque store to find the toiletries section. For a little while I couldn’t tell if I was looking at shampoos or some sort of feminine hygiene product. I then went looking for soap that wasn’t just meant for hands. For a long while the only stuff I could find was ‘High School Musical 3′ branded shower gel. The practical side of me told me to just buy it, every other bit of me told me otherwise. Thanks goodness for manly soap like Axe.

Before we left the university to head home tonight, I stupidly commented on the fact that it wasn’t raining. Out of nowhere on the way home from the store, came a hard wind and stingingly cold rain. So, for the second night in a row I got soaked and had to hang my clothes to dry.

[Joe]