After I got back from Stockholm, I had a busy couple of days trying to get ahead on work because my friend from high school, Angela (I visited her while she was studying in Paris last year) was coming to Copenhagen on Friday and was going to be here for a week. It was really nice having a friend visit and getting to show someone else Copenhagen since a lot of people kind of forget about Copenhagen even though it is a really neat city. Angela arrived early in the morning on Friday but I had class all day so she just walked around Copenhagen by herself for most of the day. On Saturday we woke up early and took the train to Malmö, Sweden (a 30 min train ride). Copenhagen and Malmö are part of the Oresund region which includes Zealand (the island that Copenhagen is on) and Southern Sweden and in the last decade I think there has been a large move to tie the Oresund region closer together. A major part of this was the construction of the Oresund Bridge which crosses the Oresund strait between Copenhagen and Malmo, I think it is the second longest bridge in the world and it spans over 4 miles!
The first thing we did in Malmo was to walk over to the Turning Torso, the tallest building in Scandinavia (at 54 stories) and very neat looking, the entire building rotates 90 degrees as it goes up. The Turning Torso was on the edge of Malmo, in an newer developed area which was fun to walk around in. It was all residential but the homes and apt buidlings were very modern and it was right next to the sea with a good view of the bridge. I really liked the feel of this part of town and both Angela and I agreed that it felt a lot like parts of Oakland and Emeryville.
From the Turning Torso we walked down to the older, main part of Malmo to find some lunch. Both Angela and I are very indecisive when it comes to food because we always think there might be something better if we keep looking, so it always takes us forever to decide on a place. We finally ended up going to a little Italian restaurant on the main square and split a pizza. I was kind of shocked by the price, we each ended up only paying $6 total for pizza and a drink! (Malmo was even cheaper than Stockholm!).
From lunch we walked over the the old Renaissance Castle in Malmo and went to two of the museums there (total entrance price $2). The first museum was about the city history and it was very strange. First of all, there are many fewer things in English in Sweden than in Denmark (this was also the case in Stockholm). Also, the museum was very kitsch and had a lot of random and strange, but sometimes funny things. We ended up being confused most of the time and I'm not even sure all of the exhibits would have been clear if we knew Swedish. But is was still fun to see the museum becasue it was very different and much less academic than the museums in larger cities.
We spend most of the rest of the day walking around Malmo. It is not all that different from Copenahgen, which is to be expected because this part of Sweden used to be part of Denmark. However, the buildings still were taller and a bit more grandiose than anything in Copenhagen. Around 5 we stopped at a cute looking teahouse and each got a drink (I got a very rich hot chocolate) and a pastry and then walked around again until dinner. For dinner we ended up eating in the main part of Malmo again, but outside. There were a two restaurants that had set up a lot of tables outside with lots of heat lamps and warm blankets. We had a bit of a hard time figureing the menu out since it was in Swedish, but finally we pretty much managed to figure out all of the different meat types from what I knew of Danish and were about to order when the waitress told us that there were English menus! So we took a look at those which were much easier and it ended up that we had figured out pretty much everything except for the word for elk! We had a pretty late dinner so afterwards we just decided to head back to Copenhagen, especially since it was starting to rain so we walked back to the train station and were back in Copenahagen 40 mins after we left the restaurant!
On Sunday I had to do some work because my final studio project was due on Wednesday so Angela did some more exploring on her own and then we met up in the afternoon and went to the Carlsberg Brewery where we took a tour which went over the history of beer, of the Carlsberg brand and how they make their beer. Afterwards, your musuem tickets get you two free tastes of beer in their beer room. I really enjoyed the tasting because before you went up to order your beers they had 20 or so different aromas that you could smell to determine what you liked and what you didn't like and then they had a list of their beers with the flavors that one could taste. Angela and I each got two different beers so we could try eachother's. My favorite was a stout beer that had chocolate, coffee and oak as the listed aromas while one the Angela got had a very strong apple flavor.
On Monday Angela and I went to a famous cake/bakery near my school and each got a pastry and a drink before I headed off to do work and she went sightseeing. That night we cooked chili (something I've been meaning to do but have never gotten around to do). It was pretty good but more solid than usual since we added more mushrooms and more vegetables than the recipe called for because we figured we wouldn't use them up otherwise.
Tuesday was a loooooong day. I had class all day and since my project was due at 10pm on Wednesday I knew I had a lot of work to do. I ended up pulling an all-nighter in the studio, along with a lot of other people because I just wanted to get my project done with. And of course, everything took a lot longer than anticipated. I ended up working pretty much straight from 2 pm on Tuesday afternoon to 7 pm Wednesday evening with only a few short breaks. Needless to say, by the end i was exhausted and had no idea how the other people who had pulled all nighters were still able to keep working since I had to concentrate really hard to do anything. however, my project turned out really good so I was pleased about that and I hadn't really made any big stupid mistakes. I was so tired Wednesday that I came back with Angela, ate dinner, took a shower and was in bed and asleep by 8:30! The next morning though I had to wake up early because I had my presentation for my project at 9 which was kind of annoying but it ended up being good to get out of the way. My presentation went very well and I think my teacher and the two guest critcs liked my idea and by presentation board so that was good.
Thursday afternoon Angela and I just walked around for a bit and the weather has finally started to be more springlike in the week Angela was here and we had 3 or 4 sunny days in a row! Also, as the weather is getting warmer ice cream stands are starting to pop up on the streets which is really nice and there are even more people out. I'm really looking forward to coming back to Copenhagen after my 3 week travel break becasue it will really be spring then!
Angela left early Friday morning and I've pretty much been spending my time getting ready for my break as I leave tomorrow (Sunday) at 8 am. I am really excited to go but I am been getting sick/have been kind of sick, for about a week now. A lot of people in my studio were sick and the rooms don't really have good ventilation so it isn't that surprising that I got sick. however, I also don't think my body let me fully get sick since I had so much work to do and I don't feel all that bad, just mostly feverish at night. So I'm hoping that I'll get better by tomorrow or at least during the first week of traveling.
Since I'll be traveling for the next 3 weeks, I probably won't be updating the blog unless I find time and a free internet connection, but here's a list of where I'll be going:
Week 1: I'll be traveling with the DIS Architecture program to Germany (Hamburg and the area around Dusseldorf) and to the Netherlands (Amsterdam and Utrecht).
Week 2-3: The DIS tour ends in Utrecht so I'll take the train to Amsterdam, spend 1 day there and then take a train to Brussels and spend 1.5 days there before I head to Barcelona where I'll meet up with another friend from high school, Lexi who is studying abroad in barcelona. I'll spend 3 days in Barcelona and then both Lexi and I will fly to London, spend 3 days there, then fly to Zurich and spend a couple of days in Switzeland, take a night train to Budapest, spend 1.5 days there and then take a night train to Prague where we'll spend out last two days before heading back to Copenhagen/Barcelona, respectively.
Saturday, March 21, 2009
Stockholm!
I visited Stockholm (by myself) from Saturday March 6 to Sunday March 7, so I had a pretty short trip but I got a really good deal on the airfare. I ended up flying to Stockholm (1 hr 15 min flight) so this was the first time I flew out of the Copenhagen airport. It is really so much nicer to fly in Europe, and the Copenhagen airport was really pretty and neat and the whole thing was lined with teak wood floors! And they had some of the famous Arne Jacobsen Egg Chairs for people to sit in.
First, a list of what I did in Stockholm:
Saturday March 6th
My flight arrived in Stockholm at 12 on Saturday so I really only had half of Saturday to do stuff.
I took the Arlanda Express (nonstop train from the airport to Stockholm that was very convenient) and checked into my hostel on Gammla Stan, the old medieval part of Stockholm.
Went to Ostermalm Saulhall, a large food/market hall which was very cool with all of the different kinds of food
Went to the Modern Museum/Arkitekturmuseum (they are connected) which I left at 6 so everything else was closed
Walked around A LOT, I kind of ended up just wandering around so I could see a bit of Stockholm and I ended up walking for 3 straight hours with a break for a frankfurter dinner before I headed back to the hostel, planned Sunday and went to bed early.
Sunday March 7th
It gets even lighter earlier in Stockholm than in Copenhagen since it is farther north so I got up at 7 so I could use as much light as possible, packed my stuff, checked out of the hostel and dropped my stuff off at the central station. Then I walked around again, mostly exploring Gammla Stan, which was a very cute and quaint island that I had seen some of in the dark, but wanted to see it in daylight. I was basically waiting for cafes to open for breakfast (it was Sunday and most places didn’t even open up until 10) but I found a place that I had read about that opened at 9 so I got a hot chocolate and a cinnamon roll for breakfast! Both were very good and the hot chocolate came in an enormous bowl! One of the best things was the price…Sweden is much cheaper than Denmark because their Kroner is much weaker (10 SKK per $ instead of 6 DKK) and the nominal prices in Sweden were about the same as in Denmark! After breakfast, I walked over to the Stockholm City Hall, which is one of their most famous buildings and one I had really enjoyed learning about in class. I took a guided tour since that was the only way to see inside and really enjoyed it. The City Hall holds the Nobel Banquet and I think is where they announce the Nobel Prize winners every year. However, the main room is called the Gold Room, and is adeptly named because this enormous room is totally covered with gold mosaics! It is very cool but a little odd because it is done in a very byzantine style even though the room in Sweden. After the tour, I walked all the way up to another building I had learned about in class, the Stockholm Public Library by Gunnar Asplund. It was not really in the main part of Stockholm and it took about an hr to walk there from City Hall, but I got to see more of Copenhagen. The library was very cool; it is a very stark building, basically a cylinder on top of a cube and painted bright orange! From the library I took the metro down to the other end of the city to go look at a church I had read about that had good views of the city and I got lunch (another frankfurter) from the same place I had gotten dinner. Then I took the Metro to the Woodland Cemetery, which is about a 12 min train ride from the center of Stockholm. This Cemetery has a lot of famous people buried there and has some interesting chapels and landscaping, so I though I would check it out. Unfortunately, since it was still winter, there was snow and ice on the ground outside of Stockholm and so it was a little hard to walk around the cemetery. Also, the two buildings I went to see were closed so I couldn’t go in. But the cemetery was very beautiful and part of it was in a forest of very tall pine trees, which was neat to see. From the Woodland Cemetery I took the Metro back to Stockholm, made a quick trip to the National Museum where I really enjoyed the temporary exhibit on the Pre-Raphaelites since I’ve always heard references to them but have never really understood what they were all about. From there I walked back to the main shopping area (I wanted to stop in an H&M to try to find a purse I saw in Copenhagen but figured would be cheaper in Stockholm). I managed to find the purse and in looking for it I went into 3 H&Ms within 2 blocks and saw a couple more that I didn’t go into. On the main shopping street, there were literally 3 H&Ms less than 50 yds from each other, it seemed a bit much! By this time it was 5 so everything expect for restaurants was closed so I walked around a bit more since my flight didn’t leave until 9 pm. However, it started to rain, so I ran into a café and had some more hot chocolate and a pastry! I waited there for a while and then went to the Central Train station and took the Arlanda Express to the airport and came back to Copenhagen.
Some things I noticed while I was in Stockholm/comparisons to Copenhagen:
1. It was really nice to be somewhere that had hills again. Copenhagen and Denmark are very flat but Stockholm had a fair amount of hills and they really help to make the streetscape more interesting and give you cool views.
2. Stockholm was a lot more different from Copenhagen than I expected. The buildings were less colorful and on average were 1 to 2 stories taller (even the older buildings). Also, the buildings had a more serious look to them and some of the residential areas had very ornate, baroque buildings that reminded me a lot of Paris. In comparison, the buildings in Copenhagen are much simpler and there are very few that are really ornate.
3. There were hardly any bikers…of course this makes sense since Stockholm is hilly, and also, their Metro system is much more extensive than Copenhagen’s.
4. People crossed the street whenever…they didn’t wait for the light as they do in Copenhagen.
5. The main shopping area was in a very modern district that was rebuilt in the 60s so the buildings are nothing that special to look at but there are still lots of people out so that makes it nicer. Also, the medieval part of town (Gammla Stan) was pretty much given over to tourist shops, a few restaurants and some arts and crafts stores. This is very different from Copenhagen where the old part is where the main shopping area is which I prefer because they everyone, both tourists and locals get to interact with the old architecture.
6. Stockholm is located on a harbor and it made up of 14 different islands so this gives you lots of really pretty views of the water and of the different islands. It was a very beautiful and picturesque city.
7. As I mentioned earlier, Stockholm was CHEAP! My big cups of hot chocolate only cost the equivalent of $2.50, which even in America would be cheap!
8. The Metro was really confusing…not figuring out which trains to take but figuring out how to buy your ticket since apparently you can’t buy single tickets from a machine and am supposed to buy them from a convenience store located in the train stations and then to get into the trains, you have to go to a special line where you show a station agent your ticket and then he lets you through. Their Metro was also really expensive.
9. I saw a lot more emphasis and advertising “traditional” Swedish costumes. There was a picture of the royal family dressed up as “traditional” Swedish peasants, which was kind of funny.
10. Apparently Swedes don’t all use the enormous prams they use in Copenhagen but normal size strollers. I also don’t think I saw as many babies as I do in Copenhagen.
So all in all I really enjoyed Stockholm and didn’t really mind traveling by myself since it meant I could be more spontaneous and could just do what I wanted to do. I was able to see everything I really wanted to see in 1.5 days but there was a lot of other interesting looking museums and shops that I didn’t get to go to so hopefully I’ll go back someday and I highly recommend visiting Stockholm (although it would probably be better to go once it is a bit warmer).
First, a list of what I did in Stockholm:
Saturday March 6th
My flight arrived in Stockholm at 12 on Saturday so I really only had half of Saturday to do stuff.
I took the Arlanda Express (nonstop train from the airport to Stockholm that was very convenient) and checked into my hostel on Gammla Stan, the old medieval part of Stockholm.
Went to Ostermalm Saulhall, a large food/market hall which was very cool with all of the different kinds of food
Went to the Modern Museum/Arkitekturmuseum (they are connected) which I left at 6 so everything else was closed
Walked around A LOT, I kind of ended up just wandering around so I could see a bit of Stockholm and I ended up walking for 3 straight hours with a break for a frankfurter dinner before I headed back to the hostel, planned Sunday and went to bed early.
Sunday March 7th
It gets even lighter earlier in Stockholm than in Copenhagen since it is farther north so I got up at 7 so I could use as much light as possible, packed my stuff, checked out of the hostel and dropped my stuff off at the central station. Then I walked around again, mostly exploring Gammla Stan, which was a very cute and quaint island that I had seen some of in the dark, but wanted to see it in daylight. I was basically waiting for cafes to open for breakfast (it was Sunday and most places didn’t even open up until 10) but I found a place that I had read about that opened at 9 so I got a hot chocolate and a cinnamon roll for breakfast! Both were very good and the hot chocolate came in an enormous bowl! One of the best things was the price…Sweden is much cheaper than Denmark because their Kroner is much weaker (10 SKK per $ instead of 6 DKK) and the nominal prices in Sweden were about the same as in Denmark! After breakfast, I walked over to the Stockholm City Hall, which is one of their most famous buildings and one I had really enjoyed learning about in class. I took a guided tour since that was the only way to see inside and really enjoyed it. The City Hall holds the Nobel Banquet and I think is where they announce the Nobel Prize winners every year. However, the main room is called the Gold Room, and is adeptly named because this enormous room is totally covered with gold mosaics! It is very cool but a little odd because it is done in a very byzantine style even though the room in Sweden. After the tour, I walked all the way up to another building I had learned about in class, the Stockholm Public Library by Gunnar Asplund. It was not really in the main part of Stockholm and it took about an hr to walk there from City Hall, but I got to see more of Copenhagen. The library was very cool; it is a very stark building, basically a cylinder on top of a cube and painted bright orange! From the library I took the metro down to the other end of the city to go look at a church I had read about that had good views of the city and I got lunch (another frankfurter) from the same place I had gotten dinner. Then I took the Metro to the Woodland Cemetery, which is about a 12 min train ride from the center of Stockholm. This Cemetery has a lot of famous people buried there and has some interesting chapels and landscaping, so I though I would check it out. Unfortunately, since it was still winter, there was snow and ice on the ground outside of Stockholm and so it was a little hard to walk around the cemetery. Also, the two buildings I went to see were closed so I couldn’t go in. But the cemetery was very beautiful and part of it was in a forest of very tall pine trees, which was neat to see. From the Woodland Cemetery I took the Metro back to Stockholm, made a quick trip to the National Museum where I really enjoyed the temporary exhibit on the Pre-Raphaelites since I’ve always heard references to them but have never really understood what they were all about. From there I walked back to the main shopping area (I wanted to stop in an H&M to try to find a purse I saw in Copenhagen but figured would be cheaper in Stockholm). I managed to find the purse and in looking for it I went into 3 H&Ms within 2 blocks and saw a couple more that I didn’t go into. On the main shopping street, there were literally 3 H&Ms less than 50 yds from each other, it seemed a bit much! By this time it was 5 so everything expect for restaurants was closed so I walked around a bit more since my flight didn’t leave until 9 pm. However, it started to rain, so I ran into a café and had some more hot chocolate and a pastry! I waited there for a while and then went to the Central Train station and took the Arlanda Express to the airport and came back to Copenhagen.
Some things I noticed while I was in Stockholm/comparisons to Copenhagen:
1. It was really nice to be somewhere that had hills again. Copenhagen and Denmark are very flat but Stockholm had a fair amount of hills and they really help to make the streetscape more interesting and give you cool views.
2. Stockholm was a lot more different from Copenhagen than I expected. The buildings were less colorful and on average were 1 to 2 stories taller (even the older buildings). Also, the buildings had a more serious look to them and some of the residential areas had very ornate, baroque buildings that reminded me a lot of Paris. In comparison, the buildings in Copenhagen are much simpler and there are very few that are really ornate.
3. There were hardly any bikers…of course this makes sense since Stockholm is hilly, and also, their Metro system is much more extensive than Copenhagen’s.
4. People crossed the street whenever…they didn’t wait for the light as they do in Copenhagen.
5. The main shopping area was in a very modern district that was rebuilt in the 60s so the buildings are nothing that special to look at but there are still lots of people out so that makes it nicer. Also, the medieval part of town (Gammla Stan) was pretty much given over to tourist shops, a few restaurants and some arts and crafts stores. This is very different from Copenhagen where the old part is where the main shopping area is which I prefer because they everyone, both tourists and locals get to interact with the old architecture.
6. Stockholm is located on a harbor and it made up of 14 different islands so this gives you lots of really pretty views of the water and of the different islands. It was a very beautiful and picturesque city.
7. As I mentioned earlier, Stockholm was CHEAP! My big cups of hot chocolate only cost the equivalent of $2.50, which even in America would be cheap!
8. The Metro was really confusing…not figuring out which trains to take but figuring out how to buy your ticket since apparently you can’t buy single tickets from a machine and am supposed to buy them from a convenience store located in the train stations and then to get into the trains, you have to go to a special line where you show a station agent your ticket and then he lets you through. Their Metro was also really expensive.
9. I saw a lot more emphasis and advertising “traditional” Swedish costumes. There was a picture of the royal family dressed up as “traditional” Swedish peasants, which was kind of funny.
10. Apparently Swedes don’t all use the enormous prams they use in Copenhagen but normal size strollers. I also don’t think I saw as many babies as I do in Copenhagen.
So all in all I really enjoyed Stockholm and didn’t really mind traveling by myself since it meant I could be more spontaneous and could just do what I wanted to do. I was able to see everything I really wanted to see in 1.5 days but there was a lot of other interesting looking museums and shops that I didn’t get to go to so hopefully I’ll go back someday and I highly recommend visiting Stockholm (although it would probably be better to go once it is a bit warmer).
Two More Museums and hints of Spring
(this is regarding Feb 25- March 5)
Wow, I was just looking back on my blog and I realized that I hadn’t posted anything since the end of February! So I’ll be filling everyone in on what I’ve been doing since then but I’ll make a couple separate posts for organization sake.
The last bit of February and the first week of March I again took it easy and didn’t try to cram a lot of things in. I did go to two museums (trying to see them all before the weather gets really nice), the Kunstindustrimuseet (Museum of Art and Design) and to the Thorvaldsen Museum. I had been to the Kunstindustrimuseet very briefly a couple of weeks earlier just to look at a specific piece for a class, but I didn’t really spend enough time looking at all of the objects. This is definitely one of my favorite museums in Copenhagen and it is broken into two parts, one shows notable Danish design furniture and goods (mostly chairs but there are lots of other things) from the 20th century to now so it has example of all of the famous Danish chairs by the big names such as Kaare Klint, Arne Jacobsen, Borge Møgensen and Poul Henningson. It is really fun to look at all of the different ways chairs can be made but just having all of those supposedly comfortable chairs there really makes me want to sit in them! The other part of the museum is given over to more historical international furniture and objects d’art from Europe (mostly France, England and the Netherlands) and from China and Japan (Modern Danish Design is greatly influenced by the Japanese). I also really liked this part, especially the Asian furniture. Finally, I could really tell I was in a design museum in a country known for its design when I went to the bathroom. The interiors were very sleek and modern, with copper stall doors and mahogany toilet seats! (I also really like how most of the public bathrooms here have actual walls for the stalls and door that go the full height of the room.
Later that week I went to the Thorvaldsen Museum, which I think was the first building created specifically to be a museum in Copenhagen and is I think the only museum in Denmark devoted to a specific artist. Thorvaldsen was a famous sculpture in the mid 19th century and he pretty much only worked in the Greek/Roman style, so the statues are pretty much what you would expect to see if you were in Italy. The thing I enjoyed the most about this museum was the architecture and the interior decorations. The building was built in a Greco-Egyptian style and the interiors used very rich yellows, eggplants, greens and red which really offset the white marble statues well. Also, it was arranged so you could see down an entire wing which created a very neat effect.
Although it definatley wasn’t spring yet, the weather was getting to be a little bit more spring like and there was a little something extra in the air. There were also starting to be more sunny or only partly cloudy days, which really so far has been the main clue that spring is coming.
Wow, I was just looking back on my blog and I realized that I hadn’t posted anything since the end of February! So I’ll be filling everyone in on what I’ve been doing since then but I’ll make a couple separate posts for organization sake.
The last bit of February and the first week of March I again took it easy and didn’t try to cram a lot of things in. I did go to two museums (trying to see them all before the weather gets really nice), the Kunstindustrimuseet (Museum of Art and Design) and to the Thorvaldsen Museum. I had been to the Kunstindustrimuseet very briefly a couple of weeks earlier just to look at a specific piece for a class, but I didn’t really spend enough time looking at all of the objects. This is definitely one of my favorite museums in Copenhagen and it is broken into two parts, one shows notable Danish design furniture and goods (mostly chairs but there are lots of other things) from the 20th century to now so it has example of all of the famous Danish chairs by the big names such as Kaare Klint, Arne Jacobsen, Borge Møgensen and Poul Henningson. It is really fun to look at all of the different ways chairs can be made but just having all of those supposedly comfortable chairs there really makes me want to sit in them! The other part of the museum is given over to more historical international furniture and objects d’art from Europe (mostly France, England and the Netherlands) and from China and Japan (Modern Danish Design is greatly influenced by the Japanese). I also really liked this part, especially the Asian furniture. Finally, I could really tell I was in a design museum in a country known for its design when I went to the bathroom. The interiors were very sleek and modern, with copper stall doors and mahogany toilet seats! (I also really like how most of the public bathrooms here have actual walls for the stalls and door that go the full height of the room.
Later that week I went to the Thorvaldsen Museum, which I think was the first building created specifically to be a museum in Copenhagen and is I think the only museum in Denmark devoted to a specific artist. Thorvaldsen was a famous sculpture in the mid 19th century and he pretty much only worked in the Greek/Roman style, so the statues are pretty much what you would expect to see if you were in Italy. The thing I enjoyed the most about this museum was the architecture and the interior decorations. The building was built in a Greco-Egyptian style and the interiors used very rich yellows, eggplants, greens and red which really offset the white marble statues well. Also, it was arranged so you could see down an entire wing which created a very neat effect.
Although it definatley wasn’t spring yet, the weather was getting to be a little bit more spring like and there was a little something extra in the air. There were also starting to be more sunny or only partly cloudy days, which really so far has been the main clue that spring is coming.
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