Mind The Gap

Because it was the weekend, we had an excuse to spend all our time sight-seeing. But come Monday, schools were back in session and we were back to the academic side of the trip. However the day started out with a visit to the Freud Museum, where he spent the final year of his life after the British government paid the Nazi ransom to bring him, a Jew, to London.


Our school destination was Lindon Bennett School, which, other than a ridiculously long train ride (where we had to stand most of the time), is a school for children with severe and multiple learning disabilities. With one teacher and at least three TAs for every class of 6-8 pupils, the school was an example of the top-tiered special needs education in England. They had their own pool for water therapy, giving children in wheelchairs a sense of mobility they would never otherwise experience. The children went on frequent field trips, seeing and doing things their parents would otherwise be too tired (or embarrassed) to do with them. Specialists came in to work with the children several times a week, from physical therapists to speech and vision therapists. There was a lovely garden, a learning-intuitive playground and some of the most amazing facilities you could imagine. And the dedication and compassion of the teachers and staff was unbelievable. Their passion for the job truly shows that teaching is more than just a profession - especially with special needs children (some of them very severely impaired), it is a matter of life work. There was one girl we saw who, upon arriving one year ago, was unable to walk and very shy and quiet. When we visited, she stood up, walked over to us, and greeted us. It was quite a sight and her teachers were so visibly proud of her - further giving her the confidence that she would otherwise not have to do such simple, but incredible things.

We got back from the school just in time to see the Tate Modern Museum. The key word is "see." The train ride back was ridiculously long and we had a reservation to go on the London Eye. So, our group made it to the meeting point with a full ten minutes left of the allocated time to rest and enjoy the building's exterior.



The London Eye, however, made us forget all about the Tate Modern. The world's largest observation wheel, it does one rotation every half-hour, bringing you up 135 meters above the city of London. Originally built for the millennium for a period of five years, its popularity with tourists and residents alike have kept it going as an icon of London.


The next morning, I found myself at Sunrise School, a more standard primary school. Upstairs was a nursery which was supposedly the main focus of the visit. However, the primary school downstairs was of more interest. It reminded me of a one-room schoolhouse, with one side of the room for ages 5-8 and another section for ages 9-11 - all with one teacher. The pupils were a breath of fresh air from all the kindergarten and special needs children we had interacted with in the month of the program. These were children that reminded me of myself and my classmates at that age. Some of the questions we got? How old were we (the shock we got at saying we were 20 made us feel so old)? Can we show them our British accent (which they found hilarious - as hilarious as we found their American ones)? Do we have a boyfriend/girlfriend (ah, puppy love and school gossip)?

From there we made our way to Shakespeare's Globe Theatre, located on the banks of the Tiver Thames. It was a careful recreation of the original 1599 theatre for which Shakespeare wrote many of his plays. We watched a performance of Othello, which, as unexpectedly long as it was, was quite a treat to see it in such an atmosphere.


From there we made a visit to the last area of interest: Parliament. The exit from the Underground literally lets you out at the base of the clock tower, immediately dwarfing you as you emerge. Parliament is stunning - to think that such architecture exists in a modern city. And not only that, but in that building is where the British government is housed. It's quite a sight:


It was a nice way to spend the last afternoon there. That night, like all the other nights, we paid a visit to one of the numerous pubs that dot the streets of London. That's something I'm gonna miss - the pub scene is genuinely unique to London and the atmosphere one-of-a-kind. The next morning we returned back to Copenhagen for our last week abroad.

How Come Everytime You Come Around, My London, London Bridge Wanna Go Down Like

A ninety minute plane ride, we arrived in London with a whole day to kill. Perhaps the most exciting prospect at first was staying in an actual hotel room. Not only could we leave all our belongings there, but this meant we were actually going to be in the same place for a good chunk of time. We had the rest of the evening to ourselves. A few of us decided to head over to the Apollo Victoria theater on the off-chance that there would be a couple of returned tickets to that night's sold-out showing of the musical Wicked. To our unbelievable luck, we managed to get tickets for all four of us - on a Saturday night at that. Not only that, but they were discounted because it was something like two hours before the show. AND, when they checked our student IDs, we got the coveted student discount applied. $50 for $200 tickets? Hot diggity damn! The show itself? Spectacular:


We decided to walk back to the hotel and ended up cutting through Hyde Park at midnight. Luckily there were enough drunken teens populating the park to make it safe. It was a gorgeous park and sadly, I didn't get a chance to go back and take pictures.

We spent the next morning wandering the street markets of London, including Petticoat Lane Market, which was established over 400 years ago.


That afternoon was spent sight-seeing. The Tower of London took nearly two hours to walk through. The Crown Jewels are every bit as impressive as you would imagine. Photography isn't allowed within the building and they had scary looking military guards there to enforce that particular rule.


In the distance you could see Tower Bridge, which, for the record, is about a million times more impressive than London Bridge. You can judge for yourself:


From there, we paid a visit to St. Paul's Cathedral. As luck would have it, we had plenty of time before Sunday night Mass for a cup of tea (with scones) at a local shop. The interior of St. Paul's was gorgeous, especially the paintings of Mark, Luke, John, and Matthew around the interior of the dome. We actually sat beneath the Dome during the service - which was hardly impressive. As a Protestant church, it was quite different from what I was used to, but also, it wasn't a full blown service (which are done in the mornings) and in general, the pastors were just quite dull.

!!KNOH

Talk about having one helluva hump day...or week, for that matter. This was the third of the five weeks here (I can't believe this is half-over!). It also happened to be our only full week of classes we'd have this whole summer (in which I have never been so anxious for the weekend before - two, two-hour classes, four times a week in the early morning? Screw that!). And to top it all off, two papers and a group presentation were due today...all before noon.

But now that it's over, there's now time to be excited - for we leave for London tomorrow morning (and I mean early - real early)! Five days in a country whose language (though perhaps not accent) I'll understand! It's going to be sweet. I guess it was inevitable, but this past week, I became, once again, a student...that just happened to be in Copenhagen, though it could've been anywhere else, considering all the time spent in my room and the library. Yale better give me credit for all of this. I almost had to HONK last night. Dear God. I thought I gave that shit up two months ago.

Don't Fuck With UEFA

People are still talking about last Saturday’s football (read: soccer) match between Sweden and Denmark. Sweden took a 3-0 lead after only 28 minutes, but Denmark rallied in the second half to tie the match at 3 before a red card against a Danish player provoked a fan to charge the field and attack the ref. The match was awarded to Sweden with a score of 3-0 and the team has been banned from playing their next 4 matches within 250 km of Copenhagen. Oh man, you should’ve seen the headlines after last weekend. The guy’s face was plastered across every front page in the city. That guy had a bounty on his head - and a couple million really pissed off Danes willing to collect it, too. The guy was arrested, but released the next day. He turned himself in to the public and apologized - but the Danish Football Association is still thinking about fining / taking court action against the guy to compensate the loss in ticket sales. Think about it. The next biggest stadium in Denmark seats only 5,200, which is nothing compared to the 42,000 in Copenhagen. Multiply that difference by the price of a ticket…and by four matches. Holy fuck, he better hope they don’t take his ass to court.

Something I really admire about football (in Europe at least) is the atmosphere of sportsmanship. That’s why you don’t see fences or large gates separating the fans from the players. The Danes, especially, pride themselves on their fan conduct. A lot of trust is put into the fans, which is very admirable. You trust that they won’t do something violent. You trust that nothing dangerous is brought into the stadium. You don’t bank on a fan to drink 20 beers and charge the field and nearly grab a ref around the neck. You just don’t. Everyone knows that football is huge in Europe, but being here to experience it - and the controversy - is something else, let me tell you.

The ironic thing? That fan lives in Sweden.

The Only Place Where It's OK To Call The People "Yellow"

The next morning, I was part of the group that visited Centerklasse, a special needs school that's part of a mainstream school, Brændkjærskolen. Like all my other visits, there aren't pictures, sadly. As legally-questionable as it is took take pictures of kids, it's probably even more iffy for special needs kids. Best not piss off the Danish government.



With my luck, I was placed, alone, in a classroom of, of all people, girls. Now, don't get me wrong, they were adorable. They had a range of disorders from Down's and fragile X syndrome to "we're not sure." Unlike the U.S., the definition of "disability" when it comes to special needs is up to the local municipality. On one hand, this allows a great deal of flexibility and personal involvement of the government - on the other hand, I feel that it hinders, in certain cases, treatment of certain disorders. Anyway, it was quite surprising to see how, even in a special needs classroom, the children had so much independence. They wandered in and out at their own will, free to go to other rooms in the building. They all also took part of the class activity (they had been making pajama pants), with both sewing with a sewing machine, and using a hot steam iron. Liability? Apparently not in Denmark.

Afterward, we paid a visit to Koldinghus, the last royal castle on the island. We were supposed to get a tour...but we ended up getting there an hour late, so we were on our own. Of course, the highlight of the castle was climbing to the top of the tower and taking in the sights.


The hostel we stayed that night was...well, I hardly think all hostels were like this one. Set besides a lake, we got an opportunity to take some canoes out for a while. It was absolutely lovely - the hostel itself, the lake in particular.


We also built a campfire that night and showed our instructor what s'mores were. Unfortunately, graham crackers do not exist in Denmark (like peanut butter, on a separate note), so we had to improvise. In turn, Line showed us what they do in Denmark. You take dough, roll it out really thinly and use it to wrap a sausage (i.e. hotdog) onto the end of a stick. It was kinda weird doing it, but it was like making your own hotdog, which wasn't all that bad. The thing both this and s'mores have in common? If you're like me and impatient, you can stick the whole damn thing in the fire and burn it all to perfection.


We stayed out there well after the sun had set. Sunset was very beautiful. Sitting on the dock, drink in hand, camp fire in view, it was quite a sight to behold - the colors reflecting off the lake's surface, the oranges and reds spreading across the sky.


The study tour ended with a trip the next morning to Lego Land! We were able to go under the pretense that Lego Land would give an opportunity to see how the park represented Denmark and other nationalities, an opportunity to view multiculturalism in a public setting, etc. In other words, we were given some assignment to do there...that we didn't (and I don't think they expected us to anyway).


The main attraction of the park was the variety of Lego replicas, reconstructing things from famous monuments to historic buildings to scenic countrysides.


Because the park is in Denmark, much of Europe and Scandinavia was represented, including some buildings and such foreigners would not be well-informed of. However, the good 'ol U.S. of A. had it's fair share of space in the park:


The models were very impressive, taking anywhere from a quarter of a million standard Lego blocks to ALOT more (the HUGE Statue of Liberty) for the replicas.

Of course, there was more to the park. Like with Legos, the actual toy, the park was divided into separate "lands." They ranged from a medieval, knights and dragon land to a pirate land, to a (surprisingly stereotypical) American wild, wild West-esque land - all with their own rides, etc. like any other park.


We left afterward for a four hour bus trip to Copenhagen. I only mention that because all I wanted to do was sleep. Line, however, woke us all up to show us the damn bridge again.

Disney Had A Weak Stomach

Odense is also the hometown of Hans Christian Anderson - Denmark's favorite native son. He is the famous fairytale author who wrote such classics like "The Little Mermaid" and "The Ugly Duckling." These stories made him famous all around the world and he's celebrated in Denmark as their cultural hero. Although, his stories are quite different than the Disney versions most Americans are used to. They are a lot more brutal and vivid. The Little Mermaid? She didn't just lose her ability to sing - her tongue was physically cut from her mouth. Also, she dies at the end. Sorry, Annie. However, this is how fairytales are supposed to be - or, at least how they are in the rest of the world. America, surprise, surprise, watered it down for it's audiences.

Also, I know you cherish your town hero and such - but they REALLY love H.C. Anderson there.


Even the street lights for pedistrians are shaped like him (well, a figure with a cane, but it's supposed to be him)!


The H.C. Museum was quite good, though.


It was built around his home (or what people believe was the place he was born because his grandparents lived there - it was a poor area of the town back in the day - and his family had a poor background).


To end the night, we had dinner at Den Grimme Ælling (The Ugly Duckling, of course).


Yum.