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

Bergen

Ever since Hong Kong, we have been planning our trip to Bergen, Norway. My good friend Maria is from there and we met her parents during our semester in Asia. If we were to visit, we were promised their famous fish soup. Although there may have been other reasons, this was the driving factor for booking our flight even further up north.

We arrived to Maria’s cozy, Norwegian home with a beautiful view overlooking a fjord and the rest of Bergen on the opposite bank. The much anticipated fish soup was for dinner and we had some time catching up with her parents before they headed off to a gathering. The soup really was delicious and did not disappoint! That night we went into the city center to meet up with some of Maria’s friends from back home. A nice, relaxing night out where we got to see the city at night and be introduced to the well-known meeting spot, The Blue Stone.

With Maria's friends at the bar

Bergen sightseeing day. Having grown up in Bergen, you would expect Maria to know lots about the city, mountains, and history, which wasn’t completely the case. Either way we had a great time walking around the center and learning bits of information that popped into Maria’s head. There is a world heritage site in Bergen that used to be the old city. A series of buildings are literally sinking into the ground and are trying to be restored. This whole area was very quaint with a European tower overlooking the water nearby. After grabbing some coffee from the best shop in town, we headed for the tram that takes you up to the top of the mountain.

Bergen's harbor

The view was amazing. The tram and view reminded us of The Peak in HK, except the small building version instead of the skyscrapers. Before going on the trip, I didn’t realize how big Bergen actually is. I just assumed that all Norwegian cities were small, quaint, cold, wooden places. Instead of taking the tram down, we spent the next hour or so “hiking” down. Although most of the path was paved, we went off-roading a few times just to spice it up. Walking down the mountain and through the woods was so great. Beautiful views and nature all around you.

View of Bergen

After spending some time in Bergen, we ventured to the Leknes’ summerhouse on the island of Tysnes. Saturday we bundled in roughly 8 layers and went out for some fishing. Three fish were caught, one lure was lost, and lots of fun was had. Sitting out on the water was so relaxing and peaceful. In fact, everything we did on the island was. We hardly looked at a clock, no obligations were planned, we just took our time and enjoyed Norway. We all helped out and made delicious tapas one night for dinner and even had a nice movie night.

All bundled

Fishy!

On our last day in Norway, we woke up late and went for a walk around the mountain until we reached a great lookout spot in a gazebo. It was a nice way to end our time in Tysnes although still no one wanted to leave. We managed to not talk about schoolwork almost the entire trip. Magically, it also didn’t rain the entire trip until the ferry ride back to Bergen.

View from the house

Along the walk

Right before catching our flight back we had a great dinner with all of Maria’s family. We finally got to meet her brothers and everyone had a great time chatting and being forced to eat way too much dessert. The trip to Bergen was truly a proper holiday. Now back to two quick days of the real world before heading off again to London.

Museums

I finally went to my first museum in Copenhagen. The city is filled with them actually, but for some reason it took this long.

First stop was to Statens Museum for Kunst. The building is big, beautiful, and old. My friend Anders (pronounced On-us, not An-ders) and I went to check out the Toulouse Lautrec exhibit and it was great! If you’re like me, you base everything in life on a movie. You may know Toulouse from Moulin Rouge… the short one with the line “the greatest thing you’ll ever learn…”. Remember him? Well supposedly he was actually that crazy in real life and was truly inspired by the Paris entertainment scene.

His models were friends and “ladies of the night” that he met in cafes, cabarets, and dance halls. He’s most known for his bright colors and poster art, but his sketches were just as intriguing. Certain characters were featured several times and the people were always exaggerated and slightly interpreted. Yvette Guilbert was a lady in different drawings and paintings and there was a horribly sad song written about this poor “drunkard” lady. Near the end of Lautrec’s life (he died at age 36) he painted a circus scene that was one of his more interesting we decided. Much different from everything else he did. Overall it was a really great exhibit! We even got to use Anders’ iPhone to listen to some special descriptions of the art. Great use of technology.

Another neat thing they do at the museum is sponsor an artist each to month to interpret artwork. We stumbled upon a really great painting called “And in his eyes I saw death” and a band called Stoffer & Maskinen (Materials & Machinery) that did their own music piece inspired by the work. We could again listen to it on the iPhone while sitting on a bench in front of the painting. A great idea to add yet another sense and enhance the experience.

The next museum was the Carlsberg Glyptotek, which is the private art collection of the Carslberg brewing company’s founder, Carl Jacobsen. The main exhibit Andrew and I went to see was of the artist Gauguin and his pieces inspired by his time in Tahiti and all of Polynesia. He is known for his young Polynesian models and his wood sculptures. I didn’t know anything about him going in so it was neat to see his work. After going through the exhibit we stopped in to see the French painting collection filled with Degas, Renoir, Monet, Manet, and Cezanne. Amazing to see these works up close!