Thanksgiving 2.0

As soon as we’re getting into the Christmas cheer we realize it’s still November and Thanksgiving has not even happened yet. So us Americans realigned our priorities and continued to plan our 2^nd Annual Thanksgiving Day Feast for Foreigners (I just made up that name).

All the grub

Last year in HK we used the university’s restaurant grade kitchen facility to cook for about 20 people. This year we upped our game a bit by cooking in a world-class Tietgen kitchen for roughly 24 people. Turkey isn’t popular meat over here so everyone was eager to not only eat Turkey, but see how we were going to manage to cook a whole one! Along with our normal 20 casseroles, we also introduced Denmark to Hot Wing dip and shipped in canned pumpkin for pumpkin pie and cookies. Let's just say that country will never be the same again.

The set up

Us girls

It was another successful feast and we cook a trip around the table to find out what everyone was thankful for this year. It was a great excuse to get several different groups of people together. We had both Debbie and my’s kitchen mates, Andrew’s flat mate, Nils, and part of the HK crew. We also forced people to pick numbers for seats in order to sit next to someone they didn't already know. It was a blast and completely delicious. And actually not as many leftovers as you’d expect given the amount of food prepared.

Trio celebrating another success with probably Fisk

Kitchen 14.6

Just after our big celebration, we had two more of our fellow Hong Kongers come visit the stunning city of Kobenhavn. Yvie and Meli. They had just flown from Amsterdam so they had quite a few unique stories upon arrival. We had an extremely limited time with them so we hit the highlights! Nexus bar at school, The Little Mermaid, homemade vegetarian lasagna, a bit of shopping on Strøget and then the bar. We all had a great time in the city dancing and partying all evening then it was back to Austria for the girls!

Playing BezzerWizzer at Nexus

The Little Mermaid

Out for the night

Holidays Starting Early

The semester has really been jam packed with events. We scheduled our trips according to when people would be visiting in Copenhagen, just to make sure everyone and everything. A big must-see was Tivoli, the second oldest amusement park in the world, accompanied by beautiful gardens. It happened to work out that Christian was in town for another visit and joined the trio for a visit to the park.

Outside of Tivoli

There are three different themes throughout the year and we were told that the Christmas decorations were the best. It was true.  The entire park was turned into a Winter Wonderland with all gift shops selling ornaments, Christmas trees and decorations, vendors selling æbleskiver (Americanly pronounced apple skewer) and glögg, and an overall holiday cheer. Although we didn’t ride any of the coasters, we had an awesome time strolling through the lighted paths and enjoying our mulled wine with almonds.

The Chinese Area

Beautiful Garden and Lights

Another exciting thing we did with Bes in town was cook an enormous pile of pancakes and go to an outrageously German bar called Heidi’s that played this song. 

Yummy Breakfast of Champions

T-Money's Visit

Taylor came to visit Copenhagen! Wooooo. While Taylor was doing his year of travel for Branner, I was lucky enough to visit him in GREECE over spring break. Not too bad I’d say. Well the roles have been reversed and it was time for Tay to come visit me in a faraway land.

Throwback to the Greece trip

I’ve taken the opportunity when people visit to use it as an excuse to see the touristy stuff I haven’t had time for yet. Thank goodness Taylor came with suggestions because I didn’t actually have that many sights on my list. Just to get acquainted with the city we went on a bike tour. The city isn’t that big, but you still cover some ground. We stopped along the way to check out cool buildings, a toyshop, the Danish design center (had been on the to do list) and try a typical Danish hot dog. Most people know my fascination with the bikes here so luckily we could borrow one to see the city the proper way.

In front of the Town Hall

Since my brother happens to like art, here was another great excuse to visit Louisiana Modern Art Museum. It was a day trip by train to a beautiful property right on the water overlooking Sweden. Although our timing was a bit off, we went right in the middle of exhibits, it was still a great trip and we were able to see some of the countryside on the train ride back.

Louisiana

Cool exhibit

One of the highlights for both of us was our day of architecture touring. We started off at the Architecture school and the new famous opera house. Where I live there are tons of modern buildings, but a few of special significance. We went to two of the most well known ones, 8 House and The Mountain. The best community we saw though was Sluseholmen. It is a series of 350 apartments (all different) with small canals running through all of the buildings and green spaces in the middle. We all decided it was our favorite visit of the day and would gladly move there.

Biking around the city

Sluseholmen

The Mountain

The week finished with the release of the annual Christmas beer by Tuborg. Taylor and I (mostly Taylor) cooked dinner for the kitchen, a lovely mussel soup with roasted potatoes and salad. There was a Christmas party going on at Tietgens and then we headed to the city for the festivities. The streets were packed with people drinking Christmas beer (it’s not actually very good) and sporting Tuborg Christmas hats and coozies. It was a great Danish celebration and timing worked out perfect that Taylor was here for it!

Christmas beer party in Tietgens

Blue Steel? (Tay with some guys from the kitchen)

Other points of interest on the trip: tour of Carlsberg brewery (the Danes are very proud of their beer), meeting my HK friends at Nexus the student bar, and going to a delicious dinner on a boat!

End of the brewery tour - we got a few extra for free (not pictured)

Part of the crew at Nexus

Dressed for our nice dinner!

Londontown

Back from Barcelona, one day to catch up on reading and print out boarding passes and then off to Londontown. I was there a whole week and was busy the whole time! The main reason for the trip was to meet with a company called Spring Studios and the London College of Fashion. Two great meetings. Spring Studios is a company that started as solely a photography studio and has grown into 45 studios that provides stylists and photographers, world class retouching, social media strategy, and is working to become a one-stop shop for the industry. 90% of the world’s luxury fashion brands use Spring’s facilities. We sat in on a photo shoot and a brand strategy meeting! The lady we met with, Lucy, was phenomenal and such a creative and inspiring spirit. It was also really great to see this side of the industry on our journey, as most of Hong Kong was more on the supply chain and production side. Our day at London College of Fashion was also great. We sat in on a lecture, had lunch on the terrace with some professors and students, gave a presentation and attended another lecture. The funny part of this was that our two British friends from HK were in the class that we happened to sit in on!

Buckingham

Parliament

Besides our meetings we had plenty of time to explore and sightsee. I think we hit most of the big stuff: Tower of London, River Thames, Big Ben/Parliament, Buckingham and Harrod’s. One of the coolest things we did was go to Brick Lane in east London. Our friends had said it was a great market that we just HAD to go to. As we walked down Brick Lane there were tons of Indian restaurants, 7 Elevens, more oriental stores and we started to question if either we were in the wrong spot or if we had misunderstood our friends about what was here. Then, we saw it. People were everywhere! There was a basement vintage market set up, booths and booths of vintage clothing and knick knacks, food stands, a huge American Apparel overstock sale, local jewelers, everything. Jackpot!! We walked around for way too long, but found a few gifts and things for ourselves. Definitely worth the trip!

Inside the Tower of London

Tower Bridge

During the trip we also got to meet up with some friends! My friend Chris is studying at an Architecture school in London so we met up with him for some coffee, a first-year exhibit and a tour of his campus. Although he’s not even sure how to explain his degree, it was great seeing the area and getting to catch up! We also met up with “the British girls” for dinner and drinks. Drinks were at this neat bar called Sketch that was very alternative, but a neat place to check out. The toilets were literally eggs that you entered. The last British friend we saw was Sam (from HK) that surprised us for a night! Just enough time for dinner, jazz bar, and brunch and then we had to head back to Denmark.

With Chris Johnson

Sketch with the British girls

Samuel and I

My Boys Visit!

Although slightly out of order, I’m backtracking to when my lovely “boys” came to visit Copenhagen. As you know, I have some European friends from the time I spent in Hong Kong. Many of them actually live in Copenhagen and go to the same school that I’m studying at, but the others are scattered around this somewhat small continent. Sam (English), Felix and Christian (German) came to visit all of the Danes and Americans for a week before the Barcelona trip.

The trio went to the airport to greet the boys, in large part because the only Starbucks in Denmark is in the airport, and pretty much headed straight to the student bar to meet up with everyone. What’s interesting about Copenhagen is that all of the faculties (or colleges) have bars in the school buildings and have a party one night a week. The whole idea of the school bars is genius, granted it fits more in the European culture, but it encourages students to stay on campus, grab a beer or coffee and have a project meeting, or play board games over a cider before heading home for the day. The night was great with everyone just catching up and dancing. You would never guess that we hadn’t seen each other in 8 months, it literally seemed like no time had passed.

Felix, Me, Maria, Christian, Daniel

Chatting away

None of the boys had really seen much, if anything, in Copenhagen so the next day I practiced my tour guide skills and we all went for a walk through Christianshavn and Christiania. Stops for coffee and photos were encouraged and it ended up being one of the warmest and sunniest days since I’ve been in Copenhagen! That night we had all of the HK people over for a big dinner (tacos!) before going to a Norwegian party. Somehow Benedicte was able to get about 15 non-Norwegians in AS Norwegians. She didn’t let us say anything while in line and were only allowed to say ja (yes) if they asked us anything and it magically worked! Another great night with the old crew!

Walking through Christianshavn

Christianshavn

Jacob and Deb in Christiania

Ludicrous. They actually went out like this.

At the Norwegian party

A delicious brunch the next day on Nyhavn was followed by an entire afternoon of Risk playing and pizza! Since Debbie, Andrew and I were heading to Spain the next day, we all went through a slightly frantic period of checking plane tickets to see if the boys could join us for the week. The plan fell through, but the trio went off for a great trip to Barcelona and the boys spent the rest of the week roadtripping to Berlin and Prague!

Brunch at Nyhavn

When we all got back from our trips, we had one more night before everyone went back home and so we went to Christiania’s 40^th anniversary celebration! If I haven’t explained Christiania before, it’s the “freetown” that was created after hippies took over old military land and started building their own buildings and society. For the event there were stages throughout the entire area with lots of great bands, “trippy” lights, decorations and fun! Finishing the night off with fireworks over the lake was a great end to our reunited week together!

Before one of the shows

MUSIC

Being in Scandinavia, I have come to learn of many more artists here and for the most part, they’re really good! A typical line from people here when talking about a good song is… “yeah, but it’s in Danish”. Fine by me! I hardly listen to lyrics anyways. At the beginning of the semester I went to a concert with my buddy with almost all Danish bands. In the kitchen I get to hear lots of current Danish music and then my lovely Norwegian friends share a bit of their music with me too. Below are some of the singers, bands, or songs that I have come to enjoy during my time here so far.

Norwegian

Whitest Boy Alive – I put this playlist on almost every time I’m in the kitchen

Burning

Golden Cage

Kings of Convenience – Boat Behind

Jarle Bernhoft – Choices

Jonas Alaska - October

Danish

Medina – really well known singer here. She actually has some English stuff that supposedly made it to the States.

For altid

Synd for dig

Rasmus Walther – Dybt vand

Icelandic

Sigur Ròs - Starálfur

Maria’s Picks – these are actually in English so you will understand them!

Maria Mena – This too shall pass

Tove Styrke – Call my name, High and low

Elin Gaustad – Confessional song

Big Bang – Wild Birds