Oslo!

I'm home. Has it sunk in yet? I'm not sure. There are so many things to process and so many thoughts to put in order. The flight from London to Chicago was really the beginning of it: American accents making official announcements, that different, perhaps even Midwestern rather than simply American, concept of politeness demonstrated by the flight attendants (they smile a lot more than SAS flight attendants, for example - and open their eyes wide, earnest).

But I have many stories to tell and I have failed rather spectacularly to update this blog. So I'll try to post in three separate posts the adventures John and I have had these past two weeks. Then I'll make an attempt at a summary of what I've learned and what it's like to be home again. I will fail. I'm okay with that.

So up first is Oslo.

John arrived in Copenhagen around noon on Saturday the 15^th. His flight was scheduled to arrive at 9, but he missed a connection, which I figured out with the help of a very kind information desk attendant at Københavns Lufthavn. But he arrived without further incident and all was well.

We left the next day via bus through Sweden. We got on at the Copenhagen central station and found seats together near the back. The bus trip was okay. It was long, and we were joined in the back in Lund by a group of noisy Swedish adolescents. They were okay companions for the most part, until they got bored and started to pull the same practical joke on everyone who came back to use the bathroom – one would stick his head out and say “oooowwww” whenever someone opened the door. It got old. Fast.

In Oslo, we were met by Margarete (I'm butchering the spelling), who is the daughter of Erik Foss, a good friend of my grandpa. Erik hosted us while we were in Oslo, which was wonderful! It was so nice to have a proper house to go back to in the evenings, and he and his family were able to show us around, which was very good. Also, we had amazing home-cooked meals!

The point of going to Oslo was mainly to see Syttende Mai (17^th May). Some of you may know that Syttende Mai is Norwegian Constitution Day. I was really excited to see how the Norwegians celebrate it in their capital!

The day began early, much to John's jet-lagged disgruntlement. We woke up around seven in order to go see the Norwegian children's parade near Erik's home. All of the schoolchildren march with all of the other children from their school up to the home of the crown prince (which, as I mentioned, is very close to where Erik lives!). Everyone has flags flying in front of their houses, and many people wave flags at the parade. The fun thing to see was that every Norwegian gets really dressed up. Many (especially women) wear the traditional costumes, or bunads. A lot of men, and some women, simply wear their best clothes. Also fun to see were the russ. The russ are graduating from gymnasium, so they're about 19. They are easily identifiable by their red or blue overalls and matching caps. The overalls are painted and decorated, and the russ have been wearing them for the past seventeen days, partying in the same clothes the entire time. Jens, Erik's grandson, who showed us around later that day, told us that they aren't allowed to take off the clothes except in order to sleep, and that there are four events for all the russ in Norway throughout those seventeen days – three of which are in Oslo. Parents and schools go all out to make sure the russ have a spectacular time. After seeing the children's parade by Erik's house, we went to see the bigger parade in Oslo with Erik's daughter Barbaro and her friend. We also saw the royal family! From a great distance, although later we got to see the King up close, because he came to visit near where Barbaro works. And...we went to a bar with Jens (Barbaro's son) to see how Norwegians party on their Independence Day. John described it well, at least for Mac people: it's like a combination of Founder's Day (because everyone is super dressed up) and Springfest (because everyone is drunk by two in the afternoon), times Norway. It was pretty excellent.

We also took in the Viking Ship Museum in Oslo, which was baller! The ships were burial ships, so there were lots of great artifacts there as well. Erik took us to see the new ski jump, which has been designed for the upcoming ski jump and biathlon world championships. At the ski jump we went through a ski museum, which was really fun to see – they had a lot of super old skis! We also saw Vigelandsparken (a sculpture garden) and the Munch museum that day. The next day, John and I went to see the opera house – which is a pretty fun modern building. And we saw the national gallery and the resistance museum. That was our last dayin Oslo. Oslo is a great town, but super expensive, so it was nice to go on to Berlin, which is rather cheaper!

Copenhagen! As a Tourist!

So I've spent this second week of spring break doing some of the touristy things around Copenhagen that I haven't had a chance or time to do earlier this semester.

On Tuesday, I went to Malmö in Sweden. It's just a thirty-minute train ride from Copenhagen, and it's absolutely beautiful. It might just be the fact that it's spring, but Malmö felt beautifully green and clean. I mostly just wandered because I didn't want to spend any money (read: I was too lazy to either exchange Danish kroner to Swedish kroner or find an ATM), but I did go to Malmö Konsthallen (The Malmö Art Hall), which is a great free art museum. It's small, but it was great. There were two pieces that really spoke to me. One was called "100 Years" and was an entire room with a line of portraits arranged around the sides of the room. The portraits featured a different person in each one from every year from newborn to 100. It was really striking because of the variety of faces and apparent age - some folks in their 60s looked like some of the folks in their 40s, and some looked like some of those in their 80s. It was interesting to imagine the differences in their lives that may have made them seem so much older or younger than they actually were. Another piece I really liked (which I can't remember the name of) featured carousels of ordinary objects - one was a small model of the Statue of Liberty, another a crane. These carousels had mirrors for bases and the piece was in a darkened room with light shining on the objects, creating a really cool shadow effect. It really made me think about the way consumerism effects a person.

The next day, Wednesday, I went to see Rosenborg Slot and Statens Musuem for Kunst. Rosenborg Slot houses the Crown Jewels, among many other old, rich objects. It was a beautiful day, and I enjoyed a picnic lunch in the Royal gardens at the foot of Rosenborg Slot. It was a really interesting place to visit - it's one of the oldest museums in Denmark, as I understood it. It's been a museum since the mid-1800s. I thought what was particularly interesting was the reverence displayed for the beautiful objects. It really made me think about the values of modern society. Yes, these objects are beautiful, of course, but more importantly, they are expensive! The treasury, which is underground, felt almost temple-like: visitors were instructed to remain very quiet. Statens Museum for Kunst is huge and free! One of the best parts of Statens Museum for Kunst (The State's Museum of Art) - other than the fact that it was free - was the wide variety of art that it held. I don't think I saw near everything, but I started to get exhausted by the end of the day just from all the looking and thinking I'd been doing. And quite a bit of walking, too. The new picture up top is of Rosenborg Slot now that it's springtime! Yay!

Thursday brought a slightly different sort of entertainment. Rather than going to an art museum, I went to the Carlsberg Visitors' Center. It focused very much on the history of beer and specifically Carlsberg beer. Carlsberg is one of the largest - maybe the largest? - brewing companies in the world! I didn't actually realize that before I went. It was quite fun, and ended with two free beers (or rather, two beers were included in the price of admission) so I can't complain! They also have the largest collection of unopened beer bottles in the world (shown in the picture). A friend who visited there earlier thought it was a bit of a waste of perfectly good beer - but it's a fun collection to look at nonetheless.

Yesterday, I had planned on going to Christiania, but I think I'll save that visit for a time when I can go with some friends, since there isn't exactly a museum to go to or anything like that, and I thought I'd be a bit more comfortable wandering about with other folks. Instead, I just went into DIS and checked out The Kalevela. I'm excited to read it! I've just started and I'm really enjoying it. This semester has made me really enjoy and appreciate old sagas and stories derived from oral tales. I shouldn't be surprised, after all, three of my classes revolve around that concept! I took the book and sat in Rådhuspladsen (Town Hall Square) for a little while, reading and enjoying the people watching and the great view of the town hall and Palace Hotel. It was a bit chilly, though, so I left after reading the foreword and went to sit in a nice little coffee shop and drink hot chocolate. It was a fun, calm day.

Then, today, I went to the Louisiana Art Museum, which has a large collection of modern art. First of all, it was quite the adventure getting there! It is a long way away from my host family's house - I traveled through 6 zones in the transportation system (that is, just as many as it takes to get into Copenhagen)! Once I got there, though, it was lovely. They had two special exhibitions going on: the larger of the two was "Color in Art" and focused on (what else?) the way that art uses color. One of the very coolest parts of that exhibit was called "The Eternal Light of the Souls" or something like that. It was a small room which the viewer stepped into and then closed the door behind them. The room was entirely covered in reflective surfaces and hung with balls of light which changed colors. It was beautiful! Another favorite part of Louisiana was the other special exhibit - "Homo Sapiens Sapiens" This was an installation piece and was a movie which was projected onto the ceiling. There were cushions scattered around the floor to lay on, and you just lay there and looked up and the bizarre and beautiful video with dozens of other people around you. The video itself was really cool and focused on the body very closely, but also had elements of nature as a sort of backdrop - leaves and grass and fruit. It really plays with the way one sees the human body. Louisiana also has a great sculpture garden, and a view across the sound to Sweden! It was a really fun outing.

The Holiness of the Inhospitable

Wow, I'm sorry I haven't posted in such a long time. That last week in March was full of midterm papers and such, and then I've been in Iceland for the past week - which is what I really want to talk about. Hopefully I'll get a chance to write a more detailed account of my classes soon - they're really cool and I want to tell you all about them. But first things first: ICELAND!

I think that the past week has been one of the most amazing trips of my life - and I've been on a lot of great trips! It was a combination of many awesome things: we had a great, small group of students (there were 11 of us), we had amazing leaders and guides, there was a lot of excellent (and surprising) food, and everything we saw and experienced was positive; I can't think of a single low point of the trip, and it's hard to pick out any one highlight. We saw the volcano erupting (from a safe distance), saw the Northern Lights twice - once when we were at the volcano, went horseback riding on Icelandic horses through lava fields, saw many glorious mountains and waterfalls and hot springs and a geysir erupting three times, we went to the Blue Lagoon, we ate delicious food, and most of all we shivered and tried to comprehend how the Vikings could have possibly settled on Iceland. You can see the best pictures I took here.

The landscape of Iceland is so barren and unlike anything I've ever seen before. When we first arrived and were driving from Keflavik airport to our hotel in Reykajvik, I honestly thought we could have been on the moon or Mars! If I hadn't been able to see the clear blue sky and telephone poles and road we were on, I wouldn't have known where to look. I think that is one of the single most startling things about Iceland. The landscape is entirely uninviting - beautiful, but very uninviting - and the weather was really harsh while we were there. It was so hard to imagine the settlers arriving from Norway and carving a life out of these desolate rocks. Granted, the landscape was very different when they arrived: there were trees, for example, and the climate was warmer then. Human habitation has not been kind to Iceland.

Despite the strangeness of the landscape, though, everything felt holier in a way that is hard to describe. It's easy to see why many Icelanders believe in elves and otherworldly creatures. On Tuesday, when we did the "Golden Circle Tour" - the tour almost every tourist goes on of the geysirs and waterfalls and the Althing - we made a stop at a small church. The church is where the bishop's seat used to be (it later moved to Reykjavik). When we went into the church, the light from the stained glass windows was casting the simple white sanctuary in a brilliant red and yellow pattern of lights. I felt when we entered that this church, of all the churches I've visited this semester on tours, was the only one that felt properly holy and sacred. Even as we took our pictures and my travel companions posed, I felt like this was a sanctuary that was actually sanctified. I felt a little bizarre taking pictures, but I did anyway, trying to capture the way the light fell and hallowed the space. I think, even though Icelanders, like Danes and most Scandinavians, no longer practice Christianity to a great extent, the barrenness of the landscape combined with the simple, elegant beauty of the space made this small church feel worshipful in a way the cathedral in Ribe - with its tourist information desk and large, numerous tour groups - could not.

There's a lot more I could say about Iceland, but I think that was what I drew most from the trip: the delicacy and preciousness of life in an inhospitable, difficult setting feels much closer than in a place where it is easy to live.

A musical week

This past Tuesday, I got to go to a 30 Seconds to Mars concert with Keemi, a new friend from DIS who also plays rugby and is in Nordic Mythology and European Storytelling with me. It was a lot of fun! I especially enjoyed the opening act - Street Drum Corps. They're a group from LA, and the lead singer was so energetic and fun, and they had a fun variety of music. Then Carpark North played, a local group. The rest of the (rather young) crowd went crazy, but Keemi and I were less excited about them. Their style was a little bit sleepier, I think. They did have a keytar, though, so that was pretty cool!

Then, 30 Seconds to Mars was up. I didn't know much about them, really just one song, but I always like going to concerts. They were definitely a great presence on stage. Their lead singer, Jared Leto, really created a cohesive performance and was really entertaining. It was also somebody's birthday in the crowd. I don't know if they were all his friends, but a bunch of people had signs saying, "Happy Birthday Shannon" on them. About midway through the performance, Jared Leto invited Shannon up on stage, and the entire crowd sang the Danish birthday song to him. Luckily, I had learned it in my Danish class just the day before. It's got a very different melody than our birthday song, but it's really fun! It goes like this:

I dag er det "Name of person celebrated"'s fødselssdag (Today is ____'s birthday)
Hurra, hurra, hurra!
Han sikkert sig en gave får (He'll probably get a gift)
som han har ønsket sig i år (That he's been wishing for this year)
med dejlig chokolade og kager til. (With yummy chocolate and cakes)

It was great to be in the crowd and be able to hum along a little bit (I could only remember the first two lines and the last line). It was just really fun - and also fun to watch the reactions of the band, who were baffled but seemed to enjoy it.

One weird thing I noticed - and maybe I just haven't been to the right performances - was that there were two beautiful blonde women sitting on the stage off to the side, facing the band. They were seated in a little box, it seemed. They were onstage for both Carpark North and 30 Seconds to Mars. Maybe they were groupies? I can't think of any other explanation, though what was striking was how disinterested they seemed - or at least, not very excited. I don't know what was going on with that at all.

Then, on Wednesday, I got to see "The Magic Flute" at the Royal Theater through DIS. It was an interesting experience, since it was performed in Danish, with Danish supertitles. Even though I'm familiar with the story and the opera (The Queen of the Night aria was performed exceedingly well!) I got a little lost rather often. It was exciting when I actually understood most of a song, though - the one that Papageno and Papagena sing together near the end! The set was also strange - it seemed very minimalistic at first, but there were an excessive (in my opinion) amount of trap doors and mechanical workings. It was fun all the same, since it's one of my favorite operas/the only opera I really have much familiarity with.

The Royal Theater itself is absolutely gorgeous! It's very vertically oriented, which is interesting - there are three balconies one on top of the other, and they each have maybe four rows or so, set at a very steep angle, so that you can actually see over the person in front of you if you (like I) are seated in the last row of the theater. Interestingly enough, we had just learned about Heiberg in my Philosophy and Religion of the Danish Golden Age class. Heiberg, as well as being a philosopher, was the director of the theater for many years, as well as primary playwright. Over the stage, in huge gold letters, is written "Ei blot til lyst" - which roughly translates to "It's not just for fun," meaning that you should seek the deeper meaning in every performance and every work of art. Something worth thinking about.

A Trip to the Czech Republic

I've just returned from a week-long trip to the Czech Republic. It was a wonderful week, full of gorgeous architecture, great conversations, thought-provoking art and speakers, and lots of good, hearty food and yummy beer. There were also moments of frustration (our first night we waited four hours for meals in a bar and had a conversation with young Czech women who expressed frustratingly intolerant views towards the Roma people) and sadness (the Holocaust memorial in the Jewish quarter and the memorial to the town of Lidice which was utterly destroyed by Nazis). Czech history (especially over the last 90 years or so) is a history of optimism, revolution, and disappointment, and that history was at the forefront of our trip, largely because that was the focus of our class.

First, though, I'll focus on the amazing architectural variety. There are just dozens of gorgeous buildings, all built next to each other. It is really interesting to see a Gothic city gate next to an art nouveau theater, for example. One of the first things we did was take a walking tour of the city, which was peppered with student presentations about various historical moments and figures, or art styles and famous artists who espoused them. It was really a fun way to start the trip, even though we all felt a bit gross after the incredibly long bus and ferry trip. Understandably, we took a lot of pictures, too! I just uploaded my pictures from the week and I had taken nearly 200 over the course of the week. You can see the best of them here

We sort of organized the trip around the famous 8s of Czech history: the creation of Czechoslovakia in 1918, the occupation by Hitler in 1938, the vote and switch to Communism in 1948, the "Prague Spring" of 1968 - a time of greater openness culturally and politically, which was followed that same year by a harsh Soviet invasion and clampdown, and finally 1989 (the 8 is at the beginning of that one) when Communism collapsed. It is interesting to travel to Prague now, 20 years after the collapse of Communism, and see what one classmate called "self-conscious capitalism." For example, when we went to the symphony on Tuesday night (a rather disappointing but culturally interesting experience) we noted the billboards placed shamelessly on the stage behind the musicians. I don't know whether or not you can really see them in the picture, but there they are, amongst this beautiful art nouveau decoration, advertising for who knows what. The symphony was also interesting because there were maybe 50 people there. Definitely no more than a hundred. They didn't know proper concert etiquette, and clapped in between movements, which is something that always annoys me. The musicians themselves hardly seemed engaged. One young woman in particular - the cello player - always looked terribly sad or perhaps disappointed whenever the group bowed. It was frustrating, but perhaps revealing. Our teacher suggested later that evening that the lack of enthusiasm for classical music stems from its encouragement during the Communist years because there was no way for it to be subversive. I'm not sure I buy that, but it's an interesting suggestion to be sure.

Another theme of the trip was art and artists. We got to meet both David Cerny and Milan Knizek, two incredibly famous Czech artists who don't necessarily like each other very much. They are/were both subversive, but Milan Knizek's work really took place mostly in the 60s and 70s. He was part of the fluxus/anti-art movement/anti-movement, like John Cage. The concept is really to play with the idea of what art is and what it isn't. David Cerny is younger and rather humorous. The Czech Republic recently commissioned him to create a piece of artwork for the EU building during their presidency, and he created Entropa, which rather vividly pokes fun at the member states. We went and saw Entropa, and I found it quite amusing. A lot of my classmates didn't really like David Cerny, partly because he has a rather bizarre attitude - he seems to think of himself as something of a rockstar, aloof to the world of mere mortals and even to his own art. We met him on Monday. On Wednesday, Milan Knizek sprinted us through the contemporary art museum, which was frustrating, and then stood and talked with us about how art shouldn't be in museums, while standing in front of his works which are in the museum, of which he is some sort of director. It was a bizarre experience. That night, though, a number of friends and I had a great discussion about what makes art Art. I think Milan Knizek sparked many interesting conversations, because I participated in at least three that day. Maybe it was just that we were growing more comfortable together as a group, though. It's hard to say.

Another facet of the trip was delicious and cheap food and (for me) beer. We ate so many good meals and stopped at a lot of fun pubs or bars. One of the best meals for me was Tuesday, when I got to have lunch with Nika, a friend from Mac who is from Prague and taking the semester off and staying at home. We had such a good conversation and a delicious meal of gnocchi - and I also didn't feel like an idiot because I was with a native Czech speaker! We also ate a lot of dumplings and goulash type meals. I think I tried a different beer every night, which was fun. Some were better than others. Some were just disappointing or downright bad. One unfortunate meal experience was the first night, when our teacher had arranged for us to meet some young Czechs and hear from them, and they had agreed to take some of us to eat somewhere "off the beaten path." The Czech women (aside from their upsetting views of the Roma) were really sweet people, and I felt bad for what happened next. I think one problem was that we ALL wanted to eat somewhere authentic, so we all went with them to this tiny pub. The bartender/waitress was the only server there, and she spoke very little English, though she eventually got all of our orders. Then it took four hours for food to come. Some people never got food. The Czech woman who orchestrated it felt terrible, but it wasn't her fault. I felt really bad for the waitress too, because we were all beginning to get irritated towards the end and she couldn't do much about it. I guess the fault really lies with the cook - apparently one of them never came that night. It was a kind of unfortunate start to the trip, though. But other than that - and a strange fish dish on the last night that wasn't quite to my liking - the food was amazing and the meal experiences were really fun. DIS really spoiled us on some of the group meals - we had a number of very fancy meals at upscale restaurants or hotels.

We also visited Cesky Krumlow, which is a beautiful town in the Sudetenland. If your World War II history is a little hazy, I'll refresh your memory: the Sudetenland was a part of Czechoslovakia inhabited in large part by German-speakers and ethnic Germans. Hitler thought it should be part of Germany, and most of the Germans agreed, because they felt they were German. So he occupied the Sudetenland and was welcomed by many of the German-speakers, who probably had no idea about the evil that was coming. Many of the Czechs from that area were exiled. After the war, the president of Czechoslovakia exiled all the Germans in a similar manner. So it has a rather difficult past. Cesky Krumlow is gorgeous and contains a gigantic castle. It was also where the fascinating artist Egon Schiele did a lot of his work and is the town most featured in his landscapes. The town was simply beautiful and a lovely place to end the trip, even though it is important to remember its contentious past.

Overall the trip was amazing. I loved Prague and am anxious to return - probably at the end of the semester when John and I have a few weeks together in Europe! It was hard to shake the urge to compare it to Copenhagen, so I'll just make note of a few of the striking differences. Prague is much more tourist-y. There was a street that stretched from Old Town Square nearly to our hotel that was basically nothing but souvenir shops. It's also a lot cheaper, which makes sense given its comparative economic standing. There were more dogs and fewer babies, and a much greater variety of architecture, since it's an older city and also wasn't bombed to the ground in the early 19th century. Partly my experience of Copenhagen is colored by the fact that I live here and am staying with a Danish family and not in a hotel, but I think it is still a quite different atmosphere. I loved it, but I'm glad that I live in Copenhagen and got to visit Prague rather than the other way around.

Skiing in Sweden! Also the rest of my week.

Wow - it's been a really busy week, and it's looking like the busy-ness will simply continue! Wheee!

The week started off well, with a visit from some other Mac kids - Anna Frye and Ella Bandes. I actually had never met Ella, but she and Anna are on the same program in France and had a week off, so they were in Copenhagen. Ella's friend from elementary school is Danish and lives in Copenhagen, and she showed us around. It was a really cozy time - we got hot cocoa at a really sweet cafe, ate at a shwarma place in Nørrebro, and then went to a bar/cafe in Free Town Christiania, where there were free crepes and ice cream, as well as interesting people-watching - awesome. I'm hoping I'll get to see Christiania in the daylight before too long - it's a really interesting place, and when I know a little more and visit again I'll probably do a whole post about it.

Tuesday was also really lovely, with the first beer-tasting session of the semester. One of my (non-academic) goals for the semester is to learn a lot about beer so that when I get back home I can impress everyone with my expertise. Or just know what to look for for beer-lucks. The beer-tasting was at Nørrebro Bryghus, a microbrewery in Copenhagen. The owner/master craftsman of the brewery is actually our guide for all three sessions, and is super knowledgeable. He also makes super great beer!

The rest of the week was a little calmer and a little less fun. I found out that I didn't get a Lilly fellowship, and apparently a lot of people want to work at the Mac library, so I might not even get to work there over the summer - I'll find out the first week in March. I'm hopeful about that though, since I worked there last summer and know what the summer routine is like.

But this weekend was really great - I went skiing in Sweden with DIS! There were only 17 of us on the trip, and most of them all knew each other, so it was a bit awkward at first, but I shared a cabin with three really sweet girls from Hamilton and got to know them and their friends from St. Lawrence University. It was hilarious to watch them all make connections - apparently everyone on the East Coast is connected, especially if they go to smaller colleges, so a lot of their parents and relatives knew each other in college!

The skiing was excellent and really fun. On Saturday I did downhill skiing, then I lost my lift ticket so I decided to switch to cross-country. It was quite an adventure trying to find the trail head, but I found it and skied for a little while. Then I got super lost coming back, walked down a really steep and difficult downhill slope and ended up taking a t-lift up to the top of the mountain after I struggled to explain the situation to two confused Swedish lift operators. They were really nice once they understood what I was trying to say, though. That night we had a really fun dinner and mild party in our cabin with the kids from the cabin next to us. Today I did cross-country all day. It had snowed so much I had to blaze a trail myself. I skied about 5 kilometers - it was a 2.5 k trail, but I did it twice, once to make tracks and then again just for fun! The trail was just gorgeous - the trees were so heavy with snow, it was unbelievable. Oh - and I (finally) got my camera back right before I left, so I was able to take this picture. I only took like one other picture this weekend, but I'm going to try to edit the Jylland post and add pictures from the trip there.

Some Things I've Noticed

My camera has been found! Unfortunately it hasn't been returned to me yet, but when it is, I'll be sure to let you know and edit the Jylland post to include pictures!

This week has been a pretty standard one. I'm starting to settle into a routine, which is nice. I've also been here for nearly a month now, and I've made some interesting observations about what is different and what is the same here. A lot of the differences are small things, but they're just different enough to notice: baby carriages, for example, or the toilets. Nearly every baby carriage I've seen looks roughly like this. Some of them are double-wide, to carry twins. There are also A LOT of babies here (Denmark has one of the highest fertility rates in Europe), and people generally just leave the carriages outside of stores while they're inside shopping, sometimes with the baby in it, which is really startling to see! Our Danish teacher says people usually lock them or have an alarm system, but she also says it's just a sign of the tremendous social trust people have here. I just can't imagine anyone leaving a stroller outside in the US, much less one with a baby in it! Although in the US people also seem to stay home with their babies, whereas here the babies are brought along everywhere.

Babies aside, there is a definite difference in the attitude of society here. Everyone, and every social system, seems more focused on the community or family. A full time job is 37 hours a week, and though some people work more than that, it seems pretty rare. Compare that to the US, where most people work at least 50 hours a week, generally more. Another difference is in the costumer-business relationship. Whereas in the US, most of our economic system is really focused on the consumer, here it's focused on the worker. I was speaking with one of the DIS interns the other night and she made the comment that costumer service is very lax here, because companies want their workers to be happy more than they want the costumers to be happy.

Obviously, the "welfare state" also indicates the importance of community. It's based on the idea that "the broadest shoulders carry the heaviest burden." Thus, my host parents, who are pretty well-off, pay 60% of their income towards taxes. Most folks pay around 50%. But minimum wage also is roughly $22, and even though they only get $11 after taxes, that's still around 50% more than most similar workers in the US get. Plus, those taxes provide for a lot of the basic needs of the society, such as health care and education, and I assume some basic housing and food for those who are unable to work or afford it otherwise. My host mom was baffled when I told her how much we pay to go to Mac, and I get a large amount of financial aid, too.

Although the system should provide for everyone, you still do see people begging sometimes (I mean, I've seen like one). My Danish teacher said that some people don't want to get money from the government, and others are mentally ill (which made me wonder how much the health care system covers mental health, though I'd heard they were quite good at that.) Another group that one sees begging, according to my teacher, are illegal immigrants, because it's basically impossible to get a job or assistance from the government (obviously).

The difference between the US and Denmark is really in the national history, though. If you think about it, Denmark and the US have followed kind of opposite trajectories up to this point. Denmark just keeps getting smaller and the US has gotten larger. We also don't have a past that includes Grundtvig, who started the Folk High School movement in the 1800s under the premise that education should be accessible to everyone, including farm workers. Nor do we have a past that includes losing a large part of our area due to humiliating losses which led to a much more peaceful foreign policy until the mid-20th century. The US also industrialized earlier than Denmark (most places did), so there's this image of Denmark being built on the shoulders of farmers, since it was largely rural until quite recently. While the Danish system would never work in the US, given the differences in history, as well as the fact that Denmark is much smaller and much more homogeneous (with an immigration process even more difficult to navigate than that of the US), I can't help but feel we can learn a lot from it. Like, socialized medicine isn't the devil, for example. And that everyone deserves a good education. But our national narrative is so wrapped up in "The American Dream" of pulling oneself up by one's bootstraps that there isn't room for the narrative of community members supporting each other. (Narrative is basically the theme of my semester, I've discovered. I think we talked about it in all of my classes except one this week!)