Day 23

Monday, 12 September 2011

So three weeks gone already.  It's funny how crazy the weather has been (mid 50s last week, mid 70s this week).

Last Thursday was the start of the short study tours.  This is one of the reasons why DIS is an awesome study abroad place.  They organize and set aside time for field trips that are both academic and fun-filled (stated purpose being to learn something and to enhance social interaction of class and teacher), and the actual site visits and activities are chosen based on the core program (akin to your major).  Just studying abroad at a foreign university as an international exchange student sorta leaves you on your own to survive classes and find your own niche and time to travel.  I really appreciate DIS doing this because I am such a lazy bum too.

In any case, my host family went above and beyond again to work with DIS so that we could be picked up at exit 34 rather than having to jump on the 6:00 am train eastwards to get to the city, meet at the bus, and end up driving westwards for the trip anyway.  Us three girls standing at exit 34 attracted curious looks and beep-beeps from passing cars and trucks (doing jumping jacks in the morning chill didn't help matters).  It was all good fun, and the buses did remember to pick us up.

We had 3 academic site visits, to Århus University Hospital (PET Center and Center for Functionally Integrative Neuroscience CFIN), Skødstrup Lægepraksis, and Skejby Hospital.  At site 1 and 3, the focus was mostly on research, although we did get to see experimental surgery on a VERY LARGE pig at site 3.  Site 2 was a general practicioner's office.  Actually, it was an enterprise owned by 8 GPs.  The cool (or super difficult thing) about Danish GPs is that they don't specialize by age.  They stay with patients from "cradle to grave."  No pediatricians, no geriatricians.  Just one GP for every citizen.

A small comment on the business practice: again, the whole Danish equality-for-all mentality shows.  Doctors and nurses, while they respect each other's knowledge bases, avoid seeing themselves in any sort of hierarchy.  Sometimes doctors do stuff like EKGs and small tests normally relegated to the nurses.  Also, the secretary staff rotate as lab technicians (saves money).  The facility is also extremely homey.  The waiting room and examination rooms are high-ceilinged and open to streaming sunlight rather than boxed in with only indoor lighting, the walls are painted pastels and decorated with various photos/art rather than a blank sterile slate, and even the lab looks like kitchen counterspace.

That night, we stayed in Danhostel's version in Århus.  For those of you who wish to travel around and stay for cheap in hostels, it's time for hostel comparison!  In Bornholm, it was 10 people in one of the rooms (5 bunks), cement floor.  You have to provide your own linens, and the bathroom is shared (also the toilet space was extremely cramped).  Meals were fine, though.  That was a 3 star hostel.

The one in Århus (note: the a with an o on top can also be written aa, like Aarhus) I didn't catch the star valuation, but it was 4 people per room (carpeted floor), and each room had a private bathroom.  Meals were tasty.  There's one more hostel coming up (meaning, keep reading!).

Also Thursday night, DIS took us out to dinner, at a place called St. Clemens Bryggeri.  Meals were pre-ordered: twas what they called "classic steak."  It was picture worthy, excepting the fact that the meat was medium-rare.  I wonder if it was possible to order the rarity, or maybe DIS wanted to satisfy everyone by having the middle choice, or maybe the restaurant assumed all Americans ate red meat?  Otherwise the restaurant is very fancy but cozy-looking with wooden tables, and they offer several choices of home-brewed beer (I couldn't give you any recommendations because I don't like beer in general).  An interesting point is that we had to walk back to our hostel afterwards.  The bus driver had a limitation on how many hours he could work!

Friday the most interesting point to see was Den Gamle By (dehn gahm luh boo).  It's an open air museum, filled with reconstructed homes from various time periods (i.e. they took apart the house from somewhere else, carted the pieces over here, and reassembled it).  The big building in the town square took 10 years to fully reassemble!  So it was fun to learn a little history, like seeing the pharmacy's mummy powder (used to treat seizures), walking on the main street's center flat cobblestones that were reserved for the wealthy, and stooping to enter a tiny house where children slept sitting up your brain would get diseased if you slept lying down (at least that was the myth).

This was in Vejle, the 2nd big town of Western Denmark south of Århus.  Their version of Danhostel was 5 stars!  The general lobby provided a TV room and activity room, and it was again 4 people to a room, with a separate entryway and bathroom, AND a TV!  We had a "How I Met Your Mother" marathon (with Danish subtitles).  Carpeted floors, and a magnificent hostel feast for dinner.  It was rather like a hotel EXCEPT no linens and no provided toiletries, and the beds were bunk.

Saturday was reserved for all fun and games.  In the morning we went to the middle island of Fyn to Jelling to see the Jelling Stones.  WAY way way way back in history, Harald Bluetooth, king of Denmark, was "persuaded" by the German empire south to convert all the Danes to Christianity, else they would be invaded and forcibly converted.  Therefore, he hired a foreigner to carve a message into a big stone.  The Danes were not so easily convinced.  So how do you get them to church?  For the longest time, the churches gave out white gowns (what they imagined Jesus wore) for free on Sundays, so church service was very popular (this is like how you attract college students, FREE T-SHIRTS!).  And at various points in history, the major sect was Catholicism, which changed to Lutheran/Protestant.  Like at Frederiksberg Castle, the church constructed at the time of the Jelling Stones is also still in use.

Afterwards, they took us on a sound byte tour of Odense, the town of H.C. Andersen's beginnings.  There are EXTREMELY ADORABLE cobblestone streets lined with painted, squat houses next to a lovely stream and an awe-inspiring cathedral and situated quietly out of range of the more modern downtown Odense.  I only wish we had more time to do it ourselves, because as a huge group they wouldn't let us go into the Andersen's childhood house-turned-museum.

For lunch, DIS treated us once again to a place called Franck A Brasserie.  We had cheeseburgers with an interesting orange-colored sauce in place of ketchup, etc.  It was very good, mind you, just different.  ALSO, the burger patty was medium rare!  WHAT????  In America, medium rare ground beef is EXTREMELY dangerous, if only because processing of beef increases exposure of E. coli to the patty interior.  All I can say is, maybe Danish processed meat is safer????? No idea.

Eventually we went home, but as I said before, every day is an adventure.  Sunday was the 1st weekend I could sleep in rather than hop on board another trip.  10 am was our neighbor Suzanne's birthday, so we were all invited to a sunday brunch at her house.  They sang the American birthday song, but were slightly depressed that there was only 1 verse (they pulled out another with "How old are you now" to the same tune).  Only today (Monday) in class did I learn that the Danish birthday song has several verses.  Here it was that I encountered the deliciously dangerous pastry called a kringle!  It's essentially braided sweet pastry bread that can be filled/decorated with oh-so-tasty-things like hazelnut and marzipan, chocolate chips, pecan walnut creme (ok I invented that one), but you get the idea (or your tongue does).

So having eaten a very carbohydrate filled brunch, I went on a bike ride into the backwoods of Borup.  Actually, I didn't bike very far before I encountered the "leaving Borup" sign.  I biked for an hour, and in that hour I passed through several small towns like Hegnede, Birkede, Viby, etc etc.  They all LOOK like suburbs, but like pockets of suburbs separated by great fields of farmland.

Yesterday was also the tenth anniversary of 9/11.  It was very striking that my host sister seemed depressed all day, listening to sad songs and watching/reading updates/reflections of 9/11.  Her opinion was that we should all be reminded that the world is not safe, that there exist evil/crazy/simply insane people like the Norway shooter and Bin Laden, and she did feel very much for those that lost a parent or a child or simply someone they loved.  I'm certain she didn't lose anyone in 9/11, nor did she grow up in America, so I was very surprised that she should feel so much for a foreign country across the ocean.  In fact, I think she was more struck by the anniversary than I was.

My opinion is that, yes, we should remember those who died, but it should be part of a bigger struggle to make the world a better place, to see and encourage what is going well and happily in the world, and to give thanks that you are still here, able to enjoy what you can, because life can be taken away at any time and most definitely without warning.

Well, I have lauded Denmark many times in my blog, but today I read something which I do not support at all.  I was reading a text for DLC class that describes how the Danish equality-for-all mentality negatively impacts society.  In a party, yes, you go around 1st thing to shake hands with everybody, but then everyone gathers into their own groups of who they know.  No one is supposed to introduce the newbies to potential friends, and certainly no one does.  Why??  Because to do that would mean you are exposing yourself as superior to the newbie, that you are in the click and have to appear to condescend in order to welcome in new people.  The Danes aren't avoiding it because they feel superior---they avoid it because they don't want other people to see it and think they think themselves superior.  And so the new person never gets to be introduced to anyone and has a very terrible time being lonely.  This unfortunate mentality also translates to the schooling system, where teachers attempt to make children equal by limiting curriculum to what a child already knows (which doesn't make sense b/c children are here to learn about something they don't know) since having knowledge makes you "superior."  Also, there is no sort of program that encourages those with talent or who wish to learn to challenge themselves (no honor roll, no G&T classes, etc) or expand their knowledge base (except maybe the Folk High Schools, which are schools for those who feel like learning--no grades, no tests, just classes).  The text also presented the results of a study that showed children whose parents graduated from university also got university degrees, children whose parents were "blue collar" remained in blue collar jobs, and children whose parents lived on welfare also continued to do so.  The author stated that there doesn't seem to be any attempt to encourage people to try and achieve something, because that would mean you are trying to become good at something, trying to be better than others, etc, etc.  All of these are individualistic, independent values that Americans hold, but apparently the Danes don't.  Food for thought.