Wow, I'm Back in the USA!

Well, I've been back in the US for almost 2 weeks. It's weird. I haven't felt the dreaded 'reverse culture shock,' but I'm certainly noticing the differences (as well as the strange similarities). Before coming back, especially on the cusp of Christmas, I can see now that I was building up my memories of Minneapolis - not to say that Minneapolis isn't a great place. For instance, bacon is wonderful. I savor every piece (yes savor, not savour - maybe my ability to change the nationality of my spelling so quickly is a good metaphor for me adapting back and forth between Ireland and the US [as if there was that huge of a difference between the two {are these nested parentheses driving you nuts?}]), but doesn't have the nice meatiness of Irish rashers...

Since I haven't reported on my last few days and adventure home, and this blog is just as much a journal for myself than a blog for anybody else, I'd like to share that.

I spent a lot of time in the last few days in Dublin walking around, taking pictures, and taking my environs in. I ate lunch at little places in the City Centre that I couldn't anywhere else, got coffee at Fallon and Bryne for the last time, and watched mallards in Stephen's Green - among other things. Jenna flew home with me, so she got to Dublin on Thursday night after a snow-induced delay in Paris. We went to a few pubs around Ranelagh and Rathmines, although they had started closing since we got going to so late. Portabello - James Joyce's old digs - was where we settled, even though they played NHL and had multi-colored dance lights roving around the walls.

Friday was consumed by cleaning, taking care of library fines, and saying goodbye to a city I really loved. I had a guest lecturer in my last class, Irish Politics, that I made sure to make it to. The lecturer was Michael Marsh, who I had cited in papers time after time that semester. It was fun to finally see the guy whose work I'd leeched for the last 4 months.

I though a good dinner would be found at O'Neills. They are recognized as having some of the best quality pub food around - a fitting goodbye. For some reason, maybe that it was the last Friday before Christmas and everybody was having a good time with friends before going to see their family, there was not a free inch in the joint. The 6 of us in the group joined a couple at a huge table they snagged for themselves (they soon left) and got our food. I had a delicious beef and Guinness stew with chips and Brussels sprouts on the side. We hung out there for a few hours and then tried a few more pubs. Turns out that EVERY pub was lacking an extra square inch. We eventually gave up and got a few cans of Guinness and retreated to our flat. I finished my packing and cleaning and grabbed a few hours of sleep before the 5:30 alarm.

At the airport, we got to deal with checking bags, answering security questions, and filing for tax refunds. Then, our flight was delayed an hour, putting a big question mark next to our connection in Chicago. After a nice jog through O'Hare a la Home Alone (which I knew I'd have to do sometime), I relaxed on a plane back to Minneapolis. I was home!

Expat Thanksgiving

Now that it's almost Christmas, I figured I needed to get to posting about Thanksgiving. I had not spent Thanksgiving without my family before, so I was in for a new experience. It was also interesting to have Thanksgiving in a country that doesn't celebrate Thanksgiving (although my Irish Politics professor wished all us Americans a Happy one!). All of the stores were open when we really needed them, so we didn't need to frantically get to the store before it closed at 4:00 PM.

Jenna came over from Paris so we could spend the holiday together! We ended up celebrating on Saturday because of the way our schedules worked out - I had class until 6 on Thursday and we went to a concert Friday.

As a matter of coincidence, one of Jenna's favourite bands, Kasabian, was in Dublin on the Friday she was in town. They are a British band that I like to describe as the post-punk version of the Byrds who grew up listening to techno every once and a while. Kasabian was playing at Dublin's biggest venue, the very new O2 Arena. All 14,000 seats were full for this show, and for good reason. They were very theatrical, incorporating LCD screens, short films, and even a man dressed as Vlad the Impaler (the namesake of their new single) into the show. It was a hell of a lot of fun, especially the 5+ minute Ole, Ole, Ole chant accompanied by 10 foot wide beach ball bouncing around the crowd.

Thanksgiving itself was a lot of fun. Jenna and I took over the kitchen and whipped up some magic. Jenna masterfully crafted some pecan pies, and we both got our hands in the dressing, lemon-garlic-butter-sage-and-thyme roasted bird (because of the oven size it was a chicken), brown sugar and whiskey sweet potatoes, and mashed potatoes. Jenna, 3 of my roommates, and I sipped on wine and cider while enjoying good craic and food.

Christmas in Dublin

Christmas in Dublin...it's like 'Christmas in Killarney' by Bing Crosby except in Dublin instead. Christmas makes Dubliners happy, as it does all over the Anglophonic world. Here are some pictures I've taken of the decorations:

Some of the things that Irish people love to do are eat and drink. On the beverages list are hot port and hot whiskey (lemon, sugar, cloves, and liquor). The favorite sweets include mince pies (tiny pies filled with sugary fruit), Christmas pudding (fruitcake soaked in liquor and lit on fire upon presentation),and Cadbury chocolates. Really, anything sweet will do here! They also play with crackers a lot. At Christmas parties, two people will hold either side of what looks like a giant paper candy and pull apart. Turns out, it makes a big popping noise and smells a little bit like a burned match afterwards (you can't bring these things on planes). Out pops a dumb little toy and a tissue-paper crown. If the side you're holding onto after the explosion is larger, then you put on the crown and claim the winnings - it's like a wishbone.

Last Day in Copenhagen, Last Big Trip of Europe

Sunday morning meant another appointment with our favorite bakery. Today, we indulged in Danish Danish. Once again, they were fantastic.

There are a series of large parks that our bus drove by on the way to the city, and we decided to investigate. The one John and I ended up in was a botanical garden. Different sections of the park had different geographic themes from Asia to America. It was a misty and chilly day, but it was a nice enough park that it was bearable (well, more than bearable). In the centre of the park, unknown to us when we went into it, was a huge complex of greenhouses. Most looked to be used by the nearby Copenhagen University and locked to the public on Sundays (including a long room of peculiar cacti), except the main greenhouse. It was a fairly old building, almost Victorian-esque. Inside was a rainforest! It was like Rainforest Cafe without the stuffed animals and thunderstorms. Seriously though, the rooms were overrun by palms and fruit trees. One of the rooms had a plant alluded to in the Bible (or so says Catholic-high-school John), but it's sign was separated from its trunk and we couldn't find the plant. The whole experience was made better by the fact that it was nice and warm in there.

Past the next big road, in the next big park, we went to the National Art Museum. In my previous post, I may have said we went to this but I really meant the National Museum. In keeping with the theme of oil=bad, there were a number of exhibits that highlighted the earth around us and all its natural splendor. There was a huge exhibit made of hanging pouches of air with water plants floating in them that I think was a progression from the earth's birth to death. Strangely enough, there was a Danish Jazz concert (for charity? - maybe against climate change?) catered towards families with young children. Besides viewing some drawings from the Netherlands and some Danish art, I got a coffee at the cafe (I felt a headache coming because of my hour and a half awake without it). The best part of the cafe was the fun mug the coffee came in and the table decor - vases with paintbrushes instead of flowers.

Central Copenhagen isn't really that big, so it may be a logical truth to say this, but we were pretty close to the Amalienborg Palace that we had seen only in the dark the night before, so we went back. We took some pictures, watched the guards march back and forth, and admired the large equestrian statue of King Fredrick V. As I could more clearly see in the light, there were 4 large houses that formed the palaces in an octagon around the roundabout. From there, it was just a hop, skip, and jump up to the Kastellet and the Little Mermaid Statue.

Yes, Hans Christian Anderson was Danish and he created the Little Mermaid. So those crazy Danes put up a statue on the banks of the canal of the Little Mermaid so that thousands of tourists would walk and take pictures by it. Apparently November 22 is not a big tourist day, because there were about a dozen people there. I was handed a camera and asked to "make a picture" of a Dutch couple - isn't it funny when people try to speak English well? Maybe they were in Denmark to learn. The statue was nice, but kind of unimpressive. We knew that going in though. Next door was what we really wanted to see - the Kastellet. It was a fortification built in the 1660s. It it a huge pentagram made of earth surrounded by a moat. The edges of the pentagram are really steep - more than 45 degrees. Nowadays, it is just a park, although there are some military officers who still live there. There are statues of Greek gods and former kings along with war memorials and a windmill from the 1850s (a self-sufficient military installation needed to grind flour, too you know!). This place was massive. Being a late Sunday afternoon, there were not many people there. That made this former barracks kind of spooky, but not too bad.

We made it back to the top-heavy church just before 5 PM. It closed at 5. We had a chance to go in though. It (my research tells me that it's Frederik's Church, or the Marble Church) was lit by candlelight and nearly empty. There were lots of church-like murals on the walls and they were fantastic. They can't match the other world's best churches I saw on my trip, but they were really good.

We went back to the pedestrian street to find the friend we were staying with (who was at school working) and found a relatively cheap dinner. We walked around Chistianhavn, the canal district modeled after Amsterdam, afterwards. This was mostly just seeing a few pretty churches, fancy office buildings, and houses that young professionals live in. We ended up walking past Christiania again and seeing a large wall of murals its inhabitants painted. We hopped on the punctual bus, went back to the apartment, and got ready to leave in the morning. We woke up far to early to be mentioned and went to the airport, where John and I said, "Goodbye Scandinavia!" I made it back just in time for class! How exciting...

A Big Day in Copenhagen

There were elections in Denmark sometime around the time of my trip, which meant lots of campaign signs. I can't find anything about when they were, but I did find a sign for someone of my clan running for office. Too bad she is a Social Democrat.

If it was any question based upon the name of a popular breakfast pastry, breakfast in Copenhagen was very good. On the way to our bus stop (to get to the city centre) we saw the sign of great things to come: the golden pretzel sign. That's the sign of a bakery. John and I bought half of kringle (which wasn't quite like the kringle my mother makes most Christmas mornings). There was no real filling, but it was supremely moist and creamy while still flaky.

Walking through the city centre on the main pedestrian street, we ran into an exhibition about green energy - biomass, wind, water, solar (yeah, right 55 degrees north latitude...). They were giving away hot chocolate too! I was a bit shocked when they served it in the epitome of unsustainable materials, styrofoam. At this point, I started sensing a theme of sustainable energy in my weekend in Copenhagen.

We made our way to the Tivoli Gardens - one of the oldest amusement parks in the world. With Christmas a month away, it was all decked out with holiday cheer. There were some rides in the park, but they were expensive, so John and I stuck to the seeing of sights. For a reason unknown to me, there was a parade of youth dressed as Danish beefeaters and (maybe?) literary figures, but none of them looked particularly happy. Once those fun-suckers were gone, the shops and decorations exuded a merry attitude. The Christmas decorations were just superimposed on the park that was already there, though. There were several different sections, each with a different theme. I saw the Orient, India, and traditional Scandinavia. There was also something that proved to be undeniably awesome, although supremely confusing: the Trojan Reindeer. It was probably 30 feet tall and made out of wood and just in the middle of the park. I didn't get the story on it, but it was kinda sweet! Also confusing was the floating ice island in the koi pond inhabited by snowmen.

We found it kind of hard to find traditional Danish food in Copenhagen. I'm sure it was somewhere, but there can't be a large amount of it. There is American, Asian, Mid-Eastern, etc, but they seemed to have moved beyond potatoes and Smørrebrød (open-faced sandwiches). It was profoundly disappointing not to see tall, blond people chowing down on smoked herring Smørrebrød. But, John and I found some great traditional Danish food in Tivoli. We started with some Æbleskiver, which are similar to pancakes, except shaped into small balls by a special hemispherical pan. They are served with (at least at Tivoli) powdered sugar and raspberry jam. Man, were they good - just get a cup of good coffee with them and you're set. Next, we NEEDED smørrebrød. It was almost an obsession at this point. We got to a sit-down restaurant in the park and found some. The menu, though, was in all Danish. Using our superior skills of logical deduction and Latin roots, we kind of figured out what some of the smørrebrød were made with. John was boring and got a roast beef one, but I was exciting and ordered a liverwurst, bacon, pickles, and picked beet one. Good choice, Alex! It was almost the perfect meal - but it didn't come with a blank check made out to me (this was also the point at which I realized I was not an Irish politician).

On the way out of Tivoli, we walked by the wonderful city hall building. It was very typical of Copenhagen architecture - red brick and an oxidized copper spire - and very beautiful. Just down the street (as if Tivoli and city hall weren't enough) was the Danish Design Centre. It had to be one of the coolest museums I've been to, even though it was fairly small. The first main gallery was focused on praxis (putting theoretical knowledge into practice) in creating productive urban spaces. I didn't figure out how some parts fit into this mold, but all parts were very cool. The highlights included: a quiz you could take to determine how active you would be for your neighborhood (I was a downright scary revolutionary), swings hanging from the ceiling, free Danish flag tissue paper, some art, white spaces, and above all a series of spinny things that look like they were stolen from a carwash. When you walked by them, they started spinning, encouraging you to run through them like a child through a sprinkler. On the edge of the next gallery were about a dozen scaled sculptures of new concepts for buildings created by the Danes. There were things like building that corkscrewed as they went up to avoid wind sheer and formed canopies over shady central courtyards. Upstairs, there was a large exhibit on the electric car. To see the videos for it, you 'made your own power' by blowing on a small windmill to charge a small card that you connected to the monitors along the way. And, as always, the gift shop at the end was full of really cool things that I didn't quite like enough to buy.

Very near to the Design Centre is the National Museum of Denmark, where we went next. The main exhibition was a walk-through of Danish history. I learned many things about the Danish kingdom and its history. For example - Denmark and Norway were a joint kingdom for several hundred years. I saw a house like the one that my Danish ancestors might have lived in. One of the houses from Christiania that was donated a few years ago was also there. There was also a long struggle with democracy there as well. Just as we got to the last of the galleries, the museum was closing, so we looked at the shop. I bought a Danish cookbook, partly because one of the recipes was called Burning Love (mashed potatoes with fried pork and onions on top).

That night, I looked on my tourist map at the top 20 sight-seeing adventures (original, I know). The first one listed alphabetically was Amalienborg. I wasn't sure what it was, but we went. As it turns out, that's the palace of the royal family. The complex is made up of several ornate buildings around a huge roundabout (that people are allowed to drive through) with the statue of a king on a rearing horse in the centre. Every 100 yards or so was a guard marching quietly, dressed like the guards at the English palaces. Across the street from the complex on one side was an incredibly awkwardly proportioned church. It was about 80% dome, 10% steps, and 10% church. The thing was looked massive, although I'm sure the scale made it look bigger. On the other side was a little courtyard that looked across the river/canal (I'm not really sure what it was) towards one of Denmark's modern architectural wonders, the Opera House. There wasn't much to do there besides look at stuff, so we started to walk back. We spent the rest of the night having a few Christmas beers (that's right - they brew a beer especially for Christmas. The day that they release it for the season, they hand out a tonne of it free too!) and watching silly American TV shows like the Office.

PS - here is some photo proof of the crazy amount of bicycling that goes on in Copenhagen.

PPS - I made some Burning Love last week and it was great.

The Motherland!

Tied for number one on my list of places to go in Europe were Edinburgh and Copenhagen. As you know, I already went to Edinburgh. On Nov 20th, my friend John (from Wash U who is at University College Dublin) and I went to Copenhagen, where we had another Wash U friend studying (free lodging!). In the run-up to the trip, I realized I was a lot more Danish than I thought I was. The best I can tell, I'm 1/4 Danish, which is probably close to the most of any one of my ancestries. The stewardesses even started speaking to me in Danish when I got on the plane in Dublin. On top of that, I was Denmark once in Model UN. It's also a beautiful, sustainable, and bustling city. I was so excited for the plane to land. But the landing was full of trepidation. The airport is on a very small island next to Copenhagen and the runway nearly begins in the water, making it look like we were going to need to find the flotation device located underneath our seats.

My first impressions of Denmark were fantastic. The Danes are famous for design and architecture, and the airport is thusly beautiful. They are also famous for LEGOS, the best toy ever. They are also famous for sustainable energy, as evidenced by the large wind farm in the bay outside Copenhagen. The legos and windmills combined in the airport to form an awesome 10 foot high model of a wind turbine made from the blocks. I can hope that this is there all the time, but it could just be that the world climate change talks (COP15) are happening in Copenhagen starting December 7th (T-minus 1 day).

I quickly learned that there is no need to ever learn Danish. Everybody speaks better English than your high school English teacher, which helped out when I couldn't figure out how to use the non-English Metro ticketing machine. They don't even judge your when you have no knowledge of their language, they just happily switch over. I've heard rumors from American students that Danish is actually non-existent: Danish people just make noises at each other when they sense Americans around - to throw them off the scent.

Once we made it off the Metro at Nørreport station, we walked through the longest web of pedestrian streets in Europe. The buildings in Copenhagen are marked by red stone, elaborateness, and spires. Having not eaten since the morning I was starving. John and I found the best thing ever: the Fransk hot dog. In the hot dog stands found at nearly every corner, they sell these unique variations on the hot dog. They poke a hole in the end of a long "French" loaf of bread, squirt in remoulade (the Danes' flavoured mayo) and stick in the hot dog. I was beginning to love Copenhagen.

We made it to Baresso Coffee, a Danish Starbucks equivilent, to wait for our friend to get out of class. The Danes drink more coffee per capita than ANYONE, 4 cups a day, and because of that, it is really good. It is also very expensive, but EVERYTHING is expensive there. Don't let the currency fool you (where 7 Danish kroner equal 1 Euro); it's like buying pineapples in Alaska, except in Copenhagen and the pineapples are everything.

With the sun waning fast (since we were at the 55th parallel above the equator and it was nearly 3:45), Nick, John and I went to possibly the most interesting place to see in Denmark - Christiania. This is a 40 hectare area in Copenhagen that was a run down barracks in the 70s, until hippies, artists, and recovering addicts stormed it. Ever since then, they've claimed Christiana as a Free State and run their own community. Besides the occasional raid by Danish police, it's pretty autonomous. Autonomous enough to openly and clearly sell hash on the side of the road. They have flea markets, music venues, and homes there. I have no pictures because there were signs every 5 feet reminding you not to take any. I've heard stories of people's fancy SLR cameras being knocked to the ground 'accidently' when the photographer is framing a shot. Christiania is a weird place, but it seems like it's kind of been a successful commune. Only in Scandanavia.

For a cheap dinner, we went to find some schwarma. That was the best kebab I've had. We found the one store that sells things for cheap (think Aldi) for some fruit and beer and made the bus trip to Nick's place, which is about 4 miles from the city centre. Public transit here is great. There is an extensive bus network and several different categories of trains that form a web through the metropolitan area. Beyond that, there are bike paths next to every road - separated from the car streets by a kind of half-curb - and thousands of bikes everywhere you look. Nick claimed to have 3, all of which disappeared during the time we were there. We went to hang out with some of the American students in his program and had a good time. On the way back though, I learned the 1 bad thing about Copenhagen: racism. We were asked by a young black guy if we knew the bus system. Nick did and helped him out. This kid had been passed up by half a dozen buses he waved down, purportedly because he was black. Even though he was half Danish, he was treated as an outsider and non-person. He had lived the US for a while and was nearly begging to get back. He was articulate and personable, and it seemed to get him nowhere in Copenhagen. He actually might be the Danish Malcolm X in a few years, after his speech about how if we all cut our arms we would bleed the same colour. That was a sobering experience. A place can't be all good after all.

Aside from that incident, the first day in Copenhagen was amazing. I felt like a puppy bounding through a field!

There is a Model of a Cloned Sheep

Saturday in Edinburgh started deliciously. My host said that we HAD to go to a little cafe called Urban Angel (PS - I just pulled up that website and few seconds later thought there was a bird in my kitchen No, it's just the sound for the site) because of its awesome French toast and hot chocolate. That's enough to convince me, so we went. It also gave me an excuse to walk through New Town, a famously well-planned Georgian area. As it turns out Urban Angel sources as much of their food as they can, using local providers and organic options for their more exotic ingredients. The French toast and its accompanying exotic topping (MAPLE SYRUP!!!! No maple trees in the British Isles, so this was a treat) were not to die for, but at least worth fainting for. It was so good I got my picture outside.

If I hadn't gotten enough sustainable and artisan food already, we went over to Castle Market (a farmers' market in the shadows of the Castle). Since it was Scotland, there were a lot of beef, cheese, lamb, and woolen products. It was a fun little market. Next, I went through an area called Grassmarket in Old Town. It's a more homely and intimate version of a shopping street, and in the main square at the end, they used to hang people. Uplifting! There were free tours (where they would try to rope you into extended, unfree tours) all through the square, so I picked up on the death theme and the significance of the pub The Last Drop. Grassmarket leads you back towards St. Giles' Cathedral. Since my host's friend who was with us is a grad student in Biblical Studies, he had something sweet to show us.

The asphalt underneath a van? That's not sweet! But when you realize that this car park used to the be church gardens, it has the potential to be more interesting. The yellowish square above the numbers is where the headstone of John Knox was before the asphaltation of the gardens. The founder of Presbyterianism is buried there. Nice little find that I wouldn't have seen without knowing a graduate student in theology.

Feeling my roots (however small) as a Scotsman, I wanted to go to the Scottish Museum. I could see the relics of my great (x a few dozen) grandparents! Inside there were a several very interesting pieces, like an ancient harp and charts showing the migration and historical homes of clans. I began to learn that Scotland was very similar to Ireland, except Scotland is more ambivalent towards England (since, essentially, Scotland conquered England instead of the other way around - in my reductionist estimation). There were a lot of exhibits for the entertainment of the children/immature college students. There were small catapults, agility games, and other energy wasters. There was a rotating model of the first cloned sheep, Dolly as well. That hurts my brain to think about - a model of a clone. There was a big section on industrialisation and distilling, mirroring 2 important aspects of Scottish culture - blackened buildings and scotch.

Lunch was the next topic. I got pigeon salad. Pigeon is delicious, by the way. We were very close to where JK Rowling wrote most of the first Harry Potter books, the Elephant House, so we stopped by and looked. The seat where she supposedly sat while writing it looked out on the Castle on a hill, and I suspect that's the idea behind something in HP.

We played some Cranium back at the flat for a few hours after that, realizing that despite the wicked darkness, it was only like 7 PM. I ended up walking around the city for a while, learning that everything closes at about 6 PM on Saturdays. There were a lot of pretty windows decorated for Christmas at the fancy department stores like Harvey Nichols. I found some dinner at the classy dinner chain Pizza Express (Milano in Ireland) and then, more importantly, found a deep fried Mars bar on the way back. Good Idea, Alex.

I ended the night here, and that essentially ended my trip in Edinburgh. On Sunday morning, I found some breakfast and hopped a train to Glasgow. The countryside in Scotland is very pretty, although not as green as Ireland. One little town we stopped at had a dramatic castle upon a hill. Below was a huge Tesco grocery store (think Wal-Mart). I assume that the castle was still armed to defend against the evil that is Tesco.

Once in Glasgow, I walked through the main shopping street, Buchnan St. I was looking for a warmer coat for the rest of the semester, and since everything is cheaper when you're not in Dublin (or so I thought until I went to Copenhagen), I figured I'd use my afternoon to find one. I found none. The main square in Glasgow was blocked off for a private Christmas light lighting ceremony, so unfortunately I couldn't admire it. I ended up at the Glasgow Museum of Modern Art. It was a fairly small gallery, but with some really cool art - especially optical art. The lines and designs messed with my eyes and bounced around the canvas as I stared.

I found the closest chipper, tried getting a king rib again, and failed. I got some fish and chips and went to the train station to get to the airport. I was flying back to Dublin from the discount airport of Glasgow - I think only Ryanair uses it. My flight was at 6:30 AM on Monday, but no buses could get me there early enough, so I decided to spend the night. I was reassured by the website Sleeping in Airports that Glasgow Prestwick Airport had benches without arm rests, providing for good sleep. I ended up getting about 4 hours of sleep, playing on the internet a lot, and pacing the whole 100 yards of the airport. Yes it was that small. I made it home safely on Monday morning, without having been scammed, killed, or raped by Couch Surfing or sleeping in an airport. Oh yea, and I had a wonderful time in a wonderful city - Edinburgh. It was a place I might be able to live someday.