Late night photo stream of consciousness

Tomorrow morning at 8:15 I will board a bus to Berlin, Germany. At the eight-hour mark of the journey, we will pause for a tour of Sachsenhausen, a Nazi forced labor camp in Oranienburg. It seems that this year I cannot help but live and relive the memory of the Holocaust. Maybe I should go to sleep right now to prepare. It is 1:31. But in the past two days, I have been trying to absorb as much culture in CPH—that's what the cool kids call it—as I can, and I'm excited to share what I've seen. When I write at night, it's usually incoherent. That said, I present instead a captioned tour through my favorite photos.

Last night was Copenhagen's Kulturnatten, The Night of Culture. Nearly all of the museums, national buildings, and music venues are open all night to anyone wearing an event badge, which costs only 75 Danish kroner. (The exchange rate is about 5.4 DKK : 1 USD.) I met my friends Marlo, Jo, and Rachael at the København Zoo, where we drank Newcastle beer, peeked into the pens of nocturnal animals, and tried to work the nighttime modes on our cameras.

The flamingos, whose elegance cannot be captured with a point-and-shoot


The arse of an ursus maritimus

What had been advertised as "live music" was actually a children's choir

We rode a bus back to Rådhusplasen, the city center, where we visited city hall in search of more culture and pancakes. No such luck. But they did have public toilets.


The Danish flag

Most Kulturnatten events end around midnight. Our last visit was to Rundetaaren, the Round Tower. Inside, a spiral ramp winds its way up 36-meter tower, which has one of the best observatories in Copenhagen.


The tower also hosts modern art exhibits



And good places to hide

Today, I visted the Ny Carlsberg Glypotek, a private art collection owned by Carl Jacobsen, who owned Denmark's own Carlsberg Brewery. The museum is beside Tivoli, a stately marble building with mosaic floors and elaborate ceilings. Two staircases diverge from the entry hall, each one leading to various ancient and modern permanent exhibits. The main modern wing, home to several Van Goghs, seemed to be sealed off this afternoon. I spent most of my time looking at ancient Greek sculptures and relaxing in the winter garden, an atrium in the very center of the museum.


From the sculpture garden

A favorite room of ancient Greek busts

I realized how little I know about art when I visited the Glypotek. I feel uncultured and imprecise for not being able to provide even the name of this work in my entry. Instead, you'll just have to appreciate it as I did: quietly.

I will do my best to write as I travel in the next few weeks. Tomorrow, my exploration of western Europe begins.

Bad luck lakris

I took a break from studying for midterms today to go to Tiger, Denmark's shabby chic 10-kroner store. After stocking up on a few toiletries for my study tour, I grabbed a bag of large cola bottle-shaped sucking candies on impulse at the register. I popped one in my mouth as I walked back to the the bus stop in Radhusplasen, the city center. Cola? Nej nej. The whole thing was coated in black licorice powder.

Danes are serious about their licorice. This was the real too coarse to bite, salt-coated, nostril-burning flavor that Scandinavian candy is apparently known for. By the time I realized how badly I wanted to spit the thing out, I was already on the bus, a place which has strange and strict rules of decorum, especially concerning food. Spitting it out in front of a car full of middle-aged Danes didn't seem to be an option. After a few stops, I had sucked all of the powder off of the candy. The optimist in me insisted that maybe it was constructed like a Warhead—coated in a tortorous outer layer with a rewardingly sweet inside.

Wrong. Inside, the licorice flavor only got stronger. So I bit the whole candy in half, desperately hoping to finish it. The candy, which was still the size of my whole palate, began to fizz wildly with an unexplainably strong salt flavor. The Danish guy I'd smiled at across the bus looked mildly appalled when he noticed my face now contorting in nausea. I was even beginning to consider following the example of my neighbor, who one weekend puked into the "free newspaper" tote bag that hangs behind the driver. I decided to just get it over with. I swallowed the whole candy. The taste lingered on my tongue, throat, and nose until my stop. I have never been so excited to brush my teeth. Which begs the question, why the hell do Danish supermarkets sell licorice-flavored toothpaste?

Now I'm stuck with a bag of giant cola-shaped pieces of poison in my kitchenette. I've offered one to every person who has come to my room tonight. And this is how we know we've become expert in Danish culture: No one has said yes.

High brow, low brow, and totally bizarre

Copenhagen is home to only 1.1 million people, most of whom are tall, blonde, and native to Denmark. Because of the socialized government's pension system, the citizens' social and economic statuses are far less stratified than in most US cities. As one medical student explained to me, Danes' even widely agree on most political and cultural matters. Improbably, then, from this small country of similar people, a diverse modern culture has flourished.

On Wednesdays, no DIS classes are scheduled. Most students instead have to attend on-site academic "study tours." For some reason my classes require very few of these, so I've began my own series of weekly Danish enlightenment programs. This Wednesday, I think I saw the country from cultural top to bottom, sliding from the most urbane modern art museum in the country, the Louisiana—to a "36th birthday party" in Christiana, where a communal bong was being hauled through the streets by wheelbarrow.

Tina Turner, singer, New York, June 13, 1971
One of my favorites from the Louisiana's Richard Avedon exhibit

(Which begs the question, how does a Dane feel upon seeing the work of Avedon, whose portraits of celebrities, artists, and vagabonds depict a distinctly American identity?)



The Lousiana's sculpture garden

As I mentioned before, you can't take pictures in Christiania without someone angrily shouting "Nej! Nej!" at you through the crowd, so this photo of our Danish friend Ask waiting to cross the street the Christianhavn will have to do.


Ask, waiting to cross the street in Christianhavn
My most recent cultural experience was one that I can hardly comprehend, let alone classify. The physician who teaches my Human Health and Disease class announced that today a beach party—with the crown prince as its guest of honor—would celebrate the opening of the new Metro stop at Copenhagen Airport. After class, my friend Katie and I hopped on the train to check it out.

As we reached the our stop, rain hammered on the roof of the car and a horde of twelve-year-olds pushed past us toward the concert. We decided to stay on the train and check out another Metro-related event, this one offering free food. There we found free beer, some strange creamy goulash being sold out of striped tents, and a handful of men and women dressed in white facepaint and old-fashioned clothes. Although we both feared that maybe we had taken the train to some strange carnie hell, the alcohol settled in our empty stomachs and we asked our new zombie friends to take pictures with us.



...I don't get it either.

Learning to play

We made another (mercifully bike-free) stop on our study tour at Børnehaven Østerladen, a Danish childcare center in northern Jutland. Although Børnehaven directly translates to "kindergarten," this piece of abandoned farmland is unlike any kindergarten I've ever seen. The kids, all three through six, tromped freely through pools of mud until every one of their neon rain suits was coated in brown. Some of the boys were playing a game that involved swinging branches of trees at each others' heads. I saw one girl fall headfirst off of the back of the monkey bars then stand up, look a little dizzy, shake it off, stumble for a few steps, and run away. Pens of chickens and free-ranging goats roam alongside the kids. We spent only a short time at the kindergarten and I'm sure that the presence a group of thirty tall, mostly dark-haired people asking, "Hvad hedder du?" and "Hvor gammel er du?" again and again in bastardized Danish wasn't calming the playground mood. But coming from a city where kids now experience flora as a pit of colored rubber mulch, Børnehaven Østerladen seemed fresh, wild, and kind of a great idea.

Of course the whole Montessori model is built on the idea that "play is the work of children." In most American daycares and pre-schools, though, free play is punctuated by classroom lessons. In Østerladen, one teacher explained to me, the kids play all day. They're too young, she said, to benefit from lectures on reading and math. Rather they cultivate independence, social skills, and creativity just by romping around together outside every day. In a basic sense, I'm still undecided about which approach to early childhood education makes more sense to me. Maybe it's a goodness of fit issue. In the largely individualist American context, acceptance to the 92nd St. Y can seem like the only way to achieve success in this world. Because of Denmark's socialist government and regard for the welfare of all, this country assumes a more collectivistic outlook. Eventually, these kids will begin public school, where they'll learn grammar and long division and English. Then they'll go to university, for free. Finally these kids in the mud will grow up to work 37-hour work weeks and take five weeks of vacation every year. I guess learning to play in Denmark is an essential lifelong skill.

So how was the bike ride?

The surburban plot where my family has lived for twenty-four years is always changing to accomodate our newest tastes and hobbies. Twelve years ago a stately Japanese maple was planted in the center of the front lawn, around the same time a basketball key was painted in the driveway, and almost ten years ago plastic sheets temporarily replaced plaster walls as an entire second floor was added to the house. What never changed was where we were: at the apex of a concrete ski slope, hemmed in between dense woods and a dead end. Right on the edge of the worst place in the world for a kid to learn to ride a bike.

My mom used to let me rollerblade on our hardwood floors because, I think, she was afraid of what might happen if I went off of our property on wheels. Until I was in high school, potholes that filled like ponds pockmarked the whole street. Because biking around the neighborhood wasn't an option, my dad used to take me out to parking lots and playgrounds occasionally to ride. But I lost interest at around age eleven and I can't remember getting on a bike since.

Copenhagen is a city with a cycle culture. As sixty-year-old women in high heels blow by me on their one-speeds as I wait for the bus in the morning, I just stare at their coattails in admiration. I was pretty content being a cyclist spectator until last week, when the coordinator of my Medical Practice and Policy program announced that we'd be going on a bike tour as a part of this weekend's study tour. After she finished, I went to speak to her privately.

"So how intense is this bike ride? Because, I, well, I can't really ride a bike." I rambled on that yes, okay, I had learned, and I know it's like riding a bike because it is riding a bike, but maybe I was never really good enough that you could call it, umm, knowing, exactly. I took a breath. In typical Danish fashion she responded, "You'll be fine."

On Thursday our study tour began. I nervously disclosed to a few people that I was dreading the ride. Saturday morning, an hour before the fearsome ride, we found out that we had the option of either biking or taking a taxi to Grenen, the beach where everyone on our program would meet that afternoon. Instead of relief, though, determination surged inside of me. I had been too nervous for too long to not try. I rented a bike with the rest of my group and dragged it into the parking lot.

Even with the seat sunk to its lowest setting, I couldn't manage to get both feet to touch the ground while I stood over my new bike. Sophie, the Danish medical student who accompanied us on the study tour, was watching me from the side of the lot. She recommended that I go back to the rental center to get a helmet and a child's bicycle. I returned with both. With Garik—a kind classmate of mine who expected that I might need thirty seconds of practice before heading to Grenen—standing beside me, I tried to take off on the smaller bike. Ten feet, okay. Twenty, and I had no idea what to do. I slowed down, swerved, put my feet on the ground, and watched the metal basket pop off of the back of the bike as the handlebars crashed to the ground.

As I righted myself by the side of a dumpster, Garik, Sophie, and a DIS intern named Libby were conferencing. The girls who had decided to take a taxi had already left. I could walk to Skagen, but by the time I arrived, the rest of the group would likely be heading back for lunch already. What was I supposed to do? Libby and Garrick, who I imagine felt somewhat relieved, jetted out of the parking lot. Sophie walked up to me. "You're doing great," she said. "But I have an idea. Would you like to ride on a tandem bicycle?"

We rode the three kilometers together on one bike, from that parking lot to the beach. Sophie narrated the whole ride, telling me about the hearty flowers that we passed and asking about US politics. "This is fun!" she even exclaimed as we pedaled. We showed up in style and on time to Grenen: the very point where the waves of the North and Baltic Seas meet above the northern tip of Jutland. The two shores narrow until they finally converge, drawing together waters carried by opposite winds into a sparkling ribbon of water.

What was most magical about the whole experience was that Sophie made me feel proud for trying to ride a bike rather than embarrassed for not exactly knowing how. In a way, this attitude is distinctly Danish. Children here are not academically tracked until the university level; apparently few differences in ability or skill are even acknowledged inside schools at all. Even disabled children are, for the most part, mainstreamed. I think the idea is that if everyone is included and expected to learn, they will. Individual challenges can be handled, even when the individual needs a little help. Furthermore, problems are not seen as something to be solved, but rather something to experience. Seeking solutions is, like most things in Denmark, a pretty stress-free endeavor.

On the way back from Grenen, Sophie, Libby, and I—I was attached the back of Sophie's bike, after all—stopped at a grocery store to buy snacks for that night's bus ride to Copenhagen. As we loaded thirty-six bottles of water onto the two bikes, Libby asked Sophie if she thought we could carry all the extra weight. "Oh, of course. I've ridden with 90 beers on my bike before," Sophie answered casually as she finished packing the two metal baskets.

Christiania, the 40-year "Social Experiment"

Last Monday, between Biomedical Ethics and a dinner for students in the Medical Practice and Policy program, my new friend Katie and I explored Christiania. In the 1960s, this neighborhood outside downtown Copenhagen housed a military base. When the base was abandoned, a community of young people moved in and founded a commune. The community is still vibrant and popular today, although I think the population has diminished since its establishment. (Someone told me that you need to be invited to live there, but I'm not sure if it's true.) The Danish government regards Christiania as a continued "social experiment," a label which somehow has allowed a streetful of vendors to continue selling pot from wooden carts for the past forty years.

(Sorry, you're prohibited from taking pictures on "Pusher Street.")

Aside from the obvious sites, Christiania's attractions are kind of limited. Feeling a little disappointed after all hype we'd heard in the halls of DIS, Katie and I wandered back to the Christianhavn metro station. Across the street, we found a bakery flooded with young mothers and giant strollers, selling the most beautiful pastries I've ever seen.


So, we went all the way to a open weed market and all we bought were some gourmet munchies.