Cruise to Copenhagen

There is no way I can keep up with the NaBloPoMo festivities, but I will at least try to blog more often then I have. Things have been piling up! But not the snow yet, so that's good.

Last weekend was one of the International Student Union's biggest events: The Booze Cruise to Copenhagen!!


The basic plan is take a giant cruise ship to Copenhagen over night, get really drunk (I didn't get that drunk--just enough to have a good time!), and then spend the day in Copenhagen hungover, then get on the boat again and do it all one more time and then you're back in Norway, sleepy and maybe hungover again. I know it sounds ridiculous, but it was actually quite fun since I didn't over do it like some people, and they had a good DJ on the boat.



My roomies in our cramped room. One Canadian, one Norwegian, one Italian and one American. see if you can guess which is which. A clue: the American is not pictured. The Norwegian is not the blonde this time--she's on the right but I think she dyes her hair to be not blonde.



This was one of the views as we shipped off. See you in about 36 hours, Oslo!

In Copenhagen itself, there's a lot more old architecture than in Oslo, but other than that not much different. The language differences were weird, since I've been learning Norwegian, so a lot of words were familiar but just looked like they were spelled wrong. For example, in Norwegian "fruit" is "frukt", but in Danish it's "frugt". And "water" is "vann" in Norwegian and "vand" in Danish. It is similarly strange like this in Sweden.

Some pictures from around the city:



I love when birds perch on dramatic statues. I'd almost suggest we make a theme out of it on the blogs, what do you think? I have a somewhat unfair advantage, perhaps, being in Europe.




The human element. Love those red boots.



Here's Copenhagen's Occupy movement. They had a sign that says: "Trees don't grow on money". Clever, and mostly true. In a literal sense anyway. In another sense, I got paid to plant trees, so does that count as trees growing on money?



Some vines of awesome colors growing up a building. Not sure how it got that way, but I like it.




The entrance to Krisitana (sp?) district, where police don't bother to go, and no one paves the roads...it's an alternative community, where they burn certain plants recreationally. Pictures aren't allowed inside, seemingly the only rule other than maybe some hippy stuff like "love everyone".



Ah, the sun. Maybe the best thing about Copenhagen is they had sun on this day, where Norway has been cloudy for several days.

After one more night of dancing, I was able to get up and face Oslo. As we slowly passed the islands and houses I was able to take my time and appreciate where I am. The Way to the North.



I survived. To get coffee. Norwegian coffee is strong, just like I like it. More on food and daily life in the next entry!