Just got back from a whirlwind adventure in another city in Denmark and two cities in Sweden! And I'm exhausted and fighting the worst sinus infection ever sooo I apologize in advance if this blog post is lacking, but I felt the pictures I uploaded needed a lot of explanation.
So first we started in Helsingør which is like an hour north of Copenhagen. We had the best tour guide who teaches what sounds like a really cool class, Royalty in the Land of Equality, but i don't have enough room in my schedule to take it :(. Also, he is Danish but speaks English with a British accent... further proof of his awesomeness. We looked at Kronborg Castle (where Hamlet takes place!) but couldn't go inside as it was closed :(. Still pretty cool though! This was just the courtyard where we were.
I should also note our whole tour of Helsingør was the most rainy, cold, and dreary day imaginable. So no one was really sad when we got on the ferry for the 15 minute ride to Helsingborg in Sweden!
Then, we drove about an hour up to the coast to visit Ladonia (GOOGLE IT). It was definitely the coolest part of our trip. Long story short, this guy built a bunch of structures out of driftwood on a beach in Sweden. Then, the Swedish government got pissed and told him to take it down or they would. But he sold it as an art exhibit so they couldn't touch it and then declared it the nation of Ladonia (You can apply for citizenship online here http://www.ladonia.org/). Pretty fucking awesome. Seriously, google it. But what we learned that google
didn't tell us was that people got kind of upset over this guy and his art and some threats have been made... so whenever he goes to Ladonia a police car escorts him as far as possible, costing the Swedish tax payers some ridiculous amount of money. So they're understandably upset. Other cool things we learned were that one of the national anthems is the sound of a pebble dropping.. and the King is a pair of shoes. Pretty sick. Sadly, my pictures don't even BEGIN to do it justice. The hike was way harder than anyone (including my teacher) expected. None of us had been before though. It was super steep (steeper than the picture seems) and beyond slippery. There was obviously snow, and fallen leaves, and lots of slippery rock surfaces and moss and ice. Honestly, I'm surprised our class made it back alive, in one piece, and without any serious injuries. I think if they do this trip in future years there may be an insurance issue haha.
But, once we got down to the structures it was
SO cool!! I can't even describe them and the pictures sort of suck cause it was so overcast, but google (really, google it) has way better pictures. We spent a while exploring and going over the rocks and taking a million pictures, hopefully my classmates got some better ones! The only annoying part was all the driftwood structures were held together with nails sticking out every which way, and I got a little tiny snag in my coat :( but better than that in my hand ha. Surprisingly, everyone made it up the crazy cliff as well. Less surprisingly, everyone was exhausted and so sore the next day.
So after Ladonia we had tea and biscuits type thing at a little restaurant. It was supposed to be 'fike' or 'fika' which is like 'cozy conversation' in Swedish (except I'm sure that's not how you spell it). Then we headed to our cute hostel and had dinner, some delicious ice cream for dessert and watched a popular Danish movie. They told us it had 'dark undertones' which apparently in Scandinavia means the whole movie is entirely depressing. After that everyone was happy to get some sleep.
The next day we drove down to Malmo (can't figure out how to add the two dots over the o) which is a small but very up and coming city in southern Sweden. We had a cool architecture tour by another DIS professor who showed us the very old parts of Malmo (see the pic of the houses with basically slanting frames), but also the really new parts. There was some housing exhibition where Scandinavian architects built and designed their own new types of housing, all featured right on the water in Malmo with a nice view of the bridge from Malmo-Copenhagen. It was super cool but also super cold. It's funny that the houses really didn't look on the outside like super chic houses, but the interiors were probably much cooler, and it probably looks way better in the summer.
Then we visited Sydsvenskan, a fairly big southern Swedish newspaper. While we were in Malmo we really focused on how the city is dealing with its large immigrant population. At Sydsvenskan, we talked to them about how they dealt with the declining role of newspapers and also how they tried to reach a more multicultural audience, not all of whom probably speak Swedish. It was definitely interesting.
That night, we did a comedy workshop with a stand up comedian in Malmo. It was pretty fun, but her main exercise was to have us go around and anonymously write bad things about how we presented ourselves.. not the most fun, but generally amusing. We had a good dinner at a restaurant in Malmo after. On our trip was the 31 students in our class plus two others. We also had our awesome teacher Helle, the most chill teacher who's up for anything, and likes to have DIS pay for our stuff.. she gets away with it because she taught at Stanford. We also had Billy, a guy who we think is in his mid 30's (highly contested and we never got a straight answer from him), who is from Dublin but moved to Malmo about 6 years ago and works at DIS designing catalogues and brochures. He was awesome. Being from Malmo, he took our whole class + Helle out to his plan C Malmo bar (turns out not many are open late on Tuesday nights.. weird). He took us to a Malmo microbrewery and convinced them (in his little Swedish) to open up the entire upper floor for us.. awesome! But the best was yet to come... Helle and Billy had DIS pay for the first beer for everyone! Great class bonding. Billy even invited his cool Californian girlfriend and we all had a great time.
On Wednesday we started the day with a trip to SVT (I think), a big TV station in Malmo. We got a cool tour from the head of news production, and then had an awesome discussion with him. He talked a lot about how Malmo gets represented in the news due to its large immigrant population. Apparently, being born in Sweden doesn't make you a Swede if your parents or grand parents or great grand parents were not born in Sweden. They praised America for calling what Swedes would call a '3rd generation immigrant' a '1st generation American', until we reminded them that we call illegal immigrants aliens. So we all have our problems. We also watched clips of how Fox and the Christian Broadcasting Network portrayed Malmo during a rough time to America. They 1) pronounced the name wrong, 2) listed facts with zero sources and 3) blamed the Muslim immigrants for everything and 4) interviewed a man who they listed as a 'head of something important' in Malmo, who has actually been convicted and arrested several times for his incredibly racist remarks. The people of Malmo are not too happy with Fox and CBN. Billy (in the pic) also got his friend who works there to show us an awesome show he does where they interview artists about how they came up with their songs (Chris Martin of Coldplay NBD). A pretty cool visit.
After, Billy took us for falafel, a traditional Arabic food that's popular in Malmo. However, the combination of ordering Arabic food in Swedish was pretty difficult and I, being the picky eater that I am, was not super pleased with the dish. However, afterwards Billy gave us a tour of Malmo and got us (DIS paid) baklava (turkish or arabic I don't know?)! I liked that a bit more. He also pointed out his house and where he DJs, and his DJ name.. wait for it... A boy called Billy. Greatest. Lastly, we went to a Jewish community center where we talked to a rabbi who moved to Sweden with his wife from NYC to better serve the Jewish community there. It's kind of crazy, he admits that he lives in fear of many attacks and threats from other ethnic minorities in Malmo yet he will stay there forever. When we discussed the roots of anti-semitism he kind of dismissed most of our ideas but didn't really offer up any of his own so we didn't get very far on solving any major world problems. But it was interesting to see how western immigrants are treated better than Middle Eastern or African immigrants, yet the Jewish people still have a really hard time in Malmo.
Thennn we went home and I slept the whole hour ride. I'm still exhausted! But it was really nice to come back to home cooked meals again! When I tried to recap the trip to my host family I couldn't even remember everything because I was so tired.
Last part I promise! Today we first had a mini presentation by two people from an organization that I unfortunately can't remember. But they're working on a campaign to stop discrimination in Copenhagen, especially in the nightlife. I haven't heard of much of that happening, but I have heard that a bar near DIS, A Bar (australian bar), doesn't let in many minorities. Apparently some bars around the city won't let in minorities because they feel those are the people usually causing bar fights, buts its basically discrimination. After the presentation we got a tour of a nearby neighborhood, Norrebrø, by Hiba, a 23 year old muslim girl who studying to be a dentist. She offered to do our dental work for free! :) She gave us a tour of her old school, a k-9th grade private arabic school. I have to admit it was weird seeing so many people in head scarves and with arabic writing on the walls, but she told us some pretty interesting stuff. The school had such good grades that the education department was suspicious of cheating (because why would minorities ever be smart apparently) and had people watch over their exams, but found no cheating. Her school had some of the highest grades and ratings in Copenhagen. Kind of reminded me of how the technical high school, traditionally for people not going to college, had the best academics of our public schools haha. The kids were SO cute and so friendly!! She also showed us around the neighborhood, including an area thats pretty run down and covered in graffiti. Apparently the government used to own a house there specifically for youth, kind of a place where they could live together and do whatever youth did back then (i think mostly drugs). Then, the government sold it to a super christian organization whose name I can't remember, and they promptly tore down the building because the people inside weren't following Christian rules or whatever. And now every year there are riots on the day it was demolished, and the drugs have spread into the city instead of being in one house. Hiba was not pleased. We also learned that no mosques have been approved for building in Copenhagen (maybe all of Denmark?) yet. For now, they worship in normal buildings where they just put down carpets in rooms for prayers. And showed us a 'ghetto' in Copenhagen (below), apparently one of the worst that is considered the 'lowest of the low'. To be a ghetto in Denmark, there are a few requirements it must fill. I believe they include having a certain percentage of immigrants, a certain number of inhabitants who have committed crimes, and maybe a certain number of apartments? Anyway, looking at this 'ghetto' it appeared WAY nicer than places not considered ghettos at home. It was crazy. Like I would probably live there. My host family said there aren't any real ghettos here though, at least not in comparison to the USA, because of their strong welfare system. Pretty crazy. Then she took us to a great Turkish restaurant where I got a chicken shish kebab which was deliciousss!
And then I came home and wrote this novel... AGAIN. Sorry I keep doing this to you guys it just kind of happens somehow. But if you skimmed all the stuff above, the gist of it is that I had a great time in Sweden, learned a lot about the issues with Denmark and Sweden's immigration policies, and bonded with all my classmates after we saved each others lives several times during our hike, and braved lots of cold walking tours and different foods together. And now I'm ready for some serious relaxation! Hope you enjoyed the forever long blog post again! At least this time I included pictures :)
Lots of love,
Colleen
