light + good company

i have been busy the past few days but think things will continue to increase in craziness as the semester wears on. i can’t believe it’s almost march!!

what have i been so busy with? my very best friend from childhood, alex, came to visit copenhagen with a good friend of hers for a few days! what a surreal, fortunate opportunity. it really felt like a collision of worlds as people i knew from seattle, from goucher and from dis all met together in one place. i met them at the airport and the first day we walked around norrebro— the famous cemetery, falafel, antique shops, people-watching, catching up on each other’s lives. the second day we walked a lot! first to christiania, the very unique “free town” of copenhagen which consists of an open drug market, amazing graffiti and squatters who have lived in abandoned navy barracks since 1970. a strange place and not so fun in the mud, but definitely a worthwhile experience. unfortunately i couldn’t take any pictures because they are worried about police issues (considering that it is a famous drug market and they haven’t paid the heavy city taxes for over 30 years, i guess that’s to be expected). i think it’s pretty cool that the municipality has allowed this to exist for so long! danes can be open-minded at times (…just not when it comes to integration of immigrants). we then trekked across downtown to the western area of vesterbro. we were looking for a specific café but ended up just walking and walking and catching the train at the other end of vesterbro. yesterday we did some more walking, this time on the pedestrian shopping street around my school. it was fun to browse the shops although clearly we couldn’t afford a single thing. we had a great time— they even brought me a birthday cake from germany (they were in berlin just before copenhagen) which made for a memorable little birthday party. they continued their journey this morning— off to paris!— but we had a solid few days together.

this weekend was also fastelavn, which is sort of like a combination of mardi gras and halloween. children participate in some activities 40 days before easter. those activities include dressing up in costumes and eating candy (hence similarity to halloween) and beating a cat in a barrel. i really don’t get that last one and i’ve heard no one actually does that anymore (they use piñatas now), but there were definitely pictures of cats in barrels (as decorations) all over the city last week. we didn’t really celebrate the holiday in any way except eating the huge cream puffs pictured on my last post.

today was another fascinating wednesday of field studies. what a great idea— to actually use the resources in copenhagen and apply what we know every week!! i met up with my history of copenhagen class this morning and we walked around frederiksstadden, an area built by the great monarch christian iv (fact: all danish kings are either named christian or frederik) when he wanted to expand the city beyond its medieval walls. he built rows and rows of housing for a permanent navy. although the houses have been painted, added to and renovated, they are a pretty interesting sight. i think people still live in them and they are still owned by the navy. we then toured the citadel called kastellet, a little star-shaped fortification that was once the royal family’s designated place to flee in case of an attack. we’ve been learning all about the bastions and ramparts that were so popular in that period so it was cool to actually go stand on some! the final part of the history class this morning was a tour of one of the palaces at amalienborg. the architect eigtved designed four nearly identical rococo mansions that the royal family bought in 1749 (when their palace at christiansborg burned to the ground). we got a tour of one that is used strictly for entertaining guests and my, my…it was amazing! extremely detailed, ornate, lavish, luxurious— the pinnacle of rococo! and the ogling at architecture didn’t end there. in the afternoon i had another field study, this time with danish design class, at the kunstindrustrimuseet (museum of art and design?). how fantastic. i somehow went in the reverse chronological order but had so much fun in the functionalist and modern rooms. they had a collection of outlandish chairs and psychadelic prints from the 60s which i loved, as well as a whole room devoted to my new favorite designer of all time, poul henningson (ph). he was the first to develop a glare-free light— you know it’s a true ph if you can’t see the light bulb. i could go on and on about how amazing the chairs in that museum are, and how influential danish designers are, but i will spare you. in any case, it was a good museum!!

the past few days have made my realize how extraordinarily fortunate i am to be here. i don’t really ever forget that, but it has been especially clear to me recently. the sun has begun to stick around dramatically longer each day, which is exhilarating! so the combination of the sun, the great company and the cool stuff dis arranges for me has been amazing…