Hygge.

ATTENTION READERS: This is about to be obnoxiously long. Continue at your own risk.

Why couldn’t Denmark be warm all year round? We had a little tease weekend in May where it was absolutely gorgeous. How amazing you ask? I tanned everyday (yes, outside and not in a tanning bed…) and was SWEATING. It was beyond amazing actually. And as happy as it made me, it also made me sad. I wish that 1) I was staying in Denmark longer into the summer to hopefully experience more of this warmth, and 2) Denmark was just a warmer place. For what feels like 90% of my semester in Copenhagen I was wearing my winter jacket. The 10% is when I was in Spain and that last week of May… 

Then after the nice week, the event we had all been waiting for was finally upon us. DISTORTION! It’s basically a free (yes, free, probably the only free thing in the country) music festival that goes on for five days, each day in a different neighborhood of the city. It was a great way to start the beginning of the last few weeks. It forced us to get off our asses and explore other parts of Copenhagen that we rarely saw. It definitely lived up to its expectations. There were people EVERYWHERE, and it was nice to actually hang around and mingle with the Danish.

Then distortion ended and so did my time in Copenhagen. The last two weeks went by in two seconds. Everyday there was another tearful goodbye. But like people always say, when one door closes another opens… and through that newly opened door came my parents and my wonderful sister! It was really great to see them again after so long. After giving them some time to explore the city (in their winter jackets, yes) We took a two day trip up to the northern part of the country. We stopped in Aarhus, but the real gem was Skagen, a quaint beachy town on the tip of Denmark where two seas collide. We rented bikes, ate a lot of seafood and fiskefrikadeller, I finally felt like a true Dane.

And in a blink of an eye, my semester abroad was over and now it was time to go back (kicking and screaming, mind you) to the US. But let’s not forget I have awesome parents who wanted to make my homecoming just that much smoother, so we decided to do a little stop over in Iceland on the way back to the states (OK, that’s really not why we stopped, but it was an extra bonus!!) I’d been looking forward to this trip since my hour and 20-minute lay-over in Reykjavik on the way to Copenhagen in January. Iceland is such a fascinating, and virtually unknown territory to most Americans it feels like, so I was very excited to explore this moon-like country.

After we got off the plane and somehow squeezed twelve pieces of luggage into our rental car, we got to the hotel and dropped off our bags. Since we’re a family of early morning flights, we of course could not check-in to our rooms for another million hours so we decided to hit the town to try some famous hotdogs. And who might you ask do we run into on the way? Oh yeah, my dear friends Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes. ( And no, everyone’s asking, but I sadly wasn’t the reason they are now getting a divorce, but yes, I will send my pictures to US Weekly and make a couple million) I was shaking for a good 30 minutes. Seeing famous people in unsuspecting places is a real high.

Some highlights of the vacation:

1)Riding Icelandic horses with two 15 year old Icelandic boys who spoke better English than me.

2)   Relaxing in the Blue Lagoon

3)   Napping while my father drove us through the beautiful countryside (which really does look like the moon in some parts)

4)  NOT eating Puffin

5)  NEVER-ending daylight (seriously though, it never got dark… ever)

6)  —But most of all, spending quality time with my family  (awwwwwww)

I could not be more grateful for the past 6 months. I will remember them forever! Now I guess it’s back to real life…

XOXOSofia

I’m starting to seriously freak out that my time here is coming to an end. And to make it even harder, the weather has actually been NICE! And it’s so much easier to do fun outdoorsy, touristy things and most importantly TANNING!!!

The other day, Jackie, Kelsey, Lea, Heidi and I went to Hillerød about 45 minutes northwest of the city to BEAUTIFUL Frederiksborgslot (Frederiksborg Castle). It was such a gorgeous warm day and we explored the inside and the gardens of the castle for a few hours then treated ourselves to delicious falafel. Perfect day! Then the next day Lea, Kelsey, Heidi and I went to Frederiksberghave (yes, many Frederiks) and layed out and tanned while drooling over every Dane we saw.

Distortion, a free 5 day street party all over the city, starts tomorrow, then my family comes on the 6th! So much to look forward to, but I’m scared that it’s all coming to an end.

XOXOSofia

Ok, so as a friend recently said to me on the phone. “You know when you talk to someone a lot, it’s easier to talk to them more frequently because there is less to say? But when you never talk to someone, the thought of talking to them is daunting since the conversation could last for hours?” That is how I feel and have felt for a few weeks now about writing this blog post. But here we go…

Since I last posted ( a wholeeee month ago, sorry 14 followers, I’m sure you’ve been dying) Lots and lots and lots and lots and lots and lots has happened.

1) I went to Berlin, Mallorca and Barcelona!

—- It was an amazingggg 11 day trip. Got to hang out in Berlin with 2 old friends, and then met my school and a large group of new friends for a few days and explored the sights. Then met up with my friend Allie from CPH and Aaron from High School in Mallorca, Spain. All I can say is: If you like trashy, chubby, scantily dressed orange skinned girls, GO THERE! It was seriously one of the trashiest places I’ve ever been in my life. But the scenery was beautiful. We rented a car one day (I miss driving so much, fingers crossed that Phyllis at the U-Haul Storage in Marrero, Louisiana is taking good care of my white-gold — not silver— baby) and drove about an hour to Es Trenc, a beautiful beach on the southeast coast of the island. The rest of the days we just lounged around and relaxed, saving energy for the craziness that was to be BARCELONA. 

I Absolutely LOVED Barcelona, it is such a beautiful, lively, amazing city and it was the first place, other than Copenhagen, that I could have seen myself living. The weather turned out to be beautiful and my company was even better. I am still thinking back to that trip a month later and wish I was there again. 

2) AVICII In CPH

— My friends and I had been looking forward to this night for months and it definitely didn’t dissapoint. Although I fell off someone’s shoulders and got a disgusting massive bruise on my forearm. But if you reference my last blog post, that is the price I pay for being short.

3) ISTANBUL!

— An amazing trip to an amazing city! My overall highlight was getting a Turkish Bath. EVERYONE WHO GOES TO ISTANBUL CANNOT LEAVE WITHOUT DOING THIS. I will say no more than that, but it is surely an unforgettable, interesting experience. Other activities included: A tour of the Bosphorus, Going to Asia for the first time, Realizing that Falafel isn’t Turkish (still haven’t recovered from that one), socializing with wonderful people on our hostel’s rooftop terrace (less glamorous than it sounds) and wandering the streets of istanbul then eventually ending up in a hookah bar. It was a perfect last trip.

I have exactly 1 month left and people have already started leaving. Goodbyes are the worst things everrrrrrrrrrr. :( But I’m trying to be positive and enjoy my last few weeks in this beautiful city as it finallllyyyyy becomes spring. Now off to Marielyst Strand for 4 nights with 11 close friends for some crazy Danish beach house shenanigans.

XOXOSofia

There are many pros and cons to being, what I like to call, petite. And fist-pumping at the Drake concert is a great way to get the full spectrum.

Con #1: Can’t see anything. And in this particular case, could barely see the jumbotron.

Pro #1: Get offered by many Danish guys to get on their shoulders. 

Pro #2: Can stay on Danish guy’s shoulders for extended periods of time.

Con #2: Drake can’t shout out to you because he can’t see you.

Pro #3: Can cut lines easily to get to coat check

Con #3: People think you’re 12.

Overall, being short played in my advantage and I had a great time. THEN to continue on the theme of seeing popstars, met this lovely lady at a bar called Zefside’s and she kissed my hand. :) Her name is Robyn and apparently she’s a famous Swedish singer..? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robyn

I stole a picture from a friend who was at Drake so you could get a nice little visual. ( I am obviously too short to have taken this myself…) 

XOXOSofia

It’s very scary trying to write a post about such an amazing trip. There is so much I want to say, but I know that I will forget 90% of it… so here it goes:

At the end of the trip we all tried to go around and say what our favorite part was, and we came up with two things. Great food and great company. It sounds corny but it’s true! We all had a great time whether it be on one of the many pub crawls or just sitting and talking.

Here’s a mini breakdown of the trip:

1) Went with Kelsey, Evan, Amanda and Adam. Stayed at the most amazing hostel in the world (Greg and Tom Hostel in Krakow). They were so nice and helpful and dinner was included in the price (and it was actually good..) It also didn’t hurt that the 5 of us had a room to ourselves which made the experience much more comfortable.

2) Went out on a pub crawl the first night and met some hilarious, interesting and unforgettable people. 

3) Went on a free walking tour with our lovely guide Peter. (every tour guide we had in Poland was named Peter… kinda weird)

4) Ate amazing, amazing food. Especially Pierogies.

5) Saw a weird dreaded-haired man ride his pony casually along the river.

6) Visited Auschwitz and Birkenau. It was definietly a highlight of the trip, but obviously in a different way from the others. It was a very moving experience and I would recommend everyone to try and go. It was just so weird to see it in the middle of a town. There were residential houses literally 100 feet away from the entrance of Birkenau… that must be a strange place to live.

7) The 5 of us took an overnight, 13 hour train ride from Krakow to Gdansk. After almost missing our train because we were on the wrong platform (thank you nice Polish guy for helping us…) we finally got on the train it felt like we were riding a train from 1950s. No Cafe onboard (for 13 hours…), no loudspeaker, and no sign showing the next stop. At 7am I woke up and the train was stopped in what looked like an abandoned train yard and we sat there for almost an hour. I didn’t want to freak out… but it wouldn’t have been fun to be stuck in Bydgoszcz, Poland would it? Finally we started moving again and finally made it to Gdansk.

8) After a few beautiful days in Krakow (one which was 65 and sunny) we got to Gdansk to find an awful blizzard. We tried to do so many things that day, dispite the weather, but ended up getting stuck and lost in a horrible town called Nowy Port before retreating back to the hostel and napping. After a while the sun finally came out and we were able to see the beautiful little town with the cutest buildings and my favorite church I’ve visited so far in Europe, St. Mary’s Church.

9) Did I say we ate delicious food? 

10) After an amazing trip we headed to the Gdansk airport with plenty of time. After sneaking my overweight and oversized bag through security I was happy to be one of the first people in line to board the plane. But no, something had to go wrong. Apparently Kelsey, Evan and I didn’t check in properly (F U WizzAir) and we were sent back out of security with less than 20 minutes until take off to go get our “documents checked.” Thank God the security people in Poland are more friendly than in Malmo because we just barely made our flight AND they let me take my Duty Free Polish Vodka back through security.

Now that I’m finally back in CPH (and it feels like its been forever) I have a couple weeks of finals and then It’s off for 10 days of travelling. AHHHH what a fabulous life :)

XOXOSofia

Lost my Danish cell phone while partying it up in Krakow… now I have to memorize another number, blehhhhhh. Also, friends, will you please let this be the last phone I lose? 2 in 2 months is a little embarrassing.

After a long day of travelling and many awkward train encounters I am finallllyyyyy back in CPH. 

Highlights/Lowlights of the trip:

1) Waking up Thursday morning to a strike at airport security causing most of my fellow exchange students to miss their flights. Thankfully, I was on an afternoon flight so we were through security in 1.5 seconds, then continued to get hit on by cute Joe and the Juice workers with Heidi. Not a bad way to start off the trip…

2) Landed in Brussels to a beautiful 65 degree day and walked to our appartment for the night. After eating dinner and getting ready to go out we ran into people we met in CPH the weekend before walking on the streets of Brussels. SMALL WORLD.

3) Got stared at for a good hour and a half by a weird 15 year old boy on the train to Luxembourg. It was really awkward because every time we made eye-contact he wouldn’t look away. Don’t people in Lux know good staring etiquette?

4) FINALLY GOT TO SEE ALLY AND LAURA AGAIN AFTER WAYYYY TOOO LONG. We had a wonderful reunion which included finally drinking a boot of beer and learning an addicting card game called Tens & Twos.

5) SENSATION. This was by far the highlight of my trip. Not only was it great to see my favorite Miami people, but the event was out of this world. I can’t even put it into words. People have been asking me to describe what Sensation is like, but I don’t even know where to begin. I highly recommend everyone go. Even if you don’t like techno music, I don’t think it’s possible to have a bad time. Watch this trailer for Sensation Belgium. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rKAogcGJFC0

6) Also, on the bus ride to Hasselt, Belgium where the event was, I found out that, yes, I am able to fit my entire body into the overhead compartment of a bus. Not sure if I should be proud, embarrassed or scared.

Now it’s time to put the “study” in “study abroad” and try to get some actual work done before Poland on the 27th…. I’ll let you know how that goes……

XOXOSofia

I had a fab time hosting Erin in CPH. We went to the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, ate a lot of yummy food, discovered new city parks and much much more. What was the highlight you might ask? Obviously stumbling across Forrest & Bob’s sample sale in a little tent on Strøget. Boxes and boxes of pure bliss (in the form of soft cotton tanks). 

Check them out: http://dk.forrestandbob.com/

Black and White cupcake from Agnes. I had a cold so I couln’t really taste it, but I think it was good….

Erin in the “room with the lights” as we fondly referred to it for the whole week. (The sole reason of visiting the museum BTW)

XOXOSofia

I am sorry to inform everyone that I can not write a blog post about the Oslo Booze Cruise. Nothing I would want to write would be at all appropriate for the internet.