So this weekend I took my second big train trip; I went to Copenhagen with Michelle. We left Thursday evening around 7pm after my International Marketing class. It was the exact same train schedule as my trip to Prague, so it felt pretty familiar. We took the bus to Aachen, the train to Cologne, and then got on the overnight all the way to Copenhagen. The trip went pretty smoothly because we were alone for the first couple of hours. A guy came in then and so I slept on the floor until he got off a few hours later.
When we made it to Copenhagen, we went to find my friend Mary McConnell who was letting us stay with her in her host family’s house. We ran into a little trouble because my cell phone was low on minutes and so I couldn’t call her. We finally found each other through a slew of text messages at the train station near her house. We dropped our stuff off at her host family’s house (Adorable family, cute little one-year-old daughter named Lotus. It really made me miss Harper) and headed out into the city to see some sights.
We decided to go and see the Little Mermaid before anything else. It’s the famous statue of Hans Christian Anderson’s little mermaid. We had kind of a hard time finding it. The statue is in the water at the north end of this really beautiful park shaped like a star. We walked through the park to get to it, but we got a little turned around. I thought I saw it at one point and we walked toward this statue we saw in some water. Once we got to it, we realized that it wasn’t the real one, but a modern interpretation of the original.
Very strange, actually. The real statue, which we found eventually after a lot more wandering, is really lovely though. It’s on a rock just in the water by this harbor. I really liked it. It was lucky that we were there when we were because Mary told us that the statue is actually going to be moving to China temporarily for an exhibition there in June. I’m glad I got to see it.
After we saw the statue, we walked to the Amalienborg Palace where the royal family lives. It’s a neat square with similar looking buildings around it where the royals live and a statue in the center. There’s also a really ornate Lutheran church just off the square. There was actually a movie being shot in the square when we were there. There were all these actors in period costumes walking around.
It was fun to see that. I did not, however, recognize any of the actors. Sad story.After we looked around the square and the church, we went back to the Central train station to grab a quick bite to eat and get on the train that goes to Sweden over the water. The bridge is called the Oresundsbron. It’s five miles long and goes right over the water into Sweden. Pretty neat. As we went over the bridge, I looked out and noticed that there were a whole bunch of the modern windmills in the water. It was a really cool sight.
When we got to Malmo, Sweden we just wandered around for a bit and explored the city. We looked around the main square with the town hall and the church. We walked over to the beach side of the city and looked out over the water and saw Sweden’s tallest building. After that, we headed back to Copenhagen. We got a little nervous because we didn’t have our passports with us. Luckily, there was no passport control on either end. Wouldn’t that have been fun if we’d gotten stuck in Sweden? Haha…When we got back to Copenhagen, we walked down the Stroget. It’s the longest shopping street in Europe. It reminded me a lot of Maastricht down by the shops. Unfortunately, we were there on National Prayer day and so everything was closed. During this walk, we were desperately trying to find a restaurant that would give us some food for less than 20 bucks per person. Copenhagen is outrageously expensive. OUTRAGEOUS. We almost ate at this Chinese buffet that was probably the worst I’ve ever seen. It was 15 dollars a plate, and that was one of the cheapest places we found. That didn’t include drinks, which were another 4 bucks each. Finally we went to this little Mexican burrito bar place where we had chicken burritos for about 13 dollars. Crazy.
After dinner, we headed back to Mary’s house to freshen up before we went out. Mary had to study all weekend, but she took us out that night. She took us to a place where you paid about 11 dollars for all you can drink beer for two hours. It was a crazy night. I don’t usually drink beer, but if I wanted to drink for less than a million dollars it would have to be that. We had a LOT of fun.
A whole bunch of people from Kelley studies in Copenhagen with Mary. It was really fun to see all those people I know from school. It made me miss Bloomington pretty badly. We had a really fun night, though. And we made it home, too!Saturday, we slept off our fun night and then said goodbye to Mary and her host family. We decided to spend the day in Tivoli Gardens, a theme park in the middle of Copenhagen.
It’s really a lovely, fairy tale place. There are stages where they do pantomime shows and rides that are old school, but fun. I went on the world’s tallest swing ride. It was pretty scary, actually. It was really high and when the wind would blow the swings would catch and spin around in a rather terrifying way. Haha…I survived, though. 
There was also a Giant Drop-type ride that was really fun. I went on one of the coasters, which was a lot like the Whizzer at Great America. It was pretty fun. We decided to leave around 5, but stopped in the bathroom first. I got locked into my stall and couldn’t get out. The lock was turning on my end, but not catching so I was just stuck in there. Haha! They had to go and get a groundskeeper to let me out of the bathroom stall. It was pretty funny.We grabbed some food, and jumped on our train. We had reserved just regular seats for the ride back like we usually do. When we got to our wagon, though, it was a couchette train instead of a sitting car. Couchette cars are basically regular cabins but instead of six seats, there are six bunks (three on each side) stacked up. They usually cost 30 euro to reserve, but there was something wrong with the sitting car so we got them for free! Score! We made it back to Maastricht without incident. The whole trip was really smooth. Next weekend I’m going to Spain with Caitlin. Should be fun!
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