Dude, Where's My House?

Okay, so we've got a lot to catch up on. There's Copenhagen and the festivities that ensued, and the festivities upon our victorious return and the triumph of starting the exchange programme.

Copenhagen.
It began an early morning, getting on a Bus ride which would take 5 hours, including a one hour ferry ride in the middle. Turns out there's only 6 of us on the bus - our group of 4 and two randoms. We had a great time.

It was a little rainy, as you can probably see from the darkness in the photos, but Copenhagen is an amazing city. It's so pictureseque. Quaint even. To give you an idea of how much this whole thing cost - €55 for the bus (it would have been €39 had we booked last week), and €30 each for the room. That's dirt cheap for a two day trip away.

Anyways, photo tour of the city on the first day:

Here's the Rathaus (The Town Hall), it's pretty cool.








Here's one of the main streets in Copenhagen, a little cosy and quaint. You'll notice how dark it is. We only found out what that REALLY meant later...






Here's the garden just outside the Opera House. There was a whole big exhibition of World Press Photos, mainly based around wild life, and it was cool.



This is a photo looking into one of the many palaces in the city. The Danish love their royal family. The building at the far end is actually a church down the street. And you can clearly see Kat trying not to get run over. The Danish have a knack for these big buildings, and the old and appealing architecture. It felt like the little brother of Vienna.

There's also a plentiful number of statues in the city. I have numerous photos of them all, but there's two I want to share right now. The first is of Hera I presume, but I can't be sure. It's this huge fountain with bronze bulls pulling her chariot and water from the fountain gushes out the back. It looks very cool, and I'd like to think I've captured part of that in this photo.

The other statue you have to go see is The Little Mermaid. She sits down by the harbour, and was a donation to the city by some famous artist after being so moved by the performance of the Little Mermaid he saw at the Opera House. This thing is old, and if you look at her legs, you can see that it's been rubbed smooth and polished simply by the numbers. I couldn't go to Copenhagen without seeing this infamous statue.

The best thing about Copenhagen though, was the night we had there. We found a nice little Italien restuarant on a little side street and had some beautiful red wine with your typical Italien dishes. It was good. We then stumbled into an Irish Pub. Now, in Denmark, it appears there are no Danish pubs. Only Irish and English bars. What made this all the more interesting was that in the bar, a Spanish trio playing covers. They were great, and we ended up staying there well into the night. As memory serves me, we left somewhere round 2 am, on a Tuesday night!

This leads to the next interesting story: Walking home drunk in the pouring rain, and I mean absolute shocking weather. We got soaked head to toe going home, and most of our clothes still required drying while on the bus. But the best part was walking down the street yelling at the top of our lungs in Irish accents. I don't know what the thrill is, but there is one. Trust me. Try it in a foreign country where people can't understand you and you'll feel the good times we experienced. Well, it was either that or the alcohol. I don't really mind.

Exchange Programme
Now this brings me to the exchange programme. It started very well. I met so many new and interesting people from all over the globe. Of course we met the Aussies, and they are a great bunch always in top form. So on Thursday night there was a BBQ at the law school. Beer was provided for free. We stayed until about 11 pm then hit the Sternschanze for the best lounge bars in town. And we found the most excellent place. It's appropriately called "The Sofa Bar", being a gutted out old theatre filled with old ornate sofas and couches. It's wall to wall couches, and it is great. The 5 shots for €6 was an added bonus. So I showed people my flaming Sambuca trick. It went down a treat. After these festivities I managed to find my way home, all the while trying not to fall asleep on the subway.

The next morning, I had no hangover. This is usual for me. And I lauded it over everyone else I met. There were many long faces at 9:30 am yesterday, and I can assure I was the one grinning.

Now these orientation things are nothing special - paper work upon paper work. Except that yesterday we had our placement test for the German Language courses. There's four levels: Basic, Beginnger, Intermediate, and Advanced. Basic being no German, Beginners having a good grasp of German, Intermediate moving onto Advanced materials, and Advanced being a refresher course. So after one month of learning German, I get put in: Intermediate. That made my day. To think I've gone from zero language skills to that high level is astounding. I just can't stop grinning. And there's going to be some wicked people in my class. Downside is that it's at 6:30 pm until 8 pm. Poos.

But last night was good. My god it was good. We had a progressive dinner, whereby groups of two people had to move between houses for Starters, Mains and Desserts so that there was six people at one house any given time. There was a schedule, and it was stuck to. But it was just so much fun meeting so many different people over food and drink.

Then came the drink. We hit the Reeperbahn. Boy did we hit the Reeperbahn. There's a bar called "The 99 Cent Bar". They don't call it that for nothing. So after a couple of starters, the group of Wiebke, Charlotte (from Australia), Philip (from Bucerius), Dong Yung (from China), and me went to the official after party. It was one hell of a party. At 2:30 am we decided to move on to another bar, don't ask me for names, German neon signs are hard to read. We didn't end the night until 6 am, which by then the best idea was to crash at the nearest house. So, we did. And I've only just gotten home.

I've had a great time. And classes start next week, which should be a different experience entirely. I assure you there will actually be study involved in this exchange, it's not purely a cultural experience.