hej!

it's been a really busy couple of weeks here in copenhagen. i had my first danish celebrity encounter! there is a tv show here called X-Factor, which is pretty similar to american idol. i watched it with my host family last week. the next day, alex and i were walking down stroget, one of the main walking streets, and who should we see, but one of the contestants from X-Factor! there was a large crowd gathered around him and he was playing music right in the middle of the street. he was actually pretty good. here's a picture:other than that, alex and i tried to go the carlsberg brewery, but it was closed when we got there. we'll have to try again. i also drove to the ocean with my host mom last weekend. it was beautiful, but kinda cold.

i just got back from the short study tour with DIS. my group went to odense, kolding, and arhus. the first day we visited the hans christian andersen museum in odense. it wasn't terribly excited, but the man was a master of paper cutouts. see: (we weren't allowed to use flash)

we then continued on to kolding where we visited the kolding castle. it was very pretty, but we weren't there very long. we spent the night in kolding and had an amazing danish buffet in the dungeon of the castle. the next day we traveled on to arhus. we stopped along the way at a scenic viewpoint (mom, you would have loved it!) and the tour leaders produced a bottle of alcohol. it was gammeldansk, a traditional danish liquor. it smelled and tasted like medicine, but did have a lovely warming effect.

once in arhus, we had the night to ourselves. we mostly walked around the city and ate dinner before going back to the hostel. the next day we went to the arhus art museum where one of the exhibits was a chopped-up horse carcass. needless to say i was a bit horrified. after that we had time to wander around arhus and one of the girls on the trip and i ventured to the old town in arhus. it was adorable! they had old-fashioned shops and exhibits and stuff and really good old-fashioned pastry. that was pretty much the end of the tour and then we headed back to cph.

here are a few more pictures from the trip:
this is a picture from the scenic area. there is a song that goes along with drinking gammeldansk that our leaders sang. Skol!


this is old town arhus. so cute!


ok, so this isn't actually from the trip, but i like this picture!

hejhej for now!!
caitlinincopenhagen