Coping in Copenhagen

Last week, I’d planned to write about the difference of ‘traveling’ and ‘vacationing.’ You see, I thought that ‘travel’ didn’t have the luxury of being a ‘vacation’ because you’re constantly on the go, and never getting to relax. Fun is an afterthought, and your main focus is having to see each city in its entirety so that you never have to spend the money to go back. Paris proved to me this was wrong. I got to put myself out of the misery that is studying while there, and just focus on seeing a new place. We took Paris bit by bit, and it made me want to come back to see more. I didn’t leave feeling unaccomplished because I hadn’t seen the entirety of Paris, because we really did see a lot. We did it at our own pace, and it made it much more enjoyable.

Copenhagen was the exact same way, although I feel like we saw more of it. I feel like we did saw a majority of it because Copenhagen is, obviously, smaller than Paris. However, I would love to go back again someday because I absolutely loved that city.

Besides mastering the entire subway system sans cell-service with Riley (Therefore being boss a** females), we also had a crap ton of fun. All the while, I didn’t write any of the three papers I have due this week, and still have to finish one and start (and finish) another before Thursday. Fun!

Liana Best gave me some great advice last spring, and that is to always have one day a week without work. It’s essential to maintaining a level-head in this world. I’ve been trying to do this ever since spring quarter, and honestly it’s made life much easier. One day a week should be dedicated to not schoolwork.

“But, Bronwyn. Aren’t you supposed to be focusing on your studies?”

Yes. And I’m doing that 6/7 days a week. One day of rest isn’t going to wreak havoc on my brain. In fact, it makes me more sane overall and therefore the work I accomplish every other day is better than when I didn’t take a day off. This just went on a tangent…

My point is that aside from the obvious of ‘travel’ and ‘vacation’ being similar because they are both wonderful things to be thankful for during my life as a college student (Courtesy of the parent-fund. Thank you, thank you), they’re also similar in that you can and should have fun while traveling.

I had an amazing weekend in Copenhagen, and I can’t wait to go back when I’m 90 and finally retired eventually.

I’m not going to lie, I’m pretty exhausted. As I previously stated, I have three papers due this week. I just turned in one, and I also just got back from Denmark tonight. So, here is my weekend in pictures and captions. Enjoy! (Warning: It’s mostly food.)

Riley (SCU) and I flew in to Copenhagen Friday evening and met up with Paige (SCU), Ali  (SCU), Amanda (SCU), Mallika (Denison), and Amanda (Denison) at Paper Island. It’s essentially San Pedro Square Market in San Jose, but 10x better because it’s food you probably haven’t seen in a while. Take for example, the pad thai!! I had been craving this (since watching the Big Bang Theory the night before) and my cravings became a REALITY because they had a thai stop there. It was phenomenal.

Saturday morning, we went to Paludan Bog & Café and got gigantic breakfasts. Riley and I successfully made it there after only taking one wrong turn before figuring out we had taken a right instead of walking straight out of the metro. I also guessed the WiFi password before the café had even opened, so that was a huge plus because that never happens in Scotland.

After breakfast, we walked to Nyhavn and saw these guards marching in the middle of the street. Still not quite sure why…

These Christmas decorations are much cooler at night, but I was too freezing cold to take any pictures of it after the sun went down (At 4:30…Classic Europe.)

We made it to Nyhavn where our beloved Mallika insisted we take 384920348290 pictures. For the sake of not boring you guys (and because none of them were on my devices), I will refrain from posting them…

Nyhavn is super cute and trendy. Take me back.

I wish I knew how to edit photos so I could make the colors really #pop.

One of many stops taken along this walk #MallikaIsQueen (SCU pic!!!)

While walking to find the trampolines (which we didn’t find until Sunday, actually) we encountered some icy sidewalks. When I say I was cold this weekend, that is an understatement. I was wearing a fur lined headband/ear-warmer thing, my ~super cute~ North Face gloves, a giant scarf up past my nose, a sweater, and my down-jacket on top of my outfits at all times. Also, I’m pretty sure this ground isn’t icy. I took this pic perhaps a few feet after the ice had ended and the ground still looked similar, because the wood changed. So, this may or may not be ice on the ground. But, the icy ground looked like this on concrete, I swear.

Got to see the Little Mermaid because H.C. Anderson was a bomb writer who put Copenhagen on the map. (Fun fact courtesy of Paige: He wasn’t from Copenhagen, but he really liked it and wrote there…or something.)

This isn’t really anywhere significant, but it’s beautiful. (In fact, it was found on our walk to find the bathrooms that are actually only open seasonally–Not this season.)

My kind of Christmas tree.

We then went to Glass Market, which is very similar to the indoor “Market” we have in Dallas, except there are two of them. There’s a dessert one and a savory one.

This is a blurry picture of the other half of Glass Market, featuring Amanda!

This was my midday snack from Glass Market (along with a mint tea: not pictured.) It’s porridge with cinnamon sauce, almonds, and apples (So freshly cut that I saw her grab the apple, wash it, and then cut it all for my order.) The apples in Copenhagen are to die for.

We went to the botanical gardens and Mallika was being her typical model self. 😉

This is where royalty lives in Copenhagen, AKA Riley. (We almost lost her there, because she was the only tall, blonde (Scandinavian) among us and totally blended in.)

Just some Christmas lights at night!!! I love Christmas.

WARNING: I’M ABOUT TO BE A SNOB ABOUT MEXICAN FOOD BECAUSE I MISS TEX-MEX.   We went and had dinner on Saturday at a place with a big menu (I can’t remember the name.) We all ended up picking from their Mexican food selection (Not Spanish food, but Mexican food. Yes, I did make sure.) As you can expect, it wasn’t super great. It did the trick though. Would’ve preferred if my enchilada were not super hard shelled and if it weren’t randomly covered with an attempt at an oddly spicy salsa, but it was delicious nonetheless.

The sun sets early in Europe, and we were pretty exhausted by the end of Saturday. So, we all parted ways and made goals to meet up at 8:30am Sunday for breakfast. This is where it all went wrong.

Well, it didn’t really go wrong. But I was in charge of getting Riley and I from our hotel to the breakfast spot, and I didn’t realize the directions called for a change in transportation. We didn’t know that our 24-hour 4-zone passes for the metro would work also for busses, and so we aimlessly trusted our offline iPhone compasses and Google Maps (Scary correct guess at your location, even when you’re on ‘airplane mode’) to guide us to the right place. I decided that ‘Amagerbro’  and ‘Amager’ were similar in spelling enough that we could take the metro stop to one and figure out how to walk to the address of our restaurant, which was near the other word on the map. I was weirdly right, and we made it by 8:50…even though we left our hotel (checked out and everything) a little bit before 8am.

Sunday Breakfast at Made & Kaffe: The confusing journey was worth it, as I had the best brunch of my whole life. Truly recommend getting 5 dishes of pure deliciousness.

I call this one: The Aftermath.

Then we went to some artsy little independent town within Copenhagen where you can’t take pictures without having scary people throw your phone to the ground…But it was Sunday so I was able to snap this pic only (Probably because it’s the exit back to the real-world.)

Then, we went to “The Church of Our Savior” and took all the tiny, winding staircases up the steeple[?] and saw all of Copenhagen. I was almost trampled by the man in front of me when his backpack string was caught to one of the prongs of painted gold pictured here. I thought I might die. At the top, it really is tiny. I got to as far as my body would go so that I wasn’t dangling with half of my body over the edge. Needless to say, I was gripping my phone pretty intensely. I accepted my fate and almost fell off, but I lived to tell the tale.

View from the top of “The Church of Our Savior.” You can see all of Copenhagen from here!

Fun fact supplied by Paige: The spiral tower pictured mid-right is made up of dragon-tales (Not real, obviously. But if you get close enough, you’ll see the dragons are facing down and their tales are making the spiral! Art.)

After this, we went to the trampolines! They were super cute and fun, and not at all what I expected. I guess I hadn’t ever seen anyone post a picture with them, so I was expecting a jump-street type set-up but with one giant trampoline. I wasn’t disappointed with what I got. Look it up, and go! Bounce away, my friends.

The view leaving Rosenborg Castle. (We didn’t go in to the castle, but we walked through it.)

After leaving this area, Paige took Riley and me to a Hillsong service. It was incredibly moving and great. I don’t know if you guys have heard of Hillsong (I hadn’t.) For you Dallas folks, it’s a little bit like Watermark and HPUMC with the rock-songs and empowering, super energized/shouting sermons, but this church was so inclusive of everyone. The community was amazing and so welcoming of everyone, no matter if you were new or what you believed in. They were pretty great. It was a very nice service. I didn’t take any pictures though, because it really wasn’t a tourist thing. I felt like it would’ve been rude to document what they were doing, when you guys can just look them up (@HillsongCPH on Instagram.) It was a great way to end our trip, and I truly hadn’t felt so at peace since I’d been abroad.

Now I’m back to writing my papers. It’s 1am in Edinburgh and I am tired, sick, and cold. But I’m drinking a monster and about to chow down on some amazing peanut butter and Cadbury chocolate. Is anything wrong in my world? I think I have it pretty great. Wish me luck on my next few papers.

Tune in next week, when I’m hopefully not dead from writing these papers and having (probably) strep throat because LUCAS WILL BE VISITING.