Scandinavia the Beautiful

Last Tuesday my friend Brette, from Alpha Chi, who is studying abroad in London, arrived in Montpellier.  She hung out here for a couple of days, taking in the French air, and then we departed for Copenhagen.

Traveling from Montpellier is not an easy task, at least when you're on a budget.  We left for the airport around 7pm and arrived in London Stansted a couple of hours later.  Once there we waited about 2 hours for a bus that would take us to London Victoria station.  This was not a bad layover as I was very amused by the English accents. The couple sitting behind us had a little quibble, and I couldn't help but laugh.         

Eventually we arrived at London Victoria station, at this point it was about 3 in the morning. Here, we waited, amongst several snoring homeless people, another hour for the bus that would take us to Gatwick airport.  At this point we decided that traveling is not always glamorous.                                                           

After another long bus ride, we arrived at Gatwick airport only to be hassled through security. After eating a quick snack, we found some chairs and took an uncomfortable nap. We arrived in Copenhagen the next morning around 11am, tired but happy.

After dropping our stuff at the hostel, we made our way to the town square.  Here we took the suggestion of the hostel staff, and ate a frankfurter from a little stand.  It was delicious.  After a couple hours of people watching we returned to our hostel for a nap.  By this point, we were totally exhausted. 

When we woke up we went in search of dinner.  We decided on bagels and ice cream.  I have to say the food in Copenhagen was definitely my favorite part. Hot dogs, bagels, and ice cream?  Yes please!

The next day we boarded a bus to Sweden.  We visited the cities of Lund and Malmo.  They were both very pretty places (look at my pictures on facebook), but other than that nothing notable happened on our trip to Sweden.

The next few days we explored Copenhagen.  We found the statue of the Little Mermaid, Copenhagen's number one tourist attraction.  What was even more interesting than the statue, were the people posing by it; we saw everything from a big ol' grandpa, to a cute little girl with pigtails.

We also found a quiet street along a canal, with brightly colored buildings, and lots of boats. Brette and I both decided this was our favorite place, and visited multiple times.

The most interesting place we visited was the "freetown" Christiana.  According to our map it was created in 1971 by people living the core values of freedom, creativity, and community. Basically this means smoking a lot of pot.  We went to a local bar to soak it all in, and found people, young and old, smoking huge joints - honestly the width of my thumb!  It was definitely different than anything I'd seen before.

Another notable thing, in both Denmark and Sweden, was the amount of bike riders.  There were bikers everywhere!  Not only were bike-lanes readily available, there were also stop lights designed specifically for bike riders.  Also interesting, the people did not lock their bikes when left unattended.  There were bike-racks with hundreds of bikes left unlock - not something you see everyday.

In addition to the bikes, there was also a bounty of 7-elevens.  Starbucks is to Chicago as 7-eleven is to Copenhagen.  There was literally a 7-eleven on every corner.  It was exciting to see a familiar store, and it turned out to be a useful place to have around.  Brette and I ate quite a few meals at the 7-eleven - the croissants were buy one get one free!

Overall I found Copenhagen to be a very beautiful city with lots of parks and flowers (luckily the weather was unusually nice and we were able to enjoy the scenery.)  

Now I'm back in Montpellier for my last few weeks of school, trying to avoid the swine flu.

25 Days to Take Off

Here's some background information for those of you who don't know:

I'm currently studying French in Montpellier, France.  Montpellier is located in southern France near the coast of the Mediterranean Sea.  While I'm sure that this sounds magical to many of you, it's not.  

Don't get me wrong, I'm happy to have had the opportunity to study abroad and I've learned a lot, but Montpellier just isn't the most happening city.  The population is 350,000, which isn't so terrible, but after going to the Art Museum and visiting the medieval St. Paul's cathedral there isn't much else to do.  

I have about 16 hours of school a week, but little to no homework, leaving me with plently of free time.  I fill this time by going to weekly quiz nights, similar to American trivia nights, at local bars.  The questions are quite challenging and getting 50% of the answers correct is good. The prize for the winning team is a liter of Rum and a liter of coke, not too shabby.  My team has won once, thanks to the help of a random French man, who joined us in hopes of practicing his English.  

Picture with our prizes.

Another challenge I've faced, apart from my hours of free time, is the lack of French customer service.  The workers here are just not very friendly.  And it drives me crazy to stand in line at the grocery store for a half-an-hour.  Can they hire some more workers?

The French school system is also very different from the American one.  The professors don't believe in syllabi, therefore I never have any idea what to expect from my classes.  The tests are at random, and have random questions on them.  For example, in one of my grammar classes we spent two weeks learning about demonstrative pronouns and the next week took a test on the past tense.  A little crazy?  I think so.

So, needless to say, I'm very excited to get out of here.  I'm counting down the days - only 22 days in Montpellier and 25 until my summer adventures.