classwork, breweries and the beast

Before I talk about the last week or so, I have been thinking about some of the things that I have noticed about Denmark that are different than anywhere else I have lived. Here is a quick list:

• Everyone rides a bike. The city is completely flat and if you go to any public place (train station, school, bar, restaurant, etc.) you will always see numerous bikes all over the place
• Bathrooms are unisex. Yep. You walk into a bathroom (sans urinal) and there are usually 3 or 4 doors to stalls and it could be Bill or Lisa that walks out. No telling.
• Exits are not marked very well. I have apparantly gotten very used to large green exit signs (with a little guy running on them) and the lack of the obvious markers has thrown me for numerous loops. I have, while trying to leave a room, accidentally gone into bathrooms, closets, classrooms and one time a cinema. I miss the green signs. (current time is about 2 minutes after I just wrote this part, and I told my friend Shell how I think that exits are poorly marked, and she told me that they are marked extremely well, they are just in Danish. The word is Udgang. I am simple)
• When bar tenders poor a beer, they leave about 2 inches free at the top (a little for foam and just a little space so they don't spill I guess).

There are probably more, but none come to mind right now.

So last week I had off from school and one of my pals from Edinburgh, Evan Green, came to visit Copenhagen for a few days. He flew into town Tuesday and Shell and I met him out at the train station for a "welcome" beer at a sports bar called O' Leary's. Shell had to bid us farewell for the evening, so Evan and I ended up going to a very strange Mexican restaurant. We ordered some nachos as an appetizer and then a main meal. When the nachos came, there actually were 2 plates of nachos. When we asked the waiter about this, he said that he thought we looked hungry and that one nacho would not be enough for us. We thought that it was awfully nice of him to give us a free nacho, until we found out that we had to pay for it. After we found this out, Evan jumped up, tipped the table over and spilled everything on the couple sitting next to us as he yelled at the waiter. Actually, that last part did not happen, but I think it would have been funny. We ended up not paying for the extra nachos.

On Wednesday Evan and I went around the town and first off saw a huge demonstration that was focused on the government and how they were making education more expensive for students and how pensions would be decreased. Or something like this. We walked along the water and saw the new Opera house, Hans Christen Anderson's Little Mermaid statue, and a few other parts of town. The night was capped off by Shell making an authentic Chinese meal (hong shao rou = pork, rice, potato, cool spice). It was quite tasty.

Thursday was the day Evan, Shell and I toured the Carlsberg brewery. It was raining, and it is a brewery, so we thought why not? The brewery was pretty impressive, and the Danish have a long history in the suds. They also had some free samples at the end, and I will say, one of the coffe/chocolate flavored beers was quite good.

A seperate paragraph is needed for this part of Evan's visit. The subject: hot dogs. I have not put down how cool hot dogs are in Denmark, but let me try to paint a picture. Think of a pig in a blanket, make it about 3 times larger, and then instead of having the pig in the blanket, put it in a sleeping bag. A small, toasted sleeping bag of goodness. To make matters much, much better, there are hot dog vendors all over the place in the city. It did not take me long to figure out how great this was, and Evan was on board with hot dogs from the start. Lunch....hot dogs. A mid-day snack, how about a dog? After going to the bar, why not cap the night off with some processed meat in a bun? We could not get enough of them. To recap, I enjoy hot dogs. And so does Evan.

Thursday night was spent at a bar (located in the business school) called Nexus, then off to a bar called Out of Juice (where you get to roll dice on thursdays and if it comes up 6, your drinks are free) and then off to a club late. It was quite a good time. Evan was off on Friday early and I slept and then caught a matinee of The Da Vinci Code. Not my favorite all time movie, but it was entertaining in a lot of parts. It has been fairly well documented, but it is nonetheless true that Tom Hanks' hair was a distraction. Odd.

This week has seen me in my last 2 classes in Copenhagen (M & A and Business in Asia). Both have been really interesting, especially the M & A class. They have structured this class where different professionals will come in and talk about each process of a merger or acquisition, usually the process in which they are an expert.

Next up, tests and papers for these classes, more work on internships, figuring out my next few months, a bit of travel probably on the way and who knows. Pictures above.