So what the heck is Festelavn? Festelavn.. aka the "Nordic Halloween" is basically a holiday the Danes celebrate- not really avidly though. They dress up and play games, and get some candy too. How you get candy is you have to break this thing that looks like a barrel and is basically a piñata, with a cat printed on it.. I think the danish name for it is: katten af tønden, which means the cat of the barrel. The way the game works is you hit the barrel until it breaks open, the person who does that is the queen of the barrel. Then, the person who breaks everything down completely is the king. Yeah- some weird thing! But anyway the party was pretty fun and I learned a lot of different danish traditions so that was good =)! This was in a dorm in Nærum, at my friend Matieu's (The guy on the right). Actually right now my dorm is gonna have a festelavn so I'll be going to that!
Hello Everyone! Sorry it's been a while since my last post... I've been really busy and a lot is going on in my life right now! I don't know if I'll be able to get to everything but now I want to blog a bit about the first Sunday of the month here in Denmark. First Sunday of the month you can ride the S-Train for free. This is pretty cool considering public transport is a bit on the expensive side here. Hellerup is just north of Copenhagen but is also considered part of the "greater Copenhagen area". It is considered one of the richest places in Denmark, and has lots of Marinas (Havn in Danish). It also is home to Tuborg and has quite a few breweries in the area. So anyway, we took the S-Train from Lyngby Station to Hellerup, which is only 2 zoner, which isn't that much money we saved. (Each 2 zoner klip is around 13 Kroners, for both of us comes out to be 52 kroner, or around 10 bucks). I wanted to go to Copenhagen cause it's about 4 zones I believe. But I've already been there a lot already and I wanted to see something new! Hellerup was definitely a nice area, and reminds me a lot of the suburbs. It was nice seeing it in the cold believe it or not, it had a nice atmosphere to it. Danny and I ate a really nice lunch in a cafe called Ovså in the local mall. We had a really nice lunch and I ordered this brunch which had a bunch of different toppings to put on bread like laks, sausages, egg, chicken, cheeses, jam, yogurt, and so on. It was really nice and it wasn't that expensive (for Denmark that is). Overall, it was a lot of fun! Pretty cold- but I managed with the coat that Danny's mom lent me.
Lots of stuff to write about-- and just not quite enough time! These pictures are from my last day of my 3-weeks class at DTU. I finished the course with a grade on the European scale of a 10. The way the grades work here is the highest is a 12 and then 10, 7, 4, 2, 0 and -3 respectively. A 12 is actually a lot harder to achieve here in Europe, and unlike in the United States can be unachievable for certain people. A motto in the US is that everyone has equal opportunities to achieve the same outcomes-- where as here, not everyone is as smart as everyone else, and they have come to accept this, and that is just OK. Anyway, to celebrate I hung out with Danny in the S-huset. Huset means House. So, S-House, or student house, is where I played pool with Danny and his classmates. We had a few beers and talked and it was some good fun. Then later on that evening I went to Running sushi with Sabrina and Mathilde (where you can see me holding the Sake). Running Sushi is a place in Copenhagen where you pay 200 DKK, or around 40 dollars, and get all the sushi you can eat off the conveyor belt. Unfortunately, we didn't realize we needed a reservation because it was all booked by the time we got there. After we had loooooots of sushi we went back to Mathilde's place in Copenhagen, (pictures above), and we had some beers and nuts and played a game called partners. I've never played this game before, and I don't know if it's specifically Danish, or European but I don't think it's American. Anyway, unfortunately this was a week ago, and I can't remember as much because so much has gone on since then. I'm trying to catch up with everything now. Hopefully more to come very soon!
Cheers! Rana
PS, the link I forgot to include of all my photos in Denmark: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2038728&id=1086180040&l=21b118faae
