Arhus, Odense, and Cheap Flights

Although Arhus and Odense are the second and third biggest cities in Denmark, I don't think it's saying much. I had a pretty awful couple days, and we didn't really do anything fun. We spent a lot of time on the bus, and I didn't make many friends. I think I'm becoming antisocial, because whenever anyone would go out, I would go back to the hostel and read. Whatever.

So a couple cool things we did:

We went to ARoS which was so unbelievably cool - go check out that link, because I can't explain how wonderful the exhibit we got to see was. It's the digital link. We totally lucked out, though, because the exhibit didn't technically open until the next day, but the curator told us he would give us a tour. We got to meet all of the artists, too, which was amazing. Unfortunately, our tour didn't last more than 30 - 45 minutes, and the rest of the museum wasn't that cool...but oh well.

In Odense, we got to take a walking tour of the city, and saw a lot of Hans Christian Andersen stuff, which was really fun for me. I don't think we were supposed to go, but after telling Morten how much I wanted to go, he managed to get our tour guide to agree to taking us to the museum because we had so much time. We spent about an hour there, and that means that I won't have to go on a study tour to Odense AGAIN, from 9:00 - 4:30 with Janis. Hooray! Because really, it means I have a full Wednesday off. At some point, Morten and I were walking and talking, and it turns out that one of his university professors wrote a biography I used for my research paper last semester, and that I'm reading for Janis right now - really cool, huh? Maybe not, but I'm smitten. Still.

We also got to go to TV2, which is Denmark's biggest TV station - but here it works much differently than the States. There's TV2, which has a subset of five different channels. There's also DR (which I think is Danish Radio, I really don't know), and they're the competitors of TV2. We went to the station and got a really cool tour, and even got to see them broadcast the 4:00 news live - and met the anchor and everything. It was really interesting to see how news stations work. All the while, I was thinking of Marcellus Parsons - what a funny person to think about while I'm in Denmark. Weird.

Anyway, the rest of our trip was comprised of the most miserable weather ever, a super lame castle (that was pretty much the ugliest place I've ever seen, but actually it's where the first Protestant church in Denmark was), a lecture from the School of Journalism in Arhus, a visit to a local newspaper who's going partially on the net for their coverage, and a dull museum that was a floor of old newspaper stuff. On the upside, they fed us two meals a day, and they were at really upscale places, and really, really good.

Well.

Except the fish. There was a fish meal on the first day, and it was like...breaded, but an entire fish. I put my fork on it, and moved it around a little, and my fork managed to slide some of it off, but I gagged, because every bone in that fish's body was in tact...except for the head and the tail. I didn't want to waste it (they pre-ordered everything for us), so I managed to slide some more of its body off of its spine and fish version of a ribcage, but had to stop really soon after. The pieces of it that I did eat were completely submerged in butter for about 10 seconds so I wouldn't have to taste it. I asked our program assistant if I could be switched to vegetarian meals whenever fish was arranged.

But since I didn't go out (and was reading "A Prayer for Owen Meany" - thanks, Katie!), I managed to only spend about $60 - on three pretty nice meals.

Also - it was my first time experiencing a hostel - two hostels, actually. They weren't bad at all, but DIS definitely paid a good amount for them. In the second hostel, for either a three or four person room, it was like $120. I guess that's not THAT much, but considering they're sending around 500 kids to hostels, it's pretty pricey. I do, however, appreciate that they're not throwing us in some terrible place where we'd be likely to die. The first hostel was kind of annoying, because we were so jam packed - it was a tiny room with three bunk beds. I'm pretty sure it was only meant to hold four people, because that was originally what the sign-up said...and they had to add two more.

All and all a bad trip, and I was homesick for Copenhagen the entire time, but I'm still holding out hope that the Communications and Mass Media program won't be entirely lame, and that London will be amazing. We'll be there in about two months, as well as Oxford. I've been looking into booking flights out of London, but I don't really have anyone to travel with. My thoughts? I'm up for a European adventure, and I think I'm going to experiment with traveling by myself - wish me luck. I can book a ticket from London to Dublin for about $70, and then one from Dublin to Paris for about $50 - so I'm thinking about booking that soon. I don't really want to finalize anything until I'm sure that I want to do this alone, but I'm about 75% sure that I'd do alright. It's really nice to be traveling so much, because I just need to book the one-ways, which are SO much cheaper. Any thoughts from you? Do you think I can do it? Where else should I go? Having two weeks to myself for spring break is getting stressful - much less fun planning than I thought. Anyway, if I travel by myself, it'll be a good way to prepare myself for traveling alone at the end of the semester - that is, of course, unless any of you want to come with me!

It's 11:11 here, so I'll make a wish that one of you will come to see me over here in Europe - and if not, I'll just wish that you're all doing well back in the States.

I miss you!